Sotomayor

TW: Am not going to get too much into the trees on this topic but two things. Sotomayor has an interesting background see below. Two, barring some skeleton in the closet the Republicans are crazy to oppose this nomination intensely. Can they raise some money with the base? Probably.

But unless Obama appoints an outright conservative that is going to be the case with any of his nominees. Sotomayor is highly qualified. The Republicans risk further pushing themselves into the toilet with women, Hispanics and moderates as Sotomayor happens to be all three. Those three groups are the same three groups Republicans will eventually need to attract should they wish to regain electoral strength.

From NYT"
"...Judge Sotomayor, 54, grew up in a Bronx housing project, a child of Puerto Rican parents. She would be the court's first Hispanic justice. Her father died when she was 9, leaving her mother to raise her and a brother. In speeches to Latino groups over the years, Judge Sotomayor has recalled how her mother worked six days a week as a nurse to send her and her brother to Catholic school, purchased the only set of encyclopedias in the neighborhood and kept a warm pot of rice and beans on the stove every day for their friends.

She loved Nancy Drew mysteries, she once said, and yearned to be a police detective. But a doctor who diagnosed her childhood diabetes suggested that would be difficult. She traded her adoration of Nancy for an allegiance to Perry -- she became a fan of Perry Mason on television, she said, and decided to become a lawyer.

She went to Princeton, which she has described as a life-changing experience. When she arrived on campus from the Bronx, she said it was like "a visitor landing in an alien country." She never raised her hand in her first year there. "I was too embarrassed and too intimidated to ask questions," Judge Sotomayor said.

In one speech, she sounded some themes similar to Mr. Obama's description of his social uncertainties as a biracial youth in a largely white society.

"I have spent my years since Princeton, while at law school and in my various professional jobs, not feeling completely a part of the worlds I inhabit," she said, adding that that despite her accomplishments, "I am always looking over my shoulder wondering if I measure up."
After graduating summa cum laude from Princeton, she went to Yale Law School, worked for Robert M. Morgenthau in the Manhattan District Attorney's Office and spent time in private practice before being named to the bench..."

From Steve Benen at Washington Monthly:
"...H.W. Bush nominated her for the district court in 1992 (she'd been recommended by Daniel Patrick Moynihan), and Clinton nominated her for the appeals court bench five years later. Senate Republicans, as is their habit, held up Sotomayor's nomination for more than a year, "because they believed that as a Hispanic appellate judge she would be a formidable candidate for the Supreme Court."