Today in Washington D. C. - June 5, 2009

The Senate in recess until 2 pm; in the evening,they will vote on cloture on the Dodd substitute amendment to the FDA tobacco regulation bill, H.R. 1256.

Yesterday, Judge Sonia Sotomayor delivered her questionnaire and boxes of her speeches and other documents to the Senate Judiciary Committee. The AP reports, though, that those speeches “include more instances in which she said she hopes a ‘wise Latina’ would reach a better decision than a man without that experience.”

Many people have expressed concerns about a speech Sotomayor gave in Berkeley in 2001 where she said, “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 who hasn’t lived that life.” The Omaha World-Herald reported on Wednesday that Democrat Sen. Ben Nelson called those remarks “troubling.”

But the administration has dismissed criticism, insisting that Sotomayor simply used a poor choice of words. President Obama said to NBC earlier in the week, “I’m sure she would have restated it. But if you look in the entire sweep of the essay that she wrote, she was simply saying that her life experiences will give her information about the struggles and hardships that people are going through that will make her a good judge.” And White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said last week, “I’ve not talked specifically with her about this, but I think that -- I think she’d say that her word choice in 2001 was poor; that she was simply making the point that personal experiences are relevant to the process of judging . . . .”

The documents given to the Judiciary Committee, however, show that Sotomayor has repeatedly said similar things over the years. As Slate put it, “Sotomayor didn’t misspeak in 2001. She apparently just repeated her stump speech.” According to a Slate piece yesterday, “in a 1994 speech Sotomayor used nearly identical language: ‘I would hope that a wise woman with the richness of her experience would, more often than not, reach a better conclusion. What is better? I … hope that better will mean a more compassionate and caring conclusion.’”

The AP adds, “In fact, she said it almost precisely the same way in speeches to the Princeton Club in 2002 and one at Seton Hall law school in 2003, according to copies she sent the Senate.”

And The Washington Post reports, “In a 1999 speech to the Women’s Bar Association of New York State, Sotomayor invoked ‘sister power,’ called for the selection of a third woman Supreme Court justice -- which she would now be -- and used phrasing similar to that in the Berkeley speech. ‘I would hope that a wise woman with the richness of her experiences would, more often than not, reach a better conclusion,’ she said.”

That makes at least five separate occasions where Sotomayor made remarks suggesting race and gender should affect a judge’s decisions. These are certainly things that Judge Sotomayor will be asked about during her hearings before the Judiciary Committee. In the meantime, the White House might want to revise its explanations of what they think she meant.

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