Harriet Miers

[Prudence]

Last night when I got in the car after class (cupcakes!) Ryan was listening to talk radio. I turned to the 24 hours news station, but before I did there was a little snippet on the Miers nomination and I suddenly had a little twinge of paranoia.

Bush was allegedly under a lot of pressure to nominate a women, including public comments from his wife and the outgoing justice.

The talk radio snippet suggested that the reason the current nominee is so unqualified is because Bush was specifically nominating a woman. The implication from the host (I have no idea who it was) was that this proves there were no qualifed female candidates and that Bush should just withdraw the nomination and hire a qualified man already.

Now the tinfoil hat portion of my brain is afraid that this was all a set up. That Bush nominated some kooky dame with Black Sabbath inspired eyeliner so that he can say, "gosh, I tried to nominate a women. Sorry!"

I'm not in favor of quotas, just making sure that all the qualified candidates were considered, including those who don't look like us or belong to our social clubs. I wouldn't say a retiring female justice has to be replaced by a woman any more than I would say a retiring male justice has to be replaced by a man. But nominating a not-so-qualified woman as proof that no qualified women exist -- that would be a low blow indeed.

I doubt that was the intention, but it worries me that it has inspired at least one kooky radio talk show host to insinuate that women aren't qualified to sit on the bench.