Dems put on quite a Miers show

The AP reports some Senate Democrats are "defending" Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers from conservative criticism that she isn't qualified to serve on the court.

We're told Sen. Tom Harkin (D – Iowa) doesn't like “the trashing" she's received. Harkin's quoted as saying, "I really think it's despicable what they're doing."

Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) finds Miers's critics “incredibly sexist."

"They're saying a woman who was one of the first to head up a major law firm with over 400 lawyers doesn't have intellectual heft," Mikulski said. "I find this a double standard."

The AP gives us more, of course, but let's stop here.

It's true there's been some unfair criticism of Miers by conservatives, but most of what's been said is within the bounds of reasonableness; and certainly nothing like what many Democratic leaders and their media follows have often done to President Bush's judicial nominees.

For instance, has a single Republican Senator or prominent conservative academic, journalist or blogger called Miers “a wacko?”

But isn't wacko exactly what the "disgusted" Tom Harkin called Judge Priscilla Owen when she was an appellate court nominee: "This is not a person to put on the bench for a lifetime appointment. This person is wacko! She's wacko!"

About the time Harkin called Owen "wacko," the American Bar Association, by unanimous vote of its committee on federal judicial nominations, awarded her its highest recommendation: "Well Qualified."

"Wacko" or "Well Qualified?" Barbara Mikulski didn't hesitate: No double standard for her. She voted with Harkin not to confirm Owen.

Remember Chuck Schumer saying:

For years, the federal courts served as the shield protecting basic civil rights in this country. This administration wants the courts to become the sword that destroys those rights. And don't think this stops with Judge Pickering. He's just the tip of the iceberg.

Post Roberts, we know Schumer is a lightweight. But Schumer deserves credit for this: He sure can trash.

(Note: Judge Charles Pickering, like Owen, received the ABA's Well Qualified rating.)

And there were all those Democrats cheering when Ted Kennedy, "the liberal lion," roared "Neanderthals" at a group of men and women who had agreed to serve on the federal bench. The ABA found every one of them either Qualified or Well Qualified, didn't it?

Mikulski is right about one thing. Harriet Miers has been the target of some incredibly sexist remarks. Here are a few of them:

"I hope President Bush doesn't have any more office wives tucked away in the White House."

"(Miers) is one of the women who steadfastly devote their entire lives to doting on (Bush), like the vestal virgins guarding the sacred fire."

"(She's) a bachelorette who was known for working long hours.'"

In her denunciation of Miers's “incredibly sexist" critics, Mikulski didn't mention any of the sexist remarks cited here.

Why not? I think because all of them appeared on the editorial page of The New York Times, a paper as passionately Democratic as Mikulski herself.

The sexist remarks are part of a Maureen Dowd column republished at the Denver Post online.

If anything I've reported concerning the Senate Democrats, Dowd, or The New York Times surprised you, pay more attention to them as well as the large MSM claque that supports them.

They put on quite a show.