Some Guys Can't Take a Hint

By DAVID ELLIS

The call from the Bush Administration last summer was tantalizing. Would you be interested, Federal Judge Ricardo Hinojosa was asked, in a promotion to the federal appeals bench? Hinojosa declined but allowed that he would accept an ambassadorship instead. Dumbfounded, his caller noted that the President might have more in mind for his old Texas friend. Hinojosa didn't take the hint. Thus when Thurgood Marshall retired, Bush apparently didn't feel he could name the Brownsville judge as the first Hispanic on the Supreme Court. "If I were him," says a senior White House official, "I'd be kicking myself right now."

With reporting by Sidney Urquhart