Pajama Pundits

Sisu (as usual) writes what I wish I'd have written on the "hysterical" and "underwhelmed" response to the nomination of Harriet Miers: They had to say something, so they said it, with or without any useful facts to back it up. Agendas — and yawns — ruled.

AmbivaBlog - The Ultimate Expletive - I'm tempted to write "heh" or maybe even "ouch". It would appear that some of the same people who deride Democrats for playing to the base want to be treated the same way.

Althouse - lots of wondering about Miers and about the others wondering about Miers. Just keep scrolling. "Heart" talk makes her suspicious and she wonders if there is a two-track system, where male appointees are truly stellar and female appointees only need to be good enough and not too offensive. In her comments, she takes the Randy Barnett track of decrying the lack of elite credentials that say this is a superior intellect. (As if a piece of paper from an elite law school makes someone competent. That's like saying an MSW makes someone compassionate. Are these "big brains" simply trying to increase the value of what they think they possess? --ed.)

Volokh Conspiracy's Orin Kerr notes that the reactions to the nomination of John Robers and Harriett Miers are following one of a handful of set scripts that have been around for a few decades. More here. Varifrank. Yeah, what he said.

Come on guys, its Harriet Miers were talking about being nominated, not Hillary Clinton. Have you read “The Corner” today? It reads like Andrew Sullivan went over there and spiked the water cooler with estrogen tablets.

(Maybe I should send a primer on estrogen over there, but that's still funny as hell.)

Joe Gandelman, The Moderate Voice, analyzes and rounds up links to other analyses. Brew a fresh pot before clicking here.

Technorati tags: Miers "Harriet Miers"

UPDATE: sigh... corrected the spelling of "Miers" in title.

UPDATE II: What we need is a feral judge! ROFL!!

UPDATE III: Check out the Coalition of the Chillin'

Things To Do Upon Retirement has been getting lots of hits from Google searches on that topic. It could have been her. Then again... maybe not. We'll know for sure if she announces she's buying a chicken ranch next week.

The Volokh Conspiracy has several interesting posts, particularly Confirmation Fight, in which Todd Zywicki suggests there's going to be fight no matter who is nominated, because. Just because.

Good links to the headlines on O'Connor at How Appealing and of course, SCOTUSblog is blogging this.

Glenn Reynolds notes:

O'Connor's, um, variable voting pattern means that if whoever replaces her is more consistent it will make a disproportionate difference. That also means that this fight is likely to be nastier than the fight over, say, a replacement for Rehnquist.

Compare Orin Kerr's take:

O'Connor's retirement may shift the Court a lot less than people think. In the big ideological cases of the last Term, Justice Kennedy was the swing vote as often as (or maybe even more often than) Justice O'Connor. Let's assume for now that O'Connor is replaced by a consistently more conservative Justice; even if that's true, the left-of-center Justices presumably still have 4 very reliable votes and a good shot at picking up a 5th vote with Kennedy. Plus, new Justices are hard to predict, and it's often hard to tell whether a new Justice will vote consistently one way or another.

Ann Althouse goes further to predict:

If Bush picks a very strong conservative to replace O'Connor, I predict... ... that Justice Kennedy will become a reliable liberal vote. This prediction is based on my belief that there is small group dynamic at work on the Court that tends to produce moderation.

My highly informed, highly educated, and thoroughly sophisticated legal opinion aligns with Kerr and Althouse. Don't let that discourage you, gentle reader, should you find yourself also agreeing with them. (For the humor impaired among you, I'm not a lawyer and have never stayed at a Holiday Inn Express.)

CNN has a nifty gallery of possible nominees. My suggestion for O'Connor's replacement is, of course, my daughter. However, she informed me this afternoon that she didn't make the "short list" because she hasn't yet graduated from law school.

Oh well...