First Read: Clues to Miers withdrawal...

[jaysunb]

First Read: The day in politics by NBC News for NBC News
---------------------------------------------------------

Breaking news at this writing: Harriet Miers has withdrawn her
nomination to replace Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.

Apart from the ongoing bad karma that had plagued the Miers nomination,
the only possible clues or shreds of evidence or reasons for a White
House change of heart that we can see from overnight are:
-- the Senate Judiciary Committee not releasing Miers' revised
questionnaire last night, as planned, apparently because of how late in the
evening they received it;
-- Senate Judiciary chair Arlen Specter's heads-up to Miers yesterday
that he planned to ask her during her confirmation hearings about issues
surrounding detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, the authority to declare
war, and how she would recuse herself on cases if confirmed;
-- a Washington Times report that leading Miers backer Leonard Leo quit
the pro-Miers effort yesterday and returned to his job as executive
vice president of the Federalist Society;
-- two conservative groups, the Ethics and Public Policy Center and
Concerned Women for America, both of which had previously taken a neutral
position on Miers, calling on her to withdraw (also reported in the
Washington Times);
-- new questions in the Washington Post about her former Texas law
firm's business "helping to promote tax shelters that were subsequently
deemed abusive by the Internal Revenue Service;" and,
-- Ann Coulter's suggestion on TODAY that all Bush needs to do is drop
Miers and everything with conservatives will be OK.

For more: Today's edition of First Read is available now at
http://www.FirstRead.MSNBC.com!

[Cha]

1. But, bush wanted his

nanny on the once esteemed sc..

snip~
"Mr. Bush would do well to augment his current staff, a C-Team if ever there was one, with some stronger characters. But to read the Bush-Miers correspondence is to gain a disturbing insight into Mr. Bush's personality: he likes having his ass kissed. Ms. Miers' cards and letters to the then-Governor of Texas belong in the Brown-Nosers Hall of Fame. You can be sure the younger and less experienced Bush White House aides are even more obsequious. The last thing this President wants is the first thing he needs: someone to slap his spoiled, pampered, trust-funded, plutocratic, never-worked-a-day-in-his-life cheek and make him face the reality of his foul-ups."


More by Paul Begala..
http://www.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/10/26/23727/338

[opihimoimoi]

2. Bush has got to be the most Dumbest of the Bunch