In the Orange County Register, Ralph Rossum makes shrewd observations about Judge Sotomayor and the mediocrity who is currently occupying the seat:

A review of [Souter’s] opinions makes clear he was never a starter and was typically brought off the bench only when the game was no longer in doubt (known by sports fans as “garbage time”) to write inconsequential majority opinions on non-constitutional questions or, on those occasions when the liberal team had lost, long and desultory dissents (so long that Justice Scalia described them on one occasion as “laying waste great northern forests”).

…

Many conservatives are taking comfort in the fact that President Obama has merely replaced one liberal with another. Their complacence ignores two key facts: Souter is 69 and is being replaced by someone 16 years younger; and Sotomayor, a New Yorker with sharp elbows and a reputation for aggressive and domineering questioning from the bench, may well win a starting position.

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