In nominating Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, the President has made good on his promise to appoint someone with stellar qualifications and intellect who understands the experiences of everyday Americans. Raised in a Bronx housing project by her widowed single mother, Sotomayor graduated summa cum laude from Princeton and has had a remarkable legal career as a prosecutor, a private attorney, a trial court judge, and an appellate judge.

As a young lawyer, I had the privilege of serving as a clerk to Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun. Justice Blackmun was a wonderful man and a brilliant, dedicated jurist, but someone whose life had been rather insular before joining the Court. I remember him saying on many occasions how much he had learned from his colleagues on the bench and, particularly, from Justices Sandra Day O’Connor—a former state legislator and pioneering female jurist—and Thurgood Marshall—a civil rights hero who both experienced and helped defeat legal segregation. Justice Blackmun learned so much from these colleagues because they shared his intellect and commitment to fairness while bringing to the task a starkly different set of life experiences.

With few exceptions, the current Court is similarly insular and in need of new perspectives. With her remarkable credentials and inspiring life story, Judge Sotomayor promises to enrich the Court’s decision making for decades to come.

This post first appeared on The Stimulist.  Read more at The Opportunity Agenda's website.

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Cross-posted at the Francis L. Holland Blog.

There has been some terribly unfortunate talk lately of President-elect Obama nominating Senator John Kerry for Secretary of State. To see why this would be so inappropriate, we have to consider what the Secretary of State will actually be required to do, in the context of two ongoing wars as well as ongoing covert interventions in Iran and Pakistan.

As Obama seeks to end the Iraq War and get Afghanistan under control, he needs a very effective and credible communicator who can explain his policies to the American public and convince us - across the political spectrum - to support his policies. He needs a change agent in Iraq.

Kerry's doesn't represent change; instead, like John McCain, Kerry is a reminder of the generational political battles about Vietnam that Obama promised to leave in the past. Unlike the wisdom shown by Obama in the leadup to the Iraq War, Kerry supported the war before he opposed the it, showing that he really hadn't learned the lessons of Vietnam, even though he fought there. Kerry made some fatal mistakes in his approach to issues of war and peace that even he acknowledges. And those mistakes preclude him from being an effective spokesman for President-elect Obama. I have disccussed this with blogger African American Political Pundit and he agrees with my assessment. (See comments.)

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I wanted to say , and I hope I am writing this to be more a topic of discussion, rather than confession - that Obama's speech really affected me on a personal level.

I have alot of personal issues, I'm a pretty bright person - I have a tendency to be sort of, well - I get caught up in occupational slumming. As a researcher, I tend to get tangled in problems I really shouldn't be working on. I do alot of "mcjobs" and sure, I get them done. But I have some important things I need to get done that usually get put off.

And I just looked at this guy from the midwest, standing up there accepting the nomination for president and I said to myself. Wow. You know. This guy is really talking about us, not himself. He wants us to do something.

It sort of hit me like, you know - ask not what your country can do for you - but what you can do for your country.

And I just said to myself. Ok. Hell. Lets get this whole thing done. And so here I am at work, occupational slumming on this blog.  And I'm going to get back to work here. :-}

And so I will leave it at that and get back to work. But I wanted to just ask, did that speech hit you where you live?

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Many a foolish racist has implied that Barack Obama is too young, too "uppity" to know his place.   Last night, Barack Obama showed the world how wrong these people are.   He made it clear to me, and to anyone listening with an open mind, that "he gets it."  He knows where he came from, understands that he has gotten where he is only because he was fortunate enough to be born in this country and no other country on earth.  He hasn't nor will he forget that he was raised by hard working working/middle class grandparents and a single mother.   He will govern in the interest of people just like them, just like most of us.  

Indeed, Barack Obama knows exactly what his place is.

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