Fr_J-H

Wall Street Opinion Journal John Fund Monday, October 31, 2005 12:01 a.m. EST

As President Bush prepares to make a new appointment to the Supreme Court, the lessons of the failed Miers nomination are still being absorbed.

One that deserves study is how a lightning-fast news cycle, a flat-footed defense and the growth of new media such as talk radio and blogs sank Ms. Miers’s chances even before the megabuck special-interest groups could unload their first TV ad. Ms. Miers herself has told friends that she was astonished at how the Internet became a conveyor belt for skeptical mainstream media reports on her in addition to helping drive the debate.

The rapidity with which Supreme Court nominations can become full-scale political contests would astonish previous generations. While one out of five previous nominees to the highest court failed to be confirmed, the battles used to be far more gentle. Nominees didn’t even show up at confirmation hearings until 1925.

But the role of the Supreme Court has changed since then. Many Americans now view it as a kind of superlegislature, micromanaging the abortion laws of 50 states, declaring state ballot measures invalid, and redefining the powers of eminent domain. So long as the court wields that much power, battles for each vacancy–the only opportunity Americans have to influence the direction of the courts–will be intense and divisive.

Phone service was restored today at my home (no power or phone yet at the Church) so I can blog, post, and do all the necessary things we cyber-types do. Yesterday was a good day especially when I heard of Mier’s withdrawal. By all appearances she was a good woman but out of her league. I’m glad she withdrew.

Someone sent me this quote from Ann Coulter. It hits the nail on the head.
[Read more…]

Wall Street Opinion Journal John Fund Thursday, October 13, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT

Harriet Miers’s nomination resulted from a failed vetting process.

“There’s a standard vetting process that we go through with all nominees.”–White House spokesman Scott McClellan

“The president is very, very confident in his judgments about people, and he likes to reward loyalty.”–Brad Berenson, an associate White House counsel in the first Bush term.

The vetting of Harriet Miers leaves questions that demand answers, not more spin or allegations that critics are “sexist” or “elitist.” It was so botched and riddled with conflicts of interest that it demands at a minimum an internal White House investigation to ensure it won’t happen again.

Wall Street Journal John Fund Monday, October 10, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT

I have changed my mind about Harriet Miers. Last Thursday, I wrote in OpinionJournal’s Political Diary that “while skepticism of Ms. Miers is justified, the time is fast approaching when such expressions should be muted until the Senate hearings begin. At that point, Ms. Miers will finally be able to speak for herself.”

But that was before I interviewed more than a dozen of her friends and colleagues along with political players in Texas. I came away convinced that questions about Ms. Miers should be raised now–and loudly–because she has spent her entire life avoiding giving a clear picture of herself. “She is unrevealing to the point that it’s an obsession,” says one of her close colleagues at her law firm.

White House aides who have worked with her for five years report she zealously advocated the president’s views, but never gave any hint of her own. Indeed, when the Dallas Morning News once asked Ms. Miers to finish the sentence, “Behind my back, people say . . .,” she responded, “. . . they can’t figure me out.”

Wall Street Journal October 11, 2005; Page A16

The world will learn a lot more about Harriet Miers in coming weeks, so we’re not going to join the pack already chasing her back to Texas. But one strategy that the White House would be wise to drop is its not-too-subtle promotion of both her religion and her personal views on abortion.

In case you haven’t heard, Ms. Miers is an evangelical Christian who is personally opposed to abortion. A main White House talking point is that she fought to reverse the American Bar Association’s position supporting abortion rights. We are supposed to believe — wink, wink — that this means Ms. Miers is a judicial conservative who would oppose the likes of Roe v. Wade. The National Right to Life Committee has already endorsed Ms. Miers. And James Dobson of Focus on the Family has endorsed her because, he says, “I know the individual who brought her to the Lord” and because “I do know things that I am not prepared to talk about here [on TV].”

We’ll concede that Mr. Dobson’s sources upstairs are better than ours. But whatever he knows, if it concerns Ms. Miers’s religion it doesn’t tell us anything about how she’ll rule on the Supreme Court. Allow us to recall the case of Anthony Kennedy.