Here's What's Left

Taking a break

As should probably be pretty obvious from the lack of posts over the past months, I've had less time for this blog that I would have liked.  This is still the case, so I thought I'd make it official -- I'm gonna take a break from blogging for a few weeks. Look for more witty, irreverent and generally brilliant commentary here around the middle of November.

-- Michael

Keep digging

Is something in the water at the White House?  They're just digging the hole deeper with the Miers nomination.  When you get a mainstream news outlet calling them on something like this, you know they're in trouble.  CNN: White House defends talk of Miers' religion.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Bush suggested Wednesday that Harriet Miers' evangelical Christian beliefs were part of the reason he nominated her to the Supreme Court. But later a White House spokesman said her religion played no role in her selection.

"People are interested to know why I picked Harriet Miers," Bush told reporters at the White House. "They want to know Harriet Miers' background. They want to know as much as they possibly can before they form opinions."

"Part of Harriet Miers' life is her religion," Bush said during Oval Office comments with visiting Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski. "Part of it has to do with the fact that she was a pioneer woman and a trailblazer in the law in Texas."[...]

Later Wednesday, White House press secretary Scott McClellan denied Miers' religious beliefs had anything to do with her nomination.

"Harriet Miers is a person of faith," McClellan told reporters. "She recognizes, however, that a person's religion or personal views have no role when it comes to making decisions as a judge."

Surely the White House has thinking of ways to placate a base and conservative punditry in rebellion, but if this how they're going to do it (i.e., by claiming to have picked her for illegal reasons), it doesn't seem to be helping them. 

Almost makes me wonder whether they're trying to shift the story away from Miers' (un)qualifications and general mediocrity to a religion thing -- and whether press stories exposing contradictory White House talking points are part of that.  See, we told you that the liberal, elitist, secularist, baby-killing media hates evangelicals.  That kind of thing. 

But that strategy strikes me as unlikely, since I can't help but think that Bush actually wants to see her confirmed.  And in coming dangerously close to talk of a "religious test," Bush isn't winning any fans with a (D) next to their name.

-- Michael

Strict Constructionist?

E.J. Dionne's column, excellent as usual, calls the right-wing on their hypocrisy in regard to Harriet Miers' religious beliefs:

"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 [John Roberts, in this case]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."

But now that Harriet Miers, Bush's latest Supreme Court nominee, is in trouble with conservatives, her religious faith and how she lives that faith are becoming central to the case being made for her by the administration and its supporters. Miers has almost no public record. Don't worry, the administration's allies are telling their friends on the right, she's an evangelical Christian .[...]

"Maybe it's the judicial implications of her evangelical faith, unseen on the court in recent decades," Olasky wrote on his blog. "Friends who know Miers well testify to her internal compass that includes a needle pointed toward Christ."[...]

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Let's be clear: It is pro-administration conservatives, not those terrible liberals, who are making an issue of Miers's evangelical faith. Liberals are not opposing Miers because she is an evangelical. Conservatives are telling their friends to support Miers because she is an evangelical.

Which, of course, is unarguably hypocritical.  But it's funny that Dionne doesn't make the more obvious point here.  It's not only that republicans have said the stuff about the religious test and are now using religion to gain support.  It's that republicans have always been very clear about what they think judges are supposed to do: they think judges should strictly interpret the law and the Constitution, and that's it.

Even when Bush announced Miers, he said that she "will strictly interpret our Constitution and laws. She will not legislate from the bench."  Bush said of some judges whose nominations were being held up that "They will strictly and faithfully interpret the law. They won't use the bench from which to legislate."  What about foreign law?  Kevin Fobbs tells us:

The Supreme Court may not continue to be the supreme court of the land if the judicial philosophy of Justices Anthony Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Stephen Breyer of using foreign law rulings in adjudicating American cases is permitted to become standard practice by the justices.

Couldn't be clearer.  Their position might be overstated, simplistic, and full of straw men, but it's clear: judges can't use their personal preferences, or even the laws of another country, to make their decisions.  They interpret the law, plain and simple.

So why, then, does it matter that Harriet Miers' heart is pointed to Christ?  Why does it matter her friend Nathan Hecht is being put on TV to tell us that in the 70s she sought a "deeper commitment to faith"?  How does any of this tell us whether she'll interpret the Constitution and the law rather than legislating from the bench?

I assume, then, ahem, that this will be the first question out the mouths of conservatives during her confirmation hearing: Ms. Miers, as you know, your job as a Supreme Court justice is to faithfully interpret the law.  Given how well publicized it is, then, how can we be sure that your Christian faith will not get in the way of this?

-- Michael

Strict Constructionist

E.J. Dionne's column, excellent as usual, calls the right-wing on their hypocrisy in regard to Harriet Miers' religious beliefs:

"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 [John Roberts, in this case]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."

But now that Harriet Miers, Bush's latest Supreme Court nominee, is in trouble with conservatives, her religious faith and how she lives that faith are becoming central to the case being made for her by the administration and its supporters. Miers has almost no public record. Don't worry, the administration's allies are telling their friends on the right, she's an evangelical Christian .[...]

"Maybe it's the judicial implications of her evangelical faith, unseen on the court in recent decades," Olasky wrote on his blog. "Friends who know Miers well testify to her internal compass that includes a needle pointed toward Christ."[...]

Let's be clear: It is pro-administration conservatives, not those terrible liberals, who are making an issue of Miers's evangelical faith. Liberals are not opposing Miers because she is an evangelical. Conservatives are telling their friends to support Miers because she is an evangelical.

Which, of course, is unarguably hypocritical.  But it's funny that Dionne doesn't make the more obvious point here.  It's not only that republicans have said the stuff about the religious test and are now using religion to gain support.  It's that republicans have always been very clear about what they think judges are supposed to do: they think judges should strictly interpret the law and the Constitution, and that's it.

Even when Bush announced Miers, he said that she "will strictly interpret our Constitution and laws. She will not legislate from the bench."  Bush said of some judges whose nominations were being held up that "They will strictly and faithfully interpret the law. They won't use the bench from which to legislate."  What about foreign law?  Kevin Fobbs:

The Supreme Court may not continue to be the supreme court of the land if the judicial philosophy of Justices Anthony Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Stephen Breyer of using foreign law rulings in adjudicating American cases is permitted to become standard practice by the justices.

Couldn't be clearer.  Judges can't use their personal preferences, or even the laws of another country, to make their decisions.  They interpret the law, plain and simple.

So why, then, does it matter that Harriet Miers' heart is pointed to Christ?

Miers nomination thoughts

I don't have any better explanation that anyone else for the Miers nomination.  In my too-clever-by-half moments I think that something like this is going on: that Miers is an intentionally disappointing nominee; that a republican strategist has no intention of seeing Roe overturning -- so that it can be continuously used in future elections to push the republican party even further to the right ('we need politicians who are even more socially conservative!').

It's also possible, I suppose, that the right really does want her, and is trying to dupe Dems into not opposing her.  That this intra-republican party war a smoke screen. 

But I think it's more likely that movement conservatism wants a fight while the White House wants someone to seem inoffensive.  And that an unexpected consequence of the Miers nomination is that some on the right are realizing that Bush is actually not very competent, i.e., he doesn't do the job of being president very well.  Some of them are just now realizing that his judgment is bad, his decisions arbitrary, his governing philosophy non-existent.  Of course, it would have been nice if they had figured this out before they all went and voted for him last year, but one can you expect from the modern republican party?

The good news for Dems, I suppose, is that this nomination could be bad for the long-term health of the republican party.  Really makes one wonder how a republican nominee in 2008 will handle the Bush legacy.  Unless things turn around dramatically, it seems like Bush is headed for a unusually unsuccessful two-term presidency, unsatisfactory to the left and the right, and that the lack of success will be obvious all but the most blind partisans.  How does a party run on such a legacy?

-- Michael