Posted on 10/15/2005 2:37:57 AM PDT by KentTrappedInLiberalSeattle
Supreme Court confirmation battles usually involve excavations of the nominee's judicial opinions, legal briefs and decades-old government memos. Harriet Miers is the first nominee to hit trouble because of thank-you letters.
Miers's paper trail may be relatively short, but it makes plain that her climb through Texas legal circles and into George W. Bush's inner circle was aided by a penchant for cheerful personal notes. Years later, even some of her supporters are cringing -- and her opponents are viciously making merry -- at the public disclosure of this correspondence and other writings from the 1990s.
Bush may have enjoyed being told by Miers in 1997, "You are the best governor ever -- deserving of great respect." But in 2005 such fawning remarks are contributing to suspicion among Bush's conservative allies and others that she was selected more for personal loyalty than her legal heft.
Combined with columns she wrote for an in-house publication while president of the Texas Bar Association -- critics have called them clumsily worded and empty of content -- Miers may be at risk of flunking the writing portion of the Supreme Court confirmation test, according to some opponents.
"The tipping point in Washington is when you go from being a subject of caricature to the subject of laughter," said Bruce Fein, a Miers critic who served in the Reagan administration's Justice Department and who often speaks on constitutional law. "She's in danger of becoming the subject of laughter."
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Why the intelligent folks who inhabit FR cannot see this point escapes me.
Just because Reid said so, it doesn't mean it's true.
Better yet, why don't you send a copy to Attorney Miers?
Priceless
It is one thing to be thought a fool. It is another thing to open your mouth and prove it.
OTOH David Souter is a brilliant writer...
Let's raise our standards. Just this once.
But I bet you do know some lawyers who think they are brilliant because of the law school they went to.
Comparing real physical skills, to lawyering "skills" is like comparing apples to oranges.
LOL! Fein is so over-the-top here. This is obviously a diminution of the Judicial branch's power by the legislature- "wisely or not". Fein's remarks on the only peice of critical writing cited make HIM look the fool!
I do feel sympathy for the many great conservative jurists who aren't confirmable today. I hope they continue, and improve upon, their heroic efforts to change that political fact instead of whining and pouting and making fools of themselves like Fein does here.
AND she's an ass-kisser. I detest ass-kissers. They seldom have an un-assisted thought.
Great point. Miers chose a wordsmithing profession--wordsmithing of a highly technical and specialized nature.
SCOTUS, especially, is no place for a Hallmark card copywriter or a James Joyce stream-of-consciousness poseur.
All the evidence suggests that Miers is a mediocre legal talent who ascended to the heights of power not on her own ability and effort but but by being at the right place at the right time and by sweet-talking others into lifting her up the ladder.
You are the one that doesn't get it. Dingy Harry doesn't like Justice Thomas's writing because he disagrees with the content.
Based on what has been published so far, Attorney Miers has the writing style of a thirteen-year-old, lacking only "Do you like me?" with "yes" and "no" check boxes.
To the objection that he has made good appellate appointments to this point, I would respond that in all his prior appointments the vetting process was performed by people other than himself and the President only was required to use his judgment and intuition among a pool of superbly qualified people.
To the objection that Miers was part of the people assistin in the vetting process and so must be qulified herself, that does not follow and her participation was over a very short period of time. A candidate such as Miers would not have made it to the final pool, to say the least, and the President has erred in allowing his personal feelings to cloud his judgment.
Miers sure knows how to lay it on thick.
Some of her comments are so juvenile, it's hard to believe the president fell for them.
Can't afford the postage.
Besides, after she's confirmed, she'll have a bevy of brilliant, eager beaver clerks to handle all that there stuff.
I don't care that she writes girlish notes. I don't care that she's a woman. I don't care that she doesn't have the "right" education. I don't care about her race. I don't even care if she was selected because she's a friend of the president. I care about how she will vote. There is little to no evidence that she will side with conservatives on consitutional issues.
How many synapses need to fire to tell you that murdering unborn children as a form of birth control has something inherently wrong with it?
Spot On!- You Go Girl!(or boy, you get the drift)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.