So, I'm back. Did I miss much?

Argh -- O'Connor. Well, at least the usual idiots who are waiting for Bush the Moderate to reveal himself now know he's under strict orders not to nominate Alberto Gonzales as a replacement.

Who else won't be picked? Well, Emilio Garza:

Garza has long been the conservative Latino justice-in-waiting on the appellate bench, but he, too, will run into trouble over Roe. In 1997, his court's majority struck down a Louisiana law that allowed judges to deny abortion to a minor (and to notify her parents), even if she was mature and the abortion was in her best interest. Garza concurred in the opinion....

Next!

Edith Clement is "on the short-short list," according to this post at confirmthem.com, but I can't find much in her record on abortion, and Bush's Christian-right puppetmasters won't let him pick anyone who isn't rock-solid on this. So I'm betting on Edith Jones:

...A recent attempt by Norma McCorvey to re-open her original lawsuit which successfully challenged Texas's criminal prohibition on abortion -- the suit that became Roe v. Wade -- was rejected this week by a federal appeals court in New Orleans....

What was surprising, though, was Judge Edith Jones powerful five-page separate opinion. While Judge Jones agreed that the court had no power to reopen the original Roe decision, her opinion assures that McCorvey's arguments did not fall entirely on deaf ears. Calling the original decision, an "exercise in raw judicial power," Judge Jones observed that McCorvey's voluminous new evidence "goes to the balance Roe struck between the choice of the mother and the life of her unborn child." Citing both the testimony of post-abortive women and scientific studies, Judge Jones reasoned that the evidence "suggests that women may be affected emotionally and physically for years afterward and may be more prone to engage in high risk, self-destructive conduct as a result of having had abortions." ...

Judge Jones further cited evidence showing dramatic advances in the sociological status of women -- especially unwed women -- that undermine the necessity of abortion. "No longer does the unwed mother face social ostracism, and government programs offer medical care, social services, and even...the option of leaving a newborn directly in the care of the state until it can be adopted."

But perhaps most importantly, Judge Jones cited evidence showing that neonatal and medical science "now graphically portrays, as science was unable to do 31 years ago, how a baby develops sensitivity to external stimuli and to pain much earlier than was then believed." ...

Judge Jones laments that the Supreme Court has effectively taken these facts out of the abortion debate....

I think Bush wants a bar fight. If he doesn't pick Edith Jones, he'll pick someone else who'll raise howls of outrage among Democrats, and feel really, really good when it happens.

(Yeah, I do think he'll replace O'Connor with someone other than a white male.)

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UPDATE: I guess Hindrocket at Power Line has endorsed Priscilla Owen, and she's running away with this Free Republic poll. I can certainly imagine the pleasure it would give Bush to nominate one of the filibustered judges for the High Court.