October 26, 2005
Harriet Miers in her own words
What do we know about Harriet Miers? Not much. So when we find some of her speeches, it’s about all we have to go on when trying to discern who she is and what she believes (“trust me” notwithstanding).
I was able to find two through the Washington Times page on Miers. The first was a speech on Women and Courage, and it makes me think she’d vote for Hillary Clinton for president just because Hillary is a woman. I’m all for feminism, but I’m also a big fan of meritocracy, and thus don’t support breaking down barriers for barriers sake (hence, why I like Janice Rogers Brown but not Miers). But in its most benign reading, she’s cheering on women who blaze trails, and I can get behind that. Of course, she threw in quite a bit of politics about how much poverty there was in Texas, and how the government wasn’t doing enough to stop it.
The second was a little bit more political. In an address to Executive Women of Dallas, she got a little bit into her judicial philosophy. She talks about the problems with the courts stepping in to enforce progressive politics, and how that was a bad thing. But what did she consider to be bad? The fact that the legislature wasn’t practicing progressive politics, and thus the courts had to fill the gap.
May 1st saw the defeat of the so-called Robin Hood funding plan for public education in our State and I found that both predictable and understandable. I have yet to see an election at any level where voters were asked to pick but told they had little choice as to what to pick that proved successful– at least in a democratic society. And my perception was that the education plan was a “do this” or else the court will shut down the schools.
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Why then did the supporters of the school funding constitutional amendment not have the sense that the amendment was going to fail, which it did by a large margin, and why did the legislature and State leaders not have a plan B? Watching the news you get the sense the amendment failing came as a big surprise and a big disappointment. I believe it was a big disappointment, I do not believe it was a big surprise.
She goes on to talk about the lack of low-income housing in Dallas, her support of a state income tax (which Texas did not have), and the racial problems facing the city. Not that such discussions shouldn’t be had, or that there weren’t problems at the time, but there is the undertone throughout her speech that it is the job of the government to step in and fix it. She believes it should be the legislature, not the courts, but her end goal of each is the same.
Now, this isn’t to say that nothing has changed in her political philosophy. After all, my political philosophy has grown and stretched in the last 12 years. Of course, I’d say more change occurs in the years 15-27 than they do in the years 48-60 in ones life. But there are some definite concerns here in what Miers has said. She may be a smart lady, but I don’t see much talk of liberty and individual rights in her speech, only discussions of society and what it must do. That’s not the sort of Supreme Court justice I’m looking for.
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