WASHINGTON (July 15) – It turns out Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor and Sen. Al Franken were both Perry Mason fans as kids.
The two reminisced at Sotomayor's Senate confirmation hearings Wednesday, after the Minnesota Democrat noted that he and his family and Sotomayor and her family tuned in to the weekly courtroom drama on television.
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"I was a big fan of 'Perry Mason.' I watched 'Perry Mason' every week with my dad, my mom and my brother -- it was a great show," the comedian-turned-politician said.
"It amazes me that you want to become a prosecutor based on that show," Franken added. "Because in that show, the prosecutor, Burger, lost every week." The crowd laughed.
Mason, played by Raymond Burr, was a fictitious defense lawyer. As Franken noted, he won all his cases except one.
Franken asked Sotomayor to name it, and she said she couldn't.
"Didn't the White House prepare you for that?" Franken asked, laughter filling the hearing room.
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Franken later became more serious and asked Sotomayor about whether she thinks the First Amendment guarantees that everyone should have access to the Internet. He later asked her how she feels about judicial activism.
On the latter question, Sotomayor said, "That is not a term I use. Because I don’t describe the work that judges do in that way."
Franken, 58, was sworn in as Minnesota's junior senator last week, after he and his Republican opponent, former Sen. Norm Coleman, engaged in an eight-month recount battle over results of the November election.
On June 30, the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled that Franken should be certified as the winner with a razor-thin edge of just 312 votes.
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