Your girl begs the question.

It's a morning when I am happy with my country as a whole. I am still employed- I am not panicked. I even remembered to bring a packet of hot cocoa with me for breakfast when I biked off to work. And President Obama picked a thoroughly qualified female candidate for the Supreme Court. When she gets in, Sonia Sotomayor will be the first Latina to hold a spot on SCOTUS.

She's got an amazing story. The child of Puerto Rican immigrants, Sotomayor grew up in a housing project in NYC. She knew she wanted to be a judge when a diagnosis with childhood diabetes turned her attention to Perry Mason. So she got into Princeton, and then into Yale. She's got brains, background, and balls.

Given that, I hate to nitpick. There is diversity in this choice, and there is reason to it, though it shows little bravery on the President's part. Sotomayor has an activist streak that scares Wendy Long- which I find endearing, even if it isn't enough of an activist streak to truly excite me. She's a solid pick, a moderate with a loyalty to the appointing executive's party, but that has been the formula of late.

She's another Ivy League educated Federal Appeals Court Judge from the Northeast.

This makes nine judges that are from the Federal Appeals Courts, seven from the Northeast, and eight law degrees from Ivy League schools, mainly Harvard. John Paul Stevens went to Northwestern, and he is the oldest of the appointees. Excuse me for observing, but this is beginning to look like something of a club.

I don't want to harp on education. It is wonderful to have brilliant, educated people in positions of power. However, questions of money and influence come into play when it comes to graduate study in law at these institutions. I do not want to see the Supreme Court closed off to those who have experience outside of the appellate courts, or those who, for whatever reason, may have elected to study at some of the great state law programs or outside of the top right corner of the country.

Diversity means more than the obvious, and I am happy with what Judge Sotomayor will bring to the court. I mean, I'm a baseball fan. She's got an excellent attitude to bring into a decidedly male dominated judiciary. I guess I just wanted to go on the record, and say that I hope the next choice takes better advantage of the opportunity to be a little radical, a little activist, a little nontraditional as I am sure we have not seen the last of Obama's SCOTUS appointments.

For now, I'm just going to revel in Wendy Long's pain. And yes, I will take my first democratic appointed judge in 14 years now, please.