What Does He Know?

I don't appreciate unelected citizens receiving more information on Supreme Court nominees than the elected officials who are duty-bound to offer advice and consent.

By day's end, Mr. (James of Focus on the Family) Dobson, one of the most influential evangelical conservatives, welcomed the nomination. "Some of what I know I am not at liberty to talk about," he said in an interview, explaining his decision to speak out in support of Ms. Miers. He declined to discuss his conversations with the White House.

A religious leader is given information by the government about a judicial nominee that the Senate will never get, inclining him to support the nominee, which is seen as an important step in the nomination. Judges getting vetted by private citizens, by religious mullahs. That sounds like Iran to me.

The heads of the Judiciary Committee certainly want to know what Dobson knows:

Specter and Vermont Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, the committee's ranking Democrat, said they intend to follow up on a comment by Focus on the Family founder and chairman James C. Dobson that, based on conversations with White House adviser Karl Rove, he believes she opposes abortion and would be a good justice.

"This is a lifetime appointment," Specter said. "If there are backroom assurances and there are backroom deals, and if there is something which bears upon a precondition as to how a nominee is going to vote, I think that's a matter that ought to be known by the Judiciary Committee and the American people."

I think, after watching the events of the past few months, the entire SCOTUS nomination and confirmation process needs to be radically overhauled. It does a disservice to the nation's highest court. The fact that either side must get a permission slip from its radical wings is ridiculous (of course, the only observable behavior on this front is the Republican side; we can only speculate whether or not Ralph Neas would say "I have been assured, and some of what I know I am not at liberty to talk about" regarding a Pres. Kerry nomination). The notion that a nominee can't be asked questions about particular cases is similarly absurd. Do we seriously not know how the current Justices would decide on, say, Roe v. Wade, for example? Well then, do they all need to recuse themselves from any similar case, because their views are well-known? Of course not.

The end result is that these nominations and their attendant hearings play out like a carnival sideshow, just an attraction with bright colors that has no basis in reality. It's time to stop it.

I do hope someone asks Harriet Miers how many cases pending before the Supreme Court she has personally worked on as chief White House counsel, and whether or not she planned to recuse herself from all those cases. That, I believe, is the real reason she was nominated, to be the President's voice on the inside of the Court. Nobody should want someone that close to the executive branch to serve on the judiciary, whether it's LBJ's personal lawyer Abe Fortas, or Miers. Conservative John Fund lays this out nicely (I'm quoting John Fund?)

It was Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention, who went so far as to paint Ms. Miers as virtually a tool of the man who has been her client for the past decade. "In Texas, we have two important values, courage and loyalty," he told a conference call of conservative leaders last Thursday. "If Harriet Miers didn't rule the way George W. Bush thought she would, he would see that as an act of betrayal and so would she." That is an argument in her favor. It sounds more like a blood oath than a dignified nomination process aimed at finding the most qualified individual possible.

That sounds, er, really really wrong. I don't know that under this sham of a confirmation process, however, whether that will matter one bit.