Hmmm ... I wonder what those two have in common?
I reckon it's a good thing he became a judge. As an advisor he seemed to be lacking.
Posted on 10/13/2005 6:53:22 AM PDT by jveritas
Hmmm ... I wonder what those two have in common?
I reckon it's a good thing he became a judge. As an advisor he seemed to be lacking.
On the note on Why Bush didn't nominate someone else, it is disheartening to face the pathetic facts about the GOP Senate. They ain't got no balls and they have some within their ranks who are downright liberal. Others have axes to grind, say like Lott.
Others like McVain and his a$$-kissin buddy Lindsey Graham, DeWhine, weepy Voinobitch...these clowns along with Chaffee, Snowe, and Collins are a cancer and cannot be counted on in a knock down drag out fight.
They've already sold us out once with their Gang of 14 antics. Should Bush have gone in-their-faces and dared them to oppose his nominee in say JRB??? I don't know. Part of me says yes, and part of me sees the downside ramifications of losing that fight.
I figure if I had the choice, I would have gone with JRB and gone to the mattresses...but, alas, it wasn't my choice. And, if the info from Dobson was in any way correct, JRB may have turned it down.
It's called cya.
And the White House can do all the spinning it wants, but that doesn't mean I have to buy it for one second.
Excellent comment.
However the "smartest" among us want to tell the President who to pick because the Constitution is very clear that the "smartest people" in the President party must send the President a list of nominees for SCOTUS and he must choose from this list or he must be impeached. (End of sarcasm).
Crazy, isn't it?
Indeed it is! IMHO one of the biggest problems the conservative movement has, and I am a VERY long term member, is their inconsistency on many issues. This one included.
Nice insinuation. Real nice, and pertinent also.
Your tagline says everything about you.
It says that I'm not a mindless lemming.
How gauche of me!
> One of the first and most important arguments that
> the anti-Miers camp tells us that Miers is not
> qualified because she never served as a judge.
I haven't been slavishly following the debate,
and don't have a position on it, but:
a. this was not one of the first arguments,
b. it isn't the most important argument, and
c. I notice that there are no references cited.
Give us examples from the "anti-Miers camp".
This looks to me like a straw-man argument.
Like many Americans in his generation, Rehnquist attended college after World War II with the support of scholarship money from the GI Bill. At Stanford, he earned both a bachelor and a master of arts degree in political science. A distinguished student, Rehnquist was elected to Phi Beta Kappa in 1948. He continued his education at Harvard where he received another master of arts degree -- this time in government -- two years later. Rehnquist returned to Stanford Law School in 1950; he graduated at the top of his class. (Sandra Day O'Connor, who would eventually serve with him on the Supreme Court, graduated third from that same class.)
At law school, Rehnquist started down the path that would eventually take him to the Supreme Court. Having already established a reputation among his instructors and peers as a brilliant legal thinker and an able scholar, Rehnquist impressed one professor sufficiently to earn a private interview with Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, who was visiting the law school. Rehnquist's professor, a former clerk for Jackson, arranged the meeting in hopes that his favored student could convince Jackson of his qualifications for a clerkship. Rehnquist walked away from that meeting feeling he had failed to impress Jackson in the slightest. However, his fears proved false as Jackson eventually selected him for clerkship that year. Rehnquist's clerkship under the moderate Jackson did not alter his conservative beliefs in any noticeable manner. Instead, his exposure to the other clerks may have served only to confirm his conservativism.
Rehnquist married Natalie Cornell, whom he had met during his law school years, after his completing his clerkship. He also moved to Phoenix, Arizona to work for a law firm there. Rehnquist chose Phoenix for its pleasant weather and favorable political leanings. The next few years passed uneventfully for Rehnquist. He, together with his wife, raised a son and two daughters.
Following advice given to him by Justice Felix Frankfurter, Rehnquist began his participation in the Republican Party. He became a Republican Party official and achieved prominence in the Phoenix area as a strong opponent of liberal initiatives such as school integration. Rehnquist campaigned for Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater during the 1964 elections. During that time, he befriended Richard Kleindienst, another attorney from Phoenix. When Richard Nixon rose to the presidency a few years later, he appointed Kleindienst deputy attorney general of his administration. Kleindienst sought Rehnquist for the position of deputy attorney general in then Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel.
When Justice John Marshall Harlan retired in 1971, the Nixon administration chose Rehnquist as Harlan's replacement. A Democratic Senate overwhelmingly confirmed his nomination. On January 7, 1972, Rehnquist -- and fellow nominee, Lewis Powell -- took their oaths of office.
In his early days on the Court, Rehnquist was outspoken as the Court's lone dissenter despite the presence of three other Republican appointees. He battled against the expansion of federal powers and advocated a strong vision of state's rights. Rehnquist also differed from the majority's view that the Fourteenth Amendment applied to non-racial issues such as the rights of women, children, and immigrants. Although his dissents at the time influenced very little of the Court's conclusions, Rehnquist provided the future Court many valuable ideas which inspired the later conservative shift. Rehnquist's views led him to oppose the majority in several important decisions. In his opinion, the liberal faction of the Court too often tried to shape public policy by expanding the scope of the law beyond its original meaning.
Hey Ive read it, Im a Christian I suppose I am qualified right... Pick me 'W'...
Miers works for President Bush and not for two people who lost as in Goldwater and Bork.
1. Both Rehnquist and Bork also worked for Nixon, like Bush a two time presidential winner.
2. My point was that Rehnquist was a well known conservative. We know nothing of Miers.
By that standard you would have been OK with Gore as president because he wasn't as bad as Clinton..
This is an argument that is reiterated-ad infinitum-by the defenders of Harriet Miers-and even some who are extremely skeptical of her nomination-but which is never buttressed by any confirmatory evidence.
How do we know that she won't, in fact, be worse than her predecessor?
Sandra Day O'Connor, whatever her faults-and they were manifold-was at the very least committed to the concept of federalism.
Do we even know that much about Ms. Miers?
We do not know that she will be better than O'Connor.
To the contrary, all evidence that's been disclosed during this process indicates that she will be as bad-or worse-than the woman she hopes to replace.
Maybe he is weak, maybe not. I think he is pretty strong, but what do I know? All I know is that if the GOPers in the Senate had made it clear that they would support conservative candidates, which they have not done (see Estrada, et al), then Bush could have confidently sent up a Janice Rogers Brown or Priscilla Owen. Instead, he sends Miers. I have no doubt she will vote with the conservative side. You can say what you want about Bush, but it is hard to knock the judicial candidates he has come up with to date. Miers may not have a history, but BUSH does.
I can't help but think that this is, once again, playing right into Bush's hands. The dems have somehow been bent into supporting a nominee who holds views clearly contrary to theirs, in hopes, misguided again, of hurting Bush politically. People need to understand: Bush doesn't care nearly as much about politics as he does results. The result here will likely be another conservative vote on the court. In 2 years, this argument will be long forgotten, but Miers will be on the court, voting conservative, providing a consistent 5-4 (at least) majority on contested issues.
In fact, it is this "failure" to deal with poltical issues that probably angers the GOP the most. Conservative writers, on the other hand, just hate that they didn't guess right on the nominee.
Judging from this post only I doubt that YOU are qualified but - on the other hand - even you could not possibly do any worse than some who have held that lofty title in the last century!
Great post.
A history of making bad decisions on nearly every major domestic policy issue that has crossed his desk.
Was Renquist responsible for starting a feminist/Marxist program (like Miers did)?
Was he an active of the ABA even after they took their ultra-liberal stances?
Did Renquist call the Federalist Society "activist and partisan"?
Let us be intellectually honest here. Why don't you mention the considerable differences between Hon. Renquist and Miers too?
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