Job position available; experience not required

So, our dear leader announced his next pick for Associate Justice to the Supreme Court this morning: Harriet Miers, the White House Counsel. Does that smell fishy to you? Me too.

Apparently, Bush has appointed another one of his cronies loyal advisers to a very important position (this one is even a lifetime appointment,) as he has done in the past with Michael Brown, former head of FEMA, and John Bolton, (appointed) US Ambassador to the UN, to name a few:

Miers's low-key but high-precision style is particularly valued in a White House where discipline in publicly articulating policy and loyalty to the president are highly valued. Formerly Bush's personal lawyer in Texas, Miers came with him to the White House in 2001 as staff secretary, the person who screens all the documents that cross the president's desk. She was promoted to deputy chief of staff before Bush named her counsel after his reelection in November. She replaced Alberto R. Gonzales, another longtime Bush confidant, who was elevated to attorney general.

Ms. Miers is a lawyer, but she's never been a judge, although other people have served on the Supreme Court without previous judicial experience, so there is precedent -- I believe the late Chief Justice Rehnquist was put on the court as an Associate without any experience as a judge himself.

Since she was never on any bench, nobody can know what her judicial philosophy really is. However, I think we're in trouble here because, since they've worked together for so many years, Bush is the only one that really knows her and how she thinks (pro-life or pro-choice, pro-business or pro-environment, ...) and if he has picked her, he must like the way she thinks, which is troubling to me. I don't like how he thinks, so I probably wouldn't like how she thinks.

The biggest problem for the Democrats is that with Miers they have even less to fight than they had with Roberts. If she doesn't make missteps, will they be able to block her? And do we want to block her at all? The Jesus freaks certainly aren't too happy Bush didn't pick an ultra conservative, so if we fight this one, he might pick one like that the next time. Which one is the lesser evil?

Let the infighting begin.