[gobucks]

I agree they are not qualifications. I just submit that for a long long time, a lot of folks are perfectly fine to use this combination of criteria (plus conservative) as grounds for elimination from consideration for sitting on SCOTUS.

That is why no one has yet answered my original question, have you noticed? The earliest 'maybe' is Black ... but he went off the 'reservation pronto. Who was the last conservative southern protestant to serve as a conservative southern protestant on the court??

I bet you don't know.

[msnimje]

Who was the last conservative southern protestant to serve as a conservative southern protestant on the court??

It doesn't matter becuase it could not be more irrelevant. The Supreme Court is not a place where you put certain percentages of certain groups. Likewise, it would not matter if there were 9 Southern Protestant Whites on the Supreme Court as long as they all had real qualifications and mental acuity to handle being there.

Your argument is a Red Herring trying to get people to ignore the fact that Harriet Miers is not qualified to sit on the Supreme Court.