Category: Old Dish

“Just talked to a very pro-Bush legal type who says he is ashamed and embarrassed this morning. 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. Dozens and dozens of women would have been better qualified. Says a crony at FEMA is one thing, but on the high court is something else entirely. Her long history of activity with ABA is not encouraging from a conservative perspective – few conservatives would spend their time that way. In short, he says the pick is ‘deplorable.'” – Rich Lowry, NRO. It seems to me at this stage that Miers might well be a quiet, decent judicial restraint conservative on the court. I’m still open to supporting her nomination. But a more fundamental issue is simply her intellectual and legal caliber. This is SCOTUS. After Roberts, we have gone from a clear A grade to a C +. It seems to me her nomination would be most successfully defeated merely by insisting that the court gets someone qualified in the most basic meaning of the term.

“It’s not as bad as Caligula putting his horse in the Senate.” – Richard Brookhiser, NRO. One more thought. Bush is a deeply arrogant and insecure person (the qualities go together), a man who refuses to cower in the face of criticism. This can be a good thing, as in his tenacity in the war on terror. But it is also a hubristic flaw – evident as early as “Mission Accomplished” – which has only been reinforced by his re-election. The one thing that could motivate him to appoint a crony as obviously unqualified as Miers is precisely to stick a finger in the eye of those accusing him of cronyism. Tell him we need more troops in Iraq? It’s the one thing he won’t do. Tell him he’s a big spender? We get: “It’s going to cost whatever it costs.” Tell him he has botched the Iraq occupation? He’ll give the architects Medals of Freedom. There’s an adolescent streak of pure willfulness in the man. He cannot and will not self-correct. If pushed into a corner, he will simply repeat the error in order to prove himself immune to criticism. We had one chance to correct this – the only one he understands. And he got away with re-election after four years of spectacular, unconservative incompetence. I’m afraid I have limited sympathy for those complaining conservatives who were silent when it mattered, and are now living with the consequences.

“Harriet Miers is the hair that broke the camel’s back. Despite the flaws I always expected things to eventually work out, and that everything was part of a master plan. Now I sit with egg on my face, and disarray that there is no plan: this is how it is supposed to be. Bush is a liberal who knows how to appeal to the churchy types. John Kerry doesn’t seem so bad now, because gridlock would have slowed things down and congressional Republicans would get their spines back, having to no longer bow to the Commander in Chief. David Brooks summed it up perfectly with his Manchurian Candidate comment. You were right I was wrong. Hopefully McCain in 2008?”

They’re both on board for now. Here’s the usual Hewitt pro-Bush spin. “Jump, Mr president? How high, Mr president? How high?” Here’s Dobson’s press release:

“We welcome the president’s nomination of Harriet Miers to the U.S. Supreme Court. He pledged emphatically during his campaign to appoint judges who will interpret the law rather than create it. He also promised to select competent judges who will ‘not use the bench to write social policy.’ To this point, President Bush’s appointments to the federal bench appear to have been remarkably consistent with that stated philosophy. Based on the information known generally about Harriet Miers, and President Bush’s personal knowledge of her, we believe that she will not prove to be a lone exception.

Dobson is holding back for the hearings before he fully commits, though. Fair enough.

“Harriet worships the president and has called him the smartest man she’s ever known. She’s a pretty good lawyer … This president can be bamboozled by anyone he feels close to. If a person fawns on him enough, is loyal, works 25 hours a day and says you’re the smartest man I ever met, all of a sudden you’re right for the Supreme Court.” – a longtime conservative Christian associate of Harriet Miers, on Marvin Olasky‘s religious right blog.

James Yee’s book on Guantanamo, “For God And Country,” is required reading for anyone concerned about the maintenance of the rule of law in America. Yee, you may recall, was the Muslim chaplain at Gitmo, falsely charged with espionage, exonerated, and then cashiered by the military on adultery charges. See? The witnesses they cannot deny, they smear – which is why Ian Fishback has every reason to be worried right now. There is far too much at stake for the administration to allow the truth of their own policy of brutality toward detainees to be revealed. But Yee’s testimony is interesting about what the authorities, under instructions from the Pentagon, decided to condone and allow at Gitmo. We already know for a fact that one prisoner was “water-boarded” at Gitmo, we also know of at least two Koran abuse allegations upheld by internal investigation, we know that one CIA-approved technique was the smearing of fake menstrual blood, we know about the illegal use of dogs, and so on. What Yee testifies to is the fact that all this – and I’ve restricted myself here solely to those techniques conceded by the military itself (there are mounds of evidence that the abuse was far worse and far more widespread) – was directly encouraged by the commander, Major General Miller. Money quote:

Mr. Yee writes that when General Miller visited the prison, he would tell the guards sternly, “The war is on.” That remark and similar comments, Mr. Yee writes, were designed to let soldiers know they were operating in a combat environment where it was understood that rules protecting detainees were relaxed and instances of mistreatment would be overlooked.
“Soldiers know that when you are in combat there’s considerable leniency in the rules,” Mr. Yee said in an interview, “and the leaders, including General Miller, wanted to put them in that frame of mind.” He said that General Miller told him that he remained deeply angry over the loss of military friends who were killed in the attack on the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001. The general, who is now assigned to duty in the Pentagon, declined through a spokesman to comment on the book.
Mr. Yee says the guards were constantly reminded of the Sept. 11 attacks by General Miller and others, and they “retaliated in whatever way they could” against the detainees. “In some cases, punishment often meant physical force,” he writes.

This kind of atmosphere, in which detainees are regarded as deserving of brutal treatment, and in which beatings were tacitly condoned, was, of course, the very atmosphere that “migrated” to Abu Ghraib and throughout the war-zone. Recall that Miller was sent to Abu Ghraib to “Gitmoize” it. But only a handful of grunts were scapegoated for a policy crafted by Rumsfeld and Bush and enforced by Miller. Miller is still ensconced in the Pentagon. Do you realy believe he has changed his ways?

Around 400 emails of support have poured in. Thank you so much. I’ve decided to post them all – or as many as I can physically copy and paste – onto the Letters Page, which has been in hiatus for a while. Give me more time to get them up. AOL is making it difficult to forward them all in bulk right away, but I’ve been able to send dozens already and I am told they are making a difference. Within a day, I should be able to forward them all. If you want to send Ian an email of support, email supportfishback@aol.com. If you need reminding why, here’s Fishback’s letter of conscience to Senator John McCain. Fishback and McCain are two critical figures of integrity who can save us from the moral nightmare that Bush and Rumsfeld have created – whether by design or incompetence. They need our help. If you’re a blogger and want to help, please advertize the email adddress.

Ryan Lizza uncovers a beaut:

Miers’s long affiliation with the ABA will serve up lots of interesting tidbits that are unlikely to please social and legal conservatives. For instance, she apparently submitted the following report to the ABA’s House of Delegates. Here are two of the report’s recommendations: “Supports the enactment of laws and public policy which provide that sexual orientation shall not be a bar to adoption when the adoption is determined to be in the best interest of the child. …
Recommends the development and establishment of an International Criminal Court.”

How will Cheney defend that on Rush?

RAGE ON THE RIGHT: Check out the anger at RedState.org. Money quotes:

Bush thinks he has people instincts. He doesn’t. Putin?! This is pathetic. Air out of my lungs pathetic. And the thing is, I’m not even sure if the instinct about people we’d hope for is the one he’s looking for. Roe (or any other social issue) is simply not on his front burner. I’ve feared this, and now I’m convinced it’s true. In fact, I think he and Rove are intentionally not placing anti-Roe votes on the Court. Roe stands, both Miers and Roberts uphold it (although upholding restrictions) and it becomes clear we have a 7-2 Supreme Court in favor of Roe. At that point, I vote McCain or even Giuliani (although I don’t donate) and just don’t bother myself with the lost cause on the abortion issue. This is terrible.

There’s more:

Bush lied to us. Let Kos cheer. The post below should not get lost, that her name was on a list of acceptables supplied by the Democrats. Bush is a gutless, abortionist liar. I spit on him. Seriously.

And more:

I cannot believe that I ever trusted this man. I am such a fool. I cannot believe that I have been so foolish as to look past the open borders, the excessive spending, the support of moderate Senators over Conservatives, the nation building in Iraq, the twisted bankruptcy “reform,” etc.

My favorite:

could have picked a real conservative. instead, he picks a 60-year-old woman who’s never been married and has never had kids. are we really to believe that she’ll vote to overturn roe? are we to believe that this woman hasn’t had sex outside of marriage over the past several decades? and if she has, hasn’t she been counting on the right to abortion just as other career-oriented women do? bush has betrayed us. i will never again contribute to the republican party.

I wonder how long it will take James Taranto to describe these people as prominent liberals? As for Roe, it seems obvious to me why Bush-Rove don’t want to over-rule it. The last thing they want is to remove that issue from their arsenal of campaign weaponry. Roe has long been the right’s best friend in electoral politics. Why would they give it up now? You don’t think that people like Rove are actually sincere about abortion, do you?

Roughly my feeling about the entire presidency for the past three years. It’s Bill Kristol on Miers. The scales keep falling from conservative eyes. But hey, Bill, you voted for him.

(Still, I’m not saying I oppose this nomination. At this point, I just don’t know enough about her judicial views.)

A right-thinking blogger coins a term on the Miers nomination.