In a morning radio commercial on my local station, KTKZ 1380 in Sacramento, the Blogfather Hugh Hewitt spoke of the Harriet Miers nomination and referenced the Beyond the News website, admonishing listeners that “special interests” are attempting to derail President Bush’s choice.

I had no idea I was a “special interest.” I thought I was just a little fat guy posting on a blog from time to time. Now I’ve been kicked UP into the special interest category. For about 1.35 seconds I was flattered. Then I was upset.

Let me be blunt: I’m no “special interest.” Nor am I an apologist or a shill for the Republican Party, though that is my affiliation. I am an individual who gets to make a choice, listen to and read information on issues, and come to a conclusion. I also, when I so choose, reserve the right to change my mind and thus my opinion on an issue.

So it is with Harriet Miers. I am very happy for her that she is an evangelical Christian. I’m glad she purports to have a pro-life stance, good for her. The charge of “cronyism” – yeah, okay, I can go with that to a limited degree. We all are more “comfortable” with those we know as opposed to those we don’t; that’s how humans are Hard Wired.

I think I can go with the Bush “loyalty factor” to an even greater degree than cronyism. History has proven that President Bush places loyalty on a very high pedestal and tends to surround himself with those fitting the category. This is good and bad: the devil you know vs. the devil you don’t, so to speak. It also locks your mind from dissenting opinions and tends to limit options. On the other hand, given the media and the left wing, it is at least understandable (though not desirable) that Bush has apparently surrounded himself with a fleet of “Yes Men & Women” and taken a bit of a bunker mentality.

This still, in my estimation, doesn’t make his choice the best of those available. Nor is it disrespectful to suggest that the president hasn’t made the finest selection, nor is it heresy to write or suggest, as did George Will, that it might not be the end of civilization if Harriet Miers is not confirmed. Loyalty is all well and good; cronyism is not necessarily wrong on its face if it equates to familiarity, comfort level, workability and a known quantity.

Loyalty to me, however, does not mean a total lack of dissent, discussion, issue exposure and examination and, finally, opinions. It is not disloyal or disrespectful to suggest that there exists a better solution to a problem or that a choice, selection or answer may not be the best available.

So no, I’m not in total disagreement with George Will. The earth will not stop rotating on its axis if Harriet Miers is not confirmed. It will simply mean President Bush must make another selection.

I wouldn’t mind Janice Rogers Brown as a nominee if for no other reason (how shallow of me!) than to expose the tacitly condoned racism of the Democratic Party. Put JRB front and center and let Senator Charles Schumer, Ted Kennedy and Diane Feinstein rake an educated and erudite conservative black woman over the coals in public, on television.

No Hugh, I’m no special interest. I’m just a little fat guy with an opinion. BABAGOI.

What a body blow!

As I posted yesterday, it would soon be known that SCOTUS nominee Harriet Ellan Miers, 60, is an evangelical Christian. When the MSM actually clued into this fact, I posited a media explosion. It only took 24 hours, but the Big MSM stories of wide-eyed cheek-slapping are here (and MSM wonders why it’s hemorrhaging readers like a New Orleans levee pump).

The New York Times and the Washington Post both are jolted, jolted I tell you, to discover Miers may actually have faith. Zounds! Let’s see: President Bush selected her, and she apparently has religious beliefs. Huh. D’ya think?

I am still, however, unconvinced that she is the finest candidate for the job. I’m thinking Janice Rogers Brown (as she actually has the gall to be a lone dissenter on the California Supreme Court! — this is a bad thing?); Michael McConnell; Michael Luttig.

And oh: Harry Reid likes Miers.

Heavy sigh.

There I was. Fat and happy, upstairs, typing, minding my own business. I started to access my e-mail and then boom. It happened. I never thought it would happen to me. It always happened to someone else. Yeah, right. I know better now.

I have a custom-built computer. It’s got a zippy mo’board, zippy processor, clear case with cool multi-colored lights winking inside (looks spiff at night!), a flatscreen, an 80-gig hard drive and a gig of ram — acquired when a gig of ram was bordering on apostasy (You have a gig of ram??!!? HERETIC!) As an aside, these days a gig of ram and $5.75 will get you a fluffy Overeducated White Person (OWP) coffee.

And then it happened. The mail wouldn’t open and the whole thing locked up tighter than a B-1B bomb bay. From there it went into one of those impossible circadian loops where it said “Hit F1 to continue” and, natch, when you hit F1 the entire confuser would re-boot back to the Dreaded F1 screen once more. I was actually smart enough to realize I had a problem.

So I pulled out, extracted, removed, unscrewed, unplugged and detached roughly 2,439 wires of every design and color, thick and thin from the rear of the box, tagging none of them because I do, in fact, Love A Mystery. Trudging downstairs I felt somehow. . .betrayed.

When I arrived at my computer store, I described the horrible cycle of events and, heck, while I was at it, asked them to upgrade the beast to USB 2.0. Shoot, its entrails would already likely be draped all over someone’s test bench anyway.

Was it a dead processor? Tanked mo’board? Nasty virus? No sir, no ma’am; failed hard drive. As in dead dead dead.

Well, I pick up my confuser this Friday — to be $647.30 lighter in the shorts than when I was issued from my house at the beginning of the week. And after doing some research I realized: know what? I think I got off light. I checked the net and it looks like what ranked in the 3-digit category could have moved into the mid 4-digit category. Like, oh, $4,000 or so. Like from a digital recovery service.

What did I lose, you ask? Well, that would be every digital photo I’ve taken in the past 5 years — about 50 gigs worth from a 5.1 mp camera (Sony DSC-707 — great camera!). Vacation photos, family photos, landscapes, nature shots and, oh, some obligatory train shots (those who know me will be shocked to read of this). As well as a Great American Novel or three. And my valued copy of Elf Bowling.

But Chris at Sundance Computers was a peach and spent the next week, day and night, in the cold, in the snow, in the driving rain, extracting information byte by bloody byte. This is no lie: he actually had to toss the hard drive into the freezer in order to keep working on info extraction. He was able to resurrect most, if not all, of the photos I wanted. And for less than $4,000. Of course, I won’t be able to buy shoes for my pregnant cat. But she’ll get over it.

So: let that be a lesson to YOU! Hard drive failure: who, me? I’d dodged the bullet for years but now I can tell you: back up your stuff, Jack. Buy one’a them new fangled external drives. Heck, burn a buttload of CDs if you have to.

Hey; why did I title this entry “Let That Be A Lesson To You (Part One)”?

Because I know, some day, there will be a Part Two.

Certainly the blogosphere is agog, on both sides, with the appointment of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS). There is controversy on both sides of the aisle, ranging from mild bowel rumbling (Laura Ingraham is not particularly pleased) to more bowel rumbling. It was even suggested that President Bush nominated Miers at the behest of Senate Minority Leader (D, Nevada) Harry Reid.

At this early stage of the reaction phase, I have yet to see anyone absolutely apoplectic over the appointment of Miers — though I suspect that is yet to come when certain camps discover and begin to voice evidence to indicate Miers is apparently an evangelical, has the temerity to attend church regularly and has (I’m not sure why there hasn’t yet been a massive MainStream Media backlash over this) the support of President Bush to the extent that he said Miers “will strictly interpret our Constitution and laws. She will not legislate from the bench. I ask the Senate to review her qualifications thoroughly and fairly, and to vote on her nomination promptly.”

Hugh Hewitt, an OG of the Blogosphere, wrote in his 10-03-05 0631 AM post:

Harriet Miers isn’t a Justice Souter pick, so don’t be silly. It is a solid, B+ pick.

The first President Bush didn’t know David Souter, but trusted Chief of Staff Sunnunu and Senator Rudman. The first President Bush got burned badly because he trusted the enthusiams of others. The second President Bush knows Harriet Miers, and knows her well. The White House Counsel is an unknown to most SCOTUS observors, but not to the president, who has seen her at work for great lengths of years and in very different situations, including as an advisor in wartime. Leonard Leo is very happy with the choice, which ought to be enough for most conservatices.

As I wrote last night, Judges Luttig and McConnell are the most qualified nominees out there, but I think from the start that the president must have decided that this seat would be given to a woman, and it is very hard to argue that she is not the most qualified woman to be on the SCOTUS for the simple reason that she has been in the White House for many years.

It would appear to me, however, that though Miers can be seen to be a “B+” candidate according to quite possibly the finest mind extant in the Blogosphere, at this point, that’s simply not enough. Why not?

When it’s taken roughly 30 years to get to the place where there exists a chance to bring the good ship SCOTUS on the proper course (witness its recent ridiculous edict in Kelo v. City of New London , No. 04-108), I find myself once again disappointed in President Bush.

Where is the fight in President Bush? Where is his willingness to take the reins of power, rightfully given to him by the electorate, and demonstrate his ability to lead rather than placate? I don’t want appeasement. I want my president to stand up and fight for whom he believes. Take the fight right back to the Dems, and get in some faces.

Unfortunately I realize that is not this president’s nature, to my clear displeasure.

Of course, I reserve the right to hope that we could all the happily surprised. Maybe President Bush really is pulling the proverbial rabbit out of the hat. But after a track record of appearing to push his conservative values, in some very important circumstances, aside, I find the appointment of a “stealth candidate,” on its face, mightily disturbing.

Heavy sigh.

Generations Going; Generations Coming; Not Their Fault:

I am 50; I am not “young.” I am not the target group for many advertising campaigns if any at all. I am not the future of the United States and certainly not the future of California, where I live (“high atop the Sierra Nevadas”). I am simply another white male European who can trace his roots to a Scottish/German ancestry, the son of a man who fought in World War II and, then, served his country in the USAF reserves and went active duty during Vietnam. He moved when it was necessary, married a beautiful young woman from Sacramento and fathered three children. I am the youngest of the three.

My father joined the US Army Air Corps and flew heavy and medium attack bombers. He taught pilots to fly the B-25 Mitchell at Mather Air Force Base. He knew General Jimmy Stewart. He met and consulted with Klaus Von Ohain, the father of the jet engine. He had his trained hands on the cockpit yokes of B-17s, B-25s, B-29s, flew the F-80 Shooting Star, C-119 and C-124 transports — I like to say: if it had rivets, he could fly it.

And fly them he could. Bi-wing PT-17 Stearman Kaydetts, AT-6 trainers, anything the USAAC could throw at him. He took the test and it was determined he was team player, not an individualist. He was sent to bombers and not to fighters.

And here we are: Memorial Day.