Sotomayor a true judge — incoherent *UPDATED*

You know that I don’t like judges.  I’ve certainly made no secret of that fact, and it’s no doubt a by-product of practicing law in a region crawling with activist judges.  Listening to Sotomayor struggle to articulate things — and to avoid her own footprint — in response to Sen. Lindsay Graham’s questioning is painful.  It’s especially embarrassing when you hear her try to explain why the Constitution directly addressed abortion.

(Graham’s questioning, incidentally, is excellent.  He makes incredibly good use of his “good ole boy” persona to leave her without anything to say.  When Sotomayor does answer, her answers are manifestly non-responsive.)

While Sotomayor’s incoherence and weaseling aren’t surprising, what is surprising is the truly nasty attack that Nancy Benac at the AP — the AP! — launched against her:

It’s a good thing Sonia Sotomayor speaks Sotomayoran.

After week upon week in which plenty of other people on the planet interpreted Sotomayor’s past comments, the Supreme Court nominee at last got a chance to deconstruct her own words Tuesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Fingers splayed, palms flat, hands bouncing up and then deliberately pressing down to the table, Sotomayor elaborated, clarified, expanded, retracted.

She drew loopy circles on her paper; she ran rhetorical circles around her past words.

“I didn’t intend to suggest …” she explained.

“What I was speaking about …” she offered.

“As I have tried to explain …” she parsed.

“I wasn’t talking about …” she demurred.

She was a tough critic at times.

“I was using a rhetorical flourish that fell flat,” she averred.

“It was bad,” she said. Of her own words.

You really have to read the whole thing to get the flavor.  Benac is hostile.  It’s bizarre coming from an AP writer.  I wonder how long Benac will have a job.

UPDATE:  Welcome, Instapundit readers!  This is, of course, the obligatory (and heartfelt) “stop and look around” message.  I really do mean it, though.  Much as I’m delighted that you’re visiting this post, it’s not the best representation of how I write.  If you want to see whether I’m worth visiting again, you’ll get a better sense of me by reading this post (which is one of my periodic better efforts), or this one (which is pretty typical for me).

UPDATE II:  For more on the fact that Sotomayor is not merely imbecilic, but is also dishonest, Jennifer Rubin is a great place to start.  The question then, and it’s a question only for intellectual entertainment, is whether she knows she’s lying or whether she’s a pathological narcissist whose version of the absolute truth is always defined by the needs of the moment.