NP: the whole MP3 collection on shuffle

All the pre-nomination wrangling over the Supreme Court is making my head hurt. Isn't the judicial branch supposed to protect against the advancement of a narrow agenda? Or has that become a quaint, naive notion in the insane partisan politics of the day? You know, like the Geneva Convention?

Which of course, brings us to the unlikely scenario where the left actually would prefer Alberto Gonzales over the alternatives. I'm sort of surprised that, as of this writing, Slate hasn't seemed to notice that pinch-hitter Lea Rappaport Geller called him Carlos.

The Washington Post has an interesting angle in all this, which is that Anthony Kennedy seems to be sliding left. I'm not sure if that's a silver lining in the event that the far right gets their way, but it's something.

The Slate piece cites an article in the L.A. Times that predicts that this whole process will absolutely suck for those of us in the middle, and on the one hand, that seems intuitively obvious. But on the other, maybe we'll end being the cooler heads that prevail and come out on top.

Nah, who am I kidding. It speaks volumes, though, that the conventional wisdom in this upcoming political fight is that wrecking the government is preferable to compromise.