High court thoughts

An advantage to blogging slowly, as I often do, as opposed to those 12-posts-a-day blogger fiends out there, is that sometimes a pseudo-event can live out its whole life-cycle and be off the radar screen again before I even have a chance to publish a post that would quickly be embarrassingly obsolete.

Case in point: The inexplicably pervasive rumor yesterday that Bush was nominating Clement to the Supreme Court caught the estimable Digby (among many others on the left and right) taking a long lead-off from first base. Of course, it took only two hours and six minutes for him to dust himself off and get on his feet again.

I, on the other hand, by dragging my feet during the early hours yesterday, don't have any Clement posts to explain away today. I also don't have any great thoughts yet on John G. Roberts, Jr., the guy Bush actually did nominate, though, so the system isn't perfected yet.

Well, okay, a couple of thoughts:

1. It's disappointing to see that the Bush strategy is once again that the less experience on the bench, the better (since it leaves no paper trail)--make this nomination process an affirmation of the candidate's homespun background.


2. Second, this is the Bush loyalty fetish at its finest: Roberts (like fellow Bush nominee John Bolton) is an veteran of the Florida Recount War in 2000. (The Bush loyalty fetish, by the way, is part of the reason I don't believe that Antonin Scalia will ever be Chief Justice: Bush likes loyalty, but he doesn't like people who don't hide it that they're smarter than everyone, including him.)

Meanwhile, Juan Cole writes:

George W. Bush's nomination of John Roberts, Jr. is a setback for American women, just has his policies in Iraq have produced a setback for women's rights in the Arab world. Indeed, Bush has been bad for women all around the globe.

Read Cole's full, depressing case here.