[link|http://www.suntimes.com/output/novak/cst-edt-novak12.html|Sun Times]

With Senate confirmation of Judge John G. Roberts Jr. as chief justice virtually assured, the struggle for the Supreme Court returns to replacing retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. The belief in legal and political circles is that President Bush will name a conservative woman, and the front-runner is federal Appellate Judge Priscilla Owen (5th Circuit, Austin, Texas).

According to White House sources, Bush met secretly with Owen last week. While not decisive evidence, this was no mere get-acquainted session beginning a long exploration. He knows and admires his fellow Texas Republican. The countervailing political pressure on Bush is to name a Hispanic American, and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is a Texas Republican the president knows and likes even better than he does Owen. But signals last week he might name Gonzales probably should not be taken seriously.

I get the impression that Bush would like to nominate Gonzales, but that has been nixed by his political advisors because of Gonzales's weakness with social conservatives. Owens would be a very controversial nomination, but is close to Bush and is thus the front runner right now. The politics involved with putting Owens on the Federal bench would complicate the issue for both sides.

In some ways the problem is now bigger for Bush. The Democrats are going to be more willing to fight Bush on his second nomination, while at the same time social conservatives are pushing even harder for somebody they consider strong. And the public at large seems to be embracing a posistion that says that Bush got somebody more right then average with Roberts so he ought to nominate somebody more left next.

Jay

Sadly, I'm inclined to say that between Gonzales, Brown and Owen, Gonzales may be the least destructive for the country.

Gonzales is an amoral legalist, the sort of corporate lawyer who will read through the law to find some legal justification for an already determined posistion. Somebody who doesn't care about moral issues and sees law only as a game to be manipulated.

But Brown and Owen are actually scarier, Owen seems to be a real social conservative believer, willing to twist the plain text of the law to get whatever decision she wants out of it. In fact her reading of the law was so weird that even Gonzales challenged it at one point. And Brown seems to me to be downright erratic, though usually to the right of Clarence Thomas.

Part of my rational is that Gonzales is the only one of the bunch that might surprise us in a good way. Owens and Brown are real believers, and placed in a posistion without external review and no way of being removed are most likely to become more reactionary. Gonzales however might go the other way. I doubt that we have ever seen what his personal opinions are because they are determined by whoever pays him. On the Supreme Court he would be in a posistion to make his own choices.

Not exactly good odds, but given a choice between 99.99% assured disaster, 99.95% assured disaster and 99% assured disaster, I'll take the 99%.

Jay