Another Bush Defends Sotomayor

From CNN. In addition to Laura Bush, it looks like Former President George H.W.Bush is speaking out in support of Sonia Sotomayor. Who's next: Dubya?

CNN)–Former President George H.W. Bush stood up for his former judicial nominee Sonia Sotomayor Friday, telling CNN Anchor Robin Meade that GOP critics who called President Obama's Supreme Court pick a racist were off-base, and unfair.

Perhaps I should have created a new discussion for this but since it is related to her character as a person, I thought it would fit in here.  This is great article with videos from the NYTimes which provides more of a glimpse into the views of Sonia Sotomayor. Since she is speaking of how Affirmative Action really helped her, I could see where it might fuel debate from the right, but this article gave me a very positive impression of our next Supreme Court judge and it also explores Affirmative Action, which is controversial ofcourse, in an interesting way.

Here's an excerpt:

The clips include lengthy remarks about her experiences as an “affirmative action baby” whose lower test scores were overlooked by admissions committees at Princeton University and Yale Law School because, she said, she is Hispanic and had grown up in poor circumstances.

“If we had gone through the traditional numbers route of those institutions, it would have been highly questionable if I would have been accepted,” she said on a panel of three female judges from New York who were discussing women in the judiciary. The video is dated “early 1990s” in Senate records.

Her comments came in the context of explaining why she thought it was “critical that we promote diversity” by appointing more women and members of minorities as judges, and they provoked objections among other panelists who pointed out that she had graduated summa cum laude from Princeton and been an editor on Yale’s law journal.

But Judge Sotomayor insisted that her test scores were sub-par — “though not so far off the mark that I wasn’t able to succeed at those institutions.” Her scores have not been made public.