Readers of Bench Memos have seen our merry band highlight enough inconsistencies between what Judge Sotomayor is saying now compared to, oh, what she has said publicly for all of her previous life, to have doubts as to whether maybe, just maybe, she is being less than forthcoming. Well, it seems that not all of the Senators are buying what she has to sell either. In response to a question from Commentary’s Contentions blogger Jennifer Rubin at Heritage’s recent Tele- Town Hall, Senator Jim DeMint referred to Judge Sotomayor’s assertion that she never read and was unaware of the PRLDEF legal arguments (which included such gems as arguing that a failure to provide public funds for abortions is akin to Dred Scott’s denial of citizenship) as a “jaw-dropper.” Furthermore, Senator DeMint didn’t seem to be buying Judge Sotomayor’s answers from their private meeting together, in which she claimed that she had never thought about whether unborn children have any rights. Given her claims of ignorance regarding PRLDEF, former Attorney General Ed Meese told Rubin that the Committee must engage in further fact-finding:
Meese went onto explain that it is now critical for senators to insist that the PRLDEF documents, which have yet to be produced in their entirety for the Senate, be obtained to verify or disprove Sotomayor’s startling claim that she was ignorant of the legal positions being taken by a group for which she served both as a board member and on the litigation committee. He added that until the documents are produced the hearings should be continued. That, he said, is what must be done when “critical issues” arise “concerning the veracity of the candidate.”