Considering the next Supreme Court Justice

A few weeks ago Justice Sandra Day O'Connor retired.

That's set in motion much wrangling and, on the part of the Conservatives, gleeful chomping of teeth as they relish being able to twist the Supreme Court even further to their ideological extremes.

Last night GW Bush proposed John Roberts.

For your consideration, let me point you here:

The John Roberts dossier Everything you need to know about Bush's nominee, before the battle begins. (By Katharine Mieszkowski, Salon.COM, July 20, 2005)

What does John Roberts believe? Bush's selection looks like a political masterstroke. But if Judge Roberts proves to be an ideologue in the Scalia/Thomas mold, he and the president may run into a Democratic buzz saw. (By Peter Rubin, Salon.COM, July 20, 2005)

"Sterling" judge or "extreme rightist"? Activists and scholars size up Bush's Supreme Court nominee. (Compiled by Page Rockwell and Aaron Kinney, Salon.COM, July 20, 2005)

I want to close by saying there's a principle of truth to consider. Just because GW proposed this guy, and just because we know the Conservatives want to stack the deck in the Supreme Court, a knee-jerk reaction is still knee-jerk. Give the guy consideration before leaping to conclusions.

Is this the death of the republic? Cloture motion filed!

On the SALON.COM blog: [14:39 EDT, May 20, 2005]

The nuclear countdown has officially begun

On behalf of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, Republican Sen. John Cornyn just filed a cloture motion on the confirmation of Priscilla Owen -- the procedural step required to set up a vote on whether debate must end and a floor vote be taken.

Under the Senate's rules, the cloture motion will ripen on Tuesday, at which time senators will vote whether or not to cut off debate on Owen's nomination. Presuming that Democrats remain united, they'll have the votes to defeat that motion, which requires 60 votes to pass. Once that happens, Frist will be in the position to trigger the nuclear option.

-- Tim Grieve

The "nuclear option" ... trying to ramrod judicial nominations

Everything you wanted to know about the "nuclear option"
If the Republicans are as good as their word, it's going to be much uglier than you think. (By Tim Grieve, May 12, 2005, SALON.COM)

This is an examination by SALON.COM on the "nuclear option".

Basically, what's up is that the Republican majority in Congress is upset at the Democratic party using the fillibuster option to block certain of the judicial nominations.

On the Democratic side they're saying those judges are part of the radical right (a.k.a. "right wing nutjobs"), and that they're using the fillibuster to block only a small portion of the nominations. Further, the Republican party used the same tactic when the shoe was on the other foot, during Clinton's years he also had a backlog of judicial nominations that couldn't get through Congress.