“Senators beginning what ought to be a protracted and exacting scrutiny of Harriet Miers should be guided by three rules.
- “First, it is not important that she be confirmed.
- “Second, it might be very important that she not be.
- “Third, the presumption — perhaps rebuttable but certainly in need of rebutting — should be that her nomination is not a defensible exercise of presidential discretion to which senatorial deference is due.
- “It is not important that she be confirmed because there is no evidence that she is among the leading lights of American jurisprudence, or that she possesses talents commensurate with the Supreme Court’s tasks.
- “The president’s ‘argument’ for her amounts to: Trust me.
- “There is no reason to, for several reasons.
- “He [President Bush] has neither the inclination nor the ability to make sophisticated judgments about competing approaches to construing the Constitution. …
- “Furthermore, there is no reason to believe that Miers’s nomination resulted from the president’s careful consultation with people capable of such judgments. …
- “In addition, the president has forfeited his right to be trusted as a custodian of the Constitution. …”
Who wrote this today? Answer below:
George Will, Washington Post columnist.
Today’s column in the WaPo, and syndicated nationally, goes on and on and on. His “Can This Nomination Be Justified?,” is a full-body slam.
“… The crowning absurdity of the president’s wallowing in such nonsense [“diversity”] is the obvious assumption that the Supreme Court is, like a legislature, an institution of representation. This from a president who, introducing Miers, deplored judges who “legislate from the bench.” …”
And about that forfeiture of the right to be a custodian of the Constitution? (Uh, isn’t that sort of like saying maybe he should resign or be impeached?]
That comes from here:
In addition, the president has forfeited his right to be trusted as a custodian of the Constitution. The forfeiture occurred March 27, 2002, when, in a private act betokening an uneasy conscience, he signed the McCain-Feingold law expanding government regulation of the timing, quantity and content of political speech. The day before the 2000 Iowa caucuses he was asked — to ensure a considered response from him, he had been told in advance that he would be asked — whether McCain-Feingold’s core purposes are unconstitutional. He unhesitatingly said, “I agree.” Asked if he thought presidents have a duty, pursuant to their oath to defend the Constitution, to make an independent judgment about the constitutionality of bills and to veto those he thinks unconstitutional, he briskly said, “I do.”
See also: Catnip’s excellent rundown on the many conservative voices speaking out against Miers: “Reasons To Vote For Harriet Miers.”
I always thought George Will was smart, but stilted. Nice rips on chimp-boy though. I have to agree with him. A rare occurrence indeed.
Is it safe to say he has contempt for Bush, which is most assuredly not confined to the instant case?
Karl Rove must be “soiling himself” as George Will might have put it.
I mus say, too, that the outrage from the conservatives has shown who the REAL BRAINS in the Republican party are … and they’re not the O’Reilly/Hannity/Limbaugh types and their lemmings. Conservatives, whether you agree or not, at least have some grounding in knowledge, in history, in philosophical reflection, while the ‘winger lemmings are only grounded in hatred.
but at least it seems to take somebody like Will to reject the nonsense that is coming from too many Dems and “liberals”: namely that there is some kind of obligation to defer to the president on court nominations. There is nothing in the Constitution to suggest that that’s the case. Nor, in fact, is there anything in the Constitution requiring any particular number of “justices” on the court. The SC started with 6 and has had as many as 10. It could run happily with 8, say, for years.
And yet we keep hearing from our alleged side how we “must” have a new justice. Bullshit.
Bush has opened the door, as the TV lawyers say, on the “trust me” issue. The Dems, if they were really an opposition, would be running like crazy with the prize he handed them.
“If the criterion for approving this nomination is trust in this administration, then the answer must be a resounding NO. This president has built an unparalleled record of deceit, recklessness, cronyism, and corruption. We just lived through the tragic results of his judgement in naming yet another unqualified crony as the head of FEMA. The Constitution requires the Senate to assure that appointments to the Court be in the best interest of our nation. In the name of America’s future, we cannot allow him to saddle our highest court with yet another unqualified political proxy.”
It’s such a damn easy case. Any bets that they’ll give it a good try?
So after 5 years George Will wakes up and realizes that Bush has his own agenda? Has he been in a coma or is he really that stupid?
Is a high-powered GOP media campaign consultant. He abandoned his independence and intellectual honesty many years ago when he basically became a closet Reagan campaign/administration operative. Just why he’s decided to suddenly use whatever credibility he still possesses to attack Bush in this fashion is a mystery. I suppose it’s finally sunk in to a lot of people that the Bush Crime Family uses its toadies and hirelings to ensure its control of the country’s levers of power, and that this has now gone too far. The disastrous performance of the former FEMA director has opened a lot of people’s eyes, it would seem.
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“You know I could run for governor but I’m basically a media creation. I’ve never done anything. I’ve worked for my dad. I worked in the oil business. But that’s not the kind of profile you have to have to get elected to public office.”
George W. Bush, Midland Texas, 1989
My Favorite Quotes —
Washington, D.C., Jan. 29, 2001
Nov. 22, 2000
Bush’s Executive Order Burying Presidential Records
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George Will was worth reading because of his intellectual honesty, as difficult as that may be to believe. He was one of the first, maybe the first, pundit of any political stripe to call for Richard Nixon’s resignation or removal from office, and after Mad Dick did leave the WH and everyone else was doing cartwheels and proclaiming “our system works!”, Will was to my knowledge the only person to take the more realistic view that in fact Nixon had been brought down by an extra-Constitutional entity (the special prosecutor), and that in any event if Nixon hadn’t bugged himself and hung on to the tapes, he would have gotten away with it.
Every now and then you’ll see a flash of the old George Will, although he still manages to inadvertently demonstrate how compromised he is ethically. Note that his wife makes a lot of money devising attack ads for GOP candidates, so any limits on campaign spending is liable to put a significant crimp in his lifestyle, hence his virulent hatred of McCain/Feingold.
Yes. I was a smiling girl when I read that last nite. 🙂
They’re like rats leaving a sinking ship…
is the best of the reasons.
Bush kept going on about how he vouched for her qualifications. I had a fantasy that someone in the WH press would ask if he thought himself equipped for a future seat on the SCOTUS.
for confirming Miers is because the conservatives are pretending not to like her… are we that dumb?
Can someone tell me a REAL reason why she should be confirmed?
Because the way I see it Miers will:
So I am not buying it for one second the conservatives crying in their teacups… they will forget why they were supposedly so upset…once she is on the bench.
I want to know what James Dobson knows, according to the NY Times:
It seems to me that he might be subpoenaed to testify about this when the nomination gets to committee, mightn’t he? Wouldn’t that be rich? He could sing, or go to jail for contempt…
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ALSO IMPORTANT – NEEDS COVERAGE ::
Despite a veto threat from the President and VP Cheney’s effort to persuade Republican senators to oppose the amendment, John McCain, R-Ariz., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., are trying to tack that legislation onto the $440 billion military spending bill. Votes could come as early as Wednesday night.
McCain’s amendment would ban the use of “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment” against anyone in U.S. custody and require all U.S. troops to follow procedures in the Army Field Manual when they detain and interrogate suspects. Graham’s amendment would define “enemy combatant” and put into law procedures for prosecuting detainees at Guantanamo Bay.
“Confusion about the rules results in abuses in the field. We need a clear consistent standard,” John McCain, a prisoner of war during the Vietnam War, said on the Senate floor.
Lindsey Graham, an Air Force judge for 20 years, added: “We have let the troops down when it comes to trying to give them guidance in very stressful situations.”
Opposing the effort, Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, said that requiring all U.S. troops to follow procedures in the Army manual is not practical in the current war environment. “The techniques vary upon the circumstances and the physical location of people involved.”
The White House opposes legislation that would impose restrictions on the Pentagon’s detention, interrogation and prosecution of prisoners, arguing that it would tie the president’s hands in wartime.
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Diary it, and keep it simple for us dumb Americans (really).
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I’m swamped by info search on topic of Ms Miller – White House – NYT – WMD link to DoD & Pentagon – Aspen Institute – Pakistan
Therefore I pass, topics are great to be diaried – anyone??
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Suppose you all saw him on TV this morning … he was quoted widely on camera.
I THINK that Harriet Mier should give it up.
As the world that he fantasized about collapses around him courtesy of the self appointed emperor, Will is trying to put distnace between himself and the emperor.The elegant taking down of the Miers appointment gave him just such an opportunity.I will also add that the fact that a sycophant and courtier like Will breaks away from his usual bended knee position tells us that the Emperor’s days of glory are coming to an end.
There’s another explanation, other than the “George Will has momentarily recovered his senses” theory.
My theory: Will is one of those far right-wingers dismayed that Miers doesn’t froth sufficiently at the mouth, like Injustice Thomas and Extreme Injustice “Fat Tony” Scalia. Will doesn’t think this Bush is far right-wing enough, period.
Will wants an “intellectual conservative” (i.e., far-right wing radical like Scalia) who will be a “strict constructionist” of the Constitution, someone with a proven record who is “safe” for the right-wingers.
Will can’t recover his senses and sanity because you cannot recover what you never possessed initially.