Give Miers a Supreme Chance

The only people not attacking the nomination seem to be a few middle of the roaders and a couple of Democrats. The Republicans are in a dither over this.

Conservative Krauthammer on the candidate SEE HERE

Conservative George Will on the candidate SEE HERE

Just so as you are aware of where the attacks are originating.

Some say Miers' qualifications are paper-thin.

And the conservative National Review's David Frum called the Miers nomination an "unforced error" by Bush, saying, "We are being asked by this president to take this appointment purely on trust, without any independent reason to support it. And that is not a request conservatives can safely grant."

Now the left wing democrats do not even want to give her a chance.

"You are the best governor ever"

When George Bush nominated Harriet Miers to fill a vacancy on the US supreme court last week, there was some surprise (Rush Limbaugh really wasn't sure) but at least one point of agreement.

Sure, Ms Miers may never have been a judge, but her relative inexperience in the field meant there was no paper trail connecting her to past cases. That meant Democrats would be unable to tie her up on her record in confirmation hearings.

But a paper trail of sorts has now emerged. Using freedom of information laws, the New York Times has obtained the correspondence between Ms Miers and Mr Bush at a time when he was the Texas governor and she was his personal lawyer.

The exchanges are revealing, and sure to beef up the charges that one of Mr Bush's concerns when making new appointments is to reward long-term loyalists - a practice some call cronyism.

"You are the best governor ever - deserving of great respect," Ms Miers wrote in 1997. She also found Mr Bush "cool" and once told him to "keep up the great work. Texas is blessed".

Well, the first one is, that this is a woman who’s undoubtedly as wonderful a person as they say she is, but so far as anyone can tell she has no experience with constitutional law whatever. Now it’s a little late to develop a constitutional philosophy or begin to work it out when you’re on the court already. So that—I’m afraid she’s likely to be influenced by factors, such as personal sympathies and so forth, that she shouldn’t be influenced by. I don’t expect that she can be, as the president says, a great justice.

But the other level is more worrisome, in a way: it’s kind of a slap in the face to the conservatives who’ve been building up a conservative legal movement for the last 20 years. There’s all kinds of people, now, on the federal bench and some in the law schools who have worked out consistent philosophies of sticking with the original principles of the Constitution. And all of those people have been overlooked. And I think one of the messages here is, don’t write, don’t say anything controversial before you’re nominated.

It’s odd that Justice Roberts, who is now the chief justice, and who will probably be an excellent choice in many ways, also had no track record that was easy to follow. . . .

Now this woman, who has even less of a track record.