I think its ping-mechanisms are calibrated correctly (scroll down to Ramesh’s post last night at 6:14 PM and Jpod’s response).

Drudge has an item up which claims that some significant number of judges took themselves out of consideration because the process has become so brutal — according to a conversation Dobson claims to have had with Karl Rove.

I don’t buy it. I don’t buy that several people who’ve been in contention for months or years decided to take their names off the list at the last minute. I don’t believe that their fear was most acute after Roberts’ generally civil hearings (even though everyone predicted the next hearings would be worse). One person, maybe. But en masse? No way. This sounds like their setting Miers up as the good soldier taking one for the team. It also sounds like whining.

Are we supposed to believe that after a generation of tireless work by the conservative legal community and hundreds of appointments to lower courts, there’s not one confirmable jurist in America more objectively qualified than Miers who isn’t such a fraidy cat he or she can’t stand up to such titans of the legal community as Joe Biden and Ted Kennedy? If that’s true, I want to hand in my conservative decoder ring. I’ll go hang out with the libertarians, old whigs and the ideologically indeterminate muttering guys who read out-of-print books at the bar.