Sonia Sotomayor: How Republicans Will Go After the Judge (Time.com)

[Yahoo! News]

Time.com - President Obama's pick seems set to sail through her Supreme Court confirmation hearings -- but not without a fight from the GOP.

When Sonia Sotomayor heads to Capitol Hill for the start of her Supreme Court confirmation hearings on July 13, she'll find two groups of players awaiting her: the Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats, who arguably have the easy job to flatter and protect President Obama's pick (Al Franken, the panel's newest member, might also provide some comic relief), and the panel's Republicans, whose primary task is to goad her into saying something inflammatory or indiscreet.

To that end, the seven Republican Senators have prepared four lines of attack. They will express concern about Sotomayor's comments that a "wise Latina, with the richness of her experiences would, more often than not, reach a better conclusion" than a judge from a more homogeneous background. They will focus on her recent Ricci v. Destefano decision, a reverse-discrimination case overturned last month by the Supreme Court. They'll grill her on her interest in foreign law - in their eyes an un-American curiosity that could pollute U.S. laws. And they will fret over her Second Amendment decisions and imply she might want to take away some folks' guns.

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