Well, that didn't take long. Ben Smith of Politico.com has a post up regarding a memo that is now circulating among conservatives identifying the problems they have with the three women who will most likely be atop the shortlist of Obama's eventual nominee to the Supreme Court: Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayer and Diane Wood.

On Elena Kagan:

"Dean Kagan has taken positions that are disturbingly out of the mainstream...It is also unclear that a Justice Kagan would be an adequately independent check on executive excesses. She has argued in favor of greatly enhanced presidential control over the bureaucracy, which is concerning in light of President Obama's unprecedented centralization of power in the White House."

Am I the only one who finds this last line to be ridiculously hypocritical?

On Sonia Sotomayer:

"(Q)uestions also persist regarding Judge Sotomayor's temperament and disposition to be a Supreme Court justice. Lawyers who have appeared before her have described her as a "bully" who "does not have a very good temperament" and who "abuses lawyers" with "inappropriate outbursts."

Are we supposed to read this as "She's a woman, so she's irrational"?

On Diane Wood:

"Judge Wood's judicial views have on occasion been far outside mainstream legal thought and appear driven by her personal policy views...Judge Wood has betrayed a consistent hostility to religious litigants and religious interests."

Yes, Diane Wood is pro-choice, so I guess that means she's a religion-hating liberal.

So the Republicans are going to attack these women as irrational, religion-hating, liberals. Oh, and did we mention that they aren't white men? After a careful reading of the entire memo, their argument boils down to this: Kagan has no experience as a judge. Sotomayer stands up for the rights of women and minorities. Wood is a champion of the separation of church and state.

One confusing line of argument in regards to Kagan:

-For example, driven by her view that the "don't ask; don't tell" policy adopted by a Democrat Congress and President Clinton is "a profound wrong -- a moral injustice of the first order," she argued that it violates the First Amendment for the United States to withhold funds from colleges that ban the military from recruiting on campus. The Supreme Court unanimously rejected this view.

Am I to understand that they oppose Kagan because she opposed "Don't ask, don't tell"? I thought that conservatives shared this opinion. Oh well, rational thought was never part of their argument anyway. Here we go!