Miers Hit on Letters and the Law

[Nightwing]

<snip>

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.

<snip>

This was among the Bush gubernatorial correspondence released this week by the Texas State Library, and posted on Web sites, including the Smoking Gun. Miers was Bush's personal lawyer and lottery commission chairman when he was Texas governor and later became his White House counsel. Her letters have provided recent fodder for sarcasm for writers such as Gerard Baker in the conservative magazine the Weekly Standard. "Miers has delivered some thundering dictums in her various legal and paralegal roles," Baker wrote in a column first published in the Times of London. He cited a 1997 handwritten card that mentioned Bush's daughters: "Hopefully Jenna and Barbara recognize that their parents are 'cool' -- as do the rest of us. . . . All I hear is how great you and Laura are doing. . . . Keep up all the great work. Texas is blessed!" :puke:

<snip>

Fair or not, late-night comics have picked up the Miers thread. NBC's Jay Leno suggested the court may need "a woman who's had more courtroom experience, like Courtney Love." CBS's David Letterman envisioned Miers exclaiming as she watched the New York Yankees botch a playoff game: "And they call me unqualified?"

Link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/14/AR2005101401979.html?nav=hcmodule

[rodeodance]

1. brownnoser comes to mind.

[Nightwing]

2. Courtney Love more qualified than Miers

Leno cracked me up with that one. :applause:

[Happy Friday.]

3. Best They Can Do?

Harriet Miers's nomination to the United States Supreme Court is a debacle. For starters, contrary to the current administration's belief, her religion is not a sufficient basis for her nomination to the Court. At the very least, such a litmus test violates the Constitution ("no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust." Art. 6).

More importantly, however, the woman just ain't that bright.

Of all the words recently written about Harriet Miers, none are more disturbing than the ones she wrote herself. David Brooks, of the New York Times, upon reviewing her opinions in the Texas Bar Journal, explains that:

"I don't know if by mere quotation I can fully convey the relentless march of vapid abstractions that mark Miers's prose and throw aside ideology. Surely the threshold skill required of a Supreme Court justice is the ability to write clearly and argue incisively. Miers's columns provide no evidence of that."


In fact, members of the haughty, conservative Federalist Society are reportedly ready to "launch a coup" at the prospect of Miers joining the Court. As one Happy Friday victim reported, even Ann Coulter -- none too bright herself but capable of at least constructing a sentence in between make-overs -- is outraged at the current administration's attempt to "dumb down America" all the way to the Supreme Court. Apparently, liberal elitism (defined as the desire to have smart people doing important jobs like running the nation and protecting the free world) has its merits when the third branch of government is threatened.

Obviously, the current administration wants to nominate a woman after they failed to do so to replace Justice O'Connor; the first woman ever appointed to the Court. And, again obviously, the current administration wants a nominee who subscribes to their reactionary ideology (anti-evolution, anti-abortion, anti-education, anti-environment, anti-separation of church and state, and oh yeah, pro-guns). But, is Harriet Miers the best they can do?

Surely, there exists somewhere a highly intelligent, female legal scholar deserving of a seat on the nation's highest court who also shares such ideals. Then again, perhaps the problem is no highly intelligent, female legal scholar deserving of a seat on the nation's highest court could share in such thinking.

Perhaps, in that regard, Miers is the best they can do...

http://happyfriday2008.blogspot.com/

[Neil Lisst]

4. Have you peeped the notes at Smoking Gun? OMG!!

You know I've got a cartoon in the can on this one!!

Next week!

[Neil Lisst]

5. Enjoy ...