The comventional wisdom has been that Chief Justice Rehnquist would announce his retirement from the court in the next week or ten days.
’The Weekly Standard’s’ Bill Kristol offers what he calls informed speculation that Sandra Day O’Connor will announce her retirement in the next week and that Alberto Gonzales will be nominated to replace her. Kristol speculates that Gonzales will be slightly more conservative than O’Connor and that Rehnquist will announce his retirement when O’Connor’s replacement is confirmed. He expects Gonzalez to be named Chief Justice at that point and a hard core conservative to replace Rehnquist as an Associate Justice.
Here’s a MainStreamMedia report on the top candidates for a Supreme Court replacement.
This would be awful. Keeping the status quo in place (by replacing O’Connor with anything less than a proven conservative) would perpetuate the current liberal majority on some important issues. We would see more liberal rulings and, therefore, more liberal precedents.
This is not what my volunteers worked for in 2004.
There are simply too many warning signals about Gonzales. If the president places his personal liking for the guy, or racial politics, ahead of his solemn duty to the country, he will have failed an enormously important test.
I agree...that will be the breaking point for me. GW Bush will have proved that he is more concerned about personal loyalties than he is about the conservative movement (i.e., a government of men rather than law). He has disappointed me quite a lot, to be frank, but making Gonzales the Chief Justice will be the last straw for me.
Conservatives, call the White House NOW with this message: NO GONZALES APPOINTMENT.
What’s wrong with Gonzalez ???
Right off the bat, he was a partner to the awful Bush/O’Connor Michigan decision that allowed the travesty of affirmative action in college admissions to stand (i.e., Powell-lite). Anyone (including Bush) who would condone accepting some and rejecting others soling on skin color should NEVER be the CJ.
"soling on skin color"??? What do you mean??
The thing that disappoints me the most is that Kristol scenario would virtually seal the power of the senate filibuster as a no-pain means of bringing the majority will to it’s knees. Elections should have meaning, that is the very heart of the democratic process, and the winners of elections must have some realistic means by which to carry out the wishes of those who bothered to vote for them.
Given that the filibustering of judicial nominees, for no other reason than for how they think, wins the day, liberals have effectively ripped the scarf completely off that gal’s eyes. She now stands gazing at her balanced scales, unable to resist tipping them at a whim.
Will the republic survive this vicious assault? Sure, but not without pain... something liberals, for the sake of the present, seemingly have no qualms about, and Bush apparently sees a problem for future generations problem to fix.
p.s. On the other hand, Krsitol’s inflammatory prediction may just be a "trial balloon."
Sandy O is retiring, and I was just beginning to like her.
When will Stevens retire?
That would mean that Gonzalez would have to be confirmed twice, once for Associate Justice and then again for Chief Justice. So we would have three confirmations for two people. Sounds like an awful lot of time and effort when Democrats are bound and determined to slow things down.
I meant "solely" in the post above.
Yes, Pchuck, that’s right, Bush has to go way out of his way to have Gonzales confirmed as Chief Justice. That’s why I will be doubly disappointed...the only way it is explicable is that Bush wants THIS man as CJ...and I don’t trust the guy, not like I trust Scalia (or Thomas).