In an update to his post, he has a response to me (well, actually, to someone named “Rammesh,” but having been called “Dinesh” several times by Anderson Cooper last night I should probably just let that pass).

I’m afraid I don’t see how anything he says in the update is responsive to anything I have said, with one exception. He has not responded to the specific criticisms I have made either of Miers, Kmiec, or himself. For example, he claimed that I was dismissing Miers because I don’t know her; I argued that this charge was unfair; he now drops the issue entirely. He defends her on the ground (among other grounds) that the Founders did not intend for Supreme Court justices to be drawn exclusively from the legal academy or the appellate bench. Fine. But since I never claimed otherwise, how is that a response to me?

The one exception: He claims that there is evidence that Miers is an originalist. Sure there is–the comment she made yesterday morning about the role of judges, for example (a comment favorably cited in NRO’s editorial on her). But there’s not a lot of such evidence. More to the point, Kmiec didn’t provide any. (Hewitt maintains that a quote at the end of Kmiec’s article was on point; I think many fair-minded readers will find it less so.)

Hewitt advances the claim that originalism is incompatible with thinking Miers unqualified, since the Founders put down no requirements that preclude her nomination or confirmation. This, again, is an unresponsive claim. It’s also, to my mind, an unpersuasive one, based on a defective originalism. It may be that nothing in the constitutional text, its original understanding, or the Federalist Papers excludes the possibility of nominating Martha Stewart to the Supreme Court, but that does not mean that anyone who thinks her unqualified for the job is not an originalist. (Let me forestall any possible misunderstanding by saying that I am not comparing Stewart’s qualifications to Miers, just trying to illustrate a point about originalism.)

But you should read his post and judge for yourself. It is always possible that I am not giving him, or Miers, enough credit.