Top Republican calls Limbaugh, Gingrich comments ‘terrible’  —  (CNN) — A top Senate Republican is taking aim at recent statements from conservative commentators Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich suggesting Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor is a “racist.”

Republicans, Let's Play Grown-Up  —  Sotomayor's hearings are an opportunity for serious debate.  —  Printer  —  Friendly  —  “Let's play grown-up.”  When I was a child, that's what we said when we ran out of things to do like playing potsie or throwing rocks in the vacant lot.

A Republican Response to Sonia Sotomayor: Criticize, Then Confirm  —  Sonia Sotomayor has a classic American story.  So does Frank Ricci.  —  Ricci is a New Haven firefighter stationed seven blocks from where Sotomayor went to law school (Yale).  Raised in blue-collar Wallingford, Conn. …

Barnes: Sotomayor ‘benefited’ from affirmative action ‘tremendously.’  —  On MSNBC yesterday, Pat Buchanan repeatedly attacked Supreme Court nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor as an “affirmative action candidate,” echoing right-wing claims that she has “been the recipient of preferential treatment for most of her life.”

The Empathy Issue  —  The American legal system is based on a useful falsehood.  It's based on the falsehood that this is a nation of laws, not men; that in rendering decisions, disembodied, objective judges are able to put aside emotion and unruly passion and issue opinions on the basis of pure reason.

Senators Offer Competing Views Of Sotomayor  —  · Judge Sonia Sotomayor is expected to begin making courtesy visits next week to Senate leaders and members of the Judiciary Committee who will conduct hearings on her nomination to the Supreme Court.  —  NPR talked with two committee members …

Princeton key to knowing Sotomayor  —  Princeton University, Michelle Obama wrote in her 1985 college thesis, was “infamous for being racially the most conservative of the Ivy League universities.”  —  But for the second time in the Obama era, the stodgy Ivy League academy has emerged …

Interrogations saved U.S. lives, Bush says  —  BENTON HARBOR, Michigan (CNN) — Former President George W. Bush on Thursday repeated Dick Cheney's assertion that the administration's enhanced interrogation program, which included controversial techniques such as waterboarding …

Brenda Lee, Reporter, Dragged Kicking And Screaming From Near Air Force One  —  LOS ANGELES — A writer for a small Georgia newspaper who wanted to give President Barack Obama a letter was forcibly removed from a press area near Air Force One on Thursday shortly before he arrived at the airport.