Miers in the Mire

Not Wild About Harriet

Bush's nomination of Miers has created a political hurricane that could rival Rita at the least. In what is an extremely odd alignment of the planets, the liberals and conservatives on "McLaughlin Group" were equally dismayed with the choice. Pat Buchanan sees Miers as a potential Trojan Liberal, voting pro-choice at the first opportunity. Eleanor Cliff sees Miers as a sycophantic Bush aide that helped him rationalize many things, including his Iraq policy.

Miers gives me pause for thought, somewhat like the thoughts of Eleanor Cliff. I'm not particularly on board with things promoted by Evangelical Christians. People insist that personal opinion has nothing to do with judicial decisions, but that’s nonsense. There will be a very strong propensity for any justice to rule in the direction of his own personal bent. Abortion is the bogeyman discussed by many, but I think church-state separation is what should be watched above all. Evangelicals are one of the groups seeking to erode the wall between church and state. Once you have state-sanctioned religion, you beg the question "whose religion?". Do we pay respects to Jesus, Buddha, Allah, Krishna, Zeus or merely God? What if I worship Gods (in the plural), or my God demands that I kneel to the East? What protects school children from the verbal abuse they receive if they "voluntarily withhold" from the prayer spoken by all the other children in the class? Pandora's box -- opened wide. Perhaps we can have the orderly society of Arabia, where Muslim sects compete bitterly for influence and firebomb each other. I sometimes hear, "My God tells me to witness". Well my friend, please witness on private property, on someone else's dime and someone else's time.

Another bugaboo with Miers -- she thinks Bush is one of our greatest thinkers, one of the greatest men who has ever lived. This hyperbole is questionable coming from anyone. It especially has the taint of yes-woman brown-nosing coming from his legal staff. That judgment alone is kind of frightening. Bush is one of the world’s great thinkers? It boggles the mind. How beholden is she to Bush? I cannot help but ponder how she would pander (couldn’t resist that phrasing). In sum, I have to agree with heinous conservatives – what are we getting? Maybe a pig in a poke is better than a highly trained, judicially experienced ahole like Scalia. At least Miers’ viewpoints would be worth a coin flip. If Bush picked Molly Jackson from the Albertson’s checkout line, it would be preferable to Scalia, who comes down wrong on every issue.

Now, I read that the White House is taking very deliberate aim at every GOP senator who’s publicly expressed dismay at the Miers choice. Apparently, coercive threats and strong-arm tactics haven’t gone away with Tom Delay, the Hammer. It’s hammer time, and rogue GOP senators who balk at Miers may be punished for their roguish ways. So Miers may come out of the mire after all. Pat Buchanan and I – we’ll be worried.