Let the games begin!

Well, now we have it: the nomination of U.S. Circuit Judge John Roberts Jr. for associate justice of the Supreme Court. That was the easy part. I think this is a shrewd choice on the part of Bush, the kind of pick I'd been expecting: conservative, but not flamingly so; young, but not newly hatched. Bush simply doesn't have the juice at the moment to push through someone further to the right, and Roberts seems unlikely to trigger the "extraordinary circumstances" the Democrats will need to justify a filibuster.

Of course, this is only a first impression. My prediction, however, is significantly more cynical. As the Democrats have made clear, they will grill Roberts on a wide variety of issues unrelated to his actual judicial expertise. This is, of course, their right, but it seems to me that asking "Do you think Roe v Wade should be overturned" is a ridiculous question in the context of the Supreme Court, since the Court will be dealing only with the facts of specific cases before it. I suspect a strong reason behind this line of questions is to develop ammunition for later: should Roberts give some hint that he feels case X should be overturned, and then in a later ruling supports X on some narrow grounds, Democrats will be able to cry bad faith and use it as a weapon in future confirmation processes.

To carry my predictions further, I think the hearings will drag on and on. The Left will pound him on issue-related questions while backroom staffs look for that one bit of dirt (for Bork, all it took was the evidence that he'd once rented a porn video) that will allow them to claim "extraordinary circumstances" and pull out the big guns. In short, it will be ugly.

I hope I'm wrong. But I doubt it.