In his Monday column, Replacing O’Connor could get ugly, Bob Novak reports that Judge Priscilla Owen is on President Bush’s short list to replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. He claims that Owen had a secret meeting with the President last week and that things went well. This comports with insider Washington speculation that Bush will name either a conservative woman or a minority to fill the post. Here’s some information about Owen:

• Many political and legal insiders consider Owen to be the strongest choice. Owen is only 50 years old and would guarantee a conservative court for 20 years. Republicans tapped Owen to run for the Texas Supreme Court in 1994. Bush was candidate for governor that year and she and Bush sometimes campaigned together. Karl Rove served both of them as campaign consultant.
• The Senate voted 56-43 to confirm her for an appeals court slot in May, 2005 after a four-year filibuster fight. She is not well-like by liberals, which I consider to be a very good thing.
• Owen supported the elimination and narrowing of protest buffer zones around reproductive health care clinics in Houston.
• Under a relatively new Texas law, teenagers can go to court to bypass the normal requirement of having to get parental consent before obtaining an abortion. In every judicial bypass case that came before the Texas Supreme Court, Owen voted against granting the young woman the bypass. “According to Owen, for the teenager to prove she is “well informed,” she must prove - regardless of her own religious background or lack thereof - that she knew about the many religious objections to abortion, and that some women who underwent abortions had serious remorse.” (FindLaw’s Writ)
• She is a member of St. Barnabas Episcopal Mission in Austin, Texas where she teaches Sunday School and serves as the head of the altar guild. I think that this is the church’s website, but I’m not absolutely positive.
• She received a bachelor of arts degree, cum laude, from Baylor University (my own alma mater), and graduated in the top of her class from Baylor Law School in 1977. She also scored highest in Texas on the bar exams for the time that she took it. She was a member of the Baylor law review.

Okay, this time I had an even better excuse for being away — I’ve been devoting my time to my Texas Clearinghouse for Katrina Aid blog. It’s a portal blogsite that allows users to search by category for organizations offering aid and taking donations for evacuees in Texas communities. The site took a lot of time but it’s been worth it because the response has been very good. I’ll keep updating it on a regular basis for several more months and will probably always keep the site alive.

Since the big objective was to get the site up and running quickly, I copied pretty much everything from Stingray and was impressed about how easy the job was with Movable Type 3.2.

It’s not too late to give. Please take the time to drop by Texas Clearinghouse for Katrina Aid and find a way to help the victims of this terrible tragedy.