Posted on 10/14/2005 1:36:03 PM PDT by freespirited
She may have no judicial record, but Supreme Court justice nominee Harriet Miers took firm stances on issues ranging from taxation to democratic reforms abroad as a one-term member of the Dallas City Council, a Dallas Morning News study of city records indicates.
For example, in 1991, Miers voted in favor of a council resolution reaffirming economic sanctions Dallas had imposed against South Africa, then under a white minority-rule apartheid government. The council adopted the resolution by a 6-2 vote with three absences.
At the time, President George H.W. Bush was considering repealing federal economic sanctions against the country.
A 1989 city ordinance prohibited Dallas government from buying goods that originated in South Africa or conducting business with firms that sold goods or services there for use by the police, military or prison system.
“As she goes through this nomination process, something like that should cheer the liberals and lead to gnashing of teeth among the very conservative social conservative,” said Cal Jillson, a political science professor at Southern Methodist University, Miers’ alma mater. “Hers was the appropriate moderate Republican position of the day, but beating up on South Africa wasn’t a way to win friends with conservatives.”
It was one of several council votes that will be scrutinized as her court nomination moves forward. She served between June 1989 and November 1991.
Miers was one of 10 Dallas council members to unanimously approve a 1989 agenda item that revised minimum height, weight and vision requirements for Dallas firefighters to facilitate “promotion of certain ranks in the Fire Department,” particularly women.
The agenda item’s title: “Implementation of Fire Department Affirmative Action Plan."
(h/t Patterico, who has more.)
Meanwhile, USA Today’s Joan Biskupic corroborates John Yoo’s assertion (later repeated by David Frum) that Harriet Miers was an influence on the Administration’s decision to argue FOR Affirmative Action in Grutter . From the the Oct 7 issue of Washington Week (no web link):
BISKUPIC: There’s not a paper trail at all on her, and actually the truth is -– there are a couple decisions that she was –- she played a larger role in. For example, the affirmative action case from Michigan two years ago, she gave a little bit more advice than usual. But one of the reasons that I think Alberto Gonzales had some things going against him is because he actually had his fingerprints on some of these memos. Harriet Miers didn’t.
In the instance of the Dallas firefighters, we can perhaps give Miers the benefit of the doubt; after all, she had yet to undergo her Party conversation, and in 1989, it may still have seemed like a good idea to decide on the basis of what kind of reproductive organs one is packing in one’s flame retardant trousers how effective one would be carrying heavy equipment and putting out fires (and really, who needs perfect eye sight to fight a three-alarm blaze? You just kinda look for the big yellow hot spot and spray water on it, right?)
But in Grutter, Bush let conservatives down, and he showed a willingness to make certain political calculations (wrongly, in my opinion) at the expense of ideological coherence. And if it turns out that Miers, his trusted friend and confidant, was (along with Al Gonzales) behind pushing that political and ideological surrender—than I simply cannot trust her to act any differently on the court.
Because presumably the President’s personal lawyer wouldn’t advise the President to side with a policy practice she felt was on its face unconstitutional. And race-based affirmative action is precisely such a political practice. That the Court continues to deny what is to many lay people so blindingly obvious is one of the reasons many Americans—and in particular, many conservatives, libertarians, and classical liberals—are so committed to changing the direction of the Court.
As Patterico reminds us:
[...] those who say we should “trust Bush” on the Miers nomination seem to forget his position on certain issues [...].
You might be able to trust Bush to pick a pal that he thinks will carry out his political agenda. But even if he’s right, that’s not necessarily the same thing as picking someone who will be your idea of a judicial conservative.
This gets precisely to the point, and it echoes an observation that I made recently, namely, that “the Miers nomination[...] appears to be an instance of George Bush finding an evangelical who will be tough on porn and abortion (which social cons will find appealing), but [who] will prove to be “moderate”—or at least deferential—on affirmative action and other proportional-based moves toward social-engineering [the Dallas firefighter example, which suggests, too, she would likely support Title IX].” That is, she appears to be a person whose loyalty to Bush extends to his political philosophy, which, on the domestic front, at least, is far less conservative than Howard Dean or the MoveOn folks would have you believe.
And what turns a judicial figure into an activist is precisely the kind of political calculus at work in the Administration’s thinking on these issues. Such a calculus plagued the tenure of Sandra Day O’Connor, who would dress her political beliefs in the garb of judicial opinion, and so who pleased liberal activists (as a “conservative” Justice) insofar as she was willing, structurally, to play their game.
But such a worldview should be anathema to a Supreme Court Justice. It’s the reason I strongly opposed an Alberto Gonzales nomination (he gave every sign that he would base important social decisions on political expediency, and he was on record as supporting affirmative action); and it’s the reason that I am now leaning forward making my opposition to Miers official.
The kind of race / gender-based social engineering that Miers seems to think will help society, if legally justified and politically implemented, is, to me, as big a divergence from our founding principles as there is. And beyond that, it has proven a practical failure insomuch as it has granted legitimacy to the notion of identity politics and given power to racial charlatans and feminist social engineers in whose interests it is to keep the country divided into warring factions.
It is also worth noting, so long as we’re pointing out that Miers’ support for the President seems to run toward the political, that had the White House filed a brief in Kelo, it would have filed on behalf of the municipal government.
Sandra Day O’Connor, you’ll remember, wrote a stinging dissent in that case. Which means that, if Miers truly does mirror the political philosophy of the President, the new Court might actually be taking a step backwards.
And if that doesn’t give you pause, nothing will.
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Glenn points to further divide over Miers: Bay vs Bay; and Ed Morrisey in the WaPo.
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update: At the invitation of Don Surber and Beth Cleaver, Commissar reads and responds to Beldar’s recent defense of Miers.
Beldar answers in the comments; more here.
See also, Mark Steyn.
Agreed. The concept of group rights is an affront to the constitution.
ping
"But changing the admittance standards so more women can become firefighters isn't affirmative action! It's equal rights!!!!"
So howled some who tried to spin this away.
Never mind that it is EXACTLY the definition of affirmative action!
Bump to watch the traffic. Seems well reasoned to me...but it's surely just the rantings of a malcontent.
steyn is a washed up hack of a writer...nobody at free republic ever took him seriously before, why should they start now that he's ranting like a DU troll?
Surely you are kidding? Steyn is absolutely brilliant most of the time. And incredibly funny....
This is not someone I would want on the Supreme Court. It's rank stupidity.
Boy you got here fast...
Miers supports race based preferences i.e. she believes in govt. sponsored and sanctioned racism see below:
Miers and Affirmative Action
Posted By Bobby On October 17, 2005 at 7:24 am
As conservatives wait for bits and pieces of information to be released from the White House regarding the nomination of Harriet Miers and her purported standing as someone who would be a conservative Supreme Court justice, one issue that is currently being discussed and which paints an ominous cloud on what the future may hold is her stance on affirmative action.
In a recent posting on National Review Online, the editors note that Miers is said to have rarely raised her voice in Bush policy debates, but they add that on the issue of affirmative action, she made her opinions known.
[I]t is known that she was a strong defender of racial preferences when they were being challenged before the Supreme Court. In the end, her influence helped sway the Bush administration to file a brief defending those preferences, which, in turn, helped sway the Court to uphold them.
The editorial adds that Miers’s career as a lawyer “shows a strong tendency to identify with local elites and establishments, to go along with prevailing ideas, and to avoid doing anything that might cause unpleasantness or rock the boat.”
These are useful personality traits, but they are not the traits of a Scalia or a Thomas — the kind of justice this president led conservatives to expect.
David Frum, former speech writer for President George W. Bush, also has added his comments on Harriet Miers’s position on affirmative action and how the White House ultimately took a weaker position than it could have regarding the Michigan affirmative action cause which was before the Supreme Court.
Many in the administration wanted to take a strong stand in favor of color-blindness. In the end, the administration faltered and argued that racial preferences are okay, up to a point. It is hard to imagine a more central issue to modern legal conservatives. Where was Miers? On the wrong side.
While there are a number of issues which I follow, there are a few that are especially close to my heart. One of those is affirmative action. As someone who is half Hispanic, I have seen first-hand the effects of affirmative action both in the advancement of people who were not nearly as qualified as others and also with reaction of people to my own success — people who attribute that success to affirmative action without even considering that it might have something to do with merit.
As I wrote several years ago in a column titled A Personal Look at Racial Preferences, “America cannot end discrimination by discriminating; we cannot yearn for a colorblind society and then base contracts, admissions, and employment on race.”
The Constitution does not talk about quotas, set-asides, or any such thing. These policies of affirmative action only perpetuate racial strife and contribute to race-based market which lines the pockets of the likes of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. A justice in the mold of Scalia or Thomas is what we want, and it doesn’t appear that we are getting it.
The White House either should be prepared to take a different tact with the committee hearings and get some real information out on how Miers would perform as a judge or else Miers should withdraw her nomination. The White House needs to stop with the information about her personal beliefs or religious convictions and instead focus on whether, in fact, she is a judicial conservative. By that, I don’t mean a political conservative. I don’t care whether she believes in lower taxes or not. I do care if she has a conservative judicial temperament, and without judicial experience or a substantial body of work to review, I’m afraid we are asking for too much to be taken on faith.
Affirmative action and other such issues are why we are working to get conservative judges appointed to the bench. We have the talent out there… let’s pick from it.
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