I would do this only for my loyal readers.....I've been foraging in the vast, scary wilderness of the conservative blogosphere, looking for the latest word on tonight's announcement of the President's Supreme court nominee to replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.

I stumbled on a site that perhaps I'm not supposed to know about....conservative blog Confirm Them. This blog and its comments are an amazing treasure trove of frank, uncensored Republican insider "chatter" and arrogance, and it's a genuine hoot to read!

Here's the very, very latest from that site on the nomination....."What I know for sure is that I don’t know who the nominee is going to be. I do know that when the herd all moves in one direction, it most likely is on to something..... the probability is that the herd is right and Clement is the nominee.

Here is what I do know. The Democratic Senators are not going to be as nuts with this nominee as their base would like them to be (that also seems to indicate Clement might be it).

....the President is not going to appoint Gonzales and the President is not going to appoint someone who is not to the right of O’Connor on life issues. Any nominee will have been thoroughly vetted on the life issues and will be acceptable to conservatives.

Finally, John King at CNN is saying that he is getting 'pushback' from 'those closely involved in the process' that he should 'not go there' on Clement. She is in the final three, but we really will not know who it is until 9pm tonight.

[UPDATE] Within the past hour, staffers on the Senate Judiciary Committee have begun steering people away from Edith Brown Clement.

Something has happened in the past ten minutes. I’ve had three five (they keep IM’ing) people from the media and conservative think tanks IM to say we’re on a wild goose chase — the conservative think tank people say its an intentional one.

According to them, we should not be looking at Edith Clement, but at her cohort on the Fifth Circuit, Edith H. Jones a/k/a the Female Scalia. "

Judge Jones is considered more conservative than moderate/centrist Judge Clement. Jones is also decidedly in favor of overturning the 1973 Roe v. Wade abortion decision.

Enjoy the intensely loony comments at this site, my liberal and progressive friends. Meanwhile, I'll keep you updated. And whoever the nominee, I'll write an article tonight to give you the scoop tomorrow morning on President Bush's first Supreme Court nominee.