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Stop! In the Name of ...
Rich Galen Wednesday July 6, 2005
Stop! In the name of love.
All right. It hasn't been a week since Justice Sandra Day O'Connor announced her resignation and I am already officially tired of the whole thing. That early 60's song by the Supremes has been running through my head all day.
Not counting lawyers, how many of the remaining Supreme Court Justices can you name? Do you even know how many there are?
The notion of people sending their hard-earned dollars - tens of millions of dollars, we are told - into political organizations run by people most of us have never heard of to produce and air advertisements most of us will never watch which are designed to convince Senators to vote for or against a nominee to the Supreme Court, seems to have led us to exactly what we were told the Campaign Finance Reform Act was going stop.
Memo to US Senator John McCain and US Representative (and Mullfave) Christopher Shays: How's this working out so far?
It seems to me that this whole thing is going to be like college basketball: There are about 181 colleges which play men's basketball at the Division I level. By the middle of March, when the NCAA tournament is over, only one of them goes home happy.
Every splinter group is going to come up with its "short list" of acceptable (or unacceptable) candidates for the Court. Only one person is going to be nominated for the Sandra Day O'Connor slot.
And guess who's going to do the nominating? Not a bunch of media producers in Minneapolis or San Francisco. It will be the man who won re-election just seven months and four days ago, by about three-and-a-half million popular votes: George W. Bush. Period. The end. Full, as they say in London, stop.
I had a wonderful theory I was espousing all weekend on television:
Chief Justice William Rehnquist will retire in the next couple of weeks.
That will leave a vacancy for Chief Justice and one Associate Justice (O'Connor).
The President will nominate Antonin Scalia to be Chief Justice (Scalia would have to be re-confirmed as Chief Justice is a separate position).
That would leave two vacancies for Associate Justice: O'Connor's seat and Scalia's.
If the Senate wanted to have a full court by the first Monday in October, they would have to deal with not one, but three Supreme Court confirmation hearings and votes.
All those special interest groups would have to figure out which of the three nominees to support, which to oppose, and how to keep people interested enough to continue sending money.
I loved this theory. I repeated in the make-up room, in the news room, and in the green room.
Up until about ten minutes ago, when I looked up Scalia's bio: He was born in 1936. He's already 69 years old.
Drat.
While official Washington was racing from studio to studio to get its collective mug on TV, I went to RFK Stadium for the July 4th game between the Nationals and the Mets.
The economics of baseball are confusing enough without this: A soda at the concession stand costs $3.50. A bottle of water costs $4.00.
In honor of Independence Day, the Air Force Singing Sergeants sang the National Anthem. It was excellent, of course, but that wasn't the best thing. The best thing was, they got a standing ovation when they finished the singing, the cheering continued as they left the home plate area, they were applauded as they passed through the gate into the stands, and the applause went on as they walked up the stairs and out the ramp at section 319.
I was very proud of my fellow fans.
On the Secret Decoder Ring page today: A PDF file listing the names and bios of the current members of the US Supreme Court. An amazing Mullfoto from last week's trip to North Carolina and a Catchy Caption of the Day which is quite clever.
--END --
Copyright © 2005 Richard A. Galen
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