Posted on 10/05/2005 4:26:54 AM PDT by saveliberty
Bad formatting on my part. Please accept my apologies.
Good info here about Miers from one who knows her and corrects some of the misinformation about her. Good read.
Good post. I bet the Admin Mod could help you out with the formatting. :)
Thank you! I actually know how to format properly but I failed to hit preview.
Pilot error. :-)
No problem!
Thanks for posting this. I try to listen to Hugh everyday but lose my signal with the sun setting so early now.
I appreciate the transcript. There's lots of good info here.
Thanks for the position. It is obvious that peole who are denigrating her career are completely off-base.
Thanks for the ping. I think what has most people upset is that Harriet doesn't have a paper trail that will comfort people that her rulings will come down on the side of a strict Constitutionalist/conservative.
I'm pretty neutral about this nomination but am delighted she isn't a judge ala Rehnquist wasn't a judge before his nomination to the Court either. I think a lot of judges live in a bubble and Harriet, although a trailblazer and leader in her field, has led a more normal life that most of us can identify with.
Like a lot of folks here.
And to his great credit, he promptly and conspicuously corrected it.
Unlike too many folks here.
:-) You are welcome. Bill Dyer (Beldar) has a great blog and a lot of material on Harriet Miers.
I have found him to be a reliable legal resource in other subjects and he is a fun read.
He also gave an unusual perspective of the preparations for Hurricane Rita in Galveston (where he is based).
His blog site can be found here -- http://beldar.blogs.com/beldarblog/
Thank you for the article. I have a question that I'm not sure if it has been discussed. Do every SCOTUS justice have to have expertise in constitutional law? You can tell, I'm not from legal community. But in other areas, it's common to have a group of people that represent different expertises. Miers' background seems to be in business law. Roberts seems to be in constitutional. How about the other sitting judges now? Or, because of its unique position in the government and judicial system, SCOTUS needs people whose expertise is constitutional law?
I like Rich Lowry too. :-)
Don't you know you shouldn't post anything positive on Miers?
You might upset the "doom and gloom" wing of the Republican party. (end/sarcasm)
Constitutional Law is part of the regimen to prepare for the bar exam. It's a lot of fun. But in terms of practice, no she doesn't ever have had to practice Constitutional law or to have served as a judge.
(Dang that Oliver Wendell Holmes for snipping away at the Bill of Rights)
Woo Hoo! Does that mean that I am in Trouble with a capital T? LOL LOL LOL!
I also liked that Bill Dyer pointed out that we don't know a lot of detail about conservative justices that other conservatives like.
Simply put--NO! In fact, there is no requirement that they even be a lawyer. There are only two qualifications---nominated by the president, confirmed by the Senate. That's it---period.
A lot of "traditional requirements" have accumulated over the years, but, in the Constitution, the above is it.
I'm not familiar with the history of all the SC judges, but I would hazard a guess that there have probably been a couple of non-lawyers among them.
I think she will try to be a modest judge, which is to say she'll stay within herself, within the proper bounds that a judge should stay within, and she won't try and grab the role of being the decision maker on policy issues for the nation, because she doesn't see that as what judges should do.
Judicial restraint is the performance criteria that I want. The evidence I have seen supports the belief that Ms. Miers would do so, but the evidence is all tangential or indirect. The evidence also exists with her -not- in the position of power. Power corrupts, or has the capacity to.
But there are issues that run in tandem with attempting to predict her performance. The charge of "crnyism" can't be ignored just because she is an accompished lawyer. Not to say the decision was based on cronyism, just to say that he capabilities don't automatically serve to dismiss the charge.
And there is the matter of conflict avoidance. It's my opinion that some fights are worth fighting, and this nomination avoids confronting a number of Constitutional principles - it also sets an example of how to adavce conservatism - by hiding it under a bushel basket.
Good observations.
To the concern that you raise about cronyism, I would add that no one has a better grasp of vulnerability and how to deal with bad news than President George W Bush. In his father's administration, he was the one who had to do the ugliest jobs, such as telling a staffer what he or she didn't want to hear or worse, having to let someone go. From what I have read, he did it with a good amount of compassion, but he was committed to the end result.
So if anyone knows how to look for points of failure in his administration or in appointing people, IMHO it would be W.
Food for thought
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