Enough Talk About Miers, Bush Really Says It All
Mike Healy
October 13, 2005
The other day, I wrote a column about why I felt the Senate should not confirm Harriet Miers to serve on the Supreme Court. I was pretty proud of the piece, but before I let my head get too big, I realized that I?m no great shakes myself. I really had no more authority to deem Harriet Miers unworthy to serve on the Supreme Court than anybody else. Basically, I had about as much business talking down the qualifications of a presidential nominee as, oh, Harriet Miers has of being a Supreme Court justice. So, with that in mind, I realized that it?s not really my place to say anything proving Harriet Miers to be unworthy of the high court, mainly because she and George Bush have been doing a pretty good job of it all by themselves.
For starters, let?s look at this pair of ?doozies? that came out last week:
?He is the smartest man I?ve ever met.?
- Harriet Miers, about George W. Bush.
I picked the best person I could find.?
-President Bush, defending the selection of Harriet Miers as his latest nominee to the Supreme Court.
Well, at least they deserve each other. Looking at this, the only conclusions I can draw are that Harriet Miers has met about seven men in her entire life, and George W. Bush is very, very bad at looking for Supreme Court justices. That happy little exchange is only the tip of the iceberg in the Bush-Miers love fest: documents surfaced last week that revealed, among other things, that Miers gave then-Texas Governor Bush a birthday card that read:
?Dear Governor GWB, you are the best governor ever ? deserving of great respect!?
The best governor ever? That?s quite a statement to make, declaring George W. Bush not only the best governor in the nation, but the greatest governor in all of history. I?m sure Miers did a lot of research in moving Gov. Bush to the head of the all-time governors list, besting people like Thomas Dewey, Franklin Roosevelt, and Pontius Pilate. Either that, or she was fawning over the President like a high school girl (she also wrote him a note that year saying she thought he was ?cool?). Either way, it?s that kind of snap, absolutist judgment and/or disregard for history that I like to see in a Supreme Court justice.
Not to be outdone, the President responded with a note that said he appreciated Miers? friendship and ?sage advice,? but added a post script that read ?p.s. no more public scatology.? For those of you wondering, ?scatology? is defined as ?the study of fecal excrement or excretory functions.? I?m not one to pass judgment on what people do with their spare time, but if Miers is really into this scatology stuff, at least we?ll have a good idea on where she stands on the Right to Privacy.
All joking about notes between friends aside, there are two recent statements attributable to George W. Bush that should absolutely and without question de-legitimize the nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court. The first came in an unrelated incident on September 2, 2005 when the President, in his first visit to the Gulf in the wake of Hurricane Katrina (three days after it hit), spoke these immortal words:
Brownie, you?re doing a heck of a job.?
This statement came as praise of since-deposed FEMA Director Michael Brown. Brown, of course, was doing a great job of standing around and holding press conferences while thousands of people suffered without food, water or medicine in the flooded city of New Orleans ? in what was perhaps the greatest display of incompetence on the part of a federal agency in our nation?s history. In and of itself, this would seem to have no bearing on Harriet Miers' Supreme Court nomination, but it should serve as ample warning that George W. Bush has no reservations about installing his own cronies in even the most-crucial of positions. Looking over their resumes, it would seem that Mike Brown was roughly as qualified to run FEMA as Harriet Miers is to sit on the Supreme Court.
We cannot afford a Mike Brown on the Supreme Court.
The most damning quote of all came this week, however, when Bush said to reporters: "People are interested to know why I picked Harriet Miers. . . .[one of the reasons is that] part of Harriet Miers' life is her religion."
Irrespective of the fact that this is a mind-numbingly stupid reason for nominating someone to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, the fact that the President made this comment as an appeal to his conservative base places the Senate in the position of having to reject her nomination or risk the setting of a grossly unconstitutional precedent.
Article VI of the Constitution states that ?No religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.? As the New York Sun pointed out recently, it is the single most absolutist and emphatic sentence in the entire Constitution. For those who would say that just because President Bush considered Miers? religion in nominating her, that doesn?t necessarily mean he was imposing any kind of ?religious test,? I would implore you to think of it this way: if part of the reason the President nominated Miers was her religion, then that necessitates the fact that part of the reason other prospects were not nominated was because they did not have the same ?quality? of religion that Harriet Miers did. Thus, they were subjected to a religious test by the President in considering them for an appointment to the Supreme Court. This is grossly unconstitutional, and if it is allowed to stand, it will be a tacit admission that the ?Religious Test? clause has become outdated and inoperable, and we will be one major step closer to theocracy.
So, as you can see, not only should Harriet Miers be rejected by the Senate to sit on the Supreme Court because she is unqualified (and a little goofy), more importantly, she should be rejected because this President has shown that we cannot trust him to make sound appointments based on his word and reputation alone. There?s also the little fact that, because George Bush decided to open his mouth this week, Harriet Miers' nomination now represents a gross challenge to the U.S. Constitution and the principle of secular government in this country.
What it all comes down to is that George W. Bush is going to have to make a tough decision between his commitment to Harriet Miers and his disdain for ?public scatology,? because, if he tries to press through with this nomination, it?s really going to hit the fan.
For starters, let?s look at this pair of ?doozies? that came out last week:
?He is the smartest man I?ve ever met.?
- Harriet Miers, about George W. Bush.
I picked the best person I could find.?
-President Bush, defending the selection of Harriet Miers as his latest nominee to the Supreme Court.
Well, at least they deserve each other. Looking at this, the only conclusions I can draw are that Harriet Miers has met about seven men in her entire life, and George W. Bush is very, very bad at looking for Supreme Court justices. That happy little exchange is only the tip of the iceberg in the Bush-Miers love fest: documents surfaced last week that revealed, among other things, that Miers gave then-Texas Governor Bush a birthday card that read:
?Dear Governor GWB, you are the best governor ever ? deserving of great respect!?
The best governor ever? That?s quite a statement to make, declaring George W. Bush not only the best governor in the nation, but the greatest governor in all of history. I?m sure Miers did a lot of research in moving Gov. Bush to the head of the all-time governors list, besting people like Thomas Dewey, Franklin Roosevelt, and Pontius Pilate. Either that, or she was fawning over the President like a high school girl (she also wrote him a note that year saying she thought he was ?cool?). Either way, it?s that kind of snap, absolutist judgment and/or disregard for history that I like to see in a Supreme Court justice.
Not to be outdone, the President responded with a note that said he appreciated Miers? friendship and ?sage advice,? but added a post script that read ?p.s. no more public scatology.? For those of you wondering, ?scatology? is defined as ?the study of fecal excrement or excretory functions.? I?m not one to pass judgment on what people do with their spare time, but if Miers is really into this scatology stuff, at least we?ll have a good idea on where she stands on the Right to Privacy.
All joking about notes between friends aside, there are two recent statements attributable to George W. Bush that should absolutely and without question de-legitimize the nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court. The first came in an unrelated incident on September 2, 2005 when the President, in his first visit to the Gulf in the wake of Hurricane Katrina (three days after it hit), spoke these immortal words:
Brownie, you?re doing a heck of a job.?
This statement came as praise of since-deposed FEMA Director Michael Brown. Brown, of course, was doing a great job of standing around and holding press conferences while thousands of people suffered without food, water or medicine in the flooded city of New Orleans ? in what was perhaps the greatest display of incompetence on the part of a federal agency in our nation?s history. In and of itself, this would seem to have no bearing on Harriet Miers' Supreme Court nomination, but it should serve as ample warning that George W. Bush has no reservations about installing his own cronies in even the most-crucial of positions. Looking over their resumes, it would seem that Mike Brown was roughly as qualified to run FEMA as Harriet Miers is to sit on the Supreme Court.
We cannot afford a Mike Brown on the Supreme Court.
The most damning quote of all came this week, however, when Bush said to reporters: "People are interested to know why I picked Harriet Miers. . . .[one of the reasons is that] part of Harriet Miers' life is her religion."
Irrespective of the fact that this is a mind-numbingly stupid reason for nominating someone to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, the fact that the President made this comment as an appeal to his conservative base places the Senate in the position of having to reject her nomination or risk the setting of a grossly unconstitutional precedent.
Article VI of the Constitution states that ?No religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.? As the New York Sun pointed out recently, it is the single most absolutist and emphatic sentence in the entire Constitution. For those who would say that just because President Bush considered Miers? religion in nominating her, that doesn?t necessarily mean he was imposing any kind of ?religious test,? I would implore you to think of it this way: if part of the reason the President nominated Miers was her religion, then that necessitates the fact that part of the reason other prospects were not nominated was because they did not have the same ?quality? of religion that Harriet Miers did. Thus, they were subjected to a religious test by the President in considering them for an appointment to the Supreme Court. This is grossly unconstitutional, and if it is allowed to stand, it will be a tacit admission that the ?Religious Test? clause has become outdated and inoperable, and we will be one major step closer to theocracy.
So, as you can see, not only should Harriet Miers be rejected by the Senate to sit on the Supreme Court because she is unqualified (and a little goofy), more importantly, she should be rejected because this President has shown that we cannot trust him to make sound appointments based on his word and reputation alone. There?s also the little fact that, because George Bush decided to open his mouth this week, Harriet Miers' nomination now represents a gross challenge to the U.S. Constitution and the principle of secular government in this country.
What it all comes down to is that George W. Bush is going to have to make a tough decision between his commitment to Harriet Miers and his disdain for ?public scatology,? because, if he tries to press through with this nomination, it?s really going to hit the fan.
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