2005-10-07
Chris Floyd
'Moot Court'
Last week, President George W. Bush filled the final vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court -- and right on cue, all the knee-jerk Bush-bashers were up in arms, sputtering the usual objections: Unqualified crony! Right-wing apparatchik! Fawning, groveling Bush Family factotum! Wheel-greasing goon in high-priced threads!
Poor little dissident lambkins. They must be the only people left in the United States who still take the country's governance seriously. For it's obvious that the nation's political elite -- whatever party label they happen to wear -- do not. No ruling class that was actually serious about governing would ever countenance the pair of jokers whom Bush has foisted on what is supposed to be the ultimate guarantor of law in the land. Yet the first bad joke sailed through with bipartisan support and the second is bound to follow. Clearly, this is an Establishment in the throes of nervous breakdown, collapsing in a fit of hysteria-induced giggles while a pack of ruthless thugs loot the store and burn down the house.
For its sheer brazen mockery of the judicial system, Bush's nomination of his personal lawyer, Harriet Miers, to the high court outdoes the installation of hard-right knee-capper John " Jughead" Roberts as chief justice. Jughead spent most of his early career trying to screw the poor and the dark-skinned out of whatever meager rights and protections they had won after centuries of slavery, exclusion and savage repression. He really made his bones, however, with his stalwart service in the Busha Nostra's shutdown of the Florida recount in 2000. For this, Jug was elevated to the federal appeals court, where -- while he was negotiating for the Supreme slot -- he upheld Bush's imperial right to "disappear" anyone on earth into his own rigged system of military tribunals.
Miers, who has zero experience as a judge, is cut from the same cloth. Bush first hired her to dig into his own past and bury the skeletons she found there as he limbered up for his presidential run in the 1990s, The Associated Press reports. Miers delivered the goods, brokering a convoluted $23 million payoff to former Texas Lieutenant Governor Ben Barnes and his business partner. Barnes said he'd used political pull to get young war-coward Georgie into the National Guard back during Vietnam, The Washington Post reports. With payoff in hand, the whistleblower's memory suddenly got all fuzzy. Miers was also key in wangling Bush out of a jury duty assignment: The standard jury questionnaire would have revealed the drunk driving conviction that Bush had hidden for over 20 years, the Philadelphia Daily News reports. (Yes, Bush is the first convicted criminal ever elected -- or in this case, selected -- president.)
Miers, an ex-Catholic turned hardcore Protestant evangelical, has broader experience, of course. She was the managing partner of a high-powered Texas law firm that, under her gentle Christian guidance, paid out more than $30 million in two separate cases of helping corporate clients defraud their investors, The Huffington Post reports. At the firm, Miers also walked in Our Saviour's footsteps by specializing in union-busting and gutting worker safety protections. As the firm's prospectus proudly noted: "We defend [safety and injury] claims of any type, including multiple death cases." If you accidentally fed a few of your coolies into the company wood-chipper, no worries: Holy Harriet and her crew would have your back.
After defrauding investors and backing corporate killers, Miers moved to the White House, where, as the Los Angeles Times reports, she became Bush's chief gatekeeper for his most important briefings, including the Aug. 6, 2001 number titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S." -- you know, the explicit, hair-raising report that somehow lulled the entire Bush team into a deep sleep until Sept. 11. According to Republican Party chairman Ken Mehlman, Miers then became "heavily involved in the War on Terror" that followed the attacks.
This week Mehlman has been on the horn to Bush's hard-right "base" (although we prefer the more eloquent Arabic term for this loyal band: "al Qaida"), assuring them that Miers "will not interfere with the administration's management of the War on Terrorism," The Hill reports. He said Miers believes that neither the courts nor Congress should "micromanage" the Terror War, i.e., put fetters on the unrestrained powers of the commander-in-chief to kill, incarcerate and torture whom he sees fit. This is particularly important now, as the revelations of blood-soaked atrocity in Bush's prisons have grown so mountainous and foul that even the rubber-stamps in the Senate were forced this week to approve a cosmetic and meaningless measure to set guidelines for interrogating captives. (The bill leaves a gaping black hole for unregulated CIA interrogations, and will in any case either be killed or watered down to even thinner gruel by the more zealous Bushist cadres in the House.)
In fact, as White House counsel, Miers "provided the president with guidance on the legal parameters" for the War on Terror, Mehlman said. In other words, Miers helped draw up the "justifications" for torture, rendition and war which she will now be ruling upon at the Supreme Court. Oh, there'll be a hot time in the old gulag when Harriet joins Jughead on the bench!
But who cares? The wiggly, giggly Democratic "opposition" is already rolling over and playing dead for Miers; in fact, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid actually recommended that Bush appoint this torture-enabling, worker-whipping political fixer to the nation's highest court. The whole American leadership class has given up democratic government for the brutal absurdities of junta rule: cronyism, conquest, corruption and moral collapse.
Annotations
New Supreme Court nominee's ties to Bush's National Guard scandal
Philadelphia Daily News, Oct. 3, 2005Miers-Led Law Firm Repeatedly Forced to Pay Damages for Defrauding Investors
The Huffington Post, Oct. 3, 2005Texas Speaker Reportedly Helped Bush Get Into Guard
Washington Post, Sept. 21, 1999Harriet Miers, Pro and Anti
WorldViews, Oct. 3, 2005Miers Briefed Bush on Famous Bin Laden Memo
Editor & Publisher, Oct. 4, 2005Harriet Miers "Worships the President
WorldViews, Oct. 3, 2005Miers Backs Wide Executive Role; Helped Develop Patriot Act
Boston Globe, Oct. 5, 2005Harriet Miers Headed Law Firm Engaged in Union Busting
Confined Space, Oct. 3, 2005Soothing the Seething Right Wing
The Hill, Oct. 4, 2005Threading the Needle: Republican Talking Points on Miers
National Journal Hotline, Oct. 3, 2005The President's Pit Bull
Los Angeles Times, Oct. 4, 2005In Mid-Career, A Turn to Faith to Fill a Void
New York Times, Oct. 4, 2005The Unification of Church and State
Molly Ivins/Creators Syndicate, Oct. 4, 2005High Court Nominee Has Never Been a Judge
Associated Press, Oct. 3, 2005
