Posted on 10/29/2005 5:23:51 PM PDT by Halfmanhalfamazing
WASHINGTON - Rebounding from the failed nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court, President Bush is poised to select between two of the nation's leading conservative federal appeals court judges - both experienced jurists with deep backgrounds in constitutional law - for what promises to be a bruising Senate confirmation battle.
With an announcement expected Sunday or Monday, administration officials have narrowed the focus to Judges Samuel Alito of New Jersey and Michael Luttig of Virginia, sources involved in the process said. Both have sterling legal qualifications and solid conservative credentials, and both would set off an explosive fight with Senate Democrats, who are demanding a more moderate nominee to replace Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.
(Excerpt) Read more at mercurynews.com ...
Both are terrific!
Who cares if its a woman or not. If there choices are real, ill forgive GW for unspeakable thing that happened before.
My pick is Luttig also but I'd be just as ecstatic if he picked Alito. Either way we win and we can look forward to a good old fashioned knock-down, drag-out fight with the Dems and enjoy every minute of it.
"On second thought, he needed only to consult with Ann Coulter". Well, I for one would vastly prefer that to consulting only with the Missus, and Sen. Reid, which resulted in his last pick.
If there is one thing that needs to be done in the future by the Court, it is reigning in the absurd decisions of the past 70 years regarding the Commerce Clause.
You can say that again.
Graham and Brownback were the two RINOs who first demanded that Bush and Miers violate the Attorney Client privilege to get their vote for Miers.
Anyone with an I.Q. larger than there shoe size knows NO PRESIDENT WOULD EVER ALLOW A NOMINEE TO VIOLATE THE ATTORNEY CLIENT PRIVILEGE.
If McCain ever makes a sharp turn, Grahams nose will break off in his a$$. The goal of McCain and Graham is to destroy George Bush so they can make the case that taking the Republican party left and nominating McCain/Graham in 2008 is the only way to stop Hillary.
AS far as Graham and McCain are concerned the sacrifice of the Supreme court is nothing compared to them getting the Republican nomination in 2008.
I think that makes Alito the better pick.
If we are truly going to see either of these fine gentlemen selected by President Bush, then there will be a hard fight in the Senate. If we have to fight, let's fight for the very best possible candidate --- and for me, restoration of the Second Amendment is the very best reason to fight our hardest.
If we can find enough justices to take a principled stand on the Second Amendment and void the GCA and the NFA, well, that truly will be as great of a gift as we can give future generations of Americans, even greater than reversing the 5-4 split on Kelo in my estimation.
Yeah, you tell him "You're not the boss of me"
You know, the way you put it, it's just about right :), I happen to believe, that with the new media, and us!, 'if we throw a lot of it and hard enough... IT MIGHT STICK!' :) Get it?
Let's suppose this is a 'rumor.' We are all excited about it... the pundits/our media, comes here to check the pulse of the conservative masses... they seee are excited about A and B choices. It's even very likely some of them we'll talk about it tomorrow in the Sunday shows. Why? because the love that kind of sh**... then, if the president is still connected to this world (out of the bubble), someone in his team is likely to let him know about the rumors and the high expectations already boiling out there in cyber space.
Conclusion: He better at least consider whatever choice he was thinking of, against the high expectations already buzzing around. And who knows... "it might stick" :)
from what I have heard, Alito is the frontrunner...but that's just hearsay obviously
Yes. It's unnamed sources again raising our expectations.
Amen.
I see no problem at all with Alito's dissent. If the rationale given for the law was the commerce clause, why should he invoke the 2nd amendment? Simply stating that the commerce clause was inapplicable should be sufficient to overturn the law.
If he picks Alito or Luttig, Bush obviously decided to consult a conservative advisor or several of them rather than a RINO like Andrew Card or his wife.
A bigger waste of time is standing there watching them do it...you have a choice..use it.
>>>A bigger waste of time is standing there watching them do it...you have a choice..use it.
But it's fun to watch monkeys fling poo...
btw - nice toss... :)
Calling Brownback a RINO is beyond the pale. He's a real conservative
Anyone with an I.Q. larger than there shoe size knows NO PRESIDENT WOULD EVER ALLOW A NOMINEE TO VIOLATE THE ATTORNEY CLIENT PRIVILEGE.
I totall agree with you on that point.
Graham and Brownback asked, with differing motives, for something that the POTUS could not give and hence gave him an escape hatch vis a vis this nomination.
Graham is one of the two biggest RINOS in the senate.
As much as I (sometimes) dislike Lindsey he's not even fifth on the RINO meter.
The top 4 RINOs are, in order, Chafee, Snow, Collins, and then Specter.
He is, and Luttig worries me a bit......
The first problem with Luttig is that he is no Roberts. The second problem with Luttig is that the Miers episode highlights the weaknesses in his resume, giving the Democrats lines of attack not related to ideology, and, indeed, so recently used by the movement conservatives themselves.
If you dig into Luttig\’s record, you do not find early in his career the kind of academic and intellectual excellence that we saw in Roberts. You find instead someone who did only moderately well in college, and failed in law school to rank above the middle of his class. While Virginia does not release exact class rank, anyone can verify that Luttig was not on law review, to which top students at Virginia were automatically assigned in his era, and a check of his classmates will verify that he was deep in the middle of his class.
Normally, this might not matter, but after all the emphasis on academic intellectual credentials with the Miers appointment, with the entire beltway concerned that her law school was not top rank, a mediocre academic record, even at a good school, has become a fair issue for debate.
Then there cronyism. Luttig did get a clerkship on the DC Circuit, followed by one on the Supreme Court. Since students from the middle of their class at state law schools don\’t usually get those kind of clerkships, you might wonder how Luttig did. In the case of his circuit clerkship with Scalia, the clerkship was arranged during the very same interview in which Luttig was interviewing Professor Scalia for a possible opening on the DC Circuit. Luttig\’s job at the time was vetting potential nominees for ideological correctness on behalf of the Reagan administration. There is nothing illegal about trading a judgeship for a clerkship, and the truth may be closer to the two immediately hitting it off with no quid pro quo involved, but something about it does not quite pass the smell test. In Nigeria or Zimbabwe, government officials walk out of official interviews with something they covet, but that normally does not happen here.
For his Supreme Court clerkship, Luttig went to Chief Justice Burger, for whom he had previously worked as a staff assistant, and with whom he had a near father-son relationship. Even though no other Justices interviewed him, and even though Burger\’s screening committee of former clerks recommended against Luttig, the personal ties prevailed. Again, there is nothing inherently improper in this, but in the wake of Miers, cronyism is a fair issue.
Next, never having made partner in any law firm (much less managing partner), never having tried a case, never having argued an appeal himself, and hever having written any law review articles, Luttig received a nomination for the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals at a remarkably early age, getting picked over better qualified candidates. His edge, like Miers, was that he had worked in the administration with the very people who selected judges, who moved their friend, or crony if you prefer that word, to the head of the list. After Miers, the cronyism issue has been validated by the very same folks who would like to see Luttig on the Court. If cronyism is fatal at the time you get picked for the Supreme Court, surely cronyism at the time of your last promotion is at least worth some discussion.
Then there are the rumors that he commented on Supreme Court briefs immediately after leaving Burger\’s employment, in violation of a strict and clear Supreme Court rule. If true, and if someone shows up with documentary evidence carefully filed away many years ago, Luttig cannot realistically be confirmed to a Court whose own ethical rules he ignored.
So, while Alito might not be the ultimate pick, it also is not likely to be Luttig. He is too fat a target for the Democrats in the wake of Miers. The President needs an ideological debate, and not another debate about mediocrity, cronyism or suspect ethics.
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