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.
I guess to you Mara Salvatrucha is an "MSM exaggeration". I doubt if it was to that poor girl in Florida who was gang raped by a pack of your beloved illegals last week.
Cult of Bush?
Gee, that sounds like a DU-type comment as well.
You act like all the folks supporting Miers are knee-jerk Bush supporters. Well, I oppose Bush's stances on illegal immigration, spending, education, Medicare and other areas.
But because I think oppoents to the Miers nomination are completely off-base for judging her before knowing much about her, and are running around parroting the usualy Dem talking points such as cronyism, I've joined the Cult of Bush?
(I think you posted to the wrong person... I agree with Podhoretz here)
That's not possible. I have been reliably informed by just about every "conservative" voice there is that the only way to sip from the Sacred Chalice of Constitutional Wisdom is to sit on a federal appellate court. One doesn't have to sit there long—Clarence Thomas was only a judge for a year—but without at least a brief sojourn in that Holy Inner Sanctum of Knowledge, one is forever doomed to be an ignorant yokel. How then would all the members of the Senate Judiciary Committee have come by this learning?
Huh and nothing about the gang rapes that happened and were perpetuated by native born Americans in the last week.
They happen and you know it but decide as the good democrat as you are to promote your myths on this board.
I surmise hillary is saluting you. Divide and conquer is her and your strategy.
Of COURSE you elitist posturing moron JP. Don't bother to consider the audience or the forum. NO just make a completely ridiculous apples to oranges comparison to says because she wrote this way in form A it obviously means she would behave that way in Forum B. Absolutely logically indefensible. For someone postulating on another person's intellect JP, you just made one of most seriously irrational arguments in world history. JP, run for cover, Hewitt is going to HUMILIATE you when he response to this desperate attempt to rationalize an emotion based position. Absolutely room temperature intellect stuff JP, am SERIOUSLY embarrassed for you.
Because since it is their job to pass on Supreme Court nominees they have to know what questions to ask.
great post. I'm with you. I'd be happy to see someone with some real world experience ont eh court. I'm sick of all the people who are willing to split hairs over aruling instead of considering what the real world must live with when they take land or let crooks go free.
In my town, DC, being managing partner is based principally on your ability to bring business into the firm, which is a social skill, not a legal skill. The intellectual horsepower to win the cases is provided by the staff.
I guess your beloved illegals were committing the gang rapes Americans won't commit.
Jerseyhighlander is right. You are falling below your usual levels of ranting incoherence today.
Talk about speaking from ignorance.
Glorified personal attorney? You know what, you epitomize what is wrong with your side in this debate.
It is fair to discuss whether her background is suitable for the court.
But you are being a world-class Klymer by calling her a "glorified personal attorney."
She has represented major corporate clients in court. She has had briefs submitted to the Texas Supreme Court and SCOTUS that won decisions without presenting verbal arguments.
And she has been White House Attorney and the attorney for a man who was both a governor and a president.
So knock off the denigration of an accomplished woman. Unless you can't help being such a jerk.
Have you worked as an attorney?
OK, smart guy, what are your intellectual credentials?
Since June, Bush Jr. has had two opportunities to appoint Supreme Court justices. Luttig and Rogers Brown haven't been nominated yet - why is that?
After all his blathering "it's all about the judges!" this time last year while begging for campaign loot and votes, ol' George Jr. is looking like a weaselly idiot with this Church Lady nominee.
She didn't keep 400 lawyers in line. She brought in business that kept them fed. She finds the cases and they provide the arguments. It is also insulting to describe federalist society law clerks as "snot-nosed types fresh out of college" types.
You do not win Supreme Court arguments by snapping a whip and pulling the leash of subordinates, but by having better arguments.
Good point. She may well have been a connected rainmaker.
And having briefs submitted doesn't mean she wrote them.
Hear, hear. Haven't seen you around much lately!
Lurking and laughing, are you?
Well argued. Bump.
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