FREE ESTRADA

The results of the Circuit's Supreme Court nominations poll are in, and in them can be seen an overwhelming rejection of the Democratic Party's strategy of filibustering the circuit court nomination of Miguel Estrada. While Senate Democratics hoped their filibuster would convince Americans that the Honduran-born Estrada does not deserve to be a federal judge, the filibuster has in fact had the opposite effect, convincing a plurality of voters that the previously obscure lawyer ought to be Bush's first pick for the Supreme Court.

The Circuit's favorite candidate, Justice Janice Rogers Brown of the California Supreme Court, finished a strong second in the poll. White House counsel Alberto Gonzales, often touted as President Bush's top choice, finshed what for him and his supporters must be a disappointing distant third place. The Circuit views Gonzales's weak finish as a strong signal from grass-roots voters that the administration should avoid a repeat of the disastrous appointment by the President's father of Justice Souter (whose name, we are told, is English for "Gonzales").

Write-in candidates included Seventh Circuit judges Richard Posner and Frank Easterbrook, Deputy Attorney General Larry Thomson, and someone named Howard Bashman.