Sotomayor Oath to Be Televised

(NEWSER) - “Empathy” was a key part of President Obama’s vocabulary when he first started talking about his Supreme Court nominee, Sheryl Gay Stolberg writes in the New York Times, but the word has disappeared. “Conservatives have hijacked empathy and turned it into an epithet,” Stolberg writes. When introducing Sonia Sotomayor, Obama spoke in “long-winded phrases” that can’t “be reduced into a convenient buzzword for the opposition.” More»

Says she burst into tears when Obama gave her the news

(NEWSER) - Sonia Sotomayor sat by the phone for 12 hours waiting for the call. When it finally rang, “I had my left hand over my chest, trying to calm my beating heart,” she recalls in an interview with C-SPAN. When President Obama offered her the Supreme Court appointment, “I caught my breath and started to cry and said, ‘Thank you, Mr. President.'” More»

Poll numbers plummeted amid Sotomayor, Gates controversies

(NEWSER) - President Obama’s downward opinion-poll trajectory among whites seems to be linked to the “blackening” of his image, writes Joan Walsh in Salon. It accelerated during two racially charged moments this summer: Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination to the Supreme Court, marked with debate over her “wise Latina” comment, and the Henry Louis Gates controversy. At such times, Walsh argues, “there's no denying, he got blacker to a segment of the white population.” More»

(AP) - The Senate confirmed Sonia Sotomayor today as the first Hispanic justice on the Supreme Court. The vote was 68-31 for Sotomayor, President Barack Obama's first high court nominee. She becomes the 111th justice and just the third woman to serve. Democrats praised the 55-year-old Sotomayor as a mainstream moderate. But most Republicans voted against her, saying she'd bring personal bias and a liberal agenda to the bench. More»

Republicans stake out a position against judicial 'empathy'

(NEWSER) - With Republicans unlikely to be able to block Sonia Sotomayor’s confirmation, it seems they’ve settled for drawing a stark contrast between President Obama’s philosophy of law and their own, writes Andrew Cohen for CBS News. During statements today, GOP senators repeatedly attacked Obama’s comments that “empathy” and “understanding people’s hopes and struggles” are essential qualities for a judge. More»