• The National Law Journal reports on recent studies about judicial activism and applies them to Sonia Sotomayor's judicial record.

• "For the first time, the Supreme Court would include two minority judges, but ones who stand at opposite poles of thinking about race, identity and opportunity," the New York Times reported on Sunday. "Judge Sotomayor and Justice" Clarence Thomas "have walked parallel paths and yet arrived at contrary conclusions, not only on legal questions, but on personal ones, too."

• "Former first lady Laura Bush says she's pleased that President Barack Obama nominated a woman for the Supreme Court," AP reports.

• "The 'racist' label certainly isn't sticking, but partisan feelings still run hot when voters are polled about" Sotomayor, Politico reports.

• Roll Call (subscription) reports on one group's efforts to lobby for Sotomayor's confirmation by way of Facebook.

• The New York Times reports on Sotomayor's income and spending.

• Gun rights advocates are preparing to get involved in the Sotomayor debate, CQ reports.

Commentary after the jump

Top Commentary

• Clive Crook thinks that with the Supreme Court nomination of Sotomayor, the time is ripe to have a national discussion about affirmative action.

• The Washington Times examines Sotomayor's "wise Latina woman" comment and aspects of her judicial record more closely and charges that her "career has been spent promoting racial and gender preferences."

• The San Francisco Examiner has similar concerns after comments surfaced from her Senate questionnaire: "The reality is that" the "latest instances, stretching through a period of more than a decade, clearly demonstrate that Sotomayor places greater importance on ethnicity, gender and life experiences than she does on the Constitution, with its uncompromising requirement that all citizens receive the equal protection of the law."

• "The Sotomayor nomination commits the cardinal sin of identity politics: It seeks to elevate people more for the political currency of their gender and ethnicity than for their individual merit," Shelby Steele, research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, remarks in the Wall Street Journal.