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A conservative uproar erupted over President George Bush's recent appointee to the Supreme Court. Bush nominated Harriet Miers to replace Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. But several key Republican senators say she not the best candidate. MSNBC-TV's Tucker Carlson talks to former judge and Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork about the Harriet Miers' nomination. He says it's, "a disaster on every level" because she has "no experience with constitutional law whatever". The nomination is a "slap in the face" to conservatives. TUCKER CARLSON, MSNBC HOST: Are you impressed by the president’s choice of Harriet Miers?

Robert Heron Bork (born March 1, 1927) is a well-known conservative legal scholar and former judge who advocates an originalist interpretation of the United States Constitution. .... On October 23, 1987, the Senate rejected Bork's confirmation by a 58-42 vote.

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...

HARRIET MIERS OUTSHINES BORK Unlike the Patron Saint of Originalism, Miers Will Defend Our Freedom Judge Robert H. Bork has come to represent in many conservative minds the gold standard of legal sagacity against which provincial upstarts such as Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers must be weighed.  In truth, however, Bork provides a poor example of conservative jurisprudence. Even as simple a phrase as, "the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed" has long confounded Judge Bork. Harriet Miers suffers no such confusion.Following a July 1, 1992 incident in which a crazed gunman slew...

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,...

Bork: 'Brilliant' Roberts the Best Conservatives Will Get By Nathan Burchfiel CNSNews.com Correspondent September 07, 2005 (CNSNews.com) - One-time Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork Tuesday lashed out at the high court and the U.S. Senate for politicizing the judiciary and offered little hope to conservatives hoping to see Roe vs. Wade, the 1973 ruling that legalized abortion, overturned. Bork said the possibility is "virtually nil" that Roe vs. Wade will be overturned in the next 10 years, even with John Roberts presiding as chief justice and a more conservative jurist replacing Sandra Day O'Connor. "I simply do not know if...

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...

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,...

The nomination of John Roberts brings up the recurrent and crucial question of who is to govern America and, therefore, what is to be the course of our culture and morality. It is hardly surprising, then, that the power seekers of the left-wing wolf pack are on the prowl, attacking Judge Roberts with their customary mendacity. "With every passing day, it is becoming clearer that John Roberts is one of the key lieutenants in the right-wing assault on civil-rights laws and precedents," proclaims Ralph Neas, the far-left ideologue who heads People for the American Way. Not to be outdone, Sen....

"Estradification": In the spirit of confirmation battles spawning a new lexicon (e.g., "Borking") the Washington Times reports today [http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20050721-115711-9900r.htm] on what some Republicans are calling "Estradification"--requiring the Justice Department to turn over internal legal memoranda written by Roberts while he worked in the SG's office. The refusal by the White House to surrender these sorts of documents was the basis for the Estrada filibuster (hence the name) as well as the current Bolton stalemate. Regardless of the merits of the request, it seems highly unlikely that the White House will surrender these documents. The tone of the article suggests that...

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...

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...

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...

DON'T SPARE THEM ANY PITY, the Democrats who are now decrying the "politics of personal destruction." The left in this country invented and perfected the politics of personal destruction. They used it against fine men and women like Robert Bork, Clarence Thomas, William Rehnquist (remember the charge that he was a drug addict?) and Prof. Carol Iannone. --Snip-- If you want a reminder of what the leaders of the Democratic Party are capable of, review the history of Robert Bork's nomination to the Supreme Court in 1987. Bork was then a federal appeals court judge, former solicitor general and former...

Contrast Tocqueville with Justices Harry Blackmun and Anthony Kennedy. Blackmun wanted to create a constitutional right to homosexual sodomy because of the asserted "'moral fact' that a person belongs to himself and not others nor to society as a whole." Justice Kennedy, writing for six justices, did invent that right, declaring that "At the heart of [constitutional] liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life." Neither of these vaporings has the remotest basis in the actual Constitution and neither has any definable meaning other than...

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.

ON OCTOBER 23, 1987--a day that lives in conservative infamy--Robert Bork's nomination to the Supreme Court was rejected by a Democratic Senate. Now, 18 years later, George W. Bush has the chance to reverse this defeat, and to begin to fulfill what has always been one of the core themes of modern American conservatism: the relinking of constitutional law and constitutional jurisprudence to the Constitution. The restoration of constitutional government has been the one area in which modern conservatism has had the least success. From Ronald Reagan to George W. Bush, conservative economic policies have been (more or less) pursued,...

My reaction to Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's retirement was almost as positive as my reaction in 1981 was negative when the Reagan administration announced that they were going to appoint a woman to the Supreme Court. It wouldn't matter if all nine Justices of the Supreme Court were women, if these were the nine best people available. But to decide in advance that you were going to appoint a woman and then look only among women for a nominee was a dangerous gamble with a court that has become dangerous enough otherwise. The recent outrageous Supreme Court decision making anyone's...