Mischief night in America: Supreme sacrifice

Mischief Night in America, among the prancing baby dinosaurs and dancing skeletons on the normally sedate sidewalks of Philadelphia, I parade around in my judicially inspired Halloween costume. Out of deference to my fondest friend "Freddy from Fresno," not his real name, I decide not to go as the Bride of Frankenstein.

Instead, leashed and collared like any good Bush-ite Repugnican loyalist in slavish devotion to Georgie-Boy, I outline my eyes with thick Kohl charcoal in the post-Goth style of defunct U.S. Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers, which my dead daddy's Jersey buddy Skip surely would have described as "two birdholes in a bucket."

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Actually, in her stead, I'm thinking about putting myself forth as a candidate, er, nominee for the Supreme Court. Pick me, Georgie-Boy, pick me! Why not? I've always wanted to be a Supreme. "Baaaaby, baaaaaby, where did our love go? Don't you want me? Don't you want me no more?" Uh, sorry. Wrong Supreme. Rewind.

I am fair. I am judicious. Although I have neither been a judge nor attended law school, uh, why should this stand in my way? I am a decision-maker. I can make great decisions without even flipping a coin. This stuff is in my genes! Yetta my mother wanted to be either a lawyer or a fashion designer. Same difference, right?

I worked my way through freshman year of college by typing and editing legal abstracts for $5 an hour. Besides, people in my life frequently look to me to make up their minds on various issues and controversies. And someone I once had a bad, bad crush on clerked for Sandra Day O'Connor, which must count for something!

"In case you didn't know, and how could you, it's not in any history books, but Halloween comes from an ancient Tibetan tradition celebrated on the eve of All Bodhisattvas Day," notes Richard Moreau of the Philadelphia Shambhala Center, adding. "It's a ritualized telling of the tale of Mara's unsuccessful bid to tempt the Buddha with the duality of trick or treat. Zen practitioners see this as the origin of koan practice and state that the Buddha's response was, 'Boo.'"

Meanwhile, back to our dear devoted Harriet. In the words of always astute "Caldor McGonigle," not his real name either, but he's a canny Washington, D.C., political observer and gifted speechwriter for the labor movement:

• "She, like Cheney, is designated to help search for a candidate – and then, like Cheney, ends up being the candidate. Hmmm. Never actually been a judge? I didn't know that a Supreme Court seat was open to on-the-job-training type candidates. Actually she will be the white female Clarence Thomas – a wily sycophant characterized by unswerving loyalty to her masters in the Bush mafia. Of course it would be very Rovian to put her forward as a sacrificial lamb – the senatorial wolves descend hungrily from the trees – pointing out her lack of experience in any judicial forum. She's tossed after much squabbling and then the real reactionary heavyweight, waiting in the wings, emerges – since obviously the Dems would look merely contrarian for opposing one nominee after another. Just a scenario."

• "Wonder what the next approach will be. Caution? Or caution to the wind? The extreme right is clamoring for one of their Nazi cohorts to be on the court. Best-case scenario: They nominate exactly that sort and then he/she gets shot down on some past-life hypocrite technicality a la smoking a joint in the high-school bathroom. Did Bush really think Miers would be a shoo-in? The new realities of post-Katrina appear not to have dawned on him. "

• "In addition to which she says she believes George Bush is 'the most brilliant man' she's ever met – meaning she is either sensory-deprived, a shameless flatterer or profoundly stupid. I go with No. 2. But ... I don't doubt that for Bush, now under the gun, having a 'loyalist' in place – regardless of their potential to advance his agenda – is more important than anything else ..."

• "Judges are generally more arrogant than college professors. And combine that with a right-wing ideological bent ... there are many who combine far-right politics with arrogance. The prevailing ethos of our time?"

• Actually, he amends, "Judges are even more arrogant than surgeons, let alone college professors. Judges are self-anointed deities."

Vote for me!