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Posted on 10/08/2005 8:52:39 AM PDT by JCEccles
The lovably irascible Beldar, the Texas trial lawyer who is one of the two people on earth hotly defending the Miers nomination (the other being our buddy Hugh Hewitt), has posted a convenient link to articles written by Harriet Miers during one of her stints as a bar association honcho. He did this in part to address a charge I made on Hugh's show that Miers shouldn't be taken seriously because over the past 30 years of hot dispute on matters of constitutional law she hadn't published so much as an op-ed on a single topic of moment. Thank you, Beldar. But you shouldn't have. I mean, for Miers's sake, you really shouldn't have.
Miers's articles here are like all "Letters from the President" in all official publications -- cheery and happy-talky and utterly inane. They offer no reassurance that there is anything other than a perfectly functional but utterly ordinary intellect at work here.
Let me offer you an analogy. I was a talented high-school and college actor. I even considered trying it as a career at one time. As an adult, I've been in community theater productions (favorably reviewed in the Virginia local weekly supplement of the Washington Post, yet!) and spent a year or so performing improv comedy in New York. I'm a more than decent semi-pro. But if you took me today and gave me a leading role in the Royal Shakespeare Company where I would have to stand toe to toe with, say, Kenneth Branagh, Kevin Spacey, Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline and others, I would be hopelessly out of my depth. I would be able to give some kind of performance. But it would be a lousy performance, a nearly unwatchable performance.
Would that be because I hadn't acted at their level for a few decades? Would it be because I don't really have commensurate talent? Who knows? Who cares? I would stink. And based on the words she herself has written -- the clearest independent evidence we have of her capacity to reason and think and argue -- as a Supreme Court justice, Harriet Miers would be about as good.
It was more a joke than anything, guy.
The reason it is a joke is that oddly, unlike for other offices in government, the Constitution says nothing whatsoever that I can find to constrain who can serve as a Justice. It's a little be astounding, but it looks to be true.
As best I can tell, Tony Blair could be nominated and would be legally qualified, as it were. The nominee need not even be a citizen.
Thank you for finally outing yourself as a chuckie schumer office basemnt sweller, sammy.
JPod is really pissing me off. She has an undergraduate degree in mathematics. Sorry, that makes her smarter than any of her detractors and at least 90% of the Constitutional law faculty at Harvard and Yale.
Ah Dane, commandante of our resident San Patricio Battalion !
BTW, I pinged you on a thread about how all categories of crime are dropping except one. Gang crime, which has gone up by 50% since 2002. And that because of Mara Salvatrucha and your beloved illegals. You didn't answer. Gee, why not ?
The above was your comment. I left off the tags in my last post.
Your regularly scheduled attacks and barbs have been incoherent and out of focus all day Dane. You might want to take a breater and regroup.
We're all very disappointed in your lack of effort in disrupting conversation on FR today.
Yeah, where Ronnie Earle is a great judicial mind.
But seriously, aren't you tired of reading scathing dissents?
I'm going to toss out another tidbit.
I don't think USSC Justices should be constrained to be lawyers.
Many of the cases are fine points and dwell on legal minutiae, but in general the influence of lawyers on American society is way overdone and needs to be undone. This is a result of numbers more than anything else. No need to add some sort of legitimization to it by insisting that Justices be lawyers.
A non lawyer can interpret the Constitution and essentially ignore stare decisis. It is not clear there is anything wrong with this. It would also save money on law clerk budget.
".....The president’s job approval is mired at the lowest level of his presidency — 39 percent. While four of five Republicans say they approve of Bush’s job performance — enthusiasm in that support has dipped over the last year."
-Newsweek
AMEN to that!!!!!!!! Sheesh!!! Are we on the right forum here or not?? Come on Freepers!!!
Well, you lost all credibility with that "successful office manager" line. Anyone who equates "office manager" with "managing partner" has no clue about the legal community.
It is odd that so many people who have no experience as practicing lawyers so freely opine on exactly what a top level commericial lawyer actually does. Like so many other things, people think that reading about something on the internet makes them an expert.
A disaster on every level.
Miers is the conservative version of Ruth Ginsberg. She is likely not going to write memorable opinions, but she will be a solidly reliable vote with the Scalia-Thomas-Roberts faction. That's what the court most needs now, not more well-qualified fools.
Everyone would like to have a renowned scholar on the bench, but its not Bush's fault that his nominee isn't one. Its the scorched-earth leftists of the Democratic party who are to blame for SCOTUS nominees with no track record. Look at the vicious, ugly treatment of other nominees. The blame rests on Schumer, Kennedy, Hillary and their ilk. In Bork's defense, he been writing about the problem of no-track-record nominees for years. Miers is a symptom, of the larger problem.
We also have to face the political realities. O'Conner has been the swing vote for years and this nominee is going to tip the court to the conservative side. I think the Dems and RINO's are facing the reality that the court is going to change. Bush gave them what they wanted, an easy way out, and they are going to give him what he wants, a conservative court.
I hoped that Bush would have effectively thrown a touchdown pass on this, but instead he chose a safe running play for a first down. I want to Monday morning quarterback this, but Bush sees the defense he is up against and is making the best play possible.
I'm in favor of Miers. But against a political process that produces no-track-record candidates.
No kidding. Kristol is not a limited-government conservative. Neither are a lot of Miers' critics.
Wheras Thomas Sowell, who is one of the best originalist writers going, said that although he would like to see a seasoned Constitutionalist jurist on the court, he understands the constraints Bush is operating under, and, within those constraints, he thinks Miers could end up being a very good choice.
So I'll put Sowell on one side of the seesaw - a man who lives and breathes the Constitution - and Kristol and Krauthammer and Coulter and Malkin - who either want expanded government or write more on non-Constitutional topics.
And watch the see-saw turn into a trebuchant under the weight of Sowell's opinion.
Uh maybe that you sammy, hillary basement dweller, post MSM exagerations, to make false political points.
Oh BTW, sammy, what do you think of Mexicans and Central Americans taking up the call to rebuild New Orleans.
When are you(sammy) going to clear out the freezers full of rotten seafood?
I hope that more people begin to see through this "elitist" nonsense. No one is more of an inside "elitist" than this Miers. She has been a member of a club of cronies that none of the rest of us can join because it does not depend upon individual achievement, but schmoozing with Texas power brokers and becoming a WH insider.
What's a "breater" JH.
Just following the lead of a spelling nazi.
Yeah, one of the more absurd arguments I saw was that Miers on the court would be unable to take on dealing with federalist society law clerks.
Like a woman who kept 400 lawyers in line couldn't handle some snot-nosed types fresh out of college.
I wonder how many folks currently on the federal bench ever made it to managing partner?
And the "Cult of Bush" seems to have infected Free Republic!
Just ask yourself...if Clinton had done this, and Miers was Clinton's nominee with EXACTLY the same record and assurances...would you support her?
If not...why not?
So...why is the "Cult of Bush" more important than Conservative Principles?
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