A Souter-and-a-half

Nina Totenberg was just having a friendly chat with fellow reporter Scott Simon. Someone left the microphone on and they called it a news program.

Standard stuff about O'Connor's retirement, but Totenberg's wind included this nice clause: "The president is very committed to racial and gender diversity on the court, though not ideological diversity." (I know, it looks like a sentence, but since interviews tend to resolve into continual run-ons, it's a clause.)

Quick. Somebody get her together with Jeff Dvorkin, so they can count Republicans on NPR staff. (Then they could count conservatives among those Republicans, but I'll give the answer matrix for both questions now: It's _ _ _ _ and _ _ _ _.)

P.S. It was also cute when she said President Bush was going to have an opportunity to remake the supreme court in much the way that President Roosevelt did. Yeah, except that Roosevelt ended up not only appointing seven justices, but so firmly established the New Deal revolution that Truman easily finished job, giving the pro-nationalists all nine seats. It'd be great if Bush got four; it's possible, in the sense it's possible I'll get hit by a bus, that he'll get more; it's highly likely he'll get less; and for every Thomas Republicans appoint there's a Souter-and-a-half.