Normally, I don't sit around and read the Federalist Papers (written by James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay to encourage states to ratify the Constitution in 1787). However, in number 76, Hamilton specifically talked about the benefits of Senate approval of Presidential nominees:

[The President] would be both ashamed and afraid to bring forward, for the most distinguished or lucative 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.


Wow. How applicable to Harriet Miers. Same state? Check. Personally allied to the President? Check. Insignificance? Maybe. Pliancy? Seems like it.

I mean, really, what has she done? Does she have any constitutional background? I'm all in favor of having someone on the Court who actually has done trial work, but is there no lawyer in America who may be more qualified? Anyone who had a First Amendment practice? For that matter, a criminal lawyer?