Posted on 10/19/2005 2:09:36 PM PDT by bigsky
I have finally hit upon a misdeed by the Bush Administration so outrageous, so appalling, so egregious, I am calling for a bipartisan commission with subpoena power to investigate: Who told the President to nominate Harriet Miers? The commission should also be charged with getting an answer to this question: Who was his second choice?
Things are so bad, the best option for Karl Rove now would be to get himself indicted. Then at least he'd have a colorable claim to having no involvement in the Miers nomination.
This week's Miers update is:
(1) Miers is a good bowler (New York Times, Oct. 16, 2005, front pageJoshua B. Bolten, director of the Office of Management and Budget: "'She is a very good bowler"), which, in all honesty, is the most impressive thing I've heard about Miers so far.
(2) In 1989, she supported a ban on abortion except to save the life of the mother.
From the beginning of this nightmare, I have taken it as a given that Miers will vote to overturn Roe v. Wade. I assume that's why Bush nominated her. (It certainly wasn't her resume.) Pity no one told him there are scads of highly qualified judicial nominees who would also have voted against Roe. Wasn't it Harriet Miers' job to tell him that? Hey, wait a minute . . .
But without a conservative theory of constitutional interpretation, Miers will lay the groundwork for a million more Roes. We're told she has terrific "common sense." Common sense is the last thing you want in a judge! The maxim "Hard cases make bad law" could be expanded to "Hard cases being decided by judges with 'common sense' make unfathomably bad law."
It was "common sense" to allow married couples to buy contraception in Connecticut. That was a decision any randomly selected group of nine good bowlers might well have concurred with on the grounds that, "Well, it's just common sense, isn't it?"
But when the Supreme Court used common senserather than the text of the Constitutionto strike down Connecticut's law banning contraception, it opened the door to the Supreme Courts rewriting all manner of state laws By creating a nonspecific "right to privacy," Griswold v. Connecticut led like night into day to the famed "constitutional right" to stick a fork in a baby's head.
This isn't rank speculation about where "common sense" devoid of constitutional theory gets you: Miers told Sen. Arlen Specter (R.-Pa.) she would have voted with the majority in Griswold.
(Miers also told Sen. Patrick Leahy (D.-Vt.)in front of witnessesthat her favorite justice was "Warren," leaving people wondering whether she meant former Chief Justice Earl Warren, memorialized in "Impeach Warren" billboards across America, or former Chief Justice Warren Burger, another mediocrity praised for his "common sense" who voted for Roe v. Wade and was laughed at by Rehnquist clerks like John Roberts for his lack of ability.)
The sickness of what liberals have done to America is that so many citizens even conservative citizens seem to believe the job of a Supreme Court justice entails nothing more than "voting" on public policy issues. The White House considers it relevant to tell us Miers' religious beliefs, her hobbies, her hopes and dreams. She's a good bowler! A stickler for detail! Great dancer! Makes her own clothes!
That's nice for her, but what we're really in the market for is a constitutional scholar who can forcefully say, "No -- that's not my job."
We've been waiting 30 years to end the lunacy of nine demigods on the Supreme Court deciding every burning social issue of the day for us, loyal subjects in a judicial theocracy. We don't want someone who will decide those issues for us but decide them "our" way. If we did, a White House bureaucrat with good horse sense might be just the ticket.
Admittedly, there isn't much that's more important than ending the abortion holocaust in America. (Abortionist casualties: 7. Unborn casualties 30 million.) But there is one thing. That is democracy.
Democracy sometimes leads to silly laws such as the one that prohibited married couples from buying contraception in Connecticut. But allowing Americans to vote has never led to crèches being torn down across America. It's never led to prayer being purged from every public school in the nation. It's never led to gay marriage. It's never led to returning slaves who had escaped to free states to their slave masters. And it's never led to 30 million dead babies.
We've gone from a representative democracy to a monarchy, and the most appalling thing iseven conservatives just hope like the dickens the next king is a good one.
Most of the cases that you raise against a right to privacy are red-herrings because they are crimes anyway. Murder, treason, etc. affect the rights of others. The real question is, can the state pass laws that make unlawful something that affects the rights of no one and takes place solely within the confines of the walls of my own house? I will even agree that the sale of contraceptives does not absent and argument that I will not supply fall within that definition.
Nothing would besides it would be idiotic for a Democratically elected Government to do so. If you want marital relations to be a Constitutional right you can pass a Constitutional Amendment that so specifies. You could include other bodily functions as well. But such a right was not spelled out in the Constitution and the right of privacy has to be derived from penumbras. If you give the Judges the power to divine penumbras you make the Judiciary a Perfect Tyranny.
You apparently don't know the definition of "tangible." But in case you're right, can you tell me what a "right to privacy" feels like? I always imagined it would be smooth and supple, and slightly moist.
Meanwhile, I do contend a kind of "privacy right" exists: namely, that defined in the fourth amendment. I simply object to folks like you using the word "privacy" to refer to it, because you seem to imagine that it includes things like an inalienable right to bugger your milkman. If you read the fourth amendment quite carefully, you'll realize it doesn't.
From where I sit and post, most of the whining is coming from those who defend Miers. I'd just like to see a rational argument in defense of her.
Absent a constitutional right of privacy nothing stops the state from doing that.
Please look up "circular reasoning" in the dictionary. You claim the "right to privacy" implies that certain things "done in private" cannot be illegalized. I proved that some things can, and challenged you to justify your claim that other things can't. Your reply? "You haven't prove that some things can be banned in private; you're only giving examples of things that are illegal (including in private)."
How about Ann Coulter for the Supreme Court?
Well, we have a clear fundamental philosophical disagreement, and this is one that separates those of us with a more libertarian view of the constitution than some of the religious conservatives here. I believe that, for instance, marital relations, being of common law origin, predate and are implicit in the Constitution, and I don't think that the state has the power to define what happens in the marital bed.
It's like shooting fish in a barrel. The answer is yes: in some states at least you can be arrested for indecent exposure performed inside your house, if it is clearly visible from a public place.
Absent a constitutional right of privacy nothing stops the state from doing that.
The state already did that, friend. Are you claiming it didn't happen, or that the such laws should be deemed unconstitutional? Or that the SC would overturn them? And out of curiosity, where did you get the idea that sitting in your window naked was a part of your "right to privacy"?
In this electronic age (going back to the 60s where the use of the SSN has been ever increasing as a tracking tool), it would seem that some of the details of citizen privacy does need to be addressed by an Amendment to the Constitution.
Ah the cheap lawyer trick. Put words in someone's mouth and then beat him over the head with them.
You are claiming your wanna be girlfriend never made a personal attack on Miers? You've lost whatever shred of credibility you had.
1) Despite the astonishing fact that Miers was THE FIRST WOMAN to head the Texas Bar Association a dumping ground for losers, by the way
http://www.anncoulter.com/cgi-local/article.cgi?article=80
2) However nice, helpful, prompt and tidy she is, Harriet Miers isn't qualified to play a Supreme Court justice on "The West Wing," let alone to be a real one.
http://www.anncoulter.com/cgi-local/article.cgi?article=79
3)And then there are Ann's helpful comments while appearing on national television calling Miers a fetch it girl.
If anyone's viscious, it's your wannbe girlfriend, not Iowa Granny. Get over yourself, Sammy Boy.
"For instance, I believe that sexual practices between consenting adults are a matter of privacy covered under a right to privacy, and that any search or seizure related thereto would be illegal regardless of warrant or statutory law banning the practice."Your words, not mine. Are you being forgetful, or just dishonest?
But if you want to insist that true conservatives will recognise that the state has such powers, then I, and I suspect a lot of folks around here, would, were this to be true, take our idealistic dreasm of limited government elsewhere.
I agree. Too many forms of non-physical intrusion have been ruled Constitutional under the fourth Amendment. Such rulings clearly violate the original intent of that amendment, but perhaps an amendment would help.
I knew it was a mistake to dignify your idiotic post with a reply.
Get lost, creep.
LOL.
That's the best you have?
You claim your wanna be girlfriend never personally attacked Harriet Miers and I give you Ann's OWN words, and you can only act like a third grader.
Thanks for the laughs, Sammy.
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