Author: Andrew Sullivan

“We’ve had quite enough dynastic politics over the past decades… 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.” – Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post today. Has Charles heard of Alberto Gonzales at Justice?

QUOTE OF THE DAY II: “The idea that one is supposed to sacrifice both intellectual distinction and philosophical clarity at the same time is just ridiculous.” – Bill Kristol, Washington Post, today.

QUOTE OF THE DAY III: “The president’s ‘argument’ for her amounts to: Trust me. There is no reason to, for several reasons. He has neither the inclination nor the ability to make sophisticated judgments about competing approaches to construing the Constitution. Few presidents acquire such abilities in the course of their pre-presidential careers, and this president particularly is not disposed to such reflections.” – George Will. Is that a somewhat circuitous way of saying that this president is too stupid to do his job?

The president is left with little Hughie Hewitt chirping loyally on his shoulder. I’m beginning to think that this appointment was an expression of the president’s contempt for the conservative intelligentsia. They are now returning the favor.

DOBSON AND CATHOLICISM: Here’s an interesting remark: “I know the person who brought her to the Lord. I have talked at length to people that know her and have known her for a long time.” That’s James Dobson, talking about Harriet Miers’ conversion to evangelical Protestantism from Catholicism. Isn’t he implying that baptized Catholics have not been “brought to the Lord”? Just asking.

HEADS UP: I’ll be on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher tonight. I’m on a panel with Salman Rushdie and Ben Affleck. I’m not making that up.

“I was born and baptized Roman Catholic, and for the past 16 years have been practicing my faith in the Eastern Catholic Church. We changed churches for spiritual, not political, reasons.

The issues which face the Roman Catholic church today are not theological or spiritual, they are political. There is no theological rationale for only ordaining single heterosexual men and forcing them to be celibate. Orthodox and Eastern Catholic churches ordain married men as a matter of course, and the sexual orientation of those who are committed to celibacy is, by virtue of celibacy, rendered theologically indifferent.

The only thing that the Roman church can do by limiting priesthood to those who are celibate and heterosexual is to further separate themselves from the Universal Church in the name of a western political culture war which need not be fought. Overcoming sin is a matter of spiritual warfare, not cultural warfare. Transforming culture to the better is a matter of winning the spiriutal fight, not the political one. As the great Russian Saint, Seraphim of Sarov, teaches: ‘Acquire the Spirit of Peace and a thousand will be saved around you.’

The good bishops of the Roman Catholic church seek to blame the scandal of sexual abuse on homosexuality, on “modernism,” and on liberal cultural permissiveness, but they need look no further than themselves. The whole world throughout history understands “human weakness” and “a few bad apples.” What remains outrageous is not that there are a few really bad priests, but that the shepherds of the flock protected the wolves rather than the sheep.”

Here’s a moving personal tribute to Harriet. Alas, the defenses keep coming down to: a) trust Bush (at this point, who in their right minds would?); b) she’s a deeply good person (she sure seems like one but that’s hardly a reason to put her on SCOTUS); c) she’s an evangelical Christian (this certainly shouldn’t bar someone from SCOTUS, but the idea that a religious conviction is now the criterion for picking a Justice is downright scary). Have we gone from a ban on religious test for public office to the notion that someone’s faith is actually a qualification for office? I hope not. The question should be: is she qualified as one of the nine best legal minds in the United States and will she make judicial decisions that are wise, restrained, prudent and intellectually solid? I’m waiting for the hearings.

Iraq’s referendum on the Constitution will now give Sunnis a slim chance to force a re-write. The entire affair does not bode well for a unified, democratic Iraq, but this change at least increases the odds of success by a smidgen.

That’s how much she’s made in speaking fees in her interim between government jobs. Nothing illegal or unethical, as far as I can see.

There’s a new news black-out on the latest synod in Rome. Some may well interpret this as yet another sign of Benedict’s authoritarian nature. They may be right. But the scope of the subjects discussed – “a purported shortage of priests, proposals to let priests marry, and whether communion should be offered to certain divorced Catholics and denied to politicians who support abortion rights” – strikes me as something that John Paul II would never have even allowed to be on the table. Some sources tell me that Benedict has not shut the door completely to a married priesthood. Personally, I think it is critical to the survival of the Western church at least. It already exists if the priest os a convert from Anglicanism, and if I were a newpaper editor, I would assign a reporter to write a feature on today’s married Catholic priests. Most people don’t even realize they exist. Who knows what might happen? But if the option for clerical marriage emerges under Benedict, you read it here first. I for one would not be surprised.

Worth reminding people who their names are:

Allard (R-CO)
Bond (R-MO)
Coburn (R-OK)
Cochran (R-MS)
Cornyn (R-TX)
Inhofe (R-OK)
Roberts (R-KS)
Sessions (R-AL)
Stevens (R-AK)

Keep this list. And tell your children and grandchildren.

Rick Santorum seems to be in trouble. Why didn’t Bush pick him to be on the Supreme Court?

And America’s gay rights groups. TNR offers a damning critique.

“The Senate has passed a bill setting standards for treatment of detainees regardless of whether they’re covered by the Geneva Convention or not. The White House is resisting.
This resistance seems to me to be a mistake. First — as Lamar Alexander noted on the Senate floor, in a passage I heard on NPR earlier this morning — it is very much the Congress’s responsibility to make decisions like this; the President might do so in the first instance, but we’ve been at war for more than four years and Congress is actually doing its job late, not jumping in to interfere. If the White House thinks that the Senate’s approach is substantively wrong, it should say so, but presenting it as simply an interference with the President’s Commander-in-Chief powers is wrong. Congress is entitled, and in fact obligated, to set standards of this sort. It’s probably also better politically for the White House, since once the legislation is in place complaints about what happened before look a bit ex post facto.” – Glenn Reynolds, today, after months of silence on the subject. It seems to me that Glenn’s long-held (and I don’t doubt sincere) position has been disproven – that we shouldn’t keep highlighting abuses and blaming the Bush administration for them because that was “screeching partisanship” and would backfire, causing more public support for torture. So John McCain, Anne Applebaum, Nat Hentoff or yours truly are “screeching partisans”? Ahem. We just didn’t believe that loyalty to the president trumped profound moral disgrace. And we believed that the American public, if told repeatedly what was going on, would support us in the end. Now that 90 senators have joined in, the notion that this was about “screeching partisanship” is even more absurd. I mean, even Rick Santorum signed on. This was simply speaking truth to power, even if it alienates your friends and makes you enemies. Anyway, glad to have Glenn’s support at last. I hope he and many others in the conservative blogosphere will do all they can to support the measure in the House and oppose the threatened White House veto.