Has Anyone Else Noticed …

… how both presidents Bush have nominated Supreme Court justices with slightly odd personal lives?

David Souter: lifelong bachelor; lives by himself in a farmhouse on an unmarked road in New Hampshire.

Clarence Thomas: married twice; accused of sexual harrassment by a former employee; left a paper trail at his local video store confirming that he is, indeed, a porn hound.

John Roberts: unmarried until his early 40s; has two adopted children, including a boy whom he dresses to ensure the poor tyke will get the shit beaten out of him his first day at school.

Harriet Miers: unmarried at 60.

For the record, I don’t care if any of them are gay, straight, confused, or just opposed to joint checking accounts. I don’t care about pornography. Adoption is great (although dressing boys in clothes that scream “sissy” should be punishable by four weeks at Parris Island). Sexual harrassment is bad, but the senators heard the evidence and confirmed him anyway (and it’s worth remembering that the Senate back then was controlled by Democrats).

Still, between the four of them, they’ve officially spawned a total of one child. (Clarence Thomas has a son from his first marriage.) Isn’t that just a little weird?

UPDATE:

In Comments, Todd S. wonders if having no family life makes it easier to be a Supreme Court justice, and asks how many children the rest of the SCOTUS justices have. Here’s the tally:

* Antonin Scalia: 9

* Sandra Day O’Connor: 3

* John Paul Stevens: 4 children from his first marriage (one of whom died), 5 stepchildren

* Anthony Kennedy: 3

* Ruth Bader Ginsburg: 2

* Stephen Breyer: 3.

So here’s the tally: Of the six current justices not nominated by a president named Bush, there are 24 children (one of whom died) and 5 stepchildren. Of the four justices or potential justices named by a Bush, there is 1 biological child and 2 adopted children.

So the difference between the Bush appointments and the others is even bigger than I’d expected.

UPDATED UPDATE: “The Obsequious Instruments of His Pleasure”

Steve Clemons has an interesting item on his website, The Washington Note:

I think that it should become standard practice for ALL committees of the United States Senate tasked with considering the credentials of an Executive Branch political nominee to read the following short passage ALOUD at the opening of a confirmation hearing:

Alexander Hamilton, Federalist Papers, “The Appointing Power of the President,” No. 76

To what purpose then require the co-operation of the Senate? I answer, that the necessity of their concurrence would have a powerful, though, in general, a silent operation. It would be an excellent check upon a spirit of favoritism in the President, and would tend greatly to prevent the appointment of unfit characters from State prejudice, from family connection, from personal attachment, or from a view to popularity. … He would be both ashamed and afraid to bring forward, for the most distinguished or lucrative stations, candidates who had no other merit than that of coming from the same State to which he particularly belonged, or of being in some way or other personally allied to him, or of possessing the necessary insignificance and pliancy to render them the obsequious instruments of his pleasure.

Tags: Tags: Politics