Krauthammer on Miers

It's not the normal course of action for me to agree with conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer. But his most recent column on the "dismaying" nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court is an exception. This essay makes a convincing case for croynism while puncturing at least one conservative argument for her nomination:

... nominating a constitutional tabula rasa to sit on what is America's constitutional court is an exercise of regal authority with the arbitrariness of a king giving his favorite general a particularly plush dukedom. The only advance we've made since then is that Supreme Court dukedoms are not hereditary... This, say her advocates: We are now at war and therefore the great issue of our time is the Article II powers of the president to wage war. For four years, Miers has been immersed in war-and-peace decisions and therefore will have a deep familiarity with the tough constitutional issues regarding detention, prisoner treatment and war powers.

Perhaps. We have no idea what her role in these decisions was. But to the extent that there was any role, it becomes a liability. For years -- crucial years in the war on terror -- she will have to recuse herself from judging the constitutionality of these decisions because she will have been a party to having made them in the first place. The Supreme Court will be left with an absent chair on precisely the laws-of-war issues on which she is supposed to bring so much.

Thus Krauthammer joins a chorus of conservative critics: Ann Coulter (Harriet Miers isn't qualified to play a Supreme Court justice on "The West Wing") , Rush Limbaugh, Michelle Malkin ( a good heart does not a great Supreme Court justice make) and George Will (Miers is the wrong pick).

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Harriet Miers, Politics, Supreme Court, SCOTUS