Political Headline of the Day

From Ace:

Sotomayor: I Disagree With Obama's Empathy Standard
Update: A Wise Latina Woman, With Her Richness of Experiences, Will More Often Than Not Commit Perjury in Her Confirmation Testimony

Ace is not impressed with Sotomayor's attempt to walk back everything she's said in the past 15 years:

She offers another dog-food answer about how she never intended to mean what she meant, and that she was only trying to inspire young Latinas, and who can argue with that?

Steven Hayes on FoxNews says he's "blown away at how she's trying to twist her speeches," at her naked disingenousnes in flatly stating that her words don't have their obvious meanings, and in fact often have the opposite meanings.

I'm blown away too. This is not a walk-back. This is brazenly lying while giving testimony. And lying is of course reason to vote against nominee.

You can promise you won't sin any further. You can offer context or mitigation for past sins. You can argue your statements weren't even sins at all.

You can do all of that.

But you can't just repeatedly lie about having made those statements or meant what you clearly did when you made them. That is every much a lie as claiming you weren't in a particular location on a particular date or that you don't know someone you know well.

We see now her philosophy of interpreting the Constitution -- or any words, in fact. Words mean precisely what it is advantageous for them to mean at any moment, no matter how strained or even how nonsensical that claimed meaning may be.

Since Sotomayor's clear, declarative sentences don't mean what they say, or perhaps mean the opposite of what they say, what about James Madison's clear, declarative sentences? Does the Bill of Rights actually mean the opposite of what it says?