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-- Just in: Harriet Miers to replace O'Connor
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lame.
Miers did mention something about following what the founding the philosophy of the founding fathers. Considering those founding fathers believed in slavery, women's rights were essentially nonexistent, and a few other tidbits here and there that clearly demonstrates societal change over time, I do hope that's what she meant.
Regardless, I wonder what she and Bush would make of this founding father's statement - Alexander Hamilton in Federalist Paper #76:
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| "To what purpose then require the co-operation of the Senate? I answer, that the necessity of their concurrence would have a powerful, though, in general, a silent operation. It would be an excellent check upon a spirit of favoritism in the President, and would tend greatly to prevent the appointment of unfit characters from State prejudice, from family connection, from personal attachment..." |
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| "(The President) would be both ashamed and afraid to bring forward, for the most distinguished or lucrative stations,candidates who had no other merit than that of coming from the same State to which he particularly belonged, or of being in some way or other personally allied to him, or of possessing the necessary insignificance and pliancy to render them the obsequious instruments of his pleasure." http://usinfo.state.gov/usa/infousa...ed/federa76.htm |
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| Originally posted by Q5echo jeez, Will, get over yourself. i didn't hear you piss and postulate over the dozens of excellent Appelate and Federal benches Bush filled this and the last term. which, BTW, has been applauded profusely by the right as outstanding history making appointments capped by Roberts. interesting article by a paranoid elitist that forgets about recent history in favor of who he wants as associate justice, not what is the constitutional right of the executive to choose. i speculate, despite the aricle, he wants to be wrong. |
add Krauthammer to the list of cons that oppose her. this is getting good.
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| Withdraw This Nominee By Charles Krauthammer Friday, October 7, 2005; Page A23 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. We've had quite enough dynastic politics over the past decades. (Considering the trouble I have had with Benjamin and William Henry Harrison, I pity the schoolchildren of the future who will have to remember who was who in the Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton presidential alternations from 1989 to 2017.) But nominating a constitutional tabula rasa to sit on what is America's constitutional court is an exercise of regal authority with the arbitrariness of a king giving his favorite general a particularly plush dukedom. The only advance we've made since then is that Supreme Court dukedoms are not hereditary. It is particularly dismaying that this act should have been perpetrated by the conservative party. For half a century, liberals have corrupted the courts by turning them into an instrument of radical social change on questions -- school prayer, abortion, busing, the death penalty -- that properly belong to the elected branches of government. Conservatives have opposed this arrogation of the legislative role and called for restoration of the purely interpretive role of the court. To nominate someone whose adult life reveals no record of even participation in debates about constitutional interpretation is an insult to the institution and to that vision of the institution. There are 1,084,504 lawyers in the United States. What distinguishes Harriet Miers from any of them, other than her connection with the president? To have selected her, when conservative jurisprudence has J. Harvie Wilkinson, Michael Luttig, Michael McConnell and at least a dozen others on a bench deeper than that of the New York Yankees, is scandalous. It will be argued that this criticism is elitist. But this is not about the Ivy League. The issue is not the venue of Miers's constitutional scholarship, experience and engagement. The issue is their nonexistence. Moreover, the Supreme Court is an elite institution. It is not one of the "popular" branches of government. That is the reason Sen. Roman Hruska achieved such unsought immortality when he declared, in support of an undistinguished Nixon nominee to the court, that, yes, G. Harrold Carswell is a mediocrity but mediocre Americans deserve representation on the court as well. To serve in Congress, or even as president, there is no requirement for scholarship and brilliance. For good reason. It is not needed. It can even be a hindrance, as we learned from our experience with Woodrow Wilson, the most intellectually accomplished president of the 20th century and also the worst. But constitutional jurisprudence is different. It is, by definition, an exercise of intellect steeped in scholarship. Otherwise it is nothing but raw politics. And is it not the conservative complaint that liberals have abused the courts by having them exercise raw super-legislative power, the most egregious example of which is the court's most intellectually bankrupt ruling, Roe v. Wade ? Miers will surely shine in her Judiciary Committee hearings, but that is because expectations have been set so low. If she can give a fairly good facsimile of John Roberts's testimony, she'll be considered a surprisingly good witness. But what does she bring to the bench? This, say her advocates: We are now at war, and therefore the great issue of our time is the powers of the president, under Article II, to wage war. For four years Miers has been immersed in war-and-peace decisions and therefore will have a deep familiarity with the tough constitutional issues regarding detention, prisoner treatment and war powers. Perhaps. We have no idea what her role in these decisions was. But to the extent that there was any role, it becomes a liability. For years -- crucial years in the war on terrorism -- she will have to recuse herself from judging the constitutionality of these decisions because she will have been a party to having made them in the first place. The Supreme Court will be left with an absent chair on precisely the laws-of-war issues to which she is supposed to bring so much. By choosing a nominee suggested by Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid and well known only to himself, the president has ducked a fight on the most important domestic question dividing liberals from conservatives: the principles by which one should read and interpret the Constitution. For a presidency marked by a courageous willingness to think and do big things, this nomination is a sorry retreat into smallness. |
is it me or does this bitch wear too much eyeliner?
Keep adding Bill Kristol of Weekly Standard:
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| After the event, Mr. Kristol said it was "not out of the question" that Ms. Miers could withdraw. "She did not come to Washington to be a Supreme Court justice," he said in a telephone interview as he drove to Richmond, Va. "And she could well decide that this is hurting the president, and could continue to hurt the president, and that the best thing to do would be to step aside and go back to serving the president and let him make another pick." http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/07/p...07strategy.html |
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| Originally posted by Shakka is it me or does this bitch wear too much eyeliner? |
did you guys read that the Miers confirmation hearings are going to be delayed so that she can get prepared?
they're supposed to start sometime in 2007.
Some people are just too far above the rest of us to pay their "fair share":
Tom Brune, Newsday
Sunday, October 16, 2005
Washington -- The year Harriet Miers began work as a senior presidential aide in the White House, the city of Dallas slapped three liens in three months on a property she controls in a low-income minority Dallas neighborhood, records show.
The city placed the liens in 2001 to force her to reimburse it for clearing the vacant lot of tall grass, weeds and debris after Miers failed to have the work done herself, as required by city law, and after she did not respond to city notices to maintain the property.
It was not the first time the city had to take action. Records show that since Miers assumed power of attorney for her ailing mother in 1995, the city has issued seven other liens on vacant lots that Miers controls in the same neighborhood around Tipton Park.
All 10 liens, totaling less than $2,000, have been paid, a city spokesman said.
But the failure of Miers, a former Dallas City Council member, to comply with city law, and her slow response in reimbursing the city, run counter to her image as a meticulous, detail-oriented attorney who is always well prepared.
That image is undergoing scrutiny now that President Bush has nominated Miers, his former personal attorney, to replace Justice Sandra Day O'Connor on the Supreme Court.
Bush's selection of Miers has drawn harsh criticism by many activists on the right, who question her conservative credentials and her legal qualifications to be on the high court.
The White House appeared to be caught off guard by questions about the liens and the properties, initially unaware of Miers' responsibility for them.
After looking into the issue, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said Saturday that Miers had control of the properties, which technically are owned by her mother, Sally, who is in a skilled nursing facility.
Miers' troubles with tax liens
Supreme Court pick has had 10 placed on overgrown property she controls in Dallas
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