Patterico's Pontifications

10/12/2005

Staffers Oppose Miers

Filed under: Judiciary — Patterico @ 12:31 pm



From the New York Times:

As the White House seeks to rally senators behind the Supreme Court nomination of Harriet E. Miers, lawyers for the Republican senators on the Judiciary Committee are expressing dissatisfaction with the choice and pushing back against her, aides to 6 of the 10 Republican committee members said yesterday.

“Everybody is hoping that something will happen on Miers, either that the president would withdraw her or she would realize she is not up to it and pull out while she has some dignity intact,” a lawyer to a Republican committee member said.

All the Republican staff members insisted on anonymity for fear of retaliation from their supervisors and from the Senate leaders.

Hugh Hewitt says:

Very nice. Committee staffers are often very bright, and superb politicos, unless they are simply the grandchildren of rich donors. There are brilliant staffers, and there are copy machine staffers. Some went to law school and excelled there, some have clerked on high or even the highest courts. Others have never worked a day in the private sector on behalf of a client. The incredible disloyalty they are showing in this instance to their bosses, the Committee, the nominee and, yes, the president, is not surprising, but disheartening. In fact, if they acted without the authorization of their Member, they will have violated the Canons of Ethics of the Bar. A small matter for some, no doubt, but call me old school.

And responding to one anonymous staffer’s criticism of Miers’s resume, Hewitt says:

I can say with complete certainty that there isn’t one staffer –not one– on the Judiciary Committee with a resume as accomplished as that. I can also say with certainty that if a month ago, Harriet Miers had offered any lawyer on the Committee’s staff the position of Associate Counsel to the President –the most prestigious law practice in the world, the Washington Post once called it– nine out of ten would have accepted. Note to the file: Many of the GOP staffers of the Judicary Committee cannot be trusted.

Pretty personal. Mike Krempasky comments:

I think Hugh Hewitt is being unfair to the Judiciary Cmte staff. I know a lot of folks that gave up ridiculously lucrative jobs in firms to take jobs on the Hill – or at Justice – or at the White House. In fact, I know some that were on the path to partner that left firms because they believed in the White House and its efforts to push the conservative legal movement. And yes – you better believe some of those folks are despondent.

I think his crack about 9 or 10 taking a White House Counsel job if they were offered is so off-point as to wonder why he made it. Just because they’re earlier in their legal careers than Ms. Miers really doesn’t warrant Hugh’s dig. Further, making hay of Ms. Miers on the “front lines of a five year war with the left” ignores the fact that much of the Senate Judiciary staff have been in the very same trenches.

Of course, the views of staffers probably will not translate into votes against Miers. Staffers have the luxury of reaching their opinions based primarily on principles. To Senators, principle is but one part in the calculus — and for some, it’s a very small part indeed.

So while this is nice to hear, it doesn’t change my pessimistic opinion that Miers will be confirmed.

16 Responses to “Staffers Oppose Miers”

  1. What canon is he talking about?

    I don’t think that senators are considered the clients of their staffers, and even if they are, I don’t think that making adverse political statements is doing something adverse to your representation or confidentiality.

    But hey, all of us who oppose Miers are unethical, sexist, anti-evangelical elitists, am I right?

    Angry Clam (fa7fff)

  2. For once since the Miers nomination was announced, I agree with Hugh, at least on the issues of the staffers’s trustworthiness and whether they should speak publicly on the nomination, especially if the comment is only identified to “a staffer” rather than to a particular staffer by name. The staffers are entitled to their own opinions, but I assume they realize that theyalso have a duty to keep their mouths shut if they can’t speak without their comments being attributed to the staff. A staffer can speak privately, or he or she can resign and then speak publicly and anonymously, or maybe he or she can speak publicly without the protection of anonymity and then try to convince the boss that the comments haven’t really done any harm and aren’t really attributable to anyone but the named staffer (NFW, obviously).

    Btw, Hugh is sticking to his story, and grasping at straws to support it. He had Mark Levin on his show yesterday, and Levin got the better of him — it wasn’t even close. He called Hugh on an argument that Hugh’s been pushing lately, presumably because there really isn’t much else for him to hang on to — it’s the one that says Miers will be reliably conservative on the court because like Scalia and Thomas, her pre-Court experience included a stint inside the Beltway, battling on the front lines against liberals, while the justices who slid leftward never had that sort of experience to sharpen their conservative outlook. Hugh should know better than this. The judges that don’t prove to be unpleasant surprises aren’t the ones who are so definitely conservative we know they’ll never succumb to the temptation of to become a liberal; it’s the ones for whom their political outlook is irrelevant to their judicial philosophy who remain consistent. Show me a pro-choice political liberal (just for example) who would vote to reverse Roe on grounds that abortion rights aren’t guaranteed by the Constitution and therefore should be determined by state legislatures, and I’ll show you a justice whose judicial philosophy will continue to direct his or her votes and reasoning, regardless of preferred policy. Could we please hear something that will tell us whether Miers would be that kind of justice?

    TNugent (58efde)

  3. Ted,

    Suppose they support abortion rights on the basis of the IXth Ammendment such as Instapundit does.

    Or suppose they took a more principled stand and said medicine was none of the Federal Government’s business? It would be the end of the FDA, the DEA, etc. except as advisory organizations.

    M. Simon (15c61c)

  4. Wow. Now I know exactly how left-wingnut Democrats felt when they knew in their hearts that Roberts would be confirmed. The empathy is choking me.

    Bench (7df803)

  5. Remember, this is the NEW YORK TIMES we are all this to do is depending on for a true account. What staffers, how many did they talk to, etc.? Not worth fighting for when you are depending on the NYT on what they said.

    Ruth H (263733)

  6. One really has to laugh at how these staffers and lawyer-run blogs imply that Supreme Court justice is a supremely difficult job. The roles of counsel to the President of the United States, head of the Texas Bar, and head of some huge Texas lawfirm are laughed at. Look at the fine credentials of judges who have written the supremely stupid opinions to see how valuable credentials are. Lawyers trying to convince the public that judging is such a difficult task reminds me of those interviews on Entertainment Tonight where some movie star talks about how difficult acting *really* is.

    Shredstar (532850)

  7. M. Simon, I’m not buying any argument that finds a Constitutionally guaranteed individual abortion right in the 9th amendment, unless it’s extremely limited — that is, a right to abortion existing at a time during pregnancy when there can be no reasonable disagreement as to whether the abortion right outweighs the state’s interest in protecting the life of the fetus. You know, pretty much never, unless the life of the mother is at risk by continuing the pregnancy. But there’s a strong argument that amendments IX and X do reserve to the people, through their elected state governments, the right to pass laws that deal with abortion rights, or anything else not within the scope of the powers expressly granted to the national government by the Constitution and those clearly implied to enable the exercise of the expressly granted powers. Conjuring an individual abortion right from the 9th amendment is just another version of policy-first then backfill with something that can be passed off as analysis later construction of the Constitution. In other words, the same thing that Blackmun did in Roe.

    There are reasons why the strained constructions of the constitution to apply the Bill of Rights to the States almost always end up doing so through the due process clause of the 14th amendment — it’s not that it works, it’s just that every other approach is even more of a stretch. The problems with the 9th and 10th amendments as a medium through which the emanating penumbras can eclipse state sovereignty include the really difficult one of explaining why the representatives of the pre-1787 independent sovereign states, concerned about surrendering too much power to the central government, would have made that central government the hall monitor for the States’ treatment of their own citizens. It just doesn’t make any sense. The better approach is to just be content with the idea of dual sovereignty, the federal government and state government, each within its own sphere. The constitution wasn’t intended to be the primary guarantor of liberty; rather, it was intended to be a framework for republican government, and it is that government that’s supposed to be the guarantor of liberty. If you don’t give it too much to do, it serves that purpose very well, without becoming a threat to individual rights. And if the state you live in happens to adopt policies you don’t like, you can always move to another State. The P&I clause guarantees that much.

    Regarding DEA and FDA . . . I’m sure some of what they do isn’t properly described as regulating the practice of medicine, but is really the regulation of interstate commerce in drugs. Let them continue to do that.

    TNugent (6128b4)

  8. I like Hewitt and all, but the more I listen to him on this issue, the more he sounds like he’s ready to have David Frum turn up in Mexico with an ice pick sticking out of him. I mean, really, what canon of ethics says Senate staffers can’t leak to the press? That’s almost as bizarre as the people calling in to accuse Rush Limbaugh of being a pointy-headed elitist. If I’d dedicated the last several years of my life to being a GOP Judiciary Committee staffer, I’d feel like Bush had just given the “execute Order 66” command myself.

    Crank (3fed2a)

  9. Dunno who’s heard about it, but it sounds like Mehlman’s defence of Miers today was … well, non-existent, consisting of cooing noises. He prob made things worse by avoiding all substance in his remarks.

    Well, maybe not all. He did concede that HM would have to recuse herself from certain WOT cases.

    So the only substantive pt he made was openly harmful to the nominee. I have to wonder if he was preparing a face-saving way to explain a withdrawal. If not, the man owes HM a huge apology for his non-performance.

    ras (f9de13)

  10. Ruth-

    The Washington Times, a very conservative newspaper, ran an almost identical article today.

    Republican staffers, lawyers, and activists all hate Miers- it isn’t a controversy being cooked up by the media.

    Angry Clam (a7c6b1)

  11. I like how Hewitt is using the staffers lack of impressive credentials to dismiss their conerns as he complains that people who oppose Miers are elitist. Can’t pundits recognize when they are being hypocrites?

    kim m (9e7a54)

  12. I’m about fed up with these GOP bully boys and their asinine attempts to shut down any voice opposed to the Miers nomination.

    If Hugh Hewitt wants to embarrass himself, show his ass, then let him do it. It’s not my naked rear end hanging out in the cold wind.

    If GWB can’t see how wrong the Miers nomination is by now, perhaps he never will. If that’s the case, we are better off knowing it right now.

    Black Jack (ee9fe2)

  13. Black Jack,

    I don’t recall them calling you “asinine” or a “bully boy.” Easy there, big guy, however important this is, it’s still a debate and contrary opinions are all a part of it.

    And there’s lotsa good pts still to be made: Over on another group, for ex, we’re kinda wondering why Mehlman raised the recusal issue. He said that HM would have to sit out various WOT cases.

    Was he setting up a face-saver in case a withdrawal becomes necessary? Would a Justice Miers really have to sit out the WOT issues? In any event, it’s still one hell of an issue.

    ras (f9de13)

  14. “Copy machine staffers”? Considering that’s Hewitt’s role vis-a-vis the Bush Administration — copying crap with a smile on his face — he knows of what he speaks.

    The Pathetic Earthling (08c01e)

  15. So now the rule is that only people who have the credentials to be Supreme Court justices can criticize potential Supreme Court justices for their lack of credentials? Does this work when I hire a plumber, too?

    Agricola (62c122)

  16. ras,

    You can do a little better, usually you do. I enjoy your perspective and your comments are often well thought out and worthy of consideration. But not this time. Obviously, you don’t read my posts or you would know I’ve been calling for open debate. I apologize if my language is too salty for your taste. I’ll try to do better.

    However, if GOP bully boys keep trying to silence critics of the Miers nomination by resorting to the sort of finger pointing and name calling characteristic of a Clinton style attack on some poor woman he’s abused, well, I don’t see how that encourages folks with “contrary opinions” to express themselves.

    By now everyone with the sense god gave little green apples ought to be able to grasp how asinine the decision to nominate Miers has been. However, inexplicably, there are those who continue to support her nomination and some even go beyond that to say opposition to Miers is opposition to GWB. And, that just ain’t necessarily so.

    True, I have avoided getting into extraneous matters like speculations on what issues a Justice Miers might or might not be able to participate in because that not only takes the focus off her lack of preparedness for SCOTUS, but also assumes her confirmation. A result I am unwilling to grant. Door to door salesmen call it the “presumptive close,” and I’m not buying.

    Black Jack (ee9fe2)


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