SCOTUS NOMINATION TONIGHT

Bush to announce his nominee in a primetime speech. His recent primetime speeches have had two problems, the first being that very few people have been watching them, and the second that he hasn't really said anything newsworthy in the last few. I can see NBC's future: "we interrupt the President's primetime address to bring you this XFL rerun..."

It's funny waking up and seeing that all the news networks are in frenzied speculation over someone they had never even mentioned in the last three weeks of frenzied speculation.

The name being thrown around is Edith Brown Clement, and apparently her record doesn't give us much to go on. Man, if he picks her and she goes all Souter on Dubya, there's gonna be trouble.

And about the timing of the nomination, which was moved up at least a week . . . I wonder which of Bush's senior advisers came up with that idea?

UPDATE: Ezra Klein...

[T]hat the Rove mess has thrown the White House off schedule with the Supreme Court is about as good as it gets. The less they dictate the news cycle, the less they decide the timing, and the less they can do things according to plan, the better off Democrats are in the upcoming battle. The smart thing now would be to cut Rove loose, stop the bleeding, and reassert control over the Court fight. That Bush is instead trying to speed up the nomination to force Rove out of the news cycle is a very good thing.

Also, Nathan Newman has a lot more on Clement, and from what he's got it's pretty clear she's no Souter.

DOUBLE SUPER SECRET UPDATE: Or someone else, perhaps?