Harriet Miers ruined my blogosphere experience

Not since Andrew Sullivan lost his mind over the Federal Marriage Amendment fiasco has there been such a separation of the sheep from the goats in my daily blog reading. I used to be a regular reader of the Brothers Judd, despite their gleeful homophobia, their bizarre belief that Tony Blair is a conservative, and their delusion that Jonah Goldberg is a libertarian (when Jonah's anti-libertoid polemic is one of his most noteworthy intellectual accomplishments). But no more. I couldn't read one more post praising the strategic brilliance of the Miers nomination and contemptuously dismissing those opposed to it. Yes, the Judds always think everything Bush does is strategically brilliant. But it takes a particular kind of denial to believe that the Miers nomination comes under that heading.

Less disconnected from reality, but no less painful to read, is the illustrious Hugh Hewitt. Now Professor Hewitt's defense has been more along the lines of "We have to trust that this was the best the President thought he could do, under the circumstances," than "Another move of unparalleled brilliance from the Bush White House!" Still, his increasingly lame defense of this increasingly indefensible nomination shows a man determined to hold on to a conclusion long after it has become evident that there are no good arguments for it. So I stopped reading him. Who wants to see a perfectly serviceable intellect voluntarily ruining itself?

This is not to say that I have stopped reading everyone who defended the nomination (a short list, in any event). D. J. Drummond at Polipundit has been perfectly reasonable, as was Captain Ed when he was still defending the wait-and-see position. Anyway, I spend too much time reading blogs, so maybe it's good to do some culling every now and then. I certainly don't miss reading Andrew Sullivan!