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 page–Joshua 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 sense–rather than the text of the Constitution–to strike down Connecticut's law banning contraception, it opened the door to the Supreme Court’s 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 witnesses–that 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 is–even conservatives just hope like the dickens the next king is a good one.
BTTT
This is what the Conservatives have waited for for 40 years. Yea, Good Choice Bush. Now do the correct thing & tell her to bow out. If not you can be the one that put the Republican party in the minority. We can top off your administration with naming the bridge to nowhere after you.
Its called PMS.
The Court created a right to privacy in Griswold, as a means of overcoming their lack of a Constitutional clause to justify their act of legislation. That right to privacy was later broadened to include abortion and sodomy.
If there is a constitutional right for married couples to be left alone in their bedrooms, then as Bork asks in Tempting, what would prevent them from using illegal drugs there?
And we got this odd idea that he might show the same type of loyalty to the people that worked to keep him in office as he seems to expect from his inner circle by keeping his often repeated promise to appoint Justices to the Supreme Court in the mold of Thomas and Scalia. He has exercised his right to appoint whomever he wanted. If that pick lacks in even rudimentary judgement then the Senate (Republicans included) have no obligation to rubber-stamp that nominee. She is entitled to an up or down vote. Hopefully they will vote her down and hopefully the next nominee will be at least minimally qualified (bowling and hero worship aren't adequate qualifications, btw).
Didn't he ask Dingy Harry? SOP - ask the enemy but not his base.
Ann says a lot about what how a lot of us feel. I must say I agree with much of what she has to say. Plus, who else gives us humor with their rhetoric?
Don't ask Annie but sit down with BONO. Real smart!
Who really cares what Ann Coulter thinks?
When she started sleeping with a Liberal manchild, young enough to be her son, she clearly demonstrated she holds no Conservative values. WHO is she to hold anyone accountable?
Thanks, Annie, for showing your true colors. Your agenda is to see your name in print and to be laid by kids still using zit creme.
The problem is that most people try to attack Griswold by claiming there is no Constitutional right to privacy, which makes most people uncomfortable. The real issue is, even if you have a right to privacy, so what?
In some cases the answers weren't responsive to the question. Have you read the follow up letter from Specter and Leahy?
"President of the United States forgo his constitutional right to choose a Supreme Court nominee."
The President doesn't have rights, he has powers. We have rights. We're exercising them.
Exactly!
And for those who like Robert Bork and think he would've made a great justice, that is Bork's opinion of Griswold too.
People who are worried about the spectre of "the government in our bedrooms" should know that the CT law was never enforced.
The only reason that law got into court in the first place is that the plaintiffs overtly violated the law for the very purpose of getting the law reversed by the courts.
I.e., the plaintiffs were NOT some unsuspecting couple trying to buy contraceptives, but Leftists who deliberately set themselves up.
(In fact, the plaintiff "Griswold" was Estelle T. Griswold -- director of Planned Parenthood of Connecticut at the time. There was never any prosecution of any "married couple.")
This was all part of a strategy of the Left to transfer power from state legislatures to an imperial court. And they succeeded.
There are many obsolete laws on the books of many states. They simply are never enforced. If citizens of those states think that obsolete, never-enforced laws need to be abolished, they have a remedy: Vote for legislators who will abolish those laws.
The critics of the decision who complain about penumbras and eminations from the Constitution, unfortunately deride the right of privacy that was identified. Perhaps the wording was boarderline 1960's wierdo, and that is unfortuante. Most Constitutional conservatives believe that there is a right to privacy and that the government can stay out of our houses, bedrooms, etc. That is not where conservatives should take issue, but rather with the question, ok, so we have a right to privacy. How does that prevent the State of CT from outlawing the sale of birth control methods?
I love Ann, but I disagree with her on this issue. She is a rock solid conservative.
"When she started sleeping with a Liberal manchild, young enough to be her son, she clearly demonstrated she holds no Conservative values."
NO conservative values?! Not one?! For whatever transgression you accuse her of, she's not fit to comment on ANY conservative issue?! That's harsh. I wonder who is actually fit to comment on anything in your world, since everyone makes mistakes.
"Who really cares what Ann Coulter thinks?
When she started sleeping with a Liberal manchild, young enough to be her son, she clearly demonstrated she holds no Conservative values. WHO is she to hold anyone accountable?
Thanks, Annie, for showing your true colors. Your agenda is to see your name in print and to be laid by kids still using zit creme."
Er, none of that was true. Not even slightly. It is a made-up Page Six story by someone eager to get his name in circulation.
But never let the facts get in the way of a mindless personal attack.
That's my read. It would also explain her response as to whom was her favorite Justice. I could use these instances to attempt to proclaim she'll do that outrage or do this outrage but I can't persuade myself to make the case if I don't believe it.
For sake of argument let's say she's a well intentioned conservative, the grave danger is in opening up loopholes by poorly reasoned decisions that create the potential for more R v W's. It isn't good enough to be a "yes" vote, though that still is questionable. Great harm can be done in the opinions that accompany the verdict. R v W didn't occur in a vacuum. Griswold came before. Well intentioned, perhaps, but see what it allowed to unfold through the Supreme Court in the years following.
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