The NYT has a nice bit of color on the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court:

President Obama announced on Tuesday that he will nominate the federal appeals judge Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court, choosing a daughter of Puerto Rican parents raised in a Bronx public housing project to become the nation’s first Hispanic justice.

Judge Sotomayor, who stood next to the president during the announcement, was described by Mr. Obama as “an inspiring woman who I am confident will make a great justice.”

[...]Judge Sotomayor’s face tightened with emotion as the president introduced her. In the front row of the East Room, her mother, Celina Sotomayor, wept. Her stepfather, Omar Lopez, also was on hand along with her brother, Juan Sotomayor, sister-in-law, two nephews and a niece.

“My heart today is bursting with gratitude for all that you have done for me,” she said to her family, describing her selection as “the most humbling honor of my life.”

“I stand on the shoulders of countless people,” she said. But towering above all, she said, is her mother, who raised her alone after her father died. “I am all I am because of her,” Judge Sotomayor said, “and I am only half the woman she is.”

It’s strange to see politics at an all-time low in the UK with the current MP’s expenses scandal, while the political narrative in the United States continues to go from strength to strength.

Obama Hails Sotomayor as ‘Inspiring’