Bush Chooses Miers for Supreme Court- Page 2

[PalJoey]

Posted: 10/3/05 at 2:00pm

Sueleen--you RULE!

[TheatreDiva90016]

Posted: 10/3/05 at 2:06pm

Sue-

I snorted on that one.

[YouWantitWhen????]

Posted: 10/3/05 at 2:09pm

**YWIW spits diet coke all over her keyboard**

Sueleen you are pretty damn amazing.

SNL will have so much fun with this. As someone else said, Rachel Dracht will have a field day. Maybe Debbie Downer is now a Supreme Court Justice?

[Calvin]

Posted: 10/3/05 at 2:14pm

Someone on another board pointed this one out.

[SNAFU]

Posted: 10/3/05 at 3:15pm

She is reported as saying that Bush is one of the most intelligent men she has ever met .... if this is true, we are ALL IN TROUBLE!

Posted: 10/3/05 at 3:31pm

"In the White House that hero worshipped the president, Miers was distinguished by the intensity of her zeal: She once told me that the president was the most brilliant man she had ever met." - David Frum

[PalJoey]

Posted: 10/3/05 at 3:33pm

Ms Miers = Mrs Meers?

"So sad to be all alone in the world..."

[Gothampc]

Posted: 10/3/05 at 3:36pm

[WOSQ]

Posted: 10/3/05 at 3:44pm

Ms. Miers kind of looks like Janet Reno in womens clothes.

[Plum]

Posted: 10/3/05 at 4:01pm

We'll see about this. But judges have been appointed to the Supreme Court without any judicial experience before. Interestingly, those are the ones most likely to shift from what people thought their views would be. They also tend to shift left.

[smartpenguin78]

Posted: 10/3/05 at 4:25pm

Yes there have been many who had little or no judicial experience, including Abe Fortas, who was appointed very similarly by LBJ, and did not last long. He has long been an example by "conservatives" that "liberals" engage in cronyism.

The precedent is there that Miers may shift left, but it remains to be seen, I really am interested in her answers, and non-answers during the confirmation hearings.

Also, now that Bush has failed them in appointing a "known" ideological conservative twice, what kind of stink will the extreme right start to throw?

[PalJoey]

Posted: 10/3/05 at 4:51pm

This kind of stink:
Civil War in the Republican Party

[Plum]

Posted: 10/3/05 at 6:08pm

But you know, it's really a shame that Bush couldn't pick a more qualified woman. There are women out there with more impressive resumes than Miers, and picking her just looks like the worst case of affirmative action ever. What a setback. But 2 women on the court is better than 1.

[Plum]

Posted: 10/3/05 at 9:58pm

Just thought I'd bump this with an encouraging link.
Daily Kos

Posted: 10/3/05 at 10:06pm

Miers and the ABA on abortion.

[brdlwyr]

Posted: 10/3/05 at 10:15pm

DG, my early thought tonight without reading her record is that she promised Bush that she would vote against Roe, other than that they are long time friends and that is enough for this man.

Posted: 10/3/05 at 10:18pm

Pat Buchanan gives his opinion:

"Handed a once-in-a-generation opportunity to return the Supreme Court to constitutionalism, George W. Bush passed over a dozen of the finest jurists of his day -- to name his personal lawyer.

In a decision deeply disheartening to those who invested such hopes in him, Bush may have tossed away his and our last chance to roll back the social revolution imposed upon us by our judicial dictatorship since the days of Earl Warren.

This is not to disparage Harriet Miers. From all accounts, she is a gracious lady who has spent decades in the law and served ably as Bush’s lawyer in Texas and, for a year, as White House counsel.

But her qualifications for the Supreme Court are non-existent. She is not a brilliant jurist, indeed, has never been a judge. She is not a scholar of the law. Researchers are hard-pressed to dig up an opinion. She has not had a brilliant career in politics, the academy, the corporate world or public forum. Were she not a friend of Bush, and female, she would never have even been considered.

What commended her to the White House, in the phrase of the hour, is that she “has no paper trail.” So far as one can see, this is Harriet Miers’ principal qualification for the U.S. Supreme Court."
Updated On: 10/3/05 at 10:18 PM

[PalJoey]

Posted: 10/3/05 at 11:33pm

I love when the right wing tears at the seams!

[papalovesmambo]

Posted: 10/4/05 at 7:19am

hidden in plain sight in the usa today story is an interesting comment:

"senate democratic leader harry reid of nevada, who voted against bush's last nominee, chief justice john roberts, had suggested that bush consider nominating miers. 'i'm very happy to have someone like her,' he said."

oh and someone asked about dobson? he was on fox last night defending her. she's an evangelical.

Updated On: 10/4/05 at 07:19 AM

[brdlwyr]

Posted: 10/4/05 at 9:51am

Papa and PJ - on a side note, NPR did a story on bloggers this morning and featured one of the bloggers from redstate.org.

[papalovesmambo]

Posted: 10/4/05 at 10:02am

it was hilarious watching the corner over at nro yesterday turn into a bizarro world version of a daily kos diary.

i enjoy lots of blogs but get a kick out of them especially when either side gets too inflated with a sense of their own power which is the case recently with more than a few right wing blogs declarations of armageddon regarding this appointment. of course anything that causes markos to make non-fire breathing posts is something that makes me teensy bit leery...
kos on miers nod

[PalJoey]

Posted: 10/4/05 at 10:20am

Big-time conservative Richard Viguerie calls Bush a liar:

--

Conservatives Feel Betrayed

Congratulations are due to Ralph Neas, Nan Aron, and Chuck Schumer for going toe-to-toe with President Bush and forcing him to blink," said conservative activist Richard A. Viguerie. "Liberals have successfully cowed President Bush by scaring him off from nominating a known conservative, strict constructionist to the Court, leaving conservatives fearful of which direction the Court will go."

"President Bush desperately needed to have an ideological fight with the Left to redefine himself and re-energize his political base, which is in shock and dismay over his big government policies," Viguerie added.

"With their lack of strong, identifiable records, President Bush's choices for Supreme Court nominees seem designed more to avoid a fight with the extreme Left than to appeal to his conservative base," lamented Viguerie.

Many conservatives worry that without verifiable records, President Bush's Supreme Court nominees will be more like the liberal Justice Souter than the conservative, strict constructionists Scalia and Thomas.

Remembering and still dismayed about how his father, President George H. W. Bush (the 41st), lied to conservatives and American voters by saying he was a conservative and expressly stating he would not raise taxes, conservatives fear President George W. Bush (the 43rd) has done the same by failing to nominate well-known conservative, strict constructionists to the U.S. Supreme Court.

"President Bush has presided over the largest growth in government since Lyndon Johnson, and now he appears willing to lose all credibility with conservative voters by failing to fulfill his campaign vow to nominate an openly Scalia- or Thomas-like justice," Viguerie concluded.

Conservatives are also exceedingly disappointed in the Republican Leadership in Congress as well. Conservatives will now begin to seriously consider why they should continue to give their support -money, labor, and votes - to Republican politicians who take their conservative base for granted by continually lying to them.

Posted: 10/5/05 at 5:01am

"She told the group she believed gay men and lesbians should have the same civil rights as straight Americans, but that she opposed repeal of the state's sodomy law criminalizing same-sex sexual conduct." - Miers, in an interview with the Lesbian/Gay Political Coalition of Dallas.

Does this make sense to anybody? Because it sure doesn't to me.

[Plum]

Posted: 10/5/05 at 8:48am

I thought she said she wanted the fate of the sodomy law left to the State Legislature.

I'm too tired for this.

Posted: 10/5/05 at 11:21am

--- "She decided that she wanted faith to be a bigger part of her life," Justice Hecht, who now serves on the Texas Supreme Court, said in an interview. "One evening she called me to her office and said she was ready to make a commitment" to accept Jesus Christ as her savior and be born again, he said. He walked down the hallway from his office to hers, and there amid the legal briefs and court papers, Ms. Miers and Justice Hecht "prayed and talked," he said.

She was baptized not long after that, at the Valley View Christian Church.

It was a pivotal personal transformation for the woman now named for a seat on the United States Supreme Court, not entirely unlike that experienced by President Bush and others in the Texas political and business establishment of that time.

Ms. Miers, born Roman Catholic, became an evangelical Christian and began identifying more with Republicans than with the Democrats who had long held sway over Texas politics. She joined the missions committee of her church, which is against legalized abortion, and friends and colleagues say she rarely looked back at her past as a Democrat. --- from the New York Times.

NYTimes article.