Things are
so bad, the best option for Karl Rove now would be to get himself
indicted. Then at least he'd have a colorable claim to having
no involvement in the Miers nomination.
This week's
Miers update is:
(1) Miers
is a good bowler (New York Times, Oct. 16, 2005, front
page — Joshua B. Bolten, director of the Office of Management
and Budget: "'She is a very good bowler"), which, in
all honesty, is the most impressive thing I've heard about Miers
so far;
(2) In 1989,
she supported a ban on abortion except to save the life of the
mother.
From the
beginning of this nightmare, I have taken it as a given that Miers
will vote to overturn Roe v. Wade. I assume that's why
Bush nominated her. (It certainly wasn't her resume.) Pity no
one told him there are scads of highly qualified judicial nominees
who would also have voted against Roe. Wasn't it Harriet
Miers' job to tell him that? Hey, wait a minute ...
But without
a conservative theory of constitutional interpretation, Miers
will lay the groundwork for a million more Roes. We're
told she has terrific "common sense." Common sense is
the last thing you want in a judge! The maxim "Hard cases
make bad law" could be expanded to "Hard cases being
decided by judges with 'common sense' make unfathomably bad law."
It was "common
sense" to allow married couples to buy contraception in Connecticut.
That was a decision any randomly selected group of nine good bowlers
might well have concurred with on the grounds that, "Well,
it's just common sense, isn't it?"
But when
the Supreme Court used common sense — rather than the text
of the Constitution — to strike down Connecticut's law banning
contraception, it opened the door to the Supreme Court rewriting
all manner of state laws. By creating a nonspecific "right
to privacy," Griswold v. Connecticut led like night
into day to the famed "constitutional right" to stick
a fork in a baby's head.
This isn't
rank speculation about where "common sense" devoid of
constitutional theory gets you: Miers told Sen. Arlen Specter
she would have voted with the majority in Griswold.
(Miers also
told Sen. Patrick Leahy — in front of witnesses —
that her favorite justice was "Warren," leaving people
wondering whether she meant former Chief Justice Earl Warren,
memorialized in "Impeach Warren" billboards across America,
or former Chief Justice Warren Burger, another mediocrity praised
for his "common sense" who voted for Roe v. Wade
and was laughed at by Rehnquist clerks like John Roberts for his
lack of ability.)
The sickness
of what liberals have done to America is that so many citizens
— even conservative citizens — seem to believe the
job of a Supreme Court justice entails nothing more than "voting"
on public policy issues. The White House considers it relevant
to tell us Miers' religious beliefs, her hobbies, her hopes and
dreams. She's a good bowler! A stickler for detail! Great dancer!
Makes her own clothes!
That's nice
for her, but what we're really in the market for is a constitutional
scholar who can forcefully say, "No — that's not my
job."
We've been
waiting 30 years to end the lunacy of nine demigods on the Supreme
Court deciding every burning social issue of the day for us, loyal
subjects in a judicial theocracy. We don't want someone who will
decide those issues for us — but decide them "our"
way. If we did, a White House bureaucrat with good horse sense
might be just the ticket.
Admittedly,
there isn't much that's more important than ending the abortion
holocaust in America. (Abortionist casualties: 7; Unborn casualties
30 million.) But there is one thing. That is democracy.
Democracy
sometimes leads to silly laws such as the one that prohibited
married couples from buying contraception in Connecticut. But
allowing Americans to vote has never led to creches being torn
down across America. It's never led to prayer being purged from
every public school in the nation. It's never led to gay marriage.
It's never led to returning slaves who had escaped to free states
to their slavemasters. And it's never led to 30 million dead babies.
We've gone
from a representative democracy to a monarchy, and the most appalling
thing is — even conservatives just hope like the dickens
the next king is a good one.
