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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Thomas A Watson who wrote (706618)	10/9/2005 4:14:10 PM
From: Mr. Palau	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

So Twatson believes that Krauthammer, Malkin, Limbaugh (the hillbilly heroin kid), Kristol, Will, Levin, Bork, Weyrich, Savage, Brownback, Coulter, Frum, American Spectator, National Review (and several RW posters on this thread, including your moderator) are all idiots who do not know appreciate how to find a qualified Supreme Court justice.

To: Thomas A Watson who wrote (706618)	10/9/2005 4:45:51 PM
From: Mr. Palau	Respond to of 769670

"Conservatives urge Bush to withdraw Supreme Court nominee Miers 10.09.2005, 02:23 PM WASHINGTON (AFX) - Conservative outrage over President George Bush's controversial pick of Texas lawyer Harriet Miers to fill a vacancy on the US Supreme Court was unabated Sunday as activists called on the White House to withdraw her nomination. Among the most outspoken detractors was former presidential candidate Pat Buchanan, who, on NBC television's 'Meet the Press' program, said Bush should name someone else to fill the vacancy on the US high court. 'I would like to see the nomination withdrawn. If I were in the Senate today I would vote against it,' Buchanan said. 'My guess is, she will not be confirmed, and she will be withdrawn.' The Weekly Standard, a bible for dyed-in-the-wool conservatives, on Sunday called the choice of Miers 'at best an error, at worst a disaster' which should be reconsidered. 'He has put up an unknown and undistinguished figure for an opening that conservatives worked for a generation to see filled with a jurist of high distinction,' the magazine's editor Bill Kristol wrote. 'The best alternative would be for Miers to withdraw,' the conservative pundit said. 'Her nomination has hurt the president whom she came to Washington to serve.' Conservatives have been harshly critical of Bush's choice of Miers, fearing the president may have blown the best chance in decades for Republicans to move the high court -- the arbiter of legal disputes on a wide range of hot-button social issues -- definitively to the right. If confirmed, Miers would fill the seat of retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who was the first woman to serve on the Supreme Court and often a critical swing vote on the nine-member panel. Miers, 60, currently is White House counsel, and served as Bush's personal attorney when he was governor of Texas. Her opinions on abortion and other burning issues are largely unknown and staunch conservatives have said they would have preferred a candidate whose views were clear. Bush's rightwing supporters are further miffed that in choosing Miers, an old friend and longtime aide, the president passed over several better-known, better-qualified conservative candidates. Meanwhile, moderate Republicans have stuck by the president, at least outwardly, and decried the rush to dismiss Miers. 'What you've had here on Harriet Miers is not a rush to judgment. It's a stampede to judgment. She's faced tough -- one of the toughest lynch mobs ever assembled in Washington,' said Arlen Specter, the Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, speaking on ABC television. 'She's intelligent, she's hard-working, unquestioned integrity. She fought her way up, couldn't get a job when she graduated from law school because she was a woman,' Specter said in Miers's defense. But he indicated there was some cause to worry about the qualifications of Miers, who has never served as a judge. 'When you deal in constitutional law, you're dealing in some very esoteric complicated subjects that require a great deal of background,' Specter said. 'And that kind of background doesn't come unless you are in the field or unless you're really studying it.' Bush on Saturday sought to reassure conservatives, saying in his weekly radio address that Miers was a solid conservative who would not drift to the left if seated on the high court. 'I chose Harriet Miers for the court both because of her accomplishments, and because I know her character and her judicial philosophy. Harriet Miers will be the type of judge I said I would nominate -- a good conservative judge,' Bush said. forbes.com

To: Thomas A Watson who wrote (706618)	10/9/2005 5:08:55 PM
From: BEEF JERKEY	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

HAMILTON AND GEORGE W. BUSH: Here's a spectacularly relevant quote from the Federalist Papers, where Hamilton argues for the Senate's important role in vetting presidential appointments to bodies such as the Supreme Court. Someone should cite it at the Miers' hearings: To what purpose then require the co-operation of the Senate? I answer, that the necessity of their concurrence would have a powerful, though, in general, a silent operation. It would be an excellent check upon a spirit of favoritism in the President, and would tend greatly to prevent the appointment of unfit characters from State prejudice, from family connection, from personal attachment, or from a view to popularity. In addition to this, it would be an efficacious source of stability in the administration. It will readily be comprehended, that a man who had himself the sole disposition of offices, would be governed much more by his private inclinations and interests, than when he was bound to submit the propriety of his choice to the discussion and determination of a different and independent body, and that body an entire branch of the legislature. The possibility of rejection would be a strong motive to care in proposing. The danger to his own reputation, and, in the case of an elective magistrate, to his political existence, from betraying a spirit of favoritism, or an unbecoming pursuit of popularity, to the observation of a body whose opinion would have great weight in forming that of the public, could not fail to operate as a barrier to the one and to the other. He would be both ashamed and afraid to bring forward, for the most distinguished or lucrative stations, candidates who had no other merit than that of coming from the same State to which he particularly belonged, or of being in some way or other personally allied to him, or of possessing the necessary insignificance and pliancy to render them the obsequious instruments of his pleasure. My italics. There are two reasons to vote against Harriet Miers. Someone who needs a "crash course" on constitutional law should not be selected to be a Supreme Court Justice required to make decisions, if confirmed, in a short period of time. The second reason is simply that this president has abused his power by picking someone who "worships" him, whose fundamental qualification is that she is an indentured servant to him, and whose fundamental loyalty has long been to a political dynasty, rather than a serious, settled judicial philosophy. I'm still waiting for the hearings to give her a fair shot. But in some ways, this nomination tells us little about Miers, and a lot about Bush. From the Federalist papers, no. 76. andrewsullivan.com Bush is a Marrooooon!