Imagine if Bill Clinton had nominated his personal attorney and White House counsel to a post on the U.S. Supreme Court.
Somehow, I can’t imagine my conservative friends supporting the nominee – particularly if there were questions about controversial documents being destroyed that might actually shed light on scandals of the past.
The stunning series of articles by WND columnist Jerome Corsi, raising serious and nagging questions about Harriet Miers’ role as chairman of the Texas Lottery Commission and the cover-up of the way that story intersects with George W. Bush’s National Guard service, points up why this kind of cronyism was frowned upon by the Founding Fathers.
In fact, this is the very reason the framers of our Constitution called for the advice and consent of the U.S. Senate in all Supreme Court nominations.
If we are all honest with ourselves, it is clear Miers’ name was put forward for one major reason – she is a friend and confidante of the president. Her selection is clearly a reward for services rendered and for her loyalty to the president.
Those do not make for qualifications for the Supreme Court, but, according to the men who debated and authored the Constitution, they should disqualify her.
For instance, in Federalist Paper 76, Alexander Hamilton explains why his colleagues gave the Senate power to confirm or reject Supreme Court nominees:
To what purpose then require the co-operation of the Senate? I answer, that the necessity of their concurrence would have a powerful, though, in general, a silent operation. It would be an excellent check upon a spirit of favoritism in the President, and would tend greatly to prevent the appointment of unfit characters from State prejudice, from family connection, from personal attachment …
The idea clearly was to shame a president from promoting cronies to the high court.
[The president] would be both ashamed and afraid to bring forward, for the most distinguished or lucrative stations, candidates who had no other merit than that of coming from the same State to which he particularly belonged, or of being in some way or other personally allied to him, or of possessing the necessary insignificance and pliancy to render them the obsequious instruments of his pleasure.
Can anyone argue, on the basis of these clear statements, that the Founders steadfastly opposed the idea of Supreme Court appointments such as Harriet Miers or Abe Fortas during the Lyndon Johnson era?
The idea was to create an independent judiciary, not one beholden to the executive branch of the federal government.
But George W. Bush does not shame so easily.
Now it’s up to the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate to decide if it, too, is little more than a rubber stamp for the president.
There have been many perfectly rotten Supreme Court nominations in the past. Harriet Miers is certainly not the worst. But with the American people clamoring as never before for real judicial reform – starting in the Supreme Court – and with an abundance of qualified potential nominees from which to draw, this nomination should be withdrawn or defeated by the U.S. Senate.
I know few in Congress care about the original intent of the Founders. I know few in Congress understand the original intent of the Founders. I know most members of the House and Senate violate the spirit and the letter of the Constitution on a daily basis. But senators who claim to be voting for Harriet Miers because she is an “originalist” should indeed be ashamed.
Her very nomination is in direct contradiction to the vision of the heroic and inspired men who shaped and framed all that made America great and unique in the history of the world.
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