Posted on 10/06/2005 8:54:53 AM PDT by cgk
Edited on 10/06/2005 9:03:34 AM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
WASHINGTON -- When in 1962 Edward Moore Kennedy ran for his brother's seat in the Senate, his opponent famously said that if Kennedy's name had been Edward Moore, his candidacy would have been a joke. If Harriet Miers were not a crony of the president of the United States, her nomination to the Supreme Court would be a joke, as it would have occurred to no one else to nominate her.
(Excerpt) Read more at townhall.com ...
Which means, given the power the SCOTUS has taken by fiat, that 299,000,000 of us are de facto eliminated from considering the course of this nation.
Now that might be OK I suppose if lawyers were indeed the best, the brightest and most resouceful members of our society and the US was constitutionally designed as an oligarchy chosen from that strata but none of that is true.
The smartest and most resourceful guy I ever knew in my 55 years was a damn mechanic. He would read "Congress shall make no law" and that would be that, he wouldn't see an 'except' in there.
You know, it occurs to me that the only good argument against Miers is that no one knows her well enough.
Is that really a good enough reason to oppose her before she even gets to the Senate confrence room???
My conservative friends and Idols, breathe until the hearings begin. Please, we still need our unity!
Of course I am. Didn't you know? :-)
I'm not ashamed of supporting this man.
Many of the objections are because American instinctively believe in meritocracy and cronyism immediately rubs the wrong way.
The burden on the crony is high and here nowhere near reached.
Now you're just sputtering ineffectually.
You go ahead and have the last word. I'm finished with you here.
Was
So I'm excused? Thanks, Counselor.
That's what this nomination process is for. Without it, we'd have a whole bunch of stealth candidates on the bench.
I usually judge a University by their basketball team, so I guess you're first tier. GO, FIGHTING SALUKIS.
Could be, but if so he needs a new calculator. This calcuation seems to have badly pissed off the conservatives in the GOP big time. And without the conservatives the GOP is toast. I haven't made up my mind about Miers yet, I am very unhappy about her supporting Gore for president over Bush the elder and her being pretty much a life long democrat. Very unhappy about that, but I will wait a bit longer before deciding.
Your remark here (and many like it in other spots on these threads) seems to be indicative of a belief that Supreme Court justices only look at the Constitution.
There are volumes of federal laws on which the Supremes are routinely called upon to interpret and opine.
That's not a defense of "elitism" it's just a fact. Look, Miers has the training that is necesary to do the job. A mechanic does not.
The objection to her nomination is not that she is not at all qualified by virtue of a lack of education. It is that this nomination is hard to explain in light of all the other equally qualified by education candidates who also are known quantities when it comes to their constitutional jurisprudence. In short, we are being asked to take a pig in the poke solely on the word of the President. He may have good reasons for this choice (see my post above about political realities) but that is what this comes down to.
Then why are they all wishing that Janice Rogers Brown was appointed? Or Priscilla Owen, who went to Baylor?
Sure she has. Most people around here think she was a "go-fer" fetching coffee and donuts. She become a lawyer in a day and age when women had a hard time achieving such credentials. She eventually worked her way up to the top, heading the Texas Bar and heading a large law firm in Dallas. Sure she clerked for a Conservative Texas judge, but that was one of the rungs on the ladder toward the top.
White House Counsel may seem insignificant to some, but it's not.
It IS pretty funny, considering how many times she's almost taken my head off; and I'm much higher on the "BushBot Scale" than she is!
That's what I can't figure out about this whole thing: if you're stance is "wait-and-see" like Howlin (and me), you're a BushBot!
I really don't think we can expect to learn a whole lot about Miers' jurisprudence during her nomination hearings before the very learned Senate Judiciary Committee. If recent past experience is any way to judge.
That's why conservatives who believe as I do would have preferred a known originalist with a history on an appellate court or in scholarly writings or political activity or hell, something, anything other than "Bush has looked into her eyes and seen her heart with his piercing presidential gaze of discernment".
But hey, trust Bush, right? He's never made a mistake before. The guy's almost supernatural that way. It's not like this is a lifetime appointment that the base has been waiting on for 20+ years or anything important like that.
Does anyone remember the name of that young girl whose body was discovered in the woods near DC. A congressman was implicated because of a romance with her. What ever happened about that? I saw that video of her every day for, like, forever, and now I can't remember her name.
Also that girl on the Island. What's with that lately. Are those Dutch boys still claiming innocence? Can't remember her name either.
And, I can't help wondering, did anyone ever figure out what happened to Vince Foster? Was that really a suicide or what?
No, qualification has been established.
The elites have to howl in futile protest because this has the potential of breaking their assumption of qualification.
Kerry and Bush both went to Yale, yet clearly Kerry was not up to the task.
This is nothing more than a simple transference of the elites who think GWBush was only admitted to Yale and then Harvard because he had "connections".
I have appeared in court before judges who have never worked a non-goverment job, and judges who have worked in the real world. The judges who have worked in the real world are far more effective than those who have not.
I do not want another snob justice who thinks law conferences at quaint european resorts represent the entirety of the real world.
I want someone who had to work, pay a mortgage, work to find a job to be the one listening to the next eminent domain case.
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