It might be just a reflection of what a blank slate Miers is. All that's known about her is that she's a long-time friend and confidante of Bush with a much more ambiguous legal background than a lot of other people Bush could have chosen. It's really not surprising given the absence of facts that people would find some other level of argument. The administration, by making 'trust the president' the cornerstone of the case for Miers --- instead of providing information about her --- has exacerbated the problem.

Eh. People are debating. Sometimes people don't debate as politely and maturely as we should. But the ad hominem stuff has been nothing compared to the debated across the political aisle. I'm not worried about it. People are people, nothing to see here.

It took me a while to figure out what the argueing over this nomination was all about. But I think I finally got it.

I note in passing that one day before Ann Coulter's 10/05 column was published, I said I'd throw "a BARNEY FOR ASSOCIATE JUSTICE parade" if President Bush nominated his terrier. I hope the Prez isn't going to make me follow through on that promise.

Though one gets the sense that Barney's votes would be more consistent and sensible than O'Connor's have been. Whither the Scooby Snack constituency?

Once again, give me a fk'n break! What “good faith”? All I've seen are a whole lot of below the belt attacks on the woman. And when you get criticized for it, you become victims? Well, boo hoo hoo!

"Below the belt" attacks?

Colon, care to offer up some evidence of those below the belt attacks?

George Will - He (the President) has neither the inclination nor the ability to make sophisticated judgements about competing approaches to construing the Constitution.

Michelle Malkin - Harry Reid endorsed cheer bear

Ann Coulter - A complete mediocrity. Isn't qualified to play a SCJ on West Wing.

Charles Krathammer - Crony, nomination is a joke. Nomination is scandalous. President retreat into smallness. (I note he also revealed himself by admitting he believes the SC to be an elite institution as opposed to the Presidency or Congress.)

David Frum- Reports accusations that Andy Card wanting to fire Miers but has to also report that Andy Card was one of Miers advocates for the nomination. Not only does this rumour sully Miers reputation it does the same to Card's. He also repeats other unfounded 2nd hand rumours.

This is the so called reasonable debate the critics began and now don't understand that they may have received a harsh response.

I kind of meant, um, 'us' here on this site.

But to answer your post, the only below the belt attacks in your list were from Frum, Malkin and Coulter, all of whom tend to get a bit overheated at times. Not that it excuses their rhetoric.

But here was Frum's first response to Miers, before coming under attack himself:

"I worked with Harriet Miers. She's a lovely person: intelligent, honest, capable, loyal, discreet, dedicated ... I could pile on the praise all morning. But there is no reason at all to believe either that she is a legal conservative or--and more importantly--that she has the spine and steel necessary to resist the pressures that constantly bend the American legal system toward the left. This is a chance that may never occur again: a decisive vacancy on the court, a conservative president, a 55-seat Republican majority, a large bench of brilliant and superbly credentialed conservative jurists ... and what has been done with the opportunity?"

I think both Will and Krauthammer had more negative to say about the president than Miers, so their criticism doesn't really count as "below the belt" attacks on the nominee.

Whatever happened to waiting till the hearings and giving the nominee an up and down vote? If the senate don't want her, then they can reject her.

Why do we have to fight each other when the enemies are right there laughing at us.

Slu I wrote my post without seeing yours but
okay here on this site bbeck called her a retard and a stupid woman.

Frum was a speechwriter. I don't believe he was privy to all of private going ons that involve the President's counsel. That said, Frum is a whiny canadian that is evident in his supposed positive book about Bush, The Right Man.

I also note that you did not list Krauthammer as one who is noted for his overheated rhetoric. Should he be included?

Listen, I understand the concern for this nomination and welcome debate but I find this pundit whine attack on Republicans just more of the same, just a different subject. Just to name a few.

NRO - Trent Lott /Strom Thurmond

Michelle Malkin- Laura Bush Joke, Michael Brown, Head of Sky Marshalls, etc. etc etc.

Ann Coulter - Judge Roberts

Krauthammer - Michael Brown, FEMA response

Whatever happened to waiting till the hearings and giving the nominee an up and down vote?

That's crap. The hearings are a dog-and-pony show for politicians. Sure, the interview matters, but a candidate should have to be qualified on paper to even get to that point.

And before you jump on me for being "elitist," I say she's not qualified on paper because of her lack of relevant accomplishment or experience since law school.

I happen to think she's eminently qualified ... for a job as a federal district court judge. She's been a corporate litigator at a top firm for decades, obviously works very hard, and is reputed to be decent, diligent and firm.

That makes her a potentially great trial court judge.

Appellate law is different, and requires a different set of aptitudes, none of which she has demonstrated.

DEMONSTRATED. The SCOTUS is not the place for on-the-job training.

Do not diss Krauthammer.

Krauthammer rules. I'm thinking of starting a new religion.

Prediction: National Review and Weekly Standard paid circulation plummet. Molasses discovered in sitemeters all over the blogosphere.

Believe me folks, there is a real gathering deep seated anger a'brewin over the attacks on our President. That ain't from the web. It's from the diner and the pew.

The people turned out by the multitude, 20 million more than 2000, and gave a resounding, overwhelming approval of George Bush to lead us in time of peril. The noise from the kids in the Peanut Gallery reminds us of the shibboleth "spare the rod and spoil the child".

The people turned out by the multitude, 20 million more than 2000, and gave a resounding, overwhelming approval of George Bush to lead us in time of peril. The noise from the kids in the Peanut Gallery reminds us of the shibboleth "spare the rod and spoil the child".

Gee, thanks, Dad. Why don't you tell us why Miers is so wonderful instead of making questionable claims about what will happen to the media and the blogosphere?

Oh c'mon Slubs, surely we can all agree that NRO should be slapped around a bit. Not necessarily for this, but hey, why quibble?

I mean, honestly - over at The Corner, they've taken to calling Podhoretz "JPod." Now I can never read his columns again, and someone ought to suffer for that.

Of course they should be slapped around.

With extreme prejudice.

I try to ignore the oh-so-cutsey nicknames on the corner and think that the conservative pundits are too often negative.

On this issue, though, I think we need to make noise. Roy was right about one thing - a lot of people turned out last year to vote for Bush. Some of us just think we deserve a lot better than another damn stealth candidate.

Slublog - High Priest of Krauthammerarianism?

I ain't arguin'. :/

Slu what would adherents to your new religion be called? Sour-Krauts?

I kid.

Appellate law is different, and requires a different set of aptitudes, none of which she has demonstrated.

It is/does? News to me. And I've been practising it for over 8 years. You know, phinn, some people are multi-skilled. And once again, over 30% of USSC cases are business related. She has certainly demonstrated an aptitude in that area.

It is/does? News to me. And I've been practising it for over 8 years.

Me, too, nameless.

Appellate law requires abstraction, whereas corporate trial-court litigation requires attention to concrete details. I would not want a corporate litigator handling my appeal any more than I would want an appellate lawyer pushing my multi-party document-intensive contract case through discovery.

Have you practiced both as a corporate litigator and an appellate lawyer? If you have, then you'd know exactly what I'm talking about.

You know, phinn, some people are multi-skilled.

OK, show me. Show me where she's multi-skilled as a corporate litigator and an appellate lawyer.

Show me the appellate briefs she's written. Show me the law review articles discussing abstract points of law.

Once I've seen the documents that demonstrate her exemplary skills and experience with legal research and appellate-brief-writing, I'll be more than happy to support her.

Fucking show me.

So, George Will noting that Bush signed legislation (CFR) that he (Bush) thought was unconstitutional in the hopes that the SCOTUS would fix it is somehow a below the belt attack on Harriet Miers?

What an odd way of thinking.

Phinn. Souter had some great examples of legal research skills and appellate brief writing before taking his position as a SCJ. As such I assume you believe the heat GHB takes for this appointment is unfounded.

Slublog - High Priest of Krauthammerarianism?

Yes. Now send me your money.

So, George Will noting that Bush signed legislation (CFR) that he (Bush) thought was unconstitutional in the hopes that the SCOTUS would fix it is somehow a below the belt attack on Harriet Miers?

Critics now splitting hairs. An attack on Bush for nominating Miers is not the same as an attack on Miers. Okay if you say so.

The snide opinon of Will was that the President has no inclination or ability to make sophisticated judgements unlike himself I suppose.

I never indicated that a disagreement with Bush on signing Mccain Feingold was off base. Odd way to interpret a post when it was never indicated.

Dman --- McCain-Feingold is what George Will was making reference to, you yutz.

Or, more precisely, the context of the column makes it clear Will was making the point that because Bush signed McCain-Feingold, Conservatives had every right to question Bush's judgment on Constitutional matters.

V the K, I would read the article again if I were you. He made his statement about the Presidents ability at the beginning of the article when listing his reasons that this choice was bad. He begins the point about Mccain Feingold by beginning the paragraph - In addition. This means it was a separate and distinct point.

And another person who feels safe behind the keyboard to name call.

None of which rises anywhere near to the level of a 'below the belt' attack on Harriet Miers, any more than "Brad Pitt's performance in Legends of the Fall was not Oscar-worthy" is a below-the-belt attack on Jennifer Aniston.

As such I assume you believe the heat GHB takes for this appointment is unfounded.

Actually, yes. But only partly so.

Souter was qualified. Absolutely. That's Step 1. If you pass Step 1, go on to Step 2.

Miers does not pass Step 1.

Step 2 is where we determine which member of our pool of qualified potential nominees gives the Left the most severe heartburn.

This is where questions about his/her judicial philosophy comes into play. If he/she is an originalist, that's all I really care about.

There's a lot of the U.S. Constitution that I would change, if I had the power to unilaterally declare it so. I'll settle for enforcing it as written.

That's why they wrote it down, by the way -- so it couldn't be changed later on. You'd think people would grasp that basic concept.

Leftists despise originalists. A centerpiece of Leftist agenda is the increased centralization of power.

That's why they love the U.N. (as against the US). That's why they love the federal gov't (as against the States). That's why they love central banks and other nationalized industry.

They hate decentralization. They hate liberty, particularly economic liberty. Originalism stands in the way of their centralization agenda.

Phinn --- On that point, I think the left despises the messiness of democracy, of the market, of millions of people making millions of choices on their own. Your basic leftist is a busy-body who knows what's best for everyone, and seeks the power to force everyone to do what she thinks they should do. (see: Hillary Clinton).

Your basic righty just wants government to mind its own business and keep its hands to itself. Hillary, mind your own business. Bill, keep your hands to yourself.

Jonah is wondering why the mean old people are picking on him? What a pussy. His mom's got bigger rocks then he does.

Indeed.

At the link, Jonah whines: "I won't be corresponding with some of these readers again. Why waste my time on people who think so little of my -- or my colleagues' -- intellectual integrity? Why waste time on people so easily persuaded by cheap arguments?"

Is it just me hearing George Costanza's voice?

Megan:

You gave me the first good belly-laugh of the day, because that's exactly what I was thinking!

I mean: can this guy possibly be more petulant? Grow some hair on your balls and suck it up, you fucking wuss!

(Aaah. The sweet balm of vulgarity. I haven't dropped the effenheimer in a long while, but it felt apropos.)

Monty,

I just read your comment at the top of the Elitism and Bloggers thread and thought it was outstanding despite your self-critisism.

Monty -

It's something in the water over at the NR office. It turns them all into snivelling sissy-boy pansies, and after the ritual castration they're given their new saccharine nickname to celebrate their complete tranformation into shrill, irritating contrarian drudges. Then they pass the time between the requisite Buckley blowjobs by masturbating in public and cooing at each others' performances.

Before, the bad writing only made agreeing with NR distasteful. Now, added to that, the pretentiousness, the conceit, insecurity, and spite, and the just plain simple faggotry on display makes it downright embarrassing.

Get Jonah away from his enablers, alone, in a column, and he's usually still worth reading. But let him go on a Corner binge and all of a sudden he's a completely different (and completely revolting) creature.

Mystifying.

BrewFan:

Thanks, but I kind of mangled the argument I was trying to make. Simply, that too many conservatives seem to want a SCOTUS judge who will be an ideological force on the court. I happen to think that ideology -- conservative or liberal -- has no place in a judge's ruling. What I want is judicial conservatism, which I suppose puts me into the "strict constructionist" camp.

I do not think that the SCOTUS should be used in place of legislation, but that's exactly where the court has been for the past four or five decades. I've always objected to Roe v. Wade because it forced a law on America that would surely have been defeated had it been put to a democratic vote. (It was also lousy jurisprudence, which many otherwise pro-choice legal scholars would agree.)

The judiciary exists to implement laws, and interpret them to a certain extent, not to make them. Too many people (especially the Left) see SCOTUS judges as moral arbiters as well as legal ones, and that bothers me mightily. Judges in America do not exist to make moral decisions; they exist to rule on whether something is legal or not. The law itself should be decided by the American people through legislation.

Or so I think with my puny wingnut brain, anyway.

Incidentally, Scalia calls constructionism a degenerate philosophy, and refers to himself as a textualist.

Megan,

Well, he obviously knows a hell of a lot more about it than I do. I'm probably not even using the term "conservative" in the way I really mean it. Scalia and Thomas (and Kennedy, to a somewhat lesser extent) seem to agree with me that the Constitution says what it means, and means what it says.

I happen to think that ideology -- conservative or liberal -- has no place in a judge's ruling

This has been one of my points all along. If you're a conservative and you're criticizing Bush for not appointing a 'proven conservative' you're being a hypocrite, imho. All along we've said all we want is a textualist (thanks Megan, I had forgotten that term).

Yeah, I understood what you meant. :) You should check out his book sometime; it's a good read. Even Dworkin is almost tolerable when he's forced to address an argument substantively.

Jonah could have saved himself the trouble of writing that long post and simply wrote:
Let's just give the prez the benefit of the doubt.

Okay. I will. What the hell else am I going to do?

This kind of reminds me of game 7 in the 2003 ALCS.
That's the game where, after the Red Sox lost to the Yankees, Grady Little was lambasted for not pulling Pedro Martinez out of the game.

Grady Little was a good manager that brought his team to the league championship series after an exciting season. But in that game, most say, he made a bonehead non-move that, apparently, was so obviously stupid to the millions of people watching the game.

Bush is a good leader. But this is an obvious bonehead move. The kind of move that makes one yell, "Whoa, dood! What the fuck are you doing?

The moonbats are eating up all this in-fighting. They think we are tearing apart the party. Fooey! We are merely have a family squabble. The joke is on the liberals. In the end, we still a fresh conservative on the Court. (Yes, I believe she is a conservative.)

Okay, she's not the best pick. But she's still a conservative and that ought to burn those left-wing anal aperatures.

Sure thing Brew. Actually I think I'm going to reread my favorite bits of AMoI tonight/tomorrow. Some of his takedowns of Tribe are just hilarious.

Nothing beats a cold Guinness, a pack of cigarettes, and a good dose of classic Scalia.

"Though one gets the sense that Barney's votes would be more consistent and sensible than O'Connor's have been."

Hey now.

But this is an obvious bonehead move

I love baseball so I was interested in your analogy but you need to consider this; the Grady Little decision was questioned in retrospect. Don't you think you're being hasty seeing as Harriet hasn't even thrown a pitch yet? IOW, Its not 'obvious' to me.

Brewski, you love baseball AND you're a big Brewers fan? Does not compute.

It's funny that you say that the Grady Little fallout came after the game. If you ask anyone who watched that game they'll tell you that they were screaming at their televisions to pull Pedro while the score was still 5-2.

Personally, I don't blame Grady Little for the loss. Grady walked out to the mound and asked Pedro how he was feeling. Pedro said he was fine.

In that situation, I would want the best pitcher in the league on the mound. Guess who that was. Right. Pedro Martinez. But he blew it. Now everyone claims, without 20/20 hindsight, they would have pulled Martinez.

In this town, we always have to blame somebody; be it Buckner, Little, or Bucky Dent.

Brewski, you love baseball AND you're a big Brewers fan? Does not compute.

Ouch!
Hey! We're getting better! Wait until next year baby.