What Did the President's Supreme Court Pick Really Mean to Say?

Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor has echoed her idea that one's physiological or ethnic characteristics make one a better judge many times during her tenure on the federal bench, according to documents submitted in response to a Senate Judiciary Committee questionnaire.

Sotomayor has taken a lot of heat for her comment that a "wise Latina woman" would more often than not come to a better conclusion than someone who is not.

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs explained that the 2001 utterance was a poor choice of words, making it seem as if it was simply a slip of the tongue.

President Obama even said he's sure she would have "restated it."

But Sotomayor has made similar statements multiple times, a fact that is not so easily explained away as an unforced error.

In a 2003 speech at Seton Hall School of Law, Sotomayor said, "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of experiences would, more often than not, reach a better conclusion."

That's the exact same line she used in a 2002 speech at The Princeton Club. It also appears word for word in a speech given at the University of California-Berkeley law school in 2001, and again in a 1999 speech given to the Women's Bar Association of the State of New York. 
 
That's at least four times she used a "poor word choice" and uttered something she would have "restated," in the words of the White House.

The "wise Latina" statement is surfacing as one the White House will now be forced to deal with in a much more direct manner.