Don't Let Me Stop You: The Next Nominee

Our favorite of the named contenders is Judge Janice Rogers Brown. Melanie Kirkpatrick, in a rundown on likely female nominees on OpinionJournal, says this of Judge Brown:

"If anything, Judge Brown is even more outspoken [than Judge Edith Jones]. She once referred to colleagues on the California Supreme Court as 'philosopher kings' when it overturned a law requiring parental consent for minors who wanted abortions. She's an advocate for property rights, and she's called big government 'the opiate of the masses' and the 'drug of choice' for many segments of society. In 2000, she wrote the opinion affirming Proposition 209, which banned racial and sex preferences in state hiring and contracting.

Her credentials aren't as impressive as Judge Jones's, and she might be too libertarian for Mr. Bush. But if nominated, her personal story would complicate matters for liberal interest groups. The NAACP would have to decide whether to oppose the confirmation of a daughter of a sharecropper from Alabama. She was confirmed to the D.C. Circuit earlier this year as part of the filibuster-ending deal in the Senate."

We love that kind of libertarian talk in a potential SCOTUS Justice. She would make a great complement to Thomas and Scalia on the court. It would also seem that, her circuit court appointment having just been officially cleared in the deal that ended the filibusters, "extraordinary circumstances" could not be asserted against her just a few months later. At least it could not be done, if that term is to have any meaning at all.

Manuel Miranda also discussed a possible Brown nomination last week in an article about how the smear game is played. We would love to see Teddy Kennedy try to claim the moral high ground while attempting to browbeat Judge Brown. It's quite likely she would make him very much regret that, and it's time the Republican majority began to stand up and act like one. They are so afraid to take a stand for principle that they've forgotten that being a "spineless invertebrate" is not the way to win voters.