Repubs on Miers: "Karl Rove should go to jail for this, not Plamegate."

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/index.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/10/03/conservatives/index.html

Bill Frist, John Cornyn and Orrin Hatch have each taken a turn before the TV cameras this morning, and each has proclaimed himself excited about George W. Bush's nomination of Harriet Miers. Maybe we're just projecting, but it seemed from here that each displayed a remarkable lack of enthusiasm in the process. Frist was measured and halting as he introduced Miers. Cornyn read from the talking points he trots out each time the subject turns to the federal judiciary. And Hatch used words like "hard working" and "good lawyer" at a moment when you might expect to hear more superlative superlatives.

---SNIP---

David Frum reaches for a sports metaphor, but not the one John Roberts favored. Frum says the Miers nomination is an "unforced error." "This is the moment for which the conservative legal movement has been waiting for two decades -- two decades in which a generation of conservative legal intellects of the highest ability have moved to the most distinguished heights in the legal profession. On the nation's appellate courts, in legal academia, in private practice, there are dozens and dozens of principled conservative jurists in their 40s and 50s unassailably qualified for the nation's highest court. . . . There was no reason for (Bush) to choose anyone but one of these outstanding conservatives."

Michelle Malkin offers a similar view: "It's not just that Miers has zero judicial experience," she says. "It's that she's so transparently a crony/"diversity" pick while so many other vastly more qualified and impressive candidates went to waste. If this is President Bush's bright idea to buck up his sagging popularity -- among conservatives as well as the nation at large -- one wonders whom he would have picked in rosier times."

---SNIP---

But they're not buying it at Confirmthem.com, a site organized to back Bush's previous judicial nominees. One poster complains that Bush has "lied to" conservatives by promising to appoint justices in the Scalia/Thomas mold but then naming a "disastrous enigma on Roe" instead. Another calls the Miers nomination the "'read my lips' disaster" of the second Bush administration. And a third declares: "Karl Rove should go to jail for this, not Plamegate."

[Pirate Smile]

1. Did the stones have him out of commission again?

[TallahasseeGrannie]

2. I've just come from reading Malkin

and all her links. Whoa! The RW is freaking out over this woman!

How bad can she be?

Just whom is GWB courting now?

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

3. Malkin was a surprise, and I saw Cornyn on MSNBC...

Cornyn usually lines up eagerly to support whatever Bush has going on, but Salon's article nailed it...he said the WORDS this morning with a complete lack of enthusiasm and a more-plastic-than-usual smile.

Maybe the folks who say that Bush is planning for the fallout of charges against his administration are correct. Maybe he's just planning ahead for his own day in court...who knows?

[jbonkowski]

4. It's a trick.

Don't fall for it. All the right needs is a few pundits out in front complaining about the nominee to be able to claim balance. All they need to do is raise the comfort level of a few Democrats to avoid a potential filibuster.

[papau]

5. WSJ implies she is anti-abortion and a Scalia "orginalist"

So is Ms. Miers's not just a judicial restraint/limited role of the court/judicial conservative, she is a Scalia anti-abortion "orginalist" with no respect for precedent?

http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB1128351923853585...

<snip>Marvin Olasky, a journalism professor and the father of the "compassionate conservative" movement, posted a series of excerpts from interviews with friends and acquaintances of Harriet Miers he conducted before the official nomination. One of the interviews was with Texas Supreme Court Justice Nathan Hecht, who said he has known Ms. Miers for 30 years and described their relationship as "very close friends."

Quoting Mr. Hecht on Ms. Miers's judicial philosophy: "She's an originalist -- that's the way she takes the Bible," and that's her approach to the Constitution as well -- "Originalist -- it means what it says."

Mr. Hecht says he and Ms. Miers "went to two or three pro-life dinners in the late 80s or early 90s."<snip>


http://usgovinfo.about.com/library/weekly/aa022701a.htm
Scalia on the Constitution


U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia explained and defended his "originalist" approach to constitutional interpretation in a closing address to a Princeton University conference on James Madison, fourth president and framer of the Constitution.

Speaking on Feb. 23, 2001, Justice Scalia explained that he, like Madison, interprets the Constitution according to the "common sense" meaning and definition of the document's words at the time they were written. An opposite approach, Scalia suggested from that applied by Justices who believe the Constitution "changes from age to age in order to meet the needs of a changing society."

Scalia criticized the second approach, saying that it too often results in crafting subjective interpretations of the Constitution to address issues that could and should be handled by Congress.

Calling his view of the Constitution an "originalist" view, Scalia conceded it often places him in a position of supporting laws that do not seem to make sense.

"It may well be stupid, but if it's stupid, pass a law!" he said. "Don't think the originalist interpretation constrains you. To the contrary. My Constitution is a very flexible Constitution. You want a right to abortion? Create it the way all rights are created in a democracy, pass a law. The death penalty? Pass a law. That's flexibility

<snip>

[belle]

6. No, really, as much as it seems like it, they're not the Borg.

They have wingnuts; we have wingnuts. it's just that their wingnuts are the mainstream now. and the wingnuts wanted someone more blatantly wingnutty.