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Jan 20: Barack Obama is inaugurated as president.

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There's nothing earth-shattering in either of their prepared statements, but this little segment from her remarks is worth reading:

Mr. President, I have the most heartfelt appreciation for the trust that you've placed in me by nominating me. And I want to convey my thanks to the Judiciary Committee, led by Chairperson Leahy, for conducting a respectful and timely hearing, and to all members of the Senate for approving the President's selection. I am so grateful to all of you for this extraordinary opportunity.

I am most grateful to this country. I stand here today knowing that my confirmation as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court would never have been possible without the opportunities presented to me by this nation. More than two centuries ago, in a Constitution that contains fewer than 5,000 words, our founders set forth their vision for this new land. Their self-proclaimed task was to form a more perfect union, to establish justice, and to secure the blessings of liberty for themselves and their posterity. Over the years, the ideals at the heart of that document have endured, as subsequent generations have expanded those blessings, these rights and freedoms to more and more Americans.

It's standard operating procedure to marvel at the Constitution and how great and open and opportunity-filled America is. Lots of politicians and appointees say such things. It just rings a little more true when the first Latina Supreme Court justice, rather than the latest hotshot Federalist Society lawyer, says it.

Bring on her wise Latina jurisprudence. Now, please, get to work, Justice Sotomayor.

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"We just received word that the [National Council of] La Raza supporters are jubilant and arranging immediate celebrations and festivities for their wins," Americans for Legal Immigration PAC, a vehemently nativist group that's been active fighting attempts to reform the immigration system in recent years, said in an e-mail Thursday afternoon. "Those of you in areas of dense illegal immigration might have a rowdy night on your hands."

Sotomayor, of course, was born in the Bronx, and besides, Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens -- so strictly speaking, she has nothing to do with immigration at all. But why should that get in the way of a good scare? "What do you think Obama and the Globalists plan to do to Americans next?" the e-mail asks. (Americans such as... Sotomayor, presumably.)

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The word most noticeably missing from the president's remarks was "empathy." It was a word he'd emphasized strongly when he dropped in on a press briefing to announce Justice David Souter's retirement from the Supreme Court and discuss the qualifications he was looking for in a nominee -- he called it "an essential ingredient for arriving at just decisions and outcomes." But it was a word the Republicans focused on in their attacks on Sotomayor, one they used to bolster their charges that her opinions were not based on the Constitution and the law but on more personal, subjective considerations, including race.

Without being explicit about it, Obama went directly at those charges in his statement.

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59 members of the Senate's Democratic caucus -- 57 Democrats, plus independent Sens. Joe Lieberman and Bernie Sanders -- voted in favor of Sotomayor. They were joined by nine of their Republican colleagues; 31 Republicans voted against confirmation. Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., who remains ill, was the lone non-voting member.

The split was more partisan than Supreme Court confirmations had been up until this decade, but the split fell right between the votes for former President George W. Bush's two nominees. Chief Justice John Roberts was confirmed by a vote of 78-22. while the Senate voted 58-42 to approve Justice Samuel Alito; that was one of the closest votes this century, according to the Associated Press.

The Republicans voting for confirmation were Sens. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., Kit Bond, R-Mo., Susan Collins, R-Maine, Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., Judd Gregg, R-N.H., Richard Lugar, R-Ind., Mel Martinez, R-Fla., Olympia Snowe, R-Maine and George Voinovich, R-Ohio.

Sotomayor will be sworn in this coming Saturday, at 11 a.m. EDT. Roberts will administer the oath, and will hopefully get it right this time.

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New Hampshire Sen. Judd Gregg announced Wednesday that he'll vote to confirm Sotomayor; Ohio Sen. George Voinovich, who'd been the last uncommitted Republican, said Thursday that he'll vote for her as well. That means there'll be nine Republicans, in all, crossing party lines.

Sotomayor's confirmation is, of course, assured. There is a lingering question about the margin of victory, though, as the votes of all 60 senators who caucus with the Democrats are not assured. Sen. Mark Begich, D-Alaska, for one, has been hesitating to say what he'll do, and he could be spooked off by the NRA's anti-Sotomayor stance and its promise to score the confirmation vote -- that is, remind its members that people like Begich bucked the pro-gun group.

Update: Begich will reportedly vote for Sotomayor.

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I’m exaggerating, but only slightly. Though it’s common to speak of liberal and conservative wings of the Court, usually we're just lining the justices up, left to right, based on where they stand on social issues. Abortion tends to be the foremost subject, or at least subtext, of a confirmation hearing. This time, as it happens, it was affirmative action, with a little bit of gun control thrown in.

What we tend to lose track of, in trying to figure out where Judge Sonia Sotomayor falls on the political spectrum is that the Supreme Court doesn’t only rule on social and cultural issues. Businesses, consumers and organized labor take their battles to the Nine all the time, and the much-noted five-to-four split on the Court doesn’t really apply to those cases. Justices we regularly refer to as liberals quite often end up in majorities with their conservative counterparts, ruling for the corporate party (usually, in these cases, the defendant).

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All week, the major Republican line of attack against her has been a simple one: She's racially biased, and she won't judge fairly and impartially. To prove that, the GOP has relied on a handful of speeches and her ruling in one controversial case out of New Haven, Conn., which found the city had acted properly by throwing out the results of a promotion exam for firefighters over concern that minority candidates were disproportionately likely to fail it; the Supreme Court overturned Sotomayor's ruling earlier this summer. And to make sure the point was driven home without any danger of subtlety, Republicans arranged for two of the firefighters to testify, calling them as witnesses in the Thursday afternoon portion of the hearing that dealt with Sotomayor's record and qualifications.

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So maybe it seemed refreshing when Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., started talking about the history of the 14th Amendment during the confirmation hearings for Judge Sonia Sotomayor. Well, maybe it would've been refreshing, if he hadn't found a way to twist the amendment's meaning. To the rest of us, the 14th Amendment is notable for its guarantee of equal protection under the law. For Coburn, it's all about guns.

Coburn first brought the subject up on Wednesday, when he pointed out to Sotomayor that there is a historical connection between equal protection under the law, as guaranteed by the 14th Amendment, and the right to bear arms, as guaranteed by the Second. Here’s an excerpt from the transcript:

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Um, maybe?

There's no denying (a) Lindsey Graham's hectoring tone, or (b) my urge to see what the Wise Latina was writing on her legal pad while waiting him out. ("Did that asshat seriously just say 'maybe these hearings are a time for self-reflection'?") There's also no question that -- as Feministing put it today -- "there's a specific sexist and racist narrative that accompanies the accusations of Sotomayor as somehow angry or meaner than her male counterparts. (Because when white dudes are strong, they're just powerful. When women of color are strong, they're scary.) And it's simply infuriating to watch it play out in these hearings."

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The theory that Sessions and his fellow Republicans appear to be working under when it comes to Sonia Sotomayor, President Obama's pick for the Supreme Court, boils down to this: ignore how she's ruled in the 3,000 or so cases she's heard in her 17 years as a federal judge (except, of course, in the one the white guy lost), and instead, focus on a few lines in a handful of speeches she's given -- and voilà, you, too, can have a peek at Sotomayor's future tenure on the high court. Her actual rulings so far -- very few of which came up at Tuesday's first day of question-and-answer with the Senate Judiciary Committee -- won't help you discern her judicial philosophy. But those speeches will, no matter what she's done as a judge or what she says in her confirmation hearings. Because as Sessions explained, only once she's on the Supreme Court will her true, white-man-hating thoughts finally be unshackled.

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"Remember Barack Obama's buddy Bill Ayers, the unrepentant terrorist who bombed American buildings in the '70s?" a narrator asks at the top of the ad. "Turns out President Obama's done it again: Picked someone for the Supreme Court, Judge Sonia Sotomayor, who led a group supporting violent Puerto Rican terrorists. Is this radical judge the type of person America needs sitting on our highest court?"

It's not clear that Committee for Justice has plans to actually air the ad, though it's soliciting donations to that end. Even if it does get the money together, though, it'll have a tough time getting stations to accept it, as it's extremely misleading.

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The senator focused in particular on accusations made by Sotomayor's detractors that the judge lacks the temperament necessary for a Supreme Court justice -- that she's rude to lawyers who come before her, a bully. Sotomayor, though, appeared well prepared for that line of questioning, maintaining her cool and brushing away the concerns. A bit of the exchange: 

GRAHAM: One thing that stood out about your record is that when you look at the almanac of the federal judiciary, lawyers anonymously rate judges in terms of temperament. And here's what they said about you: She's a terror on the bench. She's temperamental, excitable, she seems angry. She's overall aggressive, not very judicial. She does not have a very good temperament. She abuses lawyers. She really lacks judicial temperament. She behaves in an out-of-control manner. She makes inappropriate outbursts. She's nasty to lawyers. She will attack lawyers for making an argument she does not like. She can be a bit of a bully.

When you look at the evaluation of the judges on the Second Circuit, you stand out like a sore thumb in terms of your temperament. What is your answer to these criticisms?

SOTOMAYOR: I do ask tough questions at oral arguments.

GRAHAM: Are you the only one that asks tough questions in oral arguments?

SOTOMAYOR: No, sir. No, not at all. I can only explain what I'm doing which is when I ask lawyers tough questions, it's to give them an opportunity to explain their positions on both sides and to persuade me that they're right. I do know that, in the Second Circuit, because we only give litigants 10 minutes of oral argument each, that the processes in the second circuit are different than in most other circuits across the country. And that some lawyers do find that our court, which is not just me, but our court generally, is described as a hot bench, it's a term that lawyers use. It means that they're peppered with questions. Lots of lawyers who are unfamiliar with the process in the second circuit find that tough bench difficult and challenging.

GRAHAM: If I may interject, judge, they find you difficult and challenging more than your colleagues.

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The director of CPAC, the annual right-wing Woodstock, posted some alleged quotes from the Supreme Court nominee on the CPAC Twitter feed earlier this afternoon. "Soto: The time has come to end white male oppression by castrating every white male until they are no longer dominant in Western culture," the first post read. "(cont) That means forcible removal of their testicles. I realize the brutality of my comment, and I don’t know how to say it more clearly." A couple minutes later, this question came: "So, is the quote below accurate? I haven't seen it anywhere."

Surprisingly enough, the reason the quote hasn't been anywhere is because it's completely made up. About 10 seconds of Googling turned up a satirical news story that the "quotes" came from, on Carbolic Smoke Ball, which clearly describes itself as providing "news unencumbered by the facts" and as being "proud publishers of fake news since 2006."

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At confirmation hearings for Sonia Sotomayor's Supreme Court nomination this afternoon, Hatch and Sotomayor found themselves debating gun laws -- and running a bit farther afield. Here's their exchange:

HATCH: As a result of this very permissive legal standard -- and it is permissive -- doesn't your decision in Maloney mean that virtually any state or local weapons ban would be permissible?

SOTOMAYOR: Sir, in Maloney, we were talking about nunchuk sticks.

HATCH: I understand.

SOTOMAYOR: Those are martial arts sticks.

HATCH: Two sticks bound together by rawhide or some sort of a...

SOTOMAYOR: Exactly. And -- and when the sticks are swung, which is what you do with them, if there's anybody near you, you're going to be seriously injured, because that swinging mechanism can break arms, it can bust someone's skull.

HATCH: Sure.

The hearings are about to let out so senators can attend their weekly party lunches, and the show is set to pick up again at 2 p.m. Eastern. So far, no word on whether the later session will deal with throwing stars.

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The Republicans will ask Judge Sonia Sotomayor some harsh questions, and try to trip her up. The Democrats, meanwhile, will largely ask leading questions that give her a chance to look good. A few may use the opportunity to press her on issues that are important to them, but more often, they'll act like committee Chairman Sen. Pat Leahy, D-Vt., did Tuesday morning. What Leahy did was give Sotomayor an early shot at clarifiying her most controversial remarks and decisions before the Republicans go after her.

In the video below, you can see Sotomayor's response to a question from Leahy about the judge's infamous "wise Latina" remark. In it, she says, "I do not believe that any ethnic, racial or gendered group has an advantage in sound judgment." 

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Sotomayor's statement wasn't exactly earth-shaking. It contained no major surprises, nothing to offend or cause any major drama. Unsurprisingly, it was heavy on the judge's biography, and on assurances that she will not be the biased, activist justice Republicans say she will be. And, at just under eight minutes, it was blissfully short -- especially when compared with all the opening statements from the 19 senators who preceded her Monday.

Sotomayor thanked her family and friends, and all the senators she's met with since being nominated. She said "the progression of my life has been uniquely American," then described her life growing up:

My parents left Puerto Rico during World War II. I grew up in modest circumstances in a Bronx housing project. My father, a factory worker with a third grade education, passed away when I was nine years old.

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