Today at 9:30 am ET, Sonia Sotomayor returns to the Senate Judiciary Committee to continue the confirmation hearings for her nomination to the Supreme Court. So far, Sotomayor has avoided any missteps — mainly because the Senators on the committee have hardly allowed Sotomayor a word in edgewise. That will change at least somewhat today, as the Republicans will press harder for answers about Sotomayor’s past statements, and Democrats spend their time asking hardball questions like, “Just how did you get so awesomely awesome?”

Andrew Malcolm and his partners at Top of the Ticket have done a great job in live-blogging the hearings. Keep up with the transcripts at ToT. Kerry Picket, meanwhile, points out the double standards at play in the hearing when compared to the ordeal of Miguel Estrada:

What sets them apart is how they were treated by Democratic senators. In 2003, Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick J. Leahy, Vermont Democrat, said: “The White House continues to obstruct any progress toward resolving this matter by its unprecedented refusal to turn over documents requested to determine whether or not Miguel Estrada should sit on the second highest court in the land, for life. Mr. Estrada’s nomination is apparently being sacrificed by the administration for its own partisan, political purposes.”

The Democrats were requesting confidential memorandums drafted by Mr. Estrada while at the Office of the Solicitor General. This request was unprecedented. All seven living former solicitors general, Republican and Democrat alike, agreed with Mr. Estrada.

Democrats were forthright in their opposition to Mr. Estrada precisely because he is Hispanic. A staff memo to Illinois Democratic Sen. Richard J. Durbin on Nov. 7, 2001, referred to liberal concern that Mr. Estrada was “especially dangerous, because he has a minimal paper trail, he is Latino, and the White House seems to be grooming him for a Supreme Court appointment.”

Then-Rep. Robert Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat who now represents the Garden State as a cigar-chomping U.S. senator, said he did not consider Mr. Estrada to be the right kind of Latino. “Being Hispanic for us means much more than having a surname,” Mr. Menendez said in February 2003. It means being a predictable liberal.

Both Kerry and Andrew will be on The Ed Morrissey Show today, starting at 3 pm ET. Don’t miss it!