As most know by now, President Bush has nominated now-former White House Counsel Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court. Immediately, two memes have sprung up. One is that the President followed the “Cheney template,” by which it is meant that he ended up nominating the individual he had originally tapped to lead the search committee for that particular position. The second meme, and the one with more partisan legs, is that the President is guilty of “cronyism.” Meanwhile, the debate over Miers rages on in the blogosphere, with many conservatives (here, here, here, here, and here) disappointed. This doesn’t mean that liberals are giving her a pass, however, as there is too much to be gained ($$$) by ginning up opposition to anyone whom the President would have tapped. (Of course, many are particularly gleeful over the GOP infighting).
I don’t know enough about Miers to make a judgement right now, but the criticism seems to hinge on the fact that she’s never been considered a top legal mind (she’s never been a judge, actually) and the the President could have simply done better. In fact, most of the conservative criticism is of the President, not of Miers herself. For instance, Rush Limbaugh stated that this choice seemed to be “made from weakness” and not strength and one conservative blogger says he’s “done with President Bush” over this choice. There are a few (and here) conservatives who find the pick a good one, but, as can be seen, they are distinctly in the minority. Some think that the President is pulling a “rope-a-dope.” If that is the case, then Glenn Reynolds prediction that the nomination is already in trouble is all part of some Roveian master plan.
I think some of conservative disappointment is a result of trying to fit a real person, Miers, into the template many have of what, to them, is the ideal conservative SCOTUS judge (in whatever permutation each individual conservative has constructed said person). Especially as she comes on the heels of the nearly-unanimously welll-regard John Roberts. Simply put, they think that the President could have nominated a better-qualified, more clearly conservative–and just as confirmable–person to the SCOTUS. Perhaps the President’s close, personal relationship with Miers has clouded his judgement of her qualifications. However, as with most things, should Miers indeed be confirmed, it will take a few years to determine whether or not she was appropriate for the position.
And yet, maybe this is really the crux of the matter: no one is comfortable with the proposition of a candidate surrounded by so much uncertainty assuming a lifetime seat on the highest court in the land. For conservatives who voted for George Bush under the premise that he would select both respected and conservative judges to the court, the Miers pick is disappointing and unsettling. Simply put, conservatives feel as if they’ve been let down and, concomitantly, that they may not have cast their presidential vote for the type of candidate, George Bush, whom they thought. Maybe the confirmation hearings will clear things up and Miers will emerge as a solid, intellectual conservative.
I have my own doubts that will happen. These are based on her relatively short resume and by my own first impressions of her that I had while I listened to her accepting the nomination this morning. To me she sounded both nervous and overwhelmed. In short, she was not-ready -for-primetime. I know public speaking ability has little to do with one’s judicial expertise, but her shaky performance and lack of judicial experience give me pause. Now, I know former Chief Justice Rehnquist was never a judge and that Sandra Day O’Connor was really a politician with a limited judicial resume, but I still think there were many qualified judges (and others) to choose from. The president and his people, including VP Cheney, are telling conservatives to “trust us.” I’ll try, so I’ll reserve judgement until the confirmation hearings.
*A cynic might say that by then I will have talked myself into approving of Miers. Perhaps, but hopefully the fact that I’m aware of this very human tendency to seek equilibrium with one’s ideological cohort will mitigate such a thing happening “automatically.” Unless it already has, which is why I’m leaning towards doubt along with most of the rest of the conservative blogosphere.
Here is an interesting story on a San Franscisco anti-war march, where the local MSM’s photo and article most certainly did not convey the whole story.
In the past, the MSM could push their political agenda and get away with it. Now, thanks to bloggers, more complete and accurate news is getting out to American citizens. And that means very different stories are being told.
H/T to Power Line.
The same issues of incomplete, and therefore misleading, disclosures by the MSM also showed up in the coverage of Cindy Sheehan’s activities and words – about which others have now begun to tell a more complete story.
Robert Novak wrote of a successful rebuttal of a bi-partisan attempt in the U.S. Senate to spend more of our tax dollars under the auspices of “Katrina Aid.”
The Senate was up to its old tricks Monday evening. It prepared to pass, without debate and under a procedure requiring unanimous consent, a federal infusion of $9 billion into state Medicaid programs under the pretext of Katrina relief. The bill, drafted in secret under bipartisan auspices, was stopped cold when Republican Sen. John Ensign voiced his objection.
The bill’s Democratic sponsors railed in outrage against Ensign, a 47-year-old first-termer from Las Vegas, Nev., who usually keeps a low profile. But he was not acting alone. Ensign belongs to, and, indeed, originated, a small group of Republicans who intend to stand guard on the Senate floor against such raids on the Treasury as Monday night’s failure. The group includes Sen. John McCain, who long has tried to wean Republicans from ever greater federal spending but attracted little support from GOP colleagues until recently.
Fear has enveloped Republicans who see themselves handing the banner of fiscal integrity to the Democrats. The GOP is losing the rhetoric war, even though Democrats mostly push for higher domestic spending, because Republicans, while standing firm against tax hikes, have also declined to cut spending. Fearing the worst in the 2006 and 2008 elections, Republican senators who would not be expected to do so are looking to McCain to lead the party back to fiscal responsibility.
The “emergency” Medicaid bill is a classic case of how government grows and spending soars. Democratic Sen. Blanche Lincoln, concerned by health problems of evacuees in her state of Arkansas, introduced a bill increasing Medicaid funds to the states. The Senate Finance Committee’s Republican chairman, Chuck Grassley, and its ranking Democrat, Max Baucus, drafted the scaled-down, $9 billion substitute and marked it for quick passage. No hearings, no debate, no trouble.
Follow the link for the rest of the story, but you get the picture. Thankfully, there is still a small core of Senators willing to stop this sort of largess. Perhaps more Senators will join them in the future as they wake up to the fact that their political future depends upon it.
[Open full post]Somehow this bit of biography of the man who recently performed a “75-minute one-act, written by Howard Zinn, [that] engaged the audience by shedding light on the theories of philosopher Karl Marx” at the University of Rhode Island is almost too predictable to notice:
Jones is a high school teacher in New York and is a member of the International Socialist Organization. By traveling around the country, he hopes to expose the man behind the ideas that sparked a revolution.
Wonder what he teaches.
[Open full post]David Wilcox and Nance Pettit’s new CD, Out Beyond Ideas, puts to music mystic poetry from multiple religious traditions. My review, of sorts, suggests that they’ve uncovered and enhanced commonalities that underlie human societies, and that conservatives should look past the too-obvious backstory of the project to commonalities that ought to underlie our own.
[Open full post]One of the problems with looking through public budget numbers to identify wasteful spending is that the numbers become mind-numbing after a while. Is a $1,000,000 a lot to pay for something or not? How about $10,000,000? Or $100,000,000?
Here is an example. The Westerly Sun has a report on construction of a new police station in Westerly. The total cost for a new police station, according to the Sun, is $12,300,000. Sounds like a lot. However, a quick look at the RI highway bill earmarks shows that $10,000,000 has been budgeted for improving the Blackstone River Bikeway. It’s hard to believe that building a few miles of bikepath really costs as much as building a police station.
When you see these kinds of numbers side-by-side, it becomes obvious that the people of Rhode Island would be better off if they had their federal tax burden reduced. When control of the money stays closer to home, communities can address their local needs instead of paying for premium-priced pork.
To see a list of $49,000,000 in highway pork suggested for redirection to more pressing needs, click here.
Senator Jack Reed has voted against an amendment making government spending procedures more transparent.
Yesterday, the United States Senate approved a Congressional rules change. Presently, in an appropriations bill, only one house of Congress is required to specify the purpose and dollar amount of an “earmarked” project; the other House need only approve a total amount budgeted for all earmarks. If a similar rules change passes in the House, both houses of Congress will have to approve all specific earmarks.
You might think that a Senator who consistently favors high taxes (Senator Reed scores 17 out of 100 from the National Taxpayers Union, 10 out of 100 from Americans for Tax Reform) would also favor procedures that give close scrutiny to how that money is spent. Apparently, Senator Reed thinks differently.
Senator Lincoln Chafee voted in favor of the transparency amendment.
I had one of those “only in Rhode Island” moments this morning when I picked up the ProJo and read that the Democrat leaders of the General Assembly had secretly placed a bid on a prime piece of downtown Providence real estate for the purpose of expanding the bureaucratic office space.
House Speaker William J. Murphy and Senate President Joseph A. Montalbano confirmed last night having made the bid, on the General Assembly’s behalf, to buy the former American Express building next to the train station for unspecified state use, which could include office space for the state’s part-time legislators.
The two Assembly leaders went public after refusing initially to either confirm or deny having made a play for the building in the auction being conducted by the Rhode Island Public Employees Retirement System, under the supervision of a U.S. bankruptcy court judge.
In a statement issued last night in response to two days of questioning, Murphy and Montalbano cited the “significant rents” that several state agencies — including the treasurer’s office — are paying to lease privately owned office space in Providence.
They said: “Moving these departments into a state-owned building would save the taxpayers money over the long term. Further, the bid helps to protect the state pension fund.”
The third reason they cited for making a bid on the 135,110-square-foot, four-story building, with a two-level underground garage: with 150 parking spaces, “the property would help ease the parking situation faced by the public when visiting state departments or the State House.”
Said Murphy in an interview: “We look at this building and this opportunity and say there are endless possibilities for the State of Rhode Island.” Added Montalbano: “The focus is on the opportunity of acquiring the building. We didn’t want to sit idly by and let the opportunity go by.”
Governor Carcieri and former Democrat Governor Bruce Sundlun wasted no time in decrying the move.
“The idea that we should be buying a Class A, premium office building in downtown Providence for some unknown use is absolutely ridiculous,” said Carcieri, ticking off his objections one after another. Among them:
“That’s got a lot more potential for economic development. Bring a real business into the city. That will bring jobs with it and income taxes and corporate taxes, hopefully, and all those things. That’s what it should be used for.
“The state doesn’t need it. My gosh, we’ve got plenty of buildings we are looking at converting, rehabbing and so forth” at the state-owned Pastore complex in Cranston, “so I have no idea what they are thinking.”
“Last time I looked, it’s the executive branch that purchases property.”
Finally, he said: “Here we are scrambling for money to do much more needy projects . . . [and] we are going to spend that kind of money? I see no sense in this whatsoever.”
Added a “disappointed” Sundlun: “All that does is tell me why all of the arrangements that had been made and worked on — for what, three years at least — to acquire that Francis Street land are apparently going down the drain.
“Everything was going swimmingly and then all of a sudden, it closed off and I couldn’t get a word out of Murphy . . . Other people talked to him on my behalf and he said, ‘tell Bruce I love him, but I can’t talk to him now.’ “
I wonder if there’s any other angle being played here?
After meeting Murphy for coffee at a Dunkin’ Donuts in Warwick earlier in the day, Watson said: “I can confirm that I met with the speaker this afternoon and he confirmed that the General Assembly has submitted a bid for the building.
“I understand it is in and around $20 million . . . [and] the speaker hopes and expects to save money by consolidating agencies, such as the auditor general and perhaps other agencies that are, perhaps, leasing properties.”
Watson said he had many questions, among them: how much money will be removed from the City of Providence tax rolls if the state buys the building. According to Capitol Properties, which owns the separate groundlease on the building, current city taxes on the land and building are $616,393.
He said Murphy promised answers and also assured him “it would require approval of the General Assembly.”
But Watson said his most significant question — where would the money come from — remains unanswered, and “I have yet to be convinced by anyone a part-time legislature requires additional office space.”
As for the possibility of housing other non-legislative agencies in that building, Watson said: “we have a duly elected governor who can address those issues.”
UPDATE: Watson was on with Dan Yorke this afternoon. Essentially, he repeated his concerns but, with some questioning by Yorke, the picture became a bit more clear. According to Yorke, and confirmed by Watson, the Joint Committee on Legislative Services has a $30 million block of cash that they keep rolling over every year that they can use when they want. As such, though Murphy indicated to Watson that the General Assembly would be consulted to approve or reject the purchase, the fact is that there is no legal reason for this to occur. According to Watson, there are also some Separation of Powers issues.
Yorke gave his impression that the offer by Murphy to bring in the General Assembly seems to have occurred only because the deal was found out. To this, Watson commented that, as he understood it, the bid has to close by the end of November. Since the General Assembly doesn’t meet until January, he wondered, “How do we go about approving this?” Finally, Watson speculated that, given the Governor’s position on the matter, how many members will feel comfortable dashing up to the State House to approve this purchase in November? By that time, heating oil prices are going to be rising and the appearance could be given that the Legislature is throwing the public’s money around for the benefit and comfort of themselves.
That’s an interesting circle the “Chafee forces” are hoping to square, Andrew. On one hand, they don’t want anybody to believe that Laffey is electable. On the other hand, they want Democrats to cross over for the primaries in order to ensure the nomination of the Republican candidate who can (the Chafee folks believe) beat the victor of the Democrats’ own primary!
I wonder if Laffey’s advisers have developed any rough drafts of ads encouraging Democrats to cross over in the hopes of nominating the (supposed) least electable Republican.
…because you won’t find one in Sunday’s Projo from Democratic party chairman Howard Dean. Here is the start of what is supposed to be the substance of Dean’s rant…
The consistent mark of Roberts’s career is a lack of commitment to making the Constitution’s promise of equal protection a reality for all Americans — particularly the most vulnerable in our society. He has opposed laws protecting the rights of girls to have the same opportunities in sports as boys….
The case he is referring to, I believe, is NCAA v. Smith. Sports Law Blog has a short summary here…
[H]e successfully defended the National Collegiate Athletic Association (“NCAA”) against a lawsuit by Renee Smith, a law school student who alleged that the NCAA, when it refused to allow her to participate in postgraduate intercollegiate volleyball, discriminated against her because of her sex.The ruling in the case revolved around some technical issues about whether the NCAA itself is subject to Title IX regulations.
Now, ignore the fact that Roberts was representing his client’s position. And ignore the fact that, in 1999, the Supreme Court unanimously agreed with the position advocated by Roberts. Which Neanderthal Supreme Court justice do you suppose wrote the opinion concurring with Roberts’ position? The answer is Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Following Howard Dean’s reasoning, Ruth Bader Ginsburg opposes laws protecting the rights of girls to have the same opportunities in sports as boys.
Are the Democrats telling us that even Ruth Bader Ginsburg is too far to the right to be part of the mainstream? (Maybe the Democrats consider openly Marxist judges, like Rhode Island superior court judge Stephen Fortunato, to be the true representatives of the mainstream). Or are the Democrats telling us that they are not even going to bother with honest arguments against Judge Roberts and that they will say anything to obstruct qualified judicial nominees who don’t have the right political credentials? [Open full post]
