CJOTUS Interruptus Update

Checking back at the Confirm Them post, I see that SpectatorGirl speculated this afternoon that Rehnquist was delaying his retirement "in order to prevent an activist extremist like Gonzales (in favour of partial-birth abortion and of quotas and protections for illegals) being nominated."

While I appreciate S-Girl's contemplation of Rehnquist's strategic considerations, I have to chuckle at the description of Alberto Gonzalez. This is President George W. Bush's Attorney General, but this description makes it sound like he's a Clinton nominee. Didn't conservatives just fight for his appointment as AG earlier this year despite his support of the use of torture by the U.S.? Obviously, S-Girl didn't get the President's request to tone down the rhetoric in the nominations war.

This is what people mean when they refer to the lack of restraint on the far right. As the SCOTUS Nominations blog posts about Gonzalez's record shows, the information about AG²'s real attitudes on abortion, affirmative action and other stuff is pretty slim, but that doesn't prevent a conservative blog reader like SpectatorGirl from calling him everything short of a crack-smoking serial rapist who kills kittens for fun (wait, that's Bill Frist.)¹ Once a person is deemed undesirable for some reason, it remains merely to paper him or her with whatever evils one's imagination can conjure.

If we really want to get devious, I wager Rehnquist will time his retirement announcement to bury reports that Karl Rove leaked Valerie Plame's name to Robert Novak.

¹ Joke.