Posted on 10/12/2005 7:07:42 AM PDT by libstripper
As the White House seeks to rally senators behind the Supreme Court nomination of Harriet E. Miers, lawyers for the Republican senators on the Judiciary Committee are expressing dissatisfaction with the choice and pushing back against her, aides to 6 of the 10 Republican committee members said yesterday.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
So now the Times and the Post "speak the truth"?
Is there much chance, do you think, that this nomination will be pulled? I don't like seeing her subjected to such unfairness, but I do not believe that she will resist the liberalism of the Supreme Court once confirmed.
What has been unfair about questioning her nomination?
OK, I read the Times article you posted and didn't see much new except the usual delight at seeing Repubicans and Conservatives chewing on their tails the way Rats do. Good luck to you.
Does Harriet Miers understand that the Supreme Court has
turned the Constitution into toilet paper and changed the meaning of the Constitution to fit their own personal
opinions? I'm not here to hate her or President Bush but
the stakes are too high for a question mark.
As posted on an earlier thread, the Dems will immediately ask Miers about her advice to the President on GWOT-related issues: GITMO, Abu Ghraib, detention of US citizens, Patriot Act, etc. She will naturally invoke attorney-client privilege and reveal nothing. Fine.
Next the Dems (or Reps) will ask her if she would recuse herself should a GITMO/torture/Patriot Act-related issue come before the SCOTUS, having legally advised the President on these matters. If she says "Yes, I'd recuse myself." then her presence on the SCOTUS to help Bush (and America) fight the GWOT would be pointless. If she says "No, I would not recuse myself." then she has to explain why, why there would be no conflict of interest, how what she knows having advised the President would not bias her opinion on the SCOTUS, which goes back to attorney-client privilege.
And if the White House gives limited waivers for her to answer certain questions, they will have opened the floodgate for more information, on Miers and every nominee in the future.
Give her a fair hearing, she's DOA. This is a foolish blunder by the President that will be capitalized on by his political enemies and his BOHICA'd Base.
This recusal issue is a real killer for the nomination. Indeed, it's such a killer that it raises serious issues about Miers' legal competence and ethics. I just can't believe that she advised President Bush of this problem; if she had, he'd have been out of his mind to nominate her. Hence, I've concluded she didn't. Not doing it was either very sloppy lawyering that would disqualify her as a SCOTUS justice or, far more likely, she deliberately withheld the information from the President, her client, because she was consumed by her ambition to get on the Court. If the latter is true, she was deliberately disloyal and dishonest by omission, something that ethically disqualifies her from serving on the Court.
Another interesting point about the Washington Times article is it reports the WH has stopped returning Republican staffers' requests for information about her. I wouldn't be surprised if those requests include requests for information related to the recusal issue.
All of this says she's a horribly unqualified nominee who probably obtained her nomination by being deliberately disingenuous and who should now request the President to withdraw the nomination to avoid further damage to his presidency.
If we allow another David "androgynous" Souter to be confirmed we will be made to chew on more than our tails.....we will be doing more than eating crow. What we will have is another 20-30 years of decisions from the bench based on some liberal justices idea of "International law" and to hell with the Constitution. So if you feel that it is more important to bolster the president's sense of pride in getting it accomplished, no mater how negative that accomplishment may be....then you go right ahead.
It's laughable to me that some on this site actually are unhinged enough to believe that George Bush will retract this nomination. I'll go you one better. Even if she offers to withdraw, I'll bet he refuses.
Some of us on here live in an utter fantasy world if they think the man who rid the world of two terrorist governments, scared another one into giving up his WMD programs, abrogated the ABM treaty over the objections of 95% of the world's countries, deployed a missile defense system over the objections of 95% of the opposition party and some in his own party and refused to back down and withdraw the nominations of the appealate court nomineees being filibustered, is suddenly going to throw over a trusted colleague who has the same judicial philosophy as he.
IU suspect the answer to y our question is "NO." If she had this understanding, it's hard to believe she wouldn't have said so to somebody other than President Bush in the appproximately thirty five years she's been practicing law and probably written something about it.
Tell us more!
Gee, why didn't you just use the word "Bushbot" and make reference to "purple punch"? But thanks anyway for the look into your magic crystal ball.
The sources for these articles are "anonymous aides"?
Boy, that's an influential group. Bush must be quaking in his boots.LMAO
Yes I agree with you about the Wash Times. So what of it? Nothing new here except the hope for some that some disgruntled Republicans will ride to the rescue. I've read so many scenarios where Miers is withdrawn/forced out/made a fool so a God-like legal scholar and defender of Conservativism steps forward to smite our enemies. OK, maybe that will happen... but then I've been accused of drinking purple punch but I've found that punch comes in many colors around here.
The snowball's rolling. Another Miers critic does a turnaround:
David Warren begins his piece with this confession:
In the week since [his initial announcement of opposition], much dust has settled, and it has become clear that Ms
Miers is acceptable to the broad rightwing Republican constituency, and to not a few Democrats. She is despised, chiefly, by the rightwing intellectuals (people like me), who were heartbroken that Mr Bush would pass over the long list of brilliant, strict-constructionist legal scholars that have arisen in response to the challenge presented by two generations of often deconstructionist rulings by the same Supreme Court.
But for now, President Bush's apparently weak argument, "Trust me," is beginning to look much sounder.
Perhaps the great Texas jurisprude, Lino Graglia, put this best, in an interview with Hugh Hewitt. To paraphrase: the Supremes are in the habit of arrogating to themselves decisions that should really be made by the people (on everything from abortion, pornography, and school prayer, to all-male military academies in the State of Virginia).
Power naturally flows to their heads. Yet the Constitution had nothing to say about such things, and explicitly left what it had nothing to say about, to the people. It is this trust in the people that has made America the beacon she is.
And Harriet Miers may be exactly the sort of real-world type who can understand that. And George Bush, from knowing her well over a long time, is in a good position to know she knows. She doesn't need bells, whistles, and law degrees from Harvard and Yale. It might even be helpful not to have them.
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