Nor is an extra-constitutional process appropriate for confirmation, and my gut says putting an "unknown or unknowable" person up for a SCOTUS seat circumvents the role of the Senate in the confrimation process. It reduces the SSenate to a game of chance, not a serious pursuit that involves accountability for future performance by the judge.
All of "we the people" are losing with what is going on right now. All of us.
It's kind of tough for me to agree that role of the Senate has been circumvented. They are going to hold hearings, presumably to be followed by a floor debate and vote. And maybe, just maybe, without a long trail of opinions, memos, position papers, etc. we are going to hear something more constructive than the game of "gothcha" that the process has become for almost any significant Republican nominee. Maybe, just maybe, rather than hearing Miers being asked to explain a memo written 20 years ago (as we did with Roberts) we will hear questions that actually probe her constitutional knowledge, temperament and judicial philosophy.