Sotomayor's DA years: WaPo reporters Joe Stephens and Del Quentin Wilber have this story on Sonia Sotomayor's years as an NYADA. "'I had more problems during my first year in the office with the low-grade crimes -- the shoplifting, the prostitution, the minor assault cases,' she told a writer for the New York Times in 1983. 'In large measure, in those cases you were dealing with socioeconomic crimes, crimes that could be the product of the environment and of poverty. Once I started doing felonies, it became less hard. No matter how liberal I am, I'm still outraged by crimes of violence.'" Let's hope she still is.