July 2, 2005
NOT LIKELY:
Bush revisits options (Joseph Curl, July 2, 2005, THE WASHINGTON TIMES)
The White House was caught off guard yesterday when Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor announced her retirement, forcing top administration officials, who had been readying for the departure of the court's conservative chief justice, to reconsider its options. [...]
Now the small group of top candidates, which includes Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, 49, and three appeals court judges, Samuel Alito, 55, J. Michael Luttig, 51, and John Roberts, 50, is expected to expand to contain more women.
Court authorities consider Edith Hollan Jones, 56, and Edith Brown Clement, 57, both judges on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, as possible contenders, and also think White House Counsel Harriet Miers, a longtime Bush confidante, is in the mix. [...]
The White House got the first indication of Justice O'Connor's retirement about noon on Thursday. Pamela Talkin, the Supreme Court's head marshal, called Mrs. Miers to tell her that she had a sealed envelope to deliver the next morning.
The marshal did not say who the envelope was from or what it contained. After the notification, Mrs. Miers told Mr. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, who were having lunch together, that a letter was coming from the Supreme Court the next day.
About 9 a.m. yesterday, Mrs. Talkin told the White House that the letter was from Justice O'Connor, and Mrs. Miers alerted the president.
A few minutes later, the president spoke with Justice O'Connor in what the White House described as a brief but emotional phone call.
"For an old ranching girl, you turned out pretty good," he told the El Paso, Texas, native, who grew up on an Arizona ranch. She laughed, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said.
The idea that Bill Kristol knew it was O'Connor but no one at the White House did seems absurd. Posted by Orrin Judd at July 2, 2005 7:37 AM
Agreed. O'Conner had made noises about retiring since the 2000 election. Kristol and others were openly speculating that O'Connor would go soon weeks ago. If Bush was surprised then his White House isn't as organized as people think. But given how high profile the judge issue has been I would bet Bush has replacement judges in mind for each of the 9 justices when they retire/leave the court.
Posted by: AWW at July 2, 2005 12:21 PMThey (meaning everyone who had been working on vetting) were absolutley gobsmacked I am told. Whether this extended to level of Bush, Rove, etc. I have no idea. I agree that this is weird, especially after hearing SOC's remarks "Now I'm not able to retire" after the 2000 election, but everything I heard leads me to beleive that they were expecting Rehnquist first, maybe O'Connor later, but not an O'Connor alone scenario, which now appears to be the case.
Posted by: Dan at July 2, 2005 12:29 PMI don't know. When the Kristol article was published I forwarded it to a friend who had been one of her clerks a long time ago, he replied with a non denial. I expect that the clerks knew, and that despite their protestations, her family knew. If the clerks knew, then most of Washington knew. P.S. my friend does not live or practice in D.C.
Posted by: Robert Schwartz at July 2, 2005 4:06 PM