Sen. Leahy starts off by trying to bolster Sotomayor’s criminal prosecution credentials. She repeats the line from her opening remarks that she “does not make the law.” It never fails to amaze me that liberals do not have the nerve to be honest about their philosophy and when push comes to shove (i.e. a court nomination is on the line), they resort to, in effect, lying about their judicial philosophy. In her voluminous speeches she never once — except in deriding it (wink, wink!) offered the view that judges don’t make the law. Speech after speech was filled with moral relativism and calls to bring one’s ethnic baggage to the bench. Well, if hypocrisy is the tribute one pays to vice, it is never more in evidence in these type of proceedings. On a surface observation, she seems far less personable and cheery than we were led to believe she is from meetings with senators. Perhaps she is trying to be “serious”; she comes across a bit dull.

As to Ricci, Sotomayor goes with the defense that she was applying “precedent.” If the Republicans are smart, they will query on just what precedents those were and why, given the obvious implications, she did not spell out her reasoning in a full decision.