White House Prepared for Supreme Court Vacancy

ABC News is reporting that the White House is prepared for a Supreme Court vacancy, but expects none to occur this summer.

Most of the potential nominees have been well-vetted by the White House, which conducted extensive background checks and interviews in 2005, when it was searching for replacements for Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.

The White House is not expecting a retirement, but it wants to be ready if a surprise announcement occurs, sources said.

It's widely considered that the most likely candidates for retirement are liberal Justices John Paul Stevens and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, although both have said emphatically that they do not plan to step down.

The White House typically prepares an informal list of possible replacements every spring in case justices announce they are retiring at the end of the Court's term. But there's more urgency now.

I am not sure what the urgency is now.

Short of dying, John Paul Stevens and Ruth Bader Ginsburg are not going to leave the Court while George Bush is in office and the Democratically controlled Senate cannot afford the political showdown that would be precipitated by a retirement.

while it may be tradition to pare down a short list every spring, this year the exercise is likely to be more pro forma than anything else.