Volokh is puzzling my mind!

Puzzleblogger Kevan is stumping my mind with a mindbending puzzler: What do Robespierre, Lenin, and Saddam Hussein all have in common? And then he added Castro, Clinton, and Sam ALito to the list. Bester answer:

Anderson: They were all FREEMASONS!

j/k

But I don't think it's the right one. :(

Feeling sorry for Luttig

Four tries, no nods. He's actually starting to be the Susan Lucci of SCOTUS nominations.

Yay!

The blogging continues! Sam Alito doesn't have the joie de vivre and artless spelling and syntax of Harriet Miers, but I'm glad to see that the joy lives on.

But poor, poor Michael Luttig.

Powerful women

Maureen "MoDo" Dowd is working again. She had been on hiatus, I think back in the summer, because she was writing a book. And now she's written the book (Are Men Necessary? What Happens When the Sexes Collide, which sounds like porn), so she's back, writing teasing articles that mesh with her book and will hopefully bump her Amazon ranking.

I actually read this whole thing. It took me two tries, and I still haven't figured out why this needed SEVEN PAGES to write. I never read MoDo because her writing sucks, and I checked Wikipedia and found out that she's 53 years old, so there is no excuse for her to be channeling a seventh grade wallflower, but there you go. The moral of this particular piece is she is not married because men are intimidated by her intelligence and success and stature. She even says she comes from a line of "statuesque" Irish domestics and has done better than her ancestors. Seriously, who thinks about themselves like this? But, focusing on her point:

1. Feminism promised women equality, but all they got was bad hair, no makeup, and a push for animalistic sex that women never really wanted anyway.

2. Men were intimidated by the new intelligent, successful, self-actualized women that emerged from the feminist movement.

3. Men stopped marrying intelligent, successful, self-actualized feminist women and married "down," to the stupid, domestic, maternal women (who wear makeup).

4. Younger women thought the makeup-less intelligent, successful, self-actualized feminist corporate women made working in professional, status-worthy professions boring and dreary. Plus, they weren't married (see #2), so they (the young women) decided to abandon feminism and careers and intelligence, sucess, and self-actualization in order to be married.

5. So now women are unequal and unintelligent and unsuccessful and unactualized and we need another feminist movement.

6. Men need to evolve so that they will want to marry feminist women.

7. MoDo will then get married.

There are some flaws in this logic. First of all, it doesn't make sense. Is Maureen Dowd upset about feminism? Is she happy with it? She seems to be both. Is she even a feminist? She claims she was too busy dating and wearing makeup when she was in college to be a feminist.

Perhaps that's the problem. I nailed her problem right from the start:

Women were once again imitating men and acting all independent: smoking, drinking, wanting to earn money and thinking they had the right to be sexual, this time protected by the pill. I didn't fit in with the brazen new world of hard-charging feminists. I was more of a fun-loving (if chaste) type who would decades later come to life in Sarah Jessica Parker's Carrie Bradshaw. ... I took the idealism and passion of the 60's for granted, simply assuming we were sailing toward perfect equality with men, a utopian world at home and at work.

Men are too focused on sex. And women are willing to be sex objects. Yet MoDo's feminist ideal is the fictional main character of a show called "Sex and the City." See the problem? Feminism -- birth control, prostitution, maternity leave, abortion -- basically boils down to female control over sex. Taking words like "slut" and "whore" and "bitch" and coopting them for the feminist movement. Writing books like the Feminine Mystique. For that matter, breaking all male-female relationships down into the reproductive parts. Sexualizing every encounter (for instance, male bosses can't be jerks, they "sexually" harass; people didn't oppose Miers because she was unqualified, they were "sexist"). This is the feminist legacy. The mainstreaming of sex.

See, the problem she gets around to now:

Having boomeranged once, will women do it again in a couple of decades? If we flash forward to 2030, will we see all those young women who thought trying to Have It All was a pointless slog, now middle-aged and stranded in suburbia, popping Ativan, struggling with rebellious teenagers, deserted by husbands for younger babes, unable to get back into a work force they never tried to be part of?

It's easy to picture a surreally familiar scene when women realize they bought into a raw deal and old trap. With no power or money or independence, they'll be mere domestic robots, lasering their legs and waxing their floors - or vice versa - and desperately seeking a new Betty Friedan.

I appreciate the irony of women "trying to Have It All" not being considered feminist. But focusing. Does MoDo want to be married or not? The married life she just described is hardly appealing. Yet the gist of the article seems to be she and women like her would get married if only men wouldn't "marry down," I guess to the Ativan-popping haus fraus. She plods through interviewing twenty-somethings (which she is not anymore; please, MoDo, accept your age gracefully) talking about how girls really shouldn't call guys first and guys should pick up the check, and she shudders over the "the 1950's-ification and retrogression of women's lives" that her thirty-something unmarried friend gripes about. Then she floods back into the feminist mystique with the old "power dynamics." (The power dynamics that kept her from getting a man -- which is or isn't what she wanted?) Because all human relationships boil down to who has the power, right?

At a party for the Broadway opening of "Sweet Smell of Success," a top New York producer gave me a lecture on the price of female success that was anything but sweet. He confessed that he had wanted to ask me out on a date when he was between marriages but nixed the idea because my job as a Times columnist made me too intimidating. Men, he explained, prefer women who seem malleable and awed. He predicted that I would never find a mate because if there's one thing men fear, it's a woman who uses her critical faculties. Will she be critical of absolutely everything, even his manhood?

He had hit on a primal fear of single successful women: that the aroma of male power is an aphrodisiac for women, but the perfume of female power is a turnoff for men. It took women a few decades to realize that everything they were doing to advance themselves in the boardroom could be sabotaging their chances in the bedroom, that evolution was lagging behind equality.

A few years ago at a White House correspondents' dinner, I met a very beautiful and successful actress. Within minutes, she blurted out: "I can't believe I'm 46 and not married. Men only want to marry their personal assistants or P.R. women."

I'd been noticing a trend along these lines, as famous and powerful men took up with young women whose job it was was to care for them and nurture them in some way: their secretaries, assistants, nannies, caterers, flight attendants, researchers and fact-checkers.

John Schwartz of The New York Times made the trend official in 2004 when he reported: "Men would rather marry their secretaries than their bosses, and evolution may be to blame." A study by psychology researchers at the University of Michigan, using college undergraduates, suggested that men going for long-term relationships would rather marry women in subordinate jobs than women who are supervisors. Men think that women with important jobs are more likely to cheat on them. There it is, right in the DNA: women get penalized by insecure men for being too independent.

Maureen, here is the advice I would give a dear friend: If he didn't call, it's because he's not into you. If he is "between marriages," he is an incredibly bad partner, and best avoided. If this is a common thread in your relationships, "it's not you, it's me," take notice that it porbably is you. And if everyone is hammering you with how intimidating your position at the Times is, maybe you should quit hammering everyone (not just potential suitors) with how impressive and intimidating you think your position at the Times should be to them. And on a scientific note -- how can dating your boss, anyone's boss, be programmed into the DNA? It can't. Women may respond to powerful men (even our girl heroine doesn't want to marry down), men may be attracted to kind, nurturing women, but does any of this have to do with business hierarchies?

The Anchoress pointed out that MoDo is, ahem, less than accepting of "nurturing" professions like secrtaries and researchers (?) and caterers (?) and flight attendants and nannies. (How, exactly, do men marry their nurturing nannies when they must already be married with kids to get to the nannies? The nannies aren't beating you out of the husbands, MoDo.) And that's a major feminist problem, too. What if a woman wants to be a stay at home mom? Or own a florist shop or catering shop or work from home? Are these lesser choices? Are men really marrying down to these women? For that matter, are the women marrying up? But that's a small thing. There is a sad, sad aroma about this. Of course those women having meaningless lives, not like MoDo's, and the husbands they have now are going to abandon them for someone younger and hotter and they'll be left with nothing but snot-nosed kids and a drug habit, while MoDo will have her prestigious career.

The problem is MoDo doesn't know what she wants. Are men so unevolved that they don't appreciate the new equality that women enjoy? Or are women not enjoying their "equality" because it let them down, and so they're abandoning broken feminism? What is the culprit? And is the marriage-family-kid thing a good thing or a regression and prison? She quotes a lot of people who already work at the Times and a couple of friends to prove her point. All of her points, actually. But what it comes down to is she is alone and unhappy, and she doesn't know why.

Footnote: Ann Althouse has something on it ("Doesn't this make the men sound so unappealing that you wouldn't even want to marry them?"), although the comments are the best part of that particular post.

Alito pick

Sam "Scalito" Alito is the "next person to be a nominee to take Sandra Day O'Connor's place," to paraphrase John Scott. (Heh.) Third time's the charm!

Michelle Malkin, as always, has an awesome round-up of reactions to the news. Best quote ever:

"This is not one of the names I've suggested to the president," [Harry] Reid said yesterday of Alito on CNN's "Late Edition."

"In fact, I've done the opposite," he said. "I think it would create a lot of problems."

ConfirmThem has lots of posts on Alito's record and the MSM reaction. Keep scrolling.

Instapundit is okay with the pick, although he's barely hiding his disappointment over its not being the libertarian Reaganite Alex Kozinsky.

More later. I haven't looked too-too much into Alito, although everything look promising. Mainly, I'm busy being relieved. And happy. And tired.

Muslims rioting in Paris

Why isn't this story getting more play? Apparently, three boys tried to rob a "work site" and ran away from police. The three were electrocuted when they tried to jump over an electrified fence, and two were killed. Which naturally led to massive riots, burning cars, and general rampaging in a neighborhood of France. According to Reuters, the boys were North African and the neighborhood was "immigrant," so I would guess they were Algerian or Tunisian. The BBC has a story where the Paris police are talking to al-Jazeera, and the rioting progressed to a mosque last night, leading to cops throwing tear gas into it.

Four straight days of riots by Muslims in Paris. Where is the attention?

Aside, there is an interesting criticism of conservative interior minister Nikolas Sarkozy in the Reuters story from the Socialist presidential candidate:

"We need to act at the same time on prevention, repression, education, housing, jobs ... and not play the cowboy."

Yeah, what the world needs is more repression.

Mean...

..but heh.

Bush as conservative

Robert Robb has a thoughtful editorial on whether Bush is, indeed, a conservative.

I accept Bush at his word that he regards himself as a conservative, and proudly so. And he has certainly advanced more fundamental conservative reforms than anyone since Reagan.

But under his leadership, Republicans have lost any credible claim to be the party of less spending or a smaller role for government. They have also lost much of any rationale to argue for a circumspect U.S. approach to international affairs.

In fact, the primary political effect of the Bush tenure may very well be to have seriously undermined the traditional conservative cause of limited government.

That isn't the sort of legacy to which a true conservative should aspire.

Reading list

I absolutely loved Michael Crichton's State of Fear. I haven't traditionally been a Michael Crichton fan; sort of like Tom Clancy, he has interesting story ideas and his prose is a little dry. More "guyish" -- high action, stilted dialogue. (I say this based on reading Jurassic Park and The Lost World when I was a teenager, which is undoubtedly unfair.) Fun, but not my cup of tea. But State of Fear was awesome. For one thing, the writing was surprisingly good -- tight, with a balance of action, wit, and mood. Descriptive but again terse and focused; everything works toward the central thesis. This isn't to say that there isn't a healthy amount of talk; an entire chapter is little more than a two person dialogue hammering environmental concepts, complete with graphs, in the guise of a mock trial. And there's violence and action galore; a Martin-Sheen-esque actor is eaten by cannibals, one woman describes shooting a man who tried to mug her. But there is a poeticism and a point to everything, the preachiness, the ironic violence (the actor had denied that any cultures were ever cannibalistic), the pandemic action, the stark, unreal settings (Iceland, Pacific Islands, engineering facilities, Parisian laboratories). And it is so smashingly, offensively, in-your-face anti-environmental. It's like Michael Crichton was talking about an environmental axis of evil and daring them to bring it on. Awesome, awesome book. Some of the best fiction I've read.

So it is with delight that I noticed yesterday's Wall Street Journal has an article for an environmental reading list by Michael Crichton.

1. "Playing God in Yellowstone" by Alston Chase (Atlantic Monthly Press, 1986).

That raw sewage bubbles out of the ground at Yellowstone National Park--after more than a century of botched conservation--would come as no surprise to Alston Chase, who 20 years ago wrote "Playing God in Yellowstone: The Destruction of America's First National Park." Mr. Chase, a former professor of philosophy turned journalist, presents a clear critique of ever-changing environmental beliefs and the damage that they have caused the actual environment. As a philosopher, he is contemptuous of much conventional wisdom and the muddle-headed attitudes he calls "California cosmology."

[snip]

4. "The Skeptical Environmentalist" by Bjørn Lomborg (Cambridge University Press, 2002).

No one should miss Bjørn Lomborg's "The Skeptical Environmentalist." The author, a Danish statistician and former Greenpeace activist, set out to disprove the views of the late Julian Simon, who claimed that environmental fears were baseless and that the world was actually improving. To Mr. Lomborg's surprise, he found that Simon was mostly right. Mr. Lomborg's text is calm and devastating to established dogma.

I have a few more things to add to my Amazon Wish List.

Super-precedent!

Ann Althouse (h/t ConfirmThem) is mentioning Luttig's "super stare-decisis" quote in regards to Planned Parenthood v Casey, in effect saying that the SCOTUS had tried to give its decision extra-extra weight, to give it immortality and, probably, immutability. Cool beans. There is a Roberts-esque sly wit in the particular quote. I am just itching to hear what Arlen "Super-duper Precedent" Specter is going to ask if Luttig is the nominee.

ApparatChick around the world!

Wow, I am feeling very famous right now.

I got mentioned by DJ Drummond on Polipundit, which is only fair because of how much I've mentioned him lately.

I got "discovered" by Jason of Seven D's almost a month ago, #2 on his top 10 discoveries, which I just discovered myself on Technorati. Thanks, Jason!

As Jason of the Seven D's identified, I don't get many comments, so I never think anyone is reading. This is probably bad, because I am undoubtedly going to say something unadvisedly, as in very bad, and get myself in trouble. Or at least embarrassed. But, what the hey. Today is shaping up to be fantastic!

Fitzmas!

Yeah, I don’t really care. I’m more on the Mark Levin side of things than the Andy McCarthy: This is, at best, a he said/she said between reporters and Scooter Libby, and Pat Fitzgerald smeared him shameless in the press conference to make it look like something happened. My prediction is it’s dismissed or dropped in three months (after the media attention has petered out). I’m not alone on thinking this will go away.

For what it’s worth, since I didn’t read the whole indictment, the first sections in the run-down refer to Libby talking about “Wilson’s wife.” It claims a CIA debriefer told him about “Valerie Wilson” on June 11, but every conversation he had after that refers to Libby talking about “Wilson’s wife.” Perhaps he knew “Wilson’s wife” worked for the CIA, but not so much that she was Valerie/Valerie Plame? Maybe this really was told to him by a reporter (or Joe Wilson’s website or Who’s Who blurb)? Or maybe that was, at least, why he didn’t think he could “leak” this information? Prosecutors may see it differently, but this looks pointless to me.

And with that, I have commented for the first and last time on the great issues of today.

Sigh

I have simply got to stop reading DJ Drummond. Bad, Deon, bad! Stop! Because then I read stuff like this:

President George W. Bush is a man who has had to carry the Republican Party and the Conservative Movement on more than a few occasions. His back is broad indeed, to have borne such a weight for so long, and also one which is so consistently ungracious for his help. The Miers nomination is just another in a long string of decisions, where Bush made the choice to the best of his abilities, yet the very people who owe him the most for their own success and advantage, found it preferable instead to pillory the nominee and attack the President, sometimes personally, simply because they were petulant and spoiled.

Sigh. Really? Has he been carrying conservative water for so long? If he means people like Arlen Specter owe him a lot, I can get on board with that. The moderates and the party organization owe him a lot. He has been very good for them. But for conservatism? How about torpedoing true conservative Pat Toomey when he was running against (and probably would have beaten) Specter in the primaries? He had a choice there between principle and the party, and he chose the party man. He wasn't carrying me or a lot of other people right then.

Of course, like every DJ Drummond screed, it degenerates into insults. Yesterday was bastard, so this is better, but "petulant and spoiled" isn't a whole lot better.

UPDATE 10/30: Welcome, PoliPundit readers. As this post alludes to, I think there are legitimate sources of complaint and distrust on both sides, not just DJ Drummond's, or mine, or Hugh Hewitt's or David Frum's. The heated language that exasperated me from DJ (and that, I'm sure, has been pointed at him and others) is indicative of a deeper split. Party or principle? Are we better served by following the party, playing with the party line, as Hewitt and Drummond and others said? Or should we have a peasants' revolt, have a split or a backlash against the Republican establishment and hope for a better party later, even if it costs us the majority in the meantime? I don't think either side is served by insulting the other, but these problems are real, and I think we would be worse off if we tamp down the differences and wait for the next internecine riot.

UPDATE2 10/30: Oh, and this other Drummond post I did, while not exactly kind and gentle on my part, I think shows that no side (including the pro-Miers side) was clothed in sweetness and light. This was a dirty fight. That doesn't mean it was a bad thing. But it is just nice to remember...

Best lines

From the article I posted below (Hewitt's NYT piece, not Lowry's):

Voting for or against Ms. Miers would have forced Senate Democrats to articulate a coherent standard for future nominees. Now, the Democrats have free rein.

Yes, see, because the problem all along was that Democrats didn't articulate their standards. As opposed to the pro-Miers people, who set the bar pretty God-dang low with "breathing and semi-literate." What were Democrats supposed to support that or veto it to give it credence? Aren't we the controlling party? Don't we set the standards? And didn't most people say that she just didn't meet them? Why are we suddenly reading off Harry Reid's script again? They don't controll the Committe, the Senate, or the Presidency. Why should we grant them the Supreme Court?

The next nominee - even one who is a superb scholar and sitting judge who recently underwent Senate confirmation like Michael McConnell of the United States Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, or a long-serving superstar like Michael Luttig of the Fourth Circuit - will face an instant and savage assault. After all, it "worked" with Ms. Miers. A claim of "special circumstances" justifying a filibuster will also be forthcoming. And will other nominees simply pass on the opportunity to walk out in the middle of a crossfire? A White House counsel with distinguished credentials was compared to Caligula's horse and Barney the dog on National Review's Web site. George Will denounced as "crude" those evangelicals who thought Ms. Miers's faith was a good indication of character in a nominee and a hopeful sign on issues involving the unborn. She was labeled a crony before lunch on the day of her nomination by scores of commentators. Attacks on her competence within the White House followed immediately. She never had a chance, really.

The emphasis is mine; everything that went wrong was his. A) Nobody filibustered. No Republican, or Democrat for that matter, threatened a filibuster. No one at National Reivew, ConfirmThem, RedState or anywhere else asked for one. So that argument sucks. Because it is based on some fevered fantasy, not so much reality. B) Robert Bork was nominated before Miers. I know this stuns Hugh Hewitt, because Miers is the first person that ever had a smidgen of difficulty in any nomination process, but, there you go. He was lied about and denigrated and misrepresented to the point that his name became a new verb for violent, ad hominem, baseless attacks. However, in the 18 years since then, new conservative justices have prepared for these attacks. That's why so many people were willing to throw a McConnell or a Luttig or a Pryor or an Alito to this particular pack of wolves. They're read for them. C) George Will actually said it was crude of people to use her religion as a basis for any argument in her favor. He said it would be crude to accept that as an argument. He did not say being an evangelical was crude; he said, rightly, that it didn't matter. D) She is a crony. She is a long-time friend and confidante who has achieved every professional advancement based on her association with powerful friends. That doesn't make her a bad person. It does make her a crony. E) Attacks on ehr competence only began with her work at the White House. As more of her record emerged, the attacks broadened in scope. This is not a pleasant political climate and this is not a minor position. If you want to run with the big dogs, you should be able to string together a single coherent sentence in any given piece of writing, and your friends should have more to say about you than that you like M&Ms and bowling.

The first returns will come in the decision on parental notification statutes that will be argued before the Supreme Court in late November. Absent a miracle of Senate efficiency, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor will cast one of her last votes on the most important abortion-rights case in a few years. And then the accounting will begin in earnest.

Or she would vote if she were on the court in the spring, when the case is actually decided. Which she won't be. Sigh. Hugh, I'm not even a lawyer, and I caught onto that.

The Miers effect

While the pro-Miers side is weeping and gnashing teeth and blaming us (being the NRO crowd) with defeating the nomination like we're filibustering Democrats, they have raised some legitimate concerns over what damage has been done to the party. I agree with them that there is a potential to be quite a lot, but not for the reason they think.

Rich Lowry wrote that the Miers imbroglio boiled down to "the current idiotically unuseful fight between blind presidential loyalists and sighted presidential loyalists." The Hewitt Kool-Aid drinkers and the NRO/ConfirmThem rebels all want to believe in the President. And I have to admit, considering the heated rhetoric on both sides, how quickly people like Ann Coulter and Kathryn Lopez have flipped into believing in the President again. It's like it ended, and everyone on the opposing side immediately set down their torches and pitchforks and went back to their bucolic farms. Meanwhile, however, the loyal guard is still lobbing bombs. This peasant rebellion did to the Ken Mehlmans and Hugh Hewitts what the Miers nomination did to conservatives, and the withdrawal, far from ending the strife, has only deepened it.

And therein lies the problem. I don't think the "elitism" and "sexism" and "disloyal" slurs are going to end any time soon. They haven't forgiven and forgotten. Not gonna happen. It's great for the guys at RedState and ConfirmThem to think that this was a terrible mistake that has since passed; Hugh Hewitt and "the establishment" never saw it as the problem. And the disdain, arrogance, and dismissal that they showed to the rank-and-file is going to continue, way past this. They may use the conservative base in the meantime as a political expediency, but I think they'd be just as happy to replace it with somebody else if the opportunity arose. And that leads me to think maybe I should be moving on to a different party, too. If I end up not being the only person who thinks that way (Glenn Reynolds maybe? Professor Bainbridge?), than the GOP is going to encounter some choppy waters.

I have thought since the beginning of his administration that President Bush was going to end up drifting the country placidly to the right. Moderates and sane Democrats would eventually fall under the GOP's umbrella; libertarians, fiscal conservatives, and the more intense social conservatives would drift to the Libertarian or Constitution parties, where their ideas would actually be followed. And the mental meltdown of the Democrats into foaming at the mouth leftists after the 2004 election seemed to confirm that it was no longer a party for grown ups. I did not think, however, that the Republicans would simply start throwing their own, particularly the still-loyal base, overboard. For no reason. Just chucking us over the side. I always expected us to break up, but I didn't expect it to end like this.

New subject

I read this article by Peggy Noonan late last night, shortly after it was posted (bizarre case of insomnia), and it really struck a chord.

I think there is an unspoken subtext in our national political culture right now. In fact I think it's a subtext to our society. I think that a lot of people are carrying around in their heads, unarticulated and even in some cases unnoticed, a sense that the wheels are coming off the trolley and the trolley off the tracks. That in some deep and fundamental way things have broken down and can't be fixed, or won't be fixed any time soon. That our pollsters are preoccupied with "right track" and "wrong track" but missing the number of people who think the answer to "How are things going in America?" is "Off the tracks and hurtling forward, toward an unknown destination."

[snip]

A few weeks ago I was chatting with friends about the sheer number of things parents now buy for teenage girls--bags and earrings and shoes. When I was young we didn't wear earrings, but if we had, everyone would have had a pair or two. I know a 12-year-old with dozens of pairs. They're thrown all over her desk and bureau. She's not rich, and they're inexpensive, but her parents buy her more when she wants them. Someone said, "It's affluence," and someone else nodded, but I said, "Yeah, but it's also the fear parents have that we're at the end of something, and they want their kids to have good memories. They're buying them good memories, in this case the joy a kid feels right down to her stomach when the earrings are taken out of the case."

This, as you can imagine, stopped the flow of conversation for a moment. Then it resumed, as delightful and free flowing as ever. Human beings are resilient. Or at least my friends are, and have to be.

[snip]

Do people fear the wheels are coming off the trolley? Is this fear widespread? A few weeks ago I was reading Christopher Lawford's lovely, candid and affectionate remembrance of growing up in a particular time and place with a particular family, the Kennedys, circa roughly 1950-2000. It's called "Symptoms of Withdrawal." At the end he quotes his Uncle Teddy. Christopher, Ted Kennedy and a few family members had gathered one night and were having a drink in Mr. Lawford's mother's apartment in Manhattan. Teddy was expansive. If he hadn't gone into politics he would have been an opera singer, he told them, and visited small Italian villages and had pasta every day for lunch. "Singing at la Scala in front of three thousand people throwing flowers at you. Then going out for dinner and having more pasta." Everyone was laughing. Then, writes Mr. Lawford, Teddy "took a long, slow gulp of his vodka and tonic, thought for a moment, and changed tack. 'I'm glad I'm not going to be around when you guys are my age.' I asked him why, and he said, 'Because when you guys are my age, the whole thing is going to fall apart.' "

Mr. Lawford continued, "The statement hung there, suspended in the realm of 'maybe we shouldn't go there.' Nobody wanted to touch it. After a few moments of heavy silence, my uncle moved on."

Lawford thought his uncle might be referring to their family--that it might "fall apart." But reading, one gets the strong impression Teddy Kennedy was not talking about his family but about . . . the whole ball of wax, the impossible nature of everything, the realities so daunting it seems the very system is off the tracks.

And--forgive me--I thought: If even Teddy knows . . .
[snip]

This is. Our elites, our educated and successful professionals, are the ones who are supposed to dig us out and lead us. I refer specifically to the elites of journalism and politics, the elites of the Hill and at Foggy Bottom and the agencies, the elites of our state capitals, the rich and accomplished and successful of Washington, and elsewhere. I have a nagging sense, and think I have accurately observed, that many of these people have made a separate peace. That they're living their lives and taking their pleasures and pursuing their agendas; that they're going forward each day with the knowledge, which they hold more securely and with greater reason than nonelites, that the wheels are off the trolley and the trolley's off the tracks, and with a conviction, a certainty, that there is nothing they can do about it.

I suspect that history, including great historical novelists of the future, will look back and see that many of our elites simply decided to enjoy their lives while they waited for the next chapter of trouble. And that they consciously, or unconsciously, took grim comfort in this thought: I got mine. Which is what the separate peace comes down to, "I got mine, you get yours."

You're a lobbyist or a senator or a cabinet chief, you're an editor at a paper or a green-room schmoozer, you're a doctor or lawyer or Indian chief, and you're making your life a little fortress. That's what I think a lot of the elites are up to.

Not all of course. There are a lot of people--I know them and so do you--trying to do work that helps, that will turn it around, that can make it better, that can save lives. They're trying to keep the boat afloat. Or, I should say, get the trolley back on the tracks.

That's what I think is going on with our elites. There are two groups. One has made a separate peace, and one is trying to keep the boat afloat. I suspect those in the latter group privately, in a place so private they don't even express it to themselves, wonder if they'll go down with the ship. Or into bad territory with the trolley.

There is a feeling that we're on the edge of a precipice, that surreal peace from the inevitability of what is coming, even the bad. Even the fact it cuts us off from the lives we lived before. I had that feeling on September 11, and it has always stuck with me how sunny and clear and blue the sky was that day; a gorgeous day, really. But it was the end of life as we knew it when we woke up just that morning. I had that same feeling the weekend after Katrina, when, coincidentally enough, Chief Justice Rehnquist died. We're in that inbetween time. Life has changed, but it hasn't finished changing yet. You have to wonder -- did the Indians know what was going to happen the first time they saw a white trapper? There was a large gap in time between the Conquistadors and Manifest Destiny. Did they know they were on the march to the end, or was it a surprise when it happened? Moments after the assassination at Sarajevo, did Europe realize exactly what it was getting into? Did they feel the shift between the old empires and the new modern global alliances? Some things you can only pinpoint in hindsight, but the time is coming soon when the lives we're living now won't be possible anymore. An intifada of sorts, a new cold war. That is sad, especially for those who legitimately remember "the way it used to be."

One last dance

The dream has died...let this be a fitting memorial.

October 3, 2005 - October 27, 2005

Restrained jubilation

Not. That was the phrase used to describe George Costanza's reaction to the death of his fiancee, but it doesn't quite fit the conservative mood right now. With Hurricane Miers blown over, we are in the fittingly cautious wait-and-see period. Some relief, but the end isn't quite in sight.

DJ Drummond...

...at PoliPundit grates on my nerves. Of everyone I have read, he has been the most ceaselessly insulting, belittling, and angrily loyalist of any of them. His post today on Miers' withdrawal really sums it up in the first and last sentences (emphasis his):

The Bastards Won
This WILL Come Back and Bite the Conservatives.

[snip]

And yes, it will convince more than a couple Senators that the McCain method of two-faced promise and treachery, is the most effective mode of operation. The bastards did indeed win, and on more than one level.

But when a firestorm of people sprang up in the comment disagreeing with him, he can't stop talking:

**Classless, Tom. You managed to knife your own side. I’m sure you’re happy, especially thinking how Liberals will use this tactic later.

**People who ambush nominees rather than let them speak at their own hearings, are not the base of the Conservative Movement.

They are a virus killing off its life. [Ed. --Emphasis mine because this is the best quote.]

**So, Beeblebrox, a few days ago you thought Miers was too stupid to be a SCOTUS Justice, but now you’re admitting she may have been smart, but that ALSO would somehow disqualify her?

Man, you’re funny to read!

**Funny JohnMc, you seem to be trying to bring the troops on your side, but in fact the troops have always been pretty solid in supporting Dubs, something you threw overboard as inconvenient long ago.

**Brad: “the crash course on constitutional issues wasn’t going so well.”
Such comments prove my point. Even after the woman pulls out, you still feel the need to insult her and pretend you know more than she does.

Such a BIG man…

**Sure Tom. You’re right, we’re wrong, and those nasty tactics you used to prevent hearings couldn’t possibly come back around?

Sorry pal, but if I know anything, I know History. And you just unzipped and took a wizzer on Karma.

**Maybe Tom, you are still blinded by the illusion that because you axed the nominee you did not want, that the Good Fairy of Frumland will force the President to nominate only “approved” candidates, and the Senate will obligingly repent of its behavior of the past three generations?

You chose poor tactics, and there will be a cost to that. Not by my choice, but it will happen.

**Passing off arrogant and insulting assumptions as evidence Brad, as your own statement does, is the tactic of bastardy.

You like it, that’s your choice. But you are doing exactly as the Kennedy-most-likely-to-be-confused-with-Jabba-the-Hutt did, and personally I would be ashamed of it, were I in your place.

**Skymuse, you did not put Bush into office. The American voters, as a whole, did so. And in any case no minority has the right to demand that the established rules be abandoned, just because they don’t like the nominee.

I have said repeatedly, and you just keep ignoring it, that it is not the opposition to Miers that did the damage, but the tactics used by some in that group. And you have not eschewed or condemned those tactics, but instead seem to be apologizing for them, even though they are the very tactics used in campaign ads against Goldwater in 1964, against Reagan so many times, and against Bush both father and son. They are the lies of slander and innuendo, and they attack the standard of allowing a candidate to be fairly heard in hearing, to speak for themselves in context, and of allowing the elected representatives to give an up-or-down vote, as Conservatives have always demanded before now. Those tactics are wrong, and will doubtless be used against Conservatives.

If you oppose such tactics, as I do, then by no means are you a bastard [ed. -- good to know], and I have always been clear on that point. But if you choose the tactics of bastards and embrace them, then you cannot complain when you are called by your choice of ethics.

And he also gave me my favorite quote from the intraMiers squabbling:

The other lesson, sad to say, is that a great many Conservative figureheads have proven themselves to be as flighty, venal, and narcisstist, as any Liberal they have countered in the past. We are not the party we pretend to be, not yet, and there is much work to be done to mature the leadership of the Republican Party to handle such decisions in better fashion.

Somewhere, Ronnie [Reagan] is not happy.

UPDATE: Since the responses have been so far very predictable, may I request that the people who oppose Miers, cite what it is, exactly, about her which makes her unqualified? It’s one thing to say you wish your personal choice would have been picked, quite another to whine and moan about someone on no better motive than mistrust of the man you just voted for last year.

Classy.

More reax

On even a second's reflection, I think Patterico (via Michelle Malkin) is right: it was those heinous speeches that really sank this nomination. Yesterday evening, Paul at Powerline (I think he was the closest to anti-Miers of the three) wrote, "I've found the time to read Miers' speech carefully. This is not the speech of a centrist (the worst case plausible scenario, I thought); it's the speech of a liberal. ... Miers should withdraw. If she doesn't then, absent convincing evidence that her positions today are completely different from the liberal ones contained in the 1993 speech, the Senate should not confirm her." Scott, whom I think was the fence-sitter on Powerline, wrote this morning (before the withdrawal announcement): "One may credit President Bush for nominating Harriet Miers in good faith, and yet come to the conclusion that in this case he has made a mistake. If I were a senator, I think I would vote to confirm Ms. Miers, assuming that she acquitted herself honorably in the confirmation hearing and that I were able to work through the issue raised by R.J. Pestritto in "Advice and consent." But if I were Ms. Miers, on sober second thought I would ask to have my name withdrawn from consideration."

It's here!

Fox is reporting that Harriet Miers has withdrawn her nomination. Wow. Stunned, ecstatic -- wow. This was, believe it or not, the least painful of all possible resolutions. Thank God.

Fox is also reporting that the next person to "take Harriet Miers's position as nominee" (John Scott, you cuddly devil) is going to be a woman. Sigh. Let's cast our nets a little wider this time, eh?

This one's worse

Speech two, half-way through, is way worse in every capacity than speech one. More rambling, less-well edited (seriously, can this woman not use proper spelling or grammar even by accident?), less thought out. And this WaPo article, with links to the speech texts, is very kind: the reporter purged all of Miers's linguistic creativity. Kind of her. But this leads to a whole new question: is "Congressmember" a word?

Just started Harriet Speech 2....

and this is the first sentence:

This week our televisions have allowed us to sit ringside as Judge Ruth Bader Ginsberg testified at her confirmation hearings too become the second woman to ever serve on the Supreme Court of the U.S.

Geez, Louise.

Wow: Miers Speech 1

Polipundit has links to Miers speeches. I've read the first one, before the Executive Women of Dallas club in 1993. It's a doozy. There are the nit-picky grammar issues. I can't get to all the run-ons and sentence fragments and subject/verb and object/pronoun disagreements and all the times she randomly capitalized "state" and "court" versus the times she didn't and every instance of "its" instead of "it's" and all the places there should have been commas and there weren't any commas, but I can do a highlight reel. Then there's that impeccable reasoning that led to her SCOTUS nomination. It's sort of about school fudning -- Texas needs an income tax, y'all! And a little about poor housing in Dallas -- we can't get the races to harmonize and get poor people in rich neighborhoods until white kids go to public school, y'all! And then there was some talk about the glass ceiling. Things circle back on themselves a lot, but it's all there. I've chosen some of my favorites. Try not too cringe into a little wrinkled old man.

Uh....Possibly the #1 best quote from a feminine nominee to be a female associate justice.

I have yet to see an election at any level where voters were asked to pick but told they had little choice as to what to pick that proved successful--at least in a democratic society. [Ed. What's that about a democratic society? How does that sentence make more sense if it's not in a democratic society?] And my perception was that the education plan was presented as a "do this" or else the court will shut down the schools. Not the legislature is attempting to pick up the pieces which is a circumstance I do not understand.

So the answer is....

But where do we go from here? Is it back to the Courts? Possible. But what will happen remains to be seen as the legislature again begins to tackle the problem of funding.

When life in Highland Park starts seeming claustrophobic:

However, the placing of low income housing around the city is very difficult. ... At some point we need to let our elected officials know that their inability to solve problems in such a way that a court could not step in is unacceptable political leadership. [Ed. So is this a court issue? City council? Legislature? Who should and should not be involved? Do we know? Does Harriet know?]

No one would deal with this issue until the Court is presented with facts which cannot be ignored. [Ed. Oh, so there's my answer.]

Race issues are easier in the courts because there they have quotas.

Racial issues are prevalent in our society today and certainly the Courts continue to be looked to for solutions to injustice or perceived injustice. ...We have mentioned the challenge of placing low income housing around a city like Dallas which is in large measure segregated. Low income residents of the City are principally minority. SO the issue of the economic impact of the placement of low income housing in upscale neighborhood [sic] is definitly an economic issue but it quickly becomes a racial issue also.

Do not start a sentence with a number, I don't care how big and round the number is. Shouldn't happen.

The public education issue is racial in overtone. 80% of DISD is minority....

I like the exclamation points because the add emphasis.

For example, how do we think all of the efforts by business and in the white community to improve the schools will succeed when we fail the ultimate test. We won't put our kids in the public school!!!!![sic twice]

See, this was to convince us that they guy who lost the election knew what to do, and she's shocked that school funding proponents didn't follow his lead in figuring out how to advertise so that their loss wouldn't have been a shock, just a well advertised result.

I think the last week of the Senatorial Ads with Senator Kruger's ads for the first time focused upon just Kay Hutchison was not an accident.

And this is, um.....yeah:

We undeniable [sic] still have a justice system that does not provide justice for all as provided by the Pledge of Allegiance. One justice for the rich, one justice for the poor. One justice sometimes for minorities, one justice for whites.

This doesn't make a whole lot of sense:

And again issues of discrimination are more and more recognized as seated in economic concerns--minimizing the number who are able to participate in the slicing of the pie.

Missing the point that the minority, poor, Hispanic population is exploding in Texas due to, ahem, outside influences:

You should not be surprised that much of the poverty growth are in heavy minority pockets of the State.

Wondering at teh size of the crowd here:

Issues of discrimination are near and dear to the hearts of women executives like yourself....

I do not know what this means. No idea. But, to be fair, it does mirror the SCOTUS's clarity and incisiveness on church and state issues.

No one should not be able to opresively [sic] require a student to participate in religious activites again their will, but if a student on his or her own chooses to express him or her self in religious terms, that should not be prohibited.

Scary, because it's just like her blog.

I see the best and the brightest and its [sic] reassuring. I have enjoyed my year at the helm which is about to be over.

And, to end this all for now, there is a section about race relations when she says that familiarity breeds contempt, but in the case of races, it is a lakc of familiarity which breed contempt. All fin and good, except that in her description of what the cliche means, she misunderstands it. "It was the codification of a principal we are all too familiar with--with our families sometimes we tend to be at our worst or show characteristics we won't share with those with whom we are not as familiar." Um, no. That is neither a codification of anything, nor the actual meaning of the cliche. But it's a fine piece of writing, though.

Miers's grammar

She's getting short-shrift for her tardy, incomplete, and unedited questionnaire, as evidenced by the Volokh crew and Prof. Bainbridge. I like this comment to a post by Jim Lundgren at the Volokh Conspiracy:

One of the wrinkles here is that early on after her nomination we heard how Miers was a devil with a red pen regarding anything that crossed her desk as Staff Secretary, from grammar to usage to margin width. Does this mean that someone else wrote her answers and she for some reason didn't give it the once over, that she was too hurried to give her own material the attention she gave others', or that she did indeed make a lot of red pen edits at the White House, but they didn't necessarily, you know, improve things?

Heh, heh....

...IMAO.

Dubya took the stand next. "So, Mr. American President," said Saddam's lawyer, "what were you thinking when you nominated Harriet Miers for the Supreme Court?"

"I don't think that’s relevant," Dubya answered.

"Please answer the questions," the judge said, "I'm curious about that one."

"Me too," said the prosecutor.

"Yeah, what the hell were you thinking, son?" Bush Sr. asked.

"This coming from the guy who appointed Souter?" Dubya shot back.

Things that were awesome about Serenity

I finally saw Serenity this weekend. I never watched the show Firefly, although I wanted to. I blinked, and it was off the air. On subject, I saw the movie with a completely open mind. In fact, until I started reading reviews, I didn't even know it was sci-fi. People are doing the normal "space western" tripe which they always say about Star Wars when they are trying to sound either derogatory or pretentious, which all I figured was that it was going to be a typical sci-fi shoot 'em up. With Joss Whedon writing (not a fan of Buffy or Angel, either, but I saw some episodes), I also figured it would at least have a decent story to go with the blaster fights.

Yeah, hopeful as I was, I was way off on how good this was going to be. The first hint was that it wasn't performing well at the box office. Like The Village and Arrested Development, anything well-written, innovative, and intelligent usually doesn't do well financially. So, that should have been a hint for it's awesomeness. Other people have done already done great reviews of the story and movie to Serenity, including IMAO's FrankJ, some Powerline guy, and Mark Steyn. These people are good. Read them. Also check out Bryan Preston (National Review). These people all basically say the same things: the writing is tight and witty, the actors are stunning in their understated and sincere performances, the story line is believable. It's funny, it's dark, it's compelling, it's epic in a way that a single life is meaningful. It's very good.

See it. You'll love it. I'm going to preorder the DVD. It's a fantastic movie. And here are the reasons why that struck me additionally:

1. The music is fantastic. Unlike Star Wars, which went (well-done, BTW) with loud and intense symphonic events heavy on the trumpets and bass, Serenity's soundtrack is a cool, surprisingly intimate folk sound: low-key guitars, a little violin. Balladic. And, since it sounds like the close-knit music you'd hear in a coffee bar or at a college concert, it creates this individualistic feel. It makes it a story about a handful of people. It is symbolic, they do represent "humanity" -- but when it comes right down to it, it's just a small group of people who are living normal lives. In space, five hundred years from now. (Bryan Preston write, "In crafting the score, composer David Newman eschewed the usual blaring trumpets in favor of a mostly guitar and folk-based sound. It’s a brilliant if risky choice, lending the production a fittingly plucky, down-home sound.")

2. The accents. The whole space western thing actually holds true for once: There are people on the edge of the frontier who are on the losing end of a war for unification, of civilization over individualism. They speak in almost Southern accents, they sing around campfires and live off harsh lands, they have odd colloquialisms like "nether" and "reckon." Prostitution is a normal part of life and, in a lot of ways, the brothels are the only outposts of culture, cleanness, and beauty. It is a John Wayne Western, this is the Searchers or Red River or one of those other ones where he played a displaced Confederate soldier.

3. Kaley's (spelling?) crush on the doctor. No pouty-lipped coolness or sultry flirtiness. She seemed totally girl-next-door -- checking her hair, smiling at him hopefully, giving him advice on cars. It seemed real ditto the marriage between Zoe and Wash. Only Mal's relationship with Annora had any Hollywood type angst, and even that had the normal tension between a cowboy/marshal and his favorite saloon girl (Marshal Dillon and Miss Kitty, anyone?)

4. They still use bullets. No lasers (although there is an electromagnetic pulse, which actually makes sense), no phasers or photon arrays or "disrupters." Also, no magic instant-heal medicine or other uber-high-tech solutions to the vicissitudes of life to impress us with how advanced they are.

5. No aliens.

6. There is still religion. So, Christianity has been around for 2000 years, and we magically stop believing in a few hundred years? Nope. And there is more than one religion. Buddhist, Christian -- yeah, the beliefs linger.

7. No jumpsuits. No uniforms that somehow transcend all cultures, occupations, and personalities. People sweat, men need to shave, women do (and don't) wear makeup and jeweltry, people change their clothes and hairstyles as they, you know, live.

8. River, the tortured schizophrenic wunderkind, treats herself and her situation with degrees of humor. When she murmurs the name "Miranda," a clue to her visions, her brother asks her if he's talking to Miranda right then, and she gives him this look, like "How crazy do you think I am?" It's a difficult part to act, and a terrible one to write, to make someone as unstable and extraordinary as she is seem human.

9. I love the politics. Which everyone and his brother has mentioned, but it still holds true. Best line, in response to why anyone would oppose teh perfect order of the Alliance: "Because we meddle. People want to be left alone. We're meddlesome." The evil Alliance, a Communist cum liberal or perhaps European state (Steyn's take); the libertarian, South-Park-Conservative crew of Firefly. The bad guy believes in honor-killings, duty, and faith perverted. Mr. Universe, the information guru, is a blogger, or maybe Matt Drudge. That's just inspired.

Miers and Roberts

Miers released her questionnaire to the Senate today. I haven't read it, but the currently circulating excerpts are from her answer on judicial activism. The response has been much more positive than it could have been, meaning it's been tepid but not terribly critical. Highlights from the life of Miers, and how it shaped her judicial philosophy:

My own beliefs about these issues have been formed over many years, and find their roots in the beginning of my legal career.

Beginning during my two years as a Federal district court clerk, I was taught by the judge for whom I clerked, Judge Joe E. Estes, the importance of Federal courts’ keeping to their limited role.

[snip]

As I entered private practice, I grew to appreciate even more the importance of predictability and stability in the law, and came to believe that those values are best served by a rigorous and focused approach to the law. ... Many times in practice I found myself stressing to clients the importance of getting the words exactly right if their interests were to be protected in the future.

[snip]

As my career progressed, I became an elected official charged with legislative power. In that role, I...

[snip]

Finally, my time serving in the White House, particularly as Counsel to the President, has given me a fuller appreciation of the role of the separation of powers in maintaining our constitutional system. In that role, I...

Also, compare Miers's description of judicial activism versus judicial restraint to the same answer (even pretty much teh same concept) given by John Roberts.

Miers:

“Judicial activism” can result from a court’s reaching beyond its intended jurisdiction to hear disputes that are not ripe, not brought by a party with standing, not brought in the proper court, or otherwise not properly before the court because of the case’s subject matter. An additional element of judicial restraint is to be sure only to decide the case before the court, and not to reach out to decide unnecessary questions.

Roberts:

It is difficult to comment on either “judicial activism” or “judicial restraint” in the abstract, without reference to the particular facts and applicable law of a specific case. On the one hand, courts should not intrude into areas of policy making reserved by the Constitution to the political branches. As Justice Frankfurter has noted, “Courts are not representative bodies. They are not designed to be a good reflex of a democratic society.” ... Thoughtful critics of “judicial activism” — such as Justices Holmes, Frankfurter, Jackson, and Harlan — always recognized that judicial vigilance in upholding constitutional rights was in no sense improper “activism.” It is not “judicial activism” when the courts carry out their constitutionally-assigned function and overturn a decision of the Executive or Legislature in the course of adjudicating a case or controversy properly before the courts. Chief Justice Marshall made the point clearly in his opinion for the Court in Cohens v. Virginia, 6 Wheat. 264, 404 (1821): ... It is not part of the judicial function to make the law — a responsibility vested in the Legislature — or to execute the law — a responsibility vested in the Executive. As Marshall wrote in his most famous opinion, however, “[it] is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.” Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137, 177 (1803). When doing so results in checking the Legislature or Executive, the judiciary is not engaged in “activism”; it is rather carrying out its duty under the law.

Miers cites chapter and verse of her own life in her judicial philosophy. That is, the judge she clerked for did this routinely, when she was on the city council she encoutered this situation, this was how she would advise clients. Roberts never once referred to himself and his experience; rather, he pointed to two SC cases and the original intent of the Framers as creating a balance of powers, etc. Miers response is a bland, somewhat flattering portrait of herself, the kind of bland, flattering responses people typically give in a job interview (it even followed the classic five-point format, circling back in the conclusion to her time with Estes that she had mentioned in the opening). Roberts wrote a brief academic essay, a summary of judicial theory throughout the ages. The important thing here is Roberts' philosophy is based on something outside of himself, a history of legal thought grounded in the historical fact and academic reflection. Miers gave a personal biography and, since she is still alive, that biography will change. One has a philosophy; the other has a feeling.

Hindsight....

....is 20/20. The smackdown President Bush gave conservative in the middle of summer when Alberto Gonzales was floated as a SCOTUS pick seems less like an overwrought defense of a friend and more like a political hack slashing back at an unimportant constituency when it attacked the machine. This wasn't a time for George W. Bush, the friend; it was a time for George W. Bush, the president. Thus, we didn't have a right a couple of months ago to question the appropriateness of his (moderate/somewhat liberal) friend Gonzales then, and we don't have the right to question or oppose the nomination of his friend Harriet. Because he's not a politician answerable to a constituency, you see; he's a guy who is trying to show how nifty-neat and gifted his friends are. Hindsight.

Misstep

It was probably a mistake for David Rexrode, director of RNC Conservative Development, to ask me to send an email listing why I support the President and his nomination of Harriet Miers.

Ad hominem

Things have gotten dirty in the Miers debates, and it is the pro-Miers forces (personal opinion) that are throwing the muddiest sludge.

Look at Hugh Hewitt's response to David Frum of National Review:

The sort of conservative critique of Harriet Miers that ought to embarass all conservatives is a personal attack that makes sweeping assertions without a detailed factual basis, and which also makes claims that can not be rebutted by resort to evidence, present or future. It is the sort of critique that David Frum makes this morning. The ordianrily [sic] persuasive and careful Frum doubles down (triples down?) on his first blast at Miers, and does so in such a fashion as to raise the question of whether there is some personal ax being ground fine here. Frum served 13 months in the Bush White House as a speechwriter, a time when Harriet Miers was Staff Secretary, so they know each other -- a little or a lot, I don't know. Given what follows in this column, you have to wonder what sort of relationship they had.

[snip Frum's quote]

Not only is Frum inaccurately reporting the harshest criticism made of Miers --though not from him-- he is turning his face from all contrary evidence already on the table and, incredibly, puts forward the anti-intellectual argument that nothing she does or writes in the future will be enough to ever prove him wrong.

Frum has spoken. The issue is settled.

But what mighty edict did Frum mandate? What heavy-handed, unadvised, ad hominem attack did he make? The Hewitt excerpts:

Those who object to the Miers nomination do not object to her lack of credentials. They object to her lack of what the credentials represent: some indication of outstanding ability.

The objection to Miers is not that she is not experienced enough or not expensively enough educated for the job. It is that she is not good enough for the job.

(See more on this in my article in the next print NR.)

And she will remain not good enough even if she votes the right way on the court, or anyway starts out voting the right way. A Supreme Court justice is more than just a vote. A justice is also a voice.

Oh my God! The audacity! The virtiol! The hatred! The putrid stink of Ivy-League hubris! So, first of all, what, exactly, is Hewitt objecting to? Especially since what he was complaining about (college elitism) had nothing to to with what Frum was talking about. (Personally convincing argument though: the Wonkette-like whispers about a personal vendetta.) There is no doubt that a) Harriet Miers is not one of the top legal thinkers in America and b) regardless of whether she votes the right way, she has no evidence of ever developing the thinking or philosdophy to argue the right way. The intellectual heft argument stems not from her alma mater but from a 35 year lack of academic, philosophical, or even political investigation. Is that an ad hominem attack? Or is it a statement of fact, with the conclusion that that makes her "not good enough" for the job?

But DJ Drummond at PoliPundit goes one better (emphasis mine):

The other lesson, sad to say, is that a great many Conservative figureheads have proven themselves to be as flighty, venal, and narcisstist, as any Liberal they have countered in the past. We are not the party we pretend to be, not yet, and there is much work to be done to mature the leadership of the Republican Party to handle such decisions in better fashion.

Somewhere, Ronnie [Reagan] is not happy.

UPDATE: Since the responses have been so far very predictable, may I request that the people who oppose Miers, cite what it is, exactly, about her which makes her unqualified? It’s one thing to say you wish your personal choice would have been picked, quite another to whine and moan about someone on no better motive than mistrust of the man you just voted for last year.

Lindsay Graham told reporters yesterday that those opposing Miers just want their "fifteen minutes" and they should "shut up; just shut up."

Ed Gillespie told conservative leaders during a conciliatory meeting yesterday that the opposition to Miers has "a whiff of sexism and a whiff of elitism."

Since all of these are ultimately baseless accusations (has anyone every said they had problems with Miers because she was a woman? What, is she now the first woman to ever have political problems, too?), which are the ad hominem attacks? Since is seems to be the one side hurling all the stones, I have to wonder if, beneath all that, they really have any other argument to make in her favor. Anyone wanting to speak up?

Last Miers post of the day

Ed Whelan, at NRO's Bench Memos, thinks that the Miers pick is awful but....

I suppose that some who are distressed by the nomination decision might think that the best hope for improving future nomination decisions is to have the Miers nomination go down in flames. That is certainly not my judgment.

In the Corner, Ramesh Ponnuru (Ponnuru for SCOTUS!) voiced a similarly conciliatory note:

Second, to the opponents: Take a deep breath. Are you sure you haven't dug in irrationally? Many of you have been saying that it's not enough for a justice to have the right positions. (Others are unsure that Miers has the right positions on legal issues, but that's a different issue.) Are you sure you're not undervaluing the ability to reach the right conclusions? A solid opinion that reaches the right legal conclusion is superior to a weak one that also does. But either one is superior to an opinion, however well done in certain respects, that gets the law wrong. And it's not as though we've got a surplus of good votes on the Supreme Court. Some of the opponents seem to be talking as though we do.

For me, after careful (and not so careful) reflection, yes, I do think it is best that her nomination goes down in flames, precisely because the the precedent her nomination, forget her service, would set within the conservative movement and to the adheres of the Gang of 14's blood oath (also known as the codeification of borking). Some things are more important than a party or a strategy. This is.