What a long, strange trip it's been

It has been quite a while since I posted to this weblog. Odd, really, that I'd let it go, but here I am posting again, so let's just pretend the hiatus never happened and move on with our lives, mmkay?

President Bush on Tuesday nominated Judge John Roberts for the vacancy that's been left on the Supreme Court by Sandra Day O'Connor's decision to retire. Roberts is, by all accounts, a non-activist judge and someone who isn't nearly as divisive a human being as, say, John Bolton. Or even Michael Bolton, if some of the Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee are to be believed.

So where does that leave Democrats?

With Karl Rove, of course.

Roberts is not a judge who is so far to the right of American politics that he's worth a fight with the President and his cronies. He may be conservative, and that's fine - the President is entitled to nominate folks who agree with him. Anything else and people would wonder what the President is thinking.

Reports out of Washington are that the timing of the Roberts nomination was due in some part to the continued pressure that Democrats are putting on the President and Vice President for Karl Rove's head on a platter, or atleast his tookus out the door. Rove's role in the Valerie Plame leak isn't yet publicly known, and he may well be the only person right now who knows the truth.

However, rumors are starting to emerge that at the very least, Rove and Scooter Libby could be charged with perjury, because his testimony to the grand jury doesn't sync up with Matthew Cooper's testimony, or even those piddly little things some people call facts. Like that memo with Plame's name in a paragraph marked "Secret."

That's the sort of thing that will allow Democrats to continue their so-far-relentless pressure on the Bush White House over Rove's role in the leak. Roberts's nomination should not distract Democrats from what may very well be the best target that the Administration has put on the range so far. In fact, the most politically wise thing that the Democrats could do is not make a concerted challenge to Roberts at all. He should be interviewed, of course, but just because his answers don't jive with Dick Durbin or Barbara Boxer shouldn't be the end-all be-all. To polish off an old acorn, "A nation divided against itself cannot stand." Same goes for political parties.