Popping in before sundown to wish everyone a K'tiva V'Chatima Tovah (may you be inscribed for good), and a happy sweet new year to all.

OMG Bush is such a frat boy! Pootie Poot and Turd Blossom!

And yet the funny part? He comes up with better names than George Lucas.

Er, but *is* she unqualified? I mean, how low is the bar set? Thomas is considered qualified, right? How does she measure up to him when he was first nominated?

Thomas had been a judge. She has never written a judicial opinion. I assume she's written briefs, but I also assume -- not lately.

I don't have a good sense of what her legal experience actually is, although she was a president of her law firm.

And anyone who calls Bush "brilliant"? Talk about blind loyalty... And I don't want someone blindly loyal to the president on the Supreme Court, thank you very much.

K'tiva V'Chatima Tovah, Wolfram, and all who are celebrating.

Thomas was considered unqualified by the Bar Assn, IIRC. Anyway, he got something like a C grade, which is not the lightbulb I want lighting my back stairs, you know?

I don't know a thing about how smart Miers is, but she was president of the Texas Bar Assn., so at least a bunch of people in Texas think she's qualified.

That flying fish is really neat, but did they need to spend $500,000 in taxpayer money to do it?

K'tiva V'Chatima Tovah, Wolfram, and all who are celebrating.

Ditto.

Er, but *is* she unqualified? I mean, how low is the bar set? Thomas is considered qualified, right? How does she measure up to him when he was first nominated?

Depends on your meaning of qualified-- these people should be the leading lights of the legal establishment. It's the Supreme Court! I don't think that Thomas *was* qualified-- at his confirmation hearing when asked what he thought the most important cases were between Roe and the hearing he could name Roe and a couple of employment cases-- but at least he was head of an agency, a federal judge and he went to the best law school in the country. Miers has never done any legal scholarship, never clerked, and never practiced in front of the Supreme Court, let alone written a decision. She has NO experience with the kind of problems and the kind of thinking that this job requires-- and that, to me, is unqualified. Rehnquist was not a judge before being nominated to the Court, but he graduated top of his class at Stanford, was clerk to Justice Jackson and worked for the Office of Legal Counsel (IIRC)-- all experience that led him to do quite a bit of thinking about those kind of issues. A commercial lawyer is just a different kettle of fish.

ETA: she did clerk, sorry for the error above.

Here's a profile: [link] She seems perfectly smart and accomplished, but.

I don't have a good sense of what her legal experience actually is, although she was a president of her law firm.

And even that is not a position in which you practice law, at least IME. It's a management position. At a firm with 400 lawyers she'd have her hands full.