Sotomayor: Dancing Around The Obvious

U.S. President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee finally got a chance to speak in her defense today, and it wasn’t pretty.

Sonia Sotomayor stood before the Senate Judiciary Committee today and did her best to minimize the political damage done by a series of remarks and rulings that come off as substantially less than fair.

Or racist, if you ask our founding editor.

How did she do that?

By obfuscating, ornamenting and at times outright rebuking her own words.

“I was using a rhetorical flourish that fell flat,” Sotomayor said of one remark, while acknowledging that another was just plain “bad.”

Not surprisingly, Democrats were tripping over themselves to accept Sotomayor’s revisions of the public record, including her effort to recast remarks she made about using her Latino heritage as a guide to making better decisions that white male judges.

“I would hope that a wise Latina woman, with the richness of her experiences, would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male,” Sotomayor once wrote, a remark that she said today was merely an attempt to inspire young Latinos.

“Unconvincing backpedaling,” one Washington Post opinion writer noted.

Obviously, Sotomayor faces a friendly audience in the U.S. Senate – which has a filibuster-proof Democratic majority, but that doesn’t mean that Republicans are unable to deliver a few body blows toward the Obama administration during the confirmation process.

And if Sotomayor’s evasiveness continues, those body blows will do deeper damage to an adminstration that is clearly beginning to lose its aura of impenetrability.

“I would not prejudge any question that came before me if I was a justice on the Supreme Court,” Sotomayor said in response to question on gun rights.

Yeah, but will she prejudge the people asking and answering the questions? Because that’s just as important.

Frankly, Sotomayor would have earned a lot more respect in our book had she simply owned her previous comments.

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