Let’s see. We have audio, video and written statements by the nominee herself. It is not Republicans who are spinning on the Sotomayor nomination.  They couldn’t if they wanted to, because with the F5 magnitude Barack Obama is spinning

there just isn’t enough space for two in the room

“I think that when she’s appearing before the Senate committee, in her confirmation process, I think all this nonsense that is being spewed out will be revealed for what it is,” Obama said in the broadcast interview, clearly aware of how ethnicity and gender issues are taking hold in the debate.

The president’s damage control underscored how the White House is eager to stay on message as the battle to publicly define Sotomayor picks up.

Obama’s top spokesman, Robert Gibbs, told reporters about Sotomayor: “I think she’d say that her word choice in 2001 was poor.”

Nonsense? As in, the actual things she said, clearly, and knowingly? You cannot have it both ways – she cannot both intelligent and eloquent and suited for the Supreme Court and then be conveniently misunderstood when her beliefs become suspect. And poor, poor Robert Gibbs, having to reach the lowest common denominator when having to spin a bad statement. Alas, it was just “word choice”. Apparently, there was no thought behind what she said whatsoever. Right. And she doesn’t really believe appellate courts should make policy, either.

Earlier in the week, Newt Gingrich said it well. If you take the following statement made by Sotomayor

“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.”

and then imagine say, Supreme Court nominee Antonin Scalia making this statement

“I would hope that a wise white male with the richness of his experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a Latina woman who hasn’t lived that life.”

There would be hell to pay, and rightly so. The only issue on which a jurist should be measured is the validity of her understanding of the Constitution and her intellectual ability in interpreting it. Unless you are prepared to say one race is intellectually superior to another, her statement is completely out of bounds. Empathy is as relevant as hair color.

Sotomayor will be confirmed – I have no doubt about that, because the Democrats have the votes, and there isn’t an independent bone in a one of them.  What Sotomayor’s nomination does is give us a clear view into Obama’s real views on race and the kind of people he wants to associate into his government. Put in context, this administration is quickly becoming one of the more race-centered ones in history,  putting race prominently on the front lines in the most questionable of ways, and doing it in the most devastating way by apparently making it a cornerstone of legal appointments. Attorney General Eric Holder thinks race should be more prominent, mere weeks ago calling us all “cowards” on the subject. Despite overwhelming evidence (the standard is a mere preponderance), the Justice Department has dropped its pursuit of civil sanctions against the Black Panthers who used weapons and racial slurs to intimidate voters at the polls in Philadelphia last November. And now we witness the appointment of Sotomayor, who believes the “richness” of her experience somehow makes her a better scholar, and who a prominent liberal constitutional scholar has deemed lacking in intellectual firepower

to be an effective member of the court.  Jonathan Turley had this to say (watching Chris Matthews get all verklempt was an added bonus)

But I do think that there is a problem here when we talk about temperament and empathy.  You know, we are not selecting a house pet. We’re selecting a Supreme Court justice and as an academic I have a certain bias. And that is does she have the intellectual throw weight to make a difference on the court? And I have to tell you the optics are better than the opinions in this case. I’ve read a couple of dozen of her opinions. They don’t speak well to her being a nominee on the Supreme Court. She will be historic in many ways like Thurgood Marshall but I ‘ll remind you Thurgood Marshall was not a lasting intellectual force on the court. He was historic because he was first. And I think that a lot of academics are a little bit disappointed. I am in the sense that Diane Wood, Harold Coe, were not the ultimate people to prevail. These are people that are blazingly brilliant. They would have brought to the court intellects that would frame in the conceptual way.

This nomination tells us a lot about the president, and it’s not much good.