Raising Conservative Hackles

After embarrassing herself and the White House with the less than stellar questionairre answers, Harriet Miers is now expected to be questioned by Arlen Specter (R-Pa), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, about her views on White House policy regarding the detainment of "enemy combatants" at Gitmo. Not that anything will come of that, really. Roberts found for White House detainee policy in a case before his district court, so what is going to come of such questioning?

More interesting was the reaction some senators are having to a 1993 speech that Miers delivered to the Executive Women of Dallas, which discussed abortion and voluntary school prayer, in which she said,

The underlying theme in most of these cases is the insistence of more self-determination. And the more I think about these issues, the more self-determination makes the most sense.

Youch!

Now, you've got to believe that isn't going to sit well with red-state senators and their "base." Indeed, Brownback (R-Kan) said that such statements raised questions and that a willful bias toward "self-determination" will be "something we'll have to probe." Well, that ought to be fun. Probe away, Browny, probe away.

I always marvel at so-called conservatives who expound at length about keeping gubmint out of people's lives but balk when a discussion about abortion, gay marriage or any other thing they find personally offensive evolves that way. In those cases, social conservatives don't like any notion of self-determination and insist that government insert itself -- up to the hilt -- in anyone and everyone's life.