No Gonzales. Not Now. Not Ever.

Over at www.redstate.org, Erick, who scooped the entire media with the O'Connor resignation, has the goods. According to his sources, the President will nominate Alberto Gonzales to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg after naming two conservatives to replace the Chief Justice and Sandra Day O'Connor. Simply put, this is not acceptable.

Don't get me wrong. I'm happy to hear, assuming this is true, that the President will begin making his imprint on the Court with two conservatives. It is absolutely essential that these two nominees have records respecting religious freedom, restoring Constitutional restraint on government, opposing the most convoluted decision in the Court's history, i.e. Roe, and giving more credence to the Constitution than bad precedent. Of course these nominees will be judged based on their full history. Their willingness to apply precedent when they had to do so is fine, but dicta and writings that show their disagreement with bad precedent will be important in showing their true colors. Almost every potential replacement, from Samuel Alito to Janice Rogers-Brown, meets this criteria.

Even so, conservatives did not put this President in place simply to make gains on the Court. We elected this President to nominate strict constructionists to the Supreme Court. Every Supreme Court nominee must be held to the same standard. Clearly, J. Harvie Wilkinson - whom it now appears is off the short list, and Alberto Gonzales fail to meet this standard. The President has no shortage of highly qualified, highly intelligent nominees, including Senators Jon Kyl and John Cornyn and Judges Samuel Alito, Miguel Estrada, Emilio Garza, Edith Jones, Mike Luttig, Priscilla Owen, Bill Pryor, John Roberts, and Janice Rogers-Brown, among others. This President has done well to fill the circuit courts with such constitutional scholars. Now he must do the same with the Supreme Court.