Gotta Love Ann

I have to say, Ann Coulter is my favorite columnist. She has been savaged of late for her stand against Harriet Miers and her latest column is just going to cause people to go even more ballistic.

So, for all those who love to knee-jerk against Coulter because she has the sharpest tongue on the planet. I have distilled her points into something less amusing/biting but maybe easier to swallow:

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- Nixon went liberal on his base and they ultimately abandoned him.

- Bush has gone liberal and the base will abandon him.

- Conservatives have been unhappy with many Bush policies but were confident Bush would never let them down on the two most important issues of our time: the war on terrorism and the Supreme Court. Bush bashed conservative hopes on the latter.

- When conservatives complained when Bush nominated a woman because “Laura wanted a woman", the WH informed the base that only senators vote on judicial nominees.

- When conservatives complained because Bush nominated someone without experience the WH accused conservatives of elitism and sexism.

- The WH believes that we are “uneducated” and “easily led” and, acting on that belief, snookered a few evangelical leaders into supporting Miers. But apparently, at least half of the evangelical base decided not to buy in.

- The White House chose Tom Rath, the guy who assisted in getting Souter confirmed, to threaten Republican senators who are thinking of voting against Miers.

- The White House and its supporters keep saying we need to wait for the hearings to see if Miers is qualified. We know she’s not qualified so the nomination hearings will not tell us anything new.

- Just because Miers might say at the hearings she opposes “judicial activism” will not mean anything, Chuck Schumer claims he opposes “judicial activism,” too.

- If Miers gets on the court, Democrats believe Bush will have exposed himself as cowardly and will take further advantage but next time he will have to face them without his “armies.”

- “Bush has screwed his base, screwed Republican senators, screwed legal conservatives.” In so doing, he has lost the critical support he will need when things go bad for his administration in some future time of need.

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Now that Coulter’s wit has been filtered from the above prose, do any of these arguments carry any more weight?

Pro Miers Commentators Hypocritical?

Could a pro-Harriet Miers pundit please explain their primary arguments a little further?

Argument #1. President has sole authority to make SCOTUS decisions so people should stop complaining.

I assume that those who advance the "Presidential Constitutional absolute authority" position with regard to the selection of Supreme Court nominees would apply this argument consistently? When a Democrat President nominates say, Laney Davis, it should go without saying that the people making this argument will support Davis? If not, should it even be a talking point?

Argument #2. President Bush's decision-making should be trusted because he has more information than we do (or whatever the reason for trusting is being proffered).

This is kind of a kissing cousin to argument #1 without the Constitutional technicalities to support it. To be less Socratic than the Laney Davis rhetoric, would the person offering this defense of HM have supported what many believed, was Bush's preferred first choice: AG Gonzales?

Furthermore, since there is no Constitutional prose that speaks to the "trust the president" argument, I assume that this is more of a general premise by which GOPers should look at all of Bush's decisions. If it applies to the SCOTUS nominees, does it not also apply to the President's rationale on immigration policy for example? Maybe this is a limited trust thing (based on his past court nominees)? This may be a valid argument but I have read several quality commentaries that demonstrate that GHWB and Reagan both made similarly high quality lower court picks before making poor quality higher court nominations.

#3. The "kooks" on the right were never elected president and they should just go away" argument.

I really don't understand this particular line of reasoning. It is especially ironic when it includes comments like "Coulter is a snob" as if this was a support for HM. Aside from the fact that her "snobbishness" is really is beside the point, is not a snob a person who chooses to only relate with a small group of select cronies and only take advice from said small insider cadre? In any case, are snobs now prohibited from having their comments on this nominee considered? Are the "kooks" like Krauthammer, Noonan, Ned Ryan, et. al. suddenly persona non grata ? Maybe I'm missing something but how does banning a snob (especially a brilliant one) from consideration make any logical sense?

Maybe there are more Pro-HM arguments that I am missing but these seem to be the primary ones I have run across and I am failing to see the internal consistency of the arguments.

To my mind, if these are your arguments then it appears you should:

a. never question a judicial nominee of either party.
b. trust all of Bush's future decisions.
b. cease consideration of the opinions of Krauthammer, Will, et. al. because you don't listen to "elitists", "whiners", and "kooks".

Honest attempts to set me straight on this would be appreciated.

How to determine: Idiot or not an Idiot?

We now have a foolproof way of determining if someone is a total blithering idiot. I have been looking for a test of some kind for a while and now we have one.

Ask someone, "Do you think Bill Bennett is a racist based on his remarks on his radio show last Wednesday regarding abortion?"

If they do, they are an idiot. Taking someone completely out of context, reading into their clearly stated remarks the exact opposite of what they said, and then spreading that ignorance around to others is a sure sign of an ignoramus. Of course, they could be doing it purposefully and thereby, are more on the deceitful side of the spectrum than the stupid one. Nancy Pelosi is a good example of the former whereas Barbara Boxer is a prime example of the latter.

For a more in-depth explanation of why it is impossible for Bennett to be what his critics are saying, read this column from Andy McCarthy.