Sonia Sotomayor nominated to Supreme Court

1. Obama nominates Sonia Sotomayor - “It is a daunting feeling to be here… I am an ordinary person who has been blessed with extraordinary opportunities and experiences. Today is one of those experiences.” Conservatives haven’t been, aren’t, and won’t be happy.  But she should sail through confirmation.  (From Politico, pic from Reuters)

Meanwhile, some on the left aren’t so stoked about the choice either:
“The most consistent concern was that Sotomayor, although an able lawyer, was ‘not that smart and kind of a bully on the bench,’ as one former Second Circuit clerk for another judge put it.” We’ll see.  (From the New Republic)

2. Pyongyang Ka-pow!  (rumble rumble rumble) – Underground nuke and some more missile tests continue to make N. Korea the center of global attention.  (From the Wall Street Journal)

3. The rebuttal to the Tea Party-Types - Let’s be honest.  Barack Obama is a really smart guy.  You might not agree with him on everything, or heck, maybe anything.  But he’s a pretty dang smart guy.  So it didn’t make sense to me that he’d ramp up spending and sabotage the financial future of our nation just because he could.  But that’s what the tea-party types were saying.  Guy wanted to spend money, he gets elected… and bam… tax and spend liberal.  But there’s got to be more to it than that correct?  Yes.  There is: “A 2008 paper by Eric Hanushek, Dean T. Jamison, Eliot A. Jamison, and Ludger Woessmann of the conservative Hoover Institution calculated that raising our average math and science test scores by 50 points (which would bring us on par with Canada and Korea, but still well behind countries like Taiwan and Finland) would increase GDP by more than one-third over the next 75 years–a staggering gain.” (From the New Republic)

4. Pop Quiz:  Who exports more oil to the U.S. than anyone else? - Here’s a hint:  When you think of this place, you probably don’t think of sand.  Or warm weather for that matter.  Maple Syrup anyone?  (From Global Post)

5. Mr. T Pities the Pirates - And the Cubs STILL lost.  Whatta game!