October 31, 2005, Slow news weekend...
Familia TD came down and rooted in the nation's capitol, as we "ran" our second consecutive Marine Corps Marathon (the 30th edition of same, and in honor of the occasion, attended by 30,000 entrants, its largest field by far) in a time of... 5 minutes faster than last year! During our visit, we were delighted to dine with Familia Offering.
This week-after-Fitzmas promises... a new Supreme Court nominee (as early as tomorrow). Let's just say that the choice will be telling. Will the President go for another loyalist, or will he feel obliged to cave to the religious right (whose leaders helped shoot down Harriet Miers, even as polls show that the rank and file of American religious conservatives actually liked her)... or will we even be able to tell?
Stick around...
Update: The Supreme Court nomination goes to.... Samuel Alito (pronounced by some as "Scalito"), now of Philadelphia's 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, said to be someone who will make conservatives very happy indeed, and non-conservatives... less happy. The so-called Gang of 14 "no filibuster deal" may come back into play; Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC) suggests that he will not tolerate Alito being deemed "extraordinary circumstances" and might vote for "the nuclear option" if such is in the offing, although, like a certain Justice originally from Queens, New York, Alito is regarded as an ideological activist.
At 15 years on the federal bench and a former assistant solicitor general (I believe 18 arguments to the Supreme Court) and United States Attorney for New Jersey, the qualifying professional experience is unquestionably there; as noted, Alito is said to be "in the manner of Scalia" (certainly in the sense of being Italian, conservative and from the Northeast!). Elections, as I say occasionally, have consequences: the same party controls both the White House and the Senate, which means, within very narrowly defined limits (defined, evidently as "Harriet Miers"), that party can pretty much name who it likes to the Court.
I have no doubt we'll be learning more about Judge Alito in due course; I will say about Ms. Miers that Democrats lost a simultaneous opportunity to both chide the President for cronyism and to chide conservatives (especially so-called "religious conservative leaders") for being so savage in taking out one of their own. Well, no matter. The President has decided that instead of the Court having two women, it will have two (very, very conservative) Italian-American men.