Free Republic

Under withering attack from conservatives, President Bush abandoned his push to put loyalist Harriet Miers on the Supreme Court and promised a quick replacement Thursday. Democrats accused him of bowing to the “radical right wing of the Republican Party.” The White House said Miers had withdrawn because of senators’ demands to see internal documents related to her role as counsel to the president. But politics played a larger role: Bush’s conservative backers had doubts about her ideological purity, and Democrats had little incentive to help the nominee or the embattled GOP president. “Let’s move on,” said Republican Sen. Trent Lott...

Allies of Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) are starting to make a concerted effort to boost her reelection bid as she wages the fight of her political life against a Trump-backed challenger. Former President George W. Bush will hold a fundraiser for Cheney next month, as reported Wednesday, handing her a boost with the traditional wing of the GOP. But backers say they expect more Republicans aligned with Cheney's brand of conservatism to get off the bench to help her in a primary knife fight against attorney and erstwhile ally Harriet Hageman. "I think it's going to be much more than...

Invitees : Karen Hughes, Hunter Hunt, Ray Hunt, Kay Bailey Hutchison,Harriet Miers, Holly Kuzmich, Mark Langdale, Mike Meece, James C Oberwetter, Jeanne L Phillips, Karl Rove, Joe Strauss.

New York Times reporter Nick Confessore jabbed at Trump critics Tuesday over their claims that White House officials bucking subpoenas might herald the end of democracy. In just two tweets, Confessore pointed out that there is precedent for a showdown between a White House and an oppositional Congress over who does and who doesn’t comply with the inevitable subpoenas. “Another crazy NYT story here about the White House ignoring a congressional subpoena, like it’s a choice or something,” Confessore tweeted, along with a NYT story about an Obama official refusing to comply with a subpoena. He followed that with a...

My distaste for Trump is well documented at this point, but when I read this evening about Hugh Hewitt’s interview of Donald Trump, I was struck by how terrible Hewitt’s whole line of questioning is. Hewitt – who gave Harriet Miers a “solid B+” and thought that was good enough – has essentially declared that Al Gore would have been a better President than George Bush. That’s how incompetent the establishment’s favorite radio host is at criticizing Donald Trump. Remember the gotcha games they played with George W. Bush? And how Al Gore was supposedly to be a better President...

When in 1962 Edward Moore Kennedy ran for his brother's seat in the Senate, his opponent famously said that if Kennedy's name had been Edward Moore, his candidacy would have been a joke. If Harriet Miers were not a crony of the president of the United States, her nomination to the Supreme Court would be a joke, as it would have occurred to no one else to nominate her. We've had quite enough dynastic politics over the past decades. (Considering the trouble I have had with Benjamin and William Henry Harrison, I pity the schoolchildren of the future who will...

The transcript of my interview yesterday on the Hugh Hewitt show is now up at Radioblogger. By analogy to that great Congressional tradition, I want to use this post to revise and extend my remarks. In particular, I want to pick up on the baseball analogy. (In the course of doing so, I may also be able to at least indirectly answer some of the questions Beldar posed to me the other day.) The Supreme Court is the big league. Those nine old men and women have arrogated to themselves not only the powers historically exercised by jurists in the...

Senators beginning what ought to be a protracted and exacting scrutiny of Harriet Miers should be guided by three rules. First, it is not important that she be confirmed. Second, it might be very important that she not be. Third, the presumption -- perhaps rebuttable but certainly in need of rebutting -- should be that her nomination is not a defensible exercise of presidential discretion to which senatorial deference is due. It is not important that she be confirmed because there is no evidence that she is among the leading lights of American jurisprudence, or that she possesses talents commensurate...

Such is the perfect perversity of the nomination of Harriet Miers that it discredits, and even degrades, all who toil at justifying it. Many of their justifications cannot be dignified as arguments. Of those that can be, some reveal a deficit of constitutional understanding commensurate with that which it is, unfortunately, reasonable to impute to Miers. Other arguments betray a gross misunderstanding of conservatism on the part of persons masquerading as its defenders. Miers's advocates, sensing the poverty of other possibilities, began by cynically calling her critics sexist snobs who disdain women with less than Ivy League degrees. Her advocates...

OVER the last two elections, the Republican Party regained control of the United States Senate by electing new senators in Florida, Georgia, Minnesota, Missouri, North Carolina, South Carolina, South Dakota and Texas. These victories were attributable in large measure to the central demand made by Republican candidates, and heard and embraced by voters, that President Bush's nominees deserved an up-or-down decision on the floor of the Senate. Now, with the withdrawal of Harriet Miers under an instant, fierce and sometimes false assault from conservative pundits and activists, it will be difficult for Republican candidates to continue to make this winning...

In this quick clip, Sen John Cornyn compares the qualifications of Elena Kagan to Harriet Miers.

The people just don't know Caroline like I do. That was the essence of Andrea Mitchell's defense of the would-be senator after Pat Buchanan analogized her to another nominee who famously flopped. Appearing on Morning Joe, Buchanan unleashed a merciless metaphor. PAT BUCHANAN: It's not only entitlement. It appears–we are getting close to Harriet Miers country, where Bush put her out there, and it became transparent when people started going after her that she wasn't quite up to this -- Pat's barb stirred Andrea into action. View video here.

A federal judge denied the White House's last-ditch attempt to block a former aide from testifying before Congress as part of the investigation into the U.S. Attorney scandal. Today's ruling by Judge John Bates of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia is expected to pave the way for former White House Counsel Harriet Miers, who returned to her old law firm in Texas, to testify before Congress in the coming months. It also urges the White House to turn over documents subpoenaed from former chief of staff Joshua Bolten.

WASHINGTON - President Bush's refusal to let two confidants provide information to Congress about fired federal prosecutors represents the most expansive view of executive privilege since Watergate, the House Judiciary Committee told a federal judge Thursday. Lawyers for the Democratic-led panel argued in court documents that Bush's chief of staff, Josh Bolten, and former White House counsel Harriet Miers are not protected from subpoenas last year that sought information about the dismissals. The legal filing came in lawsuit that pits the legislative branch against the executive in a fight over a president's powers. The committee is seeking the testimony as...

Dems fault Bush on executive privilege By LAURIE KELLMAN, Associated Press Writer 2 minutes ago President Bush's refusal to let two confidants provide information to Congress about fired federal prosecutors represents the most expansive view of executive privilege since Watergate, the House Judiciary Committee told a federal judge Thursday. Lawyers for the Democratic-led panel argued in court documents that Bush's chief of staff, Josh Bolten, and former White House counsel Harriet Miers are not protected from subpoenas last year that sought information about the dismissals. The legal filing came in lawsuit that pits the legislative branch against the executive in...

The House Judiciary Committee has filed a lawsuit to compel Josh Bolten and Harriet Miers to testify in the US Attorney firings scandal, now mostly forgotten. The lawsuit sets the stage for a resolution to the executive privilege claim by the Bush administration. It may also provide more closure on executive privilege than either branch of government will want: The House Judiciary Committee filed a lawsuit on Monday seeking to force the White House chief of staff and the former White House counsel to cooperate with the committee’s investigation into the firing of a group of federal prosecutors.The lawsuit, filed...

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) expressed her rage at Attorney General Michael Mukasey’s refusal to prosecute White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten and former presidential counsel Harriet Miers for their contempt of congress. Mukasey observed that “these individuals’ contempt of congress is not a crime. If we consult recent polls, we find that the vast majority of Americans share this contempt. The fact is, Bolton and Miers are in-step with voters on this issue. Perhaps the Speaker should reevaluate her Party’s actions to ascertain why this is the case.” Unmollified, Pelosi insisted that Bolton and Miers were guilty of...

WASHINGTON - Attorney General Michael Mukasey refused Friday to refer the House's contempt citations against two of President Bush's top aides to a federal grand jury. Mukasey said White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten and former presidential counsel Harriet Miers committed no crime. As promised, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that she has given the Judiciary Committee authority to file a lawsuit against Bolten and Miers in federal court. "The House shall do so promptly," she said in a statement. Mukasey said Bolten and Miers were right in ignoring subpoenas to provide Congress with White House documents or testify...

Attorney General Michael Mukasey has informed Nancy Pelosi that he will not enforce the contempt citations issued by the House last week. He informed the Speaker that neither Josh Bolten nor Harriet Miers committed any crimes, and therefore the Department of Justice didn’t really see the need to prosecute them: U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey refused on Friday to pursue contempt citations issued by the House of Representatives against a current and a former White House aide for not cooperating in a probe of the firing of U.S. attorneys.Saying no crime was committed, Mukasey rejected a request by House Speaker...

Attorney General Michael Mukasey on Friday rejected referring the House's contempt citations against two of President Bush's top aides to a federal grand jury. Mukasey says they committed no crime. Mukasey said White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten and former presidential counsel Harriet Miers were right in refusing to provide Congress White House documents or testify about the firings of federal prosecutors. "The department will not bring the congressional contempt citations before a grand jury or take any other action to prosecute Mr. Bolten or Ms. Miers," Mukasey wrote House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The House voted two weeks ago...