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.
A-a-a-men!!!
To put together and send out the 'Ping List'.
I have come to the conclusion that Ann Coulter is the female version of Bill Maher. Theirs would be a match made in heaven - spewing criticism and vitriol at each other 24/7.
No, there's more to it than that. First of all, she was a good, but far from outstanding, student. Her whole professional life, while accomplished, has had nothing to do with constitutional issues. Take an SMU graduate who had clerked for an important judge in the Southwest, maybe did some pro bono work on Constitutional issues, active in the local Federalist Society, and she'd have a lot more support.
I did not loose this fight in the Rush thread. You were demanding specifics in that thread too, I gave them to you, and you ignored them. You were also making accusations about hating Bush too. I don't hate Bush. I have supported him through thick and thin. But he made me a promise, and he did not keep it.
From US Senate's Glossary
advice and consent - Under the Constitution, presidential nominations for executive and judicial posts take effect only when confirmed by the Senate, and international treaties become effective only when the Senate approves them by a two-thirds vote.
And in the U.S. Constitution, Sec 2, Clause 2:
He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.
Or to use another analogy, Bush was pitching an 80's action movie to investors and promised sylvester stallone, and after he got the money he cast frank stallone.
Now, frank stallone may be able to play the role just as well as sylvester stallone, but he's an uknown, and that's upsetting to the investors. They want a sure return on their investment, not a crap shot.
That, simply, is why many are upset. But people will take that as an attack on the President and the party.
She is becoming unreadable.
Bush the Alcholic is a tired liberal slam like the "dictator" ad hominem.
And while we're at it, how about THIS one? (this article is sooo fiskable)
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.
ehem....Ann you trashed the Roberts nomination in almost as damning language as you are trashing THIS one.
Which brings us to THIS point:
Conservatives from elite schools have already been subjected to liberal blandishments and haven't blinked.
Not always true. Sometimes they have been indoctrinated in the presumptions of the liberal establishment in ways they and no one else can even fathom until a sad sad moment of truth.
The liberal bias of Eastern establishment schools is what Scalia blamed for the egregious legislating from the bench of the Lawrence decision in which a majority of SC justices found a right to sodomy in the Constitution.
I never claimed it wasnt, but I was using your defense as an example of what you are not partaking in. We are Bush-bots for supporting her, hence therefore your claim of an independent thinking conservative loses water when we disagree with you and agree with the President on this issue.
Not certain what you are trying to say here... Am I intellectually lazy? I hope not, but perhaps. I have tried to read about Harriet Miers and her background, etc. Again, I will wait to hear her testimony in front of the Judicial Committee to make up my mind.
For more than 60 years, I believed the term to be "ADVISE and Consent".
Am I wrong? If so, I certainly misled many of my students.
I like her too- and I am glad she is able to criticize our own- Ted Olson would have been a nice choice and Ann would be pleased as punch
Mind if I disagree?
Having a fresh perspective from someone in the real world, not a sitting Judge is actually a good thing.
Look at the yahoos on the 9th Circuit...do you think they are qualified for even their current duties much less the U.S. Supreme??
Bush has the right and the power to nominate. We have the right to hear the facts, reasons, and to review the records. I am of the mind to do just that. Want my Senators to do their job -- unless we can prove President wrong by clear and convincing evidence or Miers appears as a LOON during hearings she should be confirmed.
I have sneaky feeling, that Bush will get another pick before the end of this term.
(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
"Maybe so, but the Vast majority here are Republicans so you better expect the vast majority of opinions coming from that perspective."
And the power base of the GOP is conservative repulbicans, so you and the party should keep that in mind.
You motivate the conservative base, you gain power. You alienate them, you lose power. Proven by repeated examples over time.
If you're into anorexics, yeah.
Some guys are into stick figures who chain smoke.
No thanks.
Because this topic isnt about Rush.
That is what the editors of RealClearPolitics said. And it is correct. We are not looking at a conservative constitutional gladiator here, we are looking at a nice, hard-working Bush crony. Not that there is anything wrong with that, but the facts are facts.
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