my opinion on this whole matter...
not so sure she can be confirmed...
As tentative a claim as that may be at a time when Republicans hold 55 seats in the U.S. Senate. Miers simply lacks the "built-in" Washington "fan base" that John G. Roberts enjoyed and conservatives aren't likely to rally to her cause. They would prefer to see her rejected and have an angry cowboy Bush nominate someone like Janice Rogers Brown as a replacement. From the other side of the aisle, Democrats will pound away at themes of "cronyism and inexperience". Hurricane Katrina teeds those up nicely for the left and will turn the coming confirmation hearings into an onslaught of questions about federal constitutional law that Miers in all likelihood won't want to, or won't be able to answer.
Appearing on NBC's "Today Show" this morning, George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley called Miers "an amazingly bad choice" for the court.
"No one would put Harriet Miers on the list for the Supreme Court," Turley said. "She just doesn’t have the résumé for it. I don’t mean to be cruel, but this is a time where we have to be frank ... Being the head of the Texas lottery or in the Dallas City Council are not the type of credentials that you look for."
Miers' not-quite-star-quality résumé may make the American Bar Association's view of her particularly important. Anything less than a "well qualified" rating from the ABA could doom Miers' nomination if it gets into trouble on any other ground.
The basic outlines of Miers' career are known, of course. She was born in 1945. She earned her undergraduate and law degrees from Southern Methodist University then clerked for a federal District Court judge. She became the first female attorney to be hired by the Dallas firm of Locke Purnell Rain Harrell and ultimately was chosen as the firm's president. When the firm merged with a Houston firm in the 1990s, she became the co-managing partner of a legal business with more than 400 lawyers. Along the way, she represented big-deal corporate clients, Microsoft, Walt Disney Co., and participated in the sort of legal and civic activities you'd expect of a successful lawyer before becoming the PERSONAL attorney to George W. Bush.
That's what Miers has done. But what,or how, does she think? That's the question for which nobody has much of an answer yet. At RedState, they're reading tea leaves: Miers appears to have given money to Al Gore and Lloyd Bentsen, but she also appeared to align herself against a pro-choice stand taken by the American Bar Association. Among the posters at National Review Online, there's something between mystification and panic. She did work on Bush v. Gore and has participated in Federalist Society events, but there are also worries that Bush has named Miers with less regard for her political views than for her gender and her loyalty to him.
The second half of that equation is cause for concern on the left, too: In Harriet Miers, has Bush found another Michael Brown? The White House would like to palm off Miers as another John G. Roberts, but the reality is that she comes from a different league of legaldom altogehter. SMU is a perfectly good school, but it isn't Harvard Law; a clerkship for a District Court judge isn't a clerkship with William Rehnquist; and even a successful career at a relatively unknown Texas law firm isn't the same thing as arguing dozens of cases before the Supreme Court. Miers may never have judged an Arabian horse contest, but the truth is she's never judged anything at all.
I detest Roberts, but from a non-ideological stance he was a much better pick than Miers. I just do not see how Bush and Co. plan to pull this off.
As tentative a claim as that may be at a time when Republicans hold 55 seats in the U.S. Senate. Miers simply lacks the "built-in" Washington "fan base" that John G. Roberts enjoyed and conservatives aren't likely to rally to her cause. They would prefer to see her rejected and have an angry cowboy Bush nominate someone like Janice Rogers Brown as a replacement. From the other side of the aisle, Democrats will pound away at themes of "cronyism and inexperience". Hurricane Katrina teeds those up nicely for the left and will turn the coming confirmation hearings into an onslaught of questions about federal constitutional law that Miers in all likelihood won't want to, or won't be able to answer.
Appearing on NBC's "Today Show" this morning, George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley called Miers "an amazingly bad choice" for the court.
"No one would put Harriet Miers on the list for the Supreme Court," Turley said. "She just doesn’t have the résumé for it. I don’t mean to be cruel, but this is a time where we have to be frank ... Being the head of the Texas lottery or in the Dallas City Council are not the type of credentials that you look for."
Miers' not-quite-star-quality résumé may make the American Bar Association's view of her particularly important. Anything less than a "well qualified" rating from the ABA could doom Miers' nomination if it gets into trouble on any other ground.
The basic outlines of Miers' career are known, of course. She was born in 1945. She earned her undergraduate and law degrees from Southern Methodist University then clerked for a federal District Court judge. She became the first female attorney to be hired by the Dallas firm of Locke Purnell Rain Harrell and ultimately was chosen as the firm's president. When the firm merged with a Houston firm in the 1990s, she became the co-managing partner of a legal business with more than 400 lawyers. Along the way, she represented big-deal corporate clients, Microsoft, Walt Disney Co., and participated in the sort of legal and civic activities you'd expect of a successful lawyer before becoming the PERSONAL attorney to George W. Bush.
That's what Miers has done. But what,or how, does she think? That's the question for which nobody has much of an answer yet. At RedState, they're reading tea leaves: Miers appears to have given money to Al Gore and Lloyd Bentsen, but she also appeared to align herself against a pro-choice stand taken by the American Bar Association. Among the posters at National Review Online, there's something between mystification and panic. She did work on Bush v. Gore and has participated in Federalist Society events, but there are also worries that Bush has named Miers with less regard for her political views than for her gender and her loyalty to him.
The second half of that equation is cause for concern on the left, too: In Harriet Miers, has Bush found another Michael Brown? The White House would like to palm off Miers as another John G. Roberts, but the reality is that she comes from a different league of legaldom altogehter. SMU is a perfectly good school, but it isn't Harvard Law; a clerkship for a District Court judge isn't a clerkship with William Rehnquist; and even a successful career at a relatively unknown Texas law firm isn't the same thing as arguing dozens of cases before the Supreme Court. Miers may never have judged an Arabian horse contest, but the truth is she's never judged anything at all.
I detest Roberts, but from a non-ideological stance he was a much better pick than Miers. I just do not see how Bush and Co. plan to pull this off.