Posted on 10/06/2005 6:25:16 PM PDT by wagglebee
“Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.”
--Matthew 5:5
And so they have.
A quiet public servant, who has toiled for years in veritable obscurity, immediately calls her pastor and asks him to pray for her. An unassuming Texas lady, who for years went unnoticed and didn’t make anybody’s short or long list, is stepping into the biggest limelight America can offer a legal mind, the Supreme Court.
Her name is Harriet Miers and people like Rush Limbaugh are fuming. The conservative right feels let down. Betrayed!! They are suicidal, depressed, disappointed and “demoralized”. In short, they are steamed. Pat Buchanan goes postal; Bill Kristol, hysterical; Rush Limbaugh, incoherent.
Everybody needs to get a grip. By the time you finish reading this column, you will feel calm and euphoria sweeping over you. You will be shocked and awed by the brilliant leadership President Bush has shown with this selection. You will know the Court will be in the best hands possible. You will love Harriet Miers. You will wish you had put her on the top of your short list. And here’s why:
1. Note the quote beginning this column: The “meek shall inherit the earth.” This is not just some pabulum I dreamed up. This is what Christians actually should believe. This is what Christ taught. Ordinary workers, who labor in the fields of the Lord, shall inherit the kingdom of heaven. And an unpretentious laborer in the fields of the Lord, and the fields of George W. Bush, might just be the best person for the highest court in the land.
Harriet Miers does not just show up at church on Sunday morning; go downstairs for coffee and donuts; check her Christianity at the door and return to bloodbath politics as usual.
She identifies herself as a “born again” Christian. Now, this is an important distinction. People who identify themselves this way are dead serious about their faith. They live it. They love it. And they would probably die for it. Bored, comatose Protestant mainliners and robotic, zombie-like cultural Catholics need not apply for this personal distinction unless they are ready to take the big leap into being born again, or, as we Catholics say, conversion.
As a Catholic myself, of course, I miss her and wish she’d come home to us. I can certainly imagine, though, how it happened, as the Catholic Church took a nosedive into immorality, corruption, relativism and liberalism after Vatican II.
2. Harriet Miers has toiled in obscurity and she is not getting much respect in her own town. People who toil in obscurity usually don’t owe anybody anything. You don’t see them on endless talk shows schlepping their latest book, that is, in actuality, a bloated, overblown magazine article. The D.C. assembly-line cocktail party circuit probably does it without her.
3. Horror of all horrors, liberal elitism has reared its ugly head! She was not born with a silver spoon stuck in her mouth by an Ivy League alumnus with a Harvard education on the end of it. I mean, come on, Ted Kennedy graduated from Harvard. How great can it possibly be?
4. No personal baggage! No, we don’t have to worry about any frat-house, drunken party images showing up on the internet with this Texas lady. Refreshing, isn’t it?
Not much partying for her it seems, except for a few celebrations with her co-workers, who, apparently, adore her.
She spends most of her time at the office. Being single and never married, no unseemly marriage problems, bimbo alerts or embarrassing divorce papers to be splattered all over The Smoking Gun website; no illegal-alien-nanny-gate problems; no grand-children-who-need-bailing-out-of-jail problems, and, living the simple life alone, she probably doesn’t need a cadre of workers from Guatemala to keep up the estate and then not pay their taxes. She seems to have a nice gentleman friend who shows up occasionally, so, a little romance might do the staid Court some good.
5. She is a woman! I think Harry Reid has a crush on her!
Her lack of bench experience is a red herring. Dozens of Justices brought no bench time to the Court, including the late Chief Justice Rehnquist, whose road to the Court also ran the same course through the White House.
Now, let’s pull ourselves together. This great lady presents a clean slate and appears untarnished. Her main drawback being the intellectual conservative cabal didn’t think of her first.
Harriet Miers came creeping in under the radar like a Stealth bomber; a modest, unassuming, hard-working, experienced lawyer with strong moral, religious and constitutional convictions. Just what the boss was looking for.
Let's give her a chance. Bombs away!
An even better example might be Owen Roberts (I sure hope that the coincidence in names does not indicate a similar lack of backbone), who started off as one of the stalwarts defending the Constitution against FDR's New Deal assault on it, but after the threat to increase the number of Justices allowed himself to be cowed into changing his mind and helped usher in the era of unprecedented federal power we now enjoy.
And you're the only one on FR that does that
Really? Since I'm the "only one on FR that does that", where did you ever come up with the general rule that you "don't read group replies?" I mean, I'm flattered that you came up with a rule just for me, but really, you needn't have gone to the trouble.
These threads can get long and winded.
Indeed, which is why I choose not to contribute to their length by writing half a dozen separate replies at once.
Or by just posting "LOL".
That's the point...these guys are the first to b!tch about judges legislating from the bench but it appears they don't find that problematic as long as the end result is acceptable to them.
Isn't THAT the truth.
And don't forget, the very people who were screaming bloody murder about the Democrats demanding questions of Roberts are now demanding...er.....um, QUESTIONS of Miers!
Somebody's a little testy, huh?
No doubt a member of the Perpetually Pi$$ed Off contingent here at FR.
Do you not understand that when you post multiple replies in one post, that when I read one of your "quotes" and then your following "response", I do not know who the person was you quoted, nor do I know the full intent of their post and prior posts between you and "them", because I was not privvy to that particular part of the thread's conversation?
Yes, these threads can get long and winded. Yet you said, "Indeed, which is why I choose not to contribute to their length by writing half a dozen separate replies at once." Are you trying to be silly on purpose? Your replies jumbled together in ONE POSTING did not lessen the amount of thread space in a way that would benefit anyone.
Do you doubt that President Bush wanted the same things? Perhaps you don't know as much as you think you do? No offense, just a possibility.
Then again, so would dozens of others who were overlooked during the vetting process.
In fact, I could enumerate dozens of them-off the top of my head-who would have been preferable to Ms. Miers.
If he were simply concerned about satisfying some implicit gender quota on the Court-which contradicts his administration's putative opposition to discriminatory preferential treatment in hiring and education-then President Bush could have nominated Janice Rogers-Brown.
And if that name was so unpalatable to the majority of the U.S. Senate-and I readily concede that her nomination could have provoked a Bork-like debacle-then President Bush could have just as easily plucked Edith Clement, or Edith Jones, or Alice Batchelder, or Karen Williams from their relative obscurity, at least outside of the legal field.
If he were insistent upon having a former Bush administration offical-either from his or his father's tenure as chief executive-in place, then he could have selected Viet Dienh, or Larry Thompson, or Richard Thornburgh, or John Yoo, or even (GASP!) Kenneth Starr.
If he were searching for someone outside of the appellate bench, or the incestuous political culture that predominates in this nation's capital, he could have nominated Mary Ann Glendon or Douglas Kmiec.
If he didn't want to draw from the cloistered world of academe, he could have chosen any number of more adept attorneys who haven't set foot in a lecture hall since graduating from law school.
If he wanted to make a bold pronouncement, or demonstrate that the Supreme Court was not merely the bailiwick of individuals steeped in the law for their entire academic and professional lives, he could have issued a extremely bold stroke and nominated Fouad Ajami.
Think about it.
The Chairman of Middle Eastern Studies at Johns Hopkins University.
A Muslim poet, whose primary realm of expertise is in Mideast/Arabic history and contemporary political affairs.
You can't get any more heterodox than that!
My point is that, yes Kozinski would have been a brilliant choice, but so would many, many others whose names do not begin with an H and end with an M.
HEY! No FAIR! How come I wasn't your "very first element" in your post??? Are you playing favorites? Perhaps NOW you get my point, or perhaps you want to assign us all numbers so we can look for your comments according to rank? This is so ridiculous that I'm actually ashamed for even responding to you.
Just so folks don't get confused....the above quote is made up of YOUR words, not mine. See why things can get confusing? You posted that quote with YOU and ME as the recipient. Then you followed the above quote with, "Or by just posting "LOL".
I'm trying to be nice here but you are very trying.
No kidding! I'm getting a bit perpetually Pi$$ed off myself at the lengths some people will go to make fools of themselves.
Hi. I'm still trying to find out what happened to, "The president is entitled to pick whomever he wants to be on the Supreme Court."
This president had the guts to resubmit the appellate nominees when the Democrats said they were DOA and each and every one of them was major conservative. Now suddenly, "We just can't trust him" because rather than fight a senseless battle in the Senate--and possibly losing--he has the good sense to realize it doesn't matter how you get "there" as long as you do get "there". He knows this woman and he knows her judicial philosophy and these fools are more interested in pissing and moaning because some twit like Ann Coulter doesn't approve.
This is the same senseless BS Pat Buchanan has foisted on us for years. Bush isn't the enemy and these idiots need to remember that.
And yet you continue to do so.
It's quite the conundrum you have there.
What about this article?
Miers supported affirmative action for female firefighters
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1498195/posts?page=16
I learned alot during the confirmation process regarding Roberts. I also learned DiFi loves her Frogs! That doesn't change the fact that Miers is STILL the nominee.
The sniping at Bush by his "supporters" (you don't seem to be in that group) seems to be all the more reason to keep his powder dry untill the big fight that coming.
Clinton never had a mandate, but was allowed to sail his nominees through without a fight because of the same senators you are relying on. By the way, Arizona is a Bush state and McLame is leading the charge against Bush's agenda, but coming out for Miers.
Your MOOSEMUSS reply was laughable...yea she's simple and Bush is a dunce and Rove along with Cheney and Haliburton control EVERYTHING! ROFL
You want a split in the party? That's a good way to lose ground. How about something CONSTRUCTIVE for a change?
Ah yes, isn't it? LOL
Really?
You could have fooled me.
Now that he is no longer up for election or reelection, it's amazing how we're not getting the same kind of judges for the Supreme Court that we were getting for the circuit courts.
BTW, there is no President in my lifetime that I trusted or respected more than Ronald Reagan. He was a man of tremendous principle. Yet, the stealth strategy brought us Sandra Day O'Connor and Anthony Kennedy. Compare that to the Clinton strategy of finding known quantities and appointing them.
In other words, you've invented a set of "relevant qualifications" that Miers must possess out of whole cloth and you expect everyone else to march in lock-step with you?
Reagan was the greatest president we will probably ever see, and he made two bad decisions by taking "unknown" quantities. However, the fact that Miers is an unknown quantity to almost everyone else, does not mean she is an unknown quantity to Bush.
I agree. I'll bet Harriet Miers will hold her own very nicely with the likes of Ann Coulter...and do it with dignity and grace. AND be a conscientious and trustworthy Supreme Court Justice.
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