The Village In A Nutshell

Bob Schieffer does us all a great service in his commentary on Face The Nation yesterday by defining the Village's version of a meritocracy - where people elevate in the DC community, not on the strength of their talent or brilliance, but whether or not they go to the right cocktail parties:

I had no problem with the Justice's legal work. But as one who has lived 40 years in Washington, I'll be honest: I didn't care for his attitude.

He made it no secret that he hated the city, once describing his work as the best job in the world in the worst city in the world.

Another time he called life here "akin to an intellectual lobotomy."

Really? Our nation's capital? One of the most beautiful cities in the world?

Call me corny, but I have to confess, I've run into some pretty smart people here over the years, but then again I tried to get to know the city and its inhabitants. Who wouldn't if you were going to live in a place? Justice Souter, obviously.

I've never known anyone who ever saw him outside the court. But now he's leaving. I take it he won't miss Washington - but my guess is Washington will hardly miss him.

Apparently we're supposed to care that David Souter preferred hiking in New Hampshire to schmoozing with Bob Schieffer. It's certainly colored the coverage of him. I remember multi-page spreads when Sandra Day O'Connor and William Rehnquist left the Court. Here, Souter gets the "if you didn't like us then we didn't like you" send-off.

In a certain sense, I relate this to the rapidly accepted conventional wisdom around Sonia Sotomayor as a dumb tokenist candidate for the Court, and the pervasive sexism that implies. To me, Jeffrey Rosen's conflation of diversity with mediocrity just jibes with the Village's conflation of chumminess with aptitude. Or even the conflation of pragmatism with wisdom. What matters to them are the relationships people make with them. Once you become a member in good standing you can do no wrong. And until you become one you can do no right.

Obama Makes It Official

So the President just walked into the press briefing room and announced that David Souter will retire at the end of the term, and Todd Beeton grabbed a piece of his comment:

The process of picking someone to replace Justice Souter is among my most serious responsibilities as President. I will seek somebody with a sharp and independent mind and a record of excellence and integrity. I will seek someone that understands that justice isn't about some abstract legal theory or a footnote in a casebook, it is also how our laws affect the daily realities of people's lives, whether they can make a living and care for their families, whether they feel safe in their homes and welcomed in their own nation. I view that quality of empathy of understanding and identifying with people's hopes and struggles as an essential ingredient for arriving at just decisions and outcomes. I will seek somebody who is dedicated to the rule of law, who honors our constitutional traditions, who respects the integrity of the judicial process and the appropriate limits of the judicial role. I will seek somebody who shares my respect for constitutional values on which this nation was founded and who brings a thoughtful understanding of how to apply them in our time. As I make this decision, I intend to consult with members of both parties across the political spectrum and it is my hope that we can swear in our new Supreme Court justice in time for him or her to be seated by the first Monday in October when the court's new term begins.

This gives the President about a month to come to a decision. And it gives conservatives a good bit of time to demagogue and demonize and name-tag whoever gets picked as an ultra-liberal ideologue.

Conservative groups worked into the night Thursday after news broke of Justice David Souter’s retirement to arrange a conference call early Friday morning to talk strategy with representatives of more than 60 groups.

Leaders on the call, such as Wendy Long of the Judicial Confirmation Network, told colleagues that one of their first challenges is convincing activists there is a fight to be had.

"One thing to keep in mind is that the left and media will say this doesn't really matter — Obama will just replace a liberal with a liberal,” Long said. “It's a conservative court. We need to push back against that immediately.”

Curt Levy, also of the Judicial Confirmation Network, argued to the nearly 200 activists on the conference call that this can "be a winning issue" for conservatives if they focus on what he called the "right issues" such as same sex marriage, death penalty and the Second Amendment — issues that can split Democrats.

This seems like a one-sided debate, where conservatives whip themselves into a frenzy, and in the end, Obama picks a broadly acceptable moderate liberal who sails through. With 40 votes, it would be odd to see otherwise, provided the Judiciary Committee can move the nominee, considering that silly rule.

Post-Souter Battle, Day One

First of all, let's put into some perspective the fact that David Souter's replacement will have long-term importance but not much near-term impact on shifting the ideological balance of the Supreme Court. Next session, no matter who is in Souter's chair, they'll still try to phase out the Voting Rights Act and use bizarre logic to meet their ideological goals (does Scalia know that HE was voted in unanimously? Is there "something wrong there"? You decide). So this isn't a completely consequential near-term pick.

Of course, that doesn't mean that Vice President Biden can throw a dart at a board in making his selection. And of course, it means that no matter who Obama picks, the hard right will demonize him or her as a commune-living hippie phreek who wants to personally deliver abortions from the bench. For the record, here's a fairly representative list of possibles.

The replacements: So who are the possibilities to replace Souter? Here’s our list, per NBC’s Williams, that we unveiled back in February, after we learned about Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s pancreatic cancer: Johnnie Rawlinson (9th Circuit Court of Appeals, African American woman), Leah Ward Sears, (chief justice of the Georgia Supreme Court, African American woman), Sonia Sotomayor (2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, Hispanic woman), Kim McLane Wardlaw, 9th Circuit, Hispanic woman), Diane Wood, (7th Circuit, woman, knows Obama from her time teaching at the University of Chicago), Jennifer Granholm (Michigan governor, woman), Merrick Garland, U.S. Court of Appeals, DC Circuit, Deval Patrick (Massachusetts governor, African American, Obama friend), Cass Sunstein (University of Chicago law professor, Obama friend).

I agree with Mark Halerpin, how dare there be so few white men on that list. The MAN's been keeping us Caucasian males down for too long. A world with a 7-2 male/female split on the Supreme Court ain't a world I want to live in.

Obama has generally offered good statements on his ideal Supreme Court justices, particularly in saying he wanted to find someone who could empathize with those "less powerful." There are supposed to be four "conservatives" and four "liberals" on the Court, but in reality you have four on the hard right and four on the center-left, and when it comes to corporate law the playing field is pretty much entirely tilted toward the business-friendly. So Obama would do well to change that dynamic and really start to shift the ideological balance somewhat.

However, there will be one major obstacle to getting a nominee through Congress. Despite the potential for 60 votes, despite the party switch of Arlen Specter - in fact, BECAUSE of the switch of Arlen Specter - getting nominees out of the Senate Judiciary Committee under current rules will be a practical impossibility, it appears.

Check out the Senate Judiciary Committee Rules:

IV. BRINGING A MATTER TO A VOTE

The Chairman shall entertain a non-debatable motion to bring a matter before the Committee to a vote. If there is objection to bring the matter to a vote without further debate, a roll call vote of the Committee shall be taken, and debate shall be terminated if the motion to bring the matter to a vote without further debate passes with ten votes in the affirmative, one of which must be cast by the minority.

Your current lineup of Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee:

Arlen Specter
Orrin Hatch
Chuck Grassley
Jon Kyl
Jeff Sessions
Lindsey Graham
John Cornyn
Tom Coburn

Which of these fellas do you think will be ready to provide the necessary one vote from the minority to bring things to a vote in the committee on tough questions now?

Don't think they wouldn't relish bottling up an Obama nominee in committee, and using all the lies sure to be served up by the Mighty Wurlitzer and the conservative noise machine to justify it. This rule can change if there's a new organizing resolution, but in order to make that bullet-proof, all 60 Democrats would need to be seated, and willing to vote in favor. Giving even more reason for the minority to block Al Franken. Giving Specter even more power should he decide to wank and vote against a new resolution.

In the Senate, there's ALWAYS a way to obstruct.

Souter To Retire?

NPR's Nina Totenberg usually has impeccable sources on Supreme Court issues.

Supreme Court Justice David Souter is set to retire from the Supreme Court when the current term ends, NPR is reporting.

Earlier in the day, the Associated Press had the legal word buzzing with a story that hinted at Souter's retirement due to the fact that he has yet to hire any law clerks compared to the other eight justices who have each hired their four clerks.

Great, because the hard right wasn't freaking out enough, they can now shriek about Obamanazi packing the Supreme Court with socialist fascist communists.

Here on Planet Earth, I'd expect the pick to be a woman, somewhat moderate, and demonized beyond all limits of creation.

...the full NPR report. Souter is expected to stay on the bench until a successor is named.