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.

Thanks, bon. So what you are saying is that, yeah, Thomas kinda lowered the bar in some ways, but that Miers is unqualified for different reasons, that she is a commercial lawyer, not a constitutional scholar.

And yeah, Consuela, her fierce loyalty to Bush gives me pause. I just don't have any faith for Congress to call her on it.

Excuse me while I take a brief moment to bitch.

OH MY GOD WILL YOU LISTEN TO ME? AND MY BOSS? AND YOUR BOSS? ALL OF WHOM HAVE SAID WE'RE NOT DOING THIS PROGRAM ANYMORE SO QUIT TELLING PEOPLE ABOUT IT!

OMG.

*deep breath*

...I definitely need to run this e-mail past my boss before sending.

And even that is not a position in which you practice law, at least IME. It's a management position.

Right.

Miers has never done any legal scholarship, [...], 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.

This bothers me, as well. If we can't get someone I agree with, can we at least get someone really really smart and good at the job? Sigh.

Damn, I'm blowing off work. t disappears

...I definitely need to run this e-mail past my boss before sending.

Maybe hold off on the ASSCAPS.

I overhear my annoying coworker talking about politics a lot. He claims that abortion is the primary issue that he votes on. He simply will not vote for a candidate that's pro-choice.

I honestly believe that getting Roe v. Wade overturned would be a disaster for the Republican party, and GOP strategists know this. Once abortion stops being an issue, a whole bunch of votes that were a lock-in for the Republicans suddenly wouldn't be any more, not to mention a huge backlash from people on the other side.

Maybe hold off on the ASSCAPS.

But they would be so satisfying!

Well sure, but that's why you have us. To let out the asscaps.

ION, I am such a sucker -- I just bought candy from a neighbor kid selling for school. Not cheap, either! But I've never had a kid come door-to-door to my door.

If we can't get someone I agree with, can we at least get someone really really smart and good at the job? Sigh.

Precisely. The Roes and Lawrences of this world are few and far between. But we have to practice under hundreds of lesser decisions that really should be authored by one of the amazingly brilliant jurists out there. The swing vote-- AK and SOC-- makes the Court's jurisprudence in their own image. I don't want her to be it.

If Roe v. Wade is overturned, the religious right can still mobilize the homophobic.

There's always going to be an issue out there.

That's kind of insane given that he's done plenty as head of the executive to further the pro-life agenda.

But not what the hard-core folks want: A ban with only a exception for life and health of mother. All Bush has done is not move along RU-486, stall Plan B, disallow using federal funds to hand out condoms as part of AIDS intervention, and curtail stem-cell research.

That sounds like a lot, but it's really not. Yes, a lot of it is onerous, but in 100% of this country abortion-on-demand is legal for women over the age of 18, and in a majority of this country it's legal for women under 18 without parental permission. During the Dubya time in office insurance coverage for contraception has expanded on a state level, and a court case now requires that non-profits cannot claim a Title VII exemption in order to disallow their health insurance from paying for things like The Pill.

I think Roe is a lot safer with Rehnquist off the Court. He was a man on a mission for precedents he didn't like.

Rehnquist wasn't a social opponent to Roe. He was a Constitutionalist opponent. In his mind, the right to ban/allow abortion should be rolled back to pre-Roe -- on a state by state basis. Scalia and his pubic-hair loving sockpuppet want a full-on ban with zero exception for life and health (which is a clear violation of the Constitution). Without Rehnquist, we're probably looking at politicking from the bench until Scalia dies in the saddle. I have hopes that Roberts will follow the Rehnquist model for a Chief Justice, but I'm afraid that Scalia will shove his hand up Roberts' ass the first chance he gets.

Remember this: There will never be a full overturn of Roe by the SCOTUS, ever, because a full overturn would violate Equal Protection (b/c a full overturn would place the life of the fetus/unborn above the mother). There will either be an overturn back to the Rehnquist position (devolve to states) or an expansion on Casey to allow states to limit abortion. Or, maybe we will all stand pat. A full overturn, though, would likely doom the GOP on the West Coast and in the Northeast for generations to come.