How do you feel Robert? Your insight here is valuable.

Mr. Alt

I attended your advice and consent presentation at The Ohio State University law school. You asserted that the advice and consent clause was to ensure that presidents did not pick unqualified friends or family members for the Supreme Court. I assume you would allow the Senate to withhold consent if it felt Bush had improperly nominated her.

Do you think the Senate should withhold consent? I have not looked at the numbers, but I bet the far right and far left could unite and deny her nomination. Or the right could filabuster (this would certainly put Bush and Frist in a spot). If the Senate should withhold consent, why?; if not, why not?

I voted for a President who promised me another Thomas or Scalia.

Thanks, W, for giving me another O’Connor. And thanks as well for steel tariffs, deficits, and McCain-Feingold. I might as well have casted a write-in for LBJ.

Steve,

From what we know right now, I think the Senate would definitely be within their right to refuse confirmation of Miers if they follow the position expressed by Hamilton in Federalist #76. There is absolutely nothing in Miers’ resume, with the exception of positions she was given by Bush, that sets her apart from thousands of other attorneys in the country. This nomination was clearly based in large part on "cronyism," and there is very little to suggest that Miers is in fact qualified to serve on SCOTUS.

With that being said, the sad part is, I sincerely doubt the Senate will perform their constitutional duty. The dems will love the fact that they have a potentially squishy nominee. The right will not be able to come up with enough Senators willing to go against their President. So, it seems that nothing short of a scandal will stop Miers’ confirmation.

I too attended Mr. Alt’s speech at OSU, and I think the concerns he expressed are clearly expressed in what has transpired with the Miers nomination. Due to the left’s politicalization of the process, Bush was faced with the choice of nominating a solid conservative who is clearly qualified, of whom there are many, or nominating someone like Miers that would fall under the litmus testing and other nonsense that the dems have introduced into the process. Unfortunately, President Bush made a bad decision and decided to play games with the dems, instead of playing hardball with them. As a result of the politicalization of the process, we are now poised to be stuck with someone who is clearly not as strong of a potential justice, just because she has no paper trail. Is this really what we want the SCOTUS nomination process to amount to?

Ms. Totenberg, or whoever you are, I must agree. If the Senate Democrats reject Miers on the grounds of inadequate qualification, for once I couldn’t honestly complain about their action. It’s unlikely to happen, but they’d be well within their rights.