Sonia Sotomayor--Obama's trap

I was for the one legged lesbian radical legal scholar for the nomination to the Supreme Court. I think that would have caused the Republican minds to explode. But never fear it didn't take much. Already the echochamber has launched their attacks on the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor as an activist, liberal judge, who isn't very bright. The most egregious attack on her is that she is a diabetic. From my own readings of her decisions, which are primarily on criminal procedure and immigration law, she is a Democratic Souter where there is alot of unknown. Mike Huckabee was first off the mark by blasting her activism and the Judicial Confirmation Network rifled off an e-mail calling her "a liberal judicial activist of the first order who thinks her own personal political agenda is more important than the law as written." Personally, I believed she could be a closet anti-choice judge but that doesn't matter in the right-wing world where no Democrats should sit on the bench.

Judge Sotomayor comes to the nomination with more judicial experience than any justice in over 70 years, which might explain why some of her decisions have been reversed--she's written so many. Growing up in a housing project in South Bronx, she read Nancy Drew mysteries and watched Perry Mason on television where she learned that the judge was the most important person on the show. Her father was a tool-and-die maker from Puerto Rico, who died when she was eight. Her mother raised her while serving as a nurse at a methadone clinic. As for her academic qualifications, she graduated from Princeton summa cum laude and then went on to Yale Law School, where she became the editor of the Law Journal. A Harvard professor said she had "a big heart and a brilliant mind."

Incredibly she was the first Puerto Rican judge in American history. Nominated to the federal bench by George Bush, she has already gone through the Senate process once. She's out of West Side Story and Obama's pick puts the Republicans in a hole. An hispanic woman from the working class. The Republicans are losing the woman vote, disparately failing among Hispanics and have all but lost the so-called Reagan Democrats. Any real opposition to her will thoroughly damage the Republicans among these groups. And without them, they are dead meat.

What's interesting about the media discussion is how far the media has gone in buying into the Republican version of what the Supreme Court is or is not. Will Obama change this attitude by the time of the next Supreme Court choice? Remember this choice still leaves the voting structure on the Court the same as when Souder sat.

It is the next choice where the fireworks will really come.

By all accounts President Obama was smitten by Sotomayor when they met last Tursday, someone sharing a life story similar to his own. It is a good first choice by the President.