President's speech - 10/3/05

" will cause the ideological balance on the Supreme Court to shift to the right" - Barnes 10/3/05

" Harriet Miers could turn out to be a solid conservative justice, with an intellect and commitment to constitutional rectitude to match Antonin Scalia " - NRO Editors 10/3/05

" By consensus, she’s a distinguished attorney and highly capable presidential aide. " - Goldberg 10/5/05

" He’s weakened by Katrina, Iraq, and the polls, and he can’t afford Armageddon in the Senate. A stealthy, female nominee who was all but pre-approved by Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid is the prudent step at this time. " - Goldberg 10/5/05

" President Bush's appointments to the federal bench appear to have been remarkably consistent" - Dobson 10/3/05

" he first President Bush didn't know David Souter, but trusted Chief of Staff Sunnunu and Senator Rudman. The first President Bush got burned badly because he trusted the enthusiams of others." - Hewitt 10/3/05

" Prof. Barnett and the others who are crying "Cronyism!" are using friendship and trust that's developed through superb service with the President as a disqualifying factor, irrespective of the nominee's other credentials and experience. That's a mistake. " - Beldar 10/4/05

"sometimes converts are the best Republicans" Tony Snow 10/3/05

" Converts — of the political or religious variety — do often tend to be true believers....When you decide as an adult, you make sure you know what you're getting into, etc... " - Lopez, Bench Memos 10/3/05

" she is not the most qualified woman to be on the SCOTUS for the simple reason that she has been in the White House for many years " - Hewitt 10/3/05

" he president is a poker player in a long game. He's decided to take a sure win with a good sized pot." - Hewitt 10/3/05

" Other conservatives are dismayed that the President is playing politics (!), rather than simply choosing the “best” candidate.  But the President understands that confirmation is nothing but a political game, ever since Robert Bork, truly one of the finest legal minds of his era, was demonized and defeated. " - Lifson 10/4/05

Leonard Leo
Marvin Olasky
Jay Sekulo
Charles Colson
Dick Cheney
Noel Francisco

"I spoke today with four individuals who know Harriet Miers very well and have worked very closely (in at least one case, extremely closely) with her. I know three of these individuals very well and deeply trust their judgment on matters of judicial philosophy and character. Although I do not know the fourth individual, that individual’s public record gives me ample reason to trust his judgment on matters of judicial philosophy. All four individuals are genuinely enthusiastic about Miers’s nomination and strongly believe that she will be an excellent judicial conservative " - 10/3/06 Whelan

" I think there’s quite a decent chance that Garnett is right about Miers. This could turn into our ultimate stealth triumph " - Kurtz 10/3/05

" The GOP is not the party which idolizes Ivy League acceptability as the criterion of intellectual and mental fitness. " - Lifson 10/4/05

" Ms. Miers has actually managed a business, a substantial one with hundreds of employees, and has had to meet a payroll and conform to tax, affirmative acttion, and other regulatory demands of the state. " - Lifson 10/4/05

" She has also been highly active in a White House during wartime, when national security considerations have been a matter of life and death. " - Lifson 10/4/05

" A defeated nominee does him and the future of American jurisprudence no favors. " - Lifson 10/4/05

" Harriet Miers is the nominee, and the relevant question going forward is whether to support her nomination, oppose it, or stand on the sidelines." - Whelen 10/3/05

" By presenting a female nominee, he kicks a leg out from under the stool on which the feminist left sits. Not just a female, but a career woman, one who has not raised children, not married a male, and has a number of “firsts” to her credit as a pioneer of women's achievement in Texas law. Let the feminists try to demonize her " - Lifson 10/4/05

" Having proven herself capable of charming the likes of Harry Reid, leader of the Senate Democrats, is there much room for doubt that Harriet Miers is capable of opening up opponents emotionally to hear and actually consider as potentially worthwhile the views of those they might presume to be their enemies? " Lifson 10/4/05

" In fact, though, Miers is exactly like Roberts in one crucial aspect: They are both steadfast adherents to a judicial ethic of no personally imposed points of view." - Kmiec 10/4/05

" There are not enough Republican votes in the Senate to win an ideological fight over a nominee like Michael Luttig, Edith Jones, or Janice Rogers Brown"

" The fact is that this Gang of 14 moderates, led by Senator John McCain, did make it much more difficult for the president to win an ideological battle over a Supreme Court nominee." - Levin 10/6/05

"When it comes to taking on a tough fight with the Senate Democrats over judicial nominations, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist doesn't really have a majority to lead. Before the President nominated anybody, before he even took the oath of office for his second term, Senator Arlen Specter was already warning him not to nominate anyone who would rile up the Senate. Later, Senator John Warner issued a similar warning. It sounded like a familiar Republican strategy of pre-emptive surrender." - Sowell 10/8/05

" In any event, it's surprising, but also very disappointing and frankly a bit insulting, that he [Barnett] seems to think lawyers who are neither judges nor professors must be somewhat retarded." - Beldar 10/4/05

link

" "Yes, she goes to a pro-life church," Justice Hecht said, adding, "I know Harriet is, too." The two attended "two or three" anti-abortion fund-raising dinners in the early 1990's, he said, but added that she had not otherwise been active in the anti-abortion movement. "You can be just as pro-life as the day is long and can decide the Constitution requires Roe" to be upheld, he said. " - NYT

" He begins by suggesting that the President is uninterested and incapable of making sophisticated judgments about the Court and judicial philosophies. This charge is patently unfair. The President picked John Roberts, and has a stellar first term record of selecting conservative judges for the appellate bench." - BM

"
Will's second argument is that the President didn't consult with serious people before making the choice of Miers. This is also a silly argument. We know that the President consulted with eighty members of the Senate, including all of the Republicans on Senate Judiciary. " - BM

" Miers lives in the real world. She knows what the practical impact of a Kelo decision will be and that the laws of Nigeria and the European Union aren't terribly relevant to U.S. constitutional analysis. And as important, the people that she hangs out with don't give a hoot what Linda Greenhouse and the New York Times think. That's not evidence of a quota pick — it's solid progress. " BM

" She’s an evangelical Christian who’s been a member of the Valley View Christian Church in Dallas for 25 years " - Goldberg 10/5/05

" Do these things matter at all when it comes to her qualifications for being an Associate Justice on the United States Supreme Court? Yes. They speak to her character. And in matters of justice, matters of character count. " - Kuo 10/6/05

" I do not expect any president to know enough about judicial philosophy to pick judges on his own. I expect him or her, however, to appoint advisers who do know about such matters and follow their advice." - quoted by Beldar 10/6/05

"I've had her in court. [She's] very good, very cool, very deliberate, very poised, never gets rattled, very centered and has a very matter-of-fact way of communicating to a jury that's very effective," says 192nd District Judge Merrill L. Hartman. " - quoted in Beldar 10/6/05

link - Beldar 10/6/05

" Jonathan Adler has the virtue of consistency, sticking to his previously expressed view that presidents deserve some deference to their Court appointments, and holding that there are no "sufficient, or even reasonable, grounds for seeking [Miers's] defeat in the Senate at this time." BM - Adler

"First, the notion that one needs a judge to serve on the Court runs contrary to dozens of appointments stretching back to the beginning of the nation and forward to appointments as recent as Justice William Rehnquist" - Cass 10/4/05

"The Constitution gives the president primacy on appointments of officers of the United States, including judges. It gives the Senate a far smaller role, following nomination, in safeguarding against misuse of the appointment power. It does not give the Senate an equal voice in appointments." Cass 10/4/05

Olasky on Miers 10/6/05

Beldar

Drudge

"It would be useful, and productive of further reasoned debate, if some of the people who've been proven wrong about some of these facts would squarely admit that, take responsibility for it, and confess that their proven factual unreliability in the past ought caution them to go slow in the future in making sweeping pronouncements." - Beldar 10/8/05

"She's thus another representative of Bush and Karl Rove's belief in incrementalism: that the Republican majority can be made a permanent feature of the landscape if you build it one small brick at a time. " - Steyn - 10/9/05

"The world is made up of doers and kibitzers. We in the chattering classes are kibitzers. Many, like Will, have convinced themselves that thinking and writing about what other people do is more important than actually doing stuff. It isn't... Harriet Miers is a doer." - Kelly 10/9/05

" Only by insisting that a Supreme Court nominee possess either judicial experience or a portfolio of scholarly writings can one pronounce Miers unqualified. But this has never been the standard, and it's not clear why (ideological considerations aside) Republicans should invent a new standard with which to deal a blow to a Republican president." - Mirengoff 10/10/05

a proper basis for voting against a president's qualified nominees. " - Mirengoff 10/10/05

link

Lino Graglia, Judge Hecht, Ken Starr

" Perhaps the Court is harmed by an excess of interest in the theoretical. A solid, experienced lawyer like Miers, with no real background in constitutional law, might look at the text, the precedents, the briefs, and use the standard lawyer's methods to resolve the problem at hand. What is wrong with having that style of analysis in the mix? We need a safeguard against the excessively theoretical." - Ann Althouse 10/11/05

see Souter

Bush 10/11/05

" no evidence that she is among the leading lights of American jurisprudence" - Will 10/4/05

" [no evidence that Miers has] talents commensurate with the Supreme Court's tasks" - Will 10/4/05

" Miers' name probably would not have appeared in any of the 10,000 places on those lists " - Will 10/4/05

" We don’t know much yet about Harriet Miers, except that she is the anti-Roberts, a nominee whose credentials are less than sterling and whose qualifications for the Court are less than obvious. " - Lowry 10/4/05

" Says Miers was with an undistinguished law firm; never practiced constitutional law; never argued any big cases; never was on law review; has never written on any of the important legal issues. Says she's not even second rate, but is third rate. " - The Corner

" Under the rubric of ``diversity'' -- nowadays, the first refuge of intellectually disreputable impulses -- the president announced, surely without fathoming the implications, his belief in identity politics and its tawdry corollary" - Will 10/4/05

Reuters 10/4/05

The Corner

"[lacking] a visible and distinguished constitutionalist track record-" Kristol - 10/3/05

" to say nothing of Michael Luttig, Michael McConnell, or Samuel Alito" - 10/3/05 Kristol

"If the White House considered Brown too controversial, then what about Edith Hollan Jones? Priscilla Owen also came to mind. If the idea was to pick a working attorney rather than a sitting jurist, Maureen Mahoney would appear to have all the qualifications that Miers lacks--she has argued over a dozen cases at the Supreme Court, clerked for William Rehnquist, had a long career in constitutional law, recognition from the National Law Journal as one of America's top 50 female litigators, and was chair of the Supreme Court Fellows Commission." - Morrissey 10/12/05

" President Bush flinched from a fight on constitutional philosophy" Kristol 10/3/05

" By choosing a nominee suggested by Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid and well known only to himself, the president has ducked a fight on the most important domestic question dividing liberals from conservatives:"Krauthammer 10/7/05

" her selection will unavoidably be judged as reflecting a combination of cronyism and capitulation on the part of the president." Kristol 10/3/05

" But nominating a constitutional tabula rasa to sit on what is America's constitutional court is an exercise of regal authority with the arbitrariness of a king giving his favorite general a particularly plush dukedom. The only advance we've made since then is that Supreme Court dukedoms are not hereditary." - Krauthammer 10/7/05

" This nomination was a missed opportunity." - NRO Editors 10/3/05

" a huge missed opportunity to galvanize the base heading into the midterm elections" - Hall 10/4/05

" The president would have been politically better served by what Pat Buchanan called a bench-clearing brawl" - Noonan 10/6/05

" But President Bush has put himself in the awkward position of asking his base to trust him at precisely the moment the base was expecting Bush to demonstrate their trust was well-founded in the first place." - Goldberg 10/5/05

" She’s an evangelical Christian who’s been a member of the Valley View Christian Church in Dallas for 25 years " - Goldberg 10/5/05

" 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." - Frum 10/3/05

" "[A]ccording to press reports, she did not win a reputation as a forceful conservative on issues such as the administration's position on stem cell research or affirmative action." " - Yoo 10/6/05

" "'There's a stalemate there,' says one person familiar with the chief of staff's office. 'The process can't move forward because you have to get every conceivable piece of background before you can move onto the next level. People are talking about a focus on process that is so intense it gets in the way of substance.' " - Yoo 10/6/05

" "'She failed in Card's office for two reasons,' the official says. 'First, because she can't make a decision, and second, because she can't delegate, she can't let anything go. And having failed for those two reasons, they move her to be the counsel for the president, which requires exactly those two talents.'" Yoo 10/6/05

" The damage dealt to the conservative movement will be huge and lasting" - Frum 10/6/05

" wouldn't belong to the Federalist Society" - Frum

"Shocked that so many people in the White House belonged to the FS"

FRC alert 10/7/05

link

Barnett 10/4/05

" Nothing in Harriet Miers's professional background called upon her to develop considered views on the extent of congressional powers, the separation of powers, the role of judicial precedent, the importance of states in the federal system, or the need for judges to protect both the enumerated and unenumerated rights retained by the people. " - Barnett 10/4/05

" To nominate someone whose adult life reveals no record of even participation in debates about constitutional interpretation is an insult to the institution and to that vision of the institution." - Krauthammer 10/7/05

"" "Yes, she goes to a pro-life church," Justice Hecht said, adding, "I know Harriet is, too." The two attended "two or three" anti-abortion fund-raising dinners in the early 1990's, he said, but added that she had not otherwise been active in the anti-abortion movement. "You can be just as pro-life as the day is long and can decide the Constitution requires Roe" to be upheld, he said. " - NYT

" But that is not what conservatives need to know about her. What they need to know is the answer to the question about Roe. And it seems to me that, here, Harriet Miers' supporters should not try to have it both ways: satisfy conservatives on the Roe question by pointing to her moral convictions at exactly the same time they declare her moral convictions to be irrelevant to the work of a justice. " - Bradley 10/5/05

The Corner - 10/3/05

Rush 10/3/05

WashPost

quoted in Lowery 10/5/05

" Miers, if confirmed, will probably be a nominee long after Bush has left office. How much will her loyalty count then? " - Ramesh 10/4/05

" This sounds to me a bit like the "results-oriented conservatism" some on the web are touting in Miers' defense " - Jonah 10/5/05

"It sounds more like a blood oath than a dignified nomination process aimed at finding the most qualified individual possible." - Fund 10/10/05

link

link

link

"The idea that one is supposed to sacrifice both intellectual distinction and philosophical clarity at the same time is just ridiculous." Kristol 10/7/05

"we're not going to learn anything about the candidate at the "job interview." - Right Wing News 10/6/05

"Party loyalty is fine and conservatives certainly shouldn't erupt over every little thing. But a Supreme Court appointment is just about as important as it gets in politics and if this isn't the right time to fight for conservative principles, then when will that time ever come? If this isn't an issue worth fighting over, then what is? " - Right Wing News

""There's an acknowledgement in her comments that race matters and is relevant, and from a fairness standpoint, we should acknowledge the impact of a particular political structure on voters of color," said George Washington University law professor Spencer Overton, a voting rights expert. "It's not unlike something you could see Justice Sandra Day O'Connor saying. A rigid quota system may be bad, but diversity is a compelling interest, and we want institutions to reflect society as a whole" - quoted in Prof. Baindbridge 10/8/05

"The problem for Bush a week after announcing his choice of Miers stems from the fact that it is entirely possible for someone to hold moral (or religious, for that matter) views that are deemed conservative, yet to approach judging in ways that are at odds with the judicial conservatism that the president himself says he wants in a jurist" - Eastland 10/9/05

"Miers is no mediocre. But she is no legal giant, either. Her public statements have been uniformly platitudinous. Some avid Bush supporters who have met with her have come away underwhelmed by her acuity and Milquetoast personality, as well as unsure of her convictions. " - Taylor 10/9/05

Conservatives fed up with overspending, education, immigration issues, Katrina are finally upset enough to take a stand.

"But that was before I interviewed more than a dozen of her friends and colleagues along with political players in Texas. I came away convinced that questions about Ms. Miers should be raised now--and loudly--because she has spent her entire life avoiding giving a clear picture of herself. "She is unrevealing to the point that it's an obsession," says one of her close colleagues at her law firm. " - Fund 10/10/05

"By all accounts, despite her personal opposition to abortion, Miers is sympathetic to at least some of what her feminist allies believe. Does this include sympathy with affirmative action? Probably. After all, Miers got elected by feminists, who supported her chiefly because she was a woman. " - Kurtz 10/10/05

" Indeed, in many ways, Ms. Miers resembles the early Sandra Day O'Connor, another elected official who backed some liberal positions during her time in the Arizona Legislature. As Justice O'Connor began drifting to the center she became the crucial swing vote on a host of cases. Legal scholars began referring to the "O'Connor Court." Now, with Ms. Miers slated to take the O'Connor seat it may become the "Miers Court." - Fund 10/10/05

" A few key themes recur in these short essays: Miers' aversion to conflict, or even outspoken debate; her devotion to the ideal of "diversity"; and her commitment to the interests of the legal profession above all else. " Frum 10/9/05

" Think about all of the famous lawyers that you know, all the great conservative jurists, all the people who have been through all the battles. And ask youself, have you heard from them over the past eight days? Is there one of them who has spoken up in defense of this nomination? And you'll see, they've all gone quiet." Frum 10/10/05 on HH radio

"The White House and its allies have long argued that it is wrong to bring a judicial nominee's faith into the discussion about his merits, and any attempt to do so amounts to religious bigotry. When it was suggested that John Roberts's Catholic faith might be an area for inquiry in his confirmation, White House allies recoiled in horror." - Lowry 10/11/05

"The White House was happy to trumpet the fact that Roberts graduated summa cum laude from Harvard undergrad and law school. Now it insinuates that anyone looking for similar credentials in its latest Supreme Court pick is guilty of "elitism." Indeed, White House point-man Dan Coats suggests her role will be to keep the Court from becoming too intellectual (what with that egghead Roberts now leading it). " - Lowry 10/11/05

"And on it goes. Miers is a trailblazer, but she will loyally follow Roberts's lead. She is an independent woman, but will vote however Bush wants her to vote. She has an excellent judicial temperament, but conservatives better not criticize her too harshly or she will turn against them." Lowry 10/11/05

" Given that conservatives generally don't trust trial lawyers and the Bar Association and are at best ambivalent to government sponsorship of gambling, those sound rather weak as arguments for a nomination to the Supreme Court. If Miers has other accomplishments that indicate why conservatives should trust Bush in her nomination, we've yet to hear that from the White House." - Capts Quarters 10/12/05

"There's no sexism here. Plenty of people would have been happy, ecstatic with Janice Rogers Brown or Priscilla Owen or Edith Jones, a number of qualified women" - Rush 10/11/05

" The pro-Miers response to this has been to assert that intellectual credentials don't matter or even that the lack of same is an advantage. This does appeal to a certain antielitist, or even anti-intellectual, strain in American politics. But there's nothing sexist about disagreeing. If Laura Bush has some evidence that Miers does possess intellectual heft, she would do better to come forward with it rather than insult the critics." - Taranto 10/11/05

Laura Ingraham - Hannity and Colmes 10/11/05

Brut Hume 10/4/05

"Victory for them is seeing the enemy bloodied and humiliated. They mistake the momentary thrill of triumph in combate, however evanescent, for lasting victory where it counts: a Supreme Court comprised of Justices who will assemble majorities for decisions reflecting the original intent of the Founders. " Lifson 10/4/05

" As the court’s new junior member, the 60 year old lady Harriet Miers will finally give a break to Stephen Breyer, who has been relegated to closing and opening the door of the conference room, and fetching beverages for his more senior Justices. " - Lifson 10/4/05

link

"President Bush knew how important this nomination was to the grass roots. And if I could predict beforehand that choosing Miers would be a "calamitous error" politically, then certainly the Bush Administration must have known it as well" - Right Wing News 10/6/05

" What if the Miers pick is at least partly calculated to coax out another nomination? What if Bush and Rove are playing to an audience of two, playing down fears they would nominate a raving ideologue if one of the two oldest justices decided to...(whisper it) retire? Had they gone for the A-lister this time and brought on Armageddon, they might have cemented the resolve of Stephens and Ginsburg to stay to the death. This way, who knows?" - quoted on TKS

"Harriet Miers is the very model of the work-horse, not the show-horse, and unless you happen to be, say, another lawyer who handles complicated litigation in Texas — me — you're understandably likely to have been uninformed about most of those facts." - Beldar 10/8/05

" First lady Laura Bush joined her husband in defending his nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday and said it was possible some critics were being sexist in their opposition to Harriet Miers." - Laura Bush 10/11/05

" He has neither the inclination nor the ability to make sophisticated judgments about competing approaches to construing the Constitution" - Will 10/4/05

" the president has forfeited his right to be trusted as a custodian of the Constitution" - Will 10/4/05

" prevent them from reducing the Supreme Court to a private plaything useful for fulfilling whims on behalf of friends." - Will 10/4/05

" Being a Bush loyalist and friend is not a qualification for the Supreme Court." - NRO Editors 10/3/05

" playing the victim card clarified, as much as anything has so far done, her credentials" - Will 10/4/05

Tim Russert 10/3/05

" The president has now officially stepped on a strategic landmine heading in the 2006 midterm congressional elections." - Hall 10/4/05

" a major snubbing of the social conservative base " - Hall 10/4/05

" unforced error" - Frum 10/3/05

"The president misread the field, the players, their mood and attitude. He called the play, they looked up from the huddle and balked. And debated. And dissed. Momentum was lost. The quarterback looked foolish." - Noonan 10/6/05

"The objection to Miers is not that she is not experienced enough or not expensively enough educated for the job. It is that she is not good enough for the job.

(See more on this in my article in the next print NR.)

And she will remain not good enough even if she votes the right way on the court, or anyway starts out voting the right way. A Supreme Court justice is more than just a vote. A justice is also a voice." - Frum 10/6/05

" Aside from all the substantial reasons I have cited to date, I am speaking out because there are so many others who want to speak but cannot. " - Frum 10/6/05

" Can you see any indication of intellectual excellence?" - Frum 10/6/05

" The Supreme Court is the big league of the legal profession, and Ms. Miers has never even played the judicial equivalent of high school ball, much less won a Heisman Trophy. " - Barnett 10/4/05

link

"She once told me that the president was the most brilliant man she had ever met. So reports conservative writer and former Bush speechwriter David Frum, in National Review Online. Unless White House Counsel Harriet Miers explains that she was joking or Frum was hallucinating, this alone may cast enough doubt on her judgment to warrant a "no" vote on her Supreme Court nomination." - Taylor 10/9/05

" raising the question of whether the ultimate motivation for this nomination is to open the way to hiring a new Counsel by kicking a failed Counsel upstairs" - Frum 10/10/05

link

"... I have spoken to people who have spoken to him, and they all say he's not putting a lot of fingerprints on this. He's making it clear this was Andy Card's idea, not his."Interview with Frum on HH "