You have to feel a little sorry for Sonia Sotomayor. Here she's spent all these years giving speeches about what she believes to boring little Diversity colloquia. And now she finally gets on the big stage ... and her P.R. handlers tell her she has to dissemble about everything closest to her heart, that if the public knew what she really stood for she might not get ultimate power. ("Trust us, Sonia, it worked for Obama, didn't it?")

And, then, some Republicans, surprisingly, grow a bit of a spine and make her repudiate all her best zinger lines ... over and over and over.

It had to have been humiliating for her. And she probably figures that when she finally gets on the Supreme Court, now Scalia will mock her by quoting constantly her testimony back to her. "Of course, we all know where Madame Justice stands on this issue; as she so eloquently put it during her colloquy with Senator Kyl etc. etc.," while Alito chuckles and Thomas does that thing where he just stares at you like you are the most boring waste of time ever.

Seriously, as deficient as these hearings were in various respects, they were still better than the utterly innocuous questioning that Obama bathed in during the 2008 election campaign, when the only man to stand up and speak truth to (future) power was Rev. Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr. Obama spent 20 months running for President without anybody reading to him from his own memoir.

We need Presidential candidates to be subjected to more hostile questioning by truly hostile, well-informed individuals. Presidential debate cross-questioning is lame because candidates can't afford to be too hostile or probe too deeply. And moderators are useless at hostile questioning because they are supposed to be moderate.