Harriet Miers and her Royal Family

Queen Victoria (Harriet Miers), Prince Albert (Texas Supreme Court Judge Hecht), Prince Albert (Bertie) The Prince of Wales (Hugh Hewitt), Princess Victoria The Princess Royal (Ann Coulter), Princess Alice (Laura Ingraham), baby Princess Louise (Michelle Malkin), Princess Helena leaning over the baby (the Author)

The Anchoress had a great idea the other day having seen my composition of a painting in my post 'The First Lady and Professor Althouse': "Why not have Harriet Miers be Queen Victoria and her children....Ann Coulter and Laura Ingraham?" Saying it merely in jest, little did she think I would fly with the idea and expand it...

Elite? No, of course not, simply Royal...O.K. everyone let's chill, and take it as the fun intended....we are all one big unhappy family, can't we just all get along...David Bernstein over @ Volokh has an interesting point about the possibility of a 'liberal elite': 'Putting the size six shoe on the other foot' God forbid David, I thought we had exclusivity on the 'elite' accusation....and Orin Kerr has Miers as Potter Stewart.

Patti Waldmeir in Washington is reporting today in the U.K. edition of the Financial Times:

"Top US Republicans are reaching out into to the world of high technology to tame the conservative backlash against Harriet Miers, Supreme Court nominee.

Within minutes of the nomination of Ms Miers last week, conservative blogs exploded with outrage, providing the first sign of serious conservative discontent over the choice Ms Miers.

Now the White House is trying to quell the revolt of the blogs: this week, Ken Mehlman, chairman of the Republican National Committee, reached out to the bloggers who have been leading the charge against Ms Miers in a conference call whose content appeared almost instantaneously on the internet.

Professor Stephen Bainbridge, professor of corporate law at UCLA and a leading Miers opponent, "live-blogged" the conference call: that is, he took real-time notes and broadcast them on to the web on his popular "blawg", or law blog.

Mr Mehlman assured the bloggers - who were contacted by telephone - that though Republicans had been disappointed before by Supreme Court nominees who turned liberal on the bench, that would not happen with Ms Miers.

Within minutes, bloggers posted their reaction to the call: most were unpersuaded. Several noted that Mr Mehlman stressed that Ms Miers would be a loyal ally of Mr Bush on the war on terror (which bloggers call the WOT). Mr Mehlman said Ms Miers might have to recuse herself from cases in which she was directly involved, but "because the WOT will continue for quite some time, there will be many opportunities in the long term for her to make an impact on those issues", according to the conservative blog, PoliPundit.

Yesterday the blogs were broadcasting yet more bad news for Ms Miers: several carried a link to a NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll showing that only 29 per cent of people surveyed said she was qualified to serve. Nearly half said they did not know enough about her to judge. And one blog provided a link to some testimony by Ms Miers in which she says she refused to belong to the Federalist Society - a libertarian lawyers' organization popular among conservatives."

So we do make a difference after all.

Hugh Hewitt's latest on Miers: Tucker and Teddy (and Beldar) "On Miers' side to date: Ken Starr, Lino Gralia, Thomas Sowell, James Dobson, Jay Sekulow, Marvin Olasky, Chuck Colson, Michael Medved, William Rusher, R. Emmett Tyrrell and of course Fred Barnes. Against her: The Corner, Tucker Carlson, Bill Kristol, Robert Bork, Mark Levin, George Will, Ann Coulter, Laura Ingraham, Michael Savage, and Charles Krauthhammer. I like those odds."

Hugh today: Starting Early on a Long Friday, he is off to broadcast today from GodBlogCon at Biola University,

The Anchoress: More on Harriet and Sexism, and via her to Jonah Golberg's complimentary piece on Miers published in the National Review: 'Mm'Doh', with the best advice "Take plenty of fluids, wait for the hearings, this fever will pass."

And by the way Anchoress, congratulations on being invited to write for the CBS News blog. She shares her impression of the CBS Evening News here.

Update: A must read from the former speech writer for the President, Matthew Scully, published today in the New York Times, via Ed Morrissey: 'The Harriet Miers I know'. Lorie Byrd weighs in.

"....But whatever she was up to, it's not good enough. Harriet Miers, says Bill Kristol of The Weekly Standard, is undoubtedly a well-meaning person, but he was expecting "brilliance," and her selection signaled "weakness" and "capitulation.
When it was Mr. Kristol's charming friend John Bolton whose fate was in question, that was family business, and for the president no price was too high for loyalty. But Harriet Miers, who is only the president's friend, is now to be led away like Carlo in "The Godfather" with his "ticket to Vegas." Quickly replace her with some credentialed luminary, and in a week no one will even ask where the woman is."

Update: Ann Althouse has been very kind again, The Anchoress also, and Susan Olasky at the fine World Views: 'Miers as Queen Victoria', likes the photoshop result. One of her readers suggests that Marvin Olasky should be Prince Albert in the painting.

Redneck Peril weighs in on my previous photographs: "... is there anybody else in the blogosphere who would have responded to the brouhaha by producing high-quality photoshopped images of Dubya as Napoleon, the First Lady as Josephine, and just as a bonus Ann Althouse as Catherine the Great?"

I find interesting how a number of readers who e-mailed me about these photos (excluding Redneck Peril) missed the fact that I am firmly embedded with the pro-Miers nomination 'Loyalist Army', as my regular readers well know. They inherently assumed that if that was so, I could not possibly laugh at the accusations of Imperialism, elitism and even less parody the same. One of my most avid readers, Kenny Pierce once wrote about me: "I like intellligent people who don't fit into neat pigeonholes". How right he is, at least with the latter assumtion....LOL

Further Update Monday: Matt Margolis points to David Frum being a switch hitter, and quotes the superlative comments made by him back in July. Pathetic really, after all the derogatory speeches and the supposed clear biased attack on the Miers' nomination.  Ian Schwartz @ The Political Teen, via Licianne  highlights Frum's latest view on Miers.
David Frum @ the National Review is responsible for the Petition to withdraw the Miers nomination. If he changes his mind every three months, we should be due for another change of mind around about mid-January....

Hugh Hewitt Update Monday: "NationalReview.com and The Wall Street Journal are being used as the platforms from which to put forward the argument that Miers is a weak nominee because her friends may have said she will overturn Roe v. Wade."

Update: Michelle Malkin sees the funny side of my photograph....and via Michelle I notice a cute blog of young Ms.Zanotti over @ American Princess, who has some different aspects of the Miers Hecht relationship to reveal.

Open Trackbacks: @ California Conservative, Political Teen .Mudville Gazette  Publius Rendezvous
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Comments

[California Conservative]

Delicious. A portrait that says it all. If only someone would've given them the memo...

[North by Northwest]

Wonderful - great choice!

[North by Northwest]

Gods vs. Geeks, the article in Slate describing how the GOP evangelicals fight intellectuals over Harriet Miers, actually made me step back a bit.

I mean, this kind of debate IMHO is quite simply unimaginable in Europe. Religion is a non-issue when it comes to either politics or business and if it actually is, then it would most certainly never be admitted publicly. In contrast, here, the President no less, not only mentions it, but makes certain religious beliefs the core reason for his Supreme Court nomination of Harriet Miers; a significant position indeed.

Your images, Alexandra, and the period they represent, may well be far more relevant than first meets the eye.

Is this a bad thing? George F. Will at the WaPo certainly thinks so (Can This Nomination Be Justified?).

I for one, am amazed and culturally challenged. It's hard not to sit on the fence, but, if pressed, I will say, that I am rather intrigued by the possibilities, the inclusion of religious faith as a decisive measure concerning what Europeans would presumably term 'worldly matters' may well provide - the current nomination issue clearly being a chief case in point - and what it could do to return some of the 'good' to our society, lost in the last 100+ years. We certainly have in place rugged and well established systems, preventing any of the excesses and injustices plaguing societies yonder.

It'll be interesting to list what 'good' one might think of when reflecting back on what characterized societies during these periods.

Anybody?!

[North by Northwest]

In Advice to a Seeker John Reynolds gave the following advice to students after they spent "..several weeks together trying to see the Good, the True, and the Beautiful."

First, try to fill your life with beauty. Look at your room. Is it orderly? Does it contain art or is it a self-indulgent statement about self? Now look in the mirror. Do you look like a clone or are you dressing for your body type and God-created personhood? Try to decorate and dress to please God and to create lasting beauty.

Take an art class that is not required. Listen to classical music and to good contemporary stuff even if you have to go off the normal track to find it. Most of all go to live theater and live concerts. Avoid expensive shows and find the authentic concerts done by folk for the love of art.

Now how is this for a start - looking at the painting, they certainly knew how to dress and look terribly smart and enjoyed plenty of classical music.

Certainly fits your blog title "All Things Beautiful".

[Darrell]

Love your work! But given what is being said about Ms. Miers in certain circles, shouldn't she be pictured as the skullery maid, cutting her SMU sheepskin to patch the holes in her shoes?

I would proffer that religion is "a non-issue" in Europe, because the poor dears that make it so are Socialists. People who don't substitute man for God know that religion affects every aspect of your life. Certainly our Founding Fathers knew this and incorporated it into our founding documents and their execution.

[Alexandra]

NxN, you shouldn't be quoting George Will as the authority on the subject, he has absolutely nothing to say on this matter worth repeating. He believes Miers not to be "among the leading lights of American jurisprudence", well I'd like to know why Chief Justice Rehnquist was, considering he too had not been a judge prior to being elected to the Supreme Court.

My defense of Miers has been written about over several of my posts, and it is no secret that I am pro-Miers nomination. I believe her to be a woman of principle and deep conviction. She shares the philosophy of originalists such as Scalia, who believe that judges should strictly interpret the laws and the Constitution and not legislate from the bench. She has a strong faith, and that is exactly what we need today to balance out the 'liberal craze' promoting the Constitution being a 'living document'.

Although I consider myself to be a liberal conservative, I believe that this is a time to tighten the liberal side of my views and promote the 'originalist-strict constructionist' judges to the bench, especially if they also have strong faith principles such as Roberts and Miers have.

I believe that we have slowly but very surely lost a lot of the old core Christian values that the President is attempting to install back into our society, and far from being wrong for daring to mention that Miers is a Christian, I say "don't ever be intimidated into submission". And if you don't get the atheist vote - too bad...

I for one admire the President's resolve and refusal to denounce the religious aspect of his nominee..

Darrell, does that answer your question as to why Miers is not depicted as the scullery maid? LOL!!!

[Darrell]

I think you misunderstood what I said. I, too, support Harriet Miers. I place great stock in knowing someone well, and speaking to someone daily for ten years goes a long way for me. The Elitist crowd tries to say the her "non-Ivy League" degree makes her a lesser candidate--and apparently, a lesser human being. I disagree. I have met my share of Ivy League regressions-towards-the-mean, as well as State school wonders.
If you meant that you intend your art to annoy Ms Coulter and the rest of her siblings, then I say by all means keep Harriet as Queen Victoria! Everyone has had their say except Harriet Miers. Shouldn't we give her that?

I have another stop now on my daily trek. Thank you, Alexandra!

[Darrell]

And by annoying siblings, I exclude you, of course! Lovely lean, by the way!

[Alexandra]

There are a lot of things I wish to say in this composition. Number one really is going back to some earthy Christian values of the period, where a family meant some kind of unity, even when in disagreement. Then there is the loyalty that exists between Texas Supreme Court Judge Hecht and Harriet Miers. Their long standing relationship of some 30 odd years, respect and utter admiration for the steadfastly uprightness of her character.

That loyalty for the family as a whole is echoed by Hugh Hewitt, and to a lesser extent by me. He unreservedly puts himself every day on the line for his family, I simply write about it. Then there is the norty Ann Coulter, bright eyed, feisty, wide eyed ready to question everything, disagree with everything, knock everything down that the family has spent generations building. Michelle Malkin is the baby, purely because the photo did not fit otherwise, and Laura Ingraham is there standing close to her 'brother' not knowing which way to turn.....

Then of course there is the parody relating to the 'conservative elitism' accusations, which one has to amplify before crushing to the ground. I believe in having a sense humor touch everything, especially in a situation where you are attacked by your own. Hugh is really the one who must feel pretty hurt, although I am sure he is too much of a gentleman to admit it....

[Ben Wisdom]

In keeping with the theme of a humorous approach to the Miers nomination, here's some comic relief that I came up with last week. It's called "Swing Roe, Sweet Harriet".

Sometimes you just have to laugh.

[a4g]

Alexandra,

I had actually already tried tracking back to you my movie musical take on the Miers subject when you visited, but was sadly rebuffed by the software as being "too far from source."

I had no idea trackbacks made such class distinctions. ;)

[bardseyeview]

"Thou seek'st the greatness that will overwhelm thee."

Henry IV says that to his son, who I would say stands in pretty well for Miers. What personal attorney plays on her relationship with a client to win this kind of nomination?

She used her friendship also to excuse herself from being vetted. The result has been pain for her client - but then I suppose the president is now her former client.

[Alexandra]

Bardseyeview,

You must be mistaking her for someone who saught the nomination, and further making an assumption that by virtue of the fact that she was nominated she must have rallied for the support.
Having read a huge amount written about her by people who know her better than you and I, I think your criticism to be rather harsh and incredibly presumptive. There has never been any suggestion of her 'using her friendship with the President' to avoid questions. She will get her platform at the appropriate time, and we must give her the opportunity to be fairly judged.
The so called 'causing pain for her client' is what I call 'standing by what you believe to be right', and if there is some pain to be had along the way, it's a choice you make. The short term pain he may feel, will be a flash in the pan compared to the length of her tenure term, and the latter is important to him and the future of the Supreme Court.
The long term pain may include the after effects the break in the conservative opinion caused, which could cost him dearly, but again, what is the President worth if he does not stand up for anything?
If you stand for nothing, you will fall for anything. That is my motto.