Next Monday the hearings on Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination to the Supreme Court begin in the Senate Judiciary Committee.  Do those hearings have to be a waste of time?  Not on your life.  There’s food for thought–and ammunition for the Republicans doing the only questioning that matters–in Hadley Arkes’s NRO piece from last week, and in a terrific Weekly Standard article by Robert Nagel.  And I’ll weigh in myself with a two-parter tomorrow and Friday at The Public Discourse.