Mother Mary Rants

I can almost find it in me to feel sorry for President Bush. Morally required to find a nominee for the Supreme Court who is impartial, unbiassed, and unobjectionable to the rabid partisans he has created on both sides of the aisle, Mr. Bush chose his crony and "office wife" Harriet Miers. Ms. Miers has stated that she believes Mr. Bush to be "the most brilliant man [she] ever met."

Now Mr. Bush's far-right conservative base is frothing at the mouth with rage, because there is not enough of a paper trail on Ms. Miers; they cannot be absolutely certain that the future judgments of Justice Miers will be partisan, biassed, and objectionable enough to suit them. Why, she might not vote to deprive women of the right to control their own bodies! She might not vote to turn homosexuals into second-class citizens! She might not vote to enlarge the powers of the imperial presidency!

Poor Mr. Bush. His far-right supporters are gibbering with fury because they cannot be guaranteed bias on the bench. And if Mr. Bush is compelled to withdraw Ms. Miers's name in favor of the ideologue his base demands, every sane U.S. citizen will gibber with fury at the idea of a nakedly partisan ideologue on the bench.

But I don't pity Mr. Bush too much. After all, he has told the nation, "Trust me" to know Ms. Miers's heart — that she will be biassed enough in her judgments to please his far-right conservative base.

We trusted Mr. Bush when he said he was a compassionate conservative. We trusted Mr. Bush when he said that Saddam was behind 9/11. We trusted Mr. Bush when he said that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. We trusted Mr. Bush when he said that Iraq was an "imminent threat." We trusted Mr. Bush when he said we had to spend the budget surplus. We trusted Mr. Bush when he said that lots and lots of tax cuts for the wealthy would lower the deficit. Since the end of 2000, Mr. Bush has added $2.3 TRILLION to our nation's deficit. In case you were wondering, 2.3 trillion seconds of time amounts to slightly less than 78,000 years.

I trust Mr. Bush, all right — to do whatever it takes to turn the United States into a neo-fascist dictatorship in which the Party controls all facets of every citizen's life. $10 a gallon for gasoline? No problem! — not in the United States of Halliburton. . . .