Here Your It Miers - Bush Nominates Crazy-Ass White Lady to Supreme Court

What the fuck is the White House up to now? Harriet "Seriously, Where the Hell Did I Come From" Miers nominated to the Supreme Court of the United States? Oliver Wendell Holmes just literally rolled over - very slowly mind you - in his separate but equal grave. As orgasmically satisfying as it is to watch conservatives throw Napoleonic tantrums all day about this nomination, I just cannot believe that the Bush administration has miscalculated their base's response so badly. Something is decidedly amiss in DC and it smells a lot like Karl Rove's creamy, hairless ass, which, incidentally, smells a lot like a rat. This absolutely has to be some kind of evil genius ploy. How else to explain such an inexplicable nomination, one that pleases neither conservatives nor liberals, nor any other pleasable or identifiable political faction for that matter - other than Harry Reid (who is acting freakishly like Miers is his grandmother) and "The Texas League of Single Old White Ladies for Essentially No Independent Political Agenda in America" of course, who are claiming this as a huge victory for "perplexing non-eventism." Hell, even moderates can't figure where the high and mighty middle ground is yet. Who is this old woman we are all asking ourselves? Other than an uncomfortable love for black eyeliner and gaudy Church attire, what are her passions?

She appears to be everything that John G. Roberts was not, unqualified, unknown and unpredictable. Roberts was an ideal pick for the White House because his legal record and resume was unassailable. He certainly had an impressive amount of trial experience with the Supreme Court, even if almost always on the wrong side, and he could reliably fall back on the "just representing my client" card for any unsavory bits of rightwing craziness he may have said in the past. Even if Roberts was presented with a memo in which he stated that black people had smaller brains than whites or that torturing gays can be good training exercises for our soldiers when not at war, he could simply deflect those political asteroids towards his then client, Ronald Reagan, where they would be immediately burned up in Reagan's flaming helio-atmospheric aura of political invincibility. Having watched most of the confirmation hearings, even I found Roberts frustratingly likeable. His mildly disturbing conservative ideology and handsy cub-scout-troop-leader creepiness was overshadowed by his ultra nice-guy reasonableness and his finely polished Harvardian uber-competence. With his round, overly-attentive, tumescent-eyed face, his mellifluous Midwesterny Christianiness, he had the look of a newborn Republican baby just squeezed out of the dusty, hateful womb of Barbara Bush to gasp in fright at the nefarious and multi-ethnic world for the very first time. Roberts face radiated a preternatural innocence like some innate Darwinistic defense mechanism to ward off the bloodthirsty fangs of the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee from his exposed jugular. At one point during the hearings I am pretty sure that Chuck Schumer wanted to jump over the dais and hug the shit out of Roberts and somehow try to re-civilize him as if he were a newly found wolf-child - "Come on John, you are a smart guy, you can see how fucked up it is to force poverty-stricken women to have babies they can't raise, can't you? Johnny, admit it, NASCAR sucks doesn't it?" Most importantly though, Roberts really did know constitutional law backwards and forwards, mostly backwards, whether or not he gave a fuck about those it affected.

Miers, on the other hand, has no judicial experience to look to and so it seems very few statements to illuminate her potential judicial philosophy on the bench. Her most controversial statement to date, as if in an effort to preemptively disclaim any intelligence of her own, that she considers George W. Bush to be the most brilliant man she has ever met! Oh yes, suddenly freaked-out reader, she was talking the same George W. Bush that's currently our President. Extreme loyalty to George W. Bush is scary enough on principle, but this country is in some truly deep shit if Miers has to call Dubya at the ranch in the middle of one of his famous digging in the dirt sessions to get his thoughts on a constitutional question of law before ruling. But, I think here is where we find the real answer to this nomination. I believe this nomination is a very specific reaction to the great Sandra Day O'Connor debacle of 1981. O'Connor, a relatively conservative judicial figure nominated by Reagan, back-fired on the right because eventually she decided that her commitment to her job and her own ideology overpowered her loyalty to her benefactors. The best way to avoid a similar incident, nominate a deeply entrenched political crony who is completely unqualified for the post and, consequently, passionately devoted to you and your agenda - someone lacking any political inclinations of their own. My bet is that the young Brooks Brothers boys in the West Wing are frantically calling every wingnut in the beltway right now to assure them that Miers has explicit instructions to vote in all matters with Justice Scalia. The right already has the ideology they want on the Court, now what they need is a little lubrication. They need another yes-man, or yes-woman as it were. Clarence "Pubes" Thomas is already up there to give some desperately-needed African-American mojo to their cause, Roberts has just given them some intellectual and constitutional credibility, now Bush has added the last piece to the puzzle, some pseudo-women's-rights credibility wrapped up in a five foot two public relations package, but more importantly, a guaranteed fifth vote. They have essentially just taken the swing out of the swing vote.

The problem though is that the conservative punditry wants a controversial ideologue more than it really wants an additional vote, as that's the only way we get to the impending culture war they have been so endlessly pining for. They want to watch the left squirm a bit. Nobody likes to catch a dead fish, you want a little fight to make it worthwhile. At some point though, I think they will, reluctantly, get on the same page as the Administration on this one. They still have a long confirmation process to talk about assless-pantsed homos leering at their children and the ACLU's infamous Sunday night fetus-death cocktail parties. The Democrats best bet, of course, would be to attack Miers on her glaring lack of qualifications for the job, something difficult for the Republicans to counter since it became the keystone theme of Roberts' confirmation. However, they will be wary of doing so for fear that, if they do in fact court-block Miers, the White House will put up a much more gratuitously rightwing nominee in response. But I think they need to be careful of getting too excited about the negative response of Republicans. Although almost always true, just because Rush Limbaugh is against something doesn't make it righteous. I just can't buy the notion that George Bush is cowering to the political pressure from the left to avoid a fight. After Iraq, tax cuts, stem-cells, Plamegate, Katrina, does it seem credulous to anyone that Bush in his final term is really scared of pissing off liberals? The angle isn't completely clear here yet, but its there somewhere, hiding underneath Miers' purple, pleated Gospel gear. Maybe its nothing more complicated than Bush rewarding someone for having the gargantuan balls to call him brilliant in public.

Burn Rove, Burn

Oh, how glorious it is to watch Scott McClellan squirm under the relentless questioning of the suddenly awakened White House press corps, and to imagine even more uncomfortable anxiety going on in the seedy west-wing offices as Karl Rove shleps his soulless body around barking orders at misguided Yale grads to do something, anything, just find him a fucking terrorist attack to exploit. As if snapped out of a Katie Holmesian trance, the press corps actually seems mildly interested in a story not spoon fed to them from the Administration's all-powerful press communication machine. Maybe they felt a little well-deserved shame at the idea that one of the national press' biggest hacks in Judy Miller inadvertently becoming its biggest martyr. And now, at least until they are frightened back into their proper place, we get to watch Scottie and George W. tell us they simply will not comment on an ongoing investigation - after happily commenting several times during the last year on it - in their usual ironicless tone.

We should enjoy the show now while it lasts, because it will be fleeting. If the last five years has taught us anything it should be that Karl Rove and the administration will weather this storm and emerge virtually unscathed. Hell, they will probably use this scandal as a pretext to invade Syria or to elect Jeb Bush President or to somehow have a law passed that forbids blacks from serving in Congress. The point is, it's not wise to start underestimating Karl. Listen, any person with even the slightest amount of political savvy knew that Rove was involved in the Plame leak the moment it happened, so this is really no great revelation. It was an obvious political move on the part of the White House (as convincing the American people that war is necessary always is), and Karl Rove is the political wing of the White House. I simply cannot imagine that Rove tolerates leaks of that caliber to happen without his express consent. Hell, Rove keeps his hand so deep up each of his puppet's asses, he doesn't even let his prize moron go to a debate without being wired up.

But for now at least, we get to be delighted by the tortured defenses of Karl from the rightwing pundits. John Gibson, a Foxnewswhore with a curiously familiar shtick, thinks that Rove should get a medal for the leak rather than potentially go to jail (let us put aside the matter of why John Gibson's medal-awarding threshold is so low - he probably thinks I deserve the congressional medal of honor for telling this homeless guy on the bus this morning all about Valerie Plame). The editorial boys at the Wall Street Journal tend to agree, as they applaud Rove for simply telling America the truth about Wilson - because lord knows we all gave a flying fuck whether his wife suggested he go the Niger or not. I know I did, under the arbitrary notion that you can't trust what anyone whose wife attempts to get them a job. Why are we to be incredulous of what Joe Wilson has to say about Iraqis purchasing yellow-cake because his wife suggested the CIA send him (she doesn't run the fucking place, someone else there must have agreed that it was OK as well)? First of all, its more than just a little bit suspect when the Administration claims concern over Valerie Plame's role in Wilson's assignment - Do they actually expect us to believe that they are strong opponents of nepotism? If they believed that, George W. Bush would still be lying in a pool of his own vomit in a downtown Houston motel after a long-night of jenga and hooker sex.

Apparently, Rove, a well-known defender of truth and justice in America, was simply correcting a dangerous misapprehension by leaking the information. It's a shame he didn't take credit for his altruistic deeds earlier than now, when Scott McClellan was saying how ridiculous it is to suggest he had anything to do with it. If only they could of anticipated the right wing's current spin job, they could of really set it up this heroic whistleblower bullshit better. The point they are all so purposely missing though is that is doesn't make the slightest difference whether Rove was leaking the information for sheer revenge or to protect America from the lying scourge that is Joe Wilson. If he outed a CIA operative intentionally, it was illegal and he continues to be the monstrous asshole we always knew he was. The preferred tactic now is to argue about whether Joe Wilson did in fact understate his wife's role in him being sent to Niger and whether he was anti-war. Crazy-ass John Gibson even referred to him as a peacenik (despite his support for the first Gulf War, his support of several republican causes and his wife's role as an undercover CIA operative) as if that matters in the slightest bit. Only in America can a begiantspectacled albino loudmouth newsgeek like John Gibson (see below) use the word "cojones" on national television with complete sincerity and call a guy like Joe Wilson a peacenik without getting the shit kicked out of him in the Fox news parking lot.

Yes, this guy:

Based on historical precedent, the best way for Karl to get out of the current morass is to remind the American people how fucked up the right wing is on some other hot button issue, like appointing Supreme court judges, and we will forget all about this Plame nonsense. Scottie will tell everyone that George wants a brilliant, tough strict-constructionist who will not legislate from the bench, will then appoint a right-wing lunatic that likes to wipe his/her ass with the Bill of Rights and the media, as predicted, will grab firmly a hold of the next rope and let go of this one. Or Karl could just get Robert Novak to kidnap some white girl and we will all forget how to spell CIA.