A year ago, Elizabeth Warren was pitied, the visionary of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau who would not be appointed to direct her baby, due to politics and Wall Street pressure. Turns out the baby is doing just fine without Warren, providing tough oversight on debt collection, credit card marketing practices, and payday loan operations, just as she envisioned. Warren’s doing fine, too — actually, better than fine. In the aftermath of the CFPB diss, she challenged and beat Republican incumbent (and rising star) Scott Brown for the U.S. Senate post in Massachusetts, and, quite appropriately, just landed a seat on the Banking Committee.