Armstrong Williams - Good Soldier

President Bush may have to withdraw the Harriet Miers nomination; I don't think this is very likely, but it is possible. If he does withdraw the Miers nomination, he does not want it to be for the obvious reason, i.e. that Conservatives complained about her. He would want it to be about Liberals and Democrats complaining about her. It's unclear how he would achieve that end, since it's pretty obvious that the Republicans / Conservatoids are the ones doing the bulk of the shouting. But that would be the goal.

So here is the latest column by Armstrong Williams, in which he tries to bridge this divide. What's interesting is that in positioning the enemies of Harriet Miers as liberals he spends a good portion of his article responding to an argument forwarded by Ann Coulter. I don't know if this is some sort of calculated attempt to move Ann from the right to the left, but please, no. We don't want her.

Here's the paragraph in question.

Chief among their criticism: she graduated from Southern Methodist University Law School, as opposed to Harvard or Yale. Therefore, she's in no position to shape the legal landscape, let alone occupy space in the marbled halls of the nation's highest court.

At least, that's the way several liberals -- along with conservative columnists George Will and Ann Coulter--are telling the story. As Coulter noted in her syndicated column, "The average LSAT score at SMU Law School is 155. The average LSAT score at Harvard is 170." The obvious implication: the intellectual gap between Harvard students and Miers is "humungous."

The problem is that, while Ann Coulter did latch onto her education, most other people have latched onto two other facts. She has not been a constitutional lawyer, and she is not the most qualified person (despite President Bush's claims). Add that to the Conservative contention that she may not be a strict origionalist, and you have yourself a ball game.

Of course that's not what this article is about, and after the brief but honest mention of Coulter, Armstrong moves on to castigating us awful liberals.

Lurking beneath all the Miers-bashing is partisan infighting over how to select judges. The Democrats refuse to acknowledge that Bush won the election and so jump at the chance to smear any of the federal Judge or Supreme Court Justices he nominates.

Yep it's all our fault. That's why she was suggested by Harry Reid (Democrat) who also endorsed her immediately following the nomination.

Armstrong closes his article with a nice humorous anti-American passage.

In the meantime, I can't help but hope that Miers is carrying around with her a short list of people whose first amendment rights she intends to revoke. At the top of the list: people who sit in front of you at the movies and give away the ending just as the opening credits roll. But just slightly below them, the martini supping elitists who demand that Harvard and Yale students are open spigots of profundity; the rest of us are not. I don't think anyone will mind not hearing from them for a while.

Hee hee hee. Of course the reference to people who talk in the movies is kind of funny in a fuddy duddy sort of way. But taking away Ann Coulter's constitutional rights is no laughing matter. Now I don't like Ann Coulter any more than you do, Mr. Williams, but the fact is that she is an American Citizen and should be allowed to say any hateful crazy thing she wants.