Updated at 9:45 a.m. on May 27.
White House press secretary Robert Gibbs spent more than three minutes today explaining away a short YouTube clip in which Sonia Sotomayor says appeals courts make policy -- before clarifying that she's not "advocating" that idea.
"We don't make law, I know. OK, I know. I know. I'm not promoting it, I'm not advocating it," she says in a 2005 panel discussion at Duke University after noting the session was being videotaped. The most popular version of the clip began Tuesday morning with approximately 20,000 views but has since shot past 140,000. And it's become fodder on conservative Web sites such as the Judicial Confirmation Network.
Gibbs dismissed the video, saying "the president is very convinced that people will look at the full context of this and not rely on, as I said, a small, short, out-of-context YouTube clip."
Watch both videos after the jump.
Gibbs responds:
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