Ultraliberals demand Harriet Miers be rejected

Oh, that liberal media, ganging up on Bush’s SCOTUS pick and insisting she not be confirmed. Strident, radical moonbattery at its most ugly.

Senators beginning what ought to be a protracted and exacting scrutiny of Harriet Miers should be guided by three rules. First, it is not important that she be confirmed. Second, it might be very important that she not be. Third, the presumption — perhaps rebuttable but certainly in need of rebutting — should be that her nomination is not a defensible exercise of presidential discretion to which senatorial deference is due.

It is not important that she be confirmed because there is no evidence that she is among the leading lights of American jurisprudence, or that she possesses talents commensurate with the Supreme Court’s tasks. The president’s “argument” for her amounts to: Trust me. There is no reason to, for several reasons.

He has neither the inclination nor the ability to make sophisticated judgments about competing approaches to construing the Constitution. Few presidents acquire such abilities in the course of their prepresidential careers, and this president, particularly, is not disposed to such reflections.

Furthermore, there is no reason to believe that Miers’ nomination resulted from the president’s careful consultation with people capable of such judgments. If 100 such people had been asked to list 100 individuals who have given evidence of the reflectiveness and excellence requisite in a justice, Miers’ name probably would not have appeared in any of the 10,000 places on those lists.

Only problem is, this comes from George “Stolen Talking Points” Will, one of the godfathers of American conservatism. The chorus from the American right has never, ever been so unified in condemning flightsuit boy. He of the bulging codpiece must be wondering how his career spiralled out of control so quickly, so drastically. There’s a simple answer, of course: He is totally, monumentally incompetent, and when even George Will makes this point you know there’s trouble in River City.

Oh, how the mighty hath fallen.

The Discussion: 12 Comments

ROFL. Suddenly, the Right discovers that the Left was right all along….

October 5, 2005 @ 3:01 am | Comment

River City, I miss that old town.

Trouble way overdue there.

October 5, 2005 @ 4:30 am | Comment

Oh come now, this is just pathetic. He does stuff that the left doesn’t like and they condemn him, so it proves he’s incompetent. Then he does stuff the right doesn’t like, and that prove’s he’s incompetent. I think the only thing we’ve established here is that you don’t like George Bush!

October 5, 2005 @ 6:48 am | Comment

HI-Larious…as Perot would say. Have you noticed how many of the same arguments the right is now using against this SCOTUS nominees that the left was using a month ago? I’ve even heard calls for a filabuster (gasp) from the National Review crowd. I guess those are only “unconstitutional and anti-democratic” blah blah blah when used by “liberals.” Hi-larious.

October 5, 2005 @ 7:06 am | Comment

Not quite so simple as that FSN – I never blamed Bush for nominating Roberts. Never. It was a smart move. But this is an atrocious nomination, and even the “sensible” (as opposed to rabid) right wingers like Will and Sully and Instpundit and the National Review crowd are incensed. Miers is getting moresupport from the Democrats! Most of the noise this time is coming from the right.

October 5, 2005 @ 7:26 am | Comment

Well, if she’s really that bad, then she hasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell, right? I haven’t spent any time at all to learn anything about the person, so have no opinion on that matter. Could it be a case of nominating someone first who you know is going to be rejected, so you can get the next one through as “the lesser or two evils”?

October 5, 2005 @ 7:40 am | Comment

We’ll find out. It’s not that she’s bad, it’s just that, as Will says, she is not even remotely qualified when compared to all the great jurists available. Just keep in mind, this is not the liberals talking, it’s the pro-Bush conservatives. Some are actually talking “fillibuster,” unashamed hypocrisy after trying to make that a no-no. (All that crap about an “up or down vote,” if you remember.)

October 5, 2005 @ 7:48 am | Comment

We’ll find out. It’s not that she’s bad, it’s just that, as Will says, she is not even remotely qualified when compared to all the great jurists available.

I’m curious as to why you think she isn’t qualified. Is it because she doesn’t have any experience as a judge?

Personally, I have some serious misgivings about this appointment. Either Bush knows something we don’t or we’re fucked.

October 5, 2005 @ 3:22 pm | Comment

I think the point is, we don’t know if she’s qualified or not – there have been good Supreme Court justices who were not judges, but these were prominent scholars, Senators, etc. – with a paper trail illustrating their thinking, their intellect, their judicial philosophies. This woman is about as close to a blank slate as Bush could get. Plus a White House counsel – isn’t there a danger of conflict of interest here?

October 5, 2005 @ 7:28 pm | Comment

She doesn’t have ANY experience in ANY kind of law other than commercial litigation (big corporations, that is.)

That means she’s a paper-pusher. That’s 99 percent of what commercial litigation is – especially in big firms like hers – just ordering your secretaries to file as many huge stacks of paper as possible, hopefully to overwhelm the other side through sheer weight of paperwork and petty details.

Very little analytical thinking goes into it. Except for thinking of creative ways to overbill your clients (ie, to steal from them)

I don’t like Roberts – I know his type of creepily detached Law Review weenie – however, if I were a Senator I would hold my nose and vote to confirm Roberts.

But Miers is, well, basically a Legal Secretary with lots of business connections. Her intellectual background is around the same level as a Legal Secretary. Seriously.

October 6, 2005 @ 5:04 am | Comment

I just read a very funny Salon piece quoting Ann Coulter on Ms. Miers. Though we’re way down the page now, here’s a bit of it:

The president has always said that he’s a “uniter, not a divider.” And by God, it turns out that he was right. If it weren’t for George W. Bush, we would never, ever find ourselves saying these words: We agree with Ann Coulter.

In her latest column, Coulter says Miers is so unqualified for a spot on the Supreme Court that Bush may as well have appointed his chauffeur as the next head of NASA. Coulter says that Bush “could nominate his Scottish terrier Barney, and some conservatives would rush to defend him, claiming to be in possession of secret information convincing them that the pooch is a true conservative and listing Barney’s many virtues — loyalty, courage, never jumps on the furniture.”

October 6, 2005 @ 12:31 pm | Comment

The Meirs choice is very problematic for many reasons, but to dimish her because she is a mere “commerical litigator” is ignorant in the extreme. One of the major problems with the Court is that it is far too detached from the realities of 90% of the litigation in the federal courts. The only judge currently on the bench with any interest and understanding in commercial interests is Thomas, and even he has no real world experience in the field.

While Con Law is sexy, the overwhelming majority of the cases that will come up for cert before the court will be “mere” commercial litigation. There are many serious legal scholars who think that having someone on the court who has actually practiced in that area would be a very very good thing.

Besides, “mere” commercial law pays fantastic ammounts of money and, as a result, attracts extremely brilliant minds. I have clerked in the federal appellate system, taught part time at law schools and worked for S&C and SASM&F. The smartest lawyers I ever encountered were those doing “mere commercial law” in private practice and not judges or professors.

Having said that, I am not at all confident that Meirs merits appointment, but I’d love to see an outstanding commerical litigator appointed to the USSC bench.

October 7, 2005 @ 2:34 am | Comment

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