When Harriet Miers was first nominated to the Supreme Court, my initial reaction was, "who?" Then I thought, "I'll reserve judgment until I do some research into her background and opinions." But there was nothing to be found -- nothing in her favor, anyway. That was before Senator Arlen Specter suggested that Harriet Miers "needs a crash course in Constitutional law." It was before Miers went out of her way to show her ignorance of the Equal Protection clause on the questionnaire, her answers to which many Senators considered "inadequate," "insufficient" and "insulting." And it was before Miers herself admitted, "I need to sort of bone up on this a little more," when asked about some points of Constitutional law.

If this is a Master Plan or a joke, it's a very bad one, and we could be paying for it for generations. Does anyone really think she would be a good Justice just because she's religious (so was Anthony Kennedy) or Republican (so was David Souter)? Sure, she might vote whichever way President Bush tells her to (for a while), but that does not make her a good Justice. That's not what it's supposed to be all about.

The most common question from Republicans is, "Don't you trust the President's judgment?" I'd like to trust my own, if I could find a single speech or written narrative from Harriet Miers that shows her own opinion and a convictive style of writing. A seat on the Supreme Court isn't just a button-pushing vote -- it requires persuasive ability, wisdom and a familiarity with Constitutional law. I don't want someone who'll just vote as she's told... I want an originalist thinker in the mold of Scalia or Thomas, as the President promised. So far, the only writing ability she's shown has been in creative butt-kissing.

As a contrast to the zero trail of Harriet Miers, consider the speech Janice Rogers Brown gave before the Federalist Society in 2000. This woman is such a brilliant thinker, a Constitutional scholar, a Conservative and an originalist that I'm appalled she was passed over in favor of Harriet Miers. In fact, if I were Bush, I'd have put JRB up for Chief Justice and Roberts in for O'Connor, as originally planned. She hits the nail on the head more times in a single speech than will happen during the entire post-Katrina Gulf Coast reconstruction. Brown is the perfect example of what a SC nominee ought to be. Someone we could all rely on to be the kind of originalist scholar who can not only convince her peers through reasoned argument, but influence future generations through her decisions and dissents. I could support Harriet Miers if she had ever given such a speech, or spoken about her Conservative and originalist ideals -- assuming she has any -- so proudly and well.

"The great innovation of this millennium was equality before the law," Brown stated in her speech. "The greatest fiasco -- the attempt to guarantee equal outcomes for all people." She went on to say, "Democracy and capitalism seem to have triumphed. But, appearances can be deceiving. Instead of celebrating capitalism's virtues, we offer it grudging acceptance, contemptuous tolerance but only for its capacity to feed the insatiable maw of socialism. We do not conclude that socialism suffers from a fundamental and profound flaw. We conclude instead that its ends are worthy of any sacrifice -- including our freedom."

Brown identified the New Deal of 1937 as the point where America submitted to quasi-Socialism. "Something new, called economic rights, began to supplant the old property rights. This change, which occurred with remarkably little fanfare, was staggeringly significant. With the advent of 'economic rights,' the original meaning of rights was effectively destroyed. These new 'rights' imposed obligations, not limits, on the state. It thus became government's job not to protect property but, rather, to regulate and redistribute it." Janice Rogers Brown might have been predicting the terrible decision of Kelo v. New London. In that case, the CT Supreme Court decided that the city of New London could transfer property from one private owner to another if the change would result in higher tax revenues or job creation. The Supreme Court upheld that decision as Constitutional by a 5-4 vote, to the shock and dismay of all who believe in what the Founders intended.

I can not support a bad nominee. That's what Miers is, no matter how you pretty it up. No one knows her positions on most of the important issues, and she has no background in Constitutional law. For instance, we know she supported quotas and "Affirmative" Action when she was president of the State Bar of Texas. Has she changed her mind about that? No one knows, and anything she says now is suspect. Her only "qualifications" are that she's very religious, and very loyal to President Bush, and those aren't enough to make her a better Supreme Court Justice than JRB or any of the others mentioned.

Honestly, I don't want anyone's rubber stamp vote on the Supreme Court, not even President Bush's. It flies in the face of the independent judiciary envisioned by the Founders of our country. A rubber stamp certainly won't impress the other members of the Court enough to be able to sway their votes to her side. And what kind of decisions or dissents will she write? How will she justify them? "Well, I voted no because George told me to."

Some say that perhaps a Justice who has no background in the Constitution or Constitutional law might be good for the Court. Perhaps a "blank slate" not schooled in the mistakes of the system might be the right person to fix it, they feel. Unfortunately, someone who never studied Constitutional law won't even know what the mistakes are, let alone how to fix them, unless she waits for someone to tell her how to vote. Would you hire a network engineer who didn't understand the basics of networking, had never patched a jack in a LAN closet, or who didn't know the difference between a hub, a switch and a router? Would you let your "blank slate" loose to rewire your entire company's network, believing that someone who hadn't learned the "mistakes" of bad networking was the best person to fix the problems you've been having with your system? Good luck with that.

Conservatives have always been among the first to complain when any President has made a mistake. We're Conservatives, not party apparatchiks. When President Bush didn't close the borders after 9/11, we pointed it out. When he didn't clamp down on government spending or illegal immigration, we pointed it out. When he signed McCain-Feingold, the Medicare bill, several padded federal budgets and countless pieces of pork-stuffed legislation like the Highway Bill, we pointed those out, too. So when people say that we must support anything he does merely because he is the President, I will continue to politely refuse to drink the Kool-Aid.

I, for one, think the debate over the Harriet Miers nomination is actually healthy for the Right. This is how it's done, not the schoolyard name-calling into which the Left has caused "debate" to sink. Already, we've at least got the Republicans and members of the administration making worried noises about controlling the border and even cutting spending, just by making our presence known. That's good. They realise that Conservatives are not happy. We are the base -- no Republican can get far if we are ignored.

With any luck, Ms. Miers will withdraw her nomination for the good of the President and her party. If not, we will see which Republican Senators put principle ahead of party... or at least, which Senators aren't willing to sacrifice their party to support a mistake.

UPDATE: For the sake of the Truth Laid Bear blog autopoll: I oppose the Miers nomination.

UPDATE: Acting in the best interests of the President, the Republican party and the country, Harriet Miers withdrew her nomination on 27 Oct 2005.