Excruciating to watch, and apparently not her only malaprop of the day. According to Ed Whelan, she confused “providence” with “province” and said “story of knowledge” when she meant “store of knowledge,” too. If the boss routinely made embarrassing mistakes like this on her blog, it’d be a running joke among the nutroots; as it is, the fact that a federal appellate judge turned Supreme Court justice is making them at a congressional hearing will doubtless go blissfully unremarked upon. Although to be fair, she only ever claimed to be wise, not to have the vocabulary of, say, the average 10th-grader. Awesome, awesome pick, Barry.

Anyway. Doubtless we’ll soon be told that it’s racist somehow to even mention this, so I preemptively denounce both myself and Whelan for noticing it.

Update: For added nuance, bear in mind that Sotomayor herself is famously a stickler for proper usage in lawyer’s briefs, once writing, “each time I see a split infinitive, an inconsistent tense structure or the unnecessary use of the passive voice, I blister.”