Posted on 10/05/2005 4:03:47 PM PDT by perfect stranger
I eagerly await the announcement of President Bush's real nominee to the Supreme Court. If the president meant Harriet Miers seriously, I have to assume Bush wants to go back to Crawford and let Dick Cheney run the country.
Unfortunately for Bush, he could nominate his Scottish terrier Barney, and some conservatives would rush to defend him, claiming to be in possession of secret information convincing them that the pooch is a true conservative and listing Barney's many virtues – loyalty, courage, never jumps on the furniture ...
Harriet Miers went to Southern Methodist University Law School, which is not ranked at all by the serious law school reports and ranked No. 52 by US News and World Report. Her greatest legal accomplishment is being the first woman commissioner of the Texas Lottery.
I know conservatives have been trained to hate people who went to elite universities, and generally that's a good rule of thumb. But not when it comes to the Supreme Court.
First, Bush has no right to say "Trust me." He was elected to represent the American people, not to be dictator for eight years. Among the coalitions that elected Bush are people who have been laboring in the trenches for a quarter-century to change the legal order in America. While Bush was still boozing it up in the early '80s, Ed Meese, Antonin Scalia, Robert Bork and all the founders of the Federalist Society began creating a farm team of massive legal talent on the right.
To casually spurn the people who have been taking slings and arrows all these years and instead reward the former commissioner of the Texas Lottery with a Supreme Court appointment is like pinning a medal of honor on some flunky paper-pusher with a desk job at the Pentagon – or on John Kerry – while ignoring your infantrymen doing the fighting and dying.
Second, even if you take seriously William F. Buckley's line about preferring to be governed by the first 200 names in the Boston telephone book than by the Harvard faculty, the Supreme Court is not supposed to govern us. Being a Supreme Court justice ought to be a mind-numbingly tedious job suitable only for super-nerds trained in legal reasoning like John Roberts. Being on the Supreme Court isn't like winning a "Best Employee of the Month" award. It's a real job.
One website defending Bush's choice of a graduate from an undistinguished law school complains that Miers' critics "are playing the Democrats' game," claiming that the "GOP is not the party which idolizes Ivy League acceptability as the criterion of intellectual and mental fitness." (In the sort of error that results from trying to sound "Ivy League" rather than being clear, that sentence uses the grammatically incorrect "which" instead of "that." Websites defending the academically mediocre would be a lot more convincing without all the grammatical errors.)
Actually, all the intellectual firepower in the law is coming from conservatives right now – and thanks for noticing! Liberals got stuck trying to explain Roe vs. Wade and are still at work 30 years later trying to come up with a good argument.
But the main point is: Au contraire! It is conservatives defending Miers' mediocre resume who are playing the Democrats' game. Contrary to recent practice, the job of being a Supreme Court justice is not to be a philosopher-king. Only someone who buys into the liberals' view of Supreme Court justices as philosopher-kings could hold legal training irrelevant to a job on the Supreme Court.
To be sure, if we were looking for philosopher-kings, an SMU law grad would probably be preferable to a graduate from an elite law school. But if we're looking for lawyers with giant brains to memorize obscure legal cases and to compose clearly reasoned opinions about ERISA pre-emption, the doctrine of equivalents in patent law, limitation of liability in admiralty, and supplemental jurisdiction under Section 1367 – I think we want the nerd from an elite law school. Bush may as well appoint his chauffeur head of NASA as put Miers on the Supreme Court.
Third and finally, some jobs are so dirty, you can only send in someone who has the finely honed hatred of liberals acquired at elite universities to do them. The devil is an abstraction for normal, decent Americans living in the red states. By contrast, at the top universities, you come face to face with the devil every day, and you learn all his little tropes and tricks.
Conservatives from elite schools have already been subjected to liberal blandishments and haven't blinked. These are right-wingers who have fought off the best and the brightest the blue states have to offer. The New York Times isn't going to mau-mau them – as it does intellectual lightweights like Jim Jeffords and Lincoln Chafee – by dangling fawning profiles before them. They aren't waiting for a pat on the head from Nina Totenberg or Linda Greenhouse. To paraphrase Archie Bunker, when you find a conservative from an elite law school, you've really got something.
However nice, helpful, prompt and tidy she is, Harriet Miers isn't qualified to play a Supreme Court justice on "The West Wing," let alone to be a real one. Both Republicans and Democrats should be alarmed that Bush seems to believe his power to appoint judges is absolute. This is what "advice and consent" means.
I would probably have done the same thing. One of many reasons I am not serving as POTUS. Hopefully cooler heads will prevail in this case.
He's going to get one whether he likes it or not.
"Don't waste your time on this stalking freak."
By making this remark to her you are demonstrating her characterization is spot on.
So much so that you followed Chad Fairbanks over to your beloved anti-freeper site and continued joining him spreading lies about me over there.
With attitudes and analysis like yours is it any wonder anti-Freeper sites exist?
What Coulter did as a political pundit is mild compared to what you do to me and others when some dishonest person feeds you and Fairbanks lies.
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
You like Biblical references. Why don't you do something about that beam before you continue to rag on other people?
Take your own advice.
Why do you come back here? Not happy at your AF sites? They seem to work fine for you when people catch on to your self righteous, condecending attitude and you go there and complain about this site.
He says self-righteously like a girly boy (see? I can invoke a Saint Ann-ism, too). Maybe she wants to see a site that has promise succeed. She is smart and has insights to offer yet you want to reject it.
All those you cite have their own faults and I don't look to them for how to think.
No, she's not. This column expresses in a vulgar manner ideas that were written on NRO's The Corner on Tuesday.
...except The Corner refrained from the "boozing" crack; but that's not "original" either, just vicious.
It's NOT pedigree for most who oppose Miers... it's running away from a fight that HAS to be fought.
I wonder if real world experience counts for anything among the chattering class. Ann has been off her meds for 6 months and now makes half backed statements like "woman on Lottery commission" when HM was the head sent to clean up corruption by the Govenor - GWB. Finding and rooting out corruption is a great function of government and should be acknowledged not debased. Grow up ANN!!
"This was the moment that conservatives had long waited for. For the first time in decades, the court will have a stable conservative majority. This nomination was expected to herald in a type of conservative renaissance on the court, crafting a new bold vision in legal areas long arrested by 5-4 divisions on the court. With Chief Justice Roberts, Bush had the ability to appoint the conservative equivalents to Oliver Wendell Holmes and Louis Brandeis — gifted legal intellects who could bring depth and breadth to the court's new vision. Instead, Bush chose someone of greater personal and historical significance."
"The question is now whether the Senate is capable of meeting Hamilton's test in resisting a nomination offered primarily for a president's pleasure. It seems more likely that the dream of a judicial conservative renaissance will succumb to a combination of blind loyalty and presidential whim. Let no one say qualifications do not matter. In securing this questionable confirmation, Bush will be remembered by many as a myopic president who could not see a legacy waiting just beyond his small circle of friends."
Jonathan Turley
Dear Ann, Your 15 minutes of fame expired...Refer back to Ronald Reagan's 11th Commandment and STFU!!!
She is miming DU in her snarkiness.
**************
I agree, I'm sorry to say, because I've always liked Coulter. I saw her on O'Reilly last night, and my impression was that she is simply trying to promote herself. I can agree with some of her concerns, but to slam GWB in order to score points? It was more than disappointing.
Savage is a manic depressive alcoholic, and Ingraham, this very morning, said she IS an elitist, and proud of it.
What the hell is the matter with you?
You were able to "see" all that in my post? And to think that the ones opposed to her nomination are the ones accused of thinking they have a crytal ball...
Aw, come on... she's skinny as a rail. She's VERY pretty but needs to eat more pasta.
He's going to get one whether he likes it or not.
And the interesting thing is, he seems quite eager to fight conservatives on this. In his defensive posturings over his nomination of her, I think he's had more critical words for conservatives than he's EVER had for liberals, outside of an election campaign (and even then they were only directed at his opponent).
Kinda blows out of the water the excuse his apologists make for him for not confronting liberals, when they say it's "not his style".
I am with you on this. Have always loved her in the past, but I think she is getting a little too full of herself. There is no difference between her and the liberals with these comments.
The size of this thread would strongly suggest otherwise.
By contrast, I don't think I've ever heard of you until this post.
Well Doc, I'd gladly submit an 8x10 but this is a site of ideas isn't it, not a "shallow hollow" one of physical appearances. Inevitably some men here will think that if we don't always love Ann in all her blatant rudeness and opnions we simply have to be jealous. But apparently that's where your priorities are.
I like Ann but I do think she goes over the edge sometimes and it only hurts her arguement - whatever it is.
I agree - there is an element of wanting to be the most outrageous.
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