OR, GO ASK ALICE: If the White House would prefer to avoid the altogether pitched battle that nominating Janice Brown would create, he could always consider Alice Batchelder of the 6th District Court of Appeals. She's smart, funny, terribly bright, experienced and possessed of the judicial temperament and philosophy for which the president says he's looking. Paul Rosenzweig of the Heritage Foundation has called her "the female equivalent of John Roberts," no small compliment. "Judge Batchelder is well-read, peppering her opinions with quotes from the lofty heights of Aristotle's Metaphysics to the whimsy of Alice in Wonderland," says political analyst Peter Schramm. "It should come as little surprise that she has written some of the most significant precedents in her circuit on complicated issues." Consider me torn between wanting to put liberal senators on the spot before a free-thinking black woman, and wanting to watch them squirm before a qualified, less controversial nominee who's got darned impressive credentials.