If You Can't Beat the Right . . .

You Must Indict!

The Daily Standard, the online edition of The Weekly Standard, features two columns about legal problems facing the Republican leadership - and, for a change, I am not referring to Harriet Miers.

In Criminalizing Conservatives, editor Bill Kristol writes that the investigation of Bill Frist, the indictment of Tom DeLay, and potential indictments of Karl Rove or Lewis "Scooter" Libby pose serious threats to the conservative agenda. In The White House, the CIA, and the Wilsons, Stephen F. Hayes reconstructs the chain of events in the "Plame affair" from Joe Wilson's trip through the release of the bipartisan Senate Select Intelligence Committee's report, which contradicted nearly every public assertion Wilson made on the subject but is omitted from all mainstream media accounts, including the New York Times timeline that appeared alongside its July 22, 2005 version of the same story.

Today the New York Times published My Four Hours Testifying in the Federal Grand Jury Room by Judith Miller. Miller writes, "My notes do not show that Mr. Libby identified Mr. Wilson's wife by name. Nor do they show that he described Valerie Wilson as a covert agent or 'operative,' as the conservative columnist Robert D. Novak first described her in a syndicated column published on July 14, 2003."

In the weeks preceding publication of the Novak column, Miller and Libby spoke three times and discussed Wilson, who wrote his own misleading Op-Ed for the New York Times during this period. Either before or during their third conversation, which took place over the phone just two days prior to Novak's scoop, she had written down Plame's name erroneously as Victoria Wilson. Although she couldn't remember exactly why she had the wrong name among her notes, she testified to Fitzgerald that she may have deliberately used a false name to see if Libby might corrrect her.

She had also written down Valerie Flame in the same notebook but in a part separate from her Libby notes. She testified that she thinks she may have gotten that second misnomer from another source whose name she cannot recall.

Special counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald inquired whether Libby intimated that Vice President Cheney was aware of what he was telling Miller - her answer was "no" - and if Libby shared classified information with her - she thought so but wasn't sure.

Fitzgerald had her read to the grand jury the final three paragraphs of the September 2005 letter she received from Libby when she was in jail. Here is her bizarre account:

Mr. Fitzgerald asked me to read the final three paragraphs aloud to the grand jury. "The public report of every other reporter's testimony makes clear that they did not discuss Ms. Plame's name or identity with me," Mr. Libby wrote.

The prosecutor asked my reaction to those words. I replied that this portion of the letter had surprised me because it might be perceived as an effort by Mr. Libby to suggest that I, too, would say we had not discussed Ms. Plame's identity. Yet my notes suggested that we had discussed her job.

Mr. Fitzgerald also focused on the letter's closing lines. "Out West, where you vacation, the aspens will already be turning," Mr. Libby wrote. "They turn in clusters, because their roots connect them."

How did I interpret that? Mr. Fitzgerald asked.

In answer, I told the grand jury about my last encounter with Mr. Libby. It came in August 2003, shortly after I attended a conference on national security issues held in Aspen, Colo. After the conference, I traveled to Jackson Hole, Wyo. At a rodeo one afternoon, a man in jeans, a cowboy hat and sunglasses approached me. He asked me how the Aspen conference had gone. I had no idea who he was.

"Judy," he said. "It's Scooter Libby."

According to his letter, none of the other reporters testified that they discussed Valerie Plame's name or identity (as a CIA employee) with Libby. I think it's pretty clear that Miller did not get Plame's name from Libby either, but they did discuss Mrs. Wilson's CIA employment, although not in any covert capacity. As Miller assumed Plame was just an analyst until she read Novak's column, obviously Libby did not tell her otherwise. However, Miller claims that Libby cited the specific unit, WINPAC, in which Wilson's wife worked. If that was classified information, Miller does not say so and did not draw such a conclusion at the time.

If Fitzgerald is prosecuting any other leak of classified information, it's hard to believe that Miller's vague testimony can help much. If the case against Scooter Libby is so skimpy that Fitzgerald is reduced to divining subliminal messages sent to Miller ostensibly to influence her testimony, an indictment of Libby on such flimsy charges would be a low blow worthy of Ronnie Earle.

Furthermore, Libby is a genuinely good writer, so much better than Harriet Miers. That bit about the aspens turning in clusters is sheer romantic prose. My wedding anniversary is Tuesday and I might have to borrow the line for my husband's card.

Seriously though, either Libby's letter was encoded - an incredibly stupid move if true - or Miller is irresistibly ingratiating. His letter, written in a familiar tone that hints at an unexpectedly personal rapport, began, "Your reporting, and you, are missed." I wonder if Fitzgerald, who may harbor a grudge against Miller, made her read the excerpts aloud to embarrass her.

Apparently Judy and Scooter spent time together bonding on the Iraq WMDs issue - enough to make her go to jail to cover for her friendly source? On the contrary, I agree with the Power Line crew that Miller's incarceration gambit was intended to limit the scope of her testimony to her conversations with Libby, excluding unfinished business, and she succeeded.

I guess we'll have to wait until Miller's book is published - or at least until she deposits the advance - for her explanation as to what they were both doing in Jackson Hole, apart from the rodeo, and how Libby knew she attended the Aspen conference. Tom Maguire at Just One Minute owns this story and I eagerly await his insight.

P.S. My son, channeling the late Johnnie Cochran, thought up the title of this post.

October 16, 2005 Update:

Be sure to read Tom Maguire's interpretation at Rove on the Bubble, Libby in Trouble. If Tom is right and Libby is likely to be indicted, will Judith Miller write him a letter asking, "Scooter, how's your aspen?"

Andy McCarthy at NRO is inclined to bet against a Libby indictment. Mark Levin contends that WINPAC was not classified.

The full text of Scooter Libby's letter to Judith Miller can be read here in PDF format (Adobe Reader required), along with correspondence between Libby attorney Joseph Tate and Miller attorney Floyd Abrams.

Judge Dread: Waiting for the Miers Verdict

How Handcuffs and a Unisex Bathroom Might Save the Constitution

President Bush is an extraordinarily determined man who honors his commitments to the bloody end. He has an excess of sticktuitiveness.

President Reagan had a soaring vision of freedom taking flight across the globe, so it was fitting that an airport would be renamed in his honor.

When President Bush retires, they're going to rename Elmer's Glue.

Do I expect Bush to withdraw the nomination of Harriet Miers? Not in this lifetime.

Then why did I sign David Frum's petition? Because I am a conservative of conscience. Results matter, but principles matter more.

Harriet Miers is not Linda Chavez or Michael Brown. She is Karl Rove and Karen Hughes. It will take a criminal indictment for Bush to cut her loose.

Barring Miers' own withdrawal, the nomination will proceed to the Senate Judiciary Committee. The President will invoke executive privilege, which was the strategery behind her selection. So we will learn little or nothing about her Bush years, the transformative time when she forged her qualifications, whatever the President thinks they are, for the SCOTUS.

We will learn something from Miers' performance and a lot from the Senate's reaction. If enough Senators of both parties - and Jim Jeffords - support her nomination, we may have a Supreme Court Justice with a blank slate on one side and the Presidential seal of approval on the other.

In ten years, Vice President Cheney assured Rush Limbaugh, we will appreciate what an outstanding selection Miers is. Can you imagine long years of nervous anticipation as we wait for Cheney's prediction to be proven true or false? Can you endure ten more years of this internecine debate? How about twenty or more, if she serves until her eighties?

The solution is not for principled conservatives to suck it up one more time for Bush. Those of us who disagree are sending our messages via petitions, blogs, talk radio, print media to this administration and to politicians with presidential aspirations for 2008.

Some gleeful observers of the Miers debate are asking, "Can this marriage be saved?" I ask instead, "Can this family be saved?"

Bush is like the son we send off to college and hope he stays true to his principles. He promises that he will. We worked hard to help him get where he is. We are deeply invested in his success.

We become concerned when he entertains some liberal notions that we did not teach him, but he reassures us that he is fundamentally unchanged. Then we start to get credit card bills with budget-busting charges, but he explains that they are necessary expenses. Some are impulse purchases to help others in need. We like that he is so tender-hearted, but we are already in considerable debt due to unforeseen emergencies. However, his grades are good overall, so we let him keep the credit card. All we ask is that he stay true to his principles and come home on really important family occasions.

At Christmas, he brings home a new friend who impresses us instantly. He is exceptionally bright, articulate, ambitious and yet humble. They talk about their social activities on campus with several young women of accomplishment who sound equally impressive. We are so relieved and proud of our son.

When he returns to college, he encounters opposition from leftist professors and obstacles that lead him to drop some classes. He starts talking about one special woman who is helping him deal with his problems, but she is not one of the campus standouts he mentioned earlier. He brings her home at spring break and immediately we are alarmed by how serious he is about her.

She seems nice but almost too agreeable, too deferential, even gushy. She seconds our son's every opinion and seems to have none of her own, although we learn that she changed many longheld views after becoming close to him. She reminds us of a lovely woman we know who avoids confrontation and usually agrees with the last person she talked to.

We understand that he has been living in an unnaturally cloistered, often stressful environment where personal loyalty assumes enormous significance. However, we suspect that he is relying more on his emotions than his reason, breaking his pledge to us and compromising his principles. We begin to question his judgment and revisit prior actions that caused concern.

She has an opportunity for advancement and he expects us to pay for her training. We think she is an unnecessary mistake that will cost us all for years. Looking ahead to the not-too-distant future, she plans to stay behind in the same hostile environment after he returns to the comforts of home far away. Knowing how stubborn he can be, we expect him to remain faithful. But she is so obviously impressionable that we foresee in their inevitable separation too great a risk of betrayal.

Indisputably, he has the right to make this decision. Indisputably, we have the right to revoke our support, financial and otherwise. *

Reagan said, "'Trust me' government asks that we concentrate our hopes and dreams on one man; that we trust him to do what's best for us. Well my view of government places trust not in one person or one Party, but in those values that transcend persons and parties."

The Miers nomination is the product of personal politics over conservative values. The President was moved by her personal attributes, not her judicial values. He implored the nation to trust him personally. In the absence of substantial evidence to support the nomination, his defenders resort to personal slurs against his critics. We worry that Miers' personal loyalty to Bush may not withstand the personal charms and pressures of the liberal Beltway establishment after he returns to his ranch half a continent away. I offer a personal analogy to describe our national impasse.

Even if Miers is confirmed and votes with Justices Scalia and Thomas more often than not, God willing, it won't justify the series of flawed judgments that led to her nomination. The integrity of the process does matter.

I have a solution. It may seem radical, but I think it is the only way to save the Bush coalition and the Republic.

Immediately after Miers is sworn in as an Associate Justice to the Supreme Court, Bush should walk her over to Scalia. "Harriet," he should say, "Meet Nino, your new best friend." He should slap a set of handcuffs on them and wish them luck.

Then Chief Justice Roberts needs to requisition a unisex bathroom ASAP. You know how women are. We can never powder our noses alone. In one of the most personal places where ladies gather, we share secrets, we share our dreams, we bond.

On this point I believe all conservatives can agree. When the fate of the Constitution is as stake, we want Scalia to be there where he is needed most, not Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

* For the record, my son is attending a local college while living at home, has no credit cards, is an uncompromising originalist conservative, and prefers Japanese women.

Reagan Rebuts the Miers Defense

Today Rush Limbaugh took a call from Trudy in Bloomington, Illinois, which illuminated the contrasts between George W. Bush and past presidents - and between Rush and other radio talk show hosts (ahem) prominently involved in the Harriet Miers debate. Trudy supported Bush's reelection and likewise supports Miers' nomination due to her own deep commitment to issues of faith, including abortion, which she believes they share. Consequently, the criticism of Bush and his nomination made her feel alienated and used.

With his customary patience and respect toward callers, especially dissenting callers, Rush sought to define his disagreement over Miers without being disagreeable. He enumerated the moral and constitutional arguments against Roe v. Wade, describing why the latter is more relevant to the Supreme Court. He distinguished the ideology of conservatism from GOP politics and from judges perceived as conservative who drifted leftward on the bench.

Then Rush quoted an excerpt from Ronald Reagan's 1980 GOP convention speech to accept the nomination for president. "Back in 1976 Mr. Carter said, 'Trust me,' and a lot of people did. Trust-me government asked that we concentrate our hopes and dreams on one man, that we trust him to do what's best for us. My view of government places trust not in one person or one party, but in those values that transcend persons and parties. The trust is where it belongs, in the people. The responsibility to live up to that trust is where it belongs, in their elected leaders." Thus Reagan articulated one of the founding principles of conservatism, which advocates a healthy, necessary skepticism of authority even when exercised by conservatives.

This week Theresa Kiihn reported why she does not automatically accept the evangelical exhortation to trust in this or any other context. Taken together, these anti-trust cases explain why so many moral and constitutional conservatives reject President Bush's "trust me" defense of his selection - and conclude, regretfully, that he failed to live up to our trust.

In Thursday's edition of the Opinion Journal, Peggy Noonan summarizes the scope of Bush's blunder. "If the administration had a compelling rationale for Harriet Miers's nomination, they would have made it. Simply going at their critics was not only destructive, it signaled an emptiness in their arsenal. If they had a case they'd have made it. 'You're a sexist snob' isn't a case; it's an insult, one that manages in this case to be both startling and boring." The same could be said of some media-based supporters of Miers.

Until October 3, 2005, the worst insult Hugh Hewitt could hurl at a caller was that he was a Pittsburgh Steelers fan. Ah, those were the good old days. Now he confronts dissenters on the phone and in the blogosphere with the obsessive focus of an interrogator and the righteous zeal of a missionary. His interviews posted at Radio Blogger read like courtroom transcripts of a prosecutor trying to trip up a witness. Hugh is an attorney, after all, although he seems to have forgotten that sometimes he is a talk show host in conservative radio land where nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition. His audience includes many whom he now castigates as knuckleheads and elitists. I think there is a joke in there somewhere, but your inner voice is going to have to finish it for me.

Peggy Noonan offers a constructive resolution to to the Miers dilemma, which I hope President Bush - and Hugh Hewitt - will consider.

My advice to Hugh is simply this: Rush Limbaugh is the beacon of truth and Excellence in Broadcasting. Hugh, swim toward the light.


P. S. Rush has a tribute page, The Greatness of Ronaldus Magnus, featuring Reagan media clips, documents and photos.

You can vote to make Theresa's awesome post the Crosley Solo Blog of the Week.

Hewitt Hardball

Not Hugh's Finest Hours

Anyone who examines the archives here will find that I have been as staunch a supporter of Hugh Hewitt as of George W. Bush. I listen to Hugh at work and on my drive home, although the show quality from KRLA, Hugh’s home station in Los Angeles, is just awful and San Diego station KCBQ, while farther away, is actually a slight improvement. I have been such a dedicated Hewitt fan since July 10, 2000, when his current radio show debuted, that I have gladly tolerated three hours each weekday of high-pitched static – listening online at work is forbidden – to hear the blogfather of modern conservatism.

For the past eighteen broadcast hours and counting, the whiny, grating sound has been coming from Mr. Hewitt himself – and it was never more painful to hear than when he interviewed erstwhile friend Professor Bainbridge. You can read the transcript at Radio Blogger, the website of Hugh’s producer Generalissimo Duane Patterson. I grimaced throughout their discussion as Hewitt interrupted Bainbridge repeatedly whenever he tried to finish a thought with which Hugh disagreed and talked over his guest. It was the type of interview I usually associate with Chris Matthews.

Since President Bush nominated Harriet Miers, Hugh has expressed little disappointment in the President and his selection but righteous indignation that many long-time conservatives have dared to express their disappointment. Hugh is angry, too, but his anger is directed at the conservative blogosphere and his scapegoat is National Review Online.

Today Hugh attributes to the “anti-Miers crowd” – meaning the fine folks at NRO – “the refusal to entertain any competing fact” on the Miers debate. This is an absurd assertion and Hugh Hewitt, more than anyone in the blogosphere, must know that it is an absurd assertion. The M.O. at NRO is to engage opponents in open, freewheeling discourse, as they did with Hugh on the issue of Arlen Specter's elevation to Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. At that time, Andrew Sullivan injected his grudge against the Cornerites into their civil debate.

In the Miers debate, Hugh has assumed the unlikely role of Andrew Sullivan, picking a fight with NRO. He blames NRO for leading the conservative blogosphere into a mutiny against Bush, implying that the right’s collective disapproval can be so easily manipulated or controlled. Hugh has been trying to control the debate and keep the Bush coalition together, but the only person who can repair the damage Bush has done is Bush.

On the day of the announcement, I heard about Miers’ nomination while listening to the Laura Ingraham show. Laura was mightily discouraged but looking for a reason to be optimistic. Long before I got around to reading The Corner that evening, I learned enough to feel crushingly disappointed.

We read NRO to get not our talking points but a variety of conservative viewpoints from an unruly array of bloggers who never speak with one voice, except perhaps in reverence for William F. Buckley and Ronald Reagan. When they are not debating amongst themselves, the Cornerites are posting dissenting opinions from e-mailers and other media sources.

We have been reading and listening to Hewitt and the few selective sources he cites, hoping to be persuaded by a credible argument in favor of the Miers nomination. We are not persuaded, but it is not entirely Hugh’s fault that his case for Miers is so inconsistent with his case for Roberts – and inconsistent with his case for Luttig or McConnell on the eve of the Miers nomination.

Here's another inconsistency. As a Constitutional Law professor at Chapman University, Hewitt states with authority that Con Law is not all that complicated and Miers can catch up in no time. Tellingly, when the famous Arroyo Toad case involving Hugh's client was argued before the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals in Rancho Viejo v. Norton, he hired the most knowledgeable, qualified attorney who specialized in constitutional law - those were his words about John Eastman - that he could find. Does that mean Hugh holds a higher standard for his clients than he does for the American people?

Hugh has been generous to all bloggers on the center-right, including me. He has linked to this blog and even read one of my posts on his radio show – which I am sure will never happen again after this kerfuffle. For his kindness I owe him my gratitude and my patience but not my silence when he mischaracterizes me and those who think like me.

When Hugh and like-minded Miers supporters insult NRO, they are insulting all of us who question her nomination. They are insulting me. They are insulting Theresa Kiihn. They are insulting Bunnie Diehl. They are insulting countless conservatives of faith and countless conservative non-believers who agree that fidelity to religion is not a qualification for the Supreme Court and fidelity to originalist judicial philosophy is the best qualification for the Supreme Court.

Conservatives who oppose the nomination of Miers are tolerant of disagreement within our movement. However, none of us is masochistic enough to stand for insults and bullying. In response to Hugh's insults, Jonah Goldberg calls Hugh's argument "cheap." And now that Sullivan has insulted Hewitt once too often, Hugh calls him “the Ronnie Earle of the blogosphere.” All this proves is that, when pushed, we all tend to push back.

The conservative movement is strong enough to survive this debate, hopefully with Hugh's good name intact, but a shakeup in leadership is taking place. Anyone who deliberately alienates such a substantial segment of the base over the Miers mess may find himself marginalized.

According to Bunnie Diehl, who attended the 50th birthday tribute last week to the magazine that Buckley founded, “Rich Lowry told the crowd that he could reveal that Chief Justice John Roberts was a long-time subscriber." If that insight reassures you that Roberts is more conservative than his Senate Judiciary Committee testimony suggests, that is because National Review – online and NRODT – has been and will continue to be the gold standard for conservative credentials.

Picking the Miers Scab

According to Robert Novak, President Bush told Senators that he was nominating California Circuit Judge Consuelo Callahan to replace Sandra Day O’Connor before he decided on Harriet Miers. Callahan, who enjoys the support of home state Senators Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, is a moderate pragmatist of dubious accomplishment. I guess we were lucky to get Miers after all.

But wait! Miers' supporters cite her responsibility for vetting all the SCOTUS nominees as a qualification and a clue to her judicial philosophy. Well, her fingerprints are all over the Callahan near-disaster. Just when influential blogs such as NRO, Power Line, and Captains Quarters have adopted a resigned wait-and-see-the-Senate-hearings attitude to the Miers fait accompli, along comes more salt in the wound. I am not sure that Miers will be voted out of a committee on which Sam Brownback and Tom Coburn sit, especially if James Dobson is subpoenaed to testify.

Bush defenders keep reiterating that he has never let us down with judicial nominations before and asking us to trust the esteemed Dr. Dobson. Theresa Kiihn, a conservative of faith, offers the best explanation that I have read regarding why Evangelical credentials alone are not enough. There is one key distinction between Bush's nominations to the Supreme Court and nominations to lower courts. Bush deserves credit for all the distinguished lower court appointments that were, however, processed by his staff. The difference here is that he has taken a hands-on approach to the SCOTUS nominations and revealed himself to be more persuaded by an emotional connection and religious fellowship than judicial philosophy.

Reportedly what elevated John Roberts to the top of the A list was the Putin standard. Bush caught a glimpse of Roberts’ soul and found it good. That kind of impulsive vetting is tolerable when the finalists are Roberts and Michael Luttig but alarming when the choices are Miers and Consuelo Callahan.

At the beginning of the week, I speculated that Miers was a punitive pick after conservatives denied Bush his first choice, Alberto Gonzales. Now I wonder if all the lower court nominees were a concession by Bush so that he could put his personal stamp, which is regrettably not of the originalist bent, on the Supreme Court.

I have written here and here that Bush is certain to nominate Alberto Gonzales if there is a third vacancy. Near the end of his radio show last Thursday, Hugh Hewitt warned his audience to be prepared for that exact eventuality, especially if Justice Stevens steps down during this term. That would mean that not one but two White House Counsels in the same administration would be nominated to the Supreme Court.

Hugh disdains the word cronyism. Please give me a better word for it then. Would a President Brownback or President Allen have Miers or Gonzales on their short lists?

For decades conservatives have fought their way up the judicial ladder, enduring personal and professional hardships that we cannot imagine. Rush Limbaugh described meeting Judge Janice Rogers Brown at the 50th anniversary tribute to National Review and Bill Buckley. “She wanted to thank me, and everybody who had been so supportive of her and she said, ‘I want to also thank you for explaining to people what a three-year nomination battle in the middle of a filibuster does to somebody and what that's like,’ and I said, ‘No, you're great. You're a walking lesson. You hung in there and you didn't cave during any aspect of it.’"

Robert Bork, who has paid the highest price of any nominee in modern times for his judicial fidelity, told Tucker Carlson that “it’s kind of a slap in the face to the conservatives who’ve been building up a conservative legal movement for the last 20 years. There’s all kinds of people, now, on the federal bench and some in the law schools who have worked out consistent philosophies of sticking with the original principles of the Constitution. And all of those people have been overlooked. And I think one of the messages here is, don’t write, don’t say anything controversial before you’re nominated.”

The political calculation leading to the selection of Harriet Miers is a repudiation of the conservative judicial movement that spent a quarter century trying to prevent another mistake like President Reagan’s nomination of Sandra Day O’Connor. The lesson learned was that picking diversity and/or pragmatism over judicial philosophy is always a dangerous mistake.

President Bush obviously considered the O’Connor vacancy a diversity slot. Miers, we are expected to believe, will be at least as conservative as O’Connor, which is to say not very. If a nominee is incrementally more conservative than his or her predecessor, that is called progress. Are we doomed to be locked perennially into the current ratio of judicial originalists to activists by this administration? With a farm system abundant with our own home grown strict constructionists of diverse genders, races and religions, there is no justification for wasting even one precious vacancy on a compromise.

Professor Bainbridge used a baseball analogy to explain why Miers is unqualified for the big league. I called her selection Bush’s Bill Buckner moment. At the same time Bush was choosing his second SCOTUS nominee, Ruth Bader Ginsburg hit a sacrifice fly that advanced Bush’s selection one significant step in the confirmation process.

Ginsburg said she agreed with a position taken by federal Judge John G. Roberts during his confirmation hearing. “Judge Roberts was unquestionably right,” Ginsburg said. “My rule was I will not answer a question that attempts to project how I will rule in a case that might come before the court.”

I cannot be the only blogger who threw up a fist and shouted, “Woo hoo!” Surely Ginsburg’s comments made it easier for a well-known originalist to decline to answer intrusive questions during the Senate hearings and therefore empowered Bush to make an openly conservative selection. Instead he made a disappointing choice with far-reaching political implications, as I sought to clarify when I posted this list of questions.

10 Questions for GOP Bloggers Who Support Harriet Miers

1. Last week, as President Bush was deliberating over his second SCOTUS nomination, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg voiced approval of John Roberts’ refusal to answer questions potentially related to future Supreme Court matters. When you heard her recorded comments, did you think it empowered President Bush to nominate another well-known constitutional originalist instead of a stealth nominee like Harriet Miers?

2. Does a stealth nomination by a Republican president encourage or discourage prospective candidates who aspire to the Supreme Court to publicize evidence of their judicial philosophy that Democrats might use against them in Senate hearings?

3. Does the nomination of someone that Democrats consider a Republican crony make it harder for Republicans to oppose the future nomination of someone they consider a Democrat crony?

4. GOP bloggers were angry when Miguel Estrada’s religious faith became an issue in his nomination and were prepared to criticize any of John Roberts’ opponents had they done the same. Yet supporters of Miers, including President Bush, are citing her faith as a qualification for her nomination. Isn’t this a double standard that further establishes a nominee’s religious beliefs as a legitimate factor in his/her qualification or disqualification?

5. Justice Antonin Scalia is widely known as a man of faith. Did President Reagan and the conservative media cite his faith as a primary qualification for his nomination?

6. Conservatives expect judges at all levels to separate their personal opinions from their judicial reasoning. Why are Miers’ anti-abortion beliefs relevant to her qualifications? Isn’t believing that abortion is wrong a different issue than believing that Roe v. Wade is unconstitutional?

7. The next time Bush suffers a political setback, does the Miers nomination make it less likely that his conservative base will rise to support him? Does the Miers nomination encourage or discourage Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee?

8. Does the Miers nomination make it less likely that the conservative base will support Rudy Giuliani for president in 2008? Does the Miers nomination make it more likely that the conservative base will favor George Allen or Mitt Romney for president in 2008?

9. At this point in the Roberts’ nomination process, the blogosphere had uncovered sufficient information for most conservatives to feel confident and enthusiastic about Bush’s selection. Do you feel the same level of confidence and enthusiasm about Miers? If not, why not?

10. Before her name was added to the public short list of potential SCOTUS nominees, had you ever blogged about Harriet Miers? If you contribute to any other media outlets, did you ever write about or discuss Harriet Miers?