The Time to Hesitate is Through; No Time to Wallow in the Miers

Ann Althouse quotes Charles Krauthammer getting it just right about Harriet Miers:

[W]hile I remain as exercised as anyone by the lack of wisdom of this choice, I part company with those who see the Miers nomination as a betrayal of conservative principles. The idea that Bush is looking to appoint some kind of closet liberal David Souter or even some rudderless Sandra Day O'Connor clone is wildly off the mark. The president's mistake was thinking he could sneak a reliable conservative past the liberal litmus tests (on abortion, above all) by nominating a candidate at once exceptionally obscure and exceptionally well known to him. [Emphasis added]

The problem is that this strategy blew up in his face. Her obscurity is the result of her lack of constitutional history, which, in turn, robs her of the minimum qualifications for service on the Supreme Court. And while, post-Robert Bork, stealth seems to be the most precious asset a conservative Supreme Court nominee can have, how stealthy is a candidate who has come out publicly for a constitutional amendment to ban abortion?

Krauthammer suggests an exit strategy from the disastrous nomination, which Althouse endorses and urges on either Miers or Bush, the sooner the better: the Senate cannot evaluate her qualifications without seeing documents from her years in the White House, which the President cannot release without jeopardizing executive privilege.

Comments

[michael reynolds]

I am so jealous of that headline.

[karen]

I am so excited over that headline :^)

[Adam]

That's a Doors' lyric, right? You know the 60's are cool when even young guys like me know this stuff.

"I am the Lizard King. I can do anything!"

[karen]

Adam: did you know he was schizophrenic? I have a question for you about neuroscience... Can drugs like pot, LSD, PCP, ETC (hehehe) induce a chemical imbalance and set the chemicals off in the brain, thus causing a mental illness? Is that something you've studied?

[amba]

Jim Morrison was schizophrenic??

I don't know if it's considered scientifically proven, but anecdotally, everyone from "back then" knows someone who was pushed off the deep end by drugs and never came back. Would they have become schizophrenic anyway? Likely not. Some brains are more vulnerable. And before you take the drugs, you don't know which you'll be.

[karen]

I'm pretty sure I read that in a book about him, i was pretty obsessed w/him. Not really sexually- although many guys I seemed to get involved w/were either drunks or dopes. Jim was a sick dude. He was really mean to his little brother.

I never tried drugs- jsut drank a bit. I was too scared I'd flip out like my brother. Schizophrenia- the anti-drug!! :)

[Adam]

I never heard he was schizophrenic either. I'd be more likely to believe manic.

Yes, actually, that is something that is mentioned in neuroscience. Amba's basically got it right. To use a technical term, it's called the diathesis-stress model of psychopathology. In it, a stressor (such as drug use) acts upon a pre-existing condition (the diathesis) to produce the psychopathology.

Basically, abnormal psychology embraces a multifactorial model for psychopathology: just a fancy was of saying that lots of different things can lead to a mental disorder. And all this fancy talk is a way of saying that most complex human characteristics are a result of the interaction of genetics and behavior: nature and nurture, blah, blah, blah. And, of course, the etiology (the cause) of a particular mental disorder is different for each person: Some people may only need a little environmental nudging, others might need a lot to send them spiraling into loon-tunes-ville.

My presentation for neuropharmacology class actually dealt with the interrelation between schizophrenic behaviors and cannabis use. So, for instance, both weed users and people with schizoid personality disorder (related to schizophrenia) might engage in "magical thinking" (believing that one's thoughts have more power on reality than they do).

I'm still surprised you're a Morrison fan, Karen. I mean, Morrison was hardly a "devout" man. I'm sure he was in favor of abortions, for instance.

I had a Morrison craze in late middle school, but now I'm a big wuss who listens primarily to classical music. See man, I've been through all duh phases.

[Gruntled]

Will the Republicans actually crack up enough to make the Prez withdraw the nomination? That is beyond making him a lame duck.

[karen]

Maybe I really like Morrison because he symbolizes all the things in my life I chose not to do. And, I really think his music's the greatest. He's such a wild man- i can see how it would be.

I'm fairly diverse in areas, Adam. Just because my values are boxed in doesn't mean I have to be.

Do you know the big drug up here w/the Hs age kids is Aderol- a drug that helps kids w/ ADD or is it ADHD? focus. They crush it up and snort it.

[Adam]

Don't mean to box you in, Karen, but you have to admit a conservative Catholic with a thing for Morrison is a little odd.

[karen]

Yeah? Well, how many conservative Catholics do you really know, Adam? LOL. We aren't the boxable type, each one of us odder than the next. Up here, anyway.

Values are just an internal wiring hoping to externalize through the right circut. How we look act or smell? That's the trivial stuff.

Besides, haven't you head about the *good, little Catholic girls*?

Why do you think I'm so freaked out w/three daughters to raise? all that Tradition to take down...