Posted on 10/27/2005 1:30:46 AM PDT by KentTrappedInLiberalSeattle
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court nomination of Harriet Miers ran into new trouble Wednesday, and three Republican officials said they were no longer certain it would survive to the Nov. 7 target date for hearings.
The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said a withdrawal was not out of the question but also noted that the administration's official policy remained one of strong continued support for the nominee.
Developments on several fronts reflected eroding support for Miers, President Bush's choice to replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor:
• Senators from both parties raised new questions about Miers' former law firm's lucrative business helping promote tax shelters subsequently deemed abusive by the IRS.
• Concerned Women for America, one of the nation's leading grass-roots evangelical organizations, called for the withdrawal of her nomination.
• Two conservative Web sites urging Miers' withdrawal began operating, and anti-Miers ads began airing on cable TV and radio.
• The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee warned that he intends to question Miers closely about her views of the Bush administration's detention of suspected terrorists in the military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
Bush nominated Miers, his White House counsel, Oct. 3 to replace O'Connor, a moderate conservative who has been the swing vote on the often-divided court. In particular, O'Connor joined in rulings that upheld abortion rights and affirmative action.
Miers, 60, has drawn fire from the political right and left amid questions about her judicial philosophy and about her qualifications to sit on the high court.
Tax-shelter questions
The actions of Locke Liddell & Sapp, which Miers headed for much of the 1990s, received scrutiny early this year, when the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations released a scathing report on the tax-shelter industry. The report quoted the legal adviser of a potential investor as blasting the firm for effectively signing off on a "classic 'sham' tax shelter."
Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., chairman of the investigations subcommittee, said Wednesday he is "very seriously concerned" about the firm's sale of cookie-cutter legal opinions attesting to the legitimacy of tax shelters promoted by accounting giant Ernst & Young. He said he will raise it personally with Miers today.
"These were very questionable transactions, and the volume of work done on this was substantial — in the millions of dollars," Coleman said.
In the late 1990s, major accounting firms developed and sold intricate ways to shelter income from taxation. They would then refer clients to prominent law firms such as Locke Liddell, which would issue opinion letters that individuals could present to the IRS as a defense for their actions. The tax shelters involved funneling income through short-lived business partnerships that could be written off as losses.
Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., the ranking Democrat on the Finance Committee, sent the firm a letter last week, demanding detailed explanations about Locke Liddell's activities on behalf of Ernst & Young's Contingent Deferred Swap tax shelter, which fell under IRS scrutiny in 2000 and was designated as abusive in 2002.
White House spokesman Dana Perino said the matter was not relevant to Miers' nomination because she was not involved. "Harriet Miers had nothing to do with the tax-shelter transactions ... The majority of the relevant transactions took place after Ms. Miers had left the firm," Perino said.
In fact, a little more than half of the transactions involving Locke Liddell were done while Miers was with the firm, said John McElhaney, a lawyer at the firm. Miers is not a tax lawyer, but Senate investigators from both parties said that, as co-managing partner, she should have been aware of such a lucrative part of the firm's business.
Miers was elected president of the firm Locke, Purnell, Rain and Harrell in 1996 and was made co-managing partner in 1999, when Locke Purnell merged with another firm to create Locke Liddell & Sapp. She served in that position until 2001, when she joined the White House staff.
McElhaney said no court has ruled the transactions illegal. "Just because there's been an opinion by the IRS doesn't mean it's illegal," he said.
Conservative criticism
The evangelical group Concerned Women for America, which works to bring biblical principles into public-policy discussions, changed its "wait-and-see" position on Miers on Wednesday after reading two speeches she gave in the early 1990s in which she supported "the freedom of the individual woman's right to decide for herself whether she will have an abortion."
The speeches "indicate a radical feminist worldview, a penchant for judicial activism, race and sex quotas, a liberal characterization of the abortion debate and government spending, and an inability to articulate her positions clearly," the group said in a statement.
"We do not think there is anything she could say at her hearing that would satisfy our concerns," chief counsel Jan LaRue said.
M. Edward Whelan III, president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, posted a memo on the Web saying, "Her comments reflect such a profound confusion, and such an inattention to the respective roles of the courts and the political branches, that they call seriously into question her fitness for the Supreme Court."
Tony Perkins, head of the influential Family Research Council, stopped short of opposing Miers' nomination outright but made clear his doubts were rising. The speeches "certainly tend to lean toward judicial activism," Perkins said.
White House officials played down the criticism, repeating their stance that Miers will have a chance to prove herself to critics at Senate confirmation hearings. "People continue to express themselves," said White House spokesman Jim Dyke. "Again, as we move toward hearings, that's a sign of progress. And we continue to move toward hearings."
Two Web sites urging her withdrawal — www.withdrawmiers.org and www.betterjustice.com — began operating this week, and anti-Miers ads began airing on cable TV and radio.
In the commercial, prominent conservatives who call themselves Americans for Better Justice urge Bush to withdraw Miers' nomination.
"Even the best leaders make mistakes," a narrator says. "Conservatives support President Bush but not Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers."
It quotes former federal judge Robert Bork, a failed Reagan nominee to the high court and a conservative icon, as saying Miers is not qualified and that her nomination is "a disaster on every level."
Senate pressure
Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, served notice Wednesday he intends to seek public assurances that Miers will show no favoritism toward Bush if confirmed. In a letter to Miers, Specter also said he intends to question her about constitutional issues in the war on terrorism, including the administration's policy of open-ended detention of suspects at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
The White House, meanwhile, kept the Judiciary Committee waiting late last night for answers to a written questionnaire on Miers' background and views, delaying release of the information by a day.
"It was due at 6 o'clock," Specter said on PBS' "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer." Specter asked Miers last week to revise her answers to the questionnaire after he and the committee's top-ranking Democrat, Patrick Leahy of Vermont, called her first version inadequate.
White House spokesman Dyke denied that Miers missed a deadline. "It was due today, and it will be delivered today," he said Wednesday night.
The 11th-hour work on the questionnaire underscored its significance for Miers. "If she does a good job on the questionnaire, I think it puts her in good stead for the hearing," said Leahy.
Oops! :) Mods: could you kindly remove the extra letter "o" accidentally included in the headline, above? Thanks!
Thanks! :)
("Denny Crane: Gun Control? For Communists. She's a liberal. Can't hunt.")
I'd rather have a brilliant mind that voted "correctly" 80% of the time than a dim bulb that was 100% correct (not that I have any reason to believe that Harriet would bat more than .400).
Liberals like Leahy are loving Bush's latest blunder. It's a mistake we could be reminded of over and over and over again for the next 10, 20 or 30 years.
The most amusing thing about this article is that in discussing the Better Justice TV calling for Miers withdrawal, the Seattle Times describes Rush Limbaugh as "a conservative icon" but fails to mention him by name.
Rush shall henceforth be known as "The Conservative Icon Whose Name The Left Dare Not Speak"!
If she gets confirmed, this nomination will be a "gift that keeps on giving," just like leprosy or AIDS.
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