JUDGING SONIA

Sonia Sotomayor enters confirmation hearings for her historic nomination to the Supreme Court this morning. If confirmed she will be the court's first Hispanic and third woman justice.

In the nearly seven weeks since President Barack Obama nominated Sotomayor to replace retiring Justice David Souter, critics have labored without much success to exploit weaknesses in her record. Republican senators also must take care to avoid offending Hispanic voters, the fastest-growing segment of the electorate, by attacking Sotomayor too harshly.

The opposition has insisted Sotomayor will twist the Constitution to which she has been quoted saying: "I don't believe we should bend the Constitution under any circumstance. It says what it says. We should do honor to it."

Big noise has made the Ricci case where Sotomayor was following the Rule of the Law. Her ruling reflected 38 years of court decisions, had she done otherwise she would've been sidelined as a judicial activist trying to create law.

Sotomayor has been chastised for her saying "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experience would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life."
This is particularly important because while she's been accused of reverse racism (whatever that means) her words have come from a minority living by the rule of a white-males-society, whom had never had to apologize for 'being' since male-whiteness has been taken as the norm. And that's where white-male-senators judging her today don't want to go.