JPod: If Miers had only penned some op-eds!

From the transcript of Hugh Hewitt's interview today on his radio show with the talented and always-interesting "JPod" — multi-media columnist, talking head, and blogger John Podhoretz:

HH: What would prove to you that [Harriet Miers] had the intellectual ability, because I think it's quite obvious that she does.

JP: I would like it if she had written one op-ed in her entire life, on any subject, of any remote interest, it might suggest that she was engaged with these matters.

In fact, as presidents of both the State Bar of Texas and the Dallas Bar Association, Ms. Miers regularly wrote op-eds — quite a few of them. She was writing primarily for an audience of fellow lawyers, however, rather than for the general public. Now, I don't know if JPod will accept an opinion editorial not published in a newspaper as an "op-ed," nor whether he finds, just to pick one example, the need to protect the public from unethical lawyers to be a subject of "remote interest." But I suspect that he might reply by saying that he really meant to say: "An op-ed on important matters of constitutional interpretation and philosophy" or some such thing.

I'll grant that this is a reasonable requirement — if you believe the Court should be limited to professional academics and philosopher-kings, and if you're willing to exclude the overwhelming majority of all practicing lawyers from consideration for the Supreme Court. I'll grant that one could take these positions without necessarily being "elitist" in the sense of being a credentials bigot. I'll even grant you that today's Court is composed essentially as if those were in fact the relevant criteria, even though historically they have not been until very recent times.

But I respectfully submit that if you do adhere to those as your criteria, you'll forever after have a Court as dysfunctional as today's is. There: another op-ed from Beldar!