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 ...
Whatever the outcome here, let's all keep working to the day when we can win this "discussion". We are very close.
Before the formation of the Gang of Fourteen, I'd have demanded a Luttig or Wilkerson. Bush would have had political reason to think he could have delivered one too.
There was nothing "clumsy" about her sentence.
BTW, it's actually "in like Flynn." "In like Flint" was wordplay on the actual line-- for the sequel to "Our Man Flint."
""This is a person who has almost no experience doing constitutional law, and the one case she is involved with is on a subject almost no one has talked about, at a time of extraordinary partisan interest," he said. "The only thing to infer from this is that she's a good lawyer." Sander Levinson
Sander Levinson, a constitituional attorney and professor of impeccable pedigree, seems to think his opponent was Harriet Miers.
Why don't you call him and tell him he was mistaken.
But in the end, it adds very little to our base of knowledge - and nothing to a "more certain" base of knowledge.
It sheds a helluva lot more light than the acrid smoke emanating from this article by the WaPost and those supporting it as coming down from the Mount.
She certainly was in charge of okaying the final copy.
I'm curious what the judge who pitched the case thinks. Maybe he was impressed with Miers' arguments. Or maybe he just didn't want to be the one who put the match to that particular powderkeg.
What a most excellent idea!! :)
Here's a snippet, where they take a 'dim view' on 'group think' nominating:
Premising this, I proceed to lay it down as a rule, that one man of discernment is better fitted to analyze and estimate the peculiar qualities adapted to particular offices, than a body of men of equal or perhaps even of superior discernment.
It sheds no light whatsover. We are looking for a smoking pen, and so far, and the only times we find her with ink on her fingers, she has been doodling love-notes to Bush and the bar association.
This is the crux of the matter and the part that I find particularly irksome.
The conservatives in the Senate hemming and hawing about bringing forth a woman like Edith Jones, who I favored for the seat, had the opportunity to pave the way for exactly that about one year ago. They failed miserably and now we are here.
Eunuchs complaining about being castrated just doesn't elicit much sympathy from me.
Only in the eyes of the blind man. That would be you.
I like the notion that we are to be the party of no standards for the SC. I love it. Can we make it a plank at the next convention?
Yes, he has. :(
What you want me to see as the work product of Harriet Miers is self-evidently the work product of 6 other attorneys, many of whom have well-documented records as appellate attorneys. The question, in fact, is why she is signing it at all. Answer, because she is Bush's attorney. BTW Cheney's standing in the case is at least equal to Bush's, he being the one whose claim of Wyoming residence is challenged.
"I know a few fantastic writers who are dumber than rocks."
Then they can't be all that fantastic.
Please, examples.
I'm not an attorney but I have run my own small business for most of my adult life.
When my signature appears at the bottom of a document it means something.
I can't speak for the legal profession but I would find it very surprising that lawyers sign work product they have not produced especially in cases of constitutional moment.
Torie, what does her signature tell us at the bottom of the brief?
In post #23 of this thread you wrote:
Over a twenty-year span in my profession of teaching both English composition and literature, I've taught thousands of students. To date, not ONE bright student failed to write coherently, even brilliantly, but, without exception, all of the poor thinkers invariably produced equally poor writing.
Simply put, as the mind works, so do the words tumbling out on paper (or on a word processor). Ms. Miers' mushy, unintelligible writing not only reveals a mushy, mediocre mind but also portends an embarrassing process. A "nice" woman does not an exceptionally qualified Supreme Court justice make. I, for one, hope she steps aside.
As to your question at the top of this reply to you: Your first paragraph in post #23 makes a sweeping judgement about the potential of all students who, in your assessment, were "poor thinkers" because they didn't write well. You don't say it in so many words, but you drip scorn on those students.
As to your silly comment, "My name is not Teacher Penny," and its accompanying faux injured whine: With that prickly attitude, I can see why some of your students had trouble learning. You go by the online handle "Penny," do you not? You claim to be a teacher, do you not? Using the title with the name, you are, therefore, Teacher Penny, are you not?
On that point we agree. But what is more demonstrably her personal writing is also a data point, likewise of little value, but not of zero value.
You seem to think you can just wave all that away absent any evidence to support your wishful assertions whatsoever.
Unless you have evidence that the brief she signed was not her work product and her opponent was wrong in his characterization of her contribution and ability, you have nothing to add because I'm not interested in how you want the world to be, I'm interested in how it is.
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.