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.
So, no, not for backup.
Someone can be a member of MENSA-and as I've alluded to in earlier posts, I'm not gainsaying the intelligence of this nominee-and yet not have the intellectual courage to defend their ideas.
Without that, their intelligence is of little practical application.
I'm coming into this discussion a little late, but I had a thought. What would be the value of nominating someone to go through all this hooplah just to have this someone turned down? Would it ease the nomination of President Bush's second choice? Is it feasible to suspect this may be going on so that the person he really wants in there has a better chance?
I'm surprised they are surprised, they must live in an echo chamber: conservatives all over the net have been questioning her credentials. And the question is not her intellegence [we know she is] the question is whether she has the level of intelligence required to sit on SCOTUS.
And?? The issue is that George Bush promised a candidate in "the mold of Scalia and Thomas". He failed to deliver on that promise. If this was his first term and he did this he would be a one-termer just like and for pretty much the same reasons as George "Read My Lips" H.W. Bush.
So, which cronies were appointed after decades of hard work by conservative Republicans who finally were able to win control of the House, Senate, and White House? Which cronies were appointed after a president promised his base that he would appoint someone "in the mold of" two constitutional scholars of national stature? Which cronies were appointed to the court after decades of malfeasant and destructive decisions that were based on the whims of the liberal extremist judicial activists on the court?
Sounds like Coulter's comment on Maher's show that Miers is "a cleaning lady." Sorry Ann but that is not just unfunny but downright slanderous. When Ann or any critic has been the head honcho of a 200+ law firm and the head of a state bar of the third largest state and the chief attorney for a sitting president who was instrumental in vetting strong conservative justices etc. then we can talk.
Until the hearings I am not going to dismiss Ms. Miers - she deserves a chance to prove herself after all the bickering and rude putdown of her character. It is as simple as that
I doubt YOU have the mental fortitude to make such a presumption of her abilities or how she will judge in two years.
My God people are just so comfortable in bypassing her past history of achievement and then denouncing her as some old lady cowering in the corner. It is almost the same attitude as on the left where the presumption is that african-americans are unable to achieve without affirmative action.
Please!
A perfectly functional but utterly ordinary intellect can be, in fact, a beautiful thing.
In a stunning discovery Thursday, Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers was found to have a critical role in the writing of “Blackstone’s Commentaries,” the legendary Bible of English common law, long regarded as the standard authority for lawyers. Her name arose as the result of an Oxford study which revealed her to be William Blackstone’s ghost-writer.
Reaction of Washington insiders was mixed. Evangelicals praised her intellectual. credentials, but a staffer for Sen. Patrick Leahy said the senator was concerned whether or not Ms. Miers could be impartial in suits affecting British interests, specifically, “any case involving the English language.”
Senator Charles Schumer stated, “So what if she was a crony of Blackstone. This still does not put her name up there with the best legal minds. After all, Blackstone was the authority on the COMMON law, not the elite law.”
Senator Edward Kennedy said he had never heard of Blackstone and that this new development would, at the very least, deepen the quagmire in Iraq.
There are easily 15-20 attorneys in my mid-sized city who have accomplished as much if not more as an attorney or managing partner as Harriet Miers has. Why shouldn't one of them be nominated?
Considered in the best light, Miers is a sad, barely adequate choice. Compared to Luttig, McConnell, or Rogers-Brown, Miers is woefully inadquate. Her nomination is an embarrassment to the Bush Administration, which is why Harry Reid is so high on it.
What pressures are those? she hears the case, has her peeps research the law, and then she comes to a defendable position. Repeat a few thousand times and that's a career on the USSC.
What pressure?
O, let us all now sing in praise of the beauty of mediocrity!
And the young child was the only one who noted that the Emperor, in fact, had no clothes. :-)
"The Constitution is a simple, straightforward document. You don't need years of training in constitutional law to get it right. You only (need) it to get it wrong. "
This is a good argument. The other aspect that seems to be missing in this debate is justices as political figures.....yeah, I know, it's almost heresy to speak of this, but lets face it - legal pedigree or no several justices have no business being on the court based on their stupidity alone.
Congress sets the number of justices on the the Supreme Court - FDR tried but failed to pack the court to get justices with politically convenient (socialist, pro New Deal) views...I wonder why he would do that? When you start to consider that the USSC should be considered as much a political institution (whether the justices admit it or not) as a constitutionally established judicial one, then this whole argument of level of qualification is moot.
Why don't we go back to the originalist view and set the court at 6 and just keep the best ones? (/rhetorical question)
You have a malignant brain tumor and your HMO must choose a surgeon to perform the surgery.
The HMO has two choices: one is a world renown neurosurgeon who has removed 150 of these tumors and is widely published for his state-art-the-art techniques and skills at saving patients' lives.
The other choice is a competent general surgeon assigned to small city hospital. She has never removed a brain tumor but assures the HMO that with a little bit of study and reading she is confident she can get the job done. The HMO chooses her and explains, "She may have an ordinary intellect and comoletely lack experience in operating on brain tumors, but she's a hard worker, knows what a scalpel is, and we like her a lot."
Do you feel good about the person who is about to crack your skull open?
The problem with the example you give is that if we apply it to the situation here, you are suggesting that she have experience as a supreme court justice to qualify to become a supreme court justice.
It doesn't work that way.
To answer your question, though, I'd select the specialist.
but I am concerned about Souter-2....
Aw for cripes sake. These idiots are just as bad as the MSM idiots. They talk only to themselves and arrive at the conclusion that they are indeed the best and the brightes and woe to anyone who disagrees with them. Podhoretz can make it three and kiss my ass.
You nominate them. To whatever you please.
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