from Slate’s blog review

Crony on the Court?
By David Wallace-Wells
Posted Monday, Oct. 3, 2005, at 11:30 AM PT

Crony on the court?: This morning, President Bush nominated White House counsel Harriet Miers, who has never been a judge, to replace Sandra Day O’Connor. Bloggers’ reaction was quick and biting—and this time, much of the venom came from conservatives.

At the National Review, former Bush speechwriter David Frum sets the tone by calling the nomination “an unforced error” and a missed opportunity to significantly shift the court rightward. Leading conservative Ed Morrissey agrees. “Not only does Harriet Miers not look like the best candidate for the job, she doesn’t even look like the best female candidate for the job,” he writes at Captain’s Quarters.

Volokh Conspiracy legal eagle Orin Kerr is especially flummoxed. “As far as I can tell, she has no particular experience or expertise in any areas of law that the Supreme Court is likely to consider in the next twenty years; she has no history of having thought deeply about the role of judges in a constitutional democracy; and she is a complete unknown among the parts of the DC legal community that will now be considering her candidacy for the Supreme Court.” Many beltway observers are equally dismayed. “It’s possible that with a six-week bar review course, any of us would be more qualified than Harriet Miers to sit on the Supreme Court,” writes Washington Monthly editor Amy Sullivan, a guest at Political Animal. “Bush chose hackery.”