President Bush has nominated White House Counsel Harriet Miers to succeed Sandra Day O’Connor on the Supreme Court. She has no prior judicial experience; her background is as an attorney, including as the President’s personal attorney, chairwoman of the Texas Lottery Commission, staff secretary to the President, and deputy chief of staff.
Unlike the nomination of John Roberts, this one smells extremely bad to me. I’d be willing to lay at least 2:1 odds that she has a strong ideological bent, simply based on her background; but more to the point, is it really proper to be making an obvious patronage appointment to the Supreme Court, especially after the rollicking success of his last famous one?
Yonatan Zunger’s Blog 
The conservatives seem to be up in arms about the nomination- she doesn’t seem to represent what they want. Of course, that could just be because she has no record to go on.
Agreed about patronage, though.
The conservatives seem to be up in arms about the nomination- she doesn’t seem to represent what they want. Of course, that could just be because she has no record to go on.
Agreed about patronage, though.
There was a pretty long article on past Supreme Court nominations in the Atlantic Monthly I believe.
Basic upshot: kind of hard to predict how an appointee-for-life is going to act. Author seemed to think that there were too many non-lawyer former judges, and that the court was turning into a sort of bizarre thought experiment with tortured, non-rational opinions.
The buzz seems to be all over the map on Miers – several reports seem to think that Bush just caved in the face of all of the recent craziness on a relatively non-controversial candidate (apparently she actually donated to Gore in ’88, among other oddities).
Personally, I’ve never heard of her before, I am glad she is at least female, and of course I have my usual skepticism over anything this administration does.
I’d argue that while she may have a conservative bent, I’m not sure she’s got quite the political apointee / patronage appointment problems that “Good ‘ol Brownie” had.
I just wish we were going into a presidential election in a month. 😛
There was a pretty long article on past Supreme Court nominations in the Atlantic Monthly I believe.
Basic upshot: kind of hard to predict how an appointee-for-life is going to act. Author seemed to think that there were too many non-lawyer former judges, and that the court was turning into a sort of bizarre thought experiment with tortured, non-rational opinions.
The buzz seems to be all over the map on Miers – several reports seem to think that Bush just caved in the face of all of the recent craziness on a relatively non-controversial candidate (apparently she actually donated to Gore in ’88, among other oddities).
Personally, I’ve never heard of her before, I am glad she is at least female, and of course I have my usual skepticism over anything this administration does.
I’d argue that while she may have a conservative bent, I’m not sure she’s got quite the political apointee / patronage appointment problems that “Good ‘ol Brownie” had.
I just wish we were going into a presidential election in a month. 😛
I think she’s probably the fat-cat-conservative candidate rather than the Jesus-freak conservative candidate. The big business one.
Republican “values voters” are like anti-war Democrats now; kicked around by their representatives because who else are you gonna vote for? God bless the Germans for giving us such a good word.
I think she’s probably the fat-cat-conservative candidate rather than the Jesus-freak conservative candidate. The big business one.
Republican “values voters” are like anti-war Democrats now; kicked around by their representatives because who else are you gonna vote for? God bless the Germans for giving us such a good word.