Republicans don't believe Sotomayor

I don't believe Judge Sonia Sotomayor is being trutful in her testimony in front fo the Senate.

Byron York agrees with me:

Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee are convinced that Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor has not been candid with them in under-oath testimony about her speeches and legal activism. But given the assurance that majority Democrats will vote to confirm Sotomayor no matter what, the GOP effort against her is largely an attempt to convince other Republicans that Sotomayor has not earned a vote for confirmation.

Republican aides worked through the night, Tuesday into Wednesday, studying the 108-page transcript from Tuesday's hearing. They believe Sotomayor told a variety of stories, none of them entirely truthful, to explain her series of infamous "wise Latina" speeches. And they question her efforts to distance herself from the work of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, on whose board she served for twelve years in the 1980s and early 1990s.

For example, in response to questioning from Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, Sotomayor denied involvement in PRLDEF litigation which argued that the denial of taxpayer-funded abortions amounted to a form of slavery. One brief, in 1980, compared the withholding of taxpayer abortion funding to the Dred Scott decision, and another, in 1992, argued that for poor women, especially blacks, denying taxpayer-funded abortion violated "the right to privacy in matters of body and reproduction -- a right that was trammeled with state sanction during centuries of slavery."

Sotomayor testified that she "never reviewed" and "wasn't aware of what was said" in the abortion briefs. Yet Sotomayor served on PRLDEF's litigation committee at the time, and a report last May in the New York Times, citing several former board members, said that, among the PRLDEF board, Sotomayor "stood out, frequently meeting with the legal staff to review the status of cases." The paper reported that for Sotomayor's entire 12 years on the board, "she played an active role as the defense fund staked out aggressive stances on issues like police brutality, the death penalty and voting rights."

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