Ruling Is Due for Justice Who Lobbied for Bush Pick (Harriet Miers)

[rodeodance]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/20/washington/20miers.html?th=&emc=th&pagewanted=print

October 20, 2006
Ruling Is Due for Justice Who Lobbied for Bush Pick
By RALPH BLUMENTHAL

HOUSTON, Oct. 18 — A year after the Bush administration enlisted a Texas Supreme Court justice in its unsuccessful bid to put Harriet E. Miers on the United States Supreme Court, a special state court is to announce Friday whether the judge was guilty of “willful and persistent” violations of judicial ethics for his role in that effort.
.......

Justice Hecht, a Republican who is running for re-election, also said he had reported back to the White House on questions he was asked about Ms. Miers, President Bush’s longtime counsel.

Justice Hecht was widely portrayed in news reports as Ms. Miers’s “spokesman.” Defending himself before commission members, he said he had been swept up in a “tsunami” of news coverage. “I felt I was drawn kicking and screaming into the process,” he testified.

But under questioning, he acknowledged, “Nobody forced me.”

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But the commission, citing rules it said had been devised by Justice Hecht’s own court, argued that the judge had improperly lent the prestige of his office to advance someone else’s “private interests,” illegally used his name to endorse “another candidate” for “public office,” and violated the State Constitution by conduct discrediting the judiciary......

[maddezmom]

1. duplicate

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=2571201