Confirmed!

by Clerquette

Sorry, Article III groupies: Clerquette didn't mean to feed you a piping hot dish of "What did I miss?" Alas, there are no new judicial confirmations to report (or, for that matter, fresh stats from the SCOTUS Leaderboard).

There is, however, confirmation of a delicious piece of  judicial intel reported here by intrepid reporter (and co-blogress extraordinaire) A3G. To refresh your collective recollections, one of A3G's trusty tipsters attended a SCOTUS oral argument back in March. The tipster, in describing his/her visit to the court, told A3G that: 

The real interesting part was that on my way out about an hour after argument, I passed Justice Souter standing near the security gate at the side door (near the cafeteria). He was just standing there, apparently waiting for someone. I get outside, and there, walking up the ramp towards the door, is Patrick Leahy, sans entourage.

[Ed. note: Readers of UTR are the kind of people who don't need to be reminded of this, but Senator Leahy is chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee - which plays a central role in handling Supreme Court appointments.]

As fellow groupies are aware, rumors of the Souter-Leahy redezvous, as well as Justice Souter's late-term clerklessness, were two early indicia of what is now known to all: Justice Souter's plan to live free or die.  

The news, dear readers, is that the Souter-Leahy lunch (and, a fortiori, A3G's hunch) have now been confirmed. Both Politico and the Congressional Quarterly Blog report (here and here) that Senator Leahy one-upped the rest of the judgerazzi in more ways than one. First, Senator Leahy may have been the first to learn of DHS's plans, a secret that Clerquette hopes the Senator cherished in a manner reflecting its sanctity (i.e., by writing "I know a secret about DHS!!" in his Hello Kitty diary, or its Senatorial equivalent). Second, Leahy reports that he "got a beautiful handwritten note from Souter," which -- in Clerquette's opinion -- trumps the two-line letter submitted by the Justice to POTUS. Finally, lest we negelct the obvious "dish," Leahy and Souter went out to lunch. Yes, friends: Lunch. Considering DHS's storied habit of bringing - and eating - the same thing for lunch every day (one apple, including core; one cup yogurt), Clerquette thinks that a casual lunch on the town may have been both the figurative third horseman of the apocalypse, and the finest feather in Senator Leahy's cap. 

What the two ate, however, remained a matter of speculation as of press time. 

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