From the Huffington Post:Sonia Sotomayor won confirmation Thursday as the nation's first Hispanic Supreme Court justice, a history-making Senate vote that capped a summer-long debate heavy with ethnic politics and hints of high court fights to come.
The third woman in court history, she'll be sworn in Saturday as the 111th justice and the first nominated by a Democrat in 15 years.
The Senate vote was 68-31 to confirm Sotomayor, President Barack Obama's first Supreme Court nominee, with Democrats unanimously behind her but most Republicans lining up in a show of opposition both for her and for the president's standards for a justice.
The 55-year-old daughter of Puerto Rican parents was raised in a South Bronx housing project and educated in the Ivy League before rising to the highest legal echelons, spending the past 17 years as a federal judge. She watched the vote on TV at a federal courthouse in New York City, among friends and colleagues.
From Kenneth P. Vogel @ the Seattle PI:Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor resigned from an elite women's-only group Friday under pressure from Republican senators who suggested her membership could violate judicial codes barring judges from belonging to discriminatory groups.
In a letter to the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is considering her nomination, Sotomayor reiterated her belief that the group, the Belizean Grove, "does not practice invidious discrimination and my membership did not violate the Judicial Code of Ethics, but I do not want questions about this to distract anyone from my qualifications and record."
The New York-based group, with about 120 dues-paying members, was little-known until Sotomayor disclosed her membership in a questionnaire submitted earlier this month to the Judiciary Committee.
Founded nearly 10 years ago as the female answer to the Bohemian Grove — a secretive all-male club whose members have included former U.S. presidents and top business leaders — the Belizean Grove's membership includes Army generals, Wall Street executives and former ambassadors.
From Yahoo News:A history-making selection behind him, President Barack Obama is pressing the Senate to quickly confirm federal appeals judge Sonia Sotomayor as the first Hispanic justice on the Supreme Court.
Not so fast, say Republicans.
The GOP faces an uphill battle in defeating the New York-born daughter of Puerto Rican parents, but Republicans are promising a thorough and perhaps lengthy hearing process that scrutinizes her record and judicial philosophy.
Sotomayor's personal story and her academic and legal credentials earn her respect from all quarters, but conservatives see plenty to criticize in her rulings and past statements. They describe her as a judicial activist who would put her feelings above the Constitution.
Sotomayor has said that personal experiences "affect the facts that judges choose to see."
"I simply do not know exactly what the difference will be in my judging," she said in a speech in 2001. "But I accept there will be some based on my gender and my Latina heritage."
Any Republican effort to block Sotomayor's confirmation could be risky for a party still reeling from last year's elections and struggling to gain back lost ground with Hispanics, the fastest-growing part of the population and one that is increasingly active politically.
