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Honolulu Lite
Charles Memminger
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Justice pick is Mier’d in controversy
President George Bush conducted an exhaustive nationwide search for a person to replace retiring Sandra Day O'Connor on the U.S. Supreme Court and discovered the most qualified person for the highest court in the land hanging around outside his very own office. How lucky was that?
The fact that the most qualified person in the entire country to be a Supreme Court justice also happened to be Harriet Miers, Bush's personal attorney, is just another example of the remarkable serendipity that seems to envelop American politics.
Who would think that in the United States, a free democratic republic where anyone can become president, two Bushes could become president completely independent of each other -- and yet another Bush is waiting in the wings? Or how lucky are we to have not just one Clinton qualified to be president and leader of the free world, but his wife, also!
It must be a tad confusing to countries we are trying to convince to become democracies. We extoll the virtues of free elections, and yet our office of president seems to be reserved for basically two families. And when a national search for a U.S. Supreme Court justice can be conducted entirely around the water cooler in the hallway of the West Wing, well, America's apparently a smaller country than it would seem.
I'm going to stick my neck out here and suggest that Harriet Miers is not the most qualified person in the country for Supreme Court justice. (I might even guess that she isn't even the most qualified person within a 3-mile radius of the Washington Monument.) Or, let me put it another way: If she is qualified, then a lot of other beings are, too.
Using George Bush's apparent thresholds for selection of Supreme Court justices, here are some of my own nominees:
» My dog, Boomer. Like Miers, Boomer also has not been a judge of any kind and has not written any legal opinions on the major issues of the day. You can trust me that Boomer is a conservative. He doesn't believe in government intervention when it comes to feeding time. He trusts that I can get his dog food from cupboard to dog dish without the help of FEMA. He's also quite religious. If he pees in the house, he knows I'm going to kick him to kingdom come.
» My wife. I've searched all of the country for a Supreme Court justice nominee and was surprised to find her doing the dishes the other night in my own house! Margie is not a lawyer -- and, frankly, doesn't even like them -- which makes her more qualified than Harriet Miers for the position. She would bring more "real world" experience to the court, like knowing to separate the dark judge robes from the white frilly undergarments before washing.
» Judge Judy. The TV judge is one of the most qualified people for U.S. Supreme Court because she doesn't take crap from anyone and isn't opposed to climbing over the bench and smacking the hell out of a plaintiff or defendant who ticks her off. She's like the manager of a trailer park, and you and your whiny little problems are the only things standing between her and her afternoon gin and tonic. Judge Judy does have a long paper trail of judicial decisions. But if Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter tried to get tough on her record during confirmation hearings, she'd tell him, "Senator, don't make me come over there and put that gavel where the sunshine law don't shine."
» The dust ball under my bed. By all of George Bush's criteria for Supreme Court justice, my dust ball is more than qualified -- or at least as qualified as Harriet Miers, without any of the political baggage.
Charles Memminger, the National Society of Newspaper Columnists' 2004 First Place Award winner for humor writing, appears Sundays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. E-mail
cmemminger@starbulletin.com