{"id":4340,"date":"2005-06-01T11:25:10","date_gmt":"2005-06-01T15:25:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/4340.html"},"modified":"2005-06-01T11:25:10","modified_gmt":"2005-06-01T15:25:10","slug":"in-anticipation-of-an-imminent-supreme-court-vacancy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/in-anticipation-of-an-imminent-supreme-court-vacancy\/","title":{"rendered":"In anticipation of an imminent Supreme Court vacancy"},"content":{"rendered":"

At Bush’s press conference<\/a> yesterday, a reporter asked the president, “Can you talk a little bit about the process you’re using to pick your next Supreme Court justice?” In recent months, these questions have been easily dismissed as “speculative.” There is no vacancy, Bush has said, so it’s inappropriate to start talking about the process of picking a new justice.<\/p>\n

Except that’s not at all what Bush said yesterday.<\/p>\n

“Here’s my process. One, I’m obviously going to spend a lot of time reviewing the records of a variety of people and looking at their opinions and their character, and will consult with members of the United States Senate at the appropriate time. <\/p>\n

“I know there’s been a lot of talk about consultation between the White House and the Senate, and we do consult — obviously, we consult on district judges — and that we listen to their opinions on appellate judges — ‘their’ opinions being the opinions from the home state senators, as well as others. <\/p>\n

“I look forward to talking to members of the Senate about the Supreme Court process to get their opinions, as well, and will do so — and will do so. But, obviously, it’s — I told the American people I would find people of a certain temperament that would serve on the bench, and I intend to do that, but we will consult with the Senate.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There’s nothing particularly insightful about Bush’s response — except for the fact that he made it at all. There’s already ample speculation<\/a> that Chief Justice William Rehnquist will step down at the end of the current session of the Supreme Court. Indeed, in light of Rehnquist’s health problems, the conventional wisdom is that we’ll see our first Supreme Court vacancy in a decade as early as this month.<\/p>\n

There have been rumors about the White House getting a tip about Rehnquist’s pending retirement and Bush could have easily quashed the rumors by dismissing any conjecture or assumptions about a possible vacancy. Instead, Bush did the opposite, talking about how he will approach the process.<\/p>\n

The Bush gang has a short list<\/a> and is acting like a vacancy is imminent. Stay tuned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At Bush’s press conference yesterday, a reporter asked the president, “Can you talk a little bit about the process you’re using to pick your next Supreme Court justice?” In recent months, these questions have been easily dismissed as “speculative.” There is no vacancy, Bush has said, so it’s inappropriate to start talking about the process […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4340","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4340"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4340\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}