Miers: 'Inadequate, Insufficient And Insulting' (CBS)

[kurth]

Miers: 'Inadequate, Insufficient And Insulting'
by Andrew Cohen

... Just a few days ago, we learned that Miers is either incapable of or unwilling to adequately answer the pro forma questionnaire submitted to her by the Senate Judiciary Committee, which would obviously have enormous power to determine her fate... Miers failed to provide any specific answer about the constitutional issues her office faces or any work on those issues she has personally performed. To me, with a Supreme Court job on the line, that’s tantamount to refusing to sign your name on your standardized test form.

Likewise, other senators have complained publicly that Miers, in private conversations with them, has done little to increase her frail reputation as a leading legal mind. When asked about a certain constitutional issue, for example, she told one Senator that she needed to bone up a little on that particular doctrine. She also apparently ticked off Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, the Republican she needs most on the Committee, by getting into a public dispute with him about what she did or did not say in private about a constitutional right to privacy. This is a truly ominous sign...

The Texas judges whom the President trotted out earlier this week to support Miers are some of the same folks who ruled a few years ago that a capital defendant’s constitutional rights are not violated when his court-appointed attorney sleeps through significant portions of his murder trial. These are the people who think Miers would make a fine Justice.

The President played a hunch and figured that his word to the public on Miers — that he “knew her heart”-- combined with her bubbly personality and Republican loyalty, would be enough to cobble together the 51 votes needed to get her a seat on the Supreme Court. He asked the country to buy a pig in a poke and so far the country isn’t buying. Bush’s flagrant cronyism, revealed during the Hurricane Katrina catastrophe, combined with Miers’ appallingly bad showing since she was named, combined with weakened political support from the President’s own party all have contributed to a sorry spectacle that those in the White House can blame on no one but themselves...

http://cbs4denver.com/seenon/local_story_294124402.html

[win_in_06]

1. Give the American people credit

for rejecting this blatant attempt at cronyism.