Non-Responsive

Good news! I managed to retrieve my rebuttal from this morning. Thank goodness for normal.dot.

Some of us will, anyway....

~ ~ ~

I would direct your question right back at you. How do you know Miers ISN'T a constitutionalist? Why are you so all-fired sure she is a disaster?

Demanding to prove a negative is a logical fallacy, Jen. And in any case, it is the President who is attempting to sell this woman to the GOP base, not the GOP base which is trying to dissuade him from selecting her (a prospect of which none of us could ever have conceived - indeed, I have a suspicion that Miers is the stalking horse for an Alberto Gonzales nomination, but that's just my muscular cyncism talking....). Therefore the burden of proof rests with him and those who are cheerleading Ms. Miers. And, so far at least, neither he, nor they, nor you have offered up a single convincing argument for why her nomination should be supported.

And no, "trust Dubya" doesn't count, because he forfeited that trust when he made this choice.

Tell me your separate definitions of "conservative" and "constitutionalist."

Personal ideology versus judicial philosophy. The two overlap quite a bit, but not completely. It's the difference between opposing abortion - which could lead, say, an activist religious conservative justice to rule that the Constitution forbids abortion - a new, opposite "penumbra" - and recognizing that the Constitution is silent on the issue, and that the proper decision is to return it to the states to decide for themselves.

The President is trying to sell us Harriet Miers based upon her Christian faith. But that doesn't tell me how she would function as a SCOTUS justice, which will suddenly matter again when she is forced, as she will be, to say that her "deeply held personal beliefs" will have no bearing on how she rules from the bench.

And if she won't make that concession, then guess what? The Dems will oppose her en masse, and the nasty, partisan brawl Bush went with Miers specifically to avoid will be upon him after all.

I think her evangelical Christianity is a PLUS, an item in her favor. Why don't you?

Ah, now the truth comes out. Dig long enough and it usually does. The President decides to create a “Christian seat” on the Supreme Court, and that’s all it takes to buy you off. The “affirmative action mentality” to which George Will and the Cornerites have made critical reference hitting paydirt.

Don’t get me wrong, I am glad that Harriet Miers is saved. God bless her. Would that everybody who isn’t could follow her example. But her faith, in and of itself, doesn’t qualify her for or entitle her to a Supreme Court seat.

If she had any other selling points – having been a judge, having argued cases before the SCOTUS, having a {GASP!} paper trail documenting a constitutionalist judicial philosophy – her faith would be the cherry atop the proverbial sundae. But she doesn’t. She’s been an attorney for thirty years, but never written or accomplished anything that suggests she’s worthy of such an appointment or capable of functioning successfully within it.

Remember the name Michael McConnell? Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals judge? He’s a Christian, too – as well as a judge of long standing, a constitutional scholar, and an expert on church/state jurisprudence. Why didn’t his faith persuade the President to appoint him to the O’Connor slot?

When you work your way to the answer to that question you’ll realize that Miers’ faith was not, after all, the, or even a, determining factor in her nomination, and how the White House is cynically using it to silence well-earned dissent.

You don't know the woman, you know little about her....

And the President does? Well, he certainly knows her better than we do. But that’s not an absolute yardstick. That’s why I say that he THINKS he knows what kind of Justice she would be. The truth is he doesn’t know, unless he’s learned how to perform Vulcan mindmelds during his Crawford ranch “vacations.” That’s why we are looking for something objective from which take our own measure of this woman – and of course, there’s no “there” there.

Frankly, I don’t think Harriet Miers knows herself what kind of Justice she would be. I think she probably got taken by surprise by Bush tapping her and was so honored and flattered that she just couldn’t say no. What I’m hoping is that that euphoria wears off in time for her to come to her senses and withdraw her name from consideration. Otherwise we’ll have a telling real-life example of “pride going before a fall.”

Yes, "hysteria."…I include all the hand-wringing, Eeyore sites who have lamented the downfall of conservatism and the end of America because of this nomination. Hysteria is the *perfect* word for it, because there has been a gross over-reaction to this on our part.

Would you be so kind as to provide some of these “hysteria” links, just in case (1) I’ve missed them and (2) your definition of “hysteria” doesn’t neatly line up with mine?

Chuck Schumer said yesterday that we're doing the Democrats' work for them regarding Harriet Miers. Hey, way to go guys.

Doesn’t surprise me that Chucky said what you claim (again, a link would be helpful). As far as the Left is concerned, Miers’ faith alone disqualifies her, like showing Dracula the cross. He and his fellow-travelers think, as they do with every GOP nominee, that she’ll impose her Christian views from the bench.

The thing is, there’s nothing in her background to suggest that this would not in fact become the case, just as there’s nothing in her background to suggest that she wouldn’t morph into Ruth Buzzy Ginsberg’s gal-pal. We and Schumer may fear diametrically opposite outcomes of a Miers Justiceship, but by the very “stealth” nature of this nomination, the White House and its Miersians have disarmed themselves from being able to make a persuasive case to the contrary. Just as they have ensured that if the Dems are foolish enough to mobilize in united and ferocious opposition, there won’t be any (or much of a) grassroots cavalry to come riding to Miers’ rescue or do any other water-carrying or heavy-lifting.

Before it’s all said and done the degree to which the President miscalculated on this choice will be so overpowering that even you will be shaking your head, mark my words.

If there is no "going back" from this rupture, then I would assert that it is the people moving away and making room for the Democrats to roar back in who will be responsible.

That’s blaming the victims, Jen. I'll remind you once more: three election cycles in a row the judiciary has been the major wedge issue for the GOP. And now, at the moment of truth we get this bait & switch.

No, Jennifer, we delivered for Bush. He owed us. And he left us holding three magic beans.

Only these won't grow any beanstalk.

You are acting as if Bush nominated a flaming liberal. He did not.

You don’t know that, Jen. And neither does the President.

Remember, the track record of “stealth” nominees from GOP presidents is almost universally horrible. And in a time when Republicans own a ten-seat Senate majority, it simply was not necessary to go the “stealth” route.

Remember also that the SCOTUS is a lifetime appointment, meaning that if confirmed Harriet Miers will be on Olympus (barring any unforeseen health problems or accidents) long after Bush has left office. So how does loyalty to the President figure into this equation for more than three years?

Bottom line is if we can’t win this fight now, we never will. And what does that say about the usefulness of continuing to support the Republican Party? Don’t you have ANY expectations of them?

Sorry. If she were half as awful as you are pretending to know, then yeah, I would. But you really have nothing to prove that she is going to be another Souter. I have nothing to prove that she is going to be another Scalia, either, but I'm not throwing a fit until I actually have something to go on. I'll be watching the hearings carefully and THEN will pass judgment on her. Pity my conservative brothers and sisters refuse to extend to her, and the President, the same courtesy.

I’m not “pretending to know” that Harriet Miers is “awful.” I’m saying NOBODY knows, and won't until after she's on the Court, when a mistake will be too late to fix. And that itself is unacceptable. I’m saying that George Bush appointed a manifestly unqualified individual because (1) she’s his friend and (2) her name was on Harry Reid’s list. I’m saying that he ran away from a winnable fight, and we may never get another chance to reclaim the SCOTUS.

Why did you vote for Bush, Jennifer? Before I always took the likely reason for granted, but now I'm genuinely curious.

The Left's tactics I was referring to are the continous, unrelenting attacks on Miers and President Bush.

A “tactic” is a particular mode of attack, not the act of attacking itself. That you would accuse us of “using the Left’s tactics” in the absence of Nazi slurs and slashing Ms. Miers’ tires is, quite frankly, itself a left-wing tactic. And one from which I can only conclude that, as I was already aware, Miers cheerleaders cannot counter our objections and are simply trying to shout us down.

Which, come to think of it, is another tactic of the Left.

The anti-Miers conservatives are not content to merely state their case, express their disappointment, and move on. They are intent on pounding away at them until...heck, I don't know what your end goal is.

Why, until her nomination is defeated and a bona fide constitutionalist is appointed in her place, of course. What, did you think that we were just “stating our case” just to hear ourselves “bleat”?

And remember, I’m not holding out any serious hope that this is going to happen. But until she’s actually confirmed, I will continue to argue against her nomination. It’s bad for her, bad for the President, bad for the SCOTUS, and bad for the GOP.

I just hope that we don’t end up finding out firsthand just how bad.

You have done a lot more than just say Miers is unqualified...something you really can't know for sure because elsewhere you admit to knowing little about her. How can you have it both ways?

Qualifications are active and objective, Jen, not relative and passive. And Harriet Miers does not have any of the qualifications one would ordinarily attribute to a candidate for Supreme Court Justice. The mystery meat part of this is her complete lack of a manifested judicial philosophy.

It is for the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Senate to determine whether or not she is qualified, that's what "Advise and Consent" means.

Which is what will make these hearings verrrrrrry interesting, seeing as how the Founders believed and wrote that cronyism is one of things the advice & consent function is supposed to guard against.

In this very post, you list what you see are Bush's failures while in office. None of these things has anything to do with Miers, yet you feel compelled to list them in order to...what? Now you feel Bush is blowing the war (despite the good reports that leak around the MSM), has screwed up the economy (even though most economic indicators are quite good), screwed up our borders (okay, he needs to work on that), etc.? Heck, what are you worried about? You should be GLAD his presidency is "over" if he sucks that much.

Other, of course, than it would still have three plus years to go. That's an awfully long string to play out.

I listed Bush’s failures while in office to get across to you why the Miers pick is such abysmally bad politics. A GOP base that has had to put up with all of the items that I listed, and is watching even the “big things” progressively falling apart, cannot be expected to just go docilely along when the last “big thing” lays an egg.

That you apparently can tells me that you are following the man instead of the philosophy he is supposed to represent and uphold, and which he has now pretty much abandoned.

As I wrote yesterday, I find that very saddening.

As for Mr. Fein's contentions, now, he IS arrogant.

BZZZZT. I said you couldn’t use that word.

Sounds like he thinks she's pretty stupid.

No, it sounds like Mr. Fein thinks she’s pretty unqualified to sit on the Supreme Court. And he’s absolutely right.

Answer me this, Jen: do you believe that the SCOTUS is an entry-level position? And what are Harriet Miers’ qualification(s) for the job?