• On CNN Sunday, "the two top members of the Senate Judiciary Committee hotly debated the undercurrent of ethnic/racial/identity politics that rippled through four days of the panel's confirmation hearings for Judge Sonia Sotomayor this past week," the New York Times reports. "And on NBC's 'Meet the Press,' Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell," R-Ky., "reiterated his opposition to the judge's confirmation to the Supreme Court."

• "Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Pat Leahy accused Republicans Sunday of playing the race card on Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor," Politico reports. "'You have one leader of the Republican Party call her the equivalent of the head of the Ku Klux Klan. Another leader of the Republican Party called her a bigot,' the Vermont Democrat said on CNN's 'State of the Union.'"

• "A competent and cautious performance at her Senate Judiciary Committee hearing is positioning" Sotomayor "headed for virtually certain confirmation to the Supreme Court," CQ Politics reports.

• "At least three" Sotomayors "were portrayed before the Senate Judiciary Committee at its four-day confirmation hearing last week," the National Law Journal reports. "All three versions... are caricatures born of the political dynamics of modern-day confirmation hearings, which seem to require nominees to disavow all emotions and opinions."

• Roll Call (subscription) reports that Sen. Robert Bennett, R-Utah, became the first GOP senator to oppose her who voted in favor of her confirmation to the appellate bench in 1998. There are seven current Republican senators who voted "yea" at that time.

• "On Day 4 of" Sotomayor's confirmation hearings, "one of Dallas' top lawyers took the stand to explain how the would-be Supreme Court justice unanimously earned the American Bar Association's top rating -- and in the process, to deflate some of the judge's toughest critics," the Dallas Morning News reports.

• "There's no reason to suspect that when Judge Sotomayor becomes Justice Sotomayor, she's going to change judicial course," AP writes in an analysis. "But it has happened, more than once, sometimes to the dismay of the presidents who appointed justices and the Senate that confirmed them to lifetime appointments."

• "On the question of whether the high court should allow its proceedings to be televised, Sotomayor signaled" during the hearings "that she's a thumbs up," USA Today reports.

Commentary

• "Many" of Sotomayor's answers during her hearings "could have been plagiarized from the testimony of John Roberts or Stephen Breyer or Samuel Alito," Steve Chapman contends. "These days, Supreme Court nominees manage to sound as indistinguishable as Miss America finalists addressing world peace, and not a whole lot smarter."

• Albert Hunt writes that the hearings were predictable and Sotomayor's responses less evasive than those of previous nominees. But, what did endure, he says, is "the spectacle of middle-aged, white Republicans instructing the first Latin female nominee about the irrelevance of race, gender and life experiences for a judge."

• "It has often been said that Republicans have not put up much of a fight against" Sotomayor, "but the reason for their pacifism is rarely mentioned: Republicans were severely constrained simply because they lack numerical clout," E. J. Dionne remarks.

• "The question last week should not have been whether Sotomayor will make law as a Supreme Court justice. She will," Vanderbilt law professor Brian Fitzpatrick asserts in Politico. "The question should have been what kind of law she will make. Senators spent so much time on the former question that we did not learn much about Sotomayor's inclinations on the latter question."

• "The hearings did nothing to undermine -- and much to underscore -- the notion that Sotomayor has the right temperament, intellect, and credentials for the Supreme Court," the Boston Globe maintains. "She should be confirmed."

• "When it comes to mesmerizing the media marketplace," Sotomayor "is no Sarah Palin," Howard Kurtz quips.

• Ross Douthat discusses affirmative action in the context of Sotomayor's "wise Latina woman" remark and her ruling in Ricci v. DeStefano case. He asks: "Whither affirmative action in an age of America's first black president? Will it be gradually phased out, as the Supreme Court's conservatives seem to prefer? Or will it endure well into this century and beyond?"