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.
Ann is off the mark on this IMO. :-(
She is qualified for the Court because George Bush says she is qualified. And she's a hard worker.
And that is not correct. The Gang of 14 RINOs got Browns and Owens onto appeals court positions.
But the Dems left the backdoor open for a SCOTUS nomination. And they would have opened that door for Brown or Owens.
I think it's a fair concern. SC justices have to deal with untrodden ground. Simply being competent in the practice of law is unquestionably a requirement, but I think there's a little more to it than that. I wouldn't be willing to buy that any two pilots with equal flight time would make equally good test pilots, and I think selecting an SC Justice follows in much the same manner.
You can argue that no one here has the right to second guess Bush, but I don't see that getting much traction on a political forum.
The spin is she's no ordinary Christian but a fundamentalist evangelical born again Christian. Of course later she was in charge of promoting gambling in Texas. I smell deception.
Happy for you, aft_lizard, wishing you much success. And, thank you for serving our great country. GO ARMY!! I have family and friends who have served in the Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, Coast Guard and Merchant Marines (past and present). I admire and respect all of you. I really think we are all on the same side. Have a good night.
There you go again. Peeling off qualifications and accomplishments so you can belittle them one by one.
Despicable.
Assuming that's true, that raises one rather obvious question: Why did Bush do it? It's not like he or his advisors wouldn't have known that this would get conservatives angry at him.
Do you have the list of "known originalists?" Being a layperson, I don't seem to have that bookmarked anywhere.
Nah, probably not. However if she showed up at the confirmation hearings and stabbed Chuck Schumer..........
Yeah, you are the one who said you wanted elegant.
Clarence Thomas's writings are not elegant. They are quite simple.
And coherent.
And Constitutional.
You can keep your friggin' elegance. We've had too much of that recently with SCOTUS.
That might be true if he was giving a reason why he thought the CSA itself was constitutional. But that's not what he was doing. And the worst he could be accused of is judicial passivism, not activism. He voted against having the judiciary take action.
Thanks. I am still out for a major. I am looking towards engineering but the VA wont let me go that route. They were the ones who suggested a technical field seeing as the IQ tests placed me supposably in the triple nine category overall, so the world is my oyster I just need to focus.
Most of the arguing here is not about Miers, it's about Bush. He gets to pick who he wants, that is indisputable, but We the People get to voice our opinions as well. He knew this when he made his choice.
Hey, Bork is a prominent known originalist.
Who belittles the 2nd Amendment.
Whereas Miers has vigorously defended the right to bear arms.
But I guess that doesn't matter if we can get an elegant originalist whose elegance obstructs his originalism. But he sure sounds good doing it...
"Good god that post was pathetic. And from someone who has been here since '99."
I assume you mean God. In any case, what the hell are you talking about? You really need to give me some details if you expect me to address your rant. How is it down in NO these days?
Which of her accomplishments distinguish her from many thousands of other women lawyers? If we are insisting on a woman.
What is the relationship between rising to head a club, a local Bar Association and being qualified for the Supreme Court of the United States?
Her highest position is owed solely to her relationship with Bush.
You misunderstood. She was replying to my post, claiming this that this is an elegant nomination by Bush.
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