George Will repeats two of the tendencies that have made the man such a pathetic hack in recent weeks: extensively quoting from a different columnist and essentially repeating his points, and outright lying about the positions of his opponents.  Here's will today:

"[Stuart] Taylor has also noted this from a Sotomayor speech to a Hispanic group: "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion [as a judge] than a white male who hasn't lived that life." Says Taylor, "Imagine the reaction if someone had unearthed in 2005 a speech in which then-Judge Samuel Alito had asserted, for example: 'I would hope that a white male with the richness of his traditional American values would reach a better conclusion than a Latina woman who hasn't lived that life' -- and had proceeded to speak of 'inherent physiological or cultural differences.'

Her ethnicity aside, Sotomayor is a conventional choice. The court will remain composed entirely of former appellate court judges. And like conventional liberals, she embraces identity politics, including the idea of categorical representation: A person is what his or her race, ethnicity, gender, or sexual preference is, and members of a particular category can be represented -- understood, empathized with -- only by persons of the same identity."

Thanks Will for repeating points better made by somebody else.  The difference between George Will and Stuart Taylor is that I suspect the latter has actually read Sotomayor's speech where she made that controversial quote.  Will either hasn't read it, or is deliberately misrepresenting it.  If he had read it, he would have seen that Sotomayor says this about the ability of white people to understand people of the same identity:

"Let us not forget that wise men like Oliver Wendell Holmes and Justice Cardozo voted on cases which upheld both sex and race discrimination in our society. Until 1972, no Supreme Court case ever upheld the claim of a woman in a gender discrimination case. I, like Professor Carter, believe that we should not be so myopic as to believe that others of different experiences or backgrounds are incapable of understanding the values and needs of people from a different group. Many are so capable. As Judge Cedarbaum pointed out to me, nine white men on the Supreme Court in the past have done so on many occasions and on many issues including Brown.

However, to understand takes time and effort, something that not all people are willing to give. For others, their experiences limit their ability to understand the experiences of others. Other simply do not care. Hence, one must accept the proposition that a difference there will be by the presence of women and people of color on the bench. Personal experiences affect the facts that judges choose to see. My hope is that I will take the good from my experiences and extrapolate them further into areas with which I am unfamiliar. I simply do not know exactly what that difference will be in my judging. But I accept there will be some based on my gender and my Latina heritage."

Sotomayor almost word for word rejects the very claim that Will attributes to her.  Again, I doubt that Will is intentionally distorting her views.  My suspicion is that Will read that crappy Stuart Taylor article, and wrote an entire column essentially extending it's basic message two steps further, without ever going back to the source material and checking to see if he was doing any semblance of justice to the views of the Supreme Court nominee that he was trashing. 

Why on earth is the Washington Post still publishing this trainwreck of a columnist?