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 ...
When you have time, please supply the evidence for each of your points instead of throwing a non-convincing stone my way.How long should I hold my breath waiting for an enlightened reply? Please take your time searching some authoritative grammar and punctuation handbooks so that you can cite them in your response to me.
Penny
I think that proving that RINOs CAN sweat should be one of our main goals in life. : )
This is a nice note that is supposed to be a nice note. Whatsamatter???
Have you asked them?
"We have to understand and appreciate that achieving
justice for all is in jeopardy before a call to arms to assist in obtaining
support for the justice system will be effective. Achieving the necessary
understanding and appreciation of why the challenge is so important, we can
then turn to the task of providing the much needed support."
Huh?
It is because MS lost this case, and I presume cases like it that we download patches for XP rather than get charged $99.95 to upgrade to XP17.35rev2b, which is really guaranteed to work this time, honest injun.
Beldar's summary of the Disney case completely misses the pont. Disney prevailed on common law "agency" grounds, which is not a difficult concept, but somehow gets lost in Beldar's analaysis, but is quite clear in the bench decision.
Well, Miers brought the snacks. She helped, too.
Her personal writings do NOT indicate that she is careful of details. I would expect someone writing to the governor to be more careful than someone writing a letter to grandma.
No.
The post you replied to dealt with intellect and opinion writing. Clerks do the drudge work.
(No offense intended to clerks! Been up all night.)
"I am respectful of both of your great many time commitments"
Please translate that.
" And you arrived at your conclusion by reading chicken entrails? Sorry, but the money is on Miers to be confirmed, UNLESS she strikes out in the hearings."
My guess, based on what I've seen so far, is that some Dem Senator will trip her up with a trick question.
It is telling that Ms. Miers was not even on Hewitt's radar before she was nominated. His choices before the nomination was announced were Luttig and McConnell.
No.
As she learns to be a Justice of the United States Supreme Court.
A very frequent problem with the law is interpretation. One reason for the problem is that laws and opinions are often written in an unclear manner. Having someone on the SC who can write clearly is an asset. A nominee to the SC should be able to write clearly in an effortless manner.
Most of the Meirs supporters here seem to be in the habit of making excuses for her poor writing ability. Why? I think it is wishful thinking. How old was Meirs when she wrote these thank you notes? The Texas Bar Association articles? The answer is: old enough to have had a full chance to hone her writing skills to a T. I don't want someone who obviously has difficulty writing on the SC.
As someone with several technical degrees, including a degree in math, I feel qualified to write that arguments based on her math abilities are largely irrelevant and evidence of yet more well-intended but wishful and overly simplistic thinking on the part of bushbots.
Harriet Meirs-- withdraw your nomination now.
But writing is a clear part of the job of a justice, not that all of them are good writers, I am sure.
"I know you're busy, but"
As Emily Post might say it
If people really want to check out her legal writing, it would be easy. Simply find some of the cases on which she worked as a private attorney through lexis or something, go to the courthouse, and get a copy of a dispositive motion or appellate brief she wrote. They're public records. If you really want to criticize her legal writing, that's the type of thing at which you should be looking.
I believe that when Jerry Falwell came out against O'Connor in 1981, her ascerbic sponsor, Barry Goldwater, attacked Falwell, saying that the VA minister deserved a "good, quick kick" in the exterior. Of course, Falwell had supported Goldwater for President in 1964. In retrospect, Falwell has been far more right than Goldwater and not just on O'Connor. So, now does Falwell support Miss Miers?
Aren't these arguments (similarities with Clement), in actuality, arguments in favor of a Meirs appointment to an appeals court, and not to the SC? What am I missing?
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