It's Sonia

Three weeks ago when David Souter announced he was stepping down from the Supreme Court, everyone assumed that Obama would nominate a woman, and preferably a minority, to replace him. Check and check.

Meet Sonia Sotomayor.

She was pretty much the frontrunner from day one, so this comes as no surprise. Will she be a good justice? I'm not an expert, but my lawyer friends seem unanimous in their praise of her. She's considered a liberal, but a moderate one rather than a firebrand. Assuming she's confirmed (a very, very safe assumption) she'll be the third woman and just the first latino to be on the court. Interestingly, she'll be the sixth Catholic in this particular court.

And let's toot Esquire's horn for a moment here as they called this way back in October:

If Obama becomes president, his first nominee to the Supreme Court will likely be Sonia Sotomayor. As a Hispanic woman with 16 years of court experience, Sotomayor would slay two of the court's lack-of-diversity birds with one swift stone. "These are criteria that matter these days. Even Laura Bush was disappointed that her husband didn't name a woman to replace Sandra Day O'Connor," says Mark Tushnet, the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law at Harvard. And because Sotomayor has a reputation for staying behind the scenes and sits on a federal bench known for its centrism, it's likely that she would be able to garner a two-thirds majority in the Senate, even if the Democrats only control an estimated 55 or so seats.

Well done to them. Hopefully she's paid all her taxes and didn't have a nanny off the books.

Also, for those of you who don't follow the court: This doesn't really change things. Souter was liberal, Sotomayor is liberal, so the balance of the court pretty much remains 5-to-4 conservative-to-liberal.

EDIT: TPM already has a pretty comprehensive and hilarious look at GOP talking points.