Nominee Sonia Sotomayor has now disavowed some of the views on gender, race and jurisprudence that she once delivered to admiring audiences on the foundation/conference circuit, and Manhattan Institute fellow Heather Mac Donald, for one, is disappointed:

The airing of her many speeches on identity politics and the law had produced another Ward Churchill moment: An idea that is outright mundane within the academy escapes its hothouse environment and shakes the public temporarily out of its stupor regarding university culture. Now, unfortunately, Sotomayor's bland denials that she ever meant what she said will allow the curtain to fall once more over the mad world of academic legal theory.

A more optimistic interpretation, of course, would be that Sotomayor is ready, like Shakespeare's Prince Hal on attaining the throne, to put away childish things.