Separated at birth.

Zydrunas Ilgauskas grinds your bones to make his bread. Go Cavs!

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.

Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys.

Sometimes, you get into musical moods. I would argue that a mix, particularly the mix you make for yourself, is lazy listening. The way a hits or singles record allows you to listen to just what is popular, the self-made mix is all dessert and no broccoli.

Broccoli is good for you!

But sometimes, it's important to indulge. So, if all I want to listen to today is country and country influenced indie pop, that's what I'm gonna do. Enjoy. This is all I've been listening to all day.

And just for kicks:



Have you ever fallen in love with a cover? I have.

Oh, the empathy.

President Obama says he wants his Supreme Court replacement to have "empathy." According to conservative pundits, we'd all better watch out!

"Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, speaking on This Week, warned that if a jurist were to show empathy, 'politics, preferences, personal preferences and feelings might take the place of being impartial and deciding cases based upon the law, not upon politics.' In an opinion piece in the Washington Times warning that Obama is poised to be the 'first president to make lawlessness an explicit standard for Supreme Court Justices,' Wendy Long of the Judicial Confirmation Network saw empathy as a kind of temporary insanity that so distorts a jurist's vision as to make it difficult "to uphold the federal judicial oath to dispense justice impartially." Over on Fox News, Sean Hannity warned that empathy is the first step toward "social engineering." And in a delicious Freudian slip, Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama snorted: 'I don't know what empathy means.'"

Snatched from Slate, "Once More Without Feeling" by Dahlia Lithwick

I think that, cutting through the hysteria, what is basically in play here is a fear that Obama will choose an activist, liberal judge. I doubt he will, much as I would love to see that. Souter, a liberal leaning moderate judge will, in all likelihood, be replaced by another of that mold. But, in wake of two Bush administration appointees and a bench that had more viciously political 5:4 splits then had been seen at any point in its history, a moderate will merely maintain the status quo. What many Americans may not realize is that such political polarities as we have experienced in my time as a voter are not common in the Supreme Court.

They may also not realize that the most liberal and most senior member of SCOTUS, John Paul Stevens, was appointed by a Republican, Gerald Ford. Souter, another who votes with the "liberal bloc" was appointed by George Bush Senior. They are the last, I worry, of a kind of judge whose understanding of law was not dominated by the party of the president appointing them.

What has happened to the courts? When did judicial activism become unspeakable? It is clearly meant to be one of those balances between branches of government, and yet, Chief Justice Roberts sees his role in the system as merely that of "a referee"*. If he wanted that job, he should have stayed out of the appellate courts. When Justice Stevens says, "Including myself every judge who’s been appointed to the court since Lewis Powell** has been more conservative than his or her predecessor. Except maybe Justice Ginsburg. That’s bound to have an effect on the court." He is not exaggerating. The court does not need a moderate- it needs a progressive, for the sake of balance, because neither of my favorites, Stevens or Ginsburg, are young. Empathy is a good start, but it's not enough. Conviction and the strength of will and character to wield the incredible power of the bench for the right reasons is.

So, empathy doesn't sound so bad to you now, does it, Wendy Long.

* His words, not mine.
**1971, President Nixon

Your girl has a bad case of SCOTUS.

Your favorite pandemic may be the Swine Flu, you trendy scenester you. You may have a personal weakness for SARS or a historic crush on Small Pox or the deadlier Spanish Flu. I'm not going to fight you if you come down on the side of the Bubonic Plague, classic as basic black.

That said, these diseases are not for me. I have caught a bug all my own, and let's be frank, all I want to do is read about the various possibilities in line to replace Justice Souter* in the Supreme Court when he retires this summer. SCOTUS, the Supreme Court of the United States, has long been an object of interest for me. I can offer no clever explanation of the origin of my chronic interest in the goings on of the gavel wielding. Sorry if the blog posts about the bench have become too much, but if you come back after the confirmation hearings, odds are on there will be a post or two about zombies or pies.

That said, there are resources on hand for those similarly afflicted. I tend to stick with SCOTUSblog, which is no nonsense and gives concise updates on arguments and opinions as they are delivered. Underneath Their Robes, a gossip site about the federal judiciary, is a girltalk confection, a kind of Perez Hilton for the judicial groupie. Above the Law, a similar site that I like less, has a leaderboard of potential Souter replacements. Sonia Sotomayar is leading there, and she's a reasonable choice. You know me, so you know I'm rooting for Kathleen Sullivan, a professor of law at Stanford who has presented amicus curiae to the court in the past. She's a big lesbian, an equal rights activist, and wrote the book I studied in my con law class in college. She could keep my beloved Bader Ginsburg company. I would be perfectly happy with Elena Kagan too.

Here are three opinion articles I've read recently about the Hopefuls:
Slate ran an article about the prejudices facing single women.
Daily Beast reported on a big, fat problem.
Vanity Fair presented an awkward reunion option.

* I will miss him.