According to Drudge (yeah, I know), “Attorney General John Ashcroft ‘plans to submit his resignation to Bush in the next several days’…”
I was pleased at the though until the cynic beside me said that Bush will appoint him to the Supreme Court. How likely is that? What kind of justice would he make?
jezuz… don’t the bad news stop coming ?
No, no, no, he’s going to Broadway!
I saw this last Monday (a week ago)–very funny little play. It is anti-Bush but very subtly and is extremely funny and well-acted.
So there ya go. If Sondheim and Maury Yeston and Cy Coleman start secluding themselves over the next few weeks you’ll know why.
Some pundit said that the President’s victory speech would be, “Let the healing begin. I’m nominating John Ashcroft to be the Chief Justice.”
Are there any sitting Supreme Court judges who weren’t sitting on a lower court when they were picked? While not required, I think its pretty unlikely that Bush will pick someone who isn’t a sitting judge for the court. There was a big tadoo when Clarence Thomas got nominated as he had only served two years as a federal judge, so I think it would be pretty unlikely to have Ashcroft go straight from the justice dept.
Ashcroft is the most openly religious and evangelical Bush admin figure, so a rumor that he’ll be on the supreme court is probably just wishful thinking on the part of evangelicals or a nightmare scenario for the secular community. It won’t happen
I don’t have a cite for this, but I’ve heard that the resignation is traditional. Everyone always does it, and it is up to Bush to decided whether he wants to accept or not.
WOAH!
Never considered that Ashcroft could end up on the SC.
Can things get any better?
PS: Scalia will be the next Chief Justice.
Thurgood Marshall was not a federal judge when appointed to the Supreme Court, IIRC.
There was rumor way before the election that Ashcroft would not be retained as Attorney General for the second term.
That last line was sarcasm, right?
I’m Mr. Middle-of-the-Road as far as politics goes, and Ashcroft really unnerves me.
But he had been the year previous. As far as I can tell, Ashcorft taught at a business law school thirty years ago, and that was the sum total of his law experience outside of gov’t. Certainly Bush may appoint a conservative evangleical to the court, but it will at least be someone with some sort of experience in the position.
As for Scalia as the next Chief Justice, I belive when a Chief Justice retires/dies, it’s traditional to appoint a replacement from outside the existing court.
Don’t count on Bush observing tradition if it doesn’t serve his ideology.
William Rehnquist.
A few thoughts here:
One, Ashcroft was barely confirmed as Attorney General. Now, after the Patriot Act, he is even more unpopular than he was in 2001. It’s simply not realistic that he would be confirmed by the Senate. The Democrats would filibuster him in a second.
Two, Bush knows Ashcroft is very unpopular. He would not risk using his political capital on a man with his defects for a nomination that he knows would be filibustered.
Three, Bush is a smart political strategist. He’ll nominate a Latino to the Court, probably his council Alberto Gonzalez (I think that’s his name). Or he may nominate a woman. He knows Democrats will be much more reluctant to block a minority, especially a Latino. And he knows if they do, the Republicans will benefit.
Four, no way Scalia is appointed chief justice. That position must be confirmed by the Senate, and the Democrats would call him up there to explain his statements line-by-line. Scalia doesn’t want that and Bush doesn’t want that.
Depending upon whom Bush replaces Ashcroft with, this could really be a make or break choice. While there are few choices worse than Ashcroft, appointing a moderate would go along way towards this “healing” he’s talked about. Replacing Rumsfeld would help, too. If Bush replaces those two with more moderate appointees, I could regain a little hope. These two are, for me, the worst of this Administration and the cause of much of the national polarization.
If Rumsfeld stays and Ashcroft is replaced with another hard-liner, I’m afraid this election will mark the point when the United States started to wane. We will see our influence in the world stage diminish. We will see our economy continue to decline. We will have an increasingly divided populace. Our civil liberties will further erode. I truly feel that our great experiment in a secular, liberal democracy is at risk.
Rumor has it that Condi will replace Rumsfeld.
Given that the current Chief Justice started out as an Associate Justice, then was nominated for the position of Chief when Berger retired, the “tradition,” if is exists at all, is not iron-clad.
In most cases, sure, the Chief Justice was appoint from outside the existing Court, but that’s mostly for convenience, not tradition. The Chief Justice has almost no power greater than that of Associates - the only power is that the C.J. can determine who will write an opinion for a case, and only then if the C.J. voted with the majority.
Given that the C.J. has no real additional authority, it is simply easier to appoint an outsider to that position, and only have to go through one nominating process instead of two.
Sua
Abbie, if you weren’t already married, I’d propose this minute! G
Breyer had never served as a judge before being appointed to the Supreme Court. He was, however, counsel to the U. S. Sentencing Commission and to the Senate Judiciary Committee as well as a professor at Harvard Law School.
Rehnquist had never served as a judge before being appointed as an associate justice; his previous experience includes advising the Goldwater campaign in 1964 and then serving as a deputy attorney general in the Nixon administration in the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel. He was obviously an associate Justice at the time he was picked to become Chief Justice.
Mr. Gonzales, who works in the top levels of the executive branch and is the President’s favorite Hispanic legal thinker, has probably been poisoned by his involvement in the effort to fine loopholes in the Geneva Conventions. It is difficult to get a man appointed to the Supreme Court when the ink on the Court’s 8-1 decision rejecting his pet theory of executive power is still damp.
I think that the “Let the healing begin….” Crack was intended as a sarcastic witticism.
In a move to reach out to 48% of the electorate, Bush should offer Rumsfeld’s vacancy to John Kerry 
I mean, that was one of Kerry’s selling points wasn’t it? A smarter war, or something like that?
Seriously tho, if Bush is really determined to bridge the divide he should reach across the aisle and offer a few prominent positions to some moderate democrats. Anythng less is just window dressing.
Of course I don’t expect that, I expect nothing less than 4 more years of the same. Especially seeing how he’s spent the last two days parading around with his pants down showing off his big, throbing mandate.