Headline of a story on Judge Priscilla Owen, as it appears on the front page of today's print New York Times:

For New Judge, Self-Reliance in Life and in Law

Headline of a story on Judge Priscilla Owen in the May 16 New York Times:

Rove Guided Career of Judicial Nominee in Filibuster Fight

Excuse me: How can both of these things be true?

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Of course, as today's story makes clear, the woman praised for her "self-reliance" is just now receiving

the latest reward of a partnership that began a dozen years ago when a prominent Texas conservative introduced her to Karl Rove, who was at the time a political consultant and emerging kingmaker.

As the story points out, "self-reliance" is not a lifelong habit for Owen so much as a spin point (which David Kirkpatrick, in the Times, is kind enough to transmit):

"Karl came over and visited with her at length, and he was very impressed," said Ralph Wayne, president of the Texas Civil Justice League, who was recruiting conservatives to run for the Texas Supreme Court in an effort to move it to the right.

"If you just wrote down her résumé and had it before you, it is kind of in the matrix that you look for," Mr. Wayne said.

It was a résumé brimming with self-reliance.

Yeah, she worked on her maternal grandparents' farm and paternal grandfather's ranch when she was a kid, then earned a B.A. and a law degree, then worked hard as a corporate lawyer, both before and after her divorce. Admirable, sure -- but as a youth Jacques Chirac worked as a Howard Johnson's soda jerk and a forklift operator at Anheuser-Busch in St. Louis. I don't see anyone refraining from calling him a "weasel" because as a young man he sometimes had to break a sweat.

The earlier Times story notes the limits to Owen's "self-reliance":

Mr. Rove, who had helped select her as the Republican candidate, helped raise more than $926,000 for her campaign, almost half from lawyers and others who had business before the court, according to Texans for Public Justice, a liberal group in Austin that tracks Texas campaign donations. Mr. Rove's firm was paid some $247,000 in fees.

When Mr. Bush was first elected to the White House, Mr. Rove again chose Ms. Owen, by then a justice on the Texas Supreme Court for nearly a decade, to be among the president's first appeals court candidates, administration and Congressional officials said....

Mr. Rove's third intervention came last year when the state's chief justice retired and Gov. Rick Perry privately offered to nominate Justice Owen to the post, senior Texas Republicans said in interviews. Justice Owen, whose nomination to the federal appeals court had been blocked by a Democratic filibuster, called Mr. Rove for advice before declining; some Republican political figures said he told her to turn down the post and remain ready and available for the current battle, while another Republican said Mr. Rove told her that it was her choice, but that she still had a chance at the federal court seat.

Not exactly marching to the beat of her own drummer, is she?

Oh, and here's a curious detail in today's story: Owen and Rove hooked up a dozen years ago -- and we learn that

In more recent years, Ms. Owen also became much more religious, her sister said. Republicans have lauded her role as a founding member of St. Barnabas Church, a theologically conservative congregation in Austin where she still teaches Sunday school. "On any given Sunday, you can find Justice Owen hopping on one leg, reading stories," Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas said last week.

This may be a cynical question, but you don't suppose a politically ambitious Texan might decide to become much more publicly religious partly for show, do you?

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One last thing. Here's the lead of today's story:

When the Senate asked Justice Priscilla R. Owen for the most significant opinions she had written on the Texas Supreme Court, she provided a list with a distinctive theme: tough.

She chose opinions overturning rulings in favor of a child born with birth defects, a worker injured on an oil rig, a nurse fired for blowing the whistle on a drug-dealing co-worker, a family with an interest in an oil field that had been drained by a nearby company, asbestos and breast-implant plaintiffs ....

Wow -- a truly compassionate conservative. Wouldn't it have been nice if we'd heard about some of these cases in the press before Owen was confirmed?