Today’s pullout by U.S. Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers was the right thing for the White House and the court. As Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., told NPR, her hill to confirmation was getting larger rather than smaller, and that disagreement with the Bush administration over the release of documents loomed large. The real problem with her nomination was not that she wasn’t conservative enough. It was her resume, which simply didn’t rise to the level necessary to entitle someone to sit on the highest court in the land. Miers’ confusing questionnaire answers didn’t help. At least nobody can say she was “borked.”
Posted by Rhonda Holman
Registered?
Commenting on WE Blog now requires you to be a Kansas.com member. Use the links above to register, if you haven't already, or to log in.Contact us
Follow us
Daily Archives
-
Recent Comments
- Jed on Let immigrants run
- Regular on Open thread 11/23
- Regular on Open thread 11/23
- BlueJay on Open thread 11/23
- BlueJay on Open thread 11/23
- Freebird1971 on Open thread 11/23
- Freebird1971 on Open thread 11/23
- BlueJay on Open thread 11/23
- BlueJay on Open thread 11/23
- Freebird1971 on Open thread 11/23
40 Comments
Miers was withdrawn because her handlers didn’t want her answering questions about her Texas lottery scandal under oath.
Now poor Mr. Bush has to find a white woman, staunch conservative, lawyer qualified to sit on the SCOTUS who kissed his butt for many years.
Good luck!
Galahad,
Agreed. Think W will nominate Karen Hughes?
The axe fell yesterday when Arlen Specter insisted on assurances that Miers would recuse herself from any cases involving conflicts of interest arising from her work for the Bush Administration.
Given the climate of fear over coming indictments, the current White House is in no position to discipline the Head of the Judiciary Committee. And considering that Specter is staunchly pro-choice, this doesn’t bode well for any far right conservative like Edith Jones or Janice Rogers Brown who the WH might want to nominate in order to placate their base.
I’ll say it again: Harry Reid is a friggin’ genius. All he did was give a little nudge, and the religious nutjobs did the rest.
Laugh now, libs. A real right-winger is comin’ down the pike and she’ll be confirmed.
Don’t be so sure, Joe Blow.
Moderate Republican Senators want less and less to do with this WH, and are answerable to their constituencies for approving someone with an anti-choice track record. Bush may not have the political muscle left to push someone like that through the process.
Like everyone, I’d have preferred to see Miers defeated in a vote. But it’s an ugly, ugly defeat for the WH, and a sign that their coalition is splintering. Moderate, pro-business, pro-choice Republicans look down on the Christian Jihadists, and the Christian Jihadists loathe moderate Republicans. If Bush nominates someone sure to overturn Roe v. Wade, the moderates may not be as loud as the fundos, but they have ways of calling in their chips as well. W can’t afford to let any part of his constituency feel that it’s being taken for granted.
You’re wrong. Bush’s coalition just came back together this morning. Sorry. It WAS splintered due to this pick. Not now.Frankly, I was a little conflicted over the news….then heard Barbara Boxer say this was a terrible defeat for America. Conflict over. Thank God, Miers withdrew!
Joe Blow,
Considering how the moderate Republicans turned on Bush to defeat his repeal of the Davis-Bacon Act, I’d say it’s a bit premature to say his coalition will just fall back into line. Sounds like whistling past the graveyard to me.
Blow,The conflict is far from over. Bush has blown his credibility with much of his base with this nomination. He won’t get that back simply by withdrawing the nomination. Everything he does now will be suspect to a huge part of the Republican party, and the Republican party will be suspect to huge segments of the electorate. Combine that with the WMD disaster and it’s ensuing war, the economic problems etc., and any future Republican candidate will have to distance himself from Bush the same way they had to do with Nixon. Given the party’s insistence on absolute loyalty, that may prove difficult. Tough times ahead for the GOP!
Jed,
We’ll see. This is only the first couple of skirmishes, and it’s still early in the second term. I’m also interested to see how far the WH goes in pushing back against the rule of law, and critics like Brent Scowcroft. That will tell us a lot.
But I think it’s fair to say that whoever Bush nominates isn’t going to get the John Roberts treatment. Honeymoon is over, gloves are off.
W has a black female staunch conservative on his short list. Start prep’n your weak excuse list.
ID,Any black female that’s also a conservative has to be a nut case!
ID,
Considering Janice Rogers Brown’s record of incompetence and right-wing extremism on the California Supreme Court, I’d LOVE for her to be the nominee. She’s dumb as a post in interviews and given to fits of temper.
Of course, she’ll probably play the race card like Clarence Thomas did (’this is a high-tech lynching!’), and the righties will love her for it. But I don’t think that’s going to be enough to compensate for her negatives, which are substantial.
As Digby says on his site, Bush appears to have chosen to mollify his right-wing base. Probably the right thing to do, although it does embolden them. Still, I think many of them will be less than pleased that W has nominated a ****** rather than a good white ‘Christian’ like Priscilla Owen or Edith Jones.
Miers was picked by Bush because it’s one of the few things he’s been allowed to do by himself.
Ariel decides when the US goes to war, which country, how long we’ll be there, and then the next country we’ll be attacking.
Congress decides how much over-spending will be allowed, where and when.
But little-boy-Bush put his foot down, saying: “I wanna do it myself” so he got to pick his friend Miers.
Everybody with half a brain knew that that nomination would flop, but at least he would stop being a pest and stop asking.
It worked.
Dream on libs. You’ll have a little fun tomorrow. But this too shall pass. We’ve hit bottom and are on the way back up :-)
Your party still has no ideas, no issues, no candidates, no power. You’ve got enough problems of your own, but are so consumed with hatred of “BushCo” you can’t see them until it’s too late and you’re reduced to whining about voter fraud after you’ve lost. Again.
Ho-hum. Same-old, same old from Joe Blow.
I daresay, Joe Blow, you might have shot your wad, as it were, by declaring that the Bush Administration has ‘hit bottom!’ If I were you, I’d wait until tomorrow, after Patrick Fitzgerald has announced whether or not there will be indictments of Karl Rove, Scooter Libby, and others. And once folks are under indictment, it’s awfully hard to pooh-pooh the fact that the Republican officials running the U.S. Government are crooks who disrespect the rule of law. Between Rove, Libby, Delay, and Frist, I’d say it’s plain to see that Republicans can’t be trusted to do what they say they’ll do, much less to do what’s right.
As for the ‘big ideas’ of the GOP, the ‘party of ideas’? Let’s see: invade Iraq on the pretext that it possessed WMD, when in fact no WMD ever existed; cut taxes for the richest and raise them for everyone else; push Social Security ‘reform’ that will bankrupt the system and destroy peoples’ retirement; add a prescription drug ‘benefit’ to Medicare that bankrupts seniors and enriches the pharmecutical companies.
Joe Blow, I tell ya: how many more big ‘ideas’ can the GOP afford?
‘Issues’ for the Democrats? Easy. Good government. Honesty. Disclosure. Shrinking the enormous government created by George Bush and using its resources for Americans who have bought into the system and want to be productive.
We Democrats want to make America work for those who work for America.
Unlike the GOP, we Democrats don’t need fat-cat, media think-tanks to spin and test-market these ideas, Joe Blow: we just think a bit about what is right, and how to do it.
Wow! Looks like CF and Jed have been card carrying members of MoveOn for a while. So, who’s playing the race card now, Jed? Joe, you are right. But the libs have one thing in their favor. Excuses! A black male conservative is a Uncle Tom. A black female conservative is a nut case. Sounds like CF, Jed, Galahad, xxx, k, brian, Ed (especially Ed, the Zionist hater)and the rest of you bashers need to attend the Stop the Hate Rally. Since Galahad goes to church, he understands Turn the Other Cheek. RSVP’s to wichitastophate@yahoo.com See you there.
Miers was a staunch defender of racist affirmative action programs and a supporter of “rights” for wetbacks! I say good riddance to bad judicial rubbish!
CF, you libs have the entire MSM pukes, NPR, George Soros, MoveOn (shall I go on?) spinning for you (sans the fair and balanced FOX and a few talk radio hosts). Your ‘good goverment’ is code for wealth redistribution. Your ‘work for America’ is code for unions.
Hold on there, big fella.
I’m a Christian but I didn’t say I was a GOOD Christian.
Somebody strikes me on one cheek is going to be flat on his back looking up at stars.
I’m not into the suffering martyr thing.
Kerry lost because he took the high road and let Bush “swift boat” him.
We grassroots aren’t taking it anymore. We’re starting to give what we get.
So get used to it.
Ian Santiago,
For whom does the stopped clock toll? It tolls for thee…
ID,
Indeed you will see me there: the organizers are good pals. And no, I’m not a member of MoveOn. They’s good people, though.
When I call someone a racist it’s because they support racially discriminatory policies. That’s true of Janice Rogers Brown and of Clarence Thomas.
There’s also the fact that neither of them has demonstrated a bit of intellectual independence: they’re bound to their white GOP benefactors, and are the mouthpieces for their views, while receiving the personal benefits and status that accrue to sock puppets.
Finally, they’re both activist judges in the purest sense, who want to remake law and precedent in the image of their own ideologically-driven, phony reading of the constitution.
So I’m a ‘racist’ for want to hold African-Americans to the same standard as other judges, eh?
Heeee-larious, ID.
********************************Mk. II: evidently our posts crossed in the mail. I will now respond, briefly, to your second post.
I love this fiction of the ‘MSM’ being liberal. Oh, ID, you mean, like, the NYT and Judy Miller? Give me a break. You mean Wolf Blitzer? Please. And even NPR, with Steve (Republic)Inskeep? Barf. They ain’t mine. I know no one wants to claim them, but I disavow them. Well, all but NPR, at least on some days. Mara Liasson is a whore, but Anne Garrells is quite awesome.
Poor little you! All you have is Roger Ailles, Rupert Murdoch, Richard Mellon Schaife, Clear Channel, NBC, CBS, and ABC. That nasty George Soros! He’s such a…bad, man (can’t say he’s a Jew, wouldn’t be nice!)
As for my ‘coded’ language, who’s redistributing what, ID? Seems to me the middle class pays way more than its fair share (Alternative Minimum Tax, anyone) and gets less back. Your idea of ‘distribution’ is to take from the scraping by and give to the cruising. And anyway, who does the working, living, dying, and generating of surplus value in this country? That would be…the middle class. Giving them what they merit isn’t ‘redistribution’; ‘redistribution’ is what Republicans like when the money flows to them and their rich pals.
As for unions, hell yes. I belong to one. Corporations gonna push us? We’re gonna push back. If no unions, we’ll all be even more screwed than we already are.
Anyway, that’s enough. Long post is already too, too long.
BTW, ID, the Republicans are the worst example of your hated “wealth distribution.” They just take from the average Joes like you and me and give to the rich.
Three quick examples–
1. SS tax. It “caps out” out 90,000. So it’s a tax on the middle class. Anybody who makes really good money–190K, 290K, 390K, say–only pays SS on the first 90K, just like the poor slob ekking by on 17,000 a year.
Tax on 15,000? 100 percent
Tax on 50,000? 100 percent
Tax on 90,000? 100 percent
Tax on 1 million? less than ten percent.
Yeah, that’s fair.
2. “Capital gains” tax. If I’m a construction worker and I make my living busting up concrete with a jackhammer all day, I pay over six percent of my gross to SS, almost three percent of my gross to medicare. That’s very close to ten percent of my gross skimmed off before I even get my paycheck.
If I’m flipping Dick Cheney and I make six million dollars selling stock from my brief tenure at Halliburton, I pay ZERO SS tax, ZERO medicare tax, and my income tax is less than “earned income.”
Oh, yeah, that’s real fair.
3. Halliburton no-bid contracts in Iraq. The CEO of Grace Oil Co. believes he could do most of the jobs Halliburton is doing in Iraq for one-quarter of the cost they’re doing it (or not doing it, as the case may be).
Unfortunately for Grace, they didn’t keep the Vice-President of the United States on their payroll like Halliburton does.
Is that fair? Oh, yeah, you betcha.
Well, the conservatives are going to have a hard time blaming this one on the left. What a bunch of damn hypocrites! Hey ‘Pubs! What ever happened to the part about how every nomination deserves an up or down vote?It was sweet while it lasted. I really enjoyed watching the conservatives tear at eachother’s throats.I think it was all just a scam anyway. Now watch bush nominate Attila the Hun.
From the IRS http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-soi/03in05tr.xls
Top 25% income earners pay 84% of the taxes. Are there exceptions. You bet. Both parties. For all of the Cheney’s there are Soros’s or Kennedy’s. I’m all for flat tax, but it ain’t going to happen because there are enough ‘richies’ on both sides. If it were only the Republicans who were rich, the Dems would have solved this back when they had power. Hmmmm, when was that?
Your class and race warfare tactics are no longer effective, and you can’t come up with any plan that works.
ID,
Well, now that Bush is sitting at a 2% approval rating among African-Americans, it might be time to reconsider the claim that ‘racial warfare tactics’ are over and done with. At least until after next year’s election before making that claim again.
CF
Bush’s approval rating or vote counting hasn’t stopped him from being elected.
I’m betting on Paris Hilton as the next justice.
Further upstream in this thread there were some comments about the economy, jobs, unions. There was an article in Sunday’s Eagle about the fact that there are some positives in the local economy, but people are not seeing it.
Then later in the article it quoted these national statistics:Businesses average profits since 2002 are up 17%; Job earnings, when adjusted for inflation, have actually fallen 2.7% in the last year. So, it may be understandable that many people are missing the good economic news, if they are not experiencing it first hand.
Here’s link to the story:
http://www.kansas.com/mld/kansas/business/12973818.htm
JM,If that happens, we’ll know fer sure who Bush wishes he was clintoning around with! She’s rich, vapid, barely this side of jailbait, rich, they share an IQ score, and she’s rich! What more could he want?
Well, Galahad. That’s one thing we have in common. I won’t back down from a good fight either.
CF, You forgot Alan Colmes on Fox. Can’t believe you don’t like the Hannity Colmes bantering.
Goshdangit, ID, you always trot that sh*t out. Give it a rest.
If you had a flipping FLAT TAX of 10 percent, the rich would pay just as much as a percentage as they do now.
Why?
Because they make so much MORE than everybody else.
It’s a total red herring. It’s like saying I make twenty dollars an hour and my wife spends 200 dollars an hour at the shopping mall.
IT IS NOT RELEVANT WHAT PERCENTAGE THE WEALTHY PAY OF TOTAL TAXES RECEIVED. It will always be a lot more because THEY MAKE A LOT MORE.
Duh . . .
If the rich are unhappy that they have to shoulder such a high percentage of the tax burden, then, hell, let me trade places with them.
They can earn my average salary and pay my average taxes and I’ll make their huge salary and pay their taxes.
Who’ll take me up on that?
Nobody. Because nobody hates taxes so much that they’ll make one-tenth or one-thousandth of their yearly income just so they pay lower taxes.
You accuse me of talking about “class warfare,” but it’s the Bush cabal that ENGAGES in class warfare. They’re entirely committed to giving more to those who have much (and telling people who have little to go to hell).
It REALLY IS amazing. I listen to Rush and Hannity that I may better understand the enemy. To DATE, I have never seen a conservative poster here who did not post the gospel according to the anal intestinal issuances of these and other right wing AM radio egomaniacs.
What is even MORE intersting is that the RIGHT now defines itself by just how much they piss the left off! Talk about bereft of ideas and ideals! Gotta be DOUBLY troubling when you maintain all along that “god” is on your side!
Re Miers? What happened to a “simple up or down vote”? Why did you all not want Miers to get to hearings? ??????? Could it be because bush’s assertion that “she is best qualified” was in fact a manifestation of bush’s OWN incompetence and cronyism even in the face of offending his very base? Are you afraid bush’s own actions would confirm him as the idiot we on the left ALWAYS said he was?
Oh but I forgot. He was just supposed to be a puppet. And he did that role real well so far. The rich got richer, and richer every day. Old sad jingoism was fired to encourage and excuse this. God and a holy mission was even played. And you all ate it UP!
Ahhhh but then this failed sad puppet got to do something on his OWN. He rewarded a pal with a cushy job! That is HIS Reality. That is YOUR reality. But his choice was not quite up to exacting muster of your agenda. You could not be 100% certain she’d play to your agenda. So she had to go.
Bad thing for you is……Frist, DeLay, Rove, Libby, Cheney, well they gotta go too.
Bottom line is coservatism these days is GREED. Greed devours everything, even it’s own. Good news is the nation is in the long run bigger than this. There will be terrible pain and we already see it. But in the end the greedy and self righteous will have chased themselves back into the little corner they belong in.
ID,
I NEVER watch Fox News. Rots the brain.
CF, My question was rhetorical, of course. You mentioned the 1% of questionable conservate media folk on the overwhelmingly liberal MSM, and I was giving you the 1% liberal media folk on the the fair and balanced Fox news.
‘Fair and balanced’–ha ha ha! You mean the claim that there are two, and only two, sides to every issue? In logic and critical thinking, that’s called ‘bifurcation,’ and it’s an informal fallacy. To present reality as if it neatly fell into an ‘either/or’ organization would be dishonest, even without taking into consideration the fact that Fox invariably takes sides.
As a liberal, I believe in following the money. Thus, what you denounce as ‘Main Stream Media’ is, from my vantage point, ‘Corporate Media.’ That being the case, you can call them ‘liberal’ however much you like, but I’m no more on board with their agenda than you are.
Noam Chomsky points out that media are large for-profit corporations, funded by business advertising.
Even our hometown paper, The Eagle, is owned by the national corporation, Knight-Ridder.
ABC is owned by Disney, NBC is owned by General Electric. FOX is owned by Rupert Murdoch and its news division is run by the Karl Rove of his era, Roger Ailes.
How can mega-corporations be anything but conservative or more accurately, “status-quo”ist.
BTW, great post, JR. You hit the nail on the head.
Greed is God to these people. They worship Mammon.
CF,Must be lonely at the Menza club nowadays.
Yes, I know how to spell Mensa. Feable attempt to lighten up the posts.
Feeble would be the operative term here.
ID shot himself in both feet. And all I had to do was sit here.
Now that the Right has derailed a SCOTUS nomination before it ever came before the Judiciary Committee, I hope Tony Perkins, James Dobson, and every other Christian Jihadist will spare us having to listen to them insist that “the President’s nominee deserves an up or down vote.”
I think the Right is about to go over the cliff with this nomination. There’s no reason for the Left to back down before a weakened President, and moderate Republicans have to be getting nervous at how much the ‘Christian’ conservatives think George Bush is now their bitch.
‘Nukular option’? Bring it on. Time to see whether a bunch of psychotic, hypocritical Holy Warriors or sane people, right and left, control this country.