Posted on 10/16/2005 8:13:49 AM PDT by Crackingham
Conservative howling over Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers echoes unabated since President Bush introduced his friend and confidant to the public on Oct. 3. If anything, the clamor has intensified, with some in the conservative chattering class now hounding Miers to withdraw. But while Bush dodges the brickbats, another critical element of the Republican political base is applauding from the wings.
That would be big business. For the first time in more than three decades, corporate America could find itself with not one, but two, Supreme Court allies with in-the-trenches industry experience -- Miers and newly minted Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. Don't be fooled by the low-key personas they have projected thus far; both are legal wonks who have packed a powerful punch in the corporate world. Together, they could be a CEO's dream team.
You wouldn't know it listening to the punditocracy, which is fixated on Miers's record -- or lack thereof -- on hot-button social issues. Bush is scrambling to quell this uprising by touting Miers's loyalty and Christian bona fides while the White House dispatches defenders to reassure his conservative base that she won't be Souter in a skirt.
Lost in the bitter brouhaha over abortion, gay marriage, God and the flag is another important facet of the Supreme Court debate: Miers has a blue-chip résumé that would wow Wall Street. Her record on constitutional issues is thin, but Miers's top-flight credentials in corporate law are attractive to the CEO-in-chief, who holds an MBA and was himself a businessman before being elected governor in Texas.
Her decades as a high-powered corporate litigator are just the beginning. She also has served on the corporate boards of a securities fund and a mortgage company. She's tackled the entire spectrum of commercial issues firsthand
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Take my hero, Ronald Reagan for example. He'll most likely be the best POTUS ever in my lifetime. Reagan knew the realties of politics, did live in some delusional fantasy world, knew that to get his 'your agenda' accomplished in the real world, he had to get elected, and also compromise at times. I remember very well how some of these perpetual whiners said the same things about Reagan as they are saying about Bush. "Reagan's a fraud", "Not one agency has been abolished", "He's spending like a drunken sailer", "The deficit is out of control", "He has filled his administration with RINOS and establishment insider cronies", "He's made a deal with Tip O'Neil and betrayed us conservatives", BLAH, BLAH, BLAH." Some things never change, as in the perpetual whine.
I, too, would have preferred Thomas or Scalia as Chief. It is possible that he thought 2 "fights" was better than 3.
But that decision made it possible for those to whom he was close to once again lobby hard that 'the SDO seat' had to be a woman.
And he didn't much 'like' the women who were highly qualified.
I believe he may well stand for the constitution before stare decisis. There are a LOT of SCOTUS decisions that must be overturned.
At least Roberts is young enough to influence SCOTUS in correcting its path.
It won't help with tort reform laws. But to the degree that the problem is judges NOT DOING THEIR JOB correctly interpreting existing law, she could help by defining new precedent which follows the intent of the constitution and existing laws regarding lawsuits, especially class action lawsuits.
Cutting down class-action lawsuits where there is actually no real victim (and which exist mostly to extort money for lawyers) would do wonders for our business climate, and might even obviate the need for radical tort reform laws.
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