On MSNBC now.
Details to follow.
Who will President Obama choose?
Again, it's on MSNBC now.
Confirmed by the AP:
Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, the court's oldest member and leader of its liberal bloc, says he is retiring. President Barack Obama now has his second high court opening to fill.
Stevens says he will step down when the court finishes its work for the summer in late June or early July.
His announcement Friday in Washington had been hinted at for months. It comes 11 days before his 90th birthday.
Interesting article on NPR a few days ago points out that when the Court finishes up this Summer, there will be no protestant justices in a majority-protestant country:
Let's face it: This is a radioactive subject. As Jeff Shesol, author of the critically acclaimed new book Supreme Power, puts it, "religion is the third rail of Supreme Court politics. It's not something that's talked about in polite company." And although Shesol notes that privately a lot of people remark about the surprising fact that there are so many Catholics on the Supreme Court, this is not a subject that people openly discuss.
In fact, six of the nine justices on the current court are Roman Catholic. That's half of the 12 Catholics who have ever served on the court. Only seven Jews have ever served, and two of them are there now. Depending on the Stevens replacement, there may be no Protestants left on the court at all in a majority Protestant nation where, for decades and generations, all of the justices were Protestant.
Might this somewhat influence President Obama's pick?