Nino

Now that Chief Justice William Renqhuist’s departure from the bench seems more a question of how soon instead of if, everyone is frantically trying to guess who the President will select to replace him. Word on the street (read: Time magazine) is that, of those candidates already on the Supreme Court, it’s a toss-up between Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. Thomas is black, so that would be a good political move for the President, but it looks like people are leaning toward Scalia.

He is the most conservative member of the court right now — not at all one that would be able to build consensus among the other justices, which is a big job of the chief justice. I’ve written about Scalia before — he ordered a journalist’s tapes of one of his speeches on free speech destroyed by a US marshall. He failed to recognize the irony, but was still called down by pretty much everyone in the world for his nigh-on-illegal order. Plus, he seems more ideological than the other justices and that scares me — if there are places for blind ideology, even half-blind ideology, the court is not one of them.

Hopefully President Bush will look at one of the other justices or look outside the court for a replacement because I don’t want to have to delete this post when Nino comes after me for saying disparaging things about him.