From the few times I saw snippets of Roswell, they sure made Roswell look much, much more interesting than it actually is. Not to slur your hometown or anything, Raq, just....

Truth is a defense against libel. IOW, you are slurring Roswell by saying that; I thought the same thing.

Is much known about Alito?

IIRC he said the state had a legitimate interest in spousal notification

Based on what I read today, this is true. I did think his comments were a little disingenuous. He said that a woman should have to notify her husband, and then said that this isn't a gender equality issue, it's a spouse issue.

Um, last time I checked, hardly any men were in need of abortions.

OTOH, he's clearly more qualified than Miers. Whoever Bush names will be conservative; I'd rather have someone with Alito's career and intellectual background than Miers'.

Amen. I'd much rather have a principled and competent person I disagree with on the Supreme Court than a lickspittle whose primary qualification is a notebook full of hearts with her and George W. Bush's names written together inside.

Interesting night last night - the local gay video store (regular movies, not adult) had a parking lot party where they projected The Rocky Horror Picture Show against an outside wall. I sat my lawnchair down next to the pickup truck full of fun sober lesbians. (As opposed to the loud drunken Large Marge-esque lesbian who fixated on the guy I dated last year and accosted him for 30 minutes. Ah, schadenfreund...)

Am I the only one who thinks the whole thing with Miers was a Cunning Plan and that Alito was meant to be the real nominee all along? Now everyone will be so glad he's better-qualified than Miers that the Right won't bitch as much if he's left of Scalia, and the Left won't fight as hard because they/we will think, "At least he's qualified."

In very irritating news, the construction on the street outside of my building is causing loud noises, as well as causing the building and desk to vibrate. V. annoying.

Am I the only one who thinks the whole thing with Miers was a Cunning Plan and that Alito was meant to be the real nominee all along?

They could also say, we tried a woman and it just didn't work out. But I think the Miers nomination was just Bush being really uncunning.

Yeah, I know, I shouldn't look for conspiracies for anything that can be explained by mere stupidity. I'm just floored by the sheer scope of stupidity in the Miers nomination.

Remember, this involves a man who thinks his own public image is untarnished by the Katrina response and the Plame investigation. Hunter S. Thompson had a better grasp of reality.

I think he would be more qualified if he were an Hispanic lesbian in a wheelchair with that resume.

I don't like the implication that "Well, I tried to nominate a woman, and the only woman I could find turned out to be an airhead. What can you do?? Oh well, back to the white men!"

Actually, that's a great question for the senators to ask: Mr. candidate, why are you not an Hispanic lesbian in a wheelchair? Do you think it's freakish that in this day and age, the Supreme Court should be 7 white men, one female token and one black token?

Well, I never imagine Dubya cooking up his own conspiracies--that's his handlers' job. Of course, one of the theories I've heard for why the presidency is finally falling part is that the handlers are too distracted by Plamegate and various other troubles to cover up his incompetence any longer.

I just wish it'd happened a year earlier so we wouldn't be saddled with him through '08.

Am I the only one who thinks the whole thing with Miers was a Cunning Plan and that Alito was meant to be the real nominee all along? Now everyone will be so glad he's better-qualified than Miers that the Right won't bitch as much if he's left of Scalia, and the Left won't fight as hard because they/we will think, "At least he's qualified."

Except that you could have nominated Alito the first time and not had this problem.

What it says to me is that the Bush White House has a severe leadership vacuum, one that can only be fixed if Dubya can find himself his Howard Baker. Howard Baker, if you don't know, came into the Reagan White House during the second term after Don Regan got too big for his britches and the White House got mired in Iran-Contra. Baker cleaned house and busted heads and stopped the slide into chaos the White House was on (though it never got back to its 84-85 level popularity).

Dubya's problem, though, is that he's not going to bring in an outsider to fix the problems in the White House, which is exactly what will bail his ass out right now. So, we're doomed to a power vacuum for the next three years, and while that's nice for the Dems and moves them that much closer to getting half of Congress back, it's not all that good for this country.