The Shitstorm Will Commence in Three... Two... One...

According to an anonymous source within the administration, President Barack Obama is about to formally nominate Judge Sonia Sotomayor to replace retiring Justice David Souter.

Judge Sotomayor will bring far more experience to the High Court than any other nominee in the last 70 years. As a centrist judge, Sotomayor got her start in the federal judiciary in 1991 when she was elevated by President George H W Bush and later given a bump by President Bill Clinton in 1997. So throughout her federal judicial career, Judge Sotomayor has enjoyed broad bipartisan support.

Until now. Right wing groups have been huddling in the shadows during conference calls strategerizing to pre-emptively oppose everyone and anyone that Obama could possibly nominate short of their beloved Robert Bork. Expect Republicans like Jeff Sessions to try to paint Judge Sotomayor as a wild-eyed liberal and activist judge just like the GOP tried to paint Obama as terrorist-loving Muslim socialist.

If nothing else, the Sotomayor nomination, which ought to get out of committee for an up and down Senate vote, may prove to be the lightning rod that at last draws attention to a GOP that is shrinking, baffled and embittered by their current minority status. It ought to expose them once and for all as the obstructionist saw horses that they truly are.

It will also expose their hypocrisy. Much was made during Alberto Gonzales's nomination in early 2005 of his Hispanic ancestry. Republicans, nervous about timorous questions from Democrats on the Judiciary Committee regarding his torture memos responded by charging the Democrats with racism. How dare they question Junior's choice to make as Attorney General a guy who had worked for no one else but George W. Bush since passing the bar? Affirmative Action is for Republicans only, doncha know?

I would hope that the Democrats on the Judiciary Committee have enough sense to play the same race card when Republicans inevitably begin flinging their poo at Judge Sotomayor. We may even see Harry Reid show enough backbone to hint for purely entertainment purposes at invoking his own nuclear option and taking the filibuster away from the minority party.

So get your ponchos and rain hats on, people, because this is going to be a scatalogical Blue Man Group/Gallagher show.