Harriet Miers on the Supreme Court?
 

Ok, I'm thinking this whole thing is a fake-out of some kind. Nominate a woman with no judicial experience and let the Democrats tear her to shreds as a political crony of the President, then withdraw her and nominate a woman with actual qualifications for the job.

Or am I being too cynical?

I saw this this morning.

Without more information on her credentials, it's hard to say.

I do confess to being confused as to a nominie with no bench experience, but then again, alot of nominies are only recently appointed to federal courts and then bumped up.

This concerns me...the Judiciary is the last check left in the supposed "checks and balances" put into place for the protection of our country....and it feels like its about to be removed. I have to wonder ....Why Her?

Other than the fact she works for Bush....and thus may be in his pocket to an extent.

President Bush on November 17 named Harriet Miers as White House counsel, a position she will hold upon the Senate confirmation of Alberto Gonzales -- current White House counsel -- as U.S. Attorney General.

Most recently, Miers served as Assistant to the President and Staff Secretary. Prior to that, she was Co-Managing Partner at Locke Liddell & Sapp, LLP. Previously, she was President of Locke, Purnell, Rain & Harrell, where she worked from 1972 until 1999. From 1995 until 2000, she was chair of the Texas Lottery Commission. In 1992, Harriet became the first woman president of the Texas State Bar, and in 1985 she became the first woman president of the Dallas Bar Association. She also served as a Member-At-Large on the Dallas City Council. Harriet received both her undergraduate and law degrees from Southern Methodist University.

I think clarence thomas didn't have bench experience either.

I appreciate the posting of that resume. In looking at it carefully, I'm struck by the lack of anything that jumps out and says "this person is well qualified to be an Associate Justice of the SCOUS. I'm not seeing anything that would make me think she'd be someone we'd want on a Circuit Court, or a State Supreme Court.

I'm not questioning her intellect or ability to render appellate decisions, because I just don't know--and that's the trouble here. I'd have the same opinion if Clinton had tried to appoint Bruce Lindsey to the Supreme Court--my antenna would be WAY up on this.

That could be, and I'm sure over the last two centuries, there have been good choices that weren't sitting judges. This may work out fine, but it sure seems like this position is being treated as "entry level."

I'm really surprised that he would nominate a crony with no experience after what just happened with Brownie. Learning from mistakes does not appear to be his forte.

That's an understatement. I'm really hoping the senate, especially the few sensible Republicans left in it, have the guts to treat this seriously.

This is intentional. IMO, it is intended to insure that there is no challenge from SCOTUS to the emerging, "police state".

I have included the most signifigant points in the article that are intended to persuade that appointment of SCOTUS justices who have not experienced law practice in the "real world", will, as an intended consequence, I believe..... remove the last best hope of redress for ordinary citizens who are victims of the denial of their constitutional rights by police, prosecutors, and politicians.

I think because of the brownie predicament the entire senate is going to really check her out and examine her credentials. I also think bush knows her well, better than the public or the media. I'm not sure how I feel about this since it appears that judges who have stuck to their priniples their whole carrers are being snubbed by bush here. What kind of messge is that to the true conservative judges? But we will wait and see, I'm sure the senate will take a deep look at this one.

As long as she is dedicated to the law and strictly upholds the constitution and the intentions of the framers, than I could care less if she has previous judicial experience or not.

A good article, Stuart Taylor is generally trustworthy. I was surprised that only Souter had presided over actual trials. That is disturbing to me, as a trial lawyer.

Of course, it could be that not many trial lawyers WANT to be judges--pay cut and all.

Apparently 10 out of the last 33 sitting justices worked for the president that nominated them.

Didn't seem to be an issue before so I don't see why it should be now.

That's interesting. Drawing just on my admittedly faulty memory banks, I could think of Clarence Thomas at the EEOC as working for the first Bush, and that's about it.

But if it wasn't an issue for Republicans when Democrats did it, and wasn't an issue for Democrats when Republicans did it before, then I agree, it shouldn't be an issue now.

That doesn't address qualifications, of course, but would take out the political angle.

I just heard Harry Reid say that Harriet Miers was a "trial lawyer." That may address some of the Stuart Taylor concerns.

In today's political environment any opinionated intelligent person with a track record causes a lot of problems in the confirmation process and will get slammed by the Left, Right or both. Better to pick someone who has never written or voiced their opinion on any of the important topics of the day.

I'm not saying that Harriet Miers is like this, but it wouldn't surprise me. I'm sure the pundits on both sides will let us know more about her in the coming days.

You have more confidence in them than I do. :rolleyes:

Gotta luv the cronyism here. It seems to be her only qualification for the job.

To the cynical perhaps....but I see where it comes from

I have to disagree. The lady was President of the State Bar of Texas, the authority responsible for qualifying ever other lawyer in Texas. Crony: maybe. Unqualified: that wouldn't be my opinion.

Anyway, I'm getting the impression she's a staunch conservative. I've been hearing phrases like, "Iron Maiden" and "Bulldog" being used to describe her. Somehow, I don't see these terms being used to describe Justice Ruth Ginsburg. I think she's a solid choice for the Supreme Court.

Here's an interesting take on the situation, especially the second paragraph.


http://www.volokh.com/archives/archi...tml#1128363647

I read that the appointment came as part of a recomendation from the gang of 16, i think thats what they are called and democratic majority leader harry reid already gave her recomendation.

It was a gang of 14, actually.

Miers was an interesting pick because of her personal closeness to the President, to be sure. I think calling it "cronyism" is overly simplistic. Bush, I'm sure, remembers what happened to his father when advisors assured H.W. that a certain current Justice was a solid conservative choice. That same disaster will not befall Bush the Younger. Essentially, the only people who know how conservative Miers is are George Bush and Karl Rove, and perhaps a few other administration insiders. What remains to be seen is this:

Will conservative Senators take Bush's word that Miers is a solid conservative?

I'll tell you one thing: she isn't going to get 55 Republican votes...

FEMA all over again..... non qualified, close friend getting a political nomination from Bush.

She maybe a sacrificial lamb, one that has troubles getting nominated, has a skeleton or something in the closet come out (seemingly "minor" but causes her to have problems) and Bush withdraws saying that this proves that the Dems. have some agenda and he brings out someone far more conservative.

However, right now he has pretty low numbers and all the GOP scandals aren't helping, so he would be the village idiot to try something like that........ oh wait it is Bush we are talking about..... Nevermind.

In all seriousness, she may be a great justice, or she maybe a bad one but she is still only 1 voice and as long as she is qualified and knows the law and has what's best for the country (and NOT the GOP or the Dems or any special interest group) in her then she deserves the seat.

You never know who will be great or who will be bad until they make their decisions, and in history we've had some great ones and some bad ones sooooo

I look at this country sometimes and I think why bother.......

Hmmm, when I look at it, I see all kinds of reasons to "bother."

Did you not read the credentials above? While she's not my pick, being President of the BAR Association of the 2nd most populous state isn't exactly unqualified.

I am entirely "bothered." Hardknock, you have the choice of jumping in and making a difference, or burying your head. It doesn't matter who your party of preference is, because both parties are letting us down. Get "bothered."

Bush dengrates the reputation of the U.S. and the office of the POTUS, more every day that he occupies it. Meirs is an unqualified poitical hack, just like the hack who appointed her. Where is the substance of these two people? Why are some of my countrymen so willing to not only settle for so little substance in a POTUS and a SCOTUS justice, but actually defend it? This woman and our attorney general, and many others in high positions,"earned" those positions by vigorously working to cover up the truth of how inadequate Bush was and is, to be POTUS, when there was still a window of opputunity for knowledge of Bush's inadequacies to influence a greater majority to thwart his ascendancy.......
I wil not "get used to" a thug receiving appointment to the bench of the highest court in the land because she successfully hid the background of another thug, so that he could be electable to the office of the POTUS. How do you?

You should run for office host.

This appointment is just plain BIZARRE. It satisfies nobody -- both parties are pissed off about it because she has no conservative credentials or credentials period. WTF ? ? ? ?

It gets a big "HUH?" from me . . . .

Am I the only one who thought it was wrong NOT to pick Gonzalez?

Seaver, I think Gonzalez would have to recuse himself on a number of issues that are likely to reach the court. That would leave the possibility of a 4/4 tie and I think it is in Bush's interests to avoid that.

Plus Gonzalez would get reemed by the Dems, possibly even getting a filibuster; it's no big secret where he stands on many issues.

Please explain.

He was working for the DoJ and wrote a bunch of policy under the first administration. Anything Guantanmo or Abu Gharab type stuff comes up he would have to recuse himself because he wrote the policy.

Ah thank you.

Yeah....nothing to see here, I guess....moveon, host !!!!
This is supposed to be an appointment to the SCOTUS bench. It used to mean something to be appointed to the SCOTUS. It used to mean something to be elected POTUS. Now....all of it smells. There is a stench....an appearance of impropriety (everyone in high office declares that we must avoid those....), in everything that this administration has a hand in.

The crux of the material that follows, is that, when Harriet Miers was head of the Texas State Lottery, ( a position that Bush appointed her to) after she did a background search of Bush in 1993, at his behest, she was at the helm when:
Littwin reacted by filing a lawsuit against GTECH. Littwin had come into his director position, presumably as an impartial auditor. He ended up feeling strongly enough in his opinion that Ben Barnes, who, as speaker of the Texas House of Rep., in 1968, had (Bush wants us to believe....) "made the call" to insure that Bush circumvented the waiting list to gain entry into the TANG, solely on the suggestion of "Houston businessman Sidney Adger, a longtime Bush family friend", held "undue influence over the Texas Lottery Commission".

Folks, this appointment is "payback" to Harriet. The 2004 campaign events demonstrate that Bush would not be president if the details of how he got into the TANG in 1968, was able to become a combat pilot with his low test score, and was able to refuse a flight physical and perform no further duty in the NG, and avoid being reassigned to active military duty, and yet receive an early "honorable" discharge from the TANG, were ever fully available, along with witnesses, to be examined by the public and the news media. Bush would not have run for Texas governor in 1994 if Harriet & co. were not successful in rehabilitating Bush's arrest records and military service records.

The "fixer" now gets to taint the SCOTUS by her very presence there. Lawrence Littwin received a cash settlement from his suit against Gtech, and the American people, lose again!

I wan't flaming you. You just seem to think you know an awful lot about politics and how things should run. If you know as much as you try to portray you should run for public office and fix all the wrongs you so easily point out.

Like I said before, Miers isn't going to just slide through the confirmation process. I'm nearly certain she will get a close examination.

stevo, I'm just an informed citizen, concerned because of what i've learned and the conlusions that I make as a result.
The senate minority leader, Reid, has all but endorsed Miers. There will not be a full examination of her past.

But now you cannot say that you don't know about what she did for Bush in Texas, what she knows about him, and the silence that she keeps to advance her own career........

I can tell you for a fact that the Democrats will not seriously challenge this nomination. Yes, they will question her at the hearings, but I expect as critical or even more critical questioning to come from the right on this one. The appointment of Miers will mean that after two Supreme Court appointments, there will have been no sea change in the court's composition, which is frankly what Democrats were so concerned about prior to these two appointments when debating the matter.

This does not mean that Miers is the left's justice of choice, obviously, but if she were to be defeated, it could me a more conservative nominee to follow...Dems won't risk that, they'll take status quo as a victory in this case.

Being a crony does not necessarily mean that a person is unqualified to serve on the US Supreme Court.

Take, for example, Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson. He was a brilliant legal mind, who is held to be one of the finest writers of decisions that the Court ever had. Of course, he might claim (if he were still with us) that his greatest contribution came when he was Chief American Prosecutor for the Allies during the International Military Tribunal in Nuremburg after WW II.

Jackson did NOT graduate from law school, and I believe only had one full year. Afterwards, he returned to his hometown to practice law locally, but only after he apprenticed with local lawyers! I think that Jackson was the last US Supreme Court Justice to serve without a formal law degree.

Jackson was very involved politically, and was considered close to Franklin Delano Roosvelt. It was FDR who tapped Jackson to come to Washington DC to serve as General Counsel of the IRS. He moved from the IRS to the SEC, and then worked his way up through various Asst. Attorneys General position, until he was made US Attorney General.

He was also the US Solicitor General previous to the Attorney General appointment, but I have no clue what that position entails.

Never did Jackson serve as a judge. And yet, he took various appointments, did well in those capacities, proved his loyalty to his party, and was awarded a spot on the SCOTUS.

Great man. I don't compare this woman to him as far as talent, but I fail to see why serving as a judge is a "necessary" qualification here.

Rip away.

It seems like the difference is that Jackson was a brilliant legal mind, while there's not really any evidence that Miers is.

Being a crony disqualifies someone from sitting on the highest court of the land.
Isn't a crony someone who is unethical or outright criminal?

Regardless, I didn't see anything in the following text of your post that supported the point that cronies shouldn't be supreme court justices. I can't even believe that's a serious comment after I just typed that out...anyway, you did support the last statement you made: that being a judge shouldn't disqualify someone, which I agree with on that point.

Damn, talk about croneyism! YIKES!!

She's been his personal lawyer for years...
And she knows where the bodies are buried. He had to give her a job like this.

i don' think that Hamilton could have predicted that a POTUS could be incapable of awareness of his own "shame".

I would just like to take this opporunity to say "POTUS" and "SCOTUS". They're just so much fun. It's a cool thing. Oh, one more....... "JOTSCOTUS." Dude, I feel awesome now.

Ten points for anyone who can guess what this one means, "HIACJWDNKWTFHITA".

Ok, I'll spend every waking moment on this site thinking up witty responses to threads in the politics forum to feel better. There's nothing that can be done about this. The dems are pussies who won't fillabuster and they keep trying to become repug "lite."

I'm sick of it.

I find it ironic that the TLC director, Lewitt, was hired by the Miers' led Commission, from a field of 700 applicants. Miers was charged by Bush with finding the best candidate for a SCOTUS appointment, just as Cheney was in 2000, to find the best candidate for VP to run on the Bush slate. in both cases, the best candidate turned out to be the person in charge of the search. Do you think that they selected themselves in a competition of 700?
In the "real" world, Miers would not be nominated for a SCOTUS seat, and Bush would not be POTUS, and RangerDick would not be allowed to post contentless taunts. Miers appointed Lewitt to direct TLC, apparently fired him when he promoted the interest of the people of Texas, after lauding him just 5 months earlier, then buried his investigation and audit of the TLC's prime vendor, Gtech, which the TLC paid $137 million per year, and had neverf auditted. She appointed a successor to Lewitt, who later lied about a sexual harassment complaint against a TLC commissioner, and was forced to resign. The word "judge" is in the word "judgment".
With Miers' track record of 5 years as TLC chief, and then agreeing to follow Bush to the white house, and playing her part as Al Gonzalez's assisant, as he drafter the "torture memos" (Miers introduced Gonzalez to Bush....), Miers has demonstrated incompetence, a penchant for acting against the public interest, ignorance or contempt for the Bill of Rights, and poor judgment. She shows herself to be a crony and a hack.

He would have been fertile ground for discussion by someone who was blinded by a 30-year hatred.

Oh, the irony.

:lol:

How 'bout "First Lady of the US?"

From 1993-200, I used the acronym FLATUS for her. :p

One entry found for crony.
Main Entry: cro·ny
Pronunciation: 'krO-nE
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural cronies
Etymology: perhaps from Greek chronios long-lasting, from chronos time
: a close friend especially of long standing

Robert H. Jackson was a fairly close associate of the President that appointed him. I think it is fair to think of him as a crony. I have never associated the word "crony" with negative actions - but I find that people often use the word to describe a person when there IS something negative that they are trying to convey.

If any of you aren't familiar with Justice Jackson, his is the picture under host's name when he posts. Check out www.roberthjackson.org if you want to learn about someone who has commanded the respect of many a Supreme Court Justice. Rehnquist served as Jackson's law clerk on the Court for several years.

Remember, I'm not saying that this woman is the legal, nor even intellectual equal of this person. I merely want to stress that being friends with a President does NOT disqualify you from the bench, just as not having served as a judge wouldn't disqualify. It certainly isn't the norm nowadays, but there have been effective Justices wihtout that particular qualification.

Hell, just a few years ago there was talk that Rehnquist might even retire, and that a respected law professor might be tapped as the nomination! THAT decision might have resulted in a tad less controversey, but I wonder....

I don't Renquist was a sitting judge prior to his appointment, either.

No big deal. The lady is obviously qualified with respect to the law.

IIRC, Rehnquist is the most recent appointee to lack bench experience. There have certainly been plenty of Justices who have lacked bench experience over the course of our history, some of whom have been distinguished. But the question is whether or not Miers has a really first-rate legal mind -- I'm sure she's bright, just as I'm sure all of my colleagues here in law school are bright. But I don't think many of them would be qualified to sit on SCOTUS, and I'm not sure Miers is.

These comments are represented as Harriet's, in her own words. After reading this campaign propaganda, I can picture her calling Karl to ask how she should rule on a given SCOTUS case........Is this what this administration has reduced us to, listening to a cadre of puppets mouthing uncle Karl's carefully worded drivel?

Bingo! Let the review focus on whether or not the appointee has the legal chops to handle the job.

My GOD! The woman was Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy at the Bush White House!! Do you honestly believe that she was going to answer those questions with anything less than the "company line", regardless of what her personal views are?

Since you are dispensing predictions on the direction that the nominee would take on cases she hears, I would like to hear about your track record on other sitting Supreme Court Justices. How did you do when predicting the decisions supported by Reagan-nominee Justice Kennedy? Or how about Justice Souter, himself an appointee of the elder Bush president?

Both of these Justices were believed to be conservatives at the time of their nomination, but proved to be more liberal in actuality. But I guess you knew that at the times of their nominations and didn't worry about them at all.

I agree with Moondog - I'm no Bush fan, but just what the heck do you expect a high ranking member of the team to say?

"Yeah, we suck"?

Is it possible that Bush simply wants an "advocate" for his interests on the Court, and doesn't trust any sitting judges to handle that role? People on both ends of the political scale tend to be leery of judges moving toward the middle after being appointed to the Court. There are reasons for this sort of shift, although Bush (assuming he was aware of them) would not find these reasons "reasonable." I know this doesn't explain why Roberts was appointed first, but perhaps in Bush's mind, this was the best strategy to use to get Miers on the Court as well. Even Bush would know that it couldn't have been done the other way around. (And to assume that Bush would ever have higher goals or considerations than pure self-interest could be a mistake.)

My point is that Miers is apparently very comfortable regurgitating whatever silly phrases that Rove places on her tongue. We can do better than this. An independent judiciary demands it.

My point in all of my post here is not to discredit Miers, it is to discredit what Bush has publicly pronounced about her. Bush's premise that she is the "best choice", is incredible. We observe the spectacle of one grossly incompetent executive appointing an equally incompetent justice.

I have a hunch that Miers is the best we can hope for from a Bush appointment, from the standpoint of eliciting protest from the extreme right, as well as the left. Bush '41 could not have predicted that Souter would end up being as neutral as time has revealed. I have no record of prediction, other than considering the source......the executive who makes the nomination decision. I feared the appointments of Reagan, and both Bushes, because they tend to represent a narrow base of wealthy, conservative, corporatists first, conservative Christians, second, and the rest of us a distant third.

I see why the right is "up in arms" over this, and I also agree with Hamilton...

Ms. Miers was a supporter of Al Gore's presidential bid against Bush 41. I'm happy with her. Not as happy as things should be - in the second term of the Gore presidency and the fourth term of the moderate miracle - but I'll take what I can get. And as a moderate, this is as good as it will get.

One could hope Miers is more of a moderate than Bush might have wanted. But if that's not the case already, don't expect any change in that direction any time soon, and here's why I think there won't be, and why Bush may be justified in feeling there won't be - and why Miers will remain his advocate for the forseeable future.

In my view, the style of reasoning used by an advocate in our adversarial system, often referred to as sophistry, is necessarily different from the style expected to be used by a judge, who theoretically extracts from the opposing positions something closer to the truth and hopefully to justice as it relates to the matter in question.

The further judges get from their days as advocates, the more objective they tend to become, and are required to become, and their tolerance for sophistry tends to decline accordingly. The same changes apply the further the judge is removed from political influences, where sophistry is also the name of the game.

So Miers, who will have been an advocate AND a political partisan up to the very moment of her expected appointment to the Court, can be expected to retain the advocate's reasoning style much longer than would otherwise have been the case.
And while most appointees have found themselves relatively freed from political obligations once they are on the Court, this would not necessarily be the case with Miers.

With some exceptions (Thomas comes to mind), other appointees have reached the Court largely because of a track record as a judge, even if that record itself reflected some political bias, but Miers would have earned her new position almost wholly because of partisanship, with no record of judicial accomplishment that would otherwise mitigate any obligation to fulfill the terms under which she will have been granted that appointment. Any shift to the middle could then be a long time coming.

http://news.yahoo.com/fc/us/supreme_court

Yep, she's going to be confirmed, bush said so

Excellent observations, Francisco.

Thomas was deemed unqualified by the ABA, but was nominated imo to replace a black liberal justice with a black conservative. Completely political in nature, and he has yet to ask a question during arguments given and reliably votes the conservative line. He won't be changing his stance any time soon, as you have predicted.

One has to worry about the hero worship, if indeed Rove is arraigned and tried and there is a case about it or any other case against Bush or Bush people, or a case where Bush is very vocal.... how can she rule against him. After all she has been quoted thusly:

LINK: http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Supre...1170572&page=2

LINK: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9577329/

So how can this "loyalist" be impartial and fair when ruling on Bush or DeLay or Rove????????

We already have judges on the bench that went hunting all expenses paid with Cheney, and so on.

This isn't a president worried about what is best for the country, this is a president that is trying to make sure his ass is covered. And those of you who accused Clinton of doing it, have to see Bush is, but yet you're silent on him.

I've already said here that I'm against this nomination. But let's be clear here--a sitting Supreme Court Justice can't help a president keep "his ass covered." She would be one vote of nine, and there won't be anything buried. Issues will be brought out in the lower courts, and dissents filed when the left leaning judges aren't happy with the results. Nothing will be covered up.

Clinton's attempted cover-ups were on the administrative level, not the judicial. He wasn't very good at it, of course, but had he been, matters would not have been before the judiciary.

The key word here is "help." One vote of nine is much more than that if it's the swing vote.

The whole Whitewater thing, that morphed into the Paula Jones and Monica Levinsky
show, was hardly just confined to the administrative level. Ken Starr was a prosecutor in the Federal justice system, and his "starr" chamber proceedings were hardly administrative ones. Clinton wasn't good at covering up precisely because matters were already being addressed by the judiciary.

But by the time a matter gets to the Supreme Court, the trial record is made and the matter has been argued once on appeal. I can think of little that exposes a matter than having it tried before a court/jury and then reviewed on appeal. Miers can't help hide anything; she MIGHT be a swing vote to uphold a lower court decision in favor of the administration, or to overturn such against. By that time, whatever was being alleged would be in the public domain many times over.

My point is that she can't help Bush keep "his ass covered" (Pan's expression, not mine). She's in a better position to do that now than she will be if confirmed.

Yes, but that's beside the original point. Sometimes you need to have an ace in the hole (or think you need one). As a counsel, she can be replaced by someone equally "competent" without a confirmation process. This is the person he thinks he needs on the court, and whether he's right or wrong, I think Pan is not wrong as to his motives. You may be right that he has made a mistake, however.

And covering your ass in government means as much about avoiding consequences of/for your actions as it does about having those actions exposed to begin with. Been there, done that.

Really, one voice on the US Supreme Court cannot change anything????

How about 1 Justice, Clarence Thomas, ordering that a lower court's ruling be stayed? (And yes, stays by 1 Justice are common and can be held for an indefinate length of time, so it is not unrealistic to believe Meirs will be able to help Bush if he needs it by doing such a manuever.)

LINK: http://www.bradenton.com/mld/mercury...urynews_nation

How about that 1 voice being the deciding factor, already we have one who has been hunting with Cheney, the Chief Justice appointed by Bush (and given Bush's cronyisms one can only wonder what the past between those 2 has been), and we have the hero worshipper.... hmmmmm that leaves 2 voices, I think Bush would have a lock on "covering his ass".

And considering how the 2000 election bypassed Congress and everyone else to go straight to the court (and I am using how they bypassed everyone else not the election itself as the argument) I feel Bush having his grandeur, Napoleanic complexes would make sure whatever he wanted got there.....

So yeah, on the Rove investigations, I think he'll use them to the fullest and knows with her his ass is covered.

Wow, your post beats the hell out of my post. I think I'm in love.

If that was what was meant by the original "covering the ass" remark, then I agree with you. In the event that the administration has something it faced prosecution for during the time Miers was part of the team, though, I'd hope she'd follow the ethical rules that all lawyers/judges know, and recuse.

But I see your point (and Pan's) now--in theory, the appointment could be a form of providing insulation for the administration. However, that's true for ANY judge appointed by ANY administration, isn't it? Having known a few federal judges and US District Attorneys and remembering how they were appointed, I'm quite aware of the political connections it takes to even be considered. The whole thing is appalling to me, no matter which party is in power.

You know, it's not like padding the Supreme Court is a new thing. Hell, "The Smithsonian" had a great article a few months ago on how FDR was thisclose to having Congress pass legislation that would allow him to basically appoint a number of new Justices that would allow him to circumvent Supreme Court blockages of the New Deal legislations.

I would much rather sit back and watch this woman get torn apart or credibly defend herself once the hearings begin. The mechanics of nomination are what they always have been, just as the motives are. I don't think that she can withstand the scrutiny of the hearings, and so Bush will have to find someone else to nominate.

It occurs to me to remember that in most matters people have more than one reason for doing things, and we (including me) tend to forget that. We object to someone giving what they think is someone else's reason for acting, because it's not what the objector sees as the number one reason for doing that something. But it could be a very good number two (or number three) reason, and why should my number two have to be the same as your number one (rhetorical question)? Just an idle thought on Sunday morning.

One word :

Indefinately. Thomas' stay stated (from the above linked article): So basically, he can take his time, an indefinate amount of time and for the court, the case would have to make the docket and be scheduled for a hearing, which could again, be dragged for indefinite periods of time.

Meirs, if confirmed, could do the exact same thing on ANY judicial cases against Bush, Cheney, Rove, DeLay, etc. As could Roberts or Scalia or Thomas or any one of the Justices.

I am not saying it would happen, but why take that risk? Based on what she has been quoted on record as saying about Bush, and the admitted hero worship, it is not far-fetched to believe she would.

Nor am I stating any legal cases will be brought against Bush or Cheney or Rove or anyone.... although for Rove it does appear there maybe something brewing. And there is a case against DeLay, legit or not if confirmed she could put a stay on it. (He is a US Congressman, and I am sure a Supreme Court Justice could find some reason to order a stay against the case.)

I think a pardon of any or all these people would trump any SCOTUS appointment in terms of its ass-covering potential, just as Bush's dad covered his own ass by pardoning Weinberger and others in the Contragate scandal.

Pan there is a two quick things that come to mind.

-As a long time employee of Shrub, being a member of his administration, I think any case involving the Administration or it's personnel(sp) would end up with her being recused.

-As far as the hypothetical stay you are talking about with the justices being able to hold cases, I don't know if it's a possibility. If I remember correctly the Supreme Court has original jurisdiction in cases of federal officers. Thomas was hold the case of an appeal. So if the case were to go directly to the SCOTUS docket, she wouldn't be able to stay it, all she could do is vote not to take the case.