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Who’d have known that Harriet Miers would have caused such a ruckus just by saying “yes”? At first blush, President Bush’s nomination of Miers as the successor to Justice Sandra Day O’Connor looked like a welcome indication that he wasn’t going to shoot a flamethrower at the neighbor’s parched lawn and laugh maniacally at the ensuing pandemonium. He could, after all, have poked the Democrats in the eye once again with Priscilla Owen, whom he obstinately wrestled onto the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Instead, he chose a trusted adviser who under other circumstances would have been considered an...

Other critics have expressed concern about her lack of experience grappling with constitutional reasoning. Robert Bork - whose nomination to the high court was rejected by the Senate in 1987 - called the choice of Miers "a disaster on every level." "It's a little late to develop a constitutional philosophy or begin to work it out when you're on the court already," Bork said Friday on MSNBC's "The Situation with Tucker Carlson." "It's kind of a slap in the face to the conservatives who've been building up a conservative legal movement for the last 20 years."

ROBERT BORK CALLS THE HARRIET MIERS NOMINATION "A DISASTER" ON TONIGHT'S "THE SITUATION WITH TUCKER CARLSON" SECAUCUS, NJ - October 7, 2005 - Tonight on MSNBC's "The Situation with Tucker Carlson," former judge and Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork tells Tucker Carlson the Harriet Miers' nomination is "a disaster on every level," that Miers has "no experience with constitutional law whatever" and that the nomination is a "slap in the face" to conservatives. Following is a transcript of the conversation, which will telecast tonight at 11 p.m. (ET). A full transcript of the show will be available later tonight at...

He was as divisive a Supreme Court nominee as can be imagined. But Democrats should hope they get a pick like him. Here’s why. About halfway through John Roberts’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings, I found myself grappling with a strange and surprising emotional reaction: I was pining for Robert Bork. For anyone with a sense of history watching Roberts artfully bob and weave through his face-off with the Senate, it was hard to ignore the hovering specter of the goateed strict constructionist, whose ordeal in the upper chamber took place exactly eighteen years ago this month. In no small part,...

  Confirmation Analysis: A Boomerang BorkingNow that the smoke has cleared on what many forecast as the Mother of All Political Battles -- the Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings on the nomination of John Roberts to the Supreme Court -- we can see exactly who won and who lost. Despite their initial misgivings about taking Roberts head-on, the Democrats decided to go all out in an attempt to Bork Roberts as a civil-rights Neanderthal with no heart ... and they failed miserably.For evidence of this, one need look no further than the editorial pages of the Washington Post, which notes...

AFTER SPENDING the last month reading countless briefs and memos written by John G. Roberts Jr., it is clear that he would very likely change the law dramatically in key areas such as privacy rights, separation of church and state and racial justice. Democrats need to oppose Roberts for the same reasons they fought against Clement F. Haynsworth Jr. in 1969, Harold Carswell in 1970, Robert Bork in 1987 and Clarence Thomas in 1991. The parallels to the fight over Bork are striking. Bork was nominated to replace Lewis F. Powell Jr., who had been the high court's swing vote...

...Mr. Lord is at pains to note that, although Judge Smith is less known than other judicial nominees who have come under "borking" assault -- think of William Pryor, Miguel Estrada, Janice Rogers Brown and Charles Pickering -- his experience offers a kind of template of abuse: Activist groups unearth whatever harmful details they can find, no matter how dubious; they gin them up into screaming charges; the charges in turn get picked up by reporters, eager to keep pace with a potential "controversy," and by politicians, eager to find any stick with which to beat a "dangerous" nominee from...

An alert this week from backers of Judge John Roberts cautions not to take seriously Democratic complaints that they cannot stop his confirmation. A three-page memo sent to thousands of conservatives across the country warns that the assault on President Bush's first Supreme Court nominee is yet to come. A major reason cited for this belief is the man back at Sen. Edward M. Kennedy's side on the Senate Judiciary Committee: James Flug. ''It is hard to fathom Mr. Flug coming back to Capitol Hill after 30 years of private practice for anything other than a bitterly tough confirmation fight,''...

Lessons from a Supreme Court nominee's defeat. For liberals and conservatives alike, the touchstone for beleaguered Supreme Court nominations is the rejection of Judge Robert Bork in 1987. Supreme Court nominees had been rejected before, 27 times, but never with so much orchestrated fury. Usually the nominees were lesser jurists, if not lesser intellects, if not lesser men, than was (or is) Judge Bork. The Senate rejected George Washington's nominee for chief justice, John Rutledge, in 1795 because of his position on a treaty. Andrew Jackson's nomination of Roger Taney was blocked in 1835, though Jackson later nominated Taney successfully...

CNN Live Today July 1, 2005 KAGAN: All right. Panelists, we'll be back to you in just a moment. Interesting person to talk to on the phone right now. Robert Bork on the phone, somebody who got almost to the Supreme Court. The judge nominated in 1987, a nomination that did not work out in the way that Judge Bork, I think, you would have liked. Your comments today on Sandra Day O'Connor and her legacy on the court, please. JUDGE ROBERT BORK, FMR. SUPREME COURT NOMINEE: Well, she's a very nice person, but she is -- as a justice,...

It's too bad there's now a firewall in place on the computer system used by the Senate Judiciary Committee's Democratic staff. We'd love to take a peek at the internal memos reacting to Tuesday's Washington Post story headlined "Roberts Unlikely to Face Big Fight; Many Democrats See Battle as Futile." If the staff memos that were leaked on President Bush's appeals-court nominees in 2003 are any guide, Democrats once again are taking dictation from liberal interest groups-- this time on how to oppose Supreme Court nominee John Roberts. We expect Tuesday's e-chatter went along the lines of: "Ralph Neas called..."...

The first U.S. Supreme Court confirmation hearing in more than a decade is only weeks away. Former Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork knows firsthand how bruising the process can be. His nomination was blocked 18 years ago by a well organized liberal campaign. More recently, he edited a book on the Supreme Court, A Country I Do Not Recognize: A Legal Assault on American Values. Bork joins 'Hardball' guest host David Gregory to discuss whether new Supreme Court nominee John Roberts will share a similar fate.

...If the ABA rates Mr. Roberts fairly, he will receive a unanimous "well qualified" rating. There is simply no question that he satisfies the ABA's criteria, which boil down to integrity, professional competence and judicial temperament. Before becoming a judge, he was one of the most accomplished and respected appellate lawyers in America... [of} "unquestioned integrity."... If history is any indication, however, the ABA will struggle with the Roberts rating for a simple reason: He is conservative. For that sin, the nominee may earn a split vote or worse. That disservice was infamously done to Robert Bork in 1987, when...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3080261

As President Bush contemplates his Supreme Court nominee, one fact to keep in mind is that seven of the nine current Justices were appointed by Republican Presidents. If you want to understand why many of Mr. Bush's supporters are worried that he might nominate Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, this is the reason. The objection isn't personal, and it isn't even about what Mr. Gonzales thinks; the concern is that virtually no oneknows what he thinks. Mr. Gonzales's brief tenure on the Texas Supreme Court and his behind-closed-doors advice as chief White House counsel shed little light on what his judicial...

What do the nomination of a replacement for Sandra Day O'Connor, constitutional law, and moral chaos have to do with one another? A good deal more than you may think. In Federalist No. 2, John Jay wrote of America that "providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people--a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs." Such a people enjoy the same moral assumptions, the cement that forms a society rather than a cluster...

Sources close to the Court have confirmed that all the members of the Supreme Court will announce their retirement today at 4:55pm. Sources inside the beltway have confirmed that the Justices had been hiring court clerks *for their replacements* -- a final act of judical activism... ---- This rumor is just about as good as the rest of em...And I have good sources!!

What do the nomination of a replacement for Sandra Day O'Connor, constitutional law, and moral chaos have to do with one another? A good deal more than you may think. In Federalist 2, John Jay wrote of America that "Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people -- a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs . . . ." Such a people enjoy the same moral assumptions, the cement that forms a...

...Justice O'Connor is being hailed as the Court's "swing" Justice, but her legacy is more complicated. She has been a conservative on property rights and federalism, most recently in her Kelo dissent, where she took vigorous issue with the Court's extension of government's eminent domain power to include the taking of private property for private economic development. Replacing her with a "moderate" could actually mean a more liberal court on those issues. Where she drifted left over the years--and where her written opinions often sowed confusion--was on social issues, notably church-state and racial matters. She focused more on the facts...

WASHINGTON, July 3 - Judge Robert H. Bork, the former Supreme Court nominee whose rejection 18 years ago has hovered over every confirmation since, is back in the spotlight. Interviewed on CNN on Sunday about the vacancy to be left by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's resignation, Mr. Bork squared off once again against his former nemesis, Senator Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican whose critical interrogation during the 1987 hearings helped doom Mr. Bork's nomination. "I know Specter, and the truth is not in him," Mr. Bork said on "Late Edition" on CNN.