The wolf will come out of his sheep's clothing if he gets elected...

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Harriet Miers: Antonin Scalia in sheep's clothing

Of course, if you listen to most conservatives, Harriet Miers is as dangerous as a card-carrying member of the ACLU. I'm disappointed, depressed and demoralized, huffed the Weekly Standard's Bill Kristol. Her qualifications for the Supreme Court are nonexistent, puffed former presidential candidate Pat Buchanan.

Nonsense.

Make no mistake about it. This decision is too important. Replacing William Rehnquist with John Roberts was a wash. It's this appointment, to fill the shoes of swing-vote Sandra Day O'Connor, that will determine the future direction of the Supreme Court. Karl Rove never would have let George Bush nominate Miers if he didn't know she agreed with Bush on every issue.

It's not hard to figure out how Bush decided on Miers. If elected president, he promised in 2000, he would appoint to the Supreme Court justices like extreme conservatives Antonin Scalia or Clarence Thomas. John Roberts didn't fit the bill, so Bush knew he had to deliver this time around. But he also knew any one of the names on the conservatives' wish list -- Michael Luttig, Edith Jones or Janice Rogers Brown -- would stir up a firestorm in the Senate, which Bush wanted to avoid.

So Bush came up with Plan B, as brilliant as it is diabolical: Nominate someone who is every bit as conservative as Luttig, Jones or Brown, privately, but who is a complete mystery, publicly. And that's Harriet Ellan Miers. The perfect stealth candidate. Antonin Scalia in sheep's clothing.

In case you still harbor any doubts about her right-wing credentials, here's final proof. After four days of complaints from the far right, Karl Rove got on the phone to leading conservatives, starting with James Dobson, head of Focus on the Family. Rove convinced him to support Miers, Dobson confirmed, by giving him confidential information on her religious beliefs. Miers, like Bush, is an evangelical Christian.

Notice how the White House plays the religion card both ways. It was wrong for Democrats to raise the fact John Roberts is a Catholic, they argued, just one month ago.

Notice also what their doing so tells us about Harriet Miers. She's a soul mate of James Dobson, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. She's anti-choice, anti-stem cell research, anti-separation of church and state, pro-school prayer and pro-teaching intelligent design in public-school science classes. She's way out of the mainstream.

So what are Democrats waiting for? They know enough about Miers already to merit all-out opposition -- including the filibuster, if necessary. And they'd better act fast.

If Harriet Miers is confirmed, we'll be yearning for the good old days of moderate William Rehnquist.

Bill Press is host of the nationally syndicated Bill Press Show. His e-mail address is: bill@billpress.com.

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He has lied to Americans and to the world so many times that if he actually made a mistake and told the TRUTH, nobody would be able to recognize it.

LOL at *pro-terrorist.* Is that the *talking point* word of the day that you studied at the table while drinking your daily dose of Kool-Aid? I'm not pro terrorist by any stretch of the imagination. I'm also not gullible. As far as bizarre, I think people who can't think for themselves, see the forest from the trees and continue to defend a known manipulative, deceitful liar until the end, regardless of facts to the contrary, are beyond bizarre.

And as far as J. C. Penney bills, check the date below. As I said, this is nothing new. I doubt you need to worry about your credit card bills, though. Bush only attacks those who disagree with him or catch him in lies. Ask Valerie Plame.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- Walter Soehnge is a retired Texas schoolteacher who traveled north with his wife, Deana, saw summer change to fall in Rhode Island and decided this was a place to stay for a while.

So the Soehnges live in Scituate now and Walter sometimes has breakfast at the Gentleman Farmer in Scituate Village, where he has passed the test and become a regular despite an accent that is definitely not local.

And it was there, at his usual table last week, that he told me that he was madder than a panther with kerosene on his tail.

He says things like that. Texas does leave its mark on a man.

What got him so upset might seem trivial to some people who have learned to accept small infringements on their freedom as just part of the way things are in this age of terror-fed paranoia. It's that everything changed after 9/11 thing.

But not Walter.

We're a product of the '60s, he said. We believe government should be way away from us in that regard.

He was referring to the recent decision by him and his wife to be responsible, to do the kind of thing that just about anyone would say makes good, solid financial sense.

They paid down some debt. The balance on their JCPenney Platinum MasterCard had gotten to an unhealthy level. So they sent in a large payment, a check for $6,522.

And an alarm went off. A red flag went up. The Soehnges' behavior was found questionable.

And all they did was pay down their debt. They didn't call a suspected terrorist on their cell phone. They didn't try to sneak a machine gun through customs.

They just paid a hefty chunk of their credit card balance. And they learned how frighteningly wide the net of suspicion has been cast.

After sending in the check, they checked online to see if their account had been duly credited. They learned that the check had arrived, but the amount available for credit on their account hadn't changed.

So Deana Soehnge called the credit-card company. Then Walter called.

When you mess with my money, I want to know why, he said.

They both learned the same astounding piece of information about the little things that can set the threat sensors to beeping and blinking.

They were told, as they moved up the managerial ladder at the call center, that the amount they had sent in was much larger than their normal monthly payment. And if the increase hits a certain percentage higher than that normal payment, Homeland Security has to be notified. And the money doesn't move until the threat alert is lifted.

Walter called television stations, the American Civil Liberties Union and me. And he went on the Internet to see what he could learn. He learned about changes in something called the Bank Privacy Act.

The more I'm on, the scarier it gets, he said. It's scary how easily someone in Homeland Security can get permission to spy.

Eventually, his and his wife's money was freed up. The Soehnges were apparently found not to be promoting global terrorism under the guise of paying a credit-card bill. They never did learn how a large credit card payment can pose a security threat.

But the experience has been a reminder that a small piece of privacy has been surrendered. Walter Soehnge, who says he holds solid, middle-of-the-road American beliefs, worries about rights being lost.

If it can happen to me, it can happen to others, he said.

(Bob Kerr is a columnist for The Providence Journal. E-mail bkerr@projo.com.)

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.shns.com.)

hmmmmm....? Just because everyone is voting for Barack doesn't make any of it right - they all are bad candidates to some of us......

you blast the tea parties and try to downplay their significance. The sentiment behind the tea party is that we shouldn't be part of any flock! We should be thinking on our own. We shouldn't hide behind party lines and blindly follow our politicians to our ruin, republican or democrat!

Geez, talk about totally blind. If it doesn't have a big fat O stamped on it, you won't listen. Just a bunch of freaking robots.... O rhetoric goes in and nothing relevant comes out! I thought you lefties were "intellectuals" and "free thinkers." Now you're just Obama groupies clinging to his empty promise of hope and change! Grow a brain! Exercise your brain cells and THINK!

as far as foreign affairs go to restore credibility to the US...and that's what he's doing. -- As opposed to the shrub method of trying to bully the world. Get a grip and try to catch up with the rest of us.

We are all fooling ourselves if we thing otherwise. It is literally picking the lesser of two evils. The one thing that I can say is that at least McCain makes decisions. He votes instead of just voting present like Obama and when Obama actually has voted yes or no.....he has consistently said one thing and voted the exact opposite. I just do not think he has the experience or the ability to make executive decisions. I do not trust his associations and I do not have the same values as he does.

those who supported the opposition and who warned of the types of sweeping changes to come during his presidency were told not to jump to conclusions based on what he had said during the campaign, or with whom he had chosen to associate throughout his life but to ''give him a chance'' to show the American people what he would actually do. We were told that racial prejudice and sour grapes were behind our feelings and that Obama would prove himself worthy of the office. To me, in just four months he has proven the exact opposite and further demonstrated a lack of character.

I did not necessarily want McCain in office. I voted the ''NObama'' ticket because I felt McCain would be slightly less destructive to our country and because I was pretty sure he is not a marxist. Voting third party would have been a wasted vote.

Sure, had McCain been elected I would have told his opposition to give him a chance to prove his worth as well. (I believe McCain's character has already been proven; I'm sure you'll correct me if I'm wrong.) But if he then demonstrated himself, through his words and actions, to be a screwup and/or a liar I would be posting exactly the same type of opinion.