Angry talk is cheap when it's directed any anonymous "hedge funds." Cerebus sold most of its stake to a group of some 40-odd funds.

Who was holding out? Reportedly it was about 20 of the funds, including OppenheimerFunds Inc. (owned by MassMutual), Perella Weinberg Capital Management LP and Stairway Capital Advisors. What about Citigroup's private equity arm, or any remaining Cerebus stake? Did they have a hand in it? Who called the shots and led this coalition?

There is no one "best person for the job." There are, very conservatively, dozens of justices and lawyers in this country with obviously SCOTUS-worthy curricula vitae. There are conservatively hundreds, if not thousands, of lawyers and judges in this country who are very well qualified to be a Supreme Court justice. In fact, constitutionally, there are no qualifications for a justice. Unlike most judicial offices, a justice of the Supreme Court does not legally have to have any legal training or be admitted to any bar--although almost everyone would agree that those are essential. And qualified women have rapidly risen through every rank of the legal profession--today in most law schools, more women are admitted than men.

Moreover, the cases that come before the supreme court are not a matter of deciding what is, a priori, legally "right or wrong," apologies to you natural law fans out there. They are tough cases of new law where disagreement exists across the country. Deciding these cases is not an academic exercise, but requires policy, practical, and yes, ideological considerations.

So although it is an appointed office, it all the more important that the President take into account the personal aspects of his appointee--not to be an aesthetic palette of gender and race, but to ensure that the people at the table deciding these incredibly important decisions that affect all Americans are able to consider the effect on all Americans.

So while the President should not rule out a potential candidate based on sex alone, the fact of the matter that there is a single, ancient woman suffering from cancer on the Supreme Court can and should dictate that the President look to fill Souter's seat with a woman. Women are half of America. Women's issues come before the Supreme Court on a daily basis. It is a matter of fact that an all-male supreme court is at a great handicap to American law with respect to the law regarding gender and sexual issues.

I don't mean disrespect, but your lack of legal training is obvious. Equal protection and the 14th amendment does NOT make the law gender-neutral--the law is anything but, and there is no Equal Rights Amendment. Gender and sex may be "suspect classes," but that does not make the law neutral with respect to them. There are thousands of statutes and common law rules at the federal and state level that discriminate based on sex, it is a huge area of law, and makes up a disproportionate amount SCOTUS cert petitions.

If gender and sex are "suspect classes" at law, ensuring that there are even one or two women on the Supreme Court of our land is hardly tokenism!

Ooh you are clever, are you not?

Off the top of my head, just a few areas of law that are either sex-specific on their face or have a vastly disparate impact on men and women:

- Abortion law (that's hundreds of issues right there)

- Child custody/support law

- Marital rape/domestic violence law generally

- Sexual harassment law

- Pay disparities/workplace sex discrimination litigation

- Sentencing disparities (criminal law)

- Title IX

- WIC

I, too, would like to know what penile qualities of our current and former SCOTUS justices have qualified them for the bench. There have been in the neighborhood of 120 justices over the years, of which there have been two women: Sandra Day O'Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg (whose name you are unable to spell).

O'Reilly bears a lot of blame for Tiller's death. Even if the shooter was not a viewer, O'Reilly's vendetta raised the profile of the doctor in right-wing Christian terrorist circles when he had already been shot by a terrorist in these circles.

There should definitely be a criminal investigation into O'Reilly over his broadcasts. While it may not be possible to convict him, on 1st Amendment grounds, it is a close case of incitement.

I am also not happy with President Obama's initial response: "I am shocked and outraged by the murder of Dr. George Tiller as he attended church services this morning. However profound our differences as Americans over difficult issues such as abortion, they cannot be resolved by heinous acts of violence."

Although Mr. Obama is known for cool and low-key responses, this is not the statement of someone shocked and outraged. This was no place for a hat-tip to "profound differences over difficult issues."

Any time an Arab Muslim commits some act of low-level, politically motivated thuggery, it's branded terrorism. Every time a fringe environmentalist or animal rights activist destroys property or harasses an executive, it's branded terrorism.

Yet now, even with a "pro-choice Democrat" in office, when a doctor is murdered in his church by a terrorist after surviving an attempted murder by a like-minded terrorist, we get a tepid statement acknowledging "difficult issues" and condemning "violence." Mr. Obama is not unfamiliar with the word terrorism, having used it plenty of times himself. Call it what it is.

That said, the shooter and his enablers deserve a fair trial in court, not in the press, during which their guilt is proven beyond a reasonable doubt, and after which they spend the rest of their days in confinement and obscurity in a maximum security facility.