On Miers: I was very surprised that Ted Olson (http://www.usdoj.gov/osg/aboutosg/t_olson_bio.htm) wasn’t nominated. He’s got ample experience in arguing before the supreme court and knows very well how the show works. I would guess (pure conjecture and more hopeful than anything) that he was offered but declined.

There are prior instances where a non-judge has been nominated to the supreme court. Earl Warren provides a good example of this. However, he had experience as a governor and as a DA. I don’t think Miers has any public interest trial experience.

I think that Miers will withdraw from the nomination process and that we’ll get someone with more relevant experience. Jason’s scenarios concerning privilege are pretty disturbing.

You should enable public comments on your own blog.

First, anyone lambasted by the right AND the left probably has a problem. Roberts was given a fair shake by the non-ideological senators on the Judicial commitee and he passed their tests with flying colors. Now he’s the “first among equals” on the highest court of the land. Miers had her questionairre returned to her for a re-test. That’s a bad sign. Never having been on the Judicial commitee, I wouldn’t know for sure, but I suspect that they don’t send the test back to the student because they didn’t pencil in their class number properly. It’s a fundamentally bad sign, and if the rumor that I heard is correct (that she got a question about Supreme Court precedent WRONG), I think there’s a good reason to kill her (nomination) in commitee. If you mess up on that, then maybe Bush should pick someone more well versed in the history of the Supreme Court to be part of the Supreme Court. Frankly, I’d rather have a right wing or left wing advocate who UNDERSTANDS the Constitution and the history of the Supreme Court in interpreting the Constitution than a moderate who doesn’t have a clue.

Second, I’ve heard a disturbing rumor that having her on the Supreme Court would give her the authority and responsibility to recuse herself if any action was ever brought to the Supreme Court involving the Bush administration, and, more importantly, would allow her to take off the table all documents to which she had been a part of drafting. I DO NOT KNOW THE VERACITY OF THIS CLAIM, but if it’s true it has disturbing implications for ANY counsel to ANY president who is nominated to the Supreme Court. Imagine a case in which a president does Bad Things and asks his lawyer for advice on a lot of things. S/he gives an opinion on a lot of documents, and later those documents are subpoenaed in a prosecutor’s case against an administration. But because the president managed to get that lawyer on the Supreme Court, all of that evidence is guaranteed to be thrown out of court when the appeals process gets up to the highest court in the land. The very idea of that disturbs me, for either a liberal or a conservative administration.

Whether you support the ideologies of the right or the left is immaterial. If you support either ideology more than you support the rule of law and the ideal of reason, you’re part of the problem with America. We need reason in our society rather than ideology.