January 31, 2006

Alito Sworn In

Judge Sam Alito was sworn in today as the justice replacing retiring Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.

I bet a whole lot of liberals are whining about this development.

Whine, liberals, whine!

by @ 12:31 pm. Filed under The Court

January 5, 2006

RightMarch Alert For Alito Confirmation Hearings

Next week, the Alito confirmation hearings will begin. It’s important that all right thinkers do our part to help get Sam Alito confirmed as an associate justice on the Supreme Court in whatever ways we can.

To that end, RightMarch, led by patriotic American Bill Greene, will be right on the front lines as always.

ALERT: Can you come to Washington, D.C. next week to take a stand for confirming Judge Alito to the Supreme Court?

If not — can you help send activists there to counter the HUGE numbers that the far left is busing in?

Groups like NOW, NARAL, Planned Parenthood, People for the American Way, Alliance for Justice, and others are shipping in HUNDREDS of liberal activists to be in the streets and in the hallways of the Senate next week, grabbing media attention and demanding that President Bush’s conservative nominee be blocked.

They’ll be phone banking, holding press conferences, waving signs, holding demonstrations… generally making a huge nuisance of themselves. BUT — if there’s no one there to COUNTER their antics with strong support of Judge Alito, many of the Senators, along with reporters and countless American television viewers, will assume that there’s a groundswell of opposition to Alito — which is the exact OPPOSITE of the truth!

Remember: our legislators usually “see the light” only when they “feel the heat” — so we need to make sure they’re “feeling the heat” from the RIGHT side!

WE MUST BE THERE to stand up for a FAIR hearing and a FAIR vote for Judge Alito!

There’s two ways you can help us do that: you can come JOIN us in D.C. as a volunteer during hearings week — or you can help us SEND volunteers there!

TAKE ACTION: Look, we understand that not everyone can just take off to D.C. on short notice. That’s the difference between liberals (who take to the streets for protests at the drop of a hat) and conservatives (who have families and lives and work for a living). So we’re working with a number of other conservative organizations to make sure that the massive amount of media covering the event aren’t just giving the LEFT’s side of this issue.

If you’re not able to make it into town for these historic and important hearings, can you help us send volunteers to take your place?

We’re raising money to help “TeenPact” send SIXTY young people to D.C. for the entire week of the hearings. “TeenPact” is a grassroots conservative youth organization whose mission is to train young people to be leaders who will impact the nation and the world, and they’re committed to sending 60 youth to D.C. to do whatever needs to be done.

Think of that: SIXTY young people, standing strong with dozens of others in our nation’s capital for conservative values, conservative beliefs and, of course, conservative judicial nominees!

CAN YOU HELP? We want to help TeenPact raise over $8,000 to cover all of the expenses for these 60 youth volunteers. That’s CHEAP for D.C.! Your contribution TODAY would go a LONG way:

$1,330 would pay for ten youth for the week
$665 would cover five youth for a week
$190 would cover ten youth for a day
$133 would pay for one young person for the week
$95 would cover five youth for a day
$19 would cover one young person for the day
PLEASE, whatever amount you can contribute — $1,330, $665, $190, $133, $95, $19 or another amount — time is SHORT, so make your best donation NOW:
https://secure.responseenterprises.com/rightmarch/?a=7

If you CAN come to D.C., we’d LOVE to see you! We need supporters (in t-shirts & waving signs we provide) at press conferences and in hearing room hallways, as well as volunteers helping with food preparation/distribution, t-shirt distribution, sign assembling & distribution, technology, logistics, runners, prayer warriors/walkers, and more.

If you’d like to volunteer to come to D.C. next week for one to five days, just download the Volunteer Form below, fill it out and fax it to 202-393-2134 right away:

http://www.rightmarch.com/docs/AlitoVolForm.doc

We hope to see you there — but if you can’t come, please help send folks there to TAKE A STAND for JUSTICE!

NOTE: Another member of our coalition, Concerned Women for America, is also helping to organize local events back in key targeted states during the hearings. One or two women are needed in each of the targeted states to lead the efforts to carry out “meet and greets” with reporters outside of the Senators’ local offices. If you can participate in these state activities during hearing week, or if you know someone who you can get to participate in these events (men are more than welcome!), call CWA at 202-488-7000.

And don’t forget to send a FREE message to both of your Senators at http://capwiz.com/sicminc/issues/alert/?alertid=8197216&type=CO in support of Judge Alito!

Be sure to forward this Alert to EVERYONE you know who wants to help get a FAIR hearing and a FAIR vote in the Senate for the President’s conservative pick, Judge Alito. Thank you!

Sincerely,

William Greene, President
RightMarch.com

by @ 1:55 am. Filed under The Court

November 1, 2005

RightMarch Alert — Support Alito Nomination!

This is an alert just in from RightMarch re the coming fight to get Judge Sam Alito confirmed as associate justice, and how we can help Bill Greene and RightMarch counter some of the tsunami of trashy innuendo, targeting this right-thinking nominee, that the left will be spewing from now until the day of the Senate vote.

ALERT: Wow.

President Bush just made one of the most important — and gutsiest — decisions in his term of office. He nominated Judge Samuel Alito to replace Sandra Day O’Connor on the U.S. Supreme Court.

He obviously made the RIGHT choice. Now WE need to stand up and FIGHT for a fair hearing and vote in the Senate:

https://secure.responseenterprises.com/rightmarch/?a=7

How do we know it’s the most important decision? Because Justice O’Connor has consistently been the most liberal “swing” vote on the high court for many years now — and we needed a strong CONSERVATIVE vote to take her place, and bring the court back to its Constitutional foundations.

How do we know he made the RIGHT choice? Because every single liberal Senator and far-left organization IMMEDIATELY began to squeal like stuck pigs:

“If confirmed, Alito could very well fundamentally alter the balance of the court and push it dangerously to the right, placing at risk decades of American progress in safeguarding our fundamental rights and freedoms.”
–Sen. Ted Kennedy
“It’s sad that [Bush] felt he had to pick a nominee likely to divide America.”
–Sen. Charles Schumer

“Has the right wing now forced a weakened President to nominate a divisive justice in the mold of Antonin Scalia?”
–Sen. John Kerry

“President Bush has… made a selection to appease the far right-wing of the Republican Party.”
–Sen. Barak Obama

“Last week after Harriet Miers withdrew her nomination, I asked the President: Who was in charge? Today, the President answered: the radical conservative right is in charge of this Administration.”
–Rep. Nancy Pelosi

“I look forward to… learning why those who want to pack the Court with judicial activists are so much more enthusiastic about him than they were about Harriet Miers.”
–Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid

“Alito is a notoriously right-wing judge on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. He has consistently ruled to strip basic protections from workers, women, minorities and the disabled in favor of unchecked power for corporations and special interests.”
– MoveOn.org

“Alito has compiled an extensive, right-wing judicial record on numerous matters of importance to the protection of the rights and interests of ordinary Americans… Alito’s judicial opinions demonstrate that he is an out of the mainstream opponent of fundamental legal rights and protections for all Americans and must not be confirmed to the Supreme Court.”
– People for the America Way (PFAW)

“Judge Alito’s position on each of these issues has been more hostile to civil liberties than positions taken by Justice O’Connor. His nomination therefore calls into question the court’s delicate balance that Justice O’Connor has helped to shape and preserve.”
– American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)

“On Halloween George W. Bush handed ultra-conservatives a treat with his nomination of Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court, but he won’t trick women and girls with a nominee who opposes our rights… we are most concerned by Alito’s position on the far right of the judicial spectrum, distinctly outside the mainstream. If Alito is confirmed by the U.S. Senate, many of our fundamental rights will be at great risk.”
– National Organization for Women (NOW)

“Samuel Alito, Jr. of the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit is an anti-choice jurist… Alito, who has been called ‘a favorite son of the political right,’ would likely vote to eviscerate or eliminate the protections of Roe as a member of the Supreme Court.”
– NARAL

“If confirmed to the pivotal O’Connor seat, Judge Alito would fundamentally change the balance of the Supreme Court, tipping it in a direction that could jeopardize our most cherished rights and freedoms.”
–Alliance for Justice

WOO-HOO! With that kind of talk coming from 100% of the left-wing fringes, Alito MUST be the best Supreme Court nominee to come down the pike since Scalia and Thomas!
In fact… most pundits have called Judge Alito by the nickname “Scalito” for years now!

With this pick, Bush got it RIGHT! THIS IS WHAT WE FOUGHT SO HARD FOR in 2000 and 2004!

But as you can see from all of these quotes from the far left, this is NOT the time for you and me to sit back and relax — NOW is the time to get up and take ACTION to support President Bush’s solid nominee.

TAKE ACTION: According to dozens of media reports, left-wing Senators like Ted Kennedy and Chuck Schumer, along with their radical liberal friends at groups like MoveOn.org and the ACLU, are launching an all-out WAR to block President Bush’s conservative nominee. They’re calling Judge Alito every name in the book, and they’re already talking about trying to FILIBUSTER against his confirmation in the U.S. Senate.

RightMarch.com is FIGHTING BACK against the likes of Kennedy and MoveOn.org — but we need YOUR help.

In these next two crucial weeks, we’re launching a MAJOR MEDIA BLITZ to demand a FAIR hearing and a FAIR vote for Judge Alito. Our first radio ad is scheduled to be broadcast to THOUSANDS of stations across the country, with a potential to reach literally MILLIONS of listeners — and it’s READY TO GO! Click to listen now:

http://www.rightmarch.com/media/AlitoAd1.mp3

We’re also creating print ads to run NATIONWIDE in newspapers and magazines… plus we’re already creating television ads to run ACROSS AMERICA, to counter the HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of dollars the Left is already pouring into their own ad campaigns against Alito.

WE MUST FIGHT BACK — and you KNOW that RightMarch.com NEVER pulls back from a REAL fight, for REAL conservative issues. And right now, NOTHING could be more immportant to fight for than this fight for the Constitutional heart and soul of the U.S. Supreme Court.

WE NEED YOUR HELP NOW! These ad campaigns — plus more plans that are in the works for the nomination hearings week in D.C. — are NOT cheap! But this is the fight we’ve been waiting for — the one we elected George W. Bush and the GOP Senate to engage in — and we CANNOT hide from it now!

Please give your BEST contribution right away, so that these ads can be fully-funded to run across the nation! Our average donation is only around $35 — we appreciate every single contribution, but if you can make up for others who can’t give as much, maybe by contributing $50, $100, $500, $1000 or more, then we CAN win this fight! Please click here to contribute now:

https://secure.responseenterprises.com/rightmarch/?a=7

NOTE: Last week, after Harriet Miers withdrew her name from nomination, we asked our members to call or write President Bush, and ask him to please keep his campaign promise to nominate a strict constructionist — a REAL conservative — to the Supreme Court. HE LISTENED TO YOU — so now it’s time to FIGHT BACK against the forces of the radical left, and MAKE A STAND for Judge Alito’s confirmation! Help now with your best contribution:

https://secure.responseenterprises.com/rightmarch/?a=7

Be sure to forward this Alert to EVERYONE you know who wants to help demand a FAIR hearing and a FAIR vote in the Senate for the President’s conservative pick, Judge Alito. Thank you!

Sincerely,

William Greene, President
RightMarch.com

If anyone can help in any way, no matter how small, please do so. The Democrats will be putting up a hell of a battle over this, one of the left’s worst nightmares, and our Repulican senators will have no real choice but to get up on their hind legs and fight for this Bush nominee(unless they plan to retire after the next election), and they’ll need all the support we can rally for them among our fellow voters — you know, the kind of support that breeds the pouring in of telephone calls, emails, faxes, shouts and letters to senators’ offices from the people who will soon be voting yea or nay on these politicians’ continued employment.

by @ 4:08 pm. Filed under The Court

October 31, 2005

Bush Nominates Sam Alito To Supreme Court

The President has nominated Federal Appeals Court Judge Samuel Alito to replace Sandra Day O’Connor as an associate Justice at SCOTUS.

Judge Alito has a staunchly conservative record and one that’s almost sure to blast Senate Democrats into overdrive in an attempt to fight an Alito confirmation.

ALITO BIO

NAME: Samuel A. Alito, Jr.
AGE-BIRTH DATE: 55; April 1, 1950 in Trenton, N.J.
PERSONAL FINANCE: more than $615,000 in assets
EDUCATION: AB, Princeton, 1972; JD, Yale, 1975
EXPERIENCE: Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, 1990-present; U.S. attorney for the district of New Jersey, 1987-1990; deputy assistant to the U.S. attorney general, 1985-1987; assistant to the U.S. solicitor general, 1981-1985
JUDICIAL STYLE: Known among conservatives as a strict constructionist in the mold of Justice Antonin Scalia. Abortion-rights activists point to his dissent in the 1991 case of Planned Parenthood v. Casey — in which he argued to uphold a Pennsylvania law requiring a married woman to inform her husband before getting an abortion — as putting him in the anti-Roe v. Wade camp.
FAMILY: Alito and his wife, Martha, live in West Caldwell, N.J. They have two children, a college-age son, Philip, and a younger daughter, Laura. His late father, Samuel Alito Sr., was the director of New Jersey’s Office of Legislative Services from 1952 to 1984. Alito’s sister, Rosemary, is a top employment lawyer in New Jersey.

Okay, Republican senators, it’s time to get your game faces on and support a serious Bush nominee for a change. That means no more cowardice in the face of the enemy, as you’ve demonstrated during past confirmation hearings for conservative Bush nominees: You will fight to the death over this one, “blood and gore and things in your teeth” if necessary, and get Alito confirmed!

If you play the nose-up-Democrat-butt game as you’ve become so proficient at doing and fail us again, then don’t complain the next time POTUS nominates someone with less of a conservative track record…

by @ 12:40 pm. Filed under The Court

October 11, 2005

Final Two Cents(on the Miers issue)

I thought I had said all I was going to on the issue of the Miers nomination, but then I ran into the following:

In yesterday’s Opinion Journal was a column featuring reprints of letters from Republican readers who are not in the anti-Miers camp for any number of reasons, such as,


While I agree that I was underwhelmed with the Miers pick, I am of a mind to blame Congress–more specifically, the Senate. They have consistently shown no backbone, even as the party in power. I realize it takes some time to get used to the majority status, but come on. They have always dodged any fight with the Democrats. Even after Tom Daschle lost, you would have thought that they would have at least felt a little more powerful. I mean, he lost on the filibuster issue! Still, the senators forged a compromise. No fight, compromise. The Democrats had promised to bring business to a halt in the Senate. Did anyone but our leaders believe them? If a hog goes on a hunger strike, will he garner much sympathy? Not until he actually looks thinner. Those hogs weren’t going on any hunger strike, they like sending money home too much.
The pick doesn’t get me excited, but after our Senate leaders’ behavior, I don’t blame Bush for dodging a fight.

and, on a more aggressive note,

I and my friends in Orlando, Fla., are very happy that 1,000 conservatives at National Review’s dinner are not happy with Harriet Miers. Political disaster is not a phrase we use.

We all moved to Florida from Maine, New York, Ohio, Minnesota, Indiana, Massachusetts and Connecticut, and we were all attracted to the Democratic Party by JFK. Most of us were in high school and could not vote for him. Most of us graduated from colleges that could not measure up to Southern Methodist. We do not feel intellectually inferior, but we are not nuanced. Most of us are ex-military and after Khobar Towers and Black Hawk Down in Somalia we all changed parties and registered as Republicans. Democrats do not represent any position we have. Few of us voted for Reagan, and we are all embarrassed by that fact.

However we are very tired of “It’s President Bush’s fault” and the lack of support he gets from republicans in the House and Senate and the 1,000 conservatives who attended your dinner. If you want him to wage war with liberal democrats what are you and your 1,000 friends going to do? So far you have done nothing to help him. You are all wimps. We watch Fox News and we do not hear any republican or conservative using the same rhetoric that Reid, Pelosi, Kennedy, et al., use to describe President Bush. Whatever Pat Buchanan or Bill Kristol are for we are against because they are lukewarm in supporting President Bush. If all 1,000 of you are so important and powerful, then why is federal spending so of control? Our philosophy is appoint no one from any Ivy League School. Appoint no one from the Northeast. We don’t care what your friends in Washington or New York say or feel.

Read the rest of the reader comments.

A lot of the above is true, many of these same senators, media people and high profile pundits, all on the right, who criticize the President for nominating a “stealth” candidate like Harriet Miers rather than someone with a long record as a fire breathing, two fisted, to-the-death conservative, need to look at how dumb they’re being.

These folks all yell that we have the power in our Senate majority to ramrod through any confirmation we want, yet when Bush has nominated good conservative people with any controversial baggage in the past, these same Republican senators have given the President little vote support, giving in to the Democrat minority.

Why should Potus nominate someone who will require a fight to confirm when the track record of his Senate “back-up” reads more like French than American? And who are these loud mouths that haven’t supported him in the past to demand that he trust them now?

by @ 1:50 am. Filed under The Court

October 8, 2005

My Two Cents

Since Harriet Miers was nominated to succeed Sandra Day O’Connor at SCOTUS, there has, of course, been the expected thunder of conflicting voices, raised in a variety of arguments. Unfortunately, the bulk of this disagreement seems to be occurring on the starboard side of the aisle.

She hasn’t got the experience of some of the others who might have been nominated, she’s not enough of a hardliner, there’s insufficient paper trail to know where she’s really coming from, one fellow conservative blogger with whom I tend to agree on most issues even linked to a site that showed Miers sitting on a couch beside Dubya, looking overjoyed, and it was supposed to be “proof” that Miers is a liberal waiting to come out of her political closet the minute she hits the Court, because the picture was reportedly taken at an Anti-Defamation League event about eight years ago. The ADL is as left wing as the ACLU, but as I understand it, Harriet Miers was once a Democrat. Then she became a Republican.

I was pretty liberal until Jimmuh Cahtuh was president, and that guy, bless his soul, turned me into a Republican. I very enthusiastically voted for Reagan in the next election.

So I understand that people can wake up politically, and that an old photo or a reference to something as trivial as attending a conference on the “wrong” side of the aisle so many years ago may not be relevant today. Or it might, who’s to say?

We reelected George W. Bush to serve a second term as President Of The United States. This is the equivalent of a board of directors{the voters} hiring a CEO(POTUS). We are telling him that we have confidence in his ability to carry out the duties of his office.

Part of his job is nominating people for various high-profile positions, including those of Supreme Court Associate or Chief Justice, for Congressional approval and confirmation.

You hire or promote based on the premise that someone knows what he/she’s doing, then you allow that person to get on with things, you don’t appear at the person’s shoulder every five minutes to micromanage. You let him/her do his/her job. Period.

We gave George Bush the authority to nominate different people for different jobs, so let’s stand aside now and let him do his job.

We have our share of special interests here on the right and they’re all bickering, and that accomplishes nothing. We all want specific things, but it is a rule in life that we can’t all have everything we want, there needs to be some compromise.

The right is becoming too much like the left with its internal “my way or the highway” attitude. This has to stop, we’re turning into a Tower of Babel while we all speak the same language. How does that compute?

We are not a Sunni vs Shiite situation, we are the U.S.A.

What we need to do is suck it in, no matter what it is, and rally behind the man we reelected to the Presidency. We hired him to do a job, let’s shut up and let him do it.

by @ 3:32 am. Filed under The Court

October 3, 2005

Important Email From RightMarch

I just received an email from RightMarch, an organization headed up by a patriotic American named Bill Greene whom I met while I was in Washington recently to support the Roberts nomination and to counterprotest against the anti-war/anti-troops/anti-Bush/anti-America wingnuts who showed up along with Michael Moore’s friend Cindy Sheehan.

Here is the content of the email:

Should the U.S. Supreme Court — or ANY U.S. court — use *foreign* law to interpret the U.S. Constitution?

As you know, they already have. To date at least six Justices have cited foreign law in written opinions. With increasing frequency the Supreme Court looks to constitutions, law, and trends of foreign countries when examining cases.

With last week’s Senate confirmation of John Roberts as the next Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and today’s nomination of Harriet Miers to be Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s replacement, the timing of this national civics debate couldn’t be more appropriate. How justices choose to interpret the Constitution and its original intent should be central to this discussion.

During his confirmation hearing, John Roberts said it best when characterizing the cherry-picking of foreign law to interpret the United States Constitution as “a misuse of precedent.”

Article VI of the U.S. Constitution clearly provides in the Supremacy Clause, “This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; And all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the Supreme Law of the Land.”

As Rep. Tom Feeney (R-FL) has noted, “The U.S. Constitution exemplifies our nation’s independence from foreign law and precedent. The Supreme Court’s increasing tendency to reference foreign law rather than the original intent of the Constitution jeopardizes the sovereignty of our nation. The American people have not authorized through Congress or through a constitutional amendment the use of foreign laws to establish new law or deny rights here in the United States.”

Rep. Feeney, along with Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-VA), has introduced the “Reaffirmation of American Independence Resolution” (H. Res. 97) to take a strong stand against this new — and dangerous trend. But this resolution needs a LOT more co-sponsors to guarantee it will get to a vote in front of the whole House — and that it will pass.

We need to DEMAND that our Representatives (Republican AND Democrat) sign up as co-sponsors of this bill — and that they support it all the way through passage.

TAKE ACTION: The Feeney/Goodlatte Resolution (H. Res. 97) currently has 67 co-sponsors, including the House Constitution Subcommittee Chairman Chabot and 14 other Members of the House Judiciary Committee. The resolution states:

“Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that judicial determinations regarding the meaning of the Constitution of the United States should not be based on judgments, laws, or pronouncements of foreign institutions unless such foreign judgments, laws, or pronouncements inform an understanding of the original meaning of the Constitution of the United States.”
This resolution affirms the sense of Congress that judicial decisions interpreting the U.S. Constitution should not be based on any foreign laws, court decisions, or pronouncements of foreign governments unless they are expressly approved by Congress. Click below to send a FREE message to YOUR Congressman, asking him or her to sign up as a co-sponsor of H. Res. 97, and to support it all the way through passage:
http://capwiz.com/sicminc/issues/alert/?alertid=8078481&type=CO NOTE: Be sure to forward this message to EVERYONE you know who wants to help STOP courts from using foreign law to interpret the U.S. Constitution. Thank you!

Sincerely,

William Greene, President
RightMarch.com

I wholeheartedly support Mr. Greene and RightMarch and would urge all right thinking Americans to do the same. You can sign up for their Conservative Alerts to be emailed to you when you visit their website.

by @ 3:04 pm. Filed under The Court

The New Nominee

President Bush has nominated White House Council Harriet Miers to replace retiring Associate Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, causing something of a stir among Republicans and the usual scramble for anti-Bush nominee ammunition in the leftist Mainstream Media.

The Democrats naturally won’t like the fact that Miers, like newly sworn-in Chief Justice John Roberts, doesn’t leave enough of a judicial back-trail for them to sink their teeth into while opposing the confirmation of a Bush nominee for the sole reason that she is, well, a Bush nominee. Right-o, Dems, don’t let anything like the good of the country or other picayune details like patriotism stand in your way, just follow the party line and obstruct the president any way you can over every issue possible.

The leftists over at the Village Voice have already brought a guilt by association angle out of the closet, going back to the days when Miers was Texas Lottery whip, and I won’t be terribly surprised if that scandal becomes a focal point of the portside attacks.

Miers was chair of the state lottery commission from 1995 to 2000, at a time when the agency was tied up in a case involving Gtech. That’s the company that ran the lottery, and was accused of alleged kickbacks and illegal contracts. The case also involved former lieutenant governor Ben Barnes—the same pol who claimed to have helped the young Bush get into the National Guard.

Hmmm, was accused of

Never a judge, Miers is a longtime GOP functionary, and has pumped thousands of dollars into the campaigns of right-wing GOP stalwarts in Texas—from Phil Gramm to Kay Bailey Hutchison. It must be noted that in 1988 she gave money to Democrats—$1,000 to Al Gore in his first try for president and $1,000 to Lloyd Bentsen for Senate.

That’s pretty much Spin City, as referring to “thousands of dollars,” in the minds of most readers, assumes high five digit to six digit figures. In reality, all of Miers’ listed contributions over the years total out, according to Newsmeat.com to a walloping $14,770.00, broken down thusly:

$10,500.00 to Republicans, $3,000.00 to Democrats and $1,270.00 to special interests.

Harriet Miers’ total net worth is not much over half a million dollars, so she definitely cannot be classified as a “mega-rich” Republican, and therefore the amount of money she has contributed to whatever causes she saw fit to help with is about average in some circles, less than average in others and by no means exceptional. Personally, I could care less how much money she’s donated to whom or what, I’m more interested in how she’ll perform as a justice in SCOTUS. I only brought it up because we all know some Senate Democrats will consider such things as being of “great import” and make political hay as always, since the President has once again presented them a target with a bulls eye only slightly smaller than the head of a pin.

Reading her bio, I can’t fail to be impressed by Harriet Miers, I mean here’s a woman who’s demonstrated that she could have broken the six digit income barrier a long time ago in the private sector, but selflessly devoted her legal and leadership talents instead to public service.

Important also, as quoted in the Wall Street Journal article, is the fact that she served as an attorney, prior to joining the Bush staff, in the “real world” of business Law, and brought that experience with her to Washington, concentrating on doing a good job rather than on being any kind of political “hack.”

Ms. Miers also has more of a business track record than many of the other candidates whose names were floated in recent days. The White House biographical sheet made a point of noting her experience as a lawyer for major corporations.

The choice “should be heartening to business lawyers who often feel that [Supreme Court] decisions aren’t connected to the realities they deal with,” said Reginald Brown, a former associate White House counsel in the Bush administration who now represents financial institutions in Washington. “She’s a conservative, but better known within the White House for her careful attention to detail than for waging ideological battles.”
Politicians across the spectrum have been bracing for a fight over Mr. Bush’s nominee because Justice O’Connor, a moderate on social issues, has been the swing vote on key questions like abortion and campaign finance. Chief Justice Roberts, in contrast, succeeded the late William Rehnquist, and was seen as swapping one conservative vote for another conservative vote.

There will, of course, be accusations of Bush “cronyism” coming from the left. Again, from the WSJ article:

Eager to rebut any charges of cronyism, the White House produced statistics showing that 10 of the 34 Justices appointed since 1933 had worked for the president who picked them. Among them were the late Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, first tapped for the court by Richard M. Nixon, and Byron White, whose president was John F. Kennedy.

As I said after Mr. Bush first nominated Roberts as the replacement for O’Connor prior to the death of former Chief Justice William Rehnquist, I believe the Miers nomination, too, to be an attempt to offer up a moderate candidate that most Democrats in the Senate, despite their party’s “oppose Bush no matter what” policy, could accept without turning the confirmation hearings into a bloodbath of filibustering and embarrassing{for them} invective.

This does much to demonstrate that our President, unlike most of those politicians representing our nation’s Democratic Party, is a true gentleman.

Certainly, Republicans were, for the most part, hoping for a nominee whose track record reflected a solid, hard right political perspective to counter the liberal leaning side of the Court and there were a number of potential candidates who would have met that criteria, but as we’ve seen in the last couple of years, the President has been reluctant, for whatever his reasons may be, to take advantage of the conservative majority in both the Senate and the House and institute much needed changes.

Personally, I think he’s squandering the “chance of a lifetime,” but he’s the guy I’d vote for to serve a third term if it was allowed and I’ll go with his choice of nominee. He and Miers have worked together for many years now, and it is to be presumed that he knows where she stands on issues that will come before the court in the years to come.

Here is an excerpt from her bio, linked above:

Ms. Miers has a long and distinguished professional career.

Before joining the President’s staff, she was Co-Managing Partner at Locke Liddell & Sapp, LLP from 1998-2000. She had worked at the Locke Purnell, Rain & Harrell firm, or its predecessor, from 1972 until its merger with the Liddell Sapp firm. From 1995 until 2000, she was chair of the Texas Lottery Commission. In 1992, Harriet became the first woman president of the Texas State Bar, and in 1985 she became the first woman president of the Dallas Bar Association. She also served as a Member-At-Large on the Dallas City Council.

Ms. Miers received her bachelor’s degree in Mathematics in 1967 and J.D. in 1970 from Southern Methodist University. Upon graduation, she clerked for U.S. District Judge Joe E. Estes from 1970 to 1972.

Ms. Miers had a distinguished career as a trial litigator, representing such clients as Microsoft, Walt Disney Co. and SunGard Data Systems Inc. Moreover, when she left her law firm of Locke, Liddell & Sapp, Ms. Miers was serving as Co-Managing Partner of the firm which had more than 400 lawyers.

Throughout her career, Ms. Miers has been committed to public service. In addition to her extensive involvement in the State Bar of Texas and the American Bar Association, Ms. Miers has been an elected official, a statewide officeholder, and a strong advocate of pro bono work.

During her time in the Administration, Ms. Miers has addressed numerous legal and policy questions at the highest levels of decision making, most recently serving as the Counsel to the President of the United States.

From where I sit, no matter what kind of anti-Bush partisan politics the Democrats, snivelling under the leadership of their America hating socialist liberal masters offer up, Harriet Miers seems eminently qualified for the position of Associate Justice.

by @ 12:41 pm. Filed under The Court

July 20, 2005

SCOTUS Nominee

Last night, President Bush nominated John G. Roberts to replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O’Connor on the Supreme Court.

President Bush nominated federal appeals court judge John G. Roberts Jr. to the Supreme Court, choosing a candidate with a long enough history in conservative legal circles to delight Republicans and an affable demeanor and short paper trail that could make him hard for liberals to attack.


 


Naturally, women’s groups are already beginning to carp that the President didn’t choose a woman to replace O’Connor, but look: Bush has already proven that he picks the people, regardless of gender or race, that he feels are the best for respective jobs. Here, he has another major consideration as well, and as the first paragraph in the Wall Street Journal article quoted above says, he needed also to consider whom he figures has the best chance of getting through the confirmation process with its inherent hostile Democrats. The short paper trail, as pointed out, gives the Democrats less ammo for turning the process into the same kind of three ring circus they’ve turned all other such transactions into of late. Sure, they’ll still pull the same obstructionist bullshit they have been, but the President apparently believes they’ll have a much harder time finding material to use against Roberts.

Roberts has, in the past, stated that he is anti-abortion, but when later queried, he said that since Roe vs Wade is the law, it is to be observed as such. Roe vs Wade is one of the liberals’ largest concerns, the right to murder fetuses under the dubious “scientific” pretense that they are not yet human life.

I suppose that all we can do now is sit back and see what the Dems will hit the nominee with to try to throw yet another stumbling block in the president’s way.

Read the article here.


  

by @ 1:02 pm. Filed under The Court

July 9, 2005

I Told You So

On 1 July 2005, I posted my thought about the probability that Chief Justice William Rehnquist would be retiring at around the same time as Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, triggering a judicial circus for the left. It would appear that I was right, even though so many other bloggers and a lot of media venues seemed to avoid dwelling upon such a scenario.

As I said, the liberal/Dems will have an obstructionist’s field day.

Trust me, they won’t have even an iota of patriotism in their veins, they’ll let the requirements of their War On Bush dictate their actions as ”politics first, America second” traitors are apt to do….

by @ 10:22 pm. Filed under The Court