Senate Approves Sonia Sotomayor

It's almost over now. On Saturday, Judge Sonia Sotomayor will be sworn in as the 111th justice of the United States Supreme Court. It took well over 200 years, but the United States will finally have its first Hispanic Supreme Court justice.

On Thursday, the U.S. Senate confirmed Judge Sotomayor's nomination with a 68-31 vote. Every Democrat in the senate, except Sen. Edward Kennedy (who's fighting a brain tumor) voted for Judge Sotomayor. And Sen. Kennedy has made it known that he supports her, and would have voted for her if he could have been there. The two senate independents also voted for the judge.

That means that all 31 "no" votes came from Republicans. That's over 77% of all the Republicans in the senate.

It's hard to say why the Republicans opposed Judge Sotomayor, other than the fact that she was nominated by a Democratic president who embarrassed and demoralized them in the last election. They tried to call her an "activist" judge -- a charge made ludicrous by the obvious activism of the conservative justices on the court.

Then they accused her of being a racist. But all that did was reflect and magnify their own racism. They tried to say she was anti-gun and opposed to the second amendment, but there is no actual evidence of this (outside of the tiny fevered minds in the NRA).

The truth is that Judge Sotomayor is the most qualified candidate nominated to the court in the last 50 years. She is intelligent, empathetic and extremely competent. I probably won't agree with every decision she makes, but I am certain she will distinguish herself as one of our greatest justices.

On this vote, I am proud of the Democrats. They stood together and did the right thing (regardless of how stupid the Republicans wanted to be). They need to do this more often.

I hope the Hispanic community remembers this vote in the 2010 election.