Letters to the Editor
Jeff Smith
Published Letters: 129 Editor's Choice: 39
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The Miers exit strategy
[Read the article: Miers, Libby or Rove -- who bails first?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"Then he said, as if someone had just asked him, that he won't release documents that reflect advice she may have given him at the White House."
This suggests that the White House is taking the suggestion Charles Krauthammer made a couple of days ago. In his column, Krauthammer said Bush should use the dispute over releasing documents as a face-saving way to explain Miers' withdrawal: He'd spin it not as an attempt to correct an idiotic mistake but as a heroic defense of executive privilege. It sounds like the Bush people have decided this is their best way out, and that Bush was instructed to lay the groundwork for it by reiterating his position on the documents at the Cabinet photo-op regardless of whether anyone asked about it or not.
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The Watergate option
[Read the article: Could Cheney be indicted?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Let's recall that Richard Nixon, while still president, was named an "unindicted co-cospirator" by the Watergate grand jury. That would be an option here too. According to Special Prosecutor Leon Jaworski's memoir, a straw poll of the Watergate grand jurors showed overwhelming support for a Nixon indictment, but Jaworski urged this other option on them by way of avoiding the legal/constitutional difficulties.
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This is why I can't stand to watch these hearings
[Read the article: The gang that couldn't question straight]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]You knew going in that the questioning would be awful; it always is -- like the White House press corps' questioning of Bush, but in a different way. The press corps mistakenly thinks that Sam-Donaldson-style confrontational questions are hard -- "Mr. President, your opponents say your Iraq policy is a total failure. How do you respond?" But such questions just invite answers that are all talking points: No, we're making good progress in Iraq, blah blah blah. With Senators, the problem is that they think long explanations and preambles make the questions harder. In fact, words are their enemy; the more verbiage, the easier it is for the nominee to confuse things and hide in the thickets. I don't know why both groups are so pathologically incapable of seeing what they're doing wrong.
Here's an example of a question I wish John Roberts had been asked, or now Alito:
"Do you believe the Constitution is in exile?"
That's it -- just eight words. Don't preface it or explain. Some viewers wouldn't get it, but a right-wing judge instantly would, and I think would have a very tough time answering. The "Constitution in exile" is a right-wing legal theory that holds that the New Deal and all it wrought was basically unconstitutional, and that the courts have therefore been misreading the Constitution for the past 70 years. If a Supreme Court nominee says, "Yes, the Constitution is in exile," then (as the Dems could point out) he's signed on to an extremist doctrine that 80% of the public would reject. But if he says "no," he repudiates his allies on the right. The right-wing blogosphere would go bananas, followed in quick succession by the Weekly Standard and that crowd; pretty soon they'd be demanding the return of Harriet Miers.
Recognizing this trap, the nominee will stumble and try to hedge, at which point the canny Senator could ask HIM to explain the theory and what he agrees or disagrees with about it. Thus: "You've heard the term, right? Does it describe ANY aspect of current reality? Was the New Deal unconstitutional? Is this even possible -- can there be a 'true' Constitution different from the one actually in force under current laws and court rulings?" These are worthy philosophical questions in their own right, they can't be evaded as "issues that might come before the court," yet the answers could be explosive -- and pointing out why would be a good way for Dems to educate the public about the Right and what it actually wants. But it won't happen, because it requires being unpredictable, which requires independent thought: plainly too much to ask of a United States Senator.
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Terrific discussion
[Read the article: The gang that couldn't question straight]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I've even learned something about tree sloths! I wish debates in the U.S. Senate were this intelligent.
Thanks, Biff, I'm glad you liked the question. Ignoring my own advice, I was composing a longer response to Puddin' Pie -- but Pyrian puts it simply: Yes, that's exactly the kind of response I'd like to see Democrats provoke. To suggest that NASA is unconstitutional would mark a judge as a devotee of far-right theories that most Americans wouldn't just reject, they would be horrified to know even existed. By those same theories, i.e. that the "true" Constitution is different from the one actually operating, the Social Security program is also unconstitutional -- and that's exactly what some Federalist Society ideologues (and Bush judicial appointees) have argued. My suggestion was that Democrats get Alito either to align himself with those theories or repudiate them, either of which would cause him grief and possibly stop his confirmation ..... while also serving the public-spirited goal of helping Americans understand what's at stake.