It’s a non-issue. Laura Bush is not guilty of all charges. Accept it and move on.

tequilamockingbird

“No matter how wacky and hostile the Left, I’ll never again deeply identify with the dug-in religious social conservatives or the Kewl-Kid NRO wanna-WFBees again; not because they are not relatively sound on policy and culture angles much of the time, but because of the emotional, cultural, and intellectual desert climate this premature tantrum has revealed.”

I’ve been reading and observing the “wanna-WFBees” at NRO with an increasing sense of dismay. There has been IMO a distinct whiff of elitism over there, long before the Miers business blew the lid off. It makes me tune them out for weeks at a time. I don’t believe the lot of them together could even begin to fill the tippy-toes of WFB’s shoes.

Your blog is wonderful, neo. From this lurker’s point of view, you and Dr. S. are right on on this one. It really is a tantrum, and a chill pill is definitely in order.

The puppeteers, as regards the Miers nomination, are the Gang of Fourteen, not the President, who is more simply making a political calculation, and an understandable one at that. McCain and the Gang of Fourteen should be the focal point; the President is dealing with the political realities – as is often said politics in the realm of the possible.

The Gang of Fourteen have capitulated to the Dems and Left/Dems in the Senate and are forwarding themselves as “leaders”. However, in point of fact they’re capitulating and manipulating for political ends rather than providing leadership in any more thoughtful and substantive manner.

The same qualities that drive his enemies to literally commit suicide when they can’t negotiate the cognitive dissonance their irrational hatred leads them into, is now driving right-wing nutcases to come out of the woodwork to attack him.

I hope his successor is just as infuriatingly moderate. Because Hillary “It Takes A Socialist Society To Raise A Child” Clinton certainly isn’t.

The anger at the sexism charge seems to come from the Washington Post’s skewed reporting of the incident. Malkin links to this headline: “Laura Bush says sexism possible in Miers criticism”. It sounds as if she made the charge, and in this context “possible” is more like “likely but I’m being coy about it”. The actual incident involved the reporter asking her the “loaded question” as some have called it.

Of course, you would think Malkin would be among the last people to mistakenly trust a MSM article. It seems people like her were already on edge from Ed Gillespie’s sexism charge.

From Captain’s Quarters.

The problem with the CPT is simple, on the one hand he talks about how the administration is desperate and failing in the defense/selling of the nomination, and then he talks about how the administration should have clarified Laura’s statement(As if they are guilty till proven innocent) as if the administration have spy squads on every blogger and what they are writing.

“Given the chance to lay out a positive, substantial case for her nomination to the Supreme Court, the Bush administration has remained largely silent.”

First the administration is making a mistake by not saying anything, then they should have said something and the fact that they haven’t is proof that they are guilty.

The logic is perverse.

And it is sort of the same logic as what happened with the Tancredo Firestorm.

No matter how wacky and hostile the Left, I’ll never again deeply identify with the dug-in religious social conservatives or the Kewl-Kid NRO wanna-WFBees again; not because they are not relatively sound on policy and culture angles much of the time, but because of the emotional, cultural, and intellectual desert climate this premature tantrum has revealed.

Obviously, you wouldn’t, if all you heard was the bad news filtered through more bad news ala Iraq.

But for now, President Bush’s apparently weak argument, “Trust me,” is beginning to look much sounder. Perhaps the great Texas jurisprude, Lino Graglia, put this best, in an interview with Hugh Hewitt. To paraphrase: the Supremes are in the habit of arrogating to themselves decisions that should really be made by the people (on everything from abortion, pornography, and school prayer, to all-male military academies in the State of Virginia). Power naturally flows to their heads. Yet the Constitution had nothing to say about such things, and explicitly left what it had nothing to say about, to the people. It is this trust in the people that has made America the beacon she is.

In the week since [his initial announcement of opposition], much dust has settled, and it has become clear that Ms
Miers is acceptable to the broad rightwing Republican constituency, and to
not a few Democrats. She is despised, chiefly, by the rightwing
intellectuals (people like me), who were heartbroken that Mr Bush would pass
over the long list of brilliant, strict-constructionist legal scholars that
have arisen in response to the challenge presented by two generations of
often deconstructionist rulings by the same Supreme Court.

People who don’t know enough, also can’t make justified decisions at all.

http://hughhewitt.com/archives/2005/10/09-week/index.php#a000350

All kidding aside, NNC is right. Too many on the blogosphere, like too many on posting boards and the dear old usenet of times past and present act like they’re actively looking for things to get pissed at, and choose to interpret things in the worst light possible, regardless of how (in?)accurate that interpretation may be. I don’t know much about this latest Laura Bush and Supreme Court nominee scuttlebutt — work’s been so damn busy, I’m having trouble keeping up with housework, let alone current events — but God knows I’ve seen this reaction on the internet before, no matter what the forum (blog, BBS, newsgroups, etc.). There’s some property of such postings — most likely the anonymity of it — that lead some folks to let the worst aspects of their character come out. Just give them a subject-of-the-day, and WHAM! Instant rant.

Instarant? Heh…