Rogers Brown watch

How long before the announcement? Two hours? A day? Alito cruisin' along at 41.5, Luttig 19.5, who are the rest of these guys?

ColumbusGuy adds: Half an hour later, the first signs on Free Republic that it's Alito. Nothing on AP yet, at least according to Google. News by 7 a.m.?

UPDATE: 6:30 a.m. tradesports has alito at 99.7. NPR led the 7 a.m. broadcast with it.

UPDATE: Okay, here's the plan: Dems, flush with power, fight like hell to kill Alito. Bush, to his credit, pulls a Thomas and actually fights (he's done it before; remember that 30-day plus election in 2000? Or that little tete-a-tete where he established a constitutional democracy in some Middle East hellhole, Ratherstan or something?). This time, though, Bush loses. The Dems and the Manhattan media take Alito down. Big scandal comes out. Didn't pay a quarter mill property tax in 1979 on a 10 foot segment of land that overlapped a neighboring school district. Turns out, 15 percent of the students were minorities who would have qualified for free and reduced lunch. Bush has to go to the well a third time. He pulls out . . . JRB! Has to fight like hell, but the ghost of Rosa Parks appears to announce she voted for Reagan, twice. Cryin' George Voinovich casts the deciding vote in her favor. "Over my dead body will I allow the New York Times to attack this woman or my president," Voinovich says.

Could happen.