To hear U.S. President Barrack Obama tell, Sonia Sotomayor, his nominee for the Supreme Court, simply "misspoke" and opted for a "poor choice of words" when she said a woman or Latino would make a better and more compassionate judge than a white man.

She didn't really mean it.

Perhaps. Except that we now know she has made the same claim in at least five speeches - this, while sitting as a judge - and the notion that people are better judged as members of a group rather than individuals - an idea which should be anaethma to a judge - was the theme of all those speeches.

Some Obama apologists go even further. Nobel prize winning New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, for example, dismissed Sotomayor's comments as a "joke" - she clearly wasn't joking - and said her critics are all essentially nutbars.

The Globe and Mail's John Ibbitson accused Newt Gingrich of being "evil" for saying that Sotomayor's comments are just a new form of racism.

So here's a question.

If a white male judge had given speeches and instead of speaking about women and Latinas had said, "I would hope that a wise white male with the richness of his experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion that a Latina female who hasn't lived that life," how do you think the liberal press and political class would respond?

The answer, of course, is obvious. He'd be branded a racist.

Well, what's good for the goose, as they say, should be good for the gander too.

But, in this world of identity politics, it isn't. And the trick is that instead of Sotomayor being seen as taking a "racist" view, anyone who dares question her is smeared as being "racist." Neat.

The very fact that Obama made a major point out of the fact that Sotomayor would be the first Hispanic on the Supreme Court and only the third woman, underscores the point.

Nothing wrong with either being female and/or Hispanic, but shouldn't legal qualifications trump both race and gender, particularly for what is arguably the most important position in the U.S. apart from the presidency itself?

Indeed, as an undergraduate at Princeton, Sotomayor wanted the government to force the school to hire more Hispanic faculty members and at Yale Law School she railed against a court ruling against racial quotas. As a judge, she has constantly cited her own "special" background and insights as a reason to put more Hispanics on the bench.

Yet, when a law firm partner at a recruiting dinner at Yale asked whether law firms did a disservice by hiring minority students based on race rather than qualifications, she was so offended - rejecting his personal apology to her - that she filed a discrimination complaint against the firm with the university.

So it's fine for her to advocate race-based politics, but pity the poor sap who dares to question her wisdom. Is this the kind of person who really should be a Supreme Court justice?

There's more. You likely already know that one of her recent controversial decisions - expected to be overturned by the very court she's been nominated for - involved Frank Ricci, a dyslexic Philadelphia fireman who studied for several hours a day for several months to prepare - and score well on - for a civil service exam he needed to pass in order to become a lieutenant.

Ricci and several other firefighters passed but, alas, since no black firefighters taking the test achieved passing grades, all the results were thrown out. Ricci thought this was unfair.

Perhaps because it is. But Sotomayor thinks it's just fine and she upheld the decision from the bench.

In his weekly radio address on the weekend, U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions, the senator leading the Republican Party's review of Sotomayor, asked, "if a judge is allowed to let his or her feelings for one party in the case sway his decision, hasn't that judge then demonstrated a bias against the other party?"

He went on to ask, "Do I want a judge that allows his or her social, political or religious views to impact the outcome, or do I want a judge that objectively applies the law to the facts? That is the central question around which this entire nomination process will revolve."

No doubt. But then again, Sessions is a white male. How can he possibly understand, eh?