Posted on 10/06/2005 7:15:47 PM PDT by jdhljc169
Today's Chronicle of Higher Education has a story that describes Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers' involvement with a lecture series at her alma mater, SMU Law School. The inaugural lecturer? Gloria Steinem. I've played these games in law schools, and this story sends up red flags for me. Here's my take on it ...
I was reserving judgment, but after having read the Chronicle article (and given conservatives' skittishness about her already), I think she's a non-starter. Miers may be a very nice person - and by all accounts she is. But she has never served as a judge, and while I do not think that an attorney must have been a judge in order to be an excellent justice, I do think that if you want to be certain of a nominee's views on the proper role of the judiciary, you better have seen them in action as a judge.
We haven't. And absent that, we must look to other events in Miers' professional life to ascertain her perspective. To that end, the Chronicle article is instructive:
In the late 1990s, as a member of the advisory board for Southern Methodist University's law school, Ms. Miers pushed for the creation of an endowed lecture series in women's studies named for Louise B. Raggio, one of the first women to rise to prominence in the Texas legal community ...Ms. Miers, whom President Bush announced on Monday as his choice to fill the Supreme Court seat being vacated by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, not only advocated for the lecture series, but also gave money and solicited donations to help get it off the ground ... A feminist icon, Gloria Steinem, delivered the series's first lecture, in 1998. In the following two years, the speakers were Patricia S. Schroeder, the former Democratic congresswoman widely associated with women's causes, and Susan Faludi, the author of Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women (1991). Ann W. Richards, the Democrat whom George W. Bush unseated as governor of Texas in 1994, delivered the lecture in 2003.
Having served on the faculties of three law schools, I can tell you that if you are an academic of the conservative political persuasion, this is the way you play the game: you call things by the terms the liberal academic establishment uses ("Gender Studies," "Women's Studies," etc.) and then you bring in lecturers and provide content that challenges their prevailing "wisdom."
There must be dozens -- hundreds -- thousands -- of conservative female attorneys, politicians, pundits and successful business owners in this country who would be wonderful role models for female SMU law students. If Miers pushed for the creation of a lecture series to honor Texas' first and finest female attorneys, and the series brought in the likes of Steinem and Faludi, then I know as much as I need to know about this woman.
Stick a fork in her. She's done.
Watch the hearings or shall I say it, trust the man we elected to make this choice. If you cannot trust your president for these decisions then why did you vote for him?
Dane, this was reported in the WAPO.
I am demonstrating fairness in noting they have lied before. But I am also not going to discount it either. This needs to either be shot down as untrue, or verified as true.
At the same time the folks in the Federalist Society who post here do know that.
I think we now know more about Miers than Brown.
"the Renquist wasn't qualified"
LOL May the Ghost of William Renquist come get ya in the nite.
How do you know? She has not appeared before Congress yet.
Woh, a women's studies lecture series had a bunch of yappy women give lecture, gosh that's never happened before.
People sure are eager to stab this woman in the back, sure hope nobody ever tries to appoint them to anything, the wheel of karma will kick their ass.
The ones bitching and moaning are NOT the ones who got Bush elected but either didn't vote for him or did only after bitching and moaning that he was not conservative enough.
Far more than the extreme Right of the GOP voted for him. He is NOT responsible to anything but the Nation.
He didn't take an oath to those who think they own him.
I would call that a positive revelation about her character.
Frankly, I am more worried about how Roberts will vote. Don't get me wrong, he was brilliant at the hearings, but he never said what he believed in either. Is it just me, or do I smell a double standard? Knowing the constitution, and how one applies the constitution, are very different issues, and in both cases we just don't know.
You would be well servied by reading the sheer brilliance of Federalist Paper 76. I assure you, it is NOT dull reading today.
It discusses the pros and cons of Executive nominations.
http://federalistpapers.com/federalist76.html
How can you base your verdict on no evidence?
BRAVO!
Needing more information does not mean that is a "no" vote. Until I learn otherwise, I am keeping an open mind and trusting the President.
Needing more information does not mean that is a "no" vote. Until I learn otherwise, I am keeping an open mind and trusting the President.
***
Until you learn what? Just curious...
A thinker you are. :)
You want to rethink that?
"It sounds to me that that is what he is saying."
*Smiles* uh huh
I always said that I knew people like th eClintons in Law School and that secured me in my distaste for them and a fairly accurate gauge. I am beginning to think that of Miers as well. Miss Neat Hard Worker, puddle deep intellectually. I am afraid that W does not have the capacities to know what is required in a Judge other than a slogan about "not making the law." Things are a little more complex than that and we need someone who is intellectually agile enough not to get caught up by the "appealing" aspects of leftist judicial thought.
Miers could be dead in the water if it's discovered she once bought a Streisand record..
Come on do really think she would give a one word answer, "warren". Probably just the compost trying to make more trouble.
BTW, according to the Compost she was asked her favorite "justices"(plural) and the Post only gave that non-sensical answer. Did they leave out Rehnquist, White, Scalia?
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