Why Obama's pick for the Supreme Court (Sonia Sotomayor) scares both conservatives AND liberals!

Walter Shapiro writing at Politics Daily provides two insights to Obama's Supreme Court nominee that I haven't heard mentioned so far:

While her true inspiration is Nancy Drew, Sotomayor has also revealed that she first became intrigued with being a judge as a child by watching Perry Mason on television.

Wow...now I'm convinced she's right for the Supreme Court of the United States of America...uh huh...

White House fact-sheet pointedly omitted reference to a 2002 case (Center for Reproductive Law & Policy v. Bush). Sotomayor rejected a public interest group's challenge to the Bush policy of banning federally funded non-governmental organizations that work abroad from mentioning or counseling for abortion. This is the Sotomayor decision that leaves liberal abortion rights groups (a normally loyal Obama constituency) nervous.

Meanwhile, Jeffrey Rosen, Legal Affairs Editor at The New Republic presents The Case Against Sotomayor

Over the past few weeks, I've been talking to a range of people who have worked with her, nearly all of them former law clerks for other judges on the Second Circuit or former federal prosecutors in New York. Most are Democrats and all of them want President Obama to appoint a judicial star of the highest intellectual caliber who has the potential to change the direction of the court. Nearly all of them acknowledged that Sotomayor is a presumptive front-runner, but nearly none of them raved about her. They expressed questions about her temperament, her judicial craftsmanship, and most of all, her ability to provide an intellectual counterweight to the conservative justices, as well as a clear liberal alternative.

A summary of the specifics:

• 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
• Her opinions, although competent, are viewed by former prosecutors as not especially clean or tight, and sometimes miss the forest for the trees.
• Some former clerks and prosecutors expressed concerns about her command of technical legal details

More later:

This is the first in a series of reports by TNR legal affairs editor Jeffrey Rosen about the strengths and weaknesses of the leading candidates on Barack Obama's Supreme Court shortlist.

And, finally: "A wise Latina woman with the richness of her experience would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life," Sotomayor said...

Politco explains what Newt Gingrich said and what Rush Limbaugh said about her "racist" comments.