WaxWorks
|
Friday, October 07, 2005
Hypocrisy Alert: Part Deux
I posted a few days ago about how Bush's assertion that he knew Miers' "heart" justified her confirmation completely undermined conservative attacks against questioning by Feinstein and Schumer about Roberts' "heart." Now it appears that intellectual-consistency is not going to be the strong-suit of this nomination. (Can a Republican led filibuster be next?)
E.J. Dionne nicely picks up on the latest flip-flop by conservatives in his column today, "Faith Based Hypocrisy." Over the past several years, conservatives have claimed that inquiries by those on the left into how judges' religious faith would affect their decision-making on the bench were illegitimate and showed a hostility towards religion, particularly as it relates to Catholics Bill Pryor and John Roberts. Dionne notes today that, after Senator Durbin indicated that Roberts might reasonably be questioned about the impact of his religious faith on his rulings on the bench:
"We have no religious tests for public office in this country," thundered Sen.
John Cornyn (R-Tex.), insisting that any inquiry about a potential judge's
religious views was "offensive." Fidelis, a conservative Catholic group,
declared that "Roberts' religious faith and how he lives that faith as an
individual has no bearing and no place in the confirmation process."
So, once the Miers nomination comes out, and social conservatives get very, very nervous, what's the first line of defense by the White House and its surrogates?
Why, not to worry folks, she's an Evangelical Christian!
Hmm. Wait, I get it. Raising the religion issue here to explain how a nominee might rule on the bench is legitimate, when it wasn't if Democrats did it, because, well, it's being done by Republicans!
Dionne ends his column with a quote from a conservative blogger:
And Ed Morrissey, whose "Captain's Quarters" is one of the most popular
conservative blogs, said publicly what other concerned conservatives have said
privately. "The push by more enthusiastic Miers supporters to consider her
religious outlook smacks of a bit of hypocrisy," Morrissey wrote. "After all, we
argued the exact opposite when it came to John Roberts and William Pryor when
they appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee. . . . Conservatives claimed
that using religion as a reason for rejection violated the Constitution and any
notion of religious freedom. Does that really change if we base our support on
the same grounds?"
Ah, the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Republican Mind. Harry Reid did quite a rope-a-dope with this one.
It's About Time that the Court Had an Expert in the 12th Amendment
It took several days, but the media has uncovered one Constitutional case that Miers was involved in during her career. It deals with the all-important 12th Amendment.
The 12th Amendment, inter alia, says that a state's delegation can't vote for presidential and vice presidential candidates who are both from electors' home state. This was a bit of a problem in 2000, since Dick Cheney had long since left Wyoming for Halliburton's millions in Texas. So in came Miers to help clean-up the problem in some litigation that was dwarfed by some stuff that was going on in Florida at the time.
According to that liberal rag, the Wall Street Journal, Miers headed the legal team fighting off a legal challenge about Cheney's residence:
President Bush cites many accomplishments of Harriet Miers to explain her
nomination to the Supreme Court. One the White House doesn't mention is her
successful argument during the disputed 2000 election that Dick Cheney is
definitely not a Texan.
The way she did that was striking: Her legal team successfully persuaded a
judge to take what her brief described as a "broad and inclusive" reading of the
Constitution. That runs counter to a conservative tradition of legal
interpretation that calls for a relatively narrow reading of constitutional
texts...
Mr. Aufhauser, Ms. Miers's co-counsel, suggested that whatever the 12th
Amendment might have meant in 1804, the provision's meaning had, in effect,
evolved with modern society. "Differences between the year 1800 and 2000 is more
than two centuries, it's light years," said Mr. Aufhauser, noting the "rapidity
with which each of us have changed addresses from schools and college to various
marriages and jobs."
Wednesday, October 05, 2005
It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas
First, there was the Social Security privatization train-wreck.
Then there was the Terri Schiavo misstep, which helped to put Frist and DeLay in the national spotlight.
Then there was the intersection of the Jack Abramhoff investigation with DeLay's corrupt activities.
Then there was the news that, in direct contradiction to the White House's statements, Karl Rove was involved big-time in the Valerie Plame leak.
After a brief Roberts interlude, then there was the Katrina fiasco, showing once again the incompetence of the Bush Administration and its failure of leadership.
Then there was the Frist insider-trading scandal.
Then the Delay indictments.
Leading to the Miers nomination.
Now this is what is spreading in the blogosphere:
I just talked to a source who told me that Karl Rove has been missing from a
number of recent White House presidential events - events that he has ALWAYS
attended in the past. For example, Rove was absent from yesterday's presidential
press conference to promote Harriet Miers. These are the kind of events Rove
ALWAYS attends, I'm told, yet of late he's been MIA each and every time. My
source tells me that the scuttlebutt around town is that the White House knows
something bad is coming, in terms of Karl getting indicted, and they're already
trying to distance him from the president.
How many shoes can still drop? How many feet do the Republicans have?
How soon until November 2006?
Hypocrisy Alert!
During the Roberts Hearings conservatives ridiculed Democrats like Schumer and Feinstein who expressed opposition to Roberts because they didn't feel they knew what was in his heart and Roberts sure wasn't telling. This criteria, they mocked, was ridiculous and illegitimate and, they claimed, was just an excuse by those on the left to oppose Bush's nominee.
So I wonder what they're gonna say now, after Bush made this statement at his press conference yesterday:
"I picked the best person I could find. People know we're close. But you've got
to understand, because of our closeness I know the character of the person. It's
one thing to say a person can read the law - and that's important - and
understand the law. But what also matters ... is the intangibles. To me, a
person's strength of character matters a lot."
So I'm sure we'll see these same conservatives bashing Bush, right? Right?
Monday, October 03, 2005
Do You Want Fries With That?
From SNL, John Roberts has a problem answering questions during his day to day life too.
