Judge Sonia Sotomayor's confirmation hearings this week will be remembered as a civilized affair. The fiery exchanges and dramatic grandstanding that have characterized past confirmations were all but absent. Yet, tame as these were, Supreme Court confirmation hearings are always a critical barometer of power in the nation's capital: who's got it, who wants it, and who's losing it. We asked two of our experts—Howard Fineman and Stuart Taylor Jr.—to weigh in on the biggest winners and losers of the hearings.

Barack Obama: The president's first Supreme Court pick came early in his tenure, and, true to his trademark calm, he made a no-mess, no-fuss selection. "It has been inevitable since the day she was nominated that she will be confirmed by a fairly wide margin. In that sense, she and President Obama are winners," says Taylor. But Obama did take a few knocks in the hearings. Sotomayor rejected his purported judicial philosophy—the notion that judges should have empathy. She told the panel of senators that she doesn't approach judging the way the president does, and that judges can't rely on what is in their heart; they must apply the law. "This will make it harder for Obama to give the next nomination to an overt, full-throated liberal," Taylor says. Still, her hearings were smooth and her approval ratings high. Overall it was an easy win for the president. Verdict: Winner.

Lindsey Graham: The charismatic South Carolina senator's legal background was on full display as he took turns grilling and charming the nominee. Taylor thinks his comments were among the most perceptive. Unfortunately for Graham, it was his sillier moments that made the nightly news (and Jon Stewart's show), as on the first day, when he brazenly told Sotomayor she'd get confirmed unless she had "a complete meltdown." Fineman calls Graham "brilliant but erratic, seemingly kind but also duplicitous. Having said that only a meltdown could derail her, he tried to create one." Verdict: Loser.

The White House Briefing Team: That Sotomayor looked poised, calm, and prepared throughout long days of scrutiny is in part attributable to her excellent coaching. The White House team, including Biden adviser Ron Klain, White House counsel Greg Craig and newcomer Karen Dunn did an outstanding job schooling her. Fineman declares their preparations "airtight." He also praises the White House's spin team, which aggressively fed the press updates that rebutted every GOP attack within minutes. "They treated it like a presidential debate," Fineman says. The Republicans, on the other hand, were invisible. Verdict: Winners.

Liberal Legal Minds: Taylor says that liberal court watchers hoping to hear the nominee defend their philosophy of judging will be feeling sorely disappointed. "She sounded like Alito," he says of Sotomayor's comments about her approach to judging. "Instead of taking refuge in ambiguity and fuzzy generalities, she really sounded like a conservative in what she thinks judges should do. That is fairly consistent with her judicial record." Verdict: Losers.

Al Franken: Fineman and Taylor agree that the rookie senator acquitted himself admirably throughout the hearings. While fans and comics were hoping for an uproarious performance, Franken was serious, carefully prepared, yet still entertaining. "Earnest and deadpan funny," says Fineman. Taylor notes that Franken managed to score some points against Republican declarations that the word "abortion" is not in the Constitution. Franken held up a copy of the Constitution and, with Sotomayor's help, pointed out that the words "birth control" and "privacy" aren't in it either. Verdict: Winner.

Perry Mason: Sotomayor cited the fictional defense attorney as an early inspiration for her legal career. In one of the more lighthearted moments of the week, Franken observed, “It amazes me that you wanted to become a prosecutor based on the show, because in Perry Mason the prosecutor on that show lost every week.” There were a couple of cases Mason lost, but neither Franken nor Sotomayor could recall one (1963's “The Case of the Deadly Verdict” is the most famous). Why did Mason make our list? “Now everyone knows he actually lost a case,” says Fineman. Verdict: Loser.

Honorable Mentions: Fineman is pleasantly surprised by Rhode Island Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse: "Almost no one had ever heard him speak. Turns out he is an elegant and well-informed speaker and thinker." Taylor thinks chairman Patrick Leahy ran a "generally dignifed proceeding" in his first Supreme Court confirmation hearings as chair. On the Republican side, Taylor thinks "the once combative Orrin Hatch is getting so mellow that he may ripen and then rot," and that Jeff Sessions may have been a little too aggressive in questioning Sotomayor's truthfulness. "Remarkably, at least three committee Democrats—Charles Schumer, Amy Klobuchar, and Richard Durbin—complimented their Republican counterparts for questioning the nominee in a tough but fair way," Taylor says. "No senator came across as a fool or a bully, as best I could tell." And finally, props to Klobuchar, who's been representing Minnesota alone until recently. She  won fans earlier this year with her hilarious speech at the Washington Press Club Foundation. She impressed again this week. According to Taylor, she "came across very well—smart, decent, nice."

Daniel Stone contributed reporting.

Sonia Sotomayor knows exactly what she must do to be confirmed, and that's very little. If she doesn't say too much, she can't muddy the wide respect across party lines that all but guarantee her a spot on the high court. But even if legal experts aren't learning much about what kind of justice Sotormayor may be, members of the judiciary committee (as well as Sotomayor herself) are doing their best to keep the mood light. Here are the top five moments so far from the judge's third day under the lights.

1. Well then I'll do it myself: You can’t rely on anyone else to make a point better than you can do it yourself. So when Sen. Tom Coburn, a practicing doctor, wanted to press Sotomayor on abortion, he did his own dirty work. “Let's say I'm 38 weeks pregnant and we discover a small spina bifida sack on…the lower part of the back on my baby. And I feel like I just can't handle a child with that. Would it be legal in this country to terminate that child's life?” Over some snickers from the press table, Sotomayor declined to answer, saying the issue might come before the court. Really? Because we’d be very surprised.

2. Wake-up call: Just as Sotomayor was in the middle of a long and rather rambly answer, the lights in the room went off but were quickly picked up by a back-up power generator. Sotomayor stuttered slightly as everyone in the room looked around confused. “I hope I can go on…” she said. Leahy shot back to the room “I just want every to know that that was not a comment from above. I have certain powers as chairman but not that much."

For the past two days, we’ve been watching Patrick Leahy run the show at Sonia Sotomayor’s Senate confirmation hearing. He’s the gruff-talking Democratic chairman of the Judiciary Committee, the guy who keeps close watch on the clock to make sure senators aren’t going over their allotted time for questioning and so on. Perhaps you know him best as the man former VP Dick Cheney told to go “F--- Himself” a few years ago. But your Gaggler can’t stop thinking about another big Leahy role: His bit part in one of her favorite films of 2008, The Dark Knight.

As you’ll see in the clip above, Leahy shows up in the scene where the Joker, played by the late great Heath Ledger, storms a party at Bruce Wayne’s penthouse. Leahy is more than just your average extra. He actually trades a few lines with Ledger, who eventually won a posthumous Oscar for the role. In the film, Leahy tries to stand up to the Joker who promptly puts a switchblade to the senator’s mouth and threatens to carve a ghastly smile on his face. Leahy, we must say, looks convincingly frightened. Perhaps it’s all the Batman-related acting gigs he’s had before. Leahy, who brags that he’s the biggest Batman fan in Washington, voiced the role of a governor in Batman: The Animated Series. And he had a non-speaking role in the absolutely worst Batman movie ever: Batman & Robin. (Senator, how could you? George Clooney isn’t that cool.) But Leahy’s obsession has extended well beyond film. A few years ago, he wrote the forward for a Batman anthology and he once contributed to a Batman comic about land mines. So when you’re watching Leahy chair the Sotomayor hearings, just think: That guy almost got knifed by the Joker. No wonder he's not scared of Jeff Sessions.

Photo by Gerald Herbert/AP

How exciting was the first day of Sonia Sotomayor's SCOTUS confirmation hearing? This picture says it all: Here's Sotomayor's nephews, Conner and Corey Sotomayor, snoozing away at her hearing today. We're not throwing stones here. Truth be told, after nearly five hours of opening statements, your Gaggler felt like this, too--and it wasn't the jet lag from President Obama's trip last week, either.

If there’s anything we really learned from the first day of Sonia Sotomayor’s Senate confirmation hearings, it’s this: senators LOVE their sports analogies. Just ask John Cornyn, who invoked football when talking about Sotomayor’s time as an appellate court judge. “A lower-court judge is like the quarterback who executes the plays—not the coach who calls the plays,” Cornyn said. “That means many of your cases don’t tell us much about your judicial philosophy. But a few of your opinions do raise questions—because they suggest the kinds of plays you’d call if you were promoted to the coaching staff.” Hmm. OK, yeah, we get it. (For the record, in Cornyn’s honor, your Gaggler is totally coining a new catchphrase—“activist quarterbacks”—for the rogue players who don’t listen to the coach. You heard it here first, ESPN!)

Everybody else went with baseball—and for this we hold Chief Justice John Roberts responsible. “Judges are like umpires,” Roberts said in his 2005 confirmation hearings. “Umpires don’t make the rules, they apply them. The role of an umpire and a judge is critical. They make sure everybody plays by the rules.” Well, Democrats have apparently been aching to push back on that premise for the last four years, as nearly every single one of them brought up the “umpire” argument in some way or another during their opening statements today. “Many can debate whether during his four years on the Supreme Court he actually has called pitches as they come or has tried to change the rules,” Schumer said, speaking of Roberts. Sotomayor’s record, he insisted, shows that she’s “simply called balls and strikes for 17 years.” Sen. Dick Durbin, meanwhile, got in a little dig at Roberts’s umpire analogy, noting, “It’s hard to see home plate from right field.” Ooh, face!

No doubt this isn't the last we've heard of these analogies. It's a given that someone will bring up the "umpire" when senators begin questioning Sotomayor tomorrow. Or maybe Sotomayor will bring up a whole other sports analogy on her own. Judges are like ... NBA refs?

Here's more from President Obama's interview this morning with the Associated Press’s Jennifer Loven:

On Russia, Obama was asked why he plans to meet with former Russian President Vladimir Putin in addition to talks with current leader Dmitry Medvedev. “(Putin) still has a lot of sway…and I think that it's important that even as we move forward with President Medvedev that Putin understand that the old Cold War approaches to U.S.-Russian relations is outdated — that's it's time to move forward in a different direction,” Obama told the AP. “"I think Medvedev understands that. I think Putin has one foot in the old ways of doing business and one foot in the new, and to the extent that we can provide him and the Russian people a clear sense that the U.S. is not seeking an antagonistic relationship but wants cooperation on nuclear nonproliferation, fighting terrorism, energy issues, that we'll end up having a stronger partner overall in this process.”

Also on foreign policy, Obama said he was “not reconciled” with the idea of Iran having nuclear weapons. The president also expressed some reservations about his recently announced policy of putting some high risk Guantanamo Bay detainees in “indefinite detention” as the administration moves to close the prison next year. “It gives me huge pause,” Obama said, suggesting he may not follow through on the policy.

In perhaps his most interesting comments, Obama weighed in on the Supreme Court’s ruling on affirmative action this week, in which it decided in favor of a group of white firefighters in New Haven, Conn., who sued the city for reverse discrimination. The ruling overturned a verdict laid down by an Appeals Court judge named Sonia Sotomayor. (Maybe you’ve heard of her.) SCOTUS, Obama said, was “moving the ball” on affirmative action, but he noted that the court had ruled out the use of racial preferences in hiring. Still, he spoke sympathetically toward the white firefighters, telling Loven, “I’ve always believed that affirmative action was less of an issue or should be less of an issue that it has made out to be in news reports.”

In addition to the Michael Jackson comments, Obama also weighed in on life at the White House. His biggest pet peeve: having to wear make-up all the time. "The shine police," he groused. On the plus side, he raved about the White House pastry chef, who “makes the best pie I’ve ever tasted."

NPR’s Nina Totenberg had an interesting piece on Morning Edition this morning looking at the main rap against Sonia Sotomayor. Long story short, people have said she’s pushy, going so far as to describe her as “bully” on the bench. The labels have been circulating for months, long before Sotomayor was actually named as Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee. Since then, the White House has gone to great lengths to push back against the claims, producing clerks and lawyers who have worked with Sotomayor who insist she’s just fine. But the rumors just won’t go away. More recently, Sen. Lindsay Graham has cited reviews mentioned in The Almanac of the Federal Judiciary, which included anonymous comments describing her as a “terror on the bench” and “overly aggressive.” But is the criticism legitimate or is it, as some Sotomayor allies suggest, a case of her being picked on for being a strong woman? For the piece, Totenberg listened to audio recordings of two oral arguments made before Sotomayor—portions of which aired in the story this morning and are well worth a listen. One of the oral arguments is from the much-debated New Haven firefighters case, which is still pending before the Supreme Court. Here's Totenberg:

In another case, currently on appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, Judge Sotomayor was one of three judges considering whether the city of New Haven, Conn., could discard the results of a fire department promotion exam because no African-American ranked high enough to be promoted. Under federal law, an employer can be held liable even for unintentional discrimination if the employer uses a test that disproportionately excludes minorities. At oral argument, Judge Sotomayor was the dominant questioner, and she gave both sides a hard time.

She pressed the lawyer representing the white firefighters this way: "We're not asking that unqualified people be hired — the city's not suggesting that. But if your test is going to always put a certain group at the bottom of the pass rate so they're never, ever going to be promoted, and there is a fair test that can be devised, then why shouldn't the city have an opportunity to try to look and see if it can develop that?" Conversely, in questioning the city's lawyer, Sotomayor repeatedly asked what was wrong with the test that was given and whether any valid alternatives exist. "What they're saying is … you shouldn't permit race to be the driving force," Sotomayor said. "You have to look at the test and determine if the test was fair or not. And if you're going to say it's unfair, point to specifics of ways it wasn't and make sure there really are alternatives." 

In the audio, Sotomayor is no doubt aggressive in her questioning but does not appear to be any more so than most judges--though, of course, these are just two cases. But Totenberg, who is much smarter than your Gaggler when it comes to history on the court, says Sotomayor's tone seems "routine" compared to what happens at the Supreme Court--and includes audio of Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Antonin Scalia to prove it.

Just how tough is Sonia Sotomayor? Holly recently noted an episode from her time as a private attorney when she gave chase to some crooks on a motorcycle through the streets of NYC. Yesterday, we learned that she fractured her ankle at La Guardia Airport before boarding her flight. She was traveling to DC for meetings with Senators and White House officials, and wasn't about to let a little thing like a broken ankle get in her way. Sotomayor boarded the plane regardless, went directly to the Old Executive Building (the office building adjacent to the White House where many senior officials work) upon landing and attended meetings. It was only THEN that she decided that her pained ankle needed some treatment. A White House physician soon sent her to a nearby hospital for x-rays which determined that yes, that throbbing pain in her ankle was actually a fracture. Now, in a substantial cast which has reportedly been signed by a couple of Senators, she's still holding meetings. She'll meet with 8 Senators today, after meeting with 6 yesterday. Anyone who's had or known someone with an ankle fracture is aware just what a physical feat that is.

In  other news, the Associated Press has just reported that the Senate has decided Sotomayor's hearings will commence on July 13. That's just over a month away, so Sotomayor might make history not just as the first Latina SCOTUS nominee, but as the first one to attend her own hearings with her ankle in a cast. 

In a lengthy message posted on his Web site today, Newt Gingrich apologizes for calling Judge Sonia Sotomayor a “racist" over her comment that a "wise Latina woman" could reach a better decision than "a white male who hasn't lived that life." Here’s Gingrich:

My initial reaction was strong and direct -- perhaps too strong and too direct.  The sentiment struck me as racist and I said so. Since then, some who want to have an open and honest consideration of Judge Sotomayor’s fitness to serve on the nation’s highest court have been critical of my word choice. With these critics who want to have an honest conversation, I agree.  The word “racist” should not have been applied to Judge Sotomayor as a person, even if her words themselves are unacceptable (a fact which both President Obama and his Press Secretary, Robert Gibbs, have since admitted).

That's not to say the former House Speaker is suddenly on the Sotomayor bandwagon. In the message, Gingrich cites the Sotomayor's ruling against the New Haven firefighters as a case where "equal justice for Americans" did not prevail. In other words, Gingrich is not callling her a "racist" but he's suggesting race played a role in her decision-making. He defends his believe that Sotomayor is a "radical" based on her various speeches and writings that she's delivered off the bench in recent years. However, Gingrich concedes, “many of her rulings as a court of appeals judge do not match the radicalism of her speeches and statements.  She has shown more caution and moderation in her rulings than in her words.”

All of this comes days after many Republicans were critical of Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh for using incendiary language about President Obama's Supreme Court nominee. Here's what your Gaggler is wondering: Did someone lean on Gingrich to dial back his words?