How is it that as Bush's presidency goes on his incompetence goes up and up? You'd think by now being into his second term he'd sort of have a clue. Nope, not good ol' George. He gets two shots at the Supreme Court - 1st choice Judge Roberts. I have no opinion of him b/c there's just not enough out there on him but at least he could be considered somewhat scholarly based on what the tidbits I saw during his confirmation hearings. He creeps me out a bit and in my opinion kind of looks like Ted Bundy w/ thinner eyebrows - but hey, just as long as he doesn't go on a murderous spree he seems ok.
Now, as far as Harriet Miers goes - what the hell is Bush thinking? Forget about the fact that she bares a creepy resemblance to the Sea Hag from the Popeye cartoons; she does not even come close to being qualified to step into the Supreme Court, let alone sit as an associate judge of the highest court in America. I haven't done a lot of research into the background of justices in the past but from what I know off hand, they were for the most part impressive in their judicial knowledge and their educational background. You expect Supreme Court justices to hail from our country's finest collegiate institutions and our finest law schools. Harvard, Yale and Stanford are thrown in there quite a bit. If not Harvard and Yale, then they are top schools. Additionally, don't justices usually finish at the top of their classes and have degrees other than an undergraduate degree and a J.D.?
Just a little side note - have you seen the way Harriet Miers wears her makeup? What's with the racoon eyes? Is she giving props to Billie Joe Armstrong or to the bad make-up techniques exhibited by many Aqua Net loving girls of Staten Island and Brooklyn in the 80s? Do we want a woman who can't be trusted with an eyeliner pencil or with choosing a proper shade of lipstick with being the last stop on the U.S. judicial road?
At the end of this I have pasted in the biographies of the current justices (not including Roberts which was not posted yet) that I took from the Supreme Court's web page. Please glance over the justices biographies which are all quite impressive and then read over the biography of Harriet "Sea Hag" Miers that I took off off findlaw.com. Her academic claim to fame is an undergrad degree from Southern Methodist University definately on par with Harvard and Yale, and she didn't even finish magna cum laude or even summa cum laude for that matter. Same thing with her J.D. from the same institution - not even at the top of her class. Her biggest claim to fame other than her current job as Bush's Counsel is that she was the head of the Texas Lottery. She's just a corporate lawyer. You don't have to know much about the law to know that having a J.D. does not mean you are a constitutional scholar with the know how to sit in one of those nine chairs.
First Bush appoints the former president of the Arabian Horse society to be the head of FEMA and it turns out that the moron (Michael Brown, not Bush) was fired from the horse club job.
The Supreme Court is not a place for cronyism. All politics aside, I would prefer a justice who does not comport to my ideals if he or she has the judicial and Constitutional knowledge and awareness befitting a justice of the Supreme Court.
Here are the biographies I meantioned earlier:
The Justices of the Supreme Court
John Paul Stevens, Associate Justice, was born in Chicago, Illinois, April 20, 1920. He married Maryan Mulholland, and has four children—John Joseph (deceased), Kathryn, Elizabeth Jane, and Susan Roberta. He received an A.B. from the University of Chicago, and a J.D. from Northwestern University School of Law. He served in the United States Navy from 1942–1945, and was a law clerk to Justice Wiley Rutledge of the Supreme Court of the United States during the 1947 Term. He was admitted to law practice in Illinois in 1949. He was Associate Counsel to the Subcommittee on the Study of Monopoly Power of the Judiciary Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives, 1951–1952, and a member of the Attorney General’s National Committee to Study Antitrust Law, 1953–1955. He was Second Vice President of the Chicago Bar Association in 1970. From 1970–1975, he served as a Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. President Ford nominated him as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, and he took his seat December
19, 1975. * * *
Sandra Day O’Connor, Associate Justice, was born in El Paso, Texas, March 26, 1930. She married John Jay O’Connor III in 1952 and has three sons—Scott, Brian, and Jay. She received her B.A. and LL.B. from Stanford University. She served as Deputy County Attorney of San Mateo County, California from 1952–1953 and as a civilian attorney
for Quartermaster Market Center, Frankfurt, Germany from 1954–1957. From 1958– 1960, she practiced law in Maryvale, Arizona, and served as Assistant Attorney General of Arizona from 1965–1969. She was appointed to the Arizona State Senate in 1969 and was subsequently reelected to two two-year terms. In 1975 she was elected Judge of the Maricopa
County Superior Court and served until 1979, when she was appointed to the Arizona Court of Appeals. President Reagan nominated her as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, and she took her seat September 25, 1981. * * *
Antonin Scalia, Associate Justice, was born in Trenton, New Jersey, March 11, 1936. He married Maureen McCarthy and has nine children—Ann Forrest, Eugene, John Francis,
Catherine Elisabeth, Mary Clare, Paul David, Matthew, Christopher James, and Margaret Jane. He received his A.B. from Georgetown University and the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, and his LL.B. from Harvard Law School, and was a Sheldon Fellow of Harvard University from 1960–1961. He was in private practice in Cleveland, Ohio from 1961–1967, a Professor of Law at the University of Virginia from 1967–1971, and a Professor
of Law at the University of Chicago from 1977–1982, and a Visiting Professor of Law at Georgetown University and Stanford University. He was chairman of the American Bar Association’s Section of Administrative Law, 1981–1982, and its Conference of Section Chairmen, 1982–1983. He served the federal government as General Counsel of the Office of Telecommunications Policy from 1971–1972, Chairman of the Administrative Conference of the United States from 1972–1974, and Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel from 1974–1977. He was appointed Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 1982. President Reagan nominated him asan Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, and he took his seat September 26, 1986. * * *
Anthony M. Kennedy, Associate Justice, was born in Sacramento, California, July 23, 1936. He married Mary Davis and has three children. He received his B.A. from Stanford University and the London School of Economics, and his LL.B. from Harvard Law School. He was in private practice in San Francisco, California from 1961–1963, as well as in Sacramento, California from 1963–1975. From 1965 to 1988, he was a Professor of Constitutional Law at the McGeorge School of Law, University of the Pacific. He has served in numerous positions during his career, including a member of the California Army National Guard in 1961, the board of the Federal Judicial Center from 1987–1988, and two
committees of the Judicial Conference of the United States: the Advisory Panel on Financial
Disclosure Reports and Judicial Activities, subsequently renamed the Advisory Committee
on Codes of Conduct, from 1979–1987, and the Committee on Pacific Territories from 1979–1990, which he chaired from 1982–1990. He was appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in 1975. President Reagan nominated him as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, and he took his seat February 18, 1988. * * *
David Hackett Souter, Associate Justice, was born in Melrose, Massachusetts,September 17, 1939. He was graduated from Harvard College, from which he received his A.B. After two years as a Rhodes Scholar at Magdalen College, Oxford, he received an A.B. in Jurisprudence from Oxford University and an M.A. in 1989. After receivingan LL.B. from Harvard Law School, he was an associate at Orr and Reno in Concord, New Hampshire from 1966 to 1968, when he became an Assistant Attorney General of New Hampshire. In 1971, he became Deputy Attorney General and in 1976, Attorney General of New Hampshire. In 1978, he was named an Associate Justice of the Superior Court of New Hampshire, and was appointed to the Supreme Court of New Hampshire as an Associate Justice in 1983. He became a Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit on May 25, 1990. President Bush nominated him as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, and he took his seat October 9, 1990. * * *
Clarence Thomas, Associate Justice, was born in the Pin Point community of Georgia near Savannah June 23, 1948. He married Virginia Lamp in 1987 and has one child, Jamal Adeen, by a previous marriage. He attended Conception Seminary and received an A.B., cum laude, from Holy Cross College, and a J.D. from Yale Law School in 1974. He was admitted to law practice in Missouri in 1974, and served as an Assistant Attorney General of Missouri from 1974–1977, an attorney with the Monsanto Company from 1977–1979, and Legislative Assistant to Senator John Danforth from 1979–1981. From 1981–1982, he served as Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights, U.S. Department of Education, and as Chairman of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission from 1982–1990. He became a Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 1990. President Bush nominated him as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, and he took his seat October 23, 1991. * * *
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Associate Justice, was born in Brooklyn, New York, March 15, 1933. She married Martin D. Ginsburg in 1954, and has a daughter, Jane, and a son, James. She received her B.A. from Cornell University, attended Harvard Law School, and received her LL.B. from Columbia Law School. She served as a law clerk to the Honorable Edmund L. Palmieri, Judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, from 1959–1961. From 1961–1963, she was a research associate and then associate director of the Columbia Law School Project on International Procedure. She was a Professor of Law at Rutgers University School of Law from 1963–1972, and Columbia Law School from 1972–1980, and a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral
Sciences in Stanford, California from 1977–1978. In 1971, she was instrumental in launching the Women’s Rights Project of the American Civil Liberties Union, and served as the ACLU’s General Counsel from 1973–1980, and on the National Board of Directors from 1974–1980. She was appointed a Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 1980. President Clinton nominated her as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, and she took her seat August 10, 1993. * * *
Stephen G. Breyer, Associate Justice, was born in San Francisco, California, August 15, 1938. He married Joanna Hare in 1967, and has three children—Chloe, Nell, and Michael. He received an A.B. from Stanford University, a B.A. from Magdalen College,
Oxford, and an LL.B. from Harvard Law School. He served as a law clerk to Justice Arthur Goldberg of the Supreme Court of the United States during the 1964 Term, as a Special Assistant to the Assistant U.S. Attorney General for Antitrust, 1965–1967, as an Assistant Special Prosecutor of the Watergate Special Prosecution Force, 1973, as Special Counsel of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, 1974–1975, and as Chief Counsel of the committee, 1979–1980. He was an Assistant Professor, Professor of Law, and Lecturer at Harvard Law School, 1967–1994, a Professor at the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government, 1977–1980, and a Visiting Professor at the College of Law, Sydney, Australia and at the University of Rome. From 1980–1990, he served as a Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, and as its Chief Judge, 1990–1994. He also served as a member of the Judicial Conference of the United States, 1990–1994, and of the United States Sentencing Commission, 1985–1989. President Clinton nominated him as an Associate
Justice of the Supreme Court, and he took his seat August 3, 1994.
Here's Harriet Miers' biography. I left out the honors and awards b/c they are irrelevant.
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White House Counsel
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Antitrust & Trade Regulation
Litigation & Appeals
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Texas, 1970
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Southern Methodist University School of Law, Dallas, Texas, 1970
J.D., Juris Doctor
Honors: Barristers, Moot Court Board, Kappa Beta Pi
Law Review: Comments Editor, Southwestern Law Journal, 1969 - 1970Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas, 1967
B.S., Bachelor of Science |
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| Former Trial Advocacy Instructor, SMU NITA Program, Southern Methodist University School of Law |
United States District Court, Northern District of Texas, Hon. Joe E. Estes, Law Clerk, 1970 - 1972Belli, Ashe, Ellison, Choulos & Lieff, Law Clerk, 1969City of Dallas, Judicial Nominating Commission, ChairNorth Texas Commission, Board of Directors, Former MemberLocke Purnell Rain Harrell, PresidentTexas Lottery Commission, Chair
