GOP Can't Stop Her, But They Can Look 'Silly'

Sonia Sotomayor can take these numbers to heart as she awaits her Senate confirmation hearing. When she needed Senate approval for her current post in 1998, she got it by a vote of 67-29 (with not a single Democratic nay). Forty-six of those senators are still in office, and they approved her by a comfortable margin of 35-11, notes Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com.

"It seems to me that with this pick, Obama may be trying to carefully calibrate the amount of Republican resistance: enough that there's a chance that they'll do something that makes them look silly, but not enough for them to seriously threaten Sotomayor's nomination with a filibuster," writes Silver. (More Sonia Sotomayor stories.)