It occurs to me that this is a very complicated political time.

Jeez.

Have there ever been two simultaneous Supreme Court vacancies before?

Have there ever been two simultaneous Supreme Court vacancies before?

Yes. Justices Hugo Black and John Marshall Harlan died within days of one another.

well, there goes the neighborhood! my guess is that bush will just appoint the devil himself, damn it. or, if the devil is too busy to bother, then he will go with the next most evil person on the planet, dick cheney. or, well. maybe ashcroft. basically, it doesn't matter much, we are fucked. the world's biggest idiot is allowed to make such important decisions. man, i hate democracy. or, well, come to think of it, he wasn't even elected, so maybe democracy can work. regardless, i guess we can just burn our little copies of the bill of rights, we will not be needing those any more.

Dear 'great',

Modest chap aren't you? Bush can't nominate 'the next most evil man on the planet' - it's impossible for him to name himself. So logically he has to settle for thirds - except that Cheney wouldn't be a smart choice with that dicky ticker of his. So we'll just have to settle for a medium-level demon - any Republican will do.

Reading the comments above from "great" and "Don Stadler" makes me realize that Bush could be caught (1) with his finger in Bob Sagett's infamous baby; (2) a katoy on his jock; and (3) Haliburton execs shoveling cash from the sale of Iraqi baby blood to Israeli pastry factories into his pickup, and the Democrats would still manage to lose the next election.

Hey 'yomama',

On #3 above - I thought he already had. Didn't 60 Minutes II have something on it during the election?

Hey 'yomama',

On #3 above - I thought he already had. Didn't 60 Minutes II have something on it during the election?

I guess he learned his management skills during his work keeping the minorities and poor from voting.

Gee, I always expected Dan's website to have intelligent commenters. That's too bad. =(

his greatest legacy for the Court might be his management skills -- he was a vast improvement over both Burger and Warren in that capacity

Let me see, in 1954 Earl Warren managed to persuade eight other justices the value to the nation of presenting a unanimous decision in Brown v Topeka Board of Education that finally ended the lie that separate could be equal.

If Rehnquist ever did anything like that I'd like to know about it.

Well, Rehnquist did convince 4 other justices that Congress could not prohibit people from bringing guns to school. How does that stack up to Brown v. Board?

Well, it wasn't unanimous . . .

But I get the sarcasm there.

If you can write about Rehnquist without mentioning Bush v. Gore, well then, good for you, Mr. (T)Reasonable...

I'm just hoping Scalia is not the new chief. Now there's a scary thought.

One of the Court's three constructionists dies, and lefty moonbats act as if some sort of radical political shift is about to take place.

Yeah, lefty moonbats like David Brooks.

Oh, wait, are you still talking about Rehnquist?