Sonia Sotomayor, Latinos and Blacks

As reported by the Boston Globe, IN NOMINATING federal appeals court judge Sonia Sotomayor for the nation's highest court today, President Obama stressed her "extraordinary journey" from public housing in the South Bronx to the upper reaches of the judicial system. But despite her personal history, Sotomayor's professional record is notable less for its iconoclasm than for its steadiness and solidity. Sotomayor, now a judge on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, would become the first Hispanic on the Supreme Court. By any measure, she is well prepared for the job. A graduate of Princeton and Yale Law School, she has worked as a prosecutor and as a corporate lawyer in civil cases. And her previous service as a federal district court judge would be a crucial addition to the court. Currently, only departing Justice David Souter has experience as a trial judge. By proposing Sotomayor as his replacement, Obama has answered his own complaint that current Supreme Court justices - most of whom entered the federal judiciary at the lofty appellate level - often consider cases through too abstract a prism. Some liberal activists hoped that Obama would seek a firebrand to counter Antonin Scalia, the darling of the right. Will Sotomayor be the Latino's Clarence Thomas? Let's talk tonight, on the slugfest... "if You can handle the truth."