the spineless seven argue otherwise.

Look, I don’t care if she votes identically with how I would vote in every single case to ever come before her.

Then your priorities are way out of whack. We already have Justices Scalia and Thomas, who frequently write excellent dissents. A third Scalia or Thomas would be great, but far from essential. What is essential is the votes to turn Scalia/Thomas dissents into majority opinions.

Proper voting is only part of the equation- Justices must also be able to intellectually lead the lower courts and the public at large toward their constitutional vision.

Some must, but all nine needn’t. We’ve already got the two I mentioned, and Roberts may well be a leader as well. I can do without the “leadership” of Justices O’Connor and Kennedy, and the other four have shown almost no leadership at all. And frankly, I wouldn’t care if those four didn’t consistently vote the wrong way.

Some middle of the pack SMU graduate cum Jesus loving fundie isn’t going to do that. If that’s elitist, well, tough shit. The Supreme Court is an elite institution.

It’s also a crock of shit, but FWIW I suppose you could argue that the Supreme Court is a crock of shit institution.

The fact remains that everything in her record suggests that she is an intellectual lightweight not suited for the highest court in the land.

Proper voting is only part of the equation- Justices must also be able to intellectually lead the lower courts and the public at large toward their constitutional vision.

Some middle of the pack SMU graduate cum Jesus loving fundie isn’t going to do that. If that’s elitist, well, tough shit. The Supreme Court is an elite institution.

A question. Is Ginsberg a Judicial or Policy Liberal?

What some of use are starting to think is that this appointment stinks on principle but may really have have the smell of a good solution politically.

I prefer principle but I’m not going to object if the results yeild some balance until Stevens and Ginsberg are gone.

If you mean that Miers will win confirmation, of course she will. But I think that will be a defeat for judicial conservatives, who could have easily won a victory with someone like Luttig.

Don’t understand your comment.

Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory?

Irony, thou hast an avatar.

Dafydd

But as I mentioned in the prior thread, I can actually envision a scenario - even if I don’t think it’s the most likely one - in which Miers was exactly the right choice. Suppose she really is the strict constructionist Bush says she is. I don’t know that, you don’t know that, but Bush himself presumably does. Now suppose further that she’s actually more judicially conservative than anyone on your A+ list, mine, the Tourettes-stricken Clam’s, or anyone else’s, and also less likely to “grow” on the job. Suppose further that the only reason Bush didn’t originally name her as O’Connor’s replacement is because she’s so goddamned conservative he thought for sure she’d be “super-borked.” Then the idiot Senate minority leader comes by and says “philosphy, schmilosphy, me likes her. Please consider appointing her, if only to make me feel more … included.” To which a savvy Bush replies “Oh … all right. If you insist.”

By the time this strict constructionist has been on the bench long enough for the idiot Senator to figure out what he’s done, it’s far too late to do anything about it. A few years later, appointment number three comes around, and Bush pulls someone from the short list we’d all hoped he’d pull from this time. Now the Dems have nowhere to go. How can they filibuster a conservative like Garza, Brown or whoever over issues where they’re relatively moderate by comparison to the Justice they did vote to confirm? [I know, the same way anybody justified voting against John Roberts, blah blah blah...]

Not saying any of this will happen, or even that it will probably happen - only that it might.

But, more importantly, Democrats controlled the Senate when Robert Bork was defeated.

Well, sort of. Southern Democrats from the 1980s are called Southern Republicans now, and one RINO from the 1980s now pretends to be an independent, but I’m not sure how much has really changed beyond that.