Inappropriate Content: Supremes

The gossip surrounding Chief Justice William Renquist's approaching retirement is reaching critical mass here in D.C. (Then again, this is the first major thing I've been in D.C. to witness, so it's possible that the chattering could exceed even my substantial expectations.) The major question, as posed by Kevin Drum,

Is George Bush likely to (a) save himself some grief and pick an easily confirmable conservative candidate or (b) pick the nastiest, most divisive, most polarizing candidate possible because he's hellbent on showing Democrats who's boss?

This dispatch from the New York Times' White House Correspondent suggests that the annual 4th of July on the Mall isn't the only fireworks display I have to look forward to:

Conservative groups held a briefing last week at the National Press Club and promised to spend more than $20 million promoting whomever President Bush nominates... The liberal group People for the American Way countered with the threat of its 45-computer war room on M Street and a coalition of 70 other groups to fight back.

Caught in the middle was the White House, which had its own war plan but would not say so publicly for fear of looking ghoulish.

Republicans close to the preparations say that the White House has assembled research on some 20 Supreme Court candidates, with more intensive research on a handful of the most mentioned, all federal appellate judges and all conservative: J. Michael Luttig and J. Harvie Wilkinson III of Virginia, Michael W. McConnell of Colorado, John G. Roberts Jr. of the District of Columbia, Samuel A. Alito Jr. of New Jersey and Emilio M. Garza of Texas. The White House also plans mock hearings in which the nominee will field aggressive questions from a "murder board," or a phalanx of lawyers and administration officials playing senators on the Judiciary Committee. Such hearings were conducted for Mr. Thomas and have even been conducted for some of the current administration's appellate court nominees, like Mr. McConnell.

The White House plans to name a point person to manage the process and to create an additional war room on Capitol Hill, in the office of Vice President Dick Cheney, Mr. Specter or Senator John Cornyn, a member of the Judiciary Committee and a Texas Republican.

"Murder Board?" "War Room?" Sure sounds like the President is going the conciliatory, diplomatic route here. In any case, I'm watching this whole thing with a bit of purient interest: Judge McConnell's wife was the single best history teacher I had in high school. She was the only history teacher I ever had who showed even the slightest bit of interest in history itself, and not just preparing us for the IB tests at the end of the year. She was only my teacher for a week, of course—someday I'll do a nice long post just about the way our education system hires and fires teachers. Bleech.

I've never met her husband, but reliable sources close to the situation inform me that he's not as cool as his wife. Then again, few people are.

Once, one of Judge McConnell's daughters interrupted our Mock Trial team's practice and told us, "The model United Nations team doesn't have enough people to qualify for the big meet this weekend. Can a couple of you just show up Saturday and give us some numerical support?" I've entirely forgotten the details of what committee I was on, but I recall getting a certificate for second- or third-place from it. I assume it was the committee where schools would customarily dump the incompetent players they couldn't reasonable kick off the team, because I also recall having difficulty pronouncing the country I was representing. In any case, I bumped into McConnell's daughter—who was on the mock Security Council and eventually a state champion—during a recess. She told me that Pakistan and India were at war and there was a distinct possibility of a nuclear exchange.

"Shit," I said, startling her, "Are they going to cancel the tournament?"

She took a deep breath and explained to me that she had meant the senario in the mock Security Council was an India-Pakistan nuclear confrontation. I told her that I wouldn't have used the word 'shit' if I had known she wasn't talking about an actual, real-life war.

"Good," she told me, "Glad to hear it."