Sex and the Court

"Miers fought them by choosing a path that could safely be described as politically moderate and, at times, liberal -- by Texas standards anyway. "She called for increased funding for legal services for the poor and suggested that taxes might have to be raised to achieve the notion of 'justice for all.'

"She praised the benefits of diversity, called for measures that would send more minority students to law schools, and said that just because a woman was the head of the state bar did not mean that 'all unfair barriers for women have been eradicated.' She was upset that although poverty was rising in Texas, impoverished families received a disproportionately small share of welfare and Medicaid benefits."

Now Karl Rove is lobbying Hugh Hewitt on Miers.

Not all conservatives, needless to say, are opposing Miers. Fred Barnes sounds disappointed in some of his ideological allies:

"The president has insisted that in naming Miers, his White House counsel, he's picked a judicial conservative, though one without a track record on constitutional issues.

"How should Bush's followers have responded? I don't think they have an obligation to give the president the benefit of the doubt. But, given his impressive record of naming judicial conservatives to the appeals courts and John Roberts to be chief justice of the Supreme Court, they owe Bush and Miers a reasonable chance to make a case for her as a judicial conservative, or a constitutionalist. The opportunity for that will come when she testifies before Senate Judiciary Committee in a few weeks. However, many Bush supporters and allies, particularly a large number of prominent conservatives, have not waited for her testimony.

"They're free, I believe, to complain that it would have better for Bush to have chosen a nominee--Judge Michael Luttig of the 4th U.S. Court of Appeals, for instance--whose past performance strongly indicates that person would be a reliable judicial conservative on the Supreme Court. (In truth, Luttig would have been my choice.) And Bush's followers are free to object to the White House's lame effort to stir up support by revealing that Miers is pro-life and an evangelical Christian. . . .

"My conclusion is: Bush supporters who were angry over Miers should have waited."

Too late now.

Marty Kaplan of the USC Annenberg School for Communication finds "delicious" the spectacle of Republicans in trouble, and smites the press:

"Frist, Delay, Blunt, Ney and the rest of Jack Abramoff's butt-boys could actually be in their last throes, and we're not talking Cheney-like wishful thinking here.

"It's really possible that right now, before our eyes, unfolding in slow motion, is a sordid, jaw-dropping story that connects everything from Bolton to Dobson, GannonGuckert to HannityO'Reilly, Florida in 2000 to Ohio in 2004, Enron to Halliburton, lies about the Texas Air National Guard to lies about WMDs.