Exhibit 19.5

The Supremes


I love Supreme Court nomination hearings. I only barely remember watching some of Clarence Thomas's, but that was all it took. Unfortunately, they've never been that explosive again--or involved a would-be justice allegedly describing pornographic films--but they're still fun.

We're a month or two away from Sonia Sotomayor's confirmation hearings and unless something more shocking than her diabetes comes up, it's looking like it will be a cakewalk. She's clearly no Harriet Miers--or Clarence Thomas for that matter--and so far the arguments against her can basically be summarized thusly:

* She might not be smart - This is unrelated, but Clarence Thomas hasn't asked a question during oral arguments since February 2006. Just saying.

* She too smart and therefore, as a woman, sort of a bitch - Something tells me this argument isn't going to win anyone over.

* She's racist - ?

What's clear at this point--other than one political party apparently having decided to add Hispanics and women to the list of groups they don't want votes from--is that Sotomayor is sharp and aggressive and proud of her heritage (as she should be). The same could be said of Justice Alito who spoke quite proudly about his roots as the son of Italian immigrants at his confirmation hearings.

(Also interesting is that Alito and Sotomayor share an identical educational trajectory - undergraduate degrees from Princeton and then law school at Yale where both were editors of the Yale Law Review [Alito graduate from law school in '75, Sotomayor in '79]. Remember how everyone said Alito was an unintelligent, affirmative action case? Oh, right, that never happened).

What's so sad and predictable about the identity-based attacks on Sotomayor is that it was the last administration's actions that forced this nomination. Somehow by floating Alberto Gonzalez's name and briefly nominating the unconfirmable Miers, we all shrugged our shoulders as two more male whities were confirmed and the court grew even less representative of the country. Poor Ruth Bader Ginsberg has spent the last few years looking like she's about to Pelican Brief a colleague or two herself if things didn't change. Obama really had no choice but to nominate a woman and, with no guarantee of getting to select a second justice (though it's likely), a minority woman was as inevitable as it was the right thing to do.

Which is not to say Sotomayor doesn't deserve her spot--she's done more to deserve it than just about anyone currently on the court from the looks of things--just that it's unfortunate a nominee who will make the court look more like America gets criticized for those very qualities. Where the right is wrong is in assuming those are the qualities that make her weak when the truth is exactly the opposite.

Oh, and she saved baseball. So there's that.