Found On The Corner

by AltHippo

comments

1. “We’ve all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true.”
   Robert Wilensky

   I do feel bad for Harriet Miers, though. Who and what she is has now been totally lost from a “current events” perspective, and perhaps to history as a whole, because she’s standing in the ongoing disaster area that is the Shrub’s blast radius.

   —StealthBadger • 10:06 pm

2. And I find it totally creepy ( well amusing, actually :D ) that we wrote Miers-related entries within twelve minutes of each other. If on different blogs.

   Oh, and Merry Fitzmas!

   —StealthBadger • 10:10 pm

3. Yeah, I’ve been reading about this all day. Very interesting. WaPo has links to 2 of her speeches (both from 1993). I don’t know what to make of her postion
   on Roe at this point. As far as I can tell, either she was being dishonest in 1989 or she was being dishonest in 1993. Her 1993 speech to the Executive
   Women Leaders of Dallas goes into her beliefs about Roe and privacy in more detail. She also says: “The underlying theme in most of these cases is the
   insistence of more self-determination. And the more I think about these issues, the more self-determination makes the most sense. Legislating religion or
   morality we gave up on a long time ago;” and “Where science determines the facts, the law can effectively govern. However, when science cannot determine the
   facts and decisions vary based upon religious belief, then government should not act.” Sounds like a supporter of Roe, doesn’t it?

   But this doesn’t jive with the 1989 questionnaire at all. So now she absolutely has to explain which of these documents reflects her
   real views, and disavow the one that doesn’t. And whatever she says will not please one side or the other. If she keeps refusing to talk, though,
   then she’ll piss off both sides.

   The White House’s defense of her privacy comments today was pretty inept: ABC News online: “A White House spokesman noted that Miers did not say the concept
   of self-determination gives a judge license to strike down a law, and that Justice Clarence Thomas also has talked about the principle of self-determination,
   which is different from the idea of personal autonomy.” So, she’s not an activist judge — but Roe v. Wade can’t be overturned either? I don’t think that’s
   what they want to say, but still.

   Miers made another point at some length in discussing the problems of poverty, illiteracy and school funding in TX: “It should no longer do to blame the
   Courts for what legislators and other government officials in our State have not had the courage to do. Allowing conditions to exist so long and get so bad
   that resort to the Courts is the only answer has not served our State well and we need to reverse this phenomenon [sic]. Politicians who would cry “the
   courts made me do it” or “I did not do that — the Courts did” should not be tolerated.”

   Nice! Doesn’t sound like the typical conservative judicial philosophy shit that GOP senators talk.

   So, I don’t know what to think about Miers’ views. But I still think Miers is unqualified, which overwhelms any little tidbits I like in her writing. By the
   way, her writing isn’t too hot stylistically or even grammatically. There were a few noticeably badly written passages — one example above — which doesn’t
   increase my confidence in her abilities either.

   By the way, did you hear about this prosecutor — Fitzgerald — who may be indicting some White House officials?

   —Jesse • 2:09 am, October 27

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