Harriet Miers Withdraws Nomination
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Supreme CourtJust heard it on NPR.
Here’s more from MSNBC. It looks like they used the old “don’t want to give them the documents” defense.
WASHINGTON - Confronted with criticism from both the left and right, Harriet Miers on Thursday withdrew her nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court.In a statement, President Bush said he “reluctantly accepted� her decision to withdraw, after weeks of insisting that he did not want her to step down.
The White House said he blamed her withdrawal on calls in the Senate for the release of internal White House documents that the administration has insisted were protected by executive privilege.
Well, since she’s out, who’s next?
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October 27th, 2005 at 8:31 am
Well with Miers withdrawing, the media will be able to devote their full energy toward the Plame investigation.
Who’s next?
Guarantee you whoever the next nominee will be, they’ll be vetting like nobody’s business!
October 27th, 2005 at 10:56 am
This IS good news. I’m sure he’s got another unqualified croney hanging around somewhere, though.
October 27th, 2005 at 11:09 am
Or worse, a Scalia clone
October 27th, 2005 at 12:56 pm
Sleipner — Scalia can’t be cloned — if he could I’d try to clone 8 of him and restore the diginity of the Constitution. Let me scare the Flower Power Children, who believe that the Constitution is a living breathing tulip to be molded into the whimsical edicts of 9 philosopher-kings — God help us — the next nominee will be a qualified constitutional scholar and originalist. This obviously means they won’t vote on any given case using their personal policy preferrences, but on the constitutionality of state action. It truly is amazing to me how self-professed “liberals” (as in the modern definition of liberal) show such a disdain and distrust for democracy. Power to the People, brother.
October 27th, 2005 at 3:11 pm
It never ceases to amaze me how the Right sees progressive judges as “activist” and that they “trample on the constitution” when fundie judges like Scalia are doing the exact same thing, just on the opposite side of the scale.
The Constitution IS a living, breathing document, that must adapt to the changing society to which it applies. If that were not the case, we would have no amendments, which correct for the larger drifts in societal norms, such as slavery and women voters. Rulings as to how portions of the constitution apply to situations that either did not exist or were handled much differently back in the 1700’s are required for the document to have any validity whatsoever today.
I realize that many conservatives yearn for the days of yore, when women had no rights, slavery was a cost-management method, and no federal taxation existed, but those days are over for good!
October 27th, 2005 at 3:56 pm
This is one of those lovely discussions that spread like weeds all over the Internet, where the two sides talk past each other in the most powerful terms, and both walk away triumphant with no idea what the other really said. Look how quickly an appeal to the essential meaning of the Constitution was twisted into a longing to bring back slavery and spat back at the former poster.
Beautiful!
Of course the Constitution is meant to evolve. And there is a system in place — in the Constitution — to do that. Did the courts give women the right to vote? Did they abolish slavery? Did they institute the federal income tax? No, of course not. Because it’s not their job.
But there is a judicial philosophy that says certain desirable social changes are beyond the power of a democratic nation to achieve. They ought to be done, but the people, and the representative legislature that draws its power from them, cannot manage to do them.
This philosophy holds that it is proper for the courts to use its power to accomplish these changes.
Since about the 1950s, this philosophy has been embraced by liberal activists.
That is what many conservatives fear about the modern Supreme Court. But the power, if you think about it, can be used on both sides. Like the states rights doctrine. It ought to be considered, and accepted or rejected, in a non-partisan fashion. But because the sword happens to be wielded on one side now, the debate is pointless and partisan.
The court has an endless ability to punpack new meanings and new powers out of a few clauses of the Constitution — the Commerce Clause, the First Amendment, and the dreadfully written 14th Amendment, for instance — and the line between promoting social justice from the bench, and ruling as an unelected oligarchy, is not always easy to agree upon.
October 28th, 2005 at 9:53 am
I wrote a long retort but Callimachus said it without the vitriol and much more persuasively — so I’ll leave it with that. I am assuming that Sleipners referrence to Scalia as a “fundie” was referring to his Catholic fundamentalism and not the evangelical Protestant fundamentalism of the President — but what does it matter — all those “Christy” people are the same, right.
October 28th, 2005 at 11:39 am
Perhaps I overuse the term “fundie,” but anyone who wants to tell me how I should live my life based on their (usually religiously based) moral values I refer to as a fundamentalist.
I think the Right has way overblown the extent to which the judiciary has “made” law or “ruled from the bench.” Certainly, in some cases they have thwarted the legislature or even laws that the people have voted into place.
However, they are doing exactly what they’re supposed to be doing, making sure that any laws that are enacted do not contradict the basic rights and freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution.
Of course they have probably made mistakes, and in some cases may have ruled incorrectly, but by no means is the Supreme Court some kind of Illuminati running everything from behind the scenes. Frankly, abuse of power is occurring far more within the Executive and Legislative branches these days.