Nomination

Tom Sowell:

"When it comes to taking on a tough fight with the Senate Democrats over judicial nominations, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist doesn't really have a majority to lead. Before the President nominated anybody, before he even took the oath of office for his second term, Senator Arlen Specter was already warning him not to nominate anyone who would rile up the Senate. Later, Senator John Warner issued a similar warning. It sounded like a familiar Republican strategy of pre-emptive surrender.

Before we can judge how the President played his hand, we have to consider what kind of hand he had to play. It was a weak hand -- and the weakness was in the Republican Senators.

Does this mean that Harriet Miers will not be a good Supreme Court justice if she is confirmed? It is hard to imagine her being worse than Sandra Day O'Connor -- or even as bad."

I haven't decided yet what I think of the President's latest Court nomination. I do tend to agree with Sowell that the President has taken on many tough issues, and that the Senate Republicans have, as a group, shown less than stellar leadership.

On the other hand, being told that this nominee shares the President's judicial philosophy, that she is an evangelical Christian supported by people who seem only interested in 1 issue (Roe v. Wade), and that she is a strict constructionist, doesn't really lead me to support the nomination. I want to know what she says about: the commerce clause, the meaning of necessary and proper, whether the 9th and 10 amendments have been redacted from her copy of the Constitution, if she thinks Congress's power to tax is unconstrained, and if she thinks "public use" = "public purpose." If she doesn't have my understanding of the words in the Constitution, then the reasons I hear in the public debate in support of her nomination mean nothing to me.