The religion test?

Doug Eddings is a major-league baseball umpire. Umpires are the forgotten men of pro baseball. While steroid abusers topple Babe Ruth's records and actually have fools defend their right to turn themselves into grotesque chemically-altered freaks, umpires become famous only when they really screw up. Think of Don Denkinger.

Doug Eddings is now famous.

In game 2 of the playoff series between the Anaheim Angels (I don't care what the owner wants to call the team, because I don't work for him) and the Chicago White Sox, Eddings made one of the worst calls in MLB history, taking away the third out of the ninth inning and giving the White Sox a gift baserunner when he clearly had no idea what had really happened. His incompetence became a national disgrace when the gift baserunner promptly scored, handing the White Sox an undeserved win.

Yet Eddings' incompetence is only a sideshow to the real story. After all, umpires are human. They make mistakes. If Eddings had simply owned up to his mistake, this story would have continued life only if the Angels lost the series.

But neither Eddings nor his fellow umpires did that. Instead, to a man, they insisted that Eddings had made the correct call ... an assertion so laughable that it was amazing that people could make it with a straight face. Even the supervisor of MLB umpires defended his accuracy (and should be canned for doing so). Why? Did these umpires find it easier to revel in their incompetence instead of admitting their shortcomings? Why would that be the case?

I don't know. But I do know that umpires aren't the only people who do that. Doug Eddings, meet George W. Bush.

Bush has had a bad six months. Iraq and Afghanistan are going better, but that doesn't come close to offsetting his out-and-out blunders: supporting intervention in the Terri Schiavo case; appointing crony Michael Brown to head FEMA; and now trying to appoint crony Harriet Miers (pronounced "Myers") to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Miers nomination has had a hard time, with both legal scholars and conservative scholars blasting it. Under the old theory that when your opponents are ripping each other to shreds, the best idea is to remain quiet, Democrats have generally been quiet about Miers. But now Bush and his generally-astute handler Karl Rove have made a blunder that should doom the Miers nomination and handicap future nominations to the federal courts for the rest of Bush's presidency.

What have they done? It's simple in its stupidity. They have been trying to reassure religious conservatives about Miers by telling them about Miers' religious "bonafides" for the Supreme Court. Unfortunately for Bush and Rove, but fortunately for America, some of these religious leaders have decided to "blab" about these private phone calls. Foremost among those is James Dobson of 'Focus on the Family', a demagogue who decided that showing off his importance to the White House was more important than merely supporting the nomination.

Dobson has stated that Karl Rove told him about Miers' conversion to evangelical Christianity and her longstanding involvement with anti-abortion groups. Dobson thinks this ... and the fact that Miers is a lawyer ... is sufficient to get her a seat on the Supreme Court.

It's perfectly OK for Dobson to think that way. After all, he leads a religious pressure group. But why would Bush and Rove think that way?

After all, there is nothing in Harriet Miers' background that makes her more qualified than any of 10,000 other lawyers in this country to serve on the Supreme Court. Nothing except for her fawning devotion to Dubya, that is. And it's easy for any lawyer, liberal or conservative, to name 100 lawyers substantially more qualified than her to be one of the nine people in this country referred to as "Justice." Not "Judge." "Justice."

Others have gone through Miers' shortcomings at length. I don't want to focus on that now. Instead, I'd like to focus on Bush's inept reaction to the controversy. What did he do? The same thing that Doug Eddings and his brethren have done. Pretend that he made the right call.

Bush has claimed that he believes Harriet Miers to be the absolute best candidate available for the Supreme Court. There are only three possible reasons for that comment: 1) Bush suffered severe brain damage sometime after he graduated from Harvard Business School; 2) Bush is lying; or 3) Bush believes that a passing a religion test is required for potential judicial candidates, and only people who pass the test are qualified candidates.