Mister Snitch has activated his Poindexter Awareness Office and scanned Harriet Miers for possible Souterisms. After consulting his panel of experts from Slovokia and West Virginia and elsewhere Outside the Beltway, Mr. Snitch declares: "The experts ...

There is the west (Left) coast.

There is the East Coast, (Often thought of as mainly the Northeast only) that is very liberal.

And in between, there is America.

Is was America that put Bush in office.

Clarence Thomas has a degree from a catholic seminary.

This morning, while sipping on my coffee, I read the most recent post on the Miers mess by the Anchoress. The Anchoress has long been one of my favorite blogs and she is a unique voice in the blogosphere. In

We are pleased to introduce the Poindexter Awareness Office, dedicated to identifying those whose overqualifications make them incapable of actually getting anything done.

The Poindexter Awareness Office has identified Harriet Miers as the anti-P...

It is not being elite to be uncomfortable with this key choice after many years of battle, when the main argument in favor of her is that we should trust Bush-he knows her well. There is no one more trustworthy than Jesus, but he hand- picked Judas after knowing him better than anyone. It turned out to be a disaster. We, not being omnipitant, can't turn a disasterous choice into salvation as did Christ.

There were far better choices, better strategies than splitting ourselves in two while the Dems sit laughing at their woundless victory. Karl and George blew this one!

...this would have, once again, stalemated the Congress, and thus led to another session of Washington doing nothing productive.

You say that like it's a bad thing.

Over at Originalisms, Tim Shuman gives what I think is unshakeable evidence that whatever the basis of conservative opposition to the Miers nomination may be, it is not law school snobbishness:

Patently false. A great many conservatives who were not at all pleased with the big government impulses of George Bush voted for him largely for SupCt reasons. It was right behind the War on Terror on my - and many other right-leaning voters' - list of reasons to prefer Bush over Kerry. Had the Democrats actually nominated someone (like Lieberman) I could trust on national security, it would almost assuredly have been the deciding factor in my vote. And I am hardly alone.

Perhaps TNR's logic applies to a great many voters, but it is plain nonsense for a significant minority, left and right.

I'm hardly an elitist. My step-father is a labor union electrician, and I went to a small state school for undergrad. But I expect the supreme court to have some pretty elite minds who have shown that they are such.

As a 'Bama PhD, I certainly agree that the lack of an Ivy League degree is dispositive. It is, however, a proxy for a given level of intelligence and training that a candidate without that credential would have to demonstrate otherwise. Ditto refereed journal articles.

These are three very different things. I went to an Ivy League college and law school, but I'm not qualified to be on the S.Ct. Similarly, the fact that Miers didn't go to the Ivy League means nothing. Publishing major journal pieces isn't really a big deal, either, but it's a stand-in for what IS the big deal -- having a judicial philosophy. It's inconceivable to me that someone would be nominated to the S.Ct. without having thought about the role of judges in deciding cases and their role more generally in our political system. That's not elitism; it's asking for a qualified candidate.