Ut Humiliter Opinor

Ouch - now it’s really getting bad for Bush. From The Miers Blunder:

…so far the lesson we draw from this nomination is this: Bad things happen when a President decides that “diversity,” personal loyalty and stealth are more important credentials for the Supreme Court than knowledge of the Constitution and battle-hardened experience fighting the judicial wars of the past 30 years.

(Hat Tip: Captain’s Quarters)

I guess it’s time to pile on. The initial spin from the White House was that you don’t necessarily need great judicial experience on the Supreme Court. There is no Constitutional requirement to be a lawyer. Okay, that’s true. The assumption is that a person who can bring “real world experience” to the Court is a good thing.

I can support it under the following condition: that the nominee - instead of being an extraordinary legal mind - is an extraordinary citizen. Harriet Meirs’ background, while impressive, is not so extraordinary to place her above so many others in the country. I would expect someone to be a major national business or political leader to be considered over the many qualified jurists. Head of the Texas State Bar and being a one-term city council member just doesn’t impress me much.

For me someone “from the street” would have, for example, been a school superintendant for several years, been the a mayor of a major city for a decade or created and operated a large business. That would impress me a bit more, and make me think that a person from the street with have valuable insight the other Justices might lack.

Meirs hasn’t come across as impressive and just doesn’t seem like anything other that a stealth, crony pick.

It’s amazing to me that these people still exist. Frankly, the only reason I even wish to comment on them is to point out what real racism is. It’s not the arguments over quotas, team names or hurricane response. It’s this:

As the MasterBlogger himself would say, “Heh”:

Millers Big Secret

Note to reporters: There is nothing intrinsically noble about keeping your sources’ secrets. Your job, in fact, is to expose them. And if a very senior government official, after telling you something in confidence, then tells you that you don’t have to keep it secret anymore, the proper response is “Hooray, now I can tell the world” — not “Sorry, that’s not good enough for me, I need that in triplicate.”

From Martin McKeay’s Network Security Blog: Do you still trust electronic voting machines. Martin points to a recent entry at Brad Blog which is just frightening.

Now we get an insider’s view of the Diebold machines, and it’s not encouraging. An undocumented backdoor exists in the program that allows the modification of voting results, and it doesn’t appear to be a way to detect the modification. Why wasn’t this enough, by itself, to cause the electronic voting machines to be pulled?

It should be enough. If, as Brad Blog suggests, this backdoor was known, then Diebold will lose a lot of credibility. Looking at Brad Blog, I don’t agree with a lot of his politics, but that’s irrelevant when we’re talking about the security of our vote being controlled/manipulated by parties unknown.

Paranoid? Maybe. However, unlike Florida, there’s no paper trail, no hanging chad - just bits and bytes of data begging to be manipulated. Do you really want to trust Diebold and the federal government to somehow “fix this”?

A paper trail is a must in an election.

The Roberts hearings are starting today. Feinstein’s prepared remarks have been published. I don’t know yet if she has delivered them Sen. Feinstein’s prepared opening statement for Roberts hearing

In fact, over the past decade, the Rehnquist Court has weakened or invalidated more than three dozen federal statutes. Almost a third of these decisions were based on the Commerce Clause and the 14th Amendment. If Judge Roberts subscribes to the Rehnquist Court’s restrictive interpretation of Congress’ ability to legislate, the impact could be to severely restrict the ability of Congress to tackle nationwide issues that the American people have elected us to address.

But when Congress oversteps, the Court is there to check its power. That’s why it’s called “checks and balances”. Congress doesn’t have a blank check or unlimited scope in its authority, no matter what Senator Feinstein thinks.

By virtue of our history, and our sex, women have a perspective that has been recognized as unique and valuable. I try to represent and honor this through my role on the committee. With the absence of Justice Sandra Day OConnor, the Court loses the important perspective she brought as a woman - and the deciding vote in a number of critical cases.

One problem: Roberts has been named to replace Rehnquist, not O’Connor. O’Connor agreed to stay on until a replacement could be named.

In response, the Founding Fathers created a balance in the Constitution that provided for freedom of worship as well as for separation of church and state. In their efforts to protect against religious persecution, the framers established a secular government that would remain separate from religion.

They created a federal government that could not establish a religion. That’s why there is a prayer in the Court and Senate every day. There must be tolerance of religion in daily life, not separation from it.

Here’s some more fuel to the fire for the abortion/stem cell debate. Fourteen weeks is before viability, but the harvested cells are apparently good for a medical procedure.

I can see a day coming where perhaps women will be offered money for the cells of an aborted fetus for medical purposes, which is a really scary proposition.

I am an admitted waffler on abortion. I find it personally repugnant, but have a hard time telling someone what to do in regards to personal health and moral issues. Stories like this give me pause because the end game - where we trade one potential life for another - just seems terrifying to contemplate.

Fetal skin cells help heal burn wounds in children

The research team, based at University Hospital of Lausanne, obtained a 4-cm skin donation from a 14-week aborted male fetus. Cells were expanded in culture and used to seed collagen sheets, and then grown for two more days before the sheets were applied to the burn wounds. The fetal cells were used to treat eight children considered to be candidates for traditional skin grafting, approximately 10 days after their injury. As the cells biodegraded, they were replaced every three to four days. “These cells stimulate spontaneous healing of the wound through secretion of multiple growth factors,” Hohlfeld said. The average time to healing was 15.3 days after the first cell application. The cosmetic and functional results “were excellent in all eight children,” who had little degradation of the new skin with no retraction or breakdown of the healed surfaces, the research team reports. The one patient who had dark skin had recovery of skin pigmentation. The researchers estimate that the one fetal skin donation could yield “several million” skin constructs. “We only need one very small biopsy once, giving us the potential to treat thousands of people,” Hohlfeld pointed out. He considers it possible to obtain effective skin cells from miscarriages of second trimester fetuses.

From Poliblogger, the pork is alive and well (Oink!):

And it is nice to see the GOP rising to the occassi and being the party of fiscal responsibility (not)

Yep, once again, George Bush goes on the offensive for fiscal irresponsibility:

Bush’s signature “encourages members of Congress to engage in pork-barrel spending on a massive scale, because there’s no restraint on the part of the leadership or the White House,” Schatz concluded. “I don’t know how else to say it.”

President Bush is spending domestic money like candy to buy support for his international programs. If he’s not careful, he may well lose some leverage by losing seats in Congress.

I have no other words for this type of low-life opportunism during what should be a time of grief and remembrance:

Outside The Beltway : Pennsylvania Lieutenant Governor Crashes Marine Funeral to Lobby Against War:

Catherine Baker Knoll, Pennsylvania’s Lieutenant Governor, came univited to the funeral of Marine Staff Sergeant Joseph Goodrich and proceded to hand out business cards and lobby against the war, according to the deceased’s family members.

RedState.org has an interesting analysis of John Roberts’ arguments before the Supreme Court:

These results are undoubtably influenced by the type of cases that Roberts would generally be involved in; few of these cases involve social issues. However, in the cases that were brought before the Court where the result was not unanimous and Roberts was involved, it is clear that Justice Stevens was not often swayed by his arguments. However, the percentage of non-unanimous cases where Justice Kennedy sided with Roberts’ arguments is notable. The sample size is small, but there is some indication that a Justice Roberts might have considerable influence on Justice Kennedy– the primary swing vote on the court.

So, Roberts may have enough charisma to possibly have a significant impact on the middle-of-the-road Justices. That makes his nomination and confirmation that much more important and interesting.