The Charlotte Observer (free subscription required) reminds us this week that North Carolina's 8th District Congressman Robin Hayes is bought and paid for.
Running for governor in 1996, Hayes trailed Democrat Jim Hunt in the polls and in dollars. So he visited his friend John Georgius, then-vice chairman of First Union Corp., now Wachovia. A few months later, Hayes recalled asking him for "a pretty heavy-duty" contribution to the Republican National Committee. Georgius complied.The bank gave the RNC $99,000. The same day, a Concord company gave $12,000 at the request of Hayes' campaign.
Senators beginning what ought to be a protracted and exacting scrutiny of Harriet Miers should be guided by three rules. First, it is not important that she be confirmed. Second, it might be very important that she not be.
Third, the presumption -- perhaps rebuttable but certainly in need of rebutting -- should be that her nomination is not a defensible exercise of presidential discretion to which senatorial deference is due.
It is not important that she be confirmed because there is no evidence that she is among the leading lights of American jurisprudence, or that she possesses talents commensurate with the Supreme Court's tasks. The president's "argument" for her amounts to: Trust me. There is no reason to, for several reasons.
Robin Hayes is delegate to the United States Congress from North Carolina's 8th district (composed of Hoke, Scotland, Richmond, Montgomery, Stanley, Anson, and parts of Cabarrus, Mecklenburg, Union, and Cumberland counties) (PDF map). Congressman Hayes is serving his 4th term in the US House and hopefully, for his constituents' sakes, will be serving no more as of 2007.
In 2001, Hayes screwed his constituents by voting for legislation that would remove the ability to negotiate trade deals from Congress and put it in the hands of president Bush—legislation that threatened to exacerbate the unemployment and poverty in his district, and legislation that he promised to vote against before he let himself be bullied into changing his mind:
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