Hertzberg Strikes Again: Quagmier

The New Yorker's Talk of the Town has become the most regularly incisive and gratifying source of political commentary I know of. Recently, there was a spot-on critique of the Harriet Miers nomination, including this historical context: Henrik Hertzberg cites Alexander Hamilton about how the senate confirmation of judges should make the president

both ashamed and afraid to bring forward, for the most distinguished or lucrative 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.

Read Hertzberg's whole piece. Do it now.