Me On Thomas Sowell On Miers

This Administration needs to be held responsible for its own shortcomings but not those of previous Republican administrations.

And by the Miers nomination, this Administration has shown that it has failed to learn the lesson taught by the shortcomings of previous Republican administrations. It is for this that this Administration should, and is, being held responsible.

President Bush has taken on too many tough fights - Social Security being a classic example - to be regarded as a man who is personally weak. What is weak is the Republican majority in the Senate.

And that gives such a President an engraved excuse to buckle to that weak Republican Senate majority? Wouldn't such a "fighter" do the precise opposite of what Bush is actually doing? Isn't that what we elected him to do?

Does this mean that Harriet Miers will not be a good Supreme Court justice if she is confirmed? It is hard to imagine her being worse than Sandra Day O'Connor - or even as bad.

It is hard to imagine anything, because we have no basis for the imagining. And the outcome of such GOP crap shoots in the past has been almost universally bad. One would think that as savvy a pol as Dubya would be able to weigh those odds a lot better than he did this time.

The very fact that Harriet Miers is a member of an evangelical church suggests that she is not dying to be accepted by the beautiful people, and is unlikely to sell out the Constitution of the United States in order to be the toast of Georgetown cocktail parties or praised in the New York Times. Considering some of the turkeys that Republicans have put on the Supreme Court in the past, she could be a big improvement.

We don't know any of THAT, either. If she had any avowed constitutionalist roots in her background, perhaps we could have that confidence, but then if she did, Bush would never have chosen her.

You Miersians are grasping at spiderwebs, Jen.

We don't know. But President Bush says he has known Harriet Miers long enough that he feels sure.

Which means precisely nothing. To suggest that he "knows" what kind of Supreme Court Justice she's going to be is conceited nonsense. He doesn't know, and can't know, unless he's learned how to perform Vulcan mindmelds during his Crawford "vacations."

In the meantime there were at least a dozen outstanding constitutionalist judges available for the choosing whose bona fides were objectively established. Would he have "known" how they would turn out on Olympus? Not 100%, as history shows. But the confidence level, especially for us grassrootsers, would have been a heckuva lot higher, and his claim to have found "the best person available" a lot easier to take seriously.

There is another aspect of this. The Senate Democrats huffed and puffed when Judge John Roberts was nominated but, in the end, he faced them down and was confirmed by a very comfortable margin. The Democrats cannot afford to huff and puff and then back down, or be beaten down, again.

THEN WHY DIDN'T BUSH SWING FOR THE FENCES INSTEAD OF BUNTING?????

God Almighty, nobody respects Thomas Sowell's intellect more than I do, but this is just pathetic.

On the other hand, they cannot let a high-profile conservative get confirmed without putting up a dogfight to satisfy their left-wing special interest groups.

Am I on Candid Camera with this? BUSH HASN'T NOMINATED A "HIGH-PROFILE CONSERVATIVE"!!!! Harriet Miers has no profile at all, for Chrissakes. That's what this argument is all about.

Perhaps that is why some Democrats seem to welcome this stealth nominee. Even if she turns out to vote consistently with Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, the Democrats are off the hook with their base because they can always say that they had no idea and that she stonewalled them at the confirmation hearings.

And if she turns out to vote consistently with Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Bush's ballsack is in a sling even worse than it is already because his base can always say that he shouldn't have taken such a reckless, cavalier chance with the most important SCOTUS nomination in two decades.

The bottom line with any Supreme Court justice is how they vote on the issues before the High Court. It would be nice to have someone with ringing rhetoric and dazzling intellectual firepower. But the bottom line is how they vote.

No, the bottom line is how they arrive at their vote, because if that process is not constitutionally grounded, that vote will twist to whatever fadish wind blows against it. That's where the "ringing rhetoric and dazzling intellectual firepower" enter the equation. And the prevailing current in that locale rarely, if ever, blows to the right.

Besides, aren't conservatives supposed to value excellence over mediocrity? Not to suggest that Harriet Miers is a dolt by any means, but what ever happened to the axiom that "good enough never is"?

If the President is right about Harriet Miers, she may be the best choice he could make under the circumstances.

And if he's wrong, she'll be a disaster, and one rendered completely unnecessary by the crutch enumerated by the bogus phrase "under the circumstances."

It's real simple, Jennifer: Bush chose Harriet Miers because (1) she's his friend and (2) her name was on Harry Reid's list. If that's acceptable to you, then praise the LORD and pass the second helping.

It is not acceptable to me.