Absinthe & Cookies (a bit bitter, a bit sweet)

"What a great plan. Too bad he had to sacrifice his buddy Harriet. The man really is dumb like a fox."

I dunno. I usually don't buy into complicated plots in the first place (it's one of the things I find stupidly overdone at the various lefty blogs) and it doesn't seem to reflect the Bush style. For a politician he seems to inspire, and return, a fair amount of loyalty.

I'd put it down to "tone-deafness" myself.

It was a mistake, and I'm relieved it's over, but I'd have paid fifty cents to see a Texas schoolmarm in a SCOTUS seat.

Personally, I think she would have been good on the Court. She is not the first Justice to have never been a judge before their appointment - can anyone say Rehnquist. In fact, being a judge (or an attorney) is not, even a formal requirement under the Constitution.

It was a smart pick - in that the Democrats really could not touch her. I am sure, being intelligent and a woman, she long ago decided not to publically discussed a lot of hot button items, so she would not be open to "attacks", but personally, my guess is she and Bush have dicussed a lot and she would have delivered on all the "extreme" right wanted, while being shielded from attaches of liberals during the debates.

"Personally, I think she would have been good on the Court."

I truly could not possibly disagree more.

"She is not the first Justice to have never been a judge before their appointment - can anyone say Rehnquist."

Rehnquist was Assistant Attorney for the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel. OLC is where the rest of the federal government goes for critical, hard-hitting, pull-no-punches objective legal opinions: indeed, it's been said OLC exists precisely because the Supreme Court itself is bound by the "case or controversy" requirement of Article III and thus can't issue advisory rulings. AAG for OLC is almost invariably where the number one or two legal mind in DOJ can be found, either right after or ahead of the Solicitor General.

Rehnquist also graduated first in his class from Stanford Law School, and himself clerked for Justice Jackson. I'm sorry, but to compare Miers to Rehnquist simply does not even pass the laugh test. What we do have of her writings, legal and otherwise, demonstrate the workings of, at best, a competent but hardly noteworthy attorney. And with respect to the constitutional issues that the Court routinely deals with, there's simply been too much out there in the past few weeks illustrating that they subjects on which Miers was hopelessly, embarassingly, ignorant.

"In fact, being a judge (or an attorney) is not, even a formal requirement under the Constitution."

Well, no, of course not, and there have been non-judges appointed before Rehnquist, Chief Justices Marshall, Taft and Warren perhaps most obviously.

"It was a smart pick - in that the Democrats really could not touch her."

How not? Having endorsed a constitutional ban on abortion when she was serving on the Dallas City Council, for most Democratic Senators not to do their damndest to rip her to shreds would've politically impossible. Schumer, Kennedy, Durbin, etc. were just waiting for her to be fully bloodied up from the right before going after her at the hearings.

"I am sure, being intelligent and a woman..."

How condescending. If she'd been Harry Miers, with exactly the same background, she'd have been forced to withdraw even earlier. Of course, had that been the case, she wouldn't have even been nominated, either. Can we dispense with the accusations of sexism, please? There are plenty of great women judges, attorneys and legal scholars who most of us would be happy to see on the Court (for the record, my first choice, male or female, to replace O'Connor has consistently been Edith Jones), but Harriet Miers isn't among them.

"...she long ago decided not to publically discussed a lot of hot button items, so she would not be open to "attacks","

Why do you assume this, when there's no evidence for it? She was a state bar president, and having worked with several, I can say it's a job that hardly requires you to be a stranger to controversy. Isn't it more reasonable to assume she had no very strong positions on many subjects, rather than that she did but held them so close to the vest as to be secret from almost everyone despite being on the public stage?

"...but personally, my guess is she and Bush have dicussed a lot and she would have delivered on all the "extreme" right wanted, while being shielded from attaches of liberals during the debates."

There's no evidence for this, either. What little we do know of her opinions on constitutional matters all points in the opposite direction: her support for affirmative action, her imagining a "proportional representation" requirement into the 14th Amendment, her use of the term "self-determination" with regard to issues at least tangential to abortion, etc. These all sound like the positions of someone who'd be far more like O'Connor, Kennedy or even Souter on the Court than someone in the mould of Scalia or Thomas, the kind of nominee the President explicitly promised to appoint during his election campaign.

Now see the great argument we missed while you were here, Roberta? :)