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 couldn't tell you if he is arguing or eliciting...I personally do not listen to that blowhard....all you can do is listen to him because he never gives anyone he is talking to, a chance to get a word in edgewise.
She's bitchy, which is why she sleeps alone at night (or at least she sleeps with somebody who doesn't want to hear her screeching for the rest of his life!)
Pray for W and Harriet Miers
No.
He engaged in banal rationalizations. He theorized that it would be impossible to distinguish legal medical marijuana from illegal pot.
Which is nonsense - liquor stores around the country have devised ways to track legally-taxed booze.
He IMO did not like medical marijuana. And he set out to find a rationalization to abuse the Interstate Commerce clause and the Necessary and Proper clause.
So yeah, he thought about it. Too damn much, apparently.
What I think we are seeing is that people who have worked with her know she is well-qualified. Those who don't know her are assuming she is a lightweight.
My word, this woman is 60 years old. Women were rarely even allowed in law school back when she went. And to have made the accomplishments in the male-ruled TX back then is incredible. It's hard to believe she even was hired as a lawyer. People don't realize how limited women were in those days. You could be a wife, a nurse or a teacher. I admire her greatly and look forward to hearing her "interview". If she wants to uphold our Constitution as intended, then I am for her.
A bit behind the curve are we? You already responded once to that.
And I dont believe it is an insult seeing as I was pointing at a verifiable fact that you were, even on non Miers threads, talking about her and how much you dislike Bush.
I must say, getting past my initial disappointment, I agree with you. I really don't think that, post Katrina, and the war, etc., that people want this. And I'm talking middle voters, and I know some.
On a personal level, I would have loved it, to show people that, for example, it was the conservatives who backed the little guy in Kelo.
A knock-down, drag-out fight/debate about abortion is maybe not what the country needs right now.
Just look at the thread on the euthanasia case--people are infuriated that the states' right to endorse euthanasia might be infringed.
The right to euthanasia and abortion have their same root: the right to privacy. You can't have it both ways (i.e., states rights and a Constitutional guarantee of protection to commit suicide and /or have an abortion)
Oh man, this post is so long, and now I'm tired, I can't even remember what the initial question was, LOL!
"If you can not debate the issues. Please keep the personal attack to yourself."
Oh, you mean this isn't a personal attack?
"While Bush was still boozing it up in the early '80s..."
Go take a Midol. Hell, take the entire flippin' bottle.
Since that's become your chief consideration of a person's credibility, perhaps you could explain why Harriet Miers sleeps alone at night.
:)
While I'd rather go after Coulter for her way over-the-top vitriol, I just don't know what some people see about her appearance that is so attractive. Long, bleached blonde hair? She has an angular, not-too-pretty face that's made all the more unattractive by her costant hyperbolic anger. Her body is long and skinny, and her physical movements tend to be awkward, stiff. Her body language just screams uptight, angry witch.
I've already done that here:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1497299/posts?page=634#634
"John, I thnk you need to read a bit more."
That, MM, is ALWAYS true, no matter the subject.
"Miers practiced quite a bit of law. She is quite adept at cross-examination."
I am not convinced that it was high-level work. As for the cross abilities, I am not aware of any evidence for this, and have decided to discount her friends who say she is "brilliant."
"She wasn't some sort of "office manager"."
That was NOT a put-down, and you grossly mischaracterize what I said. The manager of a law firm with a few hundred lawyers, hundreds of active cases, and tens of millions of dollars in billings is NOT a little job. That said, it still doesn't tell me enough about her as a prospective SC Justice.
"My sister-in-law is a partner in a firm, and I can guarantee you that the head of the firm isn't the "office manager."
Asked and answered.
Please recall that I was only responding to another post, in as honest a way as possible. Which leads me to....
(And I'm not necessarily saying this applies directly to you.)....
Why can't some of us (roughly half, I'd guess) express genuine misgivings about something without being accused, in effect, of being "disloyal"--to the prez, our cause, conservatism, whatever? We have doubts, for God's sake, and for a lot of good reasons!
What about debating thesubstance of the article?
And then they are stipped away one by one. So to belittle them.
By a bunch of cretins who will never accomplish anything close to what Miers has accomplished.
She has an Adam's apple, too. :)
So you don't like it when a Justice brings a personal bias. That's what I'm saying.
All the support for this women is that she brings the "right" bias.
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