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.
Personally attacking Republicans is her style? Well, her style sucks.
Why do you think it was a gamble for Bush? He has selected justices for nomination over the past five years with this woman. Don't you think he has some idea of her philosophy on how the Constitution should be parsed?
And misspell words because my new keyboard is to small.
I remember she said that, but I can't find it anywhere online.
I doubt it would make any difference at all, after seeing the MSM treat Rice as an Aunt Jemima and seeing very little outrage from the black community.
Besides, wait till they lynch Mier for being born again. That will get traction with many blacks.
BTW, the sky was blue today, but rain tomorrow so who knows.
It sounds like she's not going to be satisfied unless the president nominates somebody who'll bring a Howitzer or pearl-handled 45s to the table at his or her confirmation hearings and sit there slavering at the mouth and screaming "I'm going to grind liberals' bones to make my bread," etc. Which isn't going to happen, ever.
Liberals do that all the time. The mention of gun rights was buried so down deep among the other rights she mentioned, any casual reader would hardly have noticed it, and certainly wouldn't have come away with any lasting impression from it.
If she had actually made it the subject of her piece - hell, if she even mentioned it more than that once anywhere in her piece, or elaborated at all beyond the bare mention of it, you might have had a point. But she certainly didn't open herself to any consequences by saying that so briefly, so calling it gutsy is just plain wishful thinking.
But Thomas was lynched by Democrats, and how many black votes did the Republicans pick up? Zero. How many black votes did they pick up for backing school vouchers or the Marriage Protection act? Zero. That boat is not going anywhere.
Hehe. Harry Reid is about to choke on his own foot, if he hasn't already.
I think it quite possible that we couldn't win the vote with a very published conservative, especially if that candidate could be shown in writing to oppose Roe vs. Wade.
Three senators would definitely vote against that candidate: Cheffee, Snowe, Collins. Right there you have gone from 55-45 to 52-48. Now subtract the support of the cowards, Voinovich and DeWine. That brings you to 50-50.
At that point, all you would need is to lose the vote of Hagel, McCain, or Spector, and the candidate would not be confirmed.
I don't want to pick a fight in the Senate when there is a good chance that the candidate would be defeated. It would set conservatism back a decade or more. In fact, it might cause us to lose Congress.
Why in the world is there this fixation on a fight over the Supreme Court nominee. I am more than willing to have a fight in the Senate, but let's have it on something like taxes, the aid to New Orleans, election laws, immigration, or other important issues.
For the Supreme Court, I will be quite happy to slip in another originalist under the radar.
We agree there.
I just don't like looking weak, in front of a weak enemy. We are missing an opportunity to allow the dems to look like the insane losers they really are, on national TV, and still get the judge we want.
Except that the RINOs were too afraid to go nuclear.
We won the last four elections, lets start acting like winners for God's sake!
Tell that to seven RINO senators and get back to me.
"I trust Bush to give us a competent true conservative."
I think this is the position of the 30% who approve of the Miers pick. That's all they have: trust that Bush has given you a true conservative. That's not good enough for me.
"I think the lack of prior visibility on her part is a shrewd political calculation to outmanuever the Dems."
We have a majority in the Senate, yet Bush has to resort to stealth candidates to get his judicial appointments through? I think that's pathetic. If it's true, it means he is being blocked by the RINO members of the gangsta of 14.
"I don't think the Senate is strong enough to approve a Janice Rodgers Brown and BUsh knows it."
I guess that's why he opted for two unknowns for his SCOTUS picks.
"But, tagging her as nothing but a crony, demeans her and my President."
The dictionary defines a "crony" as a longtime close friend or companion. Does Harriet not fit that definition? If not, how well does Bush really know her?
"All nominees are unproven."
I'd say some are more proven than others. When I bet on a horse race, I always look to see how the horse performed in prior races. The track record is no guarantee, but it improves the odds a whole bunch. This will be Harriet's first time out.
"And I don't care what anyone says, a judge's beliefs show themselves in their opinions."
There we are in total agreement.
"No one can escape who they are."
Not sure what this means, but it could be true.
Who do you think would be the best nominee, Harriet Miers, Janice Rogers Brown or Edith Jones?
I remember the first time I (quite innocently) mentioned that on FR. Two guys (who shall remain nameless - one is still here, and one is long gone) nearly lost their minds, and went after me with what appeared to be everything they had. One of them even started a thread about me.
Ann has an cult of defenders here (see people getting ticked about "personal attacks" on her, on the heels of her talking about the POTUS "boozing"?). Even if you point out something like that, that's as plain as day, people will completely freak out on you.
"Sorry I have a prblem with writing respoonses as if they were in the same paragraph as to what I am responding to, at the time to me they are coherent and then I post it and sometimes I get lost in my own work. I blame it on carbamazepine."
I wouldn't be too hard on myself if I were you. We're all worked up over this stuff, and for different reasons. We all have strong views. Even if they're differing views, we can share them. You can't do that in a lot of places around the world today. We have a lot to be thankful for living here in the USA.
Only if you consider being a black panther supporter a conservative stance.
Crony is used commonly to convey a negative. "Associate" would serve just as well, unless you intended it as a negative. Beliefs and life experiences color all of our decisions. It is inescapable. Judges are no exception. That is why we seldom have unanimous rulings even though each person sees the same material.
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