I’m a little late to the party but it looks like Obama is set to pick Judge Sonia Sotomayor as his pick for the Supreme Court:

President Obama has decided to nominate the federal appeals judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, choosing a daughter of Puerto Rican parents raised in Bronx public housing projects to become the nation’s first Hispanic justice, officials said Tuesday.

The decision, to be announced Tuesday morning, will be Mr. Obama’s first selection to the Supreme Court and could trigger a struggle with Senate Republicans who have indicated they may oppose the nomination. But Democrats control nearly the 60 votes necessary to choke off a filibuster and even Republicans said they have little hope of blocking confirmation barring unforeseen revelation.

Judge Sotomayor, 54, who has served for more than a decade on the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals based in New York City, would become the nation’s 111th justice, replacing David H. Souter, who is retiring after 19 years on the bench. Although Justice Souter was appointed by the first President George Bush, he became a mainstay of the liberal faction on the court and so his replacement by Judge Sotomayor likely would not shift the overall balance of power.

Thinking about the upcoming confirmation battle in the Senate, I anticipate the next few weeks being more painful than most — especially because the talking heads will likely spend 60-75% of their time talking about Judge Sotomayor’s race and gender. The Supreme Court has become one of the biggest lightning rods in Washington, which inevitably draws all the kooks out of the woodwork to make all kinds of wild claims and accusations. It’s really too bad because I share John Cole’s view of how SCOTUS picks should be evaluated:

What do I think about all this? Pretty much what I thought when Roberts and Alito were confirmed. A president deserves his picks, and unless they are incompetent or decidedly out of the mainstream or there is some exceptional reason to keep them off the bench, they should be confirmed. I’m sure lots of you disagree with that position, but that is what I think. Elections matter. Obama should get his picks.

John also had this to say about the GOP’s strategy:

Politically, this pick is filled with land mines for Republicans, giving them the opportunity to sound like clods to hispanics and female voters, and given their remarkable tone-deafness the last couple of years, I’m sure they can manage to shave a few points off their already historically low popularity. Jeff Sessions should be a load of fun to watch. Additionally, because of the amount of time between when she was chosen and when Obama would like the vote to happen, it is going to be difficult for them to drag their feet the way they want to. For Republicans, the calculus is drag this out as long as possible, make it as ugly as possible, and hope it gets the base to give money.

Update: Steve Benen highlights a salient point:

This morning at the White House, when President Obama introduced Judge Sonia Sotomayor as his Supreme Court nominee, he noted that he’d like to see the Senate act swiftly on her nomination — as they have “twice before.”

It was a reminder that when Sotomayor sits before the Senate Judiciary Committee, and her nomination heads to the Senate floor, it won’t be the first time these lawmakers have consider her qualifications for the federal bench.

In 1998, the Senate confirmed Sotomayor for the court of appeals, 67 to 29. Every Democrat voted in support — yes, that means you too, Ben Nelson — and as Eric Kleefeld noted this morning, seven Republican senators who are still in the chamber also voted for Sotomayor’s conformation.

Update 2: Wasting no time in getting the Stoopid kicked up into high gear, here’s a statement from the rightwing Judicial [Anti-]Confirmation Network:

Judge Sotomayor is a liberal judicial activist of the first order who thinks her own personal political agenda is more important that the law as written. She thinks that judges should dictate policy, and that one’s sex, race, and ethnicity ought to affect the decisions one renders from the bench.

See those references to “sex, race and ethnicity”? To steal a bit from Wonkette: “Translation: a radical leftist lesbian radical who will take away your guns, force your children into kindergarten abortion parties, exhume the corpse of Ronald Reagan for the purposes of urinating on it, and surrender in Iraq.”

Update 3: As a final thought, I hope everyone bears in mind that 98% of the attacks the GOP will be leveling against Judge Sotomayor would be the exact same attacks they would be using against any other Obama nominee (short of Robert Bork). All that matters to them is that she’s not conservative and likely does not support criminalizing abortion.

Update 4: It looks like the RNC’s Official Talking Points (TM) on the nomination have been leaked.