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!
"Meekness" is not one of them.
I'm afraid it's nothing so dramatic. But I am disappointed in the choice.
Yeah? Gee, I hope you're right. Guess we'll just have to keep our fingers crossed and watch for a few years to find out.
"There are many traits that conservatives are looking for in a Supreme Court Nominee.
"Meekness" is not one of them."
This editorial is the sickest form of rationalization. People in the lock-step zombie mindset are finding every rationalization they can to support Miers... none of it actually having to do with any relevant qualification
"I realize that many are concerned about Miers, but I think we need to trust Bush."
So after a week of wrangling we have come full circle. "Trust Bush" is still the only justification that the pro-Miers side has.
Someone said trust, but verify. Fine, Harriet Miers is pro-life, period. How do I know? She has donated $1000 to the following Congressional candidates: Jon Newton, Don Stenberg, Pete Sessions. All of them are solid pro-life Republicans, you wouldn't donate to them if you are pro-abortion. She has attended pro-life dinners and donated to pro-life groups.
Perhaps you should rethink what "meek" means in the Gospel.
http://65.66.134.201/cgi-bin/webster/webster.exe?search_for_texts_web1828=meek
Antonin Scalia has been described with many different adjectives-not all of them necessarily flattering-but "meek" has never been one of them.
I will admit that I am "concerned" with this choice. But in the end, even though Bush has let conservatives down in other areas, his judicial nominees have been strong conservatives.
" Guess we'll just have to keep our fingers crossed and watch for a few years to find out."
OK smartass, how did you do with Souter? Breyer????
Happy now?
She might vote conservative on the Court - but the Supreme Court isn't about voting your feelings. It involves thinking about constitutional law and applying it impartially.
I don't care squat about her being 'born again' - so am I, and I have no business on the Supreme Court.
We need a very intelligent person, well versed in the law, who can write opinions that will resonate for decades...not a nice woman who hasn't expressed any noticable views on anything by age 60.
I could care less how well she comports with biblical principle, so long as she fulfills the requirements enumerated by so many other skeptics of the Miers nomination, e.g. a scrupulous adherence to the Constitution's original intent, a willingness to buck elite-but misguided-opinion, and a judicial philosophy that will stand the test of time.
She should be in good shape then, provided she never told a co-worker, "There's a pubic hair on my Coke can."
But, then again, the Libs could always just recruit some stooge to make the claim anyway. It's happened before.
As with pretty much everyone on the center-right, my initial reaction to the Miers appointment was anger, disbelief, and opposition. I feared, and many feared, that Miers was another Souter — and without the credentials to match. But I decided to do some research on Miers before I vented in my blog. After looking at the evidence, I came to two conclusions: 1) she's qualified; 2) she's very conservative.
The pick of Miers was very unexpected: Why Miers? But in retrospect it's not very mysterious. Every president wants for SCOTUS justices that they agree with nearly 100% of the time. After many years of working together, W knows that Miers agrees with him on nearly everything. So when Senator Reid suggested that W think about putting Miers on the court, W had every reason to do so.
Did Reid hoodwink W? Not likely. W has known Miers for years and well; Reid knows her only slightly. The Dems effectively told W that they would confirm a justice that W knows is in near-total agreement with him. It's not surprising that he took it. From W's perspective, he had no reason to start a fight with the Senate when Democrats indicated they would surrender nearly 100% of what he wanted without a fight.
From W's perspective: you don't need the nuclear option when the other guy waves the white flag.
But is W right about Miers?
Souter, Kennedy, and O'Connor all had one thing in common — they were unknown personally to the president who appointed them. Reagan and Bush 41 trusted the judgment of conservative legal experts who thought they would be good conservatives — these experts turned out to be mistaken. W is not trusting conservative legal experts on this pick but his own personal work with Miers for a decade. W might be wrong — but Miers is here the anti-Souter, a candidate whose work the president knows quite thoroughly; something which contrasts with Souter, et al.
Not that W's judgment is untrustworthy. Rather, he shouldn't be trusted for the simple reason that there's no need. Miers is not an unknown. She has a long paper-trail, much longer than people realize. The evidence is quite clear and quite conservative. For example...
-snip-
(GrenfellHunt in President Aristotle, October 6, 2005)
To Read This Article Click Here
"Let's give her a chance. Bombs away." Excellent choice in phrase, to say the least.
Why is it that no one seems to be concerned-even the slightest bit-that this woman has spent sixty years of her life not accumulating a written or oral record by which you could discern her political or judicial philosophy?
I have friends in their twenties whose political viewpoints are immediately identifiable.
Doesn't this disturb any of the Miers supporters, just the least bit?
Doesn't it raise some qualms about her nomination?
Clarence Thomas has on occasion voted the opposite of Scalia.
O'Connor was livid about the Kelo decision.
I can only hope that each judge votes the way he/she believes is right for 'we the people.
Breyer and Ginsberg are terrible jurists. Kennedy was vetted by Mark Levin.
We have had awesome nominees so far. This President has picked the best of the best and I do trust him.
He has earned my trust and nothing will shake that trust. He does his best and no one can ask for more.
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