George Will on Harriet Meirs (figuratively, of course)

Good ol' George Will has taken Bush to task on his selection of Harriet Meiers to the U.S. Supreme Court. In his column (click on the title of this post to read the column) he sets out three "starting points" for the Senate to keep in mind as it looks forward to the confirmation hearings:

"First, it is not important that she be confirmed. Second, it might be very important that she not be. Third, the presumption -- perhaps rebuttable but certainly in need of rebutting -- should be that her nomination is not a defensible exercise of presidential discretion to which senatorial deference is due."

Better yet, he all but calls W too dumb to be permitted to make decisions that might involve the Constitution, when he says:

"The president's "argument" for her amounts to: Trust me. There is no reason to, for several reasons.

"He has neither the inclination nor the ability to make sophisticated judgments about competing approaches to construing the Constitution. Few presidents acquire such abilities in the course of their pre-presidential careers, and this president particularly is not disposed to such reflections."

That's the nicest way I have ever heard anybody call anybody else "dumb."

As for Meirs herself, Will suggests that:

"If 100 such people had been asked to list 100 individuals who have given evidence of the reflectiveness and excellence requisite in a justice, Miers's name probably would not have appeared in any of the 10,000 places on those lists."

I can understand appointing someone with no judicial experience to the Supreme Court, if that person had some body of work (courtroom or academic) that reflected a solid and in-depth understanding of the Constitution and constitutional law. Meiers has no such experience and no relevant body of work upon which the Senate (or the people) can make an informed decision. She was a corporate lawyer at the Texas law firm of Locke, Liddell & Sapp (note that many "corporate" lawyers have never seen the inside of a courtroom), on some city council, president of the Texas Bar Association, and is nice. Yippee.

But I have to agree with Will here - there are at least 10,000 more-qualified candidates than this woman. There are certainly many, many more qualified conservative candidates.

Speaking of which, this strikes me as kinda funny. W has insisted that he would appoint candidates who share the judicial philosophy of Justice Antonin Scalia. Now, as far as I can tell, the only other human being who intentionally chooses to think like Scalia is William F. Buckley (Justice Clarence Thomas doesn't count - at least not until he demonstrates an ability to think for himself rather than be Scalia's lap dog). So far, nobody Bush has appointed is like Scalia - not even a little bit. Thus, this raises an obvious question that I have never heard asked: Does George Bush know who Antonin Scalia is? Has Bush ever actually read a Supreme Court opinion, much less one of Scalia's "the other judges on this Court are stupid assholes" dissents?