By now everyone has heard Supreme Court Nominee Sonia Sotomayor's infamous quote from a 2001 speech she gave at the law school of the University of California, Berkeley:

"I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life," (source)

Continued...

That sentence has been reported, repeated and analyzed many times over the past week. But the first public comment about it from President Obama came yesterday when he told NBC News “I'm sure she would have restated it." (source). Unless the president has a whole different dictionary than the rest of us, to restate is to state it again or in a new way. So evidently he takes no issue with her "hope". Maybe he just wishes she had been more vague so that we simple folk wouldn't realize how racist amd gender-biased her comment was.

White House Spokesman Robert Gibbs also got a turn on this issue yesterday when he responded to reporter's questions on the same quote with: "I think she'd say that her word choice in 2001 was poor." (source). Again, not disagreeing with nor condemning Judge Sotomayor's obvious meaning. Not suggesting she may have misspoke or been quoted out of context. He simply indicated that if she got a "do-over" of that speech 8 years ago he thinks she would say the same thing just with different words.

Fortunately the Judge herself will most likely be asked about that quote during her upcoming confirmation hearing and we'll all be listening intently to which words she chooses this time.