All of the Beltway elite who suffer from pundicitis are playing hot and heavy with speculation of who will fill David Souter’s New English shoes as a Supreme Court justice.
Just who the president will pick will be of momentous importance so that the highest court in the land can get down to their lofty business of deciding what to do about Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction.
Some pundits say that perhaps it is high time for the president to seat someone on the court who is not a judge: Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm for example. Although most, if not all, Supreme Court justices have been lawyers the Constitution does not set any rigid set of qualifications for the job. So Obama can go a lot of different ways with his first, and likely not his last, pick on the court.
If Obama really wants to think waaaaaay outside the box he could pick someone who is not a lawyer. Say Donald Trump, for instance. He could just tell people that they were fired. Or keeping with the TV theme, there are any number of TV judges to choose from: Judge Judy, Judge Joe Brown, Judge Marilyn Milian or Judge Mathis. Personally, if he was going for a TV judge, my preference would be Harry Stone of “Night Court,” played by Harry Anderson. He could pull a rabbit out of his hat. Of course, Antonin Scalia might try to kill it and eat it. (The rabbit, not Harry).
Since Obama likes to play basketball so much, he might think of getting a retired pro ball player like Magic Johnson or Larry Bird who could shoot some hoops after court and White Housin’ were done for the day.
Of course, the pundits all speculate that the president will pick someone within in an ethnic and/or cultural niche. Many think he’ll pick a Hispanic woman or a black woman. But what if he picked a cross-gender Asian woman who used to be a man? Or he could pick a gay half-Pakistani, half-Latino man who holds down a night-time job as a high-wire walker?
The sky is the limit for the court of the 21st century. Obama should dare to be different. Entertain us for a change. Heaven knows people like Scalia and Thomas haven’t exactly set the world on fire.