Chick List

OpinionJournal prints A look at the women who may replace Justice O'Connor

There are 10 or so women whose names come up as possibilities for the Court, including Edith Clement of the Fifth Circuit, whose reported nomination faked everyone out on the day Judge Roberts was named, and appeals-court judges Karen Williams, Diane Sykes and Consuelo Callahan. But the feminine Big Four are Edith Jones, Priscilla Owen, Janice Rogers Brown and Alice Batchelder, all appeals-court judges. Each is a judicial conservative of intellectual heft and with more experience on the bench than Judge Roberts. None, however, is as bulletproof as Judge Roberts, who managed to pursue a 25-year career in law without leaving much of a public record of his views on hot-button issues.

Normally I am opposed to quotas, and therefore would not say it should be a woman just because O'Conner was a woman, but in this case I would love to see the President appoint a woman, or a hispanic, or a black, because the Dems will really shoot themselves in the foot if they oppose any woman, hispanic, or black, because they think they are "entitled" to support from all three of those groups, and Democratic opposition will mean Republican gains. A black woman (like Judge Brown) or a hispanic woman would be even better.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid has already indicated Democrats would filibuster a Brown or Owen nomination.

That would be wonderful. The Republicans should make Dems speak continuously (as a filibuster means), rather than just saying we can't vote on it, and they should save every foot of the coverate from CSPAN2 for use in the 2006 and 2008 elections. If the Dems are stupid enough to filibuster, they will not just shoot themselves in the foot, they will blow off both feet and legs, and will find themselves in a wheelchair in 2006 and 2008.

Other nominees might meet the same fate, depending on how the moderates who signed the filibuster deal define "extraordinary circumstances." That could prompt Republicans to trigger the nuclear option and send the nomination to the floor for a vote.