HornFan:
$3,000 would have been an awfully cheap quid pro quo even in the 80's, don't you think? I live in Dallas and have for decades. I know who Miers is and where's she been. Aside from her nomination, the oldest news today is that she never sat on a bench, much less a federal one (unlike MIB).

gobar:
So far what I've seen (cautiously) is she seems to support both gay rights and abortion rights.

MIB:
But would someone in favor of abortion rights: (a) give money to a pro-life group, ( be good friends with Dr. Dobson, © urge the ABA to not take a side in the abortion debate, and (d) be nominated by Bush? I honestly think not.

fantomas:
He's talking about Miers, not you.

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 deference to which senatorial discretion 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.

He has neither the inclination nor the ability to make sophisticated judgments about competing approaches to construing the Constitution. Few presidents acquire such abilities in the course of their prepresidential careers, and this president, particularly, is not disposed to such reflections.

Furthermore, there is no reason to believe that Miers’ nomination resulted from the president’s careful consultation with people capable of such judgments. If 100 such people had been asked to list 100 individuals who have given evidence of the reflectiveness and excellence requisite in a justice, Miers’ name probably would not have appeared in any of the 10,000 places on those lists.

In addition, the president has forfeited his right to be trusted as a custodian of the Constitution. The forfeiture occurred March 27, 2002, when, in a private act betokening an uneasy conscience, he signed the McCain-Feingold law expanding government regulation of the timing, quantity and content of political speech. The day before the 2000 Iowa caucuses he was asked in advance — to insure a considered response from him — whether McCain-Feingold’s core purposes are unconstitutional. He unhesitatingly said, ‘‘I agree.’’ Asked if he thought presidents have a duty, pursuant to their oath to defend the Constitution, to make an independent judgment about the constitutionality of bills and to veto those he thinks unconstitutional, he briskly said, ‘‘I do.’’

It is important that Miers not be confirmed unless, in her 61st year, she suddenly and unexpectedly is found to have hitherto undisclosed interests and talents pertinent to the court’s role. Otherwise the sound principle of substantial deference to a president’s choice of judicial nominees will dissolve into a rationalization for senatorial abdication of the duty to hold presidents to some standards of seriousness that will prevent them from reducing the Supreme Court to a private plaything useful for fulfilling whims on behalf of friends.

The wisdom of presumptive opposition to Miers’ confirmation flows from the fact that constitutional reasoning is a talent — a skill acquired, as intellectual skills are, by years of practice sustained by intense interest. It is not usually acquired in the normal course of even a fine lawyer’s career. The burden is on Miers to demonstrate such talents, and on senators to compel such a demonstration or reject the nomination.

Under the rubric of ‘‘diversity’’ — nowadays, the first refuge of intellectually disreputable impulses — the president announced, surely without fathoming the implications, his belief in identity politics and its tawdry corollary, the idea of categorical representation. Identity politics holds that one’s essential attributes are genetic, biological, ethnic or chromosomal — that one’s nature and understanding are decisively shaped by race, ethnicity or gender. Categorical representation holds that the interests of a group can only be understood, empathized with and represented by a member of that group.

The crowning absurdity of the president’s wallowing in such nonsense is the obvious assumption that the Supreme Court is, like a legislature, an institution of representation. This from a president who, introducing
Miers, deplored judges who ‘‘legislate from the bench.’’ Minutes after the president announced the nomination of his friend from Texas, another Texas friend, Robert Jordan, former ambassador to Saudi Arabia, was on Fox News proclaiming what he and, no doubt, the White House that probably enlisted him for advocacy, considered glad and relevant tidings: Miers, said Jordan, has been a victim. She has been, he said contentedly, ‘‘discriminated against’’ because of her gender. Her victimization was not so severe that it prevented her from becoming the first female president of a Texas law firm as large as hers, president of the State Bar of Texas and a senior White House official. Still, playing the victim card clarified, as much as anything has so far done, her credentials, which are her chromosomes and their supposedly painful consequences. For this we need a conservative president?

In one of the few head-on expositions of her views on public policy, a short gay-rights survey she filled out during her city council campaign in 1989, Miers backed equal civil rights for homosexuals and spending on AIDS education while defending a Texas law - since overturned by the Supreme Court - that made gay sex a crime.

Despite that paradox, a leading gay-rights group credited her Tuesday with an open mind.

\"It's only a small window into her thinking,\" said Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign, \"but it certainly, for me, raises the possibility that she's more fair-minded than our opponents are hoping.\"

The question on civil rights on the old survey did not pin respondents down on any of the issues typically associated with gay equality today, such as domestic partner benefits or same-sex unions. Kelly Shackelford, president of the socially conservative Free Market Foundation, played down the significance of Miers' answer, saying he, too, could have answered yes to it.

Shackelford credited her with \"basic Texas down home values.\"

Solmonese said the fact Miers even came to a meeting of a Dallas gay and lesbian group to answer its questions suggested a wish to reach out.

\"She's pro-family but not condemnatory,\" Hecht said.

MIB:
George Will's stinging column on the Miers nomination (not yet published):

Ouch, GW.

Identity politics holds that one’s essential attributes are genetic, biological, ethnic or chromosomal — that one’s nature and understanding are decisively shaped by race, ethnicity or gender. Categorical representation holds that the interests of a group can only be understood, empathized with and represented by a member of that group.

I read on the news headliness that even Trent Lott of Mississippi has lots of doubts about her.

At one point in the first of the two off-the-record sessions, according to several people in the room, White House adviser Ed Gillespie suggested that some of the unease about Miers \"has a whiff of sexism and a whiff of elitism.\" Irate participants erupted and demanded that he take it back. Gillespie later said he did not mean to accuse anyone in the room but \"was talking more broadly\" about criticism of Miers.

The tenor of the two meetings suggested that Bush has yet to rally his own party behind Miers and underscores that he risks the biggest rupture with the Republican base of his presidency. While conservatives at times have assailed some Bush policy decisions, rarely have they been so openly distrustful of the president himself.

. . .

The 90-minute Norquist session, where Gillespie appeared before 100 activists, was the more fiery encounter, according to participants. Among those speaking out was Jessica Echard, executive director of the Eagle Forum, founded by Phyllis Schlafly. Although she declined to give a full account later because of the meeting ground rules, Echard said in an interview that her group could not for now support Miers: \"We feel this is a disappointment in President Bush. If it's going to be a woman, we expected an equal heavyweight to Ruth Bader Ginsburg and her liberal stance, and we did not get that in Miss Miers.\"

Another conservative captured the mood, according to a witness, by scorning Miers. \"She's the president's nominee,\" he said. \"She's not ours.\"

tnmanfan:
So Dobson gets information that the Senate and we the people don't? Yes, God speaks to him directly and tells him all about U.S. politicians...

Seriously though. Dobson's statements makes you wonder who is thinking \"that fat sob needs to learn to keep his mouth shut when I disclose matters of national security\"...

BTW, I have a real problem with overweight religious leaders telling me that I need to live my life without intimate love from another person when they can't even back away from cheeseburgers...just a small rant...

BTW, I have a real problem with overweight religious leaders telling me that I need to live my life without intimate love from another person when they can't even back away from cheeseburgers.

gmginsfo:
While I agree that Dobson's ridiculously inept comment is subpoena bait from the get-go - and I would love to see him squirm before the Sen. Judiciary Committee - I would hardly mischaracterize President Bush's efforts to consolidate executive power as \"fascist.\" These simple and recurring analogies to Nazis, Fascists and Falangists ignore the democratic tradition of this country and its Anglo-Saxon legal foundation, which neither Germany, Italy or Spain had to support them in their times of trial. Our democratic tradition and its antecedents merit protection, not belittling. However imperfect they were or remain, they are still the best form of government the world has to offer.

Fascist regimes are hostile to liberalism, intellectuals, trade unions, and dissent. Such regimes usually erect these groups as \"inner enemies of the state.\" Sometimes racial or ethnic groups, those that are a visible minority within the country, are singled out as \"the rot from within.\" This usually leads to institutional persecution and abuse. And foreign nations are often pointed out as an imminent danger to the Fatherland, and if the regime has the military power, they will often attack other nations \"out of self-defense.\" Definition five: Fascist regimes erect enemies, inside and out.
*****
Is an economic system geared to the needs, not of the people, but of the wealthy elite.

It is a republican form of government.

It features extreme forms of nationalism.

While Nazism is a form of fascism, fascism is not Nazism.

Fascism creates \"enemies of the fatherland\" in order to gain public support. These \"enemies\" usually include liberals, socialists, trade unionists, and conspicuous minority groups.

Fascism is not conservative, although it often claims to be traditional.

Fascism will replace a free press with propaganda.

OMG I CAN'T BELIEVE I'M THE NOMINEE!!!
This is BIGGEST DAY OF MY LIFE!!! EVER!!!!

OMG OMG OMG

posted by Harriet Miers @ 11:21 AM

...

there's a chance Karen Hughes might start helping me out!!! She's so thoughtful... when i got confirmed, she sent me flowers even though she was busy with diplomacy in the Arab World. I admit it, I have a total girlcrush!


posted by Harriet Miers @ 2:49 PM

None of Dallas’ gay City Council members served at the same time as Miers. But they all said they have met her and respect her abilities and accomplishments. All said they would be comfortable with her appointment to the Supreme Court.
...

Former council member Craig McDaniel said he is delighted that the president nominated Miers.
“This is as good as we would ever get out of a Republican administration.”

- Dallas gay leaders OK Miers pick, Dallas Voice (undated)

Young said some of Miers’ answers on the questionnaire appeared to contradict one another.
Although the candidate said she supported equal rights for gay and lesbian residents, she said that she would oppose efforts to overturn Texas’ sodomy law, which applied only to homosexuals. On another question, Miers said she thought the AIDS epidemic was the responsibility of the entire community and favored greater funding to fight it. Yet she failed to make a firm commitment to opposing discrimination based on HIV status, saying she would prefer that the Legislature address the issue.

Amid 2000 Election Turmoil, Harriet Miers Took On A Constitutional Battle

By JESS BRAVIN , Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
October 7, 2005

....
The way she did that was striking: Her legal team successfully persuaded a judge to take what her brief described as a \"broad and inclusive\" reading of the Constitution.
....

The section of the Constitution at issue is the relatively obscure 12th Amendment, overshadowed by its neighbor, the 13th, which abolished slavery after the Civil War. Ratified after the disputed 1800 election, the 12th lays out a number of regulations for the Electoral College. The rule in question says a state's delegation can't vote for presidential and vice presidential candidates who are both from electors' home state.

The 12th Amendment sat silently on the books for 196 years until the Bush-Cheney ticket, after falling 543,895 votes short of the Gore-Lieberman ticket, nevertheless stood poised to claim 271 electoral votes to the Democrats' 266.
....

With Bush v. Gore heading to the U.S. Supreme Court, few took notice of Jones v. Bush when it was filed Nov. 20 in Dallas's federal courthouse. Mr. Bush understood the stakes and dispatched his crackerjack legal counselor Ms. Miers.
....

According to court papers, Mr. Cheney bought a home and registered to vote in Dallas in 1995. After that date, he also held a Texas driver's license, paid Texas taxes and claimed the state's homestead tax deduction.

Mr. Cheney seemed aware of his Habitation Clause problem. In July 2000, shortly after deciding to run for vice president, he switched his voter registration and driver's license back to Wyoming. That detail formed part of his defense in the case, along with the fact that he had attended the University of Wyoming, represented Wyoming in Congress and owned a vacation home in Jackson Hole, Wyo.

Mr. Cheney also owned a Cadillac and a Lexus registered in Texas. He registered a Mercedes-Benz in Virginia, where he owned a townhouse, and a Jeep in Wyoming. The Miers team noted that Mr. Cheney put his Dallas home up for sale while the plaintiffs pointed out a listing describing it as \"owner-occupied.\"
....

Noting that Mr. Cheney's wife Lynne had not switched her voter registration to Wyoming from Texas, the plaintiffs proposed to ask Mr. Cheney if he intended to live with his wife. \"While I'm happy to say quite publicly that the marriage is good,\" said Mr. Cheney's lawyer David Aufhauser during a telephone conference, that question is \"singularly offensive.\"
....

puckman1:
I am watching CNN and there is a story out now about some Christian Evangelical man named Dobson, who claims he has talked to Ms. Miers about her views?? And also that he has talked to Karl Rove about this as well!!?? I can't wait for the hearings to begin!! Talk about drama.

gmginsfo:

And just for the record, again, my \"defenses\" of the President pale, not only in number but especially in tenor, in comparison to your violent rantings against him and anyone else who doesn't suit you.

Speaking of which, Senate Republicans, surely a group of \"people on the right\" by your definition, inserted language into a recent bill forbidding the use of torture. While their action was in writing and might not strictly be considered as \"uttering a word,\" it nevertheless belies the image of lockstep Republo-Fascism you seem intent on perpetuating at every stage of the debate.

In sum, (if not in short; cf. your latest word-pageant), your arguments lose force because of too much force - and too little perspective and reason.

By Cass R. Sunstein
Monday, August 29, 2005; Page A15

....
The Constitution does not explicitly forbid the national government from discriminating on the basis of race or sex. Nonetheless, the Supreme Court has read the Constitution to ban both forms of discrimination. Some conservatives disagree; they think that the Supreme Court has no legitimate basis for prohibiting either racial segregation or racial profiling at the national level. What does Roberts think about the question of whether the national government can engage in discrimination on the basis of race and sex?

MIB:
It's time Bush withdraws this disastrous Miers nomination. In all my years of SCOTUS watching, I don't think I have ever seen someone so...so...totally unqualified for the bench, for several reasons.

Of course, one doesn't not dare question this Administration. The arrogance and incompetence of it truly amazes me.

Miers vulnerable

gmginsfo:
My colleagues and I don't do what we do in the GOP to subsidize and excuse this sort of incompetence.

MIB:
More like Coke Zero.