Miers Hit on Letters and the Law ("Writings Both Personal and Official Have Critics Poking Fun")

Washington Post ^ | 10/15/2005 | Charles Babington

[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."

[Earthdweller]

"Miers may be at particular risk of being turned into a judicial equivalent of Vice President Dan Quayle. Until his stumbling national debut, Quayle had been regarded as a bright senator from Indiana, but he never fully recovered from the initial blast of mockery."

That would certainly be a problem if she planned to run for future office. :)

Unless she's the type of person who is concerned about her legacy, people can mock away without consequence once she has her lifetime appointment.

Jay Leno needs new material anyway.

[Penny]

<<< ". . . Claire Kehrwald Cook's Line By Line: How to improve your own writing, published by the Modern Language Association." >>>

Oh, please. Now you're touting a ho-hum text about the writing process, one that offers nothing but the obvious "revise, revise, revise," as if reading about revising certain stylistic habits will transform Miers into an authentic writer of meaningful prose instead of her published gobbledygook?

Regards . . . Penny

[AmericaUnited]

Having worked with a few bright people who lacked basic writing skills, I know the evidence you ask to see is easily found.

Thank You! This is a good starting point.

http://reading.indiana.edu/

[KentTrappedInLiberalSeattle]

Just because my simple point went right over your head completely mystifies me why you would think that is a sign of your superior intelligence.

If clanging illiteracies such as the one directly above are in any way the result of that "Line By Line" codswallop you were shilling, earlier in this thread: I think I'll stick with Strunk and White, thanks. (Hope you kept the receipt; you got fleeced, kiddo.)

I'll lay it out for you in 'baby talk', epecially [sic] for you yaddaa yadda yadda, HEE-haw, HEE-haw. *yaaaaawwwwwwwwwwwwwwwnnnnn*

One last time, Winky: deal with the substance of the article (to the extent that you actually can, I mean), rather than ineptly attempting to spinmeister your way out of it by making us the subject, instead. Clop your hoof three times, if you managed to understand all of that.

No one's even remotely fooled by the fact that you're waving your arms about and making a good deal of noise, without ever actually getting around to rebutting the article itself, I assure you. As sorry online dodges go: it's a particularly transparent one. Now: wipe your chin and begin again, please.

I could give a damn about 'poor' writing

Not quite the shattering revelation you doubtless intended it to be, I assure you.

[Do not dub me shapka broham]

Teflon?

You have to be joking.

[Marli]

This was supposed to be a joke.

Harriet Miers's Blog!!!

[The Red Zone]

That is old fashioned. Silverstone.

[nwrep]

You are right. I am embarassed to read these.

[Racehorse]

Oh, please. Now you're touting a ho-hum text . . .

Now, I understand you.

[AmericaUnited]

What an excellent example of unintelligible, mindless dribble. When you post something coherent, I'll respond.

[kabar]

I know people who are absolutely brilliant thinkers and yet can't write.

Anyone whose name we might recognize?

[kabar]

LOL

[Earthdweller]

Points well taken but this small writing sample stinks.

I sincerely hope she just needed coffee the day she wrote it. :)

[Ken H]

Quoting Stuart Bowen, who worked directly under Miers as deputy staff secretary at the White House for almost two years:

"She is wedded to stare decisis, wedded to the text of a statute. She lives her life strictly construed."

If true, doesn't that means she'll uphold Roe v Wade?

[Ken H]

means = mean

(I need a writing clerk)

[KenmcG414]

Im sure she wrote simple things to Bush, as he isn't the brightest light in the house.

[KentTrappedInLiberalSeattle]

When you post something coherent, I'll respond.

Translated into English, from the Original Double-Speak: "No, actually, I cannot rebut even so much as a single sentence of the article at hand. I stand revealed as a pompous, partisan, bloviating jackass, and -- more shamefully, still -- more lightweight than an eclair, intellectually. I have been (as the kids say) 'phoned, boned and owned'."

"What" and "ever," kiddo. In that order.

[LibLieSlayer]

Now kitty, I think that if you objectively go back and look at the President's judgment in times that NO other President has been placed in, while you may not like his choice for SCJ, he has proven his judgment time and again.

If you have any hope of changing minds on this subject, accusing President Bush of poor judgment in general will win you few converts. I think this type of backhanded attack is what is causing so many of us that want the hearings to take place, to enter into arguments here that only aid and abet the enemy (dims).

I guess my point is that your points stand on their own quite well without these low-ball tactics.

LLS

[KC_Conspirator]

For a lawyer/partner who once made 600k a year, she writes like crap.

[Skip Ripley]

No man is bigger than the ideas that bring him to power.