An overly simplistic question

October 4, 2005

This is probably too simplistic a question to even be asked, and I should know better than to put my naiveté in print by raising the point, but I have a query for the White House.

Is Harriet Miers the best person in the country for the Supreme Court?

I don’t mean whether she’s qualified or capable; I mean of all the options available to the president to fill this vacancy, is Miers so uniquely skilled, such an extraordinary attorney, that she necessarily became the top and only choice?

There are thousands of smart conservative attorneys, hundreds of brilliant legal scholars, and at least dozens of top-tier jurists who would be considered qualified for the high court. Is it really the White House’s contention that Harriet Miers is unsurpassed in her credentials for the Supreme Court? Really?

Kermit Hall, a constitutional law scholar who is president of the State University of New York at Albany, said Miers’ appointment was extraordinary because she had been deeply involved in the search for Bush’s court nominees. “No one can look at this appointment and say that the president is turning to the very best person he could find,” Hall said.

I agree, no one could say that, but the president did say that. I’m wondering if even his most ardent supporters would agree that there is no one in America better equipped for the high court than Miers. She’s the best nominee imaginable, the greatest the Republican legal world has to offer?

And if they’re not prepared to make that argument, then why, exactly, is she the president’s nominee? If this is supposed to be a meritocratic process, why is the Republican establishment prepared to settle for someone who isn’t the best person for the job?

His father said Clarence Thomas was the most qualified person in the country when he appointed him to the SC. Maybe that phrase runs in the family.

  • Hopefully this becomes the question that ultimately kills her nomination in the senate, because even with what little we know about her it makes her a terrible candidate. Whereas John Roberts seemed like a stealth candidate because he appeared to have the qualifications and we just don’t trust Bush, Miers is different. She is a Bush loyalist, one who can be counted on to rule to strengthen the Oval Office in her rulings.

    The top story on the New York Times website suggests something about this.

    “What Ms. Miers does bring to the court is a long record of loyalty to Mr. Bush, a trait that some scholars said would be attractive to the White House at a time when the court faces a welter of conflicts, beyond abortion and other social issues, that are of immediate concern to the administration.

    “Foremost among them, said William P. Marshall, a former deputy White House counsel in the Clinton administration, are executive power and government secrecy. In both areas, Mr. Bush has sought to establish wide latitude for the executive branch, especially in battling terrorism and religious extremism at home and abroad.

    “In this area, Mr. Bush might be better able to count on a loyalist than on an ideologue, said Mr. Marshall, a law professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

    “Beyond politics, ideology and Mr. Bush’s thinking about the issues on the court’s plate, there is another way of assessing his selection. Mr. Bush has always prided himself on his ability to judge character and putting into high-ranking or sensitive jobs people with whom he feels comfortable. He puts a premium on loyalty, and Ms. Miers has served him in a long list of jobs with that most prized of traits among the Bush family, discretion.”

  • Here’s my own naive question;

    Is George Bush demonstrating an understanding of the serious nature of the Supreme Court, or the awesome responsibility of his job?

    With 3 years to go, he may succeed in turning the entire government, from top to bottom, into a totally dysfunctional banana republic.

  • I don’t believe Bush knows how to shoot for the top of the list of the qualified, since he’s never been high enough on it to see who’s up there. He reinforces those incurious supporters who believe “he’s one of us” with these appointments. The “Hey, I too could lead FEMA or be on the SCOTUS,” has served him to date and he’s not about to change strategy now.

  • Think impeachment insurance. They need a reliable 5th vote given the number of investigations that finally seem to be pointing back at the White House. Don’t know if this has been broached but its got to be a consideration. They have three years left which is a lot of dof years in terms of discovery.

  • Mieirs is a stoooge for the Texas mafia, period. The Texas mafia is the most organized of crime families anywhere in the world.

    Houston thinks it should be the center of the universe and Houstonians take very good care of themselves. By September 16, 2001, the Defense of Houston was formed by an “ad hoc, self-appointed but broadly representative” group of prominent Houstonians led by James Baker. The website came complete with a section on bioterorrism.

    The other day, I read that Texas is creating 12,000 jobs a month and you can bet that Texas is using your federal tax dollars to do it. The White House created Homeland Security so you don’t know how much money is shoveled into Texas coffers.

    The natural gas market is fixed by Texans who set out to corner it twenty years ago. There’s penty of gas but the price goes up right along with oil.

    Remember Cantor Fitzgerald, the company that lost so many employees to the 9/11 attacks? It manages Tradespark, an energy trading exchange that moved to Houston immediately after 9/11. Tradespark is a limited partnership of energy companies including Koch Industries, Dynegy, Dominion, TXU, Shell Coral and Williams.

    In the months after 9/11, Tradespark reported a record number of trades. What I’d like to know is how many of those trades were with Enron and who made money on the deals. A lot of cash was siphoned out of Enron in 2001 and no one has been exactly forthcoming about where it went.

    Awhile ago, I read that the Defense Department was running an acquisition program out of the Houston VA. This might sound screwy but I remember reading that it subcontracted the buying for the Jacksonville naval base to a group of Floridians in the panhandle. If I am right, everyone is getting a percentage off the top. That’s what privatization really means.

    There are three electrical grids in the United States: the Western grid, the Eastern grid and the Texas grid. Texas could turn off the lights in the rest of the country and move the capital to Houston.

    Don’t think it’s a farfetched idea. Two Texas companies attacked California as soon as the Supreme Court installed Bush as president. Enron employees did not decide to steal billions from Californians without the consent of management. It doesn’t work that way.

    Texans have had their hook into my state ever since the mobbed up Al D’Amato brought Enron to Nassau County in 1992. Enron entered into a 23 year contract with the NY Power Authority in the early 90s and I have no idea who gets that contract or even what the terms are.

    Who knows why but LIPA (Long Island Power Authority), run by a Gargano and D’Amato stooge, owns 18% of Constellation Nuclear Plant which is under the umbrella of the Constellation Group. The ruthless Wyly brothers head Constellation and I just know that they will stick LIPA for billions one way or another.

    Sam Wyly currently is fighting to take control of Computer Associates and if he wins, CA is moving from Long Island to Texas and taking hundreds of good jobs along with it. I can thank that the piece of scum, Al D’Amato and the rest of the crooked board of driectors when it happens.

    In 1992, Itera, a mysterious Russian gas company, registered as a Florida business in Jacksonville. It’s no secret that the management of Gazprom, the huge Russian state-owned gas company, stole Gazprom assets to start Itera. In 1993, Enron announced that it was entering into a partnership with Gazprom but nothing ever came of it.

    It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that Enron was the entity that paid off the Gazprom management. Ken Lay spent a lot of time in Switzerland around 1994 and maybe someone should nail him as to what he was doing there. And don’t forget that James Baker and Robert Mossbacher became million dollar a year Enron consultants in 1993.

    I’m almost certain that Enron’s purchase of Garden State Paper Mill from Media General in July 2000 for $76m was a disguised Bush campaign contribution. Media General owns newspapers and television stations in the southeast. By selling GSP, Media got rid of a $90 million albatross including an unfunded pension liability. After Enron went under, GSP was closed and later sold for $6m.

    If anyone takes the Texas mafia to court, Mieirs is there to stack the deck.

  • I forgot – three Texas presidents, three wars.

    You think maybe the rest of us should wise up?

  • Ms Miers does not HAVE to be the best candidate for the Supreme Court.

    She just has to be President Bush’s.

    I don’t think the constitution, and certainly not precedence, says that the President has to put forward the best possible candidate, or even the best candidate that meets his views.

    He’s comfortable with Ms. Miers. And his press conference let slip his real reason, she won’t change her philosophy in the next twenty years.

    We don’t know what it is, but if President Bush does, it’s Pro-life, anti-privacy, and probably other distrubing things.

  • This is in no small measure about the preservation of Karl Rove, who will fight his coming indictment all the way to the Supreme Court. Harriet Miers has been in on every discussion about the legal problems of this White House, so she goes onto the Court for a specific purpose, and it ain’t to advance a conservative agenda, you fundie chumps! The important issues for an authoritarian ruler are voter fraud, civil liberties, Presidential power and campaign finance. Anyone who thinks that Rovistas have abortion at the top of their list of concerns is just not paying attention. The benefit to the cult of Rovism, beyond the political, is that Miers’ nomination calls for total faith in a Maximum Leader. The essense of a cult is belief which opposes the evidence of reason. Build isolation from the norm, build dependence on authority. These fascists are a clever, clever bunch, and as usual, the Beltway talkers and gawkers aren’t up to the task. Id bett on 62-38, with just 4 GOP defectors including Voinovich, who is appalled at his party’s direction and has become my favorite Republican

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