You see them in most big cities, but I’ve never seen nearly as many of these tragedies in the making anyplace else as I have here in San Francisco.

They are young people between the ages of perhaps sixteen and twenty six and generally come in one of three “looks”: frayed Gothic wannabe, often completely concealed within a mire of tattoos and face-pierce jewelry, “wish it was still the late Sixties” hippie wannabe and “wish this was ten years before I was born” punk wannabe.

Here in the liberals’ Mecca, they are to be found sitting along the sidewalks on Market Street, giving the appearance of being in their own living rooms, often entertaining their street colleagues, eating, getting high, panhandling and bumming cigarettes, or doing the same thing up in Haight Ashbury. They leave the trappings of any meals or liquid party materials right there on the sidewalk when they get up to leave, because the local socialist attitude has indoctrinated them into the mindset that everybody else is their mother and father.

While in most cities, purely in the interests of what former New York Mayor Rudi Giuliani used to call maintaining “quality of life,” charges such as mendicancy , obstructing the sidewalk and littering(as a ticket) would be among those applied by arresting officers on the beat. In San Francisco, however, these young people enjoy two benefits, one being that they are accorded the “human right” to be both eyesore and irritant without hindrance, the other that the jails here are well beyond being merely overcrowded and the locals are much too worshipful of their real estate bubble to want to “waste” valuable land on anything as unprofitable as detention facilities.

So here we have these kids who sit there, stay stoned and drunk and produce nothing, not only for others, but for themselves.

To digress briefly, mostly for any younger readers who weren’t around back in the 1960s and 1970s, back then, before the Internet and its provision of easy access to information, before the tidal wave of immigration brought on by lifted quotas, before living costs spiralled out of control as they have in many cities and before the workplace again became an employer’s market, there was a lot of elbow room for young people who wanted to be lazy and utterly nonproductive for a few years. Getting a job, even one in a corporate environment, was a piece of cake.

You looked in the employment section of the newspaper{what we once called the “want ads” and where there were always scores of job openings of every description, hungry to be filled}, found some jobs you liked the sound of, made some calls on your rotary dial telephone, put on a suit — there was this respect thing back in the day, you see — went down, filled out this sheet of paper called an “application”, resumes were nice, but not as necessary as they are today for most jobs, got interviewed a few minutes later and, if the interviewer liked what he/she “saw”, you were working within a couple of days. And you were “in”, you could work hard and build up a track record qualifying you for better paying jobs with other firms, or a strong future with the one you were at. You could leave and then rejoin “the establishment” at will.

Back then, let’s say you took home $125.00 a week. You could easily find a nice one bedroom apartment renting for $175.00 a month and cover your telephone and utility bills, buy food, hygiene items, clothes and other necessities and maintain a modest social life. There were no ISPs, cellular phone or cable companies sending any bills, until HBO arrived on the scene nearer the end of the era than the beginning.

Back to today: No way! Ours has become an unforgiving society where the marketplace is concerned, because there’s simply too much competition for every job and a prospective employer can afford to discard job candidates for a paucity of cause. Lengthy gaps in employment histories are examined, and references are thoroughly checked. Many employers even want credit references these days. People want to review resumes before they schedule interviews. It’s a whole new ball game.

So we’ve got those young people on the street out there, trying to enjoy a kind of lifestyle that ran its course before they were born, paying no attention to the consequences they will face when they suddenly wake up in their late twenties, looking to straighten their lives out.

A fortunate few will make out, but most of them will be the aging homeless of an even less forgiving tomorrow, among them the idiots who think it’s cool to have tattoos on their faces.

One of those guys who wear all black, much in need of washing, sport too many tats and use their faces for open-air jewelry boxes whom I estimated at about twenty three years of age, asked me for “a dollar” a few years ago.

“Why don’t you get a job?” I asked.

“I’m lazy.” He replied with a smirk.

“Good for you.” I said and kept on walking. Asshat!

When he’s “catching his rattling last breath with deep sea diver sounds”{a little Tull, there} on a filthy length of sidewalk someplace in another twenty someodd years, I hope he still remembers how to smirk.

The socialist political environment in a liberal city, where the ACLU rules the roost, enables these clueless doomed “children” to rejoice, unencumbered, in their quest to become the next generation of derelict lifers — the homeless, after all, are a large cash crop for liberal interests. The more, the merrier.

I’ve long since become accustomed to the fact that the Mainstream Media grinds its liberal political axe without a shred of reportorial ethics, conscience nor any ambition to provide the public with any kind of factual, unbiased reporting. Anything, no matter how trivial, that may cast any kind of positive light on anything Bush, for example, seems to be a non-event, never happened, while anything, again no matter how trivial, that may cast any kind of negative light on anything Bush becomes an epic parade of headlines and feature stories, half the time delivered with such rabid enthusiasm that the so-called journalists and the columnists who feed off them don’t even bother taking the time to confirm their information.

We’ve all seen that, and seen some of the leftist reporters responsible who’ve been caught out lose their positions, thrown to the wolves by the same editors and upper management people that encouraged their irresponsible “reporting” to begin with, in order to save their own skins. We’ve seen the media respond to a still unfounded charge that American soldiers flushed a Koran down a commode at Camp Delta with a major onslaught that brought references to the Soviet gulags, to Nazi concentration camps and even the killing fields of the Pol Pot regime, and the media jumped on all of it with relish, like a bunch of slobbering, undisciplined pre-adolescents..

Leftist twits like the NYT’s Maureen Dowd bent over backwards to make the American public believe that the Bush Administration and our soldiers were no better than Saddam, who tortured, terrorized, oppressed and murdered his own citizens as a matter of policy.

Despite all the evidence that glares blatantly from MSM newspapers and evening reports, editorials and Op Ed columns, liberals will actually look you in the eye and claim there is no media bias or actually go so far as to say, still looking you in the eye, by gum, that the MSM is right wing biased.

So-called “news” from the N.Y. Times, S.F. Chronicle, Washington Post, L.A. Times, etc, CBS,NBC, ABC, CNN, NPR and other liberal sources would have us believe we are being trounced in Iraq, for example, that everything happening over there is negative, that the Iraqi people feel we’ve occupied their country for colonial purposes, we’re there for the oil and so on, and so on. Whenever an American soldier dies in combat or from a terrorist car bomb, RPG-7 grenade or IED, he or she is added to a death count intended to show America that we are in some kind of quagmire, “another Vietnam.”

In truth, we are beating the hell out of the insurgents over there, driving down their numbers faster than they can replace those that Coalition and Iraqi forces capture or kill. We have helped open schools so that now thousands of Iraqi children are being educated where many could not enjoy educations before. There is a successful Iraqi stock exchange in Baghdad, newspapers are flourishing as the Iraqi people embrace their newfound right to freedom of speech. We have been training Iraqi police and military forces with a great degree of success, and these forces are working as counterparts with our own. As they become seasoned, adequately staffed and prepared to do their jobs independently, we will begin withdrawing our own forces and allowing them to take over.

In today’s Opinion Journal’s Review & Outlook, some good observations are made regarding a letter sent from bin Laden’s XO, Ayman al-Zawahiri to al-Qaeda’s Iraq commander, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi that was obtained this past Summer and whose contents were just released.

The letter in its entirety is here.

This link is included within this column, titled Zawahiri’s Lament.

Those who want a premature U.S. withdrawal from Iraq will now have to explain why that won’t play into the hands–and plans–of the enemy. Zawahiri makes it quite clear that al Qaeda’s ambitions extend well beyond the borders of any one country. The goal is a fundamentalist Islamic regime that begins in Iraq, extends into the neighboring secular nations of the region, assaults Israel and moves on from there. And yes, he uses the word “caliphate.”

The tone of the letter makes it quite obvious that Zawahiri is not a happy camper, that he’s watching the extremist tactics employed by his people in Iraq work against them, both in the media battle that seems to have become as big a part of both sides’ campaigns as the fighting itself, and in the more localized effects of the wanton bombings, the beheadings and other terrorist strategies being employed by the Islamofascist butchers in Iraq.

As for the Sunnis, he urges Zarqawi to cast a wider net–an implicit admission that he’s worried about Sunnis who have been showing signs of interest in the democratic political process unfolding there. Afghanistan–and the Islamic democracy emerging in that nation–is his worst nightmare. “We don’t want to repeat the mistake of the Taliban, who restricted participation in governance to the students and the people of Kandahar alone,” he says. “The result was that the Afghan people disengaged themselves from them. Even devout ones took the stance of the spectator and when the invasion came, the emirate collapsed in days, because the people were either passive or hostile.”

Later in the editorial,,

Amid these lamentations, however, one area emerges about which the terror commander exudes great confidence: the media. The lesson he learned from Vietnam is that “more than half of the battle is taking place on the battlefield of the media.” He clearly wants to use the media, in the U.S. and in the Arab world, to induce the U.S. to pull out of Iraq and default a position of strength to al Qaeda.
He actually worries about the possibility that Zarqawi will blow victory on the media battlefield: Toward this end, he gently urges Zarqawi to discontinue his habit of beheading hostages, suggesting that perhaps instead he could just shoot them. “We are in a media race for . . . hearts and minds,” he writes.

It would seem the lesson of Vietnam is featured prominently in the terrorist handbooks: The Americans’ greatest weakness is their liberal media. Beat them in the MSM, you beat them at war, no matter what the physical realities are.

The long Zawahiri letter is a rough roadmap of the strategic vision for al Qaeda’s intentions in Iraq and the global jihad. If it has a familiar ring, that’s because George Bush has been warning the world about it for several years.

Some excellent commentary on the letter can be found at Sister Toldjah!, and Howie at The Jawa Report offers another perspective — be sure to follow the link in his post.

But to cut to the chase, we are winning in Iraq and in the Global War on Terror in general, not only in terms of killing the enemy but also in terms of winning the hearts and minds of the people in the regions in which we operate. It’s just too bad that the MSM, for partisan political reasons, continues to lie to the public in their shameful crusade to discredit President Bush.

The remarkable Michael Yon, a civilian journalist who had been blogging from within the ranks of the 1st Battalion, 24th Infantry Regiment{the Deuce Four} in Iraq via his newsmagazine until its tour recently ended, is now heading into a new embed. Read his latest post here.
A single column by Michael Yon is more informative where the war in Iraq is concerned than six months’ worth of the New York Times and CNN combined.

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.

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?

There are tens of millions of Americans who obtain all their news from the liberal media, and they include people who vote Republican as well as those who vote Democrat.

The onslaught of criticism of Bush for nominating Harriet Miers from within the ranks of the Republican party and conservative columnists and bloggers is beginning to make us look bad — all those back seat presidents elected Bush to the job and now want to micromanage him, all in the interests of their own intra-party political interests.

You are all giving the left the best promotion you can for their attempt to enlarge their base on Capitol Hill during the midterm elections. How? By sending a message to the voters that the Republican Party not only hasn’t any confidence in the judgement of the man we reelected to the job of our nation’s leader, but that we’re just as willing to crawl into the same politics-first quagmire occupied by the Democrats that has lost them so many elections these last several years.

And they are already exploiting the situation.

Some Senate Democrats are jumping in the middle of a Republican fray to defend Harriet Miers from conservative criticism that she isn’t qualified to serve on the Supreme Court.

That doesn’t mean Democrats will vote to approve President Bush’s longtime confidante for the high court or give her an easy time at a Senate confirmation hearing.

No, but they’ll make as many political points as they can defending her prior to the hearings, since their input will oppose the rhetoric of the “ultraconservative” anti-Miers crowd.

“All the trashing is coming from the right wing of the Republican Party,” Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, said in a conference call with reporters. “I really think it’s despicable what they’re doing.”

Yeah, let’s make a spectacle of ourselves, ladies and gentlemen, and let the left use it to help win back some seats in 2006, maybe even the White House in 2008. As a team, this makes us look like Charlie Brown’s All Stars.

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.

A couple of days ago, Michael at Flight Pundit tagged three people, including Romeocat, Mad Dog Vinnie and yours truly, to fill in the questionnaire below. Thank you, Michael, and may the bluebird of happiness….

Well, here are my responses:

5 things I plan to do before I die:
1. Own a cabin cruiser, 25 feet +
2. Spend at least 6 months in Israel
3. Get a few books published
4. Figure out how to use my digital camera
5. Make it to at least 1 Carnival in Rio

5 things I can do:
1. Successfully manage a business
2. Design an all-faceted, customized physical security environment
3. Professionally train physical security people
4. Royally irritate liberals(a habit I find difficult to break)
5. Shoot accurately with a rifle or pistol

5 things I cannot do:
1. Figure out all the little settings and doohickies on my digital camera{see “things to do,” above, #4}
2. Anything overly technical on a computer
3. Eat yogurt
4. Fly an airplane
5. Do the Macarena

5 things that attract me to the opposite sex:
1. Self confidence
2. Sexy eyes
3. Sexy lips
4. Real intelligence
5. Passionate about hobbies, interests, work

5 things I say most often:
1. Another day in Paradise!
2. La misma mierde, diferente dia (keeping in mind that I live in California)
3. What’s up?
4. Let’s talk about it over {lunch or} dinner at your favorite restaurant
5. But that’s NOT Uncle Sam’s JOB!

Yesterday was a tiring one, what with a six hour flight from Boston to San Francisco aboard a 757. I don’t know where that extra hour’s flying time came from, I haven’t seen any speed limit signs sticking out of passing clouds and using high fuel prices as an excuse won’t cut it because the slower you go, the more fuel efficiency you burn off.

I usually fly United, but this time I flew American, and I think I’ll stick with them in future travel. Six hours is a long time to be cooped up in an airplane any way you look at it. I was in 1st Class, and the purser and a flight attendant(a second one helping out during the meal service) made the long flight go quickly. The food{I had a steak with a pepper glaze and spinach mashed potatoes} was better than any previous cooked meals I’ve ever had on an airplane, they even cooked the steak to order, in my case light-medium rare. They were very forthcoming with wine, liquor, desserts and were constantly handing out things to eat.

Hats off to the TSA people at Logan!

Unlike their colleagues at O’Hare, Reagan National, Dulles and Orlando, these folks were real pros, both in their attitude and in the performance of their duties. Conversations with some of them revealed both healthy senses of humor mixed with total professionalism and more general intelligence than their coworkers at other airports.

And something else, which could only serve to support my complete admiration for the security staff at Logan — This is funny!

Some time before I left on my trip in early September, someone gave me a mini Victorinox{Swiss Army Knife}as a token gift or whatever, and I dropped it into my notebook’s carrying case and forgot about it. Naturally, that’s my one piece of carry-on luggage when I travel, and that Victorinox knife I’d forgotten existed passed through security at four airports, in my carry-on luggage, only to be discovered, finally, by the Transportation Security people at Logan!

There was no problem, we’d been having dialogue and understood we were on the same side, so I had no objection to their keeping it per their SOP. Hell, I didn’t even remember owning it, anyway.

I suppose that since Logan was the airport at which 9/11 hijackers boarded two of the four aircraft involved, there’s a certain amount of understandable “never again” attitude. One of the things that struck me as different in the TSA personnel at Logan was their easy way with people passing through their checkpoint. It flowed, and for me, well… I travel differently than many people in some ways that tend to earn me extra scrutiny… I won’t say why, because that would only give terrorists a useful look at another thing that might get one of them caught should one happen to read this blog. At any rate, even though such things are an inconvenience, the TSA people at Logan made it a smooth procedure(No, I don’t get strip searched or the rubber glove, get your mind the frick away from there!).
Another thing that amazed me at Logan was that they didn’t waste their time searching my suitcase. The lock is one of those that are made in a series to which the TSA has master keys. If you don’t have one of those, they’ll cut your lock if they decide they need to get in and look. My suitcase is an Atlantis, and they include a TSA lock.
The contents of my suitcase at any given time compose a quagmire, and at the tail end of my month-long trip, coming home, we’re talking major chaos. At most other airports that my bag’s been checked, I afterward found the obligatory notice from the TSA inside that they’d searched it. At Logan they didn’t, probably because their government security crew knows what they’re looking at when they look at an X-ray of a piece of luggage.

I didn’t have a whole lot of time for reading anything on line — as soon as I got home, I went back out to buy coffee and other basic necessities, since then most of my time has been spent going through a month’s worth of mail of the USPS, UPS and FedEx variety, and we’re talking a lot.

So this morning, before hitting the rack as I will soon, I’ve been exploring a few of my favorite blogs.

In the Eminent Domain Strikes Again Department, Ogre’s Politics And Views details an ongoing example of the deterioration, due to corruption and government policy supported by the Supreme Court, of our American right to own property in our country.

Sister Toldjah! links us to Michael Yon in another example of the human compassion within our military forces that you won’t read about in the liberal Mainstream Media.

Debbie Schlussel talks about a complete waste of skin named Josh Rushing.

Me? I’m about ready for some serious slumber, so I’m saying goodnight for now, and “Ah’ll be bock!”

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?

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.

During my perusal of today’s Jewish World Review, I came upon this oh-so-true column by the great Mark Steyn about the lameness of today’s media, and thought I should share it. It’s titled Media Deserves Blame For New Orleans Debacle, but it doesn’t stop there.

The facts they put in front of us were wrong, and they didn’t talk truth to power. They talked to goofs in power, like New Orleans’ Mayor Nagin and Police Chief Compass, and uncritically fell for every nutso yarn they were peddled. The media swallowed more bilge than if they’d been lying down with their mouths open as the levee collapsed. Ten thousand dead! Widespread rape and murder! A 7-year-old gang-raped and then throat-slashed! It was great stuff — and none of it happened. No gang-raped 7-year-olds. None.

More?

Four years ago, you’ll recall, we were bogged down in “the brutal Afghan winter.” By “we,” I don’t mean the military but the media. The line on Afghanistan was that it was the white man’s grave. Actually, it was the grave that was white; the man was more of a blueish color thanks to temperatures “so cold that eyelids crust and saliva turns to sludge in the mouth,” according to Knight-Ridder’s Tom Ifield. “Realistically,” reported New York’s Daily News, “U.S. forces have a window of two or three weeks before the brutal Afghan winter begins to foreclose options.”

Er, no. “Realistically,” U.S. forces turned out to have a window of four years, which is how long they’ve been waiting for the “fast, fast approaching” (ABC’s ”Nightline”) brutal Afghan winter to show up. It’s Knight-Ridder’s news reports that turn to sludge on your lips. The “brutal Afghan winter” is a media fiction.

Go ahead, read the entire column. Next time you open up the New York Times, whose online version is now charging a subscription fee to read their op-ed’s or special features, the L.A. Times, the Washington Post or any other MSM newspapers, watch CNN, CBS, ABC, or NBC news shows, think about Steyn’s column, then wonder how much truth you’re reading vs how much fiction.

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.

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.