Sotomayor Leaves Passion Behind in Her Testimony  —  WASHINGTON — During her enforced silence, Judge Sonia Sotomayor has been portrayed as a woman of passion.  Her speeches, endlessly dissected in the weeks since President Obama nominated her to the Supreme Court, reveal a fiery Latino pride.

Sotomayor's Unconvincing Backpedaling  —  I'm surprised and disturbed by how many times today Sonia Sotomayor has backed off of or provided less-than-convincing explanations for some of her more controversial speeches about the role of gender and ethnicity in judicial decision-making.

Smiling GOPers Ought to be Frowning  —  Watching Lindsey Graham's gotcha grin as he needled Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor with disingenuous and rhetorical questions you had to wonder what was so funny.  —  Does the Republican senator think it is amusing that he and his party's …

Mike Seidman on Sotomayor: On the Federalist Society Online Debate on the Sotomayor hearings (click here and scroll down), my Georgetown Law colleague Mike Seidman—a cofounder and intellectual leader of the Critical Legal Studies movement in the 1980s—is brutally candid in his opinion of Judge Sotomayor's testimony today:

Obama reps Chicago's South Side, delivers All-Star first pitch  —  ST LOUIS — Where did it land?  Was it a strike or wasn't it?  Why didn't the network choose a better camera to shoot from?  Those were the questions that viewers of baseball's All-Star Game were asking themselves at home …

House Democrats' Health Reform Proposal: Preliminary Analysis of Major Provisions Related to Insurance Coverage  —  CBO and the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) worked together to produce a preliminary analysis of the major provisions related to health insurance coverage …

The House Releases Its Health-Care Reform Bill  —  On first glance, it looks good.  A few thoughts:  —  The Process Is the Message: Three separate committees — Energy and Commerce, Ways and Means, and Education and Labor — have come together on one bill.  This is an incredible achievement.

Hilarious: HuffPo Says Sarah Palin Had No Authority To Write An Op-Ed In The Washington Post  —  My, my, my.  —  In what is without a doubt the best foot stomping, squealing, hold-your-breath-until-you-turn- purple fit I've seen in quite some time, and it's all because Sarah Palin had the gall …

Palin becomes MoveOn target as SarahPAC cash haul surges  —  (CNN) - Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's political action committee is confirming a flood of new donations that push her cash haul close to the million-dollar mark, as one of the nation's largest liberal PACs announced an ad targeting the former GOP vice presidential candidate.