The Anchoress Is Servin' Links

First blog I looked at today is The Anchoress, who's got a couple of good link-filled posts. Out of all the links, the ones I found most interesting were the one about the Warrior Monk who changed his plans to enter a monastery and instead went to Iraq as a Marine chaplain, and the Loren Bliss essay "Conflicts Such as Gwydion Made" (Loren writes like someone who considers himself to be formally leftist, but still comes across pretty darned Left. Unusual insights from a different perspective). We also have this:

One last thought: I've read here and there that Senator Harry Reid, who is replacing Tom Daschle as the Senate Minority Leader has said he would support Antonin Scalia over Clarence Thomas as Chief Justice of the SCOTUS. Interesting. The Thomas/Hill debacle was the watershed moment for me, politically. Back then, I was a classical liberal and a Democrat, but the behavior of the press and the feminists (both of which I had 'til then admired) so disgusted me that the congressional hearings on Justice Thomas' fitness for the court were the beginning of my re-positioning from left to right. Since then I've read many of Thomas' speeches and some of his writing and I think he's a much maligned man.

But I have to say, I think Reid has been rope-a-doped by the president on this issue. Dubya tends to play his cards very close to the vest, and I was rather surprised to read - a few weeks ago - that he was mentioning Thomas as Chief Justice. I think he was simply setting up a chess move: Mention Thomas (re whom the left will instinctively recoil in classic knee-jerk, reactionary fashion) and suddenly Scalia will look more tantalizing. For the Democrats and the press, there could be no more distasteful CJ of the SCOTUS than Clarence Thomas who is, like Dr. Condoleeza Rice, the "wrong sort" of African-American, the sort who might attract other African-Americans away from the party. Scalia, getting up there in years, is suddenly "brilliant" and more palatable.

Rope-a-doped. Oh, yeah.