The White House portrays Sotomayor as a living image of the American dream, though its telling of the rags-to-riches story emphasizes the rags, a more politically appealing narrative, and plays down the riches.

Discussions about Sotomayor and her ethnicity, gender and tax bracket carry risks for supporters.

In a California speech in 2001 now under renewed scrutiny, she remarked that, on a court, "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."

Yet years ago, during a recruiting dinner in law school at Yale, Sotomayor objected when a law firm partner asked whether she would have been admitted to the school if she weren't Puerto Rican, and whether law firms did a disservice by hiring minority students the firms know are unqualified and will ultimately be fired.

Afterward, Sotomayor confronted the partner about the questions, rejected his insistence that he meant no harm and turned down his invitation for further job interviews. She filed a discrimination complaint against the firm with the university, which could have barred the firm from recruiting on campus. She won a formal apology from the firm.

In speeches, Sotomayor has harkened back to her and her brother's beginnings in a poor Bronx neighborhood, roots that President Barack Obama highlighted in introducing her this week.

Yet Sotomayor did not live her entire childhood in a housing project in the South Bronx — she spent most of her teenage years in a middle-class neighborhood, attending private school and winning scholarships to Princeton and then Yale.

She climbed her way up through New York's Democratic power structure boosted by its ultimate brokers over those years — Gov. Mario Cuomo, Mayor Ed Koch, Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan and District Attorney Robert Morgenthau. That's the access of a partner in a corporate law firm, not a kid from the South Bronx.

She now earns more than $200,000 a year and owns a condominium in Greenwich Village, a neighborhood of million-dollar-plus homes.

What I am finding, both statistically and emotionally, is that the worst victims of crimes are not general society — i.e., white folks — but minorities themselves. The violence, the sorrow are perpetrated by minorities on minorities.

She served simultaneously on New York's campaign finance board and the board of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, an advocacy group that took legal action in 1991 to fight what it considered discriminatory redistricting. Sotomayor didn't recuse herself from a finance board discussion of the redistricting battle, despite the involvement of her own advocacy group.

Also during this time, Sotomayor served on the state board that makes mortgages available to low- and middle-income New Yorkers. She missed nearly a third of the board's meetings during three of those years.

"It is probably important for anybody involved in this debate to be exceedingly careful with the way in which they've decided to describe different aspects of this impending confirmation," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said.

With Hispanics a growing voting bloc, and ethnic sensitivities high, few are willing to be as blunt as former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who said of her comment that a Latina woman would rule more wisely than a white man: "New racism is no better than old racism."

The diabetic Sotomayor certainly does NOT fit physical leadership requirements put forth in Leviticus 21:17-22 which states:

(RSV)Leviticus 21:17 "Say to Aaron, None of your descendants throughout their generations who has a blemish may approach to offer the bread of his God.
Leviticus 21:18 For no one who has a blemish shall draw near, a man blind or lame, or one who has a mutilated face or a limb too long,
Leviticus 21:19 or a man who has an injured foot or an injured hand,
Leviticus 21:20 or a hunchback, or a dwarf, or a man with a defect in his sight or an itching disease or scabs or crushed testicles
Leviticus 21:21 no man of the descendants of Aaron the priest who has a blemish shall come near to offer the Lord's offerings by fire; since he has a blemish, he shall not come near to offer the bread of his God.

On August 14, 1976, just after graduating from Princeton, Sotomayor married Kevin Edward Noonan, whom she had dated since high school. He became a biologist and a patent lawyer. She and Noonan divorced in 1983; they did not have children.

Some women remain virgins to be singular and holy in body and spirit for the Lord Jesus. Other are single because they will not submit to a man in affectionate love. The latter are not worthy to become judges.

Democratic senators circulated a 1994 speech in which Sotomayor spoke about how personal characteristics could affect judging, which some never criticized during the 1997 debate on her confirmation to a federal appeals court — proof, Chuck Schumer inferred, that conservatives are trying to politicize Sotomayor's nomination [now that the inferior-gender weaker-sex one is sexist-quota Obama's appointee to be on the Highest Court in the land, thus involving a whole different set of circumstances pertaining to evaluating her obviously racist and chauvenistic prejudices].

In 1994, Sotomayor said, "I would hope that a wise woman with the richness of her experiences would, more often than not, reach a better conclusion" than a wise man. "What is better?" she said. "I ... hope that better will mean a more compassionate, caring conclusion." "No one made an issue out of Judge Sotomayor's comments the last time the Senate confirmed her for the federal bench, because everyone understood what she meant and knew her respect for the rule of law was unquestionable," said Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., Sotomayor's home-state senator and her sponsor during the confirmation process.

Sotomayor returned to Capitol Hill on Wednesday for a second day of meetings with senators, staying mostly mum in public.

Many Republicans sounded unconvinced.

"When I look at her ideology, record and philosophy, I'm deeply troubled," said Sen. Lindsay Graham, R-S.C., a member of the Judiciary Committee, after meeting with Sotomayor on Wednesday.