The Supreme Court pulsed with retirement speculation Friday, with rumors focusing first on the ailing chief justice, then the oldest member, and even the tiniest justice, the Associated Press reported.
The buzz came one week after Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's decision to step down, giving the court its first vacancy in more than a decade.
The 80-year-old chief, William H. Rehnquist, has thyroid cancer. And though he's been working full-time at the court, it's widely thought he will step down, the AP said.
Many court observers believed that because of O'Connor's announcement he would wait until this week to make the announcement. Speculation intensified as the week wore on.
TV news crews and an Associated Press photographer waited in pelting rain for three hours Friday morning for Rehnquist to emerge from his suburban Virginia town house. He eventually did, but said nothing, smiling as he ambled by, gripping an ornate cane.
The press room at the Supreme Court was filled, a rarity during a time when the court is not in session. And the rumors flew.
E-mails to reporters from various groups speculated when Rehnquist would make an announcement, and also speculated about other possibilities.
Justice John Paul Stevens, who is 85 and healthy, may be going, the speculation went. Stevens is the court's liberal leader and would seem an unlikely prospect with a Republican in the White House and GOP-controlled Senate.
He also has already started hiring law clerks to work for him in 2006-07. That could be a sign that he's sticking around for a while. Or that he's sneaky and wants to keep reporters off his trail.
Next came hints that the real retirement would be that of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the petite opera lover President Clinton put on the bench in 1993.
Ginsburg and O'Connor are the only two female justices in history. Ginsburg, who stands about 5-feet tall, had issued a statement last week lamenting the retirement of her sister justice, saying she "will sorely miss her support and guidance."
Supreme Court officials had no news for reporters about Rehnquist, Stevens or Ginsburg, according to the report.
When no Rehnquist announcement had come by late morning, new speculation started that the White House had asked the chief justice to delay making public a decision until Bush returned from an overseas trip.
