an arrogant insult: the nomination of Harriet Miers

I consider the nomination of Harriet Miers to the vacancy on the Supreme Court to be an arrogant insult to the nation.

To quote Pres. Bush: Miers "will strictly interpret our Constitution and laws. She will not legislate from the bench." That statement is happy horse feathers. The Constitution, written more than 200 years ago in concise terms, does not and cannot be applied to every factual situation without some measure of interpretation. There is no such thing as "strict" interpretation. Be glad of that. Otherwise, you would not have a constitutional right to privacy, which is mentioned nowhere in the Constitution.

To be able to apply the Constitution requires an exceedingly rare mental capacity. You need a mind capable of dealing with messy, sometimes ambiguous, sometimes conflicting, facts. After wrapping your mind around the facts, you need to be able to apply legal principles that often are in conflict with each other. Most federal judges have learned to do this fairly well, some better than others, most better than state court judges who see constitutional issues infrequently. The mind of a good federal judge is a wonder to behold. The best ones do not begin with the conclusion and work backwards. They begin at the beginning and plow forwards to a decision which is consistent with precedent.

My point is that we have hundreds of federal judges who have both the intellectual capacities and the judicial temperament to wear the robes of a Supreme Court Justice. Becoming president of the Texas Bar Association and being George W. Bush's confidant and in-house legal adviser are not qualifying events.