So says MSNBC.

The bottom line in all the SCOTUS rumors is that, quite clearly, we really don’t know who it is. That in itself is an accomplishment for the White House.

In less than two hours, we will know.

UPDATE, 6:34 PM: We may know sooner than that. Drudge has a siren up: “Name to be made public in minutes…”

Time to fire up the BrendanLoy.com Drudgewatch… :)

(I presume he doesn’t mean “in ninety minutes.”)

UPDATE, 6:43 PM: “A real surprise,” says Erick Erickson at RedState. But who? Harriet Miers? William Kelley? :)

“White House staff have just been told the name. We should be hearing it soon now.” That was 20 minutes ago.

As of 6:00 PM EST, Emily is officially a Category Three hurricane with 125 mph winds, and according to the discussion, she “could reach Category Four intensity before landfall.”

It is seen as highly unlikely that President Bush will appoint her to the Supreme Court, however.

Apparently I have a source in Ted Kennedy’s office (who knew?), and that source said earlier today that Democrats there were pleased with the prospect of an Edith Brown Clement nomination.

Perhaps the prospect of Ted Kennedy being happy is what caused Bush to change his mind:

Judge Edith Clement — perceived by many observers as a potential frontrunner for the Supreme Court seat vacated by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor — is not President Bush’s choice for the high court.

An informed source told ABC News they had spoken with Clement and said she received a phone call from the White House this afternoon. According to the source, Clement was thanked for meeting with the president and sharing her views on the Supreme Court, but that the administration has decided to go in a “different direction.”

I’m just kidding, of course — I’m sure Bush hasn’t “changed his mind” at all; he’s known all day exactly who he’s going to pick, it’s the Beltway/blogospheric rumor mill that can’t make up its mind. And who knows if ABC News is right? My Kennedy source said an hour ago that the not-Clement rumors were probably smoke-and-mirrors from the White House, an attempt to frame the Clement pick in a particular way — i.e., (I’m surmising now) to make Clement look moderate in comparison to other prospective choices like her fellow Fifth Circuit Edith (Jones). But the source was not sure; the fog of SCOTUS is very thick at the moment. :)

I should note that this is second-hand information, but I trust the person who is relaying it to me.

Anyway… over on TradeSports.com, Jones remains the front-runner, but Luttig has come out of nowhere to take over second place, moving ahead of Owen and Clement (this morning’s front-runner is now in fourth place!). Do the bettors know something we don’t know? Stay tuned… 2 1/2 hours to go…

UPDATE: Now Clement has retaken third place from Owen on TradeSports. It’s very close between those two and Luttig, and the site updates in real time, so the order may change. But Jones is the clear front-runner at the moment.

UPDATE, 5:45 PM EST: Three minutes ago, from Erick Erickson at RedState:

Newrooms in Washington and Senate staffers have begun pulling data on John Roberts.

“[Edith] Jones still appears to be in Houston,” he adds.

Here is Roberts’s Wikipedia entry. I expect a surge in his TradeSports numbers presently, and a dip in Jones’s.

UPDATE, 5:55 PM EST: The Supreme Court Nomination Blog writes:

We’re now off the Edith Clement bandwagon. That isn’t to say for sure that she won’t be nominated — we’ve been unable to confirm ABC News’s claim that Clement has said so herself — but that we’re now convinced that no person who actually knows the nominee’s identity is talking. It seems that sources who today spoke with confidence about the Clement nomination were very likely inside a Washington echo chamber.

Here is what we know. The White House waved reporters off of the Clement speculation as overblown several times during the day. Several close outside advisors have told reporters during the day that they haven’t been told who the nominee is. Some said they believed it would be Clement (further fueling the speculation), but that was the echo chamber, I think.

More generally, I must say that Judge Clement’s decisions summarized below don’t strike me as those of a truly committed conservative, which I expect the President’s nominee to be.

That last sentence rings true — all Ted Kennedy jokes aside, I’d honestly be surprised if Bush appointed someone as unobjectionable to the Democrats as Edith Brown Clement.

More breaking news, this time on the hurricane front: Eye of the Storm reports, as of five minutes ago: “The maximum 30 second average winds found in the northeast quadrant were 120 knots, which would suggest that Emily has surface winds of 120-125 mph, putting her easily at category three status.”

This after a 4:00 PM EST advisory putting Emily at 100 mph, but noting that her central pressure, 956 mb, “would typically support” Category 3 status. Looks like she’s finally spinned into gear. An NHC update will probably follow shortly.

In other news, it looks like I’ll be taking several short lunches this week, to make up for today’s breaking-news-blogging time. :)

UPDATE, 5:22 PM: Confirmed:

DATA FROM AN AIR FORCE HURRICANE HUNTER AIRCRAFT INDICATE THAT THE MAXIMUM SUSTAINED WINDS IN EMILY HAVE CONTINUED TO RAPIDLY INCREASE AND ARE AT LEAST 120 MPH. A SPECIAL ADVISORY WILL BE ISSUED BY 530 PM CDT…2230Z…REFLECTING A SIGNIFICANT INCREASE IN THE INTENSITY FORECAST.

Breaking News on ABCnews.com: “SOURCE TELLS ABC NEWS JUDGE EDITH CLEMENT IS NOT PRESIDENT BUSH’S CHOICE FOR SUPREME COURT”

So… is it the other Edith? A.k.a. the “female Scalia”? Or is it somebody else? Garza? Luttig? Or maybe William Kelley? :) Or perhaps his boss, Harriet Miers? How about Fred Thompson? :) Or is ABC News wrong? Stay tuned… we’ll know in less than four hours…

P.S. Over on TradeSports.com, the smart money is on Edith Jones, followed by Edith Clement — a distant second! — and, not far behind her, Priscilla Owen.

President Bush will announce his Supreme Court pick at 8:00 PM EST (South Bend time) tonight, according to CNN. (That’s 9:00 EDT on the East Coast, 6:00 PDT on the West Coast.)

So… is it Clement? The Note thinks so. “We can report, based on independent sourcing, that she sat down privately with President Bush at the White House within the past few days.” RedState.org says she is “the only one to have had a private meeting [with Bush] - so far as anyone has been able to pin down.”

So just who is Edith Brown Clement, and what will the reaction to her be, if indeed she is the pick? The liberal People for the American Way points to some “troubling dissents” that Clement has joined. But the equally liberal Daily Kos says, in dKosopedia, that Clement “doesn’t provide much ammunition for opposition groups, but perhaps not much for conservatives to get excited about either.” However, the conservatives on RedState, seem, if not excited, at least satisifed. Erick Erickson calls her a “loyal conservative” with reliably pro-business views. Her beliefs on Roe v. Wade are not 100% certain, but conservatives seem to believe that she is “with them” on that and other social issues as well. Unlike with Alberto Gonzales, there is a strong feeling she won’t be another Souter. Also, “There is no indication that Clement takes an expansive reading of the Commerce Clause and every indication that she does, in fact, take the opposite view.”

The Supreme Court Nomination Blog has a list of Edith Clement resources and a list of Edith Clement opinions.

UPDATE: From the Washington Post’s Campaign for the Supreme Court blog: “Some observers are cautioning about jumping to the conclusion that Edith Clement is the designated nominee.”

UPDATE 2: In a post ingeniously titled “A Tale of Two Ediths, Part II: The Bait and Switch,” Erick Erickson at RedState writes:

Something has happened in the past ten minutes. I’ve had three five (they keep IM’ing) people from the media and conservative think tanks IM to say we’re on a wild goose chase — the conservative think tank people say its an intentional one. According to them, we should not be looking at Edith Clement, but at her cohort on the Fifth Circuit, Edith H. Jones a/k/a the Female Scalia.

My money is on Clement still, but it is interesting how, by the time I’ve finished writing this post seven people have IM’ed to say it is Jones, not Clement.

Reminds me of the Novak generated Rehquist retirement frenzy of two weeks ago, but with more credible people participating this time.

On the other hand, the SCOTUS Nomination Blog is reporting that Sen. Arlen Specter’s staff “just sent this note around the Senate”:

The October 4, 2001 confirmation hearing for Edith Clement is available full text online. See S.Hrg. 107-584, Pt. 1 on GPO Access
http://www.access.gpo.gov/congress/senate/senate14ch107.html. This
includes submissions to the record, any follow-up questions, and her questionnaire.

That would be Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-PA), of course. Does his staff know something we don’t know? Or are they on the same “wild goose chase” as the rest of us?

We’ll all know soon enough…

UPDATE 3: It seems the “Specter note” is much ado about nothing. SCOTUS Nomination Blog now says, “We’re helpfully advised that a committee staff member sent the email around because of the large number of requests received for information on Clement, no more.”

Meanwhile, Erick Erickson offers a very thorough and honest post titled “What I Know For Sure“:

What I know for sure is that I don’t know who the nominee is going to be. I do know that when the herd all moves in one direction, it most likely is on to something. There is the potential to be wrong, but the probability is that the herd is right and Clement is the nominee.

Here is what I do know. The Democratic Senators are not going to be as nuts with this nominee as their base would like them to be (that also seems to indicate Clement might be it). …

[T]he President is not going to appoint Gonzales and the President is not going to appoint someone who is not to the right of O’Connor on life issues. Any nominee will have been thoroughly vetted on the life issues and will be acceptable to conservatives.

Finally, John King at CNN is saying that he is getting “pushback” from “those closely involved in the process” that he should “not go there” on Clement. She is in the final three, but we really will not know who it is until 9pm tonight.

He adds in an update, “Within the past hour, staffers on the Senate Judiciary Committee have begun steering people away from Edith Brown Clement.” Whatever that means.

Grains of salt, people, grains of salt. We’ll all know soon.

Hurricane Emily is now 1 mph away from regaining Category 2 strength. Her maximum sustained winds are at 95 mph, and they seem destined to rise further. She’ll be a Category 2 for sure, and perhaps a Category 3, before landfall overnight in Tamaulipas state, Mexico.

The Mexican mainland is currently sandwiched between two tropical cyclones, Emily and Eugene, making for an interesting satellite view:

Dr. Jeff Masters has some good analysis, and an interesting comparison with Hurricane Beulah in 1967. Meanwhile, over at Eye of the Storm, Charles Fenwick has damage reports from Emily’s first landfall on the Yucatan.

My hero in life, Kerri Walsh, and Misty May-Treanor won the gold in the Portugal Open this weekend, their 17th Swatch-FIVB championship as a team. They breezed past the Greeks 21-12 and 21-13 in a match that only lasted a half hour…and still thought they played sloppy.

Just another excuse to post these wonderful photos on bloy.com. Check for updates on the 2005 Pro Tour at avp.com.

Take this with about a million grains of salt, in light of previous false SCOTUS gossip, but rumors on the Internets and the buzz in Washington suggest that President Bush will announce very soon — possibly later today — that he is nominating Fifth Circuit Judge Edith Brown Clement to the Supreme Court.

RedState.org’s Erick Erickson, who openly admits this is an “unsubstantiated rumor” based on information from a single source, says that according to that source, “Major players are on board,” “Senate Dems are okay,” “Specter is pleased,” and “a handful of Dem Senators will play ‘mean’ to pacify base. Bark will be worse than bite.”

Stay tuned…

P.S. Or will it be Edith Hollan Jones? It’s a Battle of the Ediths!

The collapse of a giant Antarctic ice shelf has revealed a thriving ecosystem half a mile under the sea.

We what the land folks love to cook, under the sea we off the hook… :)

Actually, the “thriving ecosystem” doesn’t contain any crabs, so far as I know, but rather “a community of clams and a thin layer of bacterial mats.” I particularly love this analogy from the lead scientist on the case:

“Seeing these organisms on the ocean bottom — it’s like lifting the carpet off the floor and finding a layer that you never knew was there,” said Eugene Domack of Hamilton College.

LOL! Anybody with a messy house can relate to that one. :) Hmm… why do I suspect that Mr. Domack is unmarried? ;)

Perhaps I spoke too soon. Hurricane Emily got better organized overnight, with maximum sustained winds of 90 mph and increasing; she now is expected to become a major hurricane (115 mph+) prior to landfall, which should occur shortly after midnight tonight. Emily is still expected to take a left turn and hit Mexico rather than Texas, but because that turn has not yet materialized, Hurricane Warnings have been issued from Port Mansfield, TX southward to the Mexican border, just in case. (Map here.)

I apologize for the less-frequent-than-usual updates. Alas, my attempts to deal with my computer crisis is taking up most of the free time that I would otherwise be using to blog.

P.S. Dr. Jeff Masters points out that Michiana’s weather is having an effect on faraway Emily:

As far as the track forecast goes, there is a trough of low pressure pulling Emily a little more northward than yesterday’s track; she is now moving at about 300 degrees. However, the cold front attached to the trough just cleared Michigan, bringing heavy thunderstorms here (and FINALLY clearing out the remains of Hurricane Dennis!) This trough and associated cold front are rapidly headed east, and by morning should lessen its pull on Emily. I expect a more westward track tomorrow, as the models and NHC are predicting. Texas should miss a direct hit by Emily.

It’s amazing to watch the weather here in Michigan and see connections to a hurricane far away in the tropics. The weather everyone experiences is interconnected and influences what happens to the weather everywhere else.

In the circle… the circle of life… :)

Perhaps the residents of Tamaulipas, Mexico should send flowers to the residents of the Cozumel area. The Yucatan Peninsula sapped Hurricane Emily of most of her strength — she’s down to minimal Category 1 strength — and it now appears unlikely that she’ll regain major hurricane status before making landfall again, probably in the state of Tamaulipas, tomorrow night. According to Dr. Jeff Masters:

Emily has shown great resilience, and may still regain Category 3 status when she moves further away from the Yucatan and stops pulling in so much dry air. However, the kind of disruption of the inner core that appears to be happening usually takes at least a day for a hurricane to recover from, and Emily has only 36 hours before landfall. It is unlikely Emily will be stronger than a Category 2 storm at its next landfall.

(more…)

Contrary to earlier reports that there’d be no Supreme Court news until the end of the month, some Republican strategists are saying that President Bush may announce his choice to replace Sandra Day O’Connor this week.

Am I the only one who finds it rather disturbing that, three years and ten months after 9/11, New York City’s public-transit authority is only just now implementing its “first wave of major anti-terrorism projects“?