Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor has fallen in the good graces of one high-profile—and very vocal—Republican. Outspoken RNC chairman Michael Steele said on a radio show Friday that his party should hold off “slammin’ and rammin’”Sonia Sotomayor and that he was “excited” to have a Hispanic woman as a nominee. While he acknowledged the trap for the GOP is “enormous” he says first they must recognize the “historic aspect” of her nomination and then discuss the “substance of the conversation about what this woman believes.” Meanwhile, Rush Limbaugh recently stated that the “way to get promoted in the Barack Obama administration” is by “hating white people.” He added that “she brings a form of bigotry or racism to the court.”

Their party brethren could take a cue from the joint appearance of former presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton at a Toronto event on Friday. The two shared the stage in front of 6,000 people attending a forum and, much to the crowd’s chagrin, rarely engaged in forceful debate—in fact, former President Bush joked that his mother, Barbara, feels “President Clinton and Father share the stage so much, he's like a son to her." Bush continued: "So brother, it's good to see you." Taking a more serious tone, President Bush said the Cuban trade embargo should remain, while Clinton said it “ought to be part of the hemisphere.” On the topic of same-sex marriage, Bush called wedlock between a man and a woman “sacred” and Clinton said the more he knows gay people, the more he feels their relationships “should be up to them.” Each was paid an undisclosed—and likely very handsome—sum to appear.

Is Obama’s hindsight 20/20—even on someone else’s behalf? Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor was under heavy media fire this week for a comment she made in 2001 saying a female Hispanic judge would reach a better decision than a white male judge. "I'm sure she would have restated it," President Obama told NBC News, without any further remarks. At a press conference earlier in the day, spokesman Robert Gibbs said, "I think she'd say that her word choice in 2001 was poor." Gibbs said that while he did not talk to her directly, he learned that from people who spoke to her. Critics are latching on to the quote, given a Berkeley lecture titled “A Latina Judge’s Voice” that stated in full: “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life.” 

One of the strangest Hollywood cases has come to an end. In a court in L.A. Friday, music producer Phil Spector, 69, was sentenced to 19 years to life for murdering actress Lana Clarkson. In April, Spector was found guilty of shooting the 40 year-old. "All our plans together are destroyed. Now I can only visit her in the cemetery," her daughter told the judge.

One sign that President Obama and Hillary Clinton are taking peace in the Middle East seriously: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is complaining about them. When Clinton called for a freeze on Israeli settlements in the West Bank, Netanyahu apparently groaned “What the hell do they want from me?” According to Laura Rozen at Foreign Policy, “the Israeli prime minister, looking for loopholes and hidden agreements that have often existed in the past with Washington, has been flummoxed by an unusually united line that has come not just from Obama White House and the secretary of state, but also from pro-Israel congressmen and women who have come through Israel for meetings with him over Memorial Day recess.” According to Aaron David Miller of the Woodrow Wilson Institute, “What I'm beginning to see is that the Obama administration may be less concerned with actually getting to negotiations and an agreement and more interested in setting new rules and rearranging the furniture. They may have concluded that they can't get to a real two state solution with this prime minister [Netanyahu]. Maybe they want a new one? And the best way to raise the odds of that is to demonstrate that he can't manage Israel's most important relationship: with the U.S."

From Sarah Palin’s Twitter page: “Will be on ‘Colbert Report’ next month, broadcast from Iraq.” An aide tells Ben Smith it will be “a shout-out with Colbert for the troops.” Let’s hope it goes better than Katie Couric.

President Obama apparently has a guilty pleasure: For the second time this month, he appeared in a D.C. burger joint. This time it was Five Guys, where he ordered a cheeseburger with lettuce, tomato, jalapeno peppers, and mustard, as well as several more to go. It may have all been a publicity stunt, however: He also ordered a burger for NBC anchor Brian Williams, who was filming a day-in-the-life program. The Huffington Post has pictures.

Ouch—what a way to kick Jon and Kate Gosselin when they’re down. The Pennsylvania labor department is looking into whether the couple’s reality show, Jon Kate Plus 8, violates any of the state’s child labor laws. A complaint was filed, and while the details of the allegation can’t be discussed because it’s an ongoing case, a spokesman for the Pennsylvania Dept. of Labor said the bureau of labor law compliance is conducting an investigation. TLC, the network where the show is broadcast, issued a response stating its cooperation—and its innocence. Add to that the couple’s very public marital woes and Jon’s alleged affair, and Jon and Kate could be circling the drain.

With Jon Huntsman having defected to China, will Texas Senator John Cornyn become the new hero for moderate Republicans? The chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, not a known moderate himself, has attacked Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh for calling Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor a “racist.” “I think it’s terrible,” he told NPR. “This is not the kind of tone any of us want to set when it comes to performing our constitutional responsibilities of advise and consent.” He has also authored a post for RedState, where he writes “Some believe that we should be a monolithic Party; I disagree. While we all might wish for a Party comprised only of people who agree with us 100 percent of the time, this is a pipedream.”

Former eBay CEO and California gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman was one of John McCain’s strongest supporters during his presidential campaign. McCain is now repaying the favor: He will endorse Whitman for governor today at a meeting in Orange County, even though she hasn’t yet officially announced her candidacy. Whitman served as the national co-chair of McCain’s campaign.

Last week, the conversion of radio host Erich “Mancow” Muller from a “waterboarding is not torture” position to “waterboarding is torture” after he underwent the procedure himself was a big story. Was it all a hoax? An email from Mancow’s publicist reads, “It is going to have to look ‘real’ but of course would be simulated with Mancow acting like he is drowning. It will be a hoax but have to look real.” Gawker also compares the video of Muller’s waterboarding to that of Christopher Hitchens’ and notices several differences. Muller’s publicist insists that “It was NOT a hoax.”

One of President Obama’s campaign gaffes was when he announced that his great uncle had helped to liberate Auschwitz (the camp was liberated by the Red Army). The uncle, it turned out, liberated a camp at Buchenwald, and he speaks to Der Spiegel in advance of President Obama’s trip to the camp in June. “I was quite surprised when the whole thing came up and Barack talked about my war experiences in Nazi Germany,” says Charles Payne. “We had never talked about that before” Asked about his experience, Payne says, “I am unable to tell you what I was thinking then. That was a long time ago, and as I told you, until Barack misspoke, I hadn't thought about any of this for a very, very long time. In fact, I guess I prefer not to think about it. I can assure you I was horrified by the lengths to which men will go to mistreat other men. This was, to me, almost unbelievable. There was more: There were sheds full of dead bodies that had been stripped and thrown in and then stacked up on top of each other. I don't know how many, but many high and the whole length of the room. They sprinkled lime to keep the smell down. That's about the extent that I remember actually seeing.”

One of the world's most famous faces has been damaged. Angelina Jolie was hospitalized Friday morning in New York for what TMZ.com describes as "some sort of nick between her eyes." The injury came out during stunt work for her movie Salt, which she is filming on Long Island. "She bled a bit and was taken to the hospital," TMZ reports.

Has Nadya Suleman's soulmate been discovered? Desmond Hatchett, a 29-year-old Tennessee man, set a U.S. record by fathering a whopping 21 children with 11 different women. Hatchett is unable to pay child support for his offspring with his minimum-wage salary, apparently causing some residents in his hometown of Knoxville to call for his castration. After Hatchett's name appeared on court documents 11 times representing 15 of his children whose mothers demanded child support, local authorities ruled that half of his salary be given to each child. Unfortunately, that only factors out to about $1.60 a week each. Hatchett is due to appear in court next month, but it sounds like he's seen the benefits of contraception at last. "I'm done," Hatchett said when asked if he'd father a 22nd child. "I'll say I'm done."

Only months after President Obama called for transparency in the White House, one of Abraham Lincoln's lost letters is being returned to the public. A note the president drafted four days before the Gettysburg address has been donated to the National Archive by a private collector. In it, Lincoln takes a minute away from thinking about the Civil War to address a minor annoyance: Robert Stevens, superintendent of the San Francisco Mint and the son of his good friend, had been investigated for corruption and removed from his position. In his letter to Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase, Lincoln kept it short and sweet: "Mr. Stevens, late Superintendent of the Mint at San Francisco, asks to have a copy, or be permitted to examine, and take extracts, of the evidence upon which he was removed. Please oblige him in one way or another. Yours truly, A. Lincoln."

It took 15 rounds and three days for champion speller to Kavya Shivashankar to knock out her 292 competitors at the Scripps National Spelling Bee, but in the end the Kansas teenager emerged victorious. Her winning word: "laodicean," meaning "indifferent or lukewarm especially in matters of religion." Other words Shivashankar spelled en route to winning $40,000 in cash and prizes included "phoresy," "hydrargyrum," and "huisache." The event was nationally televised on ABC and the live audience included such big names as Jill Biden, the wife of Vice President Joe Biden.

Committee hearings on health care begin next week, and President Obama is gearing up for a fight. In an attempt to motivate political supporters and lawmakers to take action, President Obama told supporters by phone today that 2009 is the Congress’s last chance to get health care reform right. If lawmakers are not pressured to act, Obama said, health care reform would fall by the wayside in Washington and never take place. He also said the health care plan should extend coverage to the 50 million Americans who are currently uninsured, lower costs, and ensure choice—and it will cost an estimated $1.5 trillion, which Obama argues will actually be less than the current system's costs. "If the country stands with the president and if the country is demanding health care reform then we'll get it done,” Obama said. “Washington will not have any option but to follow us." Obama’s urgent words come one day after Senator Ted Kennedy penned a Boston Globe column arguing that, when it comes to health care, “we cannot afford to wait—or to fail.” Get ready for a battle.

The U.S. and South Korea raised military alerts on North Korea today after North Korea broke its truce ending the Korean War and announced it was ready to attack. South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said that the alert level was raised to stress how serious a threat North Korea is, making it the highest threat level since 2006, when the North conducted its only other nuclear test. So what do the experts think we should do? Washington Post columnists Dan Blumenthal and Robert Kagan say we should drop the notion that a unified Korea is a common goal for both the U.S. and China. And rather than going through Bejing to reach Pyongyang, send Obama to meet with Kim Jong-Il. Some analysts say the nuclear threats are an attempt to strengthen Kim’s image after a suspected stroke caused doubt over his control, while weapons experts point out that although North Korea wants to build a nuclear arsenal, it does not yet have a method of attack with a nuclear bomb or warhead.

Someone at the White House must have caught a showing of Terminator this week: Administration officials are planning a major overhaul of the nation's cyber defenses, complete with a new military command for computer defense. According to the New York Times, the cybersecurity office will run a multi-billion dollar plan to block invaders from entering government computers as well as key national interests like stock exchanges, airports, and banks. One unresolved question, however, is whether the military will pair its defensive preparations with an offensive plan as well.

China is aggressively moving to contain an outbreak of swine flu—but it seems to be burning all bridges in the process. The country has adopted new measures for avoiding pandemic, putting thousands of healthy travelers into quarantine. The measures have quickly turned into a witchhunt for a cough or a runny nose. One Virginian man was on an airplane when Chinese health officials came on to test for swine flu. After they discovered he had a 98.9 temperature, barely above average, the man was deemed a public threat, separated from his family, and rushed via ambulence to a quarantine facility where he was checked for every illness by doctors in full biohazard suits. He was released three days later. China may be succeeding in containing the disease—with only 14 cases reported in the country—but, as the Washington Post writes, “From a public relations standpoint... China’s medical checks and quarantines have been a disaster.”

Rush Limbaugh may be in a tizzy over Sotomayor’s race and gender, but what do the senators who control her confirmation care about? NPR had Judiciary Committee members from both sides of the aisle weigh in. Senator John Coryn (R-TX) fretted over judicial activism, questioned remarks made in 2005 from Sotomayor about the court of appeals, calling them “troubling.” The court of appeals, Sotomayor said, is where policy is made. "We don't make law, I know,” she said. “I'm not promoting it, I'm not advocating it." She went on to say that in the court of appeals, the law is subject to interpretation. Coryn, a former Texas Supreme Court judge, said that the purpose of the appeals court is for “error correction.” Conversely, Sen. Charles Shumer, a Democrat from New York, says that Sotomayor’s comments were taken out of context: “What happens here is what the right wing often does: They will take half of the tape, show it, put it on YouTube and create an uproar.” Republicans opposed to Sotomayor, Schumer said, have “nothing to hang their hats on.”

What would Bill Clinton say? For Italians, next week's European elections aren't about the issues, they're about whether Silvio Berlusconi had a "steamy affair" with 18 year-old model Noemi Letizia. The Italian prime minister has provided apparently contradictory explanations of why he attended Letizia's 18th birthday party, where he gave her an expensive necklace. The Independent reports that Berlusconi has gone one step further than the usual denial. Yesterday he said, "I have sworn it on the life of my children. And I said that I am aware that, if this were perjury, I would have to resign a minute later." Earlier this month, Berlusconi's children jumped to his defense after the center-left opposition leader Dario Franceschini asked Italians, "Would you have your children raised by this man?"

How scared of Ralph Nader were Democrats in 2004? According to Nader, then-DNC chair and current Virginia gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe offered to help fund Nader's campaign if he would agree not to campaign in 19 swing states. In a statement, McAuliffe did not deny the charges, saying through a spokeswoman that he was "concerned that Ralph Nader would cost John Kerry the election" in a similar manner to the 2000 contest. Nader said he turned the "inappropriate" offer down, adding that "if you don't immediately say no, it's like taffy, you get stuck with it." Despite his stand against McAuliffe, Nader happily accepted thousands of dollars at the time from wealthy Republicans who hoped he would steal votes from the Democratic candidate.

Another sign the economy is slowly improving: an updated GDP shows that the American economy shrank at a rate of 5.7 percent this year—better than the 6.1 percent estimated last month. But it still fell short of analysts' predictions, which placed it at 5.5 percent. Despite the glimmer of hope, the report from the Commerce Department is still grim, as it was the second straight quarter in which the economy took a huge hit.

He may be the best chance Madoff victims have of seeing their stole cash returned, but while he’s getting the job done, Irving H. Picard is hardly a popular man. He’s representing the victims of Bernie Madoff’s ponzi scheme, and is responsible for recouping their lost money—and then deciding who gets repaid and who doesn’t. Picard is looking to recover over $10.1 billion—he has returned $1.25 billion to victims so far—and has spearheaded the lawsuits against those Madoff victims he deemed complicit in the ponzi scheme. Picard may be recovering money for the victims, but it’s never as much as they want, and few are fully satisfied by his work. Says Picard of the daily complaints by victims, “I told my staff at the fund: with this kind of pain, don’t expect a ‘thank you,’ don’t expect a ‘well done.’”

North Korea fired another short-range missile early Friday morning, its sixth this week. In a statement its foreign ministry said that it would take "self-defense" measures if it needed to, warning "there is a limit to our patience." Did Defense Secretary Robert Gates speak too soon? "I don't think that anybody in the Obama administration thinks there is a crisis," he said before North Korea's launch on Friday.

Next up on President Obama’s agenda? A firewall. The President announced today that “it’s clear now this cyber threat is one of the most serious economic and national security challenges we face as a nation” and “We’re not as prepared as we should be, as a government or as a country.” As a result, he announced that he will name a cyber czar to press for action. The person will head the new “White House office of cyber security, and that person will report to the National Security Council and the National Economic Council,” according to the Associated Press. “Government officials have grown increasingly alarmed as U.S. computer networks are constantly assailed by attacks and scams, ranging from nuisance hacking to more nefarious probes and attacks, including suspicions of cyber espionage by other nations, such as China.”

Adam Lambert may have lost American Idol, but he’s still getting a cover of Rolling Stone. And, in the interview, the singer will apparently disclose what many have already speculated: that he is gay. “A well-placed magazine source tells Page Six that Lambert will be coming out officially on the next cover of Rolling Stone,” according to Page Six. According to their source, "He didn't want it to be an issue during the contest, but he's fine with his sexuality.”