Sonia Sotomayor

Sotomayor: The Afternoon Session.

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After a lunch break, the Senators are back to preening for the cameras, and we’re back to our live blog.
There are four Senators left to speak, including Al Franken. And there will be introductions from Chuckie (Schumer) and a rare Kristen Gillibrand sighting. Then we’ll finally get an opening statement from Sotomayor herself.

Slight change in plans, lets open up a new comment thread for people just coming here for the afternoon. Here’s where we are so far.
2:04: Elie here. I’ll be taking us through the afternoon session. Amy Klobuchar is up next. I wonder if the senior senator from Minnesota is jealous that the junior senator from Minnesota is much more famous? Probably not. Minnesotans are too nice.
2:11: Senator Klobuchar had a pretty good grasp on the personal and jurisprudential history of every other female justice confirmed for the Supreme Court. It’s a short list.
2:14: Senator Ted Kaufman (D-DE) is up now. I already miss Joe Biden.
Check after the jump for comments and more updates.


2:20: Kaufman was all kinds of boring. But now we get a little Benedict Arlen Specter.
2:23: Specter thinks that the Court should be deciding more cases. Is he suggesting that the Court hasn’t been activist enough? Wow, I guess when you change parties they furnish you with a whole new brain.
2:31: Shocking news, Arlen Specter likes television cameras! So much so that he wants them in the SCOTUS hearings too.
Anyway, here we go, Senator Stuart Smalley.
2:33: God, another yelling guy. How come this only happens when the Democrats are speaking? Was there some kind of production break down at the Pfizer plant?
2:37: One of our commenters is summing up Franken perfectly: “Franken really was playing himself when he did Stuart Smalley. “I may not be a lawyer, but goshdarn it…”
2:40: Franken: “We’re going to have a lot more time together, so I’m going to start listening.” I actually think he was pretty solid, for a guy who has been on the job for five days.
2:46: Chuck Schumer is doing the Sotomayor backstory thing. He brought up how the Nancy Drew novels inspired her as a child. I don’t know, if I was a mechanic and the “black transformer” Jazz inspired me to work with cars, I wouldn’t be proud of that.
2:48: I think that Julie Andrews made Gillibrand’s outfit out of the old curtains in the Von Trapp family mansion.
2:51: Sotomayor’s nephews have the shakes.
2:54: Gillibrand ran over time, Leahy tried to cut her off, Gillibrand begged for 20 more seconds — which she got — so she could say that she “strongly supports Judge Sotomayor.” Congress makes a mockery of common sense every day. Anyway, it’s time for Sotomayor’s opening statement.
3:00: Sotomayor: “the task of a judge is not to make law, it is to apply law.”
3:05: Sotomayor’s statement was short and to the point. She said she’d be governed by the law. But she did say that she felt the suffering of victim’s families while she was a prosecutor. Hmm … empathy for victims of crime. Is that bad too?

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