Two new bloggers have joined the blogosphere: “J. Michael Luttig” and “Harriet Miers.” Heh.

Baseball’s “second season” begins today with three Division Series opening games. Complete schedule here.

Game 7 of the World Series, if it happens, would be on my birthday. At Fenway Park, potentially. :)

Yesterday was the 10th anniversary of the beginning of O.J. Simpson’s search for the real killers. I wonder how it’s going?

The L.A. Times seems to think that the Miers nomination was Harry Reid’s idea. But according to the Washington Post, it was Notre Dame Law School’s own William Kelley — Miers’s second-in-command in the White House counsel’s office — who got the ball rolling:

Miers, who was Bush’s personal lawyer in Texas, was on no short list when he began assembling candidates for the court. When Justice Sandra Day O’Connor announced in July her plans to retire, Bush directed Miers to oversee the process to find a replacement. The choice of Roberts was widely hailed as a politically shrewd move, and Miers reaped some of the credit within the White House.

At that point, according to another senior official close to the process, deputy White House counsel William K. Kelley suggested to Card that Miers ought to be considered for the next seat that opened. “It began to be kicked around in a small circle of people,” the official said. With Bush’s approval, Card and Kelley began the secret vetting, looking at Miers’s public work. …

Bush sat down with Miers in the Oval Office [on Sept. 21] for the first of four conversations in which she was the interviewee instead of the interviewer. Miers was stunned at first.

“We said, ‘Well, Harriet, look at your résumé. Is that the résumé of someone you would recommend the president consider?’” recalled the senior official. “And she said, ‘Yes.’”

Hat tip: DJE. Background on Professor Kelley’s journey from ND to D.C. here.

Louisiana’s search for Katrina victims has ended with a statewide death toll of 964. That brings the overall toll to 1,203, including 221 deaths in Mississippi and 18 in other states, according to Wikipedia.

1,203 deaths is an order of magnitude less bad than what was initially feared in the weeks after the storm (10,000+), and it’s two orders of magnitude less bad than the worst-case scenario predicted by scientists years in advance (as many as 100,000) — a scenario which would have come to pass if Katrina had moved just 30 or 40 miles to the west, causing the flood waters in New Orleans to rise higher and much faster, and be accompanied by Category 4 winds that would have torn apart everything above the water line — including any rooftops that weren’t submerged. There wouldn’t have been a refugee problem in New Orleans in such a scenario, just a corpse problem. It seems ridiculous to say that New Orleans got “lucky,” but the truth is, it did.

That said, let’s take a step back for a moment. 1,203 deaths. Did you ever expect to see a quadruple-digit death toll from a hurricane — in America — in your lifetime? Think about that. We should all feel relieved that it wasn’t worse, but man, holy crap, that’s still an amazingly terrible tragedy. Not only is Katrina the third-deadliest U.S. hurricane since 1900, she killed almost five times as many people as the previous deadliest hurricane of the modern, satellite-based weather-forecasting era: Camille in 1969. And if you add up all the death tolls from all U.S. hurricane landfalls since Camille, you’d have only a few hundred more. And then came Katrina. An epic, awful moment in history, to say the least.

SpaceWeather.com has some great pictures from today’s solar eclipse in Europe, Africa, and the Middle and Near East, including:

That awesome photo was taken by Stefan Seip in Campillo de Altobuey, Spain. See also here.

Experts say today’s annular eclipse of the Sun is unrelated to the simultaneous partial eclipse of President Bush’s conservative support. :)

Heh. (Hat tip: Alex.)

Speaking of Mr. Ho, I saw this sign on a building in Phoenix and thought of him:

From the Left, Alex Ho is undecided about the Miers pick, while his friend Derek Walden (not technically a member of the Brendansphere, but in the penumbra, if you will) summarizes Miers’s credentials as: “I’m not a judge… but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.” Heh.

From the Right, Ryan Bradel — president of the NDLS chapter of the Federalist Society — is “underwhelmed”:

Maybe she will turn out to be okay; I hope so. In fact I don’t seriously entertain the possibility that she will be another Souter; she will likely end up on the right side of many decisions.

But the point is that Bush missed out on a huge opportunity to appoint a real judicial titan with burnished conservative credentials. I cannot for the life of me figure out why he picked her. It can’t just be that she was a woman- there were plenty of other women eminently more qualified. Also, there were plenty of other candidates who were younger and could have left a more lasting impact on the court.

He adds, “Hell, my credentials are better than Miers’.” Heh.

Regarding Professor Garnett’s opinion of Miers, Ryan astutely points out:

Prof. Garnett is very close to Bill Kelley, Notre Dame professor, the associate WH counsel and Miers’ presumptive replacement should she be confirmed. That can cut both ways: maybe Prof. Garnett has it on good authority that Miers has the bona fides. But he may also be colored by his closeness to Kelley and the resulting spin. If Prof. Garnett is anything, it is an independent thinker, and I have full confidence in his ability to form his own opinions. But I want something more than WH spin. If it’s there, then give it to us, but so far I don’t see it.

Holy crap!

I figured out what President Bush is up to! The deterioration of Iraq, the lame Katrina response, the cronyism, the tolerance of corruption all around him, the inexplicable Harriet Miers pick… it’s all part of an evil-genius Rovian plot to deliberately lose the 2006 elections!!!

Why, you ask? Well, Bush and Rove understand that the public periodically has a spasmodic, largely irrational urge to “kick the bums out,” and that when one party controls the entire apparatus of government, that party inevitably suffers when such a spasm occurs. They sense that an anti-incumbent spasm coming on, and they know it’ll be like a political tsunami when it hits — unstoppable in its force and stunning in its power. They’re smart enough to realize they can’t stop it, so they’ve decided to try and hasten it by displaying as much incompetence as humanly possible!

Again, why? Because they also understand that, if the Democrats take back the Congress in 2006, they will have peaked too soon (just like the GOP did in 1994), and the Republicans will have a much better chance of holding onto the White House in 2008 (just like Clinton did in 1996) because the public will have exhausted its bum-kicking spasm and won’t have one single party to blame for the country’s problems anymore. Instead of outrage against the ruling party, abject cynicism about the whole process will once again reign supreme. Advantage: Rove!

Okay, okay I don’t really believe this… but hey, you never know… :)

P.S. Full disclosure: the day after the 1994 election, when everyone in the MSM was solemnly proclaiming the day’s CW — that Clinton was doomed, DOOMED — I boldly declared that, no, Clinton would be re-elected two years hence precisely because the Republicans had taken back the Congress. (I think I said this to a fellow eighth grader in the middle-school bathroom. Anyway, I know I said it.) After all, I reasoned, it will be harder now for the public to blame Clinton for everything, because he can just blame the Republicans back! This explanation of the 1994-1996 dynamic, out of the mouths of babes (I was 13), so beautiful in its simplicity, has not yet been accepted by political historians, but by God, I stand by it. :)

Kos: “That [Harriet Miers’s] appointment is an act of cronyism is without a doubt, but if that’s the price of admission to another Souter or moderate justice, I’m willing to pay it.”

Via e-mail from the law school:

WHAT: An American Tragedy: Hurricane Katrina in Focus

WHO: Black Law Students Association, Environmental Society, International Law Society, the office of Student Affairs, and the office of Africana Studies have all linked up to provide an open forum about the Hurricane Katrina response.

We have four panelists: Fr. Lindend (from Xavier University [in New Orleans]); Prof. Tidmarsh (civil rights issues); Prof. Mason (federalism issues); and Prof. Camacho (environmental concerns). It will be moderated by our own Erika Harriford-McLaren of the Career Services Office.

WHEN: This event is Tuesday, October 4th (tomorrow) and doors open at 6:45p.m.

WHERE: The Hesburgh Library Auditorium

Not all conservatives are upset by the Miers nomination. NDLS’s own Rick Garnett says the Right should trust Bush on this one:

President Bush and his advisors — his advisors who are, it should be remembered, entirely committed to constitutionalism in the courts — believe that Ms. Miers is a judicial conservative.

I yield to no one in my respect for the “farm team” — McConnell, Alito, Luttig, etc. — but I am also surprised that some are so quick to assume that this President, who fought hard to get home-run judges Pryor, Owen, Colloton, Brown, McConnell, Sutton, Roberts, etc., confirmed to the courts, would suddenly drop the constitutionalism-ball just to be nice to an old friend or to satisfy those demanding another female justice. This is a White House — and, more particularly, this is a White House Counsel’s office — that is well stocked with very smart conservative lawyers, who understand that few things are as important to a President’s sucess, and few tasks are as central to his constitutional obligations, as judicial nominations. Whatever our complaints might be about some of this President’s decisions, I do not think he has ever given conservatives anything to complain about when it comes to judges and Justices. …

President Bush clearly believes that Harriet Miers is a conservative, who does share the commitment of Justices Scalia, Thomas, Rehnquist, and Roberts to a democracy-respecting understanding of the Constitution. This is not a case where those of us who believe strongly in the rule of law are being asked to rely on the vouching of Sununu and Rudman; this is a case where an Administration that has consistently — uniformly — picked solid judges is holding out a nominee who, the Administration reports, is every bit as solid.

Mark Levin is unconvinced by Garnett’s argument. Levin isn’t willing to just trust the Bushies; he wants “some evidence that Miers is sound philosophically.”

Hugh Hewitt, however, is also sounding the “trust” theme:

Harriet Miers isn’t a Justice Souter pick, so don’t be silly. It is a solid, B+ pick. The first President Bush didn’t know David Souter, but trusted Chief of Staff Sununu and Senator Rudman. The first President Bush got burned badly because he trusted the enthusiams of others.

The second President Bush knows Harriet Miers, and knows her well. The White House Counsel is an unknown to most SCOTUS observors, but not to the president, who has seen her at work for great lengths of years and in very different situations, including as an advisor in wartime.

He expands from there on the “wartime” theme, arguing that Miers is a good pick precisely because she has experience in the executive branch during the war on terror.

The Anchoress also “disagree[s] with the hysterics coming from the right, today” and thinks this is the ultimate rope-a-dope:

When I saw her name being floated - she who has no record on the bench, who, in 1988, contributed to some Democrats (ahem - just as I and many others did - good lord half of the conservative blogosphere are former Democrats), who is a winner of the Sandra Day O’Connor award for Excellence in Lawyering, or whatever that award is…my first thought was - she’s an ardently pro-life churchgoer who is going to confound the Democrats, who will really want to hate her but will find themselves unable to credibly do that. And she’ll outrage the right (until they begin to start thinking) which will help her get past the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Along the same lines is this post from NRO:

Bush knows she’s a hard-a**, he knows she will be tough on Roe, marriage, etc. But he’s not going to tell anyone that, he’s doing what in football is called a draw play. He’s blunting the dems; the groups can’t figure her out and don’t want to be too kooky (relying instead on conservatives to bash her), and she scoots right onto the bench. Once there, her real self appears — GOPers are happy; dems are, once again, left scratching their head.

Perhaps.

Getting back to The Anchoress… later in the same above-linked post, she brings up an entirely different possibility:

She may not make it to the Supreme Court. Bush may not even intend for her to get there. She may be, rather than the ‘misdirection’ many expected, an out-and-out decoy, floated to allow both the liberals and the conservatives to blast her out of the water so that Bush can then put up another candidate that both left and right - after having behaved very badly over Miers - will get behind.

I’m still finding that “throw Miers under the bus” theory hard to believe, but who knows? Only time will tell, I suppose.

Oh, and Professor Bainbridge is not pleased, not pleased at all.

Okay, lunch break over, back to work.

P.S. Heh.

It’s Kelley’s boss! The AP reports:

President Bush on Monday nominated White House counsel Harriet Miers to replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O’Connor on the Supreme Court, reaching into his loyal inner circle for a pick that could reshape the nation’s judiciary for years to come.

“She has devoted her life to the rule of law and the cause of justice,” Bush said, announcing his choice from the Oval Office with Miers at his side. “She will be an outstanding addition to the Supreme Court of the United States.” …

Miers, who has never been a judge, … said she was humbled by the nod.

“If confirmed, I recognize I will have a tremendous responsibility to keep our judicial system strong and to help insure the court meets their obligations to strictly apply the laws and Constitution,” she said.

Democratic and Republican special interests groups were braced for a political brawl over the pick, Bush’s second. But the lack of a judicial record may make it difficult for Democrats to find ground upon which to fight her nomination.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., had urged the administration to consider Miers, two congressional officials said. There was a long list of staunchly conservative judges that Democrats were poised to fight, Miers not among them. …

“She will strictly interpret our Constitution and laws. She will not legislate from the bench,” Bush said. Conservatives apparently agreed.

“There’s every indication that she’s very similar to Judge Roberts — judicial restraint, limited role of the court, basically a judicial conservative,” said Republican consultant Greg Mueller, who works for several conservative advocacy leaders.

The conservatives at ConfirmThem.com are not impressed:

Where’s my Scalia? Where’s my Thomas?

Can someone - anyone - make the case for Justice Miers on the merits? Seriously, this is the best the president could do?

And what really sticks in my craw is the president’s unwillingness to have a national debate about the proper method of interpreting the Constitution. I suppose I should have seen this coming when White House staffers freaked out over Chief Justice Roberts’s ties to the Federalist Society.

Thanks for nothing, Mr. President. You had better pray that Justice Miers is a staunch legal conservative, because if she turns out to be another O’Connor then the Republican Party is in for a world of hurt.

Un-freakin’-believable.

Oh, and if any of you RNC staffers are reading, you can take my name off the mailing list. I am not giving the national Republican Party another dime.

Update: O.k., I’ve received several calls and emails from conservative buddies telling me to chill out and reserve judgment on Miers. I suppose I should do that, but I am really furious about the president’s unwillingness to nominate an outspoken legal conservative. This nomination is not just about one person. This country needs to have a national debate about the proper method of interpreting the Constitution, and the president balks at taking on the penumbra lovers on the merits. Disgusting.

Read this, too. She gave money to the DNC and, in 1988, Al Gore. (At NRO, John Podhoretz offers one possible explanation for that.)

Also, Miers is 60. A commenter on this post writes, “there are so many more qualified and experienced candidates who are younger.”

Glenn Reynolds is “underwhelmed.” Kathryn Jean Lopez’s initial reaction was “Ugh.” (Obviously, she hates women! ;)

But at least some of the liberals at Daily Kos aren’t happy, either:

I think Miers is a sitting duck for opposition.

And frankly, I look at the judicial nominations this way.

There’s no way we can stop Bush from appointing a conservative. Even a hardcore conservative.

But what we can stop him from doing is appointing a total Republican hack whose loyalties lie first and foremost with the George W Bush wing of the Republican party. Roberts didn’t necessarily fit in that category; or at least he didn’t do so obviously. Miers does. And I think it’s genuinely worrisome that someone whose only apparent qualification for the Court is that she’s a friend of W is allowed to take a lifetime position on the Supreme Court.

So you know what? If Bush comes back and appoints someone who is a fairminded hardcore conservative, someone like a Luttig, I’ll take it. I may not like it, but there’s not much I can do.

It’s the cronyism that we ought to be opposing at this point. We all know how the Busheviks operate. They’re not interested in advancing conservative principles so much as they are in consolidating power. Allowing them to have someone who is totally beholden to Bushco should not be permissible.

And frankly, I think this is something we can explain easily to the American people, and something they’ll agree with.

Maybe so, but if given a choice between 1) a “fairminded hardcore conservative” whose deeply held right-wing views are unlikely to change, and could reshape the law in this country for decades, and 2) a “total Republican hack” whose “loyalties” will become totally irrelevant the moment she’s confirmed to her lifetime position on the Court, and who isn’t a known social conservative … is the Left sure it really wants choice #1? (What’s the “hack” Justice Miers going to do? Personally issue a ruling making Bush our President-for-Life?) A preference for choice #1 might be intellectually justifiable, but is it wise? In other words, Luttig might be objectively more qualified, but isn’t the Miers nomination a potential boon for those who don’t want to see the Court packed with outspoken social conservatives?

I guess I think the Right’s ire is a bit more understandable than the Left’s, in this particular instance. I would think the problem for the Left would be more along the lines of abject confusion. So much of their worldview has been tied up in the assumption that Bush would “pack” the Supreme Court with known radical right-wing social-conservative nutjobs at every opportunity … and now he’s had two chances, with no guarantee he’ll get a third, and he’s 0-for-2 on fulfilling those expectations. Perhaps Roberts and Miers will turn out to be very conservative justices — or perhaps they won’t. There are so many people he could have nominated where that doubt would not have existed, and he could have gotten any one of them confirmed (because his party controls both houses of Congress, and could invoke the “nuclear option” if necessary to defeat a filibuster), but he made a conscious choice not to. Why? And how does his unexpected restraint fit in with the “evil Bush” mentality?

If I were a social conservative, damn straight I’d be pissed. If I were a doctrinaire liberal, I’d be relieved. As it is, I’m not sure what to think, except that I’m unimpressed with her grammar: “the court meets their obligations”? C’mon, Harriet, that should be “its.” Jeez. :)

UPDATE: There’s lots more conservative reaction at the National Review’s Bench Memos blog and at The Corner, including this from Mark R. Levin:

The president, despite a magnificent farm team from which to choose a solid nominee, chose otherwise. Miers was chosen for two reasons and two reasons alone: 1. she’s a she; 2. she’s a long-time Bush friend. Otherwise, there’s nothing to distinguish her from thousands of other lawyers.

Sounding a similar note, David Frum writes:

This is the moment for which the conservative legal movement has been waiting for two decades - two decades in which a generation of conservative legal intellects of the highest ability have moved to the most distinguished heights in the legal profession. On the nation’s appellate courts, in legal academia, in private practice, there are dozens and dozens of principled conservative jurists in their 40s and 50s unassailably qualified for the nation’s highest court. Yes, Democrats might have complained. But if Democrats had gone to war against a Michael Luttig or a Sam Alito or a Michael McConnell, they would have had to fight without weapons: the personal and intellectual excellence of these candidates would have made it obvious that the Democrats’ only real principle was a kind of legal Brezhnev doctrine: that the court’s balance must remain forever what it was in the days when Democrats had a majority of the votes in the US Senate - in other words, what we have, we hold. Not a very attractive doctrine, and not very winnable either.

The Senate would have confirmed Luttig, Alito, or McConnell. It certainly would have confirmed a Senator Mitch McConnell or a Senator Jon Kyle, had the president felt even a little nervous about the ultimate vote.

There was no reason for him to choose anyone but one of these outstanding conservatives. As for the diversity argument, it just seems incredible to imagine that anybody would have criticized this president of all people for his lack of devotion to that doctrine. He has appointed minorities and women to the highest offices in the land, relied on women as his closest advisers, and staffed his administration through and through with Americans of every race, sex, faith, and national origin. He had nothing to apologize for on that score. So the question must be asked, as Admiral Rickover once demanded of Jimmy Carter: Why not the best?

I worked with Harriet Miers. She’s a lovely person: intelligent, honest, capable, loyal, discreet, dedicated … I could pile on the praise all morning. But nobody would describe her as one of the outstanding lawyers in the United States. And there is no reason at all to believe either that she is a legal conservative or - and more importantly - that she has the spine and steel necessary to resist the pressures that constantly bend the American legal system toward the left.

I am not saying that she is not a legal conservative. I am not saying that she is not steely. I am saying only that there is no good reason to believe either of these things. Not even her closest associates on the job have no good reason to believe either of these things. In other words, we are being asked by this president to take this appointment purely on trust, without any independent reason to support it. And that is not a request conservatives can safely grant.

There have just been too many instances of seeming conservatives being sent to the high court, only to succumb to the prevailing vapors up there: O’Connor, Kennedy, Souter. Given that record, it is simply reckless for any conservative president, especially one backed by a 55-seat Senate majority, to take a hazard on anything other than a known quantity.

It does seem like an odd choice, under the circumstances. Especially when you consider that Bush’s alternative choices weren’t just Luttig, Alito, or McConnell — there are several outspoken judicial conservatives he could have picked who are also women/minorities.

P.S. Right up near the top of Drudge’s homepage is this tidbit:

MIERS TURNED 60 IN AUGUST; IS SINGLE, DEVOUT CHURCHGOER, VERY CLOSE TO FAMILY…

Hmm, 60 and single, eh? Do you think Drudge is trying to imply something? Wonkette picks up the thread.

UPDATE 2: Here’s something that the Right is a bit more happy about.

UPDATE 3: Tom Goldstein of SCOTUSblog predicts that she’ll be rejected:

The President’s nomination creates a very interesting political dynamic - one that places the nomination in peril. The nomination obviously will be vigorously supported by groups created for the purpose of pressing the President’s nominees, and vigorously opposed by groups on the other side. But within the conservative wing of the Republican party, there is thus far (very early in the process) only great disappointment, not enthusiasm. They would prefer Miers to be rejected in the hope - misguided, I think - that the President would then nominate, for example, Janice Rogers Brown. Moderate Republicans have no substantial incentive to support Miers, and the President seems to have somewhat less capital to invest here. On the Democratic side, there will be inevitable - perhaps knee-jerk - opposition. Nor does Miers have a built in “fan base” of people in Washington, in contrast to the people (Democratic and Republican) who knew and respected John Roberts. Even if Democrats aren’t truly gravely concerned, they will see this as an opportunity to damage the President. The themes of the opposition will be cronyism and inexperience. Democratic questioning at the hearings will be an onslaught of questions about federal constitutional law that Miers in all likelihood won’t want to, or won’t be able to (because her jobs haven’t called on her to study the issues), answer. I have no view on whether she should be confirmed (it’s simply too early to say), but will go out on a limb and predict that she will be rejected by the Senate. In my view, Justice O’Connor will still be sitting on the Court on January 1, 2006.

I read somewhere this morning (I can’t remember where now) a comment, presumably tongue-in-cheek, suggesting that the Miers nomination is a ruse; Bush nominated Miers knowing she’ll be rejected (or eventually withdrawn after a bitter fight), and figuring he can then nominate a qualified but far-right conservative, because the public won’t have the stomach for a second consecutive Senate bloodbath, and the new nominee’s judicial credentials will look stellar compared to Miers’s.

Far-fetched, and almost certainly false, if for no other reason than that I can’t believe Bush, Mr. Loyalty, would throw a long-time confidant under a bus like that. But who knows? It might work out that way for him accidentally…

Okay, I gotta go to work now — no more updates till later.

Is the Republican Party in trouble for the 2006 elections? Could be.

The linked article quotes Rep. Jeff Flake (R-AZ), one of many fiscal conservatives who is upset with his party’s recent free-spending ways. Flake is the third-term congressman from the district where Becky’s house in Mesa is located, and I’ve noticed him quoted nationally in several recent articles, criticizing his spendthrift GOP colleagues. Interesting.