The first rule is that there can be no more David Souters or John Paul Stevens appointed to the Supreme Court by Republican presidents. Dumbo Jerry Ford was told NOT to appoint Stevens back in 1976 by conservative senators but he did it anyway, with defiance. As a consequence we have had a reliable ACLU supporter on the highest court for nearly 30 years.
I hope to God that GWB appoints some real conservatives to the SCOTUS. No more grey areas that turn out to be leftists. With the majorities in the House and Senate, and no re-election dancing necessary, there's no reason to shilly shally.
With any luck, two may have to be replaced - you think three maybe?
Not wishing ill to any of the judges (with one or two exceptions...) - just that two or three are pretty old and may want to step down. How old is Bader Meinhoff Ginsberg, anyway?)
Souter was a social cipher who had no friends and no bedmate (of whatever gender), so Pamela fixed him up, and guests at her parties told Souter how smart he was, and the rest is history.
It perhaps helped that Laurence Tribe of Harvard has been using his former students who get clerk appointments to the Supreme Court to back-channel "helpful" precedents to Justices Souter and Kennedy, according to a column by Bob Novak. Novak also said Kennedy was lobbied by Tribe directly during a Viennese judicial congress, during the reconsideration of Roe vs. Wade (in which case, btw, one of the counsellors for Roe and intervenors was an attorney named Ruth Bader Ginzburg). It was illegal for Tribe and Kennedy to confer on U.S. soil, so Tribe just intercepted Kennedy outside U.S. jurisdiction. Larry, such chutzpah! -- but we know how important it is not to have an overreaching, juridical-imperial liberal precedent overturned! Heck, the overturning itself would be a precedent!
That's what I love about liberals. When the going gets tough, the stuff gets flowing.