Instruments of Pleasure

I know that headline sounds really salacious, as if this is going to be an exciting post about plastic vibrating anal thumbs or some such thing, but it's nothing fo the sort. It's a post about the Supreme Court. So, perverts who only got here by typing "pleasure instruments" or, worse yet, "vibrating anal thumbs," please move along.

When George W. Bush decided to nominate his good buddy Harriet to the Supreme Court, it clearly violated a number of the nation's most sacred principles. The entire point of the famed system of checks and balances installed by our Founding Fathers was to prevent someone from amassing too much power. And one of the surest signs of a tyrannical regime attempting to dominate an unwilling nation? The installation of puppets and toadies into essential governmental positions.

But George, instead, wanted someone he knew on the court, someone who would give the thumbs up (possibly the vibrating anal thumbs up) to any random fool thing he decided to enact. "I want to give a proper Christian burial to all the stem cells," for example. Or possibly, "Hey, y'all, let's invade Turkmenistan...They won't see that shit coming! I ain't even 100% that's a real country."

Bush, at this point, has gotten away with so much malfeasance, he's essentially daring us to try and stop him. Thus far, his administration has started a war on false pretenses, has leaked the name of an undercover CIA agent to the press, has reversed the long-term policy of the United States against torturing prisoners of war, has refused to join the other nations of the world in combatting the collapse of our environment, has condoned all manner of corruption, cronyism and fraud...I mean, what more can he do? How about start nominating his close and unqualified friends to important and high-ranking positions?

Joe Conason brings up a really terrific historical precedent into the conversation. Alexander Hamilton's Federalist Paper #76.

No, no, wait, don't stop reading. I know I've brought up The Federalist Papers, which you probably haven't read or talked about since high school American History. But this is really interesting, and I promise it won't take too long.

The entire essay provides Hamilton's savvy insight into the notion of Presidential appointments. Having come from a tyrannical state, the Founders avoided any system that would place too much power into the hands of an individual.

To what purpose then require the co-operation of the Senate? I answer, that the necessity of their concurrence would have a powerful, though, in general, a silent operation. It would be an excellent check upon a spirit of favoritism in the President, and would tend greatly to prevent the appointment of unfit characters from State prejudice, from family connection, from personal attachment, or from a view to popularity.

What Hamilton's saying is quite simple...You have the Senate approve important Presidential appointments to make sure he doesn't choose people based on favoritism, relation or personal attachment. President Bush nominated his own lawyer. A woman who served a few years ago as his staff secretary. A woman who sends him mash notes and love letters on special occasions and holidays. A woman who describes him as [sigh] the most brilliant man she has ever known.

Favoritism doesn't get any more intense than that. To my mind, this is a direct challenge to The Seante. On one side is The Constitution of the United States and the intent of the Founding Fathers, and on the other side is Chimpface McFuckup. What do you do?

The possibility of rejection would be a strong motive to care in proposing. The danger to his own reputation, and, in the case of an elective magistrate, to his political existence, from betraying a spirit of favoritism, or an unbecoming pursuit of popularity, to the observation of a body whose opinion would have great weight in forming that of the public, could not fail to operate as a barrier to the one and to the other.

Unfortunately, here, Hamilton was incorrect. George W. has proven to be a more callow and shameless leader than the Founders ever imagined. They thought a president would be ashamed to appoint someone unworthy of a position, because he would have to present this choice to the Senate. Unfortunately, our system relies now so much on mutual favoritism, on cronyism, on backdoor deal-making and the distribution of pork, the Senate no longer functions independantly from the President.

The system now more closely resembles a crime syndicate than a government. Money is funneled all around to keep people quiet and to motivate loyalty. I'm not 100% certain Miers will be confirmed, mind you. And the argument growing in popularity among Democrats that she may represent the best possible nomination from a douchebag like our president is not without merit. All I know is that the Executive Branch is already in direct violation of the spirit of the Constitution, and if Miers is confirmed, the Legislative Branch will join them in that dubious honor.

He would be both ashamed and afraid to bring forward, for the most distinguished or lucrative stations, candidates who had no other merit than that of coming from the same State to which he particularly belonged, or of being in some way or other personally allied to him, or of possessing the necessary insignificance and pliancy to render them the obsequious instruments of his pleasure.

Man, the Founding Fathers were good. I fucking love the Age of Enlightenment. They were all so goddamn clever and such terrific writers. I mean, when was the last time you read an essay about politics with a phrase like "obsequious instruments of his pleasure." Hamilton is a fucking genius, and it's really too bad that most people only know him as the guy who got shot by Aaron Burr in that famous duel because it was in that idiot milk commercial.

I agree with Conason. The phrase "obsequious instrument of his pleasure" perfectly sums up Harriet Miers. She's a blank, she represents no point of view or perspective. The president wants to place her on the most powerful judicial body in America merely to carry out his orders, and after he's gone, the orders of his comrades and followers. Surely this can't be permitted, right? I mean, as dumb, greedy and clueless as your average Congressman is, they still will rally around the Constitution? Right? You guys? Is anyone still even reading this?