Chicken Noodle Supreme

... And then there were 7. Well, 8. Sort of. I'm talking about the Supreme Court of course. With Rehnquist's death we've got two openings on the Court, though O'Connor previously agreed to stay on until her spot was filled. Given the probable desire to have a full 9 seats filled, it would make sense for Bush to change his nomination of Roberts to Chief Justice, and keep O'Connor around until there's a another nominee in the pipe. I think this also makes sense because Bush would probably much prefer having Roberts as Chief Justice instead of the extremely liberal Justice Stevens. We'll see what happens, but with at least two confirmation hearings pending, it's an exciting time to be in Washington. I bet you're all so jealous. Except those of you living in D.C. You're probably markedly less jealous. Though in all honesty, most people I know living outside of D.C. probably aren't too jealous anyways. So forget I brought it up.

Naturally, I will be extremely interested to see who the next nominee is. There's still a ton of conversation about tokenism, as if it has some persuasive effect on the Bush administration. "Bush is going to nominate an Hispanic", "Bush is going to nominate a woman", "Bush is going to nominate someone from the New Orleans circuit," etc. Fools. I think we saw in his last nomination that such talk can hardly be trusted. The rumors of a Hispanic are the only ones I find somewhat credible, and only then because Bush has so many Hispanic friends and associates - a reason completely separate (and much more "W") than tokenism.

I should also pass on this choice Supreme Court tidbit:

The other day I was flipping channels and came across a program I couldn't refuse: confirmation hearings. From 1986. That's right, I was watching CNN reruns. The best (read "worst") part was that I got Laura hooked too. For an hour we watched Senator Edward Kennedy ask a conservative nominee questions about abortion that the nominee found it inappropriate to answer. Apparently history repeats itself on a 19-year loop.

We're just tiny little specks,
About the size of Mickey Roony