Politicians do not generally make great novelists. (Heck, for most of them, getting through a speech without falling all over themselves constitutes a minor victory.) So one could be forgiven for sneering a bit at California Senator Barbara Boxer’s debut novel, which pits a liberal senator (surprise!) against an arch-conservative nominee to the Supreme Court. But wait – Boxer wrote the novel over a year ago, long before the retirement of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and the subsequent death of Chief Justice William Rehnquist. The parallels to the current dust-up over Court nominee Harriet Miers are palpable, and make the book worth a look. Of course, Boxer is a blue-state pol first and foremost, so red-staters looking for a sympathetic (or realistic) portrayal will be sorely disappointed.