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Nov. 20, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: How to make every second of your life come first
Caroline B. Glick: Whither American Jewry
Nov. 19, 2009
Binyamin L. Jolkovsky: Please Listen to this Godcast (5 minutes)
Jonathan Tobin: ADL Crosses the Line with Report Bashing Obama Critics
Nov. 18, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: What Judaism has to say about the secret of the Mona Lisa's smile
JWisdom.com: The (Jewish) Dating Game with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (8 minutes)
Nov. 17, 2009
Steven Emerson: How Does the 4th Amendment Impact Terror Finance Investigations?
JWisdom.com: If Frank Sinatra married Edith Piaf with Rabbi Y.Y. Rubinstein (2 minutes) Life lessons from what would be regarded as the most inappropriate lyrics ever sung
Nov. 16, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : When borrowing is stealing
JWisdom.com: Deconstructing faith with Rabbi Warren Goldstein (9 minutes)
Nov. 13, 2009
JWisdom.com Sarah's subjective reality with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 6 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick: Obama's failure, Netanyahu's opportunity
Nov. 12, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet By Marialisa Calta : A sweet sweet potato treat
JWisdom.com Does God get tired? with Rabbi Harvey Belovski ( 5 minutes)
Nov. 11, 2009
Rabbi Avi Shafran: Jews and money: When anti-Semitism isn't
JWisdom.com Marriages are not made in Heaven with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (VERY fast 15 minutes)
Nov. 10, 2009
Michael Doyle: Author of book exposing CAIR ordered to remove supporting documents from Web
JWisdom.com If the creation so loudly shouts the existence of the Creator, why aren't more people believers? with Rabbi Naftali Brawer (9 minutes)
Nov. 9, 2009
Mark Steyn: Shooter exposes hole in U.S. terror strategy
JWisdom.com It's never too late to have a happy childhood with Sarah Chana Radcliffe (5 minutes)
Nov. 6, 2009
Rabbi Berel Wein: Choosing to hear
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick The mullahs' big week
Suzanne Fields A Fallen Wall for Fallen Man
Nov. 5, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet: Three scrumptious -- but simple -- butternut squash dishes
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger: Should prayers be covered?
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
Martin Peretz: Beware, Barack. Beware, Rahm. Beware, Axelrod
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater? With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The Holocaust is now on Facebook
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review Oct. 27, 2005 / 24 Tishrei, 5766

Prez is in a pit dug in large part by his ‘friends’

By Jack Kelly

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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Some in the news media, citing anonymous sources, say Vice President Dick Cheney recommended against nominating Harriet Miers for the Supreme Court. If true, this should dispel the notion, prevalent on the fever swamp Left, that Mr. Cheney pulls the president's strings. But in this instance, it would have been better if the moonbats had been right.

If you're in a hole, stop digging. That's good advice, but it tends to be followed only by those who realize they're in a hole.

President Bush is in a pit, dug in large part by his "friends."

Like most conservatives, I was disappointed when Mr. Bush chose a person unknown to all but the handful who have worked with her.

But I was appalled more by the childish and churlish reaction of much of the conservative intelligentsia. The president, by virtue of his stellar judicial choices in the past, had earned the benefit of the doubt. And Ms. Miers deserved the opportunity to be heard before harsh judgments were made about her.

But it is one thing to give the president the benefit of the doubt in the absence of evidence, another to continue giving him that benefit in the face of evidence.

If Ms. Miers were as smart and as conservative as Mr. Bush said she was, criticism should have abated as we learned more about her. It hasn't worked out that way.

Her private meetings with senators have gone poorly. "No one is walking out of these meetings thinking they've just met with a star," a staffer who attended one told the Washington Times.

Her meeting with Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter ended in a public dispute over whether she had or had not endorsed the "right to privacy" the Court had found in the case of Griswold v. Connecticut. This was compounded when Specter and Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the ranking Democrat on the committee, gave Ms. Miers a public spanking for turning in her written questionnaire late, with incomplete responses.

Opponents have been posting on the Web examples of vapid writing by Ms. Miers. They have been scouring her work for passages that make her look bad. But there has, alas, been no shortage of such passages.

The White House has not countered with examples of clear, concise written statements by Ms. Miers. This could be because the White House staff is incompetent, a conclusion the bungled campaign for Ms. Miers to date makes plausible. But it could also be that no examples of clear, concise written statements by Ms. Miers exist.

If Ms. Miers were as the president described her, there was much to be said for a "stealth" nominee. But all hopes of having her on the Court by Thanksgiving have been blown up by the controversy on abortion, the one issue their interest groups demand Democrats fight to the death.

Abortion is the worst of all judicial issues for conservatives to pick a fight on. On takings, on racial quotas, on homosexual marriage, on the pledge of allegiance, the vast majority of Americans side with us. But even many Republicans oppose overturning Roe v. Wade.

And recent revelations about her support for racial set asides indicate Ms. Miers is to the left of Sandra Day O'Connor on affirmative action, a matter of as much distress to conservatives as her abortion views are to liberals.

The vetting of Ms. Miers was as incomplete as her Judiciary Committee questionnaire. Some troublesome financial issues relating to her service on the Texas Lottery Commission were overlooked. I doubt very much that Harriet Miers is guilty of any impropriety. But as we have seen in the Tom Delay persecution, Democrats don't require any actual evidence to make charges.

I had wanted to wait until the hearings to make up my mind about Ms. Miers. But now I fear continuing this debacle will produce the worst of all worlds for conservatives.

It's hard to find supporters of Harriet Miers beyond the president and the First Lady. Her only friend on the Judiciary Committee is Texas Sen. John Cornyn. All the others, Democrat and Republican, will be asking tough, probing questions, for which there is no evidence Ms. Miers can answer well.

The president needs to pull the plug on this nomination. He needs to fill in this hole before it gets deeper. If he keeps digging, his enemies will fill it in over his head.

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JWR contributor Jack Kelly, a former Marine and Green Beret, was a deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration. Comment by clicking here.

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