Bush Names Harriet Miers to Supreme Court, White House Counsel Would Replace O'Connor

By Fred Barbash, Peter Baker and Michael Fletcher

President Bush has named White House Counsel Harriet Miers, 60, to be associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Miers, who was Bush's personal attorney in Texas, was the first woman elected president of the Texas Bar Association and was a partner at the Texas law firm of Locke Liddell & Sapp before coming to Washington.

If confirmed, she would be a rare appointee with no experience as a judge at any level. Among the non-judges appointed in modern history are the late William H. Rehnquist, who was a top justice department official in the Nixon administration, and Abe Fortas, an influential Washington attorney and close adviser to Lyndon B. Johnson, who nominated Fortas to the court in 1965.

Bush portrayed her as a "pioneer" in the legal profession who broke down gender barriers in the law.

"Harriet's greatest inspiration was her mother, who taught her the difference between right and wrong and instilled in Harriet the conviction that she could do anything she set her mind to," said Bush.

"Inspired by the confidence, Harriet became a pioneer in the field of law, breaking down barriers to women that remain even after a generation -- remain a generation after President Reagan appointed Justice O'Connor to the Supreme Court."

Miers was active in a 1992 battle in the American Bar Association, arguing vehemently but unsuccessfully against a resolution supportive of abortion rights. New reports at the time did not quote her on the merits of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision legalizing abortion, but rather on what she considered the inappropriateness of the ABA taking a position.

Miers does have some political experience. In 1989, she was elected to a two-year term as an at-large candidate on the Dallas City Council. She chose not to run for reelection when her term expired.

Miers served as general counsel for the transition team of Governor-elect Bush in 1994, according to a White House biography of Miers released this morning.

"She is single and very close to her family: two brothers and her mother live in Dallas and a third brother lives in Houston," said the White House biography.

Miers's low-key but high-precision style has been particularly valued in a White House where discipline in publicly articulating policy and loyalty to the president are highly valued.

Miers came with him to the White House in 2001 as staff secretary, the person who screens all the documents that cross the president's desk. She was promoted to deputy chief of staff before Bush named her counsel after his reelection in November. She replaced Alberto R. Gonzales, another longtime Bush confidant, who was elevated to attorney general.

"Harriet Miers is a trusted adviser on whom I have long relied for straightforward advice," Bush said at the time. "Harriet has the keen judgment and discerning intellect necessary to be an outstanding counsel."

When he was governor of Texas, Bush once called her "a pit bull in size 6 shoes" for her cool but dogged determination.

Working with her staff of 13 lawyers, and in cooperation with the Justice Department, Miers's office provides guidance on issues from the legal parameters for the war on terrorism to presidential speeches. Her office also takes the lead in vetting and recommending candidates for the federal judiciary, all the way up to the Supreme Court.

The office also has played a pivotal role in recommending federal appeals court candidates to Bush. Senate Democrats blocked 10 of the president's 34 appeals court nominees during his first term, saying they were too extreme in their conservatism. That prompted Senate Republicans to threaten to change the rules to disallow filibusters of judicial candidates.

Born and raised in Dallas, Miers, 60, is a graduate of Southern Methodist University, where she majored in mathematics. She went on to law school at SMU, earning her law degree in 1970 and going on to clerk for a federal judge in Dallas. In an era when there were few female lawyers, Miers set out for the top.

According to published reports, she was the first woman hired by Locke Purnell Boren Laney & Neely, a Dallas firm whose history extends to the 1890s. She went on to become a top commercial litigator whose clients included Microsoft and the Walt Disney Co.

Miers was active in professional organizations and eventually was elected head of the Dallas and Texas bar associations, where she was known for encouraging members to do pro bono work.

Miers met Bush in the 1980s and was drafted to work as counsel for his 1994 gubernatorial campaign. In 1995, he appointed her to the Texas Lottery Commission.


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Profile: Harriet Miers

President Bush announced on Monday, Oct. 3, that he is nominating White House Counsel Harriet Miers to fill the Supreme Court vacancy created by the retirement of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.

Harriet Miers was born in Dallas, Texas on August 10, 1945.

Ms. Miers received her bachelor's degree in Mathematics in 1967 and J.D. in 1970 from Southern Methodist University. Upon graduation, she clerked for U.S. District Judge Joe E. Estes from 1970 to 1972. In 1972, Ms. Miers became the first woman hired at Dallas's Locke Purnell Rain Harrell.

In March 1996, her colleagues elected her the first female President of Locke, Purnell, Rain & Harrell, at that time a firm of about 200 lawyers. She became the first female to lead a Texas firm of that size.

Locke, Purnell eventually merged with a Houston firm and became Locke Liddell & Sapp, LLP, where Ms. Miers became Co-Managing Partner and helped manage an over-400-lawyer firm.

Ms. Miers had a very distinguished career as a trial litigator, representing such clients as Microsoft, Walt Disney Co. and SunGard Data Systems Inc.

Throughout her career, she has been very active in the legal community and has blazed a trail for other women to follow.

* In 1985, Ms. Miers was selected as the first woman to become President of the Dallas Bar Association.

* In 1992, she became the first woman elected President of the State Bar of Texas. Ms. Miers served as the President of the State Bar of Texas from 1992 to 1993.

* She played an active role in the American Bar Association. She was one of two candidates for the Number 2 position at the ABA, chair of the House of Delegates, before withdrawing her candidacy to move to Washington to serve in the White House. Ms. Miers also served as the chair of the ABA's Commission on Multijurisdictional Practice.

On numerous occasions, the National Law Journal named her one of the Nation's 100 most powerful attorneys, and as one of the Nation's top 50 women lawyers.

Ms. Miers also has been involved in local and statewide politics in Texas.

* In 1989, she was elected to a two-year term as an at-large candidate on the Dallas City Council. She chose not to run for re-election when her term expired.

* Ms. Miers also served as general counsel for the transition team of Governor-elect George W. Bush in 1994.

* From 1995 until 2000, Ms. Miers served as Chairwoman of the Texas Lottery Commission, a voluntary public service position she undertook while maintaining her legal practice and other responsibilities. When then-Governor Bush appointed Ms. Miers to a six-year term on the Texas Lottery Commission, it was mired in scandal, and she served as a driving force behind its cleanup.

Ms. Miers came to Washington D.C. in 2001 and began a period of distinguished and dedicated service that continues today.

* She was appointed to be Assistant to the President and Staff Secretary on January 20, 2001.

* In 2003, Ms. Miers was promoted to be Assistant to the President and Deputy Chief of Staff.

* Ms. Miers has served as Counsel to the President since February, 2005.

She is single and very close to her family: two brothers and her mother live in Dallas and a third brother lives in Houston.

(Source: The White House.)


For further reading: "Quiet But Ambitious White House Counsel Makes Life of Law" (The Post, June 21, 2005).


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Longtime Confidante of Bush Has Never Been a Judge

By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS
Published: October 3, 2005
President Bush nominated Harriet E. Miers, the White House counsel, as his choice to replace Justice Sandra Day O'Connor this morning, his second nominee for the Supreme Court.

Doug Mills/ The New York Times
Harriet Miers, White House counsel, was named to replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.

Ms. Miers, 60, a longtime confidant of the president's, has never been a judge, and therefore lacks a long history of judicial rulings that could reveal ideological tendencies. Her positions on such ideologically charged issues as abortion and affirmative action are not clear.

Many of President Bush's allies had lobbied the president to choose a conservative justice to replace Justice O'Connor, a key swing vote on the court, in order to affix a conservative stamp on the court for years to come. The president has vowed to turn the court rightward. Democrats in the Senate however, have warned that a conservative pick to replace a moderate justice would lead to a drawn-out partisan battle.

Ms. Miers has spent her life serving others, Mr. Bush said in making the announcement at the White House. "And she will bring that same passion," for helping others to the Supreme Court, he said..

Mr. Bush said Ms. Miers had devoted her life to the rule of law and added, "She will not legislate from the bench."

If Ms. Miers is ratified by the Senate, she would be the third woman to serve on the nation's highest court - after Justice O'Connor and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who currently sits on the court. She was a leading candidate in the search for Justice O'Connor's successor, and was also part of the White House team that led Mr. Bush to Judge John G. Roberts Jr., who was confirmed by the Senate as chief justice last week and begins work today on the Supreme Court's new term.

The president had signaled his desire to name a woman or a member of a minority group to the Supreme Court last week when in response to a question about how close he was to choosing a successor, he said "diversity is one of the strengths of the country."

Ms. Miers was the first woman to become a partner at a major Texas law firm and the first woman to be president of the State Bar of Texas. At one point, Ms. Miers was Mr. Bush's personal lawyer.

In 1995, Mr. Bush, then governor of Texas, named her chairwoman of the Texas Lottery Commission and gave her the task of cleaning up that scandal-plagued agency.

The White House said last week that officials had consulted about 70 senators to seek names in the selection process. But Senator Charles E. Schumer, the New York Democrat who is on the judiciary panel, said that it was "consultation in name only" and that Ms. Miers called him to ask for suggestions in a conversation that lasted less than five minutes.

"There is no back and forth," he said. "It's just, 'Give us some names.' I said to her, 'Look, I'd like to know who the president is considering.' And she didn't say anything."

Among others who were reportedly considered by the White House were Judge Edith Brown Clement of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit; Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales; Larry D. Thompson, a former deputy attorney general and now general counsel of Pepsico in Purchase, N.Y.; and Judge Karen J. Williams of Orangeburg, S.C., who sits on the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.

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By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS
Published: October 3, 2005
President Bush nominated Harriet E. Miers, the White House counsel, as his choice to replace Justice Sandra Day O'Connor this morning, his second nominee for the Supreme Court.


Doug Mills/ The New York Times
Harriet Miers, White House counsel, was named to replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.

Ms. Miers, 60, a longtime confidant of the president's, has never been a judge, and therefore lacks a long history of judicial rulings that could reveal ideological tendencies. Her positions on such ideologically charged issues as abortion and affirmative action are not clear.

Many of President Bush's allies had lobbied the president to choose a conservative justice to replace Justice O'Connor, a key swing vote on the court, in order to affix a conservative stamp on the court for years to come. The president has vowed to turn the court rightward. Democrats in the Senate however, have warned that a conservative pick to replace a moderate justice would lead to a drawn-out partisan battle.

Ms. Miers has spent her life serving others, Mr. Bush said in making the announcement at the White House. "And she will bring that same passion," for helping others to the Supreme Court, he said..

Mr. Bush said Ms. Miers had devoted her life to the rule of law and added, "She will not legislate from the bench."

If Ms. Miers is ratified by the Senate, she would be the third woman to serve on the nation's highest court - after Justice O'Connor and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who currently sits on the court. She was a leading candidate in the search for Justice O'Connor's successor, and was also part of the White House team that led Mr. Bush to Judge John G. Roberts Jr., who was confirmed by the Senate as chief justice last week and begins work today on the Supreme Court's new term.

The president had signaled his desire to name a woman or a member of a minority group to the Supreme Court last week when in response to a question about how close he was to choosing a successor, he said "diversity is one of the strengths of the country."

Ms. Miers was the first woman to become a partner at a major Texas law firm and the first woman to be president of the State Bar of Texas. At one point, Ms. Miers was Mr. Bush's personal lawyer.

In 1995, Mr. Bush, then governor of Texas, named her chairwoman of the Texas Lottery Commission and gave her the task of cleaning up that scandal-plagued agency.

The White House said last week that officials had consulted about 70 senators to seek names in the selection process. But Senator Charles E. Schumer, the New York Democrat who is on the judiciary panel, said that it was "consultation in name only" and that Ms. Miers called him to ask for suggestions in a conversation that lasted less than five minutes.

"There is no back and forth," he said. "It's just, 'Give us some names.' I said to her, 'Look, I'd like to know who the president is considering.' And she didn't say anything."

Among others who were reportedly considered by the White House were Judge Edith Brown Clement of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit; Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales; Larry D. Thompson, a former deputy attorney general and now general counsel of Pepsico in Purchase, N.Y.; and Judge Karen J. Williams of Orangeburg, S.C., who sits on the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.

--------------------
Bush Nominates Harriet Miers for Supreme Court
--------------------

By James Gerstenzang
Times Staff Writer

October 3 2005, 6:07 AM PDT

President Bush today nominated Harriet Miers, his White House counsel and a long-time political supporter and personal friend, to be the 110th associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

The complete article can be viewed at:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/na...-home-headlines

--------------------
Key Facts on Harriet Miers
--------------------

From Reuters

October 3 2005

President Bush nominated Monday White House counsel Harriet Miers, 60, to be a justice on the Supreme Court, replacing retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.

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http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/na...-home-headlines

Miers, Bush's Lawyer, Selected for US Supreme Court Bloomberg
US President George W. Bush chose White House Counsel Harriet Miers, a fellow Texan and longtime confidant who has never served as a judge, to succeed swing vote Sandra Day O'Connor on the Supreme Court. Miers, 60, would help determine the court's direction on abortion, affirmative action, gay rights and congressional power, issues on which O'Connor often cast the pivotal vote. She would become the third woman ever to sit on the high court. ``She has devoted her life to the rule of law and the cause of justice,'' Bush, with Miers at his side, said today in the Oval Office in Washington. ``She will be an outstanding addition to the Supreme Court of the United States.'' The selection of Miers may avert a showdown with Senate Democrats, who had threatened to block a vote if the White House chose a hard-line conservative. Both Democratic and Republican senators suggested Miers as a possible nominee in meetings with Bush, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said. Miers would join Ruth Bader Ginsburg as the court's only women. Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid, who met with Bush Sept. 21, called Miers ``a trailblazer for women'' in her career as a Texas attorney. He said the court ``would benefit from the addition of a justice who has real experience as a practicing lawyer.'' Still, Democrats will face a challenge in assessing Miers, who built her career on giving private advice rather than making public pronouncements. She is the first Supreme nominee with no prior judicial experience since 1971, when Lewis Powell and William Rehnquist were appointed. Democrats likely will question Miers about her efforts to rescind the American Bar Association position favoring abortion rights in the 1990s.

Conservatives Split
The announcement came just hours before new Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. presided over his first Supreme Court session across town. Roberts was confirmed last week by a 78-22 vote, with the backing of all 55 Republicans, 22 Democrats and one independent. The Miers nomination drew mixed reactions from conservatives. Leonard Leo, who is on leave from serving as executive vice president of the conservative Federalist Society in Washington, called her a ``judicial conservative'' who will ``heed the founders' vision of the role of courts in our constitutional system.'' Manuel Miranda, executive director of the a Washington-based conservative advocacy group, the Third Branch Conference, said he will support Miers only reluctantly. Many conservatives will view Miers as ``possibly the most unqualified choice'' since President Lyndon Johnson selected his longtime adviser Abe Fortas almost 40 years ago, Miranda said. Fortas, who served four years as an associate justice, resigned over conflict-of-interest allegations after Johnson tried to elevate him to chief justice.

`Pit Bull'
``The nomination of a nominee with no judicial record is a significant failure for the advisers that the White House gathered around it,'' Miranda said in an e-mailed statement. Bush once described Miers as ``a pit bull in size 6 shoes.'' She has known the president since the 1980s and worked as a lawyer on his 1994 gubernatorial campaign. Much like Vice President Dick Cheney before his selection as Bush's running mate in 2000, Miers led the president's search for a new justice before Bush chose her from a crowded field of contenders. Miers said in the Oval Office that she has ``great respect and admiration for the genius that inspired our Constitution and our system of government.'' Miers was the first woman president of the Dallas Bar Association and the first woman to be elected president of the Texas State Bar. She was on the National Law Journal's list of most powerful lawyers in 1997 and 2000. She once was a donor to Democratic causes, according to PoliticalMoneyLine, a Washington-based company that tracks campaign finance disclosures. She gave $1,000 each in 1988 to Al Gore's presidential campaign, Lloyd Bentsen's U.S. Senate campaign and the Democratic National Committee.

Could Have Been
``My first reaction is a simple one,'' Senator Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat who voted against Roberts, told reporters in Washington. ``It could have been a lot worse.'' In talks with fellow Democrats this morning, Schumer said most were optimistic about the choice. Miers received her undergraduate and law degrees at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. She was a litigator in Texas for 26 years, rising to co-managing partner of Locke Liddell & Sapp in Dallas. She was elected to a two-year term on the Dallas City Council in 1989. Bush, as Texas governor, tapped Miers to lead the Texas Lottery Commission in 1995. She came with Bush to Washington when he was elected in 2000, serving first as his staff secretary, then as deputy chief of staff.
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Longtime Confidante of Bush Has Never Been a Judge

By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS
Published: October 3, 2005
President Bush nominated Harriet E. Miers, the White House counsel, as his choice to replace Justice Sandra Day O'Connor this morning, his second nominee for the Supreme Court in the past two and half months.

Doug Mills/The New York Times
Harriet Miers, White House counsel, was named to replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.

Ms. Miers, 60, a longtime confidante of the president's, has never been a judge, and therefore lacks a long history of judicial rulings that could reveal ideological tendencies. Her positions on such ideologically charged issues as abortion and affirmative action are unclear.

Many of President Bush's allies had lobbied the president to choose a conservative justice to replace Justice O'Connor, a key swing vote on the court, in order to place a conservative stamp on the court for years to come. Democrats in the Senate however, have warned that a conservative pick to replace a moderate justice would lead to a drawn-out partisan battle.

In making the announcement at the White House, Mr. Bush said of Ms. Miers, "She has devoted her life to the rule of law and the cause of justice." He added that Ms. Miers, "will not legislate from the bench."

The president said that while considering his choice in recent days, Ms. Miers had "stood out as being exceptionally well suited" to replace the retiring Justice O'Connor.

He urged the Senate to take up her nomination "promptly."

In brief remarks during the announcement, a beaming Ms. Miers said she had a duty to "ensure the courts meet their obligation to strictly apply" the constitution and to adhere to "the founders' vision of the court."

In choosing Ms. Miers as his nominee, Mr. Bush once again signaled the importance he places on personal loyalty and familiarity. Ms. Miers has served in a number of posts for the president, and at one point was his personal lawyer.

If Ms. Miers is confirmed by the Senate, she would be the third woman to serve on the nation's highest court - after Justice O'Connor and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who currently sits on the court. She was a leading candidate in the search for Justice O'Connor's successor, and was also part of the White House team that led Mr. Bush to Judge John G. Roberts Jr., who was confirmed by the Senate as chief justice last week and begins work today on the Supreme Court's new term.

Her elevation to the court along with Chief Justice Roberts would add an unknown judicial element to the nine-justice body. Ms. Miers lacks a track record that would shed light on her views, and Justice Roberts declined to be specific about his views on several key issues during his recent Senate confirmation hearings.

This morning Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, signaled some optimism about the selection. "Today is a day, I guess, of some hope - there's hope Harriet Miers is a mainstream nominee," Mr. Schumer said. But, "we just don't know very much" about her, he said.

If confirmed, Ms. Miers would be the first justice with no previous experience on the bench since President Nixon nominated William H. Rehnquist, then an assistant attorney general, as associate justice in 1972. He was elevated to chief justice in 1986 by President Reagan. Chief Justice Rehnquist died last month, prompting Mr. Bush to nominate Chief Justice Roberts as his replacement. The president had originally nominated Mr. Roberts in mid-July to replace Justice O'Connor.

The president had signaled his desire to name a woman or a member of a minority group to the Supreme Court last week when in response to a question about how close he was to choosing a successor, he said "diversity is one of the strengths of the country."

Ms. Miers was the first woman to become a partner at a major Texas law firm and the first woman to be president of the State Bar of Texas. In 1995, Mr. Bush, then governor of Texas, named her chairwoman of the Texas Lottery Commission and gave her the task of cleaning up that scandal-plagued agency.

Ms. Miers has also served Mr. Bush in the posts of assistant to the president, staff secretary and as deputy chief of staff. Previously, she had been president of a Texas law firm, Locke, Purnell, Rain & Harrell, and when it merged with another Texas firm to become Locke Liddell & Sapp, she became its co-managing partner.

She was the first woman elected as president of the Texas bar in 1992, and the first female to be president of the Dallas Bar Association in 1985. Ms. Miers, who received her bachelor's and law degrees from Southern Methodist University, was also an at-large member of the Dallas City Council.
In 1996, Mr. Bush described her as being "a pit bull in size 6 shoes."

Mr. Bush said this morning that the White House had consulted 80 senators to seek names in the selection process. But last week, Senator Schumer, who is a member of the judiciary panel, said that it was "consultation in name only" and that Ms. Miers called him to ask for suggestions in a conversation that lasted less than five minutes.

"There is no back and forth," he said. "It's just, 'Give us some names.' I said to her, 'Look, I'd like to know who the president is considering.' And she didn't say anything."

Mr. Schumer said this morning that many questions about Ms. Miers's judicial philosophy must be answered. Because Ms. Miers is a nominee for Justice O'Connor's swing vote seat on the court, Mr. Schumer said it was important that senators are able to gain an understanding of her beliefs during the confirmation hearings.

"That's going to be even more important than it was for John Roberts," Senator Schumer said.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, of Tennessee, said Ms. Miers's selection was "a nomination we are excited about, we are pleased with."

"She is a woman who understands judicial restraint," he said.

Senator Arlen Specter, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, would not say when hearings would start, but the Pennsylvania Republican said he hoped there would be a "confirmation by Thanksgiving."

In a statement, the Senate Democratic leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, said he had taken no position on the nominee, but said, "I like Harriet Miers."

"I look forward to the Judiciary Committee process, which will help the American people learn more about Harriet Miers, and help the Senate determine whether she deserves a lifetime seat on the Supreme Court," he said.

Among others who were reported to have been considered by the White House for the seat were Judge Edith Brown Clement of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit; Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales; Larry D. Thompson, a former deputy attorney general and now general counsel of Pepsico in Purchase, N.Y.; and Judge Karen J. Williams of Orangeburg, S.C., who sits on the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.

In recent days, the White House reshuffled its list to try to avoid a contentious confirmation process in the Senate. Many senators who voted for Justice Roberts said they would use different criteria in evaluating Justice O'Conner's replacement.

"It is going to be different," Senator Lincoln Chafee, Republican of Rhode Island, said last week. Senator Chafee is socially liberal and voted to confirm Judge Roberts.

Mr. Chafee said he planned to apply a more skeptical standard to the next nominee because of the balance of the court and might even oppose a jurist similar to Judge Roberts. "I will be looking very carefully," he said, at the next nominee's views on privacy rights, separation of church and state and the scope of federal power.

On the conservative side of the party, Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas has said he would vote against a nominee who was not "solid and known" on cultural issues like abortion, same-sex marriage and religion in public life.

"If the president doesn't nominate a solid nominee, that is going counter to what he campaigned on," Mr. Brownback said, before this morning's nomination announcement. And if such a nominee "involves a contentious battle, then let it be."

Ms. Miers has generally contributed financially to Republicans in the past - including a total of $4,000 to Mr. Bush's successful presidential runs, and $5,000 to the Bush-Cheney recount fund in 2000. But Ms. Miers also gave $1,000 to Senator Al Gore's presidential campaign in 1988 and to the Democratic National Committee the same year, according to politicalmoneyline.com.

Alexander Hamilton, Federalist Papers, "The Appointing Power of the President," No. 76



To what purpose then require the co-operation of the Senate? I answer, that the necessity of their concurrence would have a powerful, though, in general, a silent operation. It would be an excellent check upon a spirit of favoritism in the President, and would tend greatly to prevent the appointment of unfit characters from State prejudice, from family connection, from personal attachment, or from a view to popularity. . . . He would be both ashamed and afraid to bring forward, for the most distinguished or lucrative stations, candidates who had no other merit than that of coming from the same State to which he particularly belonged, or of being in some way or other personally allied to him, or of possessing the necessary insignificance and pliancy to render them the obsequious instruments of his pleasure.


http://www.constitution.org/fed/federa76.htm

Good Post... Anyway, Remember story of Thomas Beckett, appointed by the King of England to be Archbishop of Canterbury, because he was friend of king and not a priest? Becket fell into his duties as Archbishop and opposed the king on many stands, rather than being an appointed crony.
It would appear that GOP right are afraid that Bush has appointed a female Becket, and liberals are afraid he has appointed a crony, and the Senate gets handed the question...
Interesting...

Strong Grounding in the Church Could Be a Clue to Miers's Priorities

By Michael Grunwald, Jo Becker and John Pomfret

One evening in the 1980s, several years after Harriet Miers dedicated her life to Jesus Christ, she attended a lecture at her Dallas evangelical church with Nathan Hecht, a colleague at her law firm and her on-again, off-again boyfriend. The speaker was Paul Brand, a surgeon and the author of "Fearfully and Wonderfully Made," a best-selling exploration of God and the human body.

When the lecture was over, Miers said words Hecht had never heard from her before. "I'm convinced that life begins at conception," Hecht recalled her saying. According to Hecht, now a Texas Supreme Court justice, Miers has believed ever since that abortion is "taking a life."

"I know she is pro-life," said Hecht, one of the most conservative judges in Texas. "She thinks that after conception, it's not a balancing act -- or if it is, it's a balancing of two equal lives."

Hecht and other confidants of Miers all pledge that if the Senate confirms her nomination to the Supreme Court, her judicial values will be guided by the law and the Constitution. But they say her personal values have been shaped by her abiding faith in Jesus, and by her membership in the massive red-brick Valley View Christian Church, where she was baptized as an adult, served on the missions committee and taught religious classes. At Valley View, pastors preach that abortion is murder, that the Bible is the literal word of God and that homosexuality is a sin -- although they also preach that God loves everybody.

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino declined to comment on Hecht's recollection yesterday but said President Bush did not ask Miers her personal views on abortion or any other issue that may come before the court. "A nominee who shares the president's approach of judicial restraint would not allow personal views to affect his or her rulings based on the law," Perino said.

Some religious conservatives have expressed deep dissatisfaction with the Miers nomination, grumbling that she has never taken public stands on hot-button social issues. But her friends point to Valley View as evidence that she is cut from conservative cloth. They say she's not a "holy roller" who flaunts her religion on her sleeve but she lives her faith as a born-again Christian.

"People in Dallas know she's a conservative," said her friend Ed Kinkeade, a federal district judge. "She's not Elmer Gantry, but she lives what she believes. . . . I'm like, y'all, has George Bush appointed anyone to an appellate court that is a betrayal to conservatives?"

Even in Dallas, home of groups such as the Texas Eagle Forum and the Republican National Coalition for Life, some religious conservatives say Miers, 60, has demonstrated an insufficient commitment to family values. They cited a questionnaire she filled out for a gay rights group in 1989 as a candidate for Dallas City Council, indicating that gay people should have the same civil rights as straight people and that the city should fund AIDS education and services. After her election, she appointed an openly gay lawyer to an influential city board.

"For goodness' sake, why elevate AIDS over cancer? She shouldn't have filled out that questionnaire at all," said Cathie Adams, president of the Texas Eagle Forum. "President Bush is asking us to have faith in things unseen. We only have that kind of faith in God."

But on the same questionnaire, Miers opposed the repeal of a Texas anti-sodomy law and said she was not seeking the endorsement of the gay rights group. In a meeting with the group, she said that her "personal conviction is not consistent" with the "homosexual lifestyle," according to one activist's notes.

Hecht suggested that it would be difficult to attend Valley View regularly and support gay rights. At the same time, he said, Miers's faith made her more sympathetic to the struggles of others, and her duties as an at-large City Council member transcended her personal views.

"She represented those people, and she wanted to represent the whole city," Hecht said. "It doesn't mean that you approve of their lifestyle."

Hecht remembers that when Miers made partner at their law firm, the first woman ever to do so, she began to question what life was all about. He said they would often put their feet up and trade Big Questions: Is there a God? Who is He? What difference does it make? Miers had attended Episcopalian and Presbyterian churches as a girl, and her mother was religious, but Miers told Hecht she wanted a "deeper faith." Hecht believes she may have supported abortion rights at the time, although he said she had not thought about it much.

"Well, let's go to my church," Hecht told her.

That was Valley View, where Hecht played the organ and taught Sunday school. It was a church, pastor Ron Key said, that believed in "the Judeo-Christian perspective on the sanctity of life" and "the Christian perspective on marriage." There are antiabortion pamphlets inside the church and literature opposing premarital sex. Key and his wife, Kaycia, said they never asked Miers what she thought about those issues, because they never thought they had to.

"We've known Harriet for 30 years and we've never had any reason to discuss these hot topics," Kaycia Key said. "But I can say one thing: She's a totally committed Christian."

But some antiabortion activists noted that Justice Anthony M. Kennedy was described as a devout Catholic when he was nominated by President Ronald Reagan -- and he still voted to uphold Roe v. Wade . Miers donated $150 at a fundraising dinner for a Texas antiabortion group in 1989, but Colleen Parro, director of the Republican National Coalition for Life, remembers that there were plenty of politicians trolling for votes at the dinner. Parro said she does not care whether Miers is a born-again Christian, or the companion of Hecht.

"It's not about her church, or the fellow she dates. It's about her record," Parro said. "She seems like a fine lady, but this nomination does not advance the culture of life."

In 1993, when Miers was the president of the Texas bar, she led a challenge to the American Bar Association's support for abortion rights. Some of her friends say she just thought it was inappropriate for the group to take a stand on a moral issue, but others point out that an abortion rights supporter probably would not have challenged the status quo.

"She didn't have to do that," Kinkeade said. "She was following her beliefs."

Those beliefs were forged at Valley View, but Miers is breaking away from the church where she embraced Jesus. In recent years, church elders have moved to cut back on missionary work, sparking a split this summer among the parishioners. Key is forming a church that plans to donate half its revenues to mission work, and Miers plans to join him.

"These days so many of the churches have become Christian country clubs," Key said. "They are more about making you feel good about yourself than making you grow. Some of us, including Harriet, were uncomfortable with all this."

But if Miers is leaving her church, the church is not leaving her. Kaycia Key said she expects to see the next Supreme Court justice in the pews, singing enthusiastically, if not skillfully. "Let's just say she makes a joyful noise unto the Lord," Key said. "She doesn't hesitate to sing out."

Pomfret reported from Dallas.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/e...er=emailarticle

Can This Nomination Be Justified?

By George F. Will

Senators beginning what ought to be a protracted and exacting scrutiny of Harriet Miers should be guided by three rules. First, it is not important that she be confirmed. Second, it might be very important that she not be. Third, the presumption -- perhaps rebuttable but certainly in need of rebutting -- should be that her nomination is not a defensible exercise of presidential discretion to which senatorial deference is due.

It is not important that she be confirmed because there is no evidence that she is among the leading lights of American jurisprudence, or that she possesses talents commensurate with the Supreme Court's tasks. The president's "argument" for her amounts to: Trust me. There is no reason to, for several reasons.

He has neither the inclination nor the ability to make sophisticated judgments about competing approaches to construing the Constitution. Few presidents acquire such abilities in the course of their pre-presidential careers, and this president particularly is not disposed to such reflections.

Furthermore, there is no reason to believe that Miers's nomination resulted from the president's careful consultation with people capable of such judgments. If 100 such people had been asked to list 100 individuals who have given evidence of the reflectiveness and excellence requisite in a justice, Miers's name probably would not have appeared in any of the 10,000 places on those lists.

In addition, the president has forfeited his right to be trusted as a custodian of the Constitution. The forfeiture occurred March 27, 2002, when, in a private act betokening an uneasy conscience, he signed the McCain-Feingold law expanding government regulation of the timing, quantity and content of political speech. The day before the 2000 Iowa caucuses he was asked -- to ensure a considered response from him, he had been told in advance that he would be asked -- whether McCain-Feingold's core purposes are unconstitutional. He unhesitatingly said, "I agree." Asked if he thought presidents have a duty, pursuant to their oath to defend the Constitution, to make an independent judgment about the constitutionality of bills and to veto those he thinks unconstitutional, he briskly said, "I do."

It is important that Miers not be confirmed unless, in her 61st year, she suddenly and unexpectedly is found to have hitherto undisclosed interests and talents pertinent to the court's role. Otherwise the sound principle of substantial deference to a president's choice of judicial nominees will dissolve into a rationalization for senatorial abdication of the duty to hold presidents to some standards of seriousness that will prevent them from reducing the Supreme Court to a private plaything useful for fulfilling whims on behalf of friends.

The wisdom of presumptive opposition to Miers's confirmation flows from the fact that constitutional reasoning is a talent -- a skill acquired, as intellectual skills are, by years of practice sustained by intense interest. It is not usually acquired in the normal course of even a fine lawyer's career. The burden is on Miers to demonstrate such talents, and on senators to compel such a demonstration or reject the nomination.

Under the rubric of "diversity" -- nowadays, the first refuge of intellectually disreputable impulses -- the president announced, surely without fathoming the implications, his belief in identity politics and its tawdry corollary, the idea of categorical representation. Identity politics holds that one's essential attributes are genetic, biological, ethnic or chromosomal -- that one's nature and understanding are decisively shaped by race, ethnicity or gender. Categorical representation holds that the interests of a group can be understood, empathized with and represented only by a member of that group.

The crowning absurdity of the president's wallowing in such nonsense is the obvious assumption that the Supreme Court is, like a legislature, an institution of representation. This from a president who, introducing Miers, deplored judges who "legislate from the bench."

Minutes after the president announced the nomination of his friend from Texas, another Texas friend, Robert Jordan, former ambassador to Saudi Arabia, was on Fox News proclaiming what he and, no doubt, the White House that probably enlisted him for advocacy, considered glad and relevant tidings: Miers, Jordan said, has been a victim. She has been, he said contentedly, "discriminated against" because of her gender.

Her victimization was not so severe that it prevented her from becoming the first female president of a Texas law firm as large as hers, president of the State Bar of Texas and a senior White House official. Still, playing the victim card clarified, as much as anything has so far done, her credentials, which are her chromosomes and their supposedly painful consequences. For this we need a conservative president?

georgewill@washpost.com


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Miers Led Law Firm Repeatedly Forced to Pay Damages For Defrauding Investors:

In case anyone thought Harriet Miers wasn't a corporate-shill-in-White-House-clothing, Miers headed Locke, Liddell & Sapp at the time the firm was forced to pay $22 million to settle a suit asserting that "it aided a client in defrauding investors."
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10524.htm

The Scoop on Harriet Miers :

So you thought that Harriet Miers, George W. Bush’s new Supreme Court pick has no paper trail. You were wrong.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10525.htm

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/05/politics/p

In Midcareer, a Turn to Faith to Fill a Void

By EDWARD WYATT and SIMON ROMERO
Published: October 5, 2005

DALLAS, Oct. 4 - By 1979, Harriet E. Miers, then in her mid-30's, had accomplished what some people take a lifetime to achieve. She was a partner at Locke Purnell Boren Laney & Neely, one of the most prestigious law firms in the South, with an office on the 35th floor of the Republic National Bank Tower in downtown Dallas.

Stephen Crowley/The New York Times
Harriet E. Miers visited Capitol Hill to meet with Senator Orrin G. Hatch, a Utah Republican and member of the Judiciary Committee.

Harriet Miers: A Timeline

Woman in the News: Miers Known as a Hard-Working Advocate for the President (October 4, 2005)
Abortion: Miers Was Leader in Effort Within Bar to Rescind Support for Abortion (October 4, 2005)
Texas Lottery: Mixed Review of Bush Pick in Oversight of Gambling (October 4, 2005)
Judicial Experience: If Approved, a First-Time Judge, Yes, but Hardly the First in Court's History (October 4, 2005)

The Miers Nomination
The Times's Richard W. Stevenson discusses the nomination of Harriet E. Miers to the Supreme Court. Plus video of the president and the nominee.


Ms. Miers graduated in 1963 from Hillcrest High School in Dallas.

But she still felt something was missing in her life, and it was after a series of long discussions - rambling conversations about family and religion and other matters that typically stretched from early evening into the night - with Nathan L. Hecht, a junior colleague at the law firm, that she made a decision that many of the people around her say changed her life.

"She decided that she wanted faith to be a bigger part of her life," Justice Hecht, who now serves on the Texas Supreme Court, said in an interview. "One evening she called me to her office and said she was ready to make a commitment" to accept Jesus Christ as her savior and be born again, he said. He walked down the hallway from his office to hers, and there amid the legal briefs and court papers, Ms. Miers and Justice Hecht "prayed and talked," he said.

She was baptized not long after that, at the Valley View Christian Church.

It was a pivotal personal transformation for the woman now named for a seat on the United States Supreme Court, not entirely unlike that experienced by President Bush and others in the Texas political and business establishment of that time.

Ms. Miers, born Roman Catholic, became an evangelical Christian and began identifying more with Republicans than with the Democrats who had long held sway over Texas politics. She joined the missions committee of her church, which is against legalized abortion, and friends and colleagues say she rarely looked back at her past as a Democrat.

"There weren't that many Republicans in Texas in those days," said Merrie Spaeth, a director of media relations at the White House under Ronald Reagan who met Ms. Miers after moving to Dallas in 1985. "Harriet is what you would call a Southern lady. It is marvelous to watch her in meetings with huge egos, where she allows people to think good results are the product of their own ideas."

To persuade the right to embrace Ms. Miers's selection despite her lack of a clear record on social issues, representatives of the White House put Justice Hecht on at least one conference call with influential social conservative organizers on Monday to talk about her faith and character.

Some evangelical Protestants were heralding the possibility that one of their own would have a seat on the court after decades of complaining that their brand of Christianity met condescension and exclusion from the American establishment.

In an interview Tuesday on the televangelist Pat Robertson's "700 Club," Jay Sekulow, chief counsel of the Christian conservative American Center for Law and Justice, said Ms. Miers would be the first evangelical Protestant on the court since the 1930's. "So this is a big opportunity for those of us who have a conviction, that share an evangelical faith in Christianity, to see someone with our positions put on the court," Mr. Sekulow said.

But other conservatives were unappeased, looking for someone with clearly stated public commitments on social issues like abortion.

While Ms. Miers rarely wore her religious thinking on her sleeve, her gradual tilt toward conservative views resulted in some uneasy moments when she took a break from a lucrative law practice and delved into politics with a campaign for the Dallas City Council in 1989, running for a nonpartisan post. She appeared as a candidate at the Dallas Gay and Lesbian Political Caucus, but even though she said gays should have the same civil rights as others in society, she stopped short of endorsing a repeal of a Texas law criminalizing gay sexual activity.

Religion appears to have influenced her views on certain subjects. In a discussion with her campaign manager in 1989, Ms. Miers said she had been in favor in her younger years of a woman's right to have an abortion, but her views evolved against abortion, influenced largely by her born-again religious beliefs, said Lorlee Bartos, a Democratic campaign consultant in Dallas who managed Ms. Miers's City Council campaign.

"She was someone whose view had shifted, and she explained that to me," Ms. Bartos said.
One of the most controversial issues before the Dallas City Council during Ms. Miers's single term that ended in 1991 was a battle over whether the city should adopt a plan doing away with council members elected at large, an election method that minority groups in Dallas criticized as marginalizing them from municipal politics.

Ms. Miers, elected as an at-large council member, initially favored the at-large system, but her position evolved to support a proposal that would create a collection of different districts in the city. This was adopted and eventually led to greater representation of blacks and Hispanics in Dallas.

While known as a moderate conservative, "Harriet didn't really distinguish herself," said Domingo Garcia, a lawyer who was elected to the Council in the early 1990's after the bitter redistricting fight. "She wasn't a leader and wasn't furniture," said Mr. Garcia, a former mayoral candidate in Dallas and the national civil rights chairman for the League of United Latin American Citizens. "She was in between."

And yet Ms. Miers, known for her thorough study of the issues before the Council, acquired the grudging respect of some colleagues across the political spectrum. "You might think she's a pushover because she looks meek and humble," said Al Lipscomb, a former city council member. "But can America handle a Republican conservative who's fair? She is a tigress when it comes to the law."

The Dallas of political battles over minority and gay rights, of course, was substantially different from the predominantly white and segregated city where she was born the fourth of five children. Few schools were more emblematic of the old Dallas than Hillcrest High School, from which Ms. Miers graduated in 1963.

"It was a school in the sense like schools were supposed to be," said Ron Natinsky, a classmate of Ms. Miers who is now on the Dallas City Council, referring to an atmosphere of respect and decorum. "Teachers were addressed as ma'am or sir."

The strait-laced student body at Hillcrest was also almost entirely white, with integration in that part of Dallas several years off when Ms. Miers graduated, Mr. Natinsky said. Her yearbook from 1963 shows photographs of a blond, smiling senior, described by classmates as "efficient, sweet and sincere, good at sports from what we hear." Mr. Natinsky remembered her as someone involved in clubs and school activities, but not part of the "cool crowd."

"She was almost an unseen person at school," Mr. Natinsky said.

Ms. Miers sometimes attended Mass at St. Jude Chapel in downtown Dallas, but before embracing evangelical Protestantism, her experience with religion was lukewarm and her attendance sporadic, Justice Hecht said.

Her friends say that there is much about her world experience that shapes her attitudes and views, from her rise in a male-dominated legal profession to her years of loyalty and counsel to Mr. Bush in Texas and Washington.

But as important as her professional trajectory, friends and family of Ms. Miers say, is the influence of religion on her approach to issues of political and legal importance. After joining Valley View Christian Church, she began teaching a Sunday night class for first, second and third graders at the church, called Whirlybirds.

Vickie Wilson, the office manager at Valley View, knew Ms. Miers from the time she began attending the church in 1979; Ms. Wilson's two daughters, now 27 and 30, were in Ms. Miers's Sunday youth group. Even though it was known that she was a high-powered lawyer in Dallas, "she never used the church to further her political career," Ms. Wilson said.

"She never took a role where she was trying to stand out front," Ms. Wilson said. "She put herself in servant roles, making coffee every Sunday morning and putting doughnuts out."


A close relationship with Justice Hecht - also a longtime member of Valley View - who frequently appears with Ms. Miers at social functions in Washington and in Texas, has been a steady feature of her life for nearly 30 years. Justice Hecht is known as one of the most conservative members of the Republican-dominated Texas Supreme Court.

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Harriet Miers: A Timeline

Woman in the News: Miers Known as a Hard-Working Advocate for the President (October 4, 2005)
Abortion: Miers Was Leader in Effort Within Bar to Rescind Support for Abortion (October 4, 2005)
Texas Lottery: Mixed Review of Bush Pick in Oversight of Gambling (October 4, 2005)
Judicial Experience: If Approved, a First-Time Judge, Yes, but Hardly the First in Court's History (October 4, 2005)






The Miers Nomination
The Times's Richard W. Stevenson discusses the nomination of Harriet E. Miers to the Supreme Court. Plus video of the president and the nominee.

THE ANNOUNCEMENT
Transcripts: Bush | Miers
Newspapers in Texas have reported that Justice Hecht and Ms. Miers were romantically involved, and when asked in an interview whether that was still the case, Justice Hecht responded that they were close, without going into great detail. "She works in Washington, I work in Austin," Justice Hecht said. "We have dinner when she's here; if she invites me to Washington I happily go. We talk on the phone all the time."

Justice Hecht and Ms. Miers spoke on Sunday evening, but she did not tell him about the pending announcement that she had been offered the nomination, he said. "She's a stickler for the rules," he said. He never asked Ms. Miers how she would vote on the issue of abortion if it came before the Supreme Court, he said. "She probably wouldn't answer, she wouldn't view it as appropriate."

"Yes, she goes to a pro-life church," Justice Hecht said, adding, "I know Harriet is, too." The two attended "two or three" anti-abortion fund-raising dinners in the early 1990's, he said, but added that she had not otherwise been active in the anti-abortion movement. "You can be just as pro-life as the day is long and can decide the Constitution requires Roe" to be upheld, he said.

Apart from the questions about abortion and other issues Ms. Miers will face in confirmation hearings, the strong tie she and Justice Hecht have to their church is undergoing a test. The congregation at Valley View is in the middle of a schism, and Mr. Hecht said he and Ms. Miers are siding with the splinter groups that are forming a new church under Valley View's longtime pastor, Ron Key.

Church members said in interviews that Mr. Key was fired several weeks ago by the Valley View board of elders after he refused to take a less prominent role in the church's leadership. The members said that the pastor and the board members disagreed on several matters, including the appointments of new ministers and whether the church should adopt more contemporary forms of worship services to try to attract newer and younger members.

Dr. Barry McCarty, the Valley View pastor, said Ms. Miers has often asked the congregation to pray for her and the president, and he added that even if she is joining the roughly 150 members that have left to start a new church, he believes that the Valley View members will continue those prayers. "Our particular congregation is committed to starting new churches," Dr. McCarty said. "It's something they do with our blessing."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/04/politics...l1/04miers.html

Woman in the News
Miers Known as a Hard-Working Advocate for the President


By TODD S. PURDUM and NEIL A. LEWIS
Published: October 4, 2005
WASHINGTON, Oct. 3 - Last May, the Texas Center for Legal Ethics and Professionalism gave Harriet E. Miers its second annual Sandra Day O'Connor Award. On Monday, President Bush proposed Ms. Miers for something a little bit bigger: Sandra Day O'Connor's seat on the Supreme Court.


Eric Draper/The White House
President Bush at his ranch in August 2001 with Ms. Miers; Stephen E. Biegun, left, national security aide; and Joe Hagin, deputy chief of staff.

The parallels to the woman she would replace are apparent. Both were born in Texas. Both graduated at the top of their law school class, and yet had trouble finding jobs. Both served in elective office, Justice O'Connor in the Arizona State Senate and Ms. Miers a single two-year term on the Dallas City Council, but neither had been a federal judge. Both have now made history - beyond their wildest early dreams.

"I really came out of high school believing I wasn't bright enough to be a doctor," Ms. Miers told The Dallas Morning News in 1991. "Career days at high school, you just got no encouragement."

It has been a long time since Ms. Miers lacked encouragement, and for the last 12 years she has had the support of an important patron. By 1993, when Mr. Bush first ran for governor of Texas, he wanted a solid lawyer on his staff to handle a politician's delicate personal tasks, including scrutinizing his own past. His first two choices declined, but both mentioned a deceptively quiet but sharp Dallas lawyer: Ms. Miers, who just happened to be the first woman to be president of the Texas bar association.

Mr. Bush had met her briefly, when she was escorted to a Texas political dinner by Justice Nathan L. Hecht of the State Supreme Court, a frequent companion then and now. "She got to be pretty close to him in that race since she was dotting all the i's," Justice Hecht said in a recent interview. "In not too long a time, they all realized she was a person to go to for good, sensible advice on all manner of things."

Ms. Miers has been a go-to person for Mr. Bush ever since, first as his appointee to the Texas State Lottery Commission, which she helped clean up; then as White House staff secretary, directing the flow of presidential papers; then as a deputy White House chief of staff; and since the beginning of this year, White House counsel, the president's in-house lawyer.

She is known among friends and associates as a hard-working and thorough advocate, someone staunchly loyal to Mr. Bush and possessing an unusual ability to remain calm and out of public view in the glare of the White House.

What she is not known for are her personal views on the hottest legal and political issues of the day. She has never been a judge and appears not to have written any legal articles espousing a point of view. Her friends and acquaintances say they are genuinely at a loss to describe with certainty her political, judicial or philosophical leanings.

"I think she's conservative in the sense that most lawyers are conservative, that she looks at the issues in that case," said Linda S. Eads, a professor at the Dedman School of Law at Southern Methodist University, from which Ms. Miers graduated and to which she returned as an adjunct professor. "I don't know her to be an ideologue."

Diane Ragsdale, a liberal Democrat who served on the Dallas City Council with Ms. Miers, said that the two had differed on some policy matters, but that Ms. Miers was thorough in studying every issue. "She's not a Scalia," Ms. Ragsdale said. "She's not going to legislate from the court. I believe she will follow the law."

Until she joined the Bush administration in 2000, Ms. Miers's whole life was based in Dallas and revolved around her legal work, her family and an attachment to an evangelical church that led her to what her former pastor described as a flowering of faith late in life. She came of professional age when opportunities for women who were corporate lawyers in Texas were comparatively few, but she seized them. She was on a track to become president of the American Bar Association when she came to Washington instead.

Now 60, Ms. Miers has never married, but is close to her extended family and still relishes the Texas tradition of "Friday night lights" at her nephew's high school football games, and occasional Washington girls' nights out with the likes of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and former Agriculture Secretary Ann M. Veneman.

"I think the one thing that comes across is she genuinely cares about people, at every level - professionally, personally, socially," said Hugh Hackney, a lawyer in Dallas who has known her since their undergraduate days at S.M.U. "She has always taken a great deal of time to really consider other people."

Before making herself a trusted counselor in the Bush political operation, Ms. Miers made her reputation in Dallas's legal establishment. In 1972 she was the first woman hired at a Dallas law firm that traced its roots back to the late 19th century. She rose to lead the state and local bar, exhorting her colleagues to dedicate more time to representing indigent clients. She took on poor clients herself, mostly in civil disputes over issues like wrongful termination of employment, home sales and child custody and divorce cases.


"That she is hard-working explains why she is able to do so much," said Colleen McHugh, a lawyer in Corpus Christi, Tex., who was chairman of the board of the state bar when Ms. Miers was president. "She is also brilliant."

Harriet Ellan Miers was born in Dallas on Aug. 10, 1945, the fourth of five children. Her father, Harris, invested in real estate; her mother, Sally, was a homemaker. Ms. Miers was a standout student and athlete, lettering in tennis at Hillcrest High School, on the city's northern fringe, then segregated.

Ms. Miers planned to be a teacher, said Liz Lang Miers, a Texas judge who was her law partner for 28 years and married Ms. Miers's brother Dr. Jeb Stuart Miers after she had arranged for them to meet.

She majored in math at Southern Methodist, but instead chose to go to law school, she has said, after a lawyer stepped in and organized her family's financial situation when her father was disabled by a stroke.

"There's no question that the family owes a tremendous debt to that lawyer," she told the Dallas newspaper. "It was also a lesson that there's power in the law."

The family's money problems grew so difficult after her freshman year in college that she came close to dropping out, her relatives said. Instead, as Mr. Bush noted in announcing her nomination, she worked part time to help pay her expenses through college, which she finished in 1967. She graduated from S.M.U.'s law school in 1970 and served on the law review.

"She was one of the few women in the law school, and she was very successful," recalled W. Wilson Jones, a lawyer at the Rose Law Firm in Little Rock, Ark.

K. Bruce Stickler, a classmate who is now a health care lawyer in Chicago, said he would never forget her performance against him in a moot court competition. "She destroyed me," he said with a laugh. "She was either the No. 1 or No. 2 person in our class."

He added: "People are going to find that this is an endearing person who is not afraid to express her views and opinions. I just don't see any extreme positions."

At first, Ms. Miers had trouble finding employment as a lawyer. She had an offer in San Francisco with the trial lawyer Melvin Belli, for whom she had worked one summer. But she wanted to remain in Dallas, so she clerked for a federal judge there for two years and moved on to be the first female lawyer at Locke Purnell Boren Laney & Neely, a venerable Dallas firm to which she soon recruited other women.

At that time, some women who were law firm associates in Dallas sued several of the city's major firms, contending they were denying equal treatment to female lawyers.

"Some of the questions you got asked were pretty offensive," recalled Professor Eads, who interviewed for summer jobs while in law school. "One partner asked me if I was taking birth control pills." She said that while Ms. Miers "doesn't wear her experiences on her sleeve," such treatment "affected her and she has to know from that experience that not all groups are always treated equally."

In private practice, Ms. Miers represented clients from Microsoft to Fannie Mae to the Walt Disney Company, usually in complex commercial cases.

"She knows the facts of the case that she's dealing with, she knows the cases that are applicable to the points of law, and can articulate those points extremely well," said Carlos M. Zaffirini Sr., who said he has known Ms. Miers for more than 30 years.

In the late 1980's, Ms. Miers served a term as a City Council member in a citywide district. Press accounts from the time portray her as earnest but less than fully effective because she was reluctant to engage in some of the horse-trading of politics. She left after a sharp fight over redistricting resulted in a plan intended to elect more minority candidates from single districts. Justice Hecht said that she had no appetite for representing a single district in her north Dallas neighborhood rather than the entire city.

Soon enough, through her association with Mr. Bush, she was exposed to politics on a larger stage, first in Austin heading the Texas Lottery Commission, and for the last five years in Washington.

When Andrew H. Card Jr., the chief of staff, first offered her the job of staff secretary at the beginning of the Bush administration, her friends said, she had to look up the job in a book. She discovered that the office is influential because the person holding it shapes what information flows to the president.

One thing Ms. Miers shares with her boss is a deep faith. She was introduced to Valley View Christian Church in Dallas by Justice Hecht, of the Texas Supreme Court. He was an elder at the church and often plays the organ during Sunday services.

"Harriet has placed her faith in Jesus," said the Rev. Ron Key, who was the longtime pastor there until recently. "She may have been religious before, but it's become more of a priority, more of a focus of her life. She has become a strong example of what happens in a person's life when they come to the faith."

Her brother Dr. Miers said that Ms. Miers was always a spiritual person, "someone who believed strongly but quietly." Earlier this year, he said, his sister and their two brothers found themselves in a deep discussion about the meaning of life. Their 91-year-old mother, who was at nursing home, took a turn for the worse and the family considered withdrawing life support. He said their mother "has since rallied and has done rather well."

Asked if he was surprised by Monday's announcement, Dr. Miers said, "I always felt that Harriet could have been almost anything she set her mind to."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/05/politics...094&partner=AOL


Bush's Court Choice Meets With Key Conservative Senators

By DAVID STOUT
Published: October 5, 2005
WASHINGTON, Oct. 5 - President Bush's choice for the Supreme Court courted important senators today, gaining the support of at least one conservative Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee. But another conservative Republican on the panel remained uncommitted.

"I don't need to reserve judgment, because I know she's the right person for the job now," Senator John Cornyn of Texas said of Harriet E. Miers. But Mr. Cornyn, a former judge, acknowledged in an interview with The Associated Press that some of Mr. Bush's supporters were "nervous" about the nomination.

Indeed, Mr. Cornyn's fellow Republican conservative on the Judiciary Committee, Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas, reiterated his uncertainty about the nomination today. Mr. Brownback, who opposes abortion, signaled that he would question Ms. Miers closely on that issue when her confirmation hearings begin.

Mr. Brownback, in an interview on ABC's "Good Morning America" with Diane Sawyer, said he wanted to know more about Ms. Mier's views of the Constitution. "Is it a living document, or is it something that's more strictly construed?" Mr. Brownback said. "Hopefully, I'll be able to ascertain that."

Mr. Brownback was asked whether he might vote against her if she indicates that she believes Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court ruling that established a woman's right to choose abortion, is "settled law" and therefore unlikely to be overturned.

"There's a good chance that I would then in that case," Mr. Brownback replied.

Ms. Miers was meeting at the Capitol today with Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee. So far, Mr. Leahy is uncommitted.

"Is this a nominee who will protect and expand our constitutional rights, or will she neglect and narrow those rights?" Mr. Leahy asked just after Mr. Bush announced his choice on Monday. "Learning the answer will be at the core of what the American people and the Senate need to know from the hearings on this nomination."

Any signals from Mr. Leahy could be significant, since he was one of the three Democrats on the Judiciary Committee who voted for Judge John G. Roberts Jr. when the panel considered his nomination to be chief justice. The other two committee Democrats who voted in favor were Senators Herb Kohl and Russell D. Feingold, both of Wisconsin. (The other five committee Democrats voted no.)

Mr. Kohl and Mr. Feingold have been noncommittal so far.

"We hope that Harriet Miers will be someone who represents the views of people all across America, someone who will respect the Constitution and, ultimately, someone I will be able to support," Mr. Kohl said just after Mr. Bush announced his choice.

Mr. Feingold was similarly cautious.

"White House Counsel Harriet Miers is a relatively unknown quantity," Mr. Feingold said after the announcement, promising to "review her record and writings carefully."

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/ne...t_id=1001221205


Miers Briefed Bush on Bin Laden PDB, But Papers Handle Photo From That Day Quite Differently

By E&P Staff

Published: October 04, 2005 10:45 AM ET

NEW YORK On its front page Tuesday, The New York Times published a photo of new U.S. Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers going over a briefing paper with President George W. Bush at his Crawford ranch “in August 2001,” the caption reads.

USA Today and the Boston Globe carried the photo labeled simply “2001,” but many other newspapers ran the picture in print or on the Web with a more precise date: Aug. 6, 2001.

Does that date sound familiar? Indeed, that was the date, a little over a month before 9/11, that President Bush was briefed on the now-famous “PDB” that declared that Osama Bin Laden was “determined” to attack the U.S. homeland, perhaps with hijacked planes. But does that mean that Miers had anything to do with that briefing?

As it turns out, yes, according to Tuesday's Los Angeles Times. An article by Richard A. Serrano and Scott Gold observes that early in the Bush presidency “Miers assumed such an insider role that in 2001 it was she who handed Bush the crucial 'presidential daily briefing' hinting at terrorist plots against America just a month before the Sept. 11 attacks.”

So the Aug. 6 photo may show this historic moment, though quite possibly not. In any case, some newspapers failed to include the exact date with the widely used Miers photo today. A New York Times spokesman told E&P: "The wording of the caption occurred in the course of routine editing and has no broader significance."

The photo that ran in so many papers and on their Web sites originally came from the White House but was moved by the Associated Press, clearly marked as an “Aug. 6, 2001” file photo. It shows Miers with a document or documents in her right hand, as her left hand points to something in another paper balanced on the president's right leg. Two others in the background are Deputy Chief of Staff Joe Hagin and Steve Biegun of the national security staff.

The PDB was headed “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.,” and notes, among other things, FBI information indicating “patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks.”




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E&P Staff

Conservatives wary of Miers
President Bush this week tried to reassure his base about the high
court nominee. By Gail Russell Chaddock
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1006/p01s01-uspo.html?s=hns

From Miers, Telling Words

By David S. Broder

The nomination of Harriet Miers as a replacement for swing-vote Justice Sandra Day O'Connor poses entirely different confirmation challenges to the Senate from those raised when President Bush chose John Roberts to be chief justice of the United States.

Roberts had a lengthy record of service in government, two years of judicial experience on the federal appellate bench and an incomparable set of credentials in academia and private practice. He was also replacing another conservative.

Miers enjoys similarly high standing with colleagues in the Dallas and Texas legal circles. But she has never judged a single case or argued a constitutional issue before the high court. Her one distinguishing characteristic is the trust she has earned from her most important client, George Bush.

The words the president used in his news conference Tuesday conveyed his deep admiration for the woman he employed as a private attorney, campaign adviser and, most recently, White House counsel. He spoke not only of her intellect but also of her character, of his confidence that she shares his "strict constructionist" judicial philosophy, and of his certainty that she will not change. She will have the "same philosophy 20 years from now," he said.

Bush's words were clearly aimed at reassuring his conservative constituents, some of whom had greeted the choice of Miers with groans of disappointment because they had other favorites with records and views more obviously in line with their own.

It's too soon to judge this nomination. But my guess is that in the end it is the liberals who will have the most misgivings about Miers.

I came to that conclusion after a breakfast interview -- by coincidence the morning of the president's announcement -- with Leonard Leo, who is on leave as executive vice president of the Federalist Society to work with the White House on judicial confirmation issues.

The Federalist Society, an organization of conservative lawyers, has been influential in staffing the Bush administration and recommending candidates for the federal bench. Leo came late to the breakfast from a conference call, in which he was attempting to quash the arguments other conservative leaders were making against Miers.

He spoke as one who has known and worked with her for well over a decade, who has played host to her when she has been a Federalist Society speaker, and -- perhaps most significant -- who joined her in a battle to get the American Bar Association to rescind its resolution endorsing Roe v. Wade , the decision establishing a right to abortion.

The first thing Leo said was that Miers's statement accepting the nomination from Bush was significant to him. "It is the responsibility of every generation to be true to the Founders' vision of the proper role of courts in our society . . . and to help ensure that the courts meet their obligations to strictly apply the laws and the Constitution," she said. "When she talked about 'the Founders' vision' and used the word 'strictly,' " Leo said, "I thought, 'Robert Bork,' " Ronald Reagan's Supreme Court pick, who was rejected by the Senate after a bitter fight. "She didn't have to go there. She could simply have said, 'Judges should not legislate from the bench.' But she chose those words."

I asked if he was surprised that she did -- or whether it was consistent with what he knew of her judicial philosophy. He replied: "I'm not surprised that's what she believes. I'm surprised her handlers let her say it."

As for the fight within the bar association, Leo said that he and Miers and their allies argued that it was "inappropriate" for the organization to endorse Roe "when there are doubts about the legitimacy of the underlying legal doctrine."

Was she opposed to the Roe decision? I asked. "That was not the issue. The only way to fight this within the ABA was to talk about the process" by which the endorsement was made. "It took a lot of courage to be out front on that issue" within the bar association, "especially for a woman."

And then he added that Miers is "well-regarded by antiabortion leaders in Dallas" and has written a check to at least one such group.

Finally, I asked him to compare Miers to the justice she would be replacing, if confirmed. Unlike O'Connor, he said, "she believes in legal rules, that law has a content to it. She is not one who would vacillate back and forth in a world of murky standards, which is how I see Justice O'Connor."

Maybe that's what the president meant when he said he was confident she "won't change."

davidbroder@washpost.com


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Night And Fog Revisited

Is Harriet Miers a Closet Sadist?

By Ted Rall

10/05/04 "ICH" -- -- Field Marshall Wilhelm Keitel, supreme chief of the German armed forces, explained the thinking behind the Nazis' "Night and Fog" (the term comes from Goethe) decree: "Efficient and enduring intimidation can only be achieved...by measures by which the relatives of the criminals do not know the fate of the criminals...These measures will have a deterrent effect because the prisoners will vanish without a trace and no information may be given as to their whereabouts or their fate."

Anyone who doubts the extravagant pain of not knowing what happened to a loved one should talk to Natalee Holloway's parents.

Night and Fog came to the United States when federal agencies built and filled a global, ad hoc network of prisons and concentration camps during the months following 9/11, and began filling it with Muslims of varying status. Officials promising to update lapsed visas lured foreign-born residents to immigration offices and arrested them when they showed up. Captured Taliban soldiers, stripped of their rights under the Geneva Conventions, were thrown together with civilian shopkeepers sold by local warlords for bounties to the CIA in Afghanistan, to whom were added anti-communist rebels from China and democracy activists from Pakistan. Some were shipped to Cuba, where many were tortured, some to death. Others were delivered for "extraordinary rendition" via covert CIA jets to countries reputed for their pain-inflicting expertise, including Syria, Yemen and Uzbekistan. No one knows what happened to them.

Four years after 9/11, the U.S. government still refuses to release information about the disappeared. We do not know how many there are, where they are being held, how many are dead and alive, or even their names. The vanished have access to neither their families nor legal representation. They cannot send or receive mail or packages. Because there was no evidence against them, none have been charged with a crime. But catching terrorists was never the purpose of America's new Night and Fog policy. The goal was to instill fear, particularly among Muslims. It has also worked with other "enemies of the state": since 9/11, "See you in Gitmo" has become a standard joke among activists on the left.

The legal cover for the Bush Administration's updating of Night and Fog comes courtesy of then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales, since promoted to attorney general. In his January 22, 2002 memo, for example, Gonzales repeatedly twisted the facts in order to obtain the result Bush desired.

Gonzales' contradictory linguistic contortions, here to argue that the Taliban were not covered by Geneva and could thus be vanished into thin air because they were not a viable government, would be comical if not for the man's chilling willingness to suspend intellectual honesty along with fundamental human rights: "It is unclear whether the Taliban militia ever fully controlled most of the territory of Afghanistan. At the time the United States air strikes began, at least ten percent of the country, and the population within those areas, was governed by the Northern Alliance."

Since when does 90 percent, or nearly 90 percent, fail to qualify as "most"?

Harriet Miers, Bush's nominee to succeed Sandra Day O'Connor on the Supreme Court, replaced Gonzales in November 2004. Has she ever questioned Gonzales' extreme and bizarre legal opinions justifying the torture, indefinite detention and disappearing of countless innocent people? We don't know. Her legal opinions have yet to be released and Senate Republicans, in keeping with the Bush Administration's obsession with keeping the people's business secret from the people, say they'll fight to keep them shrouded by the night and fog.

We know that Miers has chosen not to issue a full-fledged rebuttal of Gonzales' disappear-'em-and-torture-'em philosophy, which remains in full force at Abu Ghraib, Bagram, Guantánamo, Camp Mercury and other giant memory holes. Reports continue to emerge, most recently from a former Muslim chaplain at Gitmo, that top officials encourage soldiers to abuse inmates.

This comes as little surprise, given that Miers' reluctance to rock the boat appears to be more highly developed than the average striver. "In [a] White House that hero-worshipped the president, Miers was distinguished by the intensity of her zeal: She once told me that the president was the most brilliant man she had ever met," right-winger David Frum writes in the National Review.

Senate Democrats and patriotic Republicans should insist on a full review of Miers' advice to Bush on torture and disappearances before voting on confirmation to the Supreme Court. No one who agrees with Alberto Gonzales' monstrous contempt for human rights ought to be elevated to such a powerful post--even if her consent is expressed through tacit silence.

Ted Rall, is America's hardest-hitting editorial cartoonist for Universal Press Syndicate, is an award-winning commentator who also works as an illustrator, columnist, and radio commentator. Visit his website www.tedrall.com

Copyright: Ted Rall

Conservatives Confront Bush Aides

By Peter Baker and Dan Balz

The conservative uprising against President Bush escalated yesterday as Republican activists angry over his nomination of White House counsel Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court confronted the president's envoys during a pair of tense closed-door meetings.

A day after Bush publicly beseeched skeptical supporters to trust his judgment on Miers, a succession of prominent conservative leaders told his representatives that they did not. Over the course of several hours of sometimes testy exchanges, the dissenters complained that Miers was an unknown quantity with a thin résumé and that her selection -- Bush called her "the best person I could find" -- was a betrayal of years of struggle to move the court to the right.

At one point in the first of the two off-the-record sessions, according to several people in the room, White House adviser Ed Gillespie suggested that some of the unease about Miers "has a whiff of sexism and a whiff of elitism." Irate participants erupted and demanded that he take it back. Gillespie later said he did not mean to accuse anyone in the room but "was talking more broadly" about criticism of Miers.

The tenor of the two meetings suggested that Bush has yet to rally his own party behind Miers and underscores that he risks the biggest rupture with the Republican base of his presidency. While conservatives at times have assailed some Bush policy decisions, rarely have they been so openly distrustful of the president himself.

Leaders of such groups as Paul M. Weyrich's Free Congress Foundation and the Eagle Forum yesterday declared they could not support Miers at this point, while columnist George Will decried the choice as a diversity pick without any evidence that Miers has the expertise and intellectual firepower necessary for the high court.

As the nominee continued to work the halls of the Senate, the White House took comfort from the more measured response of the Senate Republican caucus and remained confident that most if not all of its members ultimately will support her. Yet even some GOP senators continued to voice skepticism of Miers, including Trent Lott (R-Miss.), who pronounced himself "not comfortable."

"Is she the most qualified person? Clearly, the answer to that is 'no,' " Lott said on MSNBC's "Hardball," contradicting Bush's assertion. "There are a lot more people -- men, women and minorities -- that are more qualified, in my opinion, by their experience than she is. Now, that doesn't mean she's not qualified, but you have to weigh that. And then you have to also look at what has been her level of decisiveness and competence, and I don't have enough information on that yet."

The persistent criticism has put the White House on the defensive ever since Bush announced Monday his decision to nominate Miers to succeed the retiring Sandra Day O'Connor. While Miers has a long career as a commercial lawyer, Texas political figure and personal attorney to Bush before joining him at the White House, she has never been a judge or dealt extensively with the sorts of constitutional issues that occupy the Supreme Court.

Bush tried to defuse the smoldering conservative revolt with a Rose Garden news conference Tuesday, and the White House followed up yesterday by dispatching Gillespie, Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman and presidential aide Tim Goeglein to meetings that regularly bring together the city's most influential fiscal, religious and business conservatives.

"The message of the meetings was the president consulted with 80 United States senators but didn't consult with the people who elected him," said Manuel A. Miranda, a former nominations counsel for Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), who attended both private meetings.

Weyrich, who hosted one of the meetings, said afterward that he had rarely seen the level of passion at one of his weekly sessions. "This kind of emotional thing will not happen" often, Weyrich said. But he feared the White House advisers did not really grasp the seriousness of the conservative grievance. "I don't know if they got the message. I didn't sense that they really understand where people were coming from."

Grover Norquist, head of Americans for Tax Reform and host of the other meeting, declined to comment on the discussion because of its presumption of confidentiality but said there is widespread concern given the experience with the nomination of Justice David H. Souter, who proved more liberal once on the bench. "There's a great deal of frustration because of the Souter experience," Norquist said. "The problem is there's no fixing, there's no allaying those fears. For the president to say 'Trust me,' it's what he needs to say and has to say, but it doesn't calm the waters."

In interviews afterward, Gillespie and Mehlman acknowledged they faced skeptical questions but assured their usual allies that Miers would earn their respect. "People have questions," said Gillespie, who bore the brunt of the criticism at the Norquist meeting. "If you don't know Harriet and don't know her background, it's understandable that people have questions."

While much of the consternation was voiced by social conservatives, the White House has trumpeted the support of such prominent figures as James C. Dobson, head of Focus on the Family, and the National Right to Life Committee. And in the end, White House advisers emphasized, only the Senate gets a vote. "This is about getting senators, both Republicans and Democrats, to support her," said one administration ally working on the confirmation effort. "There's no real concern about Republican senators now."

The main complaints cited at the Norquist and Weyrich sessions yesterday, according to several accounts, centered on Miers's lack of track record and the charge of cronyism. "It was very tough and people were very unhappy," said one person who attended. Another said much of the anger resulted from the fact that "everyone prepared to go to the mat" to support a strong, controversial nominee and Miers was a letdown. As a result, a third attendee observed, Gillespie and Mehlman came in for rough treatment: "They got pummeled. I've never seen anything like it."

The 90-minute Norquist session, where Gillespie appeared before 100 activists, was the more fiery encounter, according to participants. Among those speaking out was Jessica Echard, executive director of the Eagle Forum, founded by Phyllis Schlafly. Although she declined to give a full account later because of the meeting ground rules, Echard said in an interview that her group could not for now support Miers: "We feel this is a disappointment in President Bush. If it's going to be a woman, we expected an equal heavyweight to Ruth Bader Ginsburg and her liberal stance, and we did not get that in Miss Miers."

Another conservative captured the mood, according to a witness, by scorning Miers. "She's the president's nominee," he said. "She's not ours."

At Weyrich's two-hour luncheon featuring Mehlman and Goeglein addressing 85 activists, the host opened the discussion by rejecting Bush's call to trust him. "I told Mehlman that I had had five 'trust-mes' in my long history here . . . and I said, 'I'm sorry, but the president saying he knows her heart is insufficient," Weyrich said, referring to Republican court appointments that resulted in disappointment for conservatives.

In a later interview, Mehlman said he retorted that Bush's decade-long friendship with Miers set this nomination apart: "What's different about this trust-me moment as opposed to the other ones is this president's knowledge of this nominee."

Staff writer Thomas B. Edsall contributed to this report.




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A Lawyer and a Justice

George W. Bush is getting heat from all sides for his second Supreme Court choice. The left cries cronyism; the right fears there is no litmus test on abortion and gay rights; one cynical columnist speaks of "office wives tucked away in the White House;" cartoonists ask what kind of justice is it that puts Lynndie England in jail for three years because of Abu Ghraib while her boss Donald Rumsfeld remains at large.

All these views have merit. But there is an elephant in the room that even a psychoanalyst can see: Bush is reacting to what Truthout calls the "tightening noose" around the White House's neck -- George Stephanopoulos revealed on Sunday October 2 that Bush himself may have been involved in the plotting to expose Valerie Plame to the press.

By appointing his personal lawyer after appointing a Chief Justice who helped him out in the 2000 Florida election, he is "stacking" the court with justices who will protect him and his colleagues at all costs. After all, Miers kept Bush from one particular jury duty which, had he served it, would have exposed his DWI arrest record before he even had a chance to cover it up.

As it stands, the court will protect even more White House secrets than ever, against any and all investigators. After all, Roberts didn't have to release personal memos that had direct bearing on his beliefs. And the old GAO case about the energy scandal remains a big win for White House secrecy. This appointment is insurance: the Harriet Miers policy. No more close votes in Bush's favor. In case there is an impeachment effort Bush will be safe from inquiry by counting on his court (i.e. his lawyers) to protect him.

Nothing psychological there. Bush is as astute as ever, as are those around him who also fear indictment. When will the Senate wake up? This is not about Roe v. Wade; this is not about favors to big business through eliminating business accountability; it is not about gay marriage. The only thing this appointment could be about is self-protection from impeachable offenses. How great to have your own lawyer sitting on the bench of the highest court in the land?

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/06/politics...094&partner=AOL


New Questions From the Right on Court Pick

By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
Published: October 6, 2005
WASHINGTON, Oct. 5 - A growing chorus of conservatives from Republican senators to the columnist George F. Will cast skepticism on Wednesday on President Bush's selection of Harriet E. Miers for the Supreme Court, expressing worry not only about unanswered questions on her legal philosophy but also about her legal credentials.


"There are a lot more people - men, women and minorities - that are more qualified, in my opinion, by their experience than she is," Senator Trent Lott, Republican of Mississippi, told MSNBC on Wednesday. "Right now, I'm not satisfied with what I know. I'm not comfortable with the nomination, so we'll just have to work through the process."

Senator George Allen, Republican of Virginia, considered a potential presidential candidate, said that "people who I have a great deal of admiration for" had said they were "disappointed or deflated" by the choice.

"I want to be assured that she is not going to be another Souter," Mr. Allen said, referring to Justice David H. Souter, a George H. W. Bush appointee who has upheld abortion rights and other liberal precedents. "I understand the president knows her well, but I don't."

The administration sent Ed Gillespie, the former Republican Party chairman helping to shepherd Ms. Miers through Senate hearings, to shore up support at a weekly meeting of conservative organizers convened Wednesday by the strategist Grover Norquist. There, Mr. Gillespie was pelted by criticism that the president had failed to pick a committed conservative or a legal star.

"There was pretty much unanimity," said one conservative who spoke anonymously because confidentiality was a condition of the meeting. "Morale is low right now at the base."

Ms. Miers, meanwhile, continued her rounds of Capitol Hill. Senator Mike DeWine, Republican of Ohio, pronounced her "tough as nails" after an hourlong meeting with her. Responding to criticism that Ms. Miers had never been a judge, Mr. DeWine praised the breadth of her practical experience in the White House and in her long career as a private lawyer. "She is somebody who has gone out late at night to get someone out of jail," Mr. DeWine said she had told him.

None of the senators who spoke with her said they discussed constitutional issues. "She listens more than she talks," said Senator Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of Utah.

Democrats, delighted by the division on the right, pushed Ms. Miers to repudiate assurances about her views that the administration has reportedly made through private conversations or closed conference calls with conservatives. "No Supreme Court nomination should be conducted by winks and nods," said Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee.

Referring to statements by the evangelical conservative James C. Dobson that he had been given confidential information about Ms. Miers's views, Mr. Leahy said: "I asked her about that specifically. I said, 'Has anybody been authorized to speak on your behalf or have you spoken to anybody about how you would vote?' She assured me, 'Absolutely not.'

"I said, 'Would you disavow anybody who send out assurances that they know how you would vote?' She said, 'Absolutely.' "

After a meeting on Wednesday of the so-called Gang of 14, a bipartisan group of senators who agreed earlier to block filibusters against judicial nominees except in "extraordinary circumstances," several members of both parties said they agreed that so far Ms. Miers "did not set off alarm bells," as Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, put it. If the Republican majority of 55 senators votes on party lines, a filibuster would be the only way Democrats could block a nominee.

On Wednesday, however, the Democrats mostly stood back as conservatives took aim at the selection of Ms. Miers. Mr. Will, a conservative essayist, made the case for her rejection in a syndicated column published on Wednesday. "There is no evidence that she is among the leading lights of American jurisprudence, or that she possesses talents commensurate with the Supreme Court's tasks," he wrote.

If 100 legal experts had each recommended 100 top candidates for the Supreme Court, Mr. Will added, "Miers's name probably would not have appeared in any of the 10,000 places on those lists."

Mr. Gillespie, who also attended a lunch of the Senate Republicans to make the case for Ms. Miers, acknowledged "pointed questions" from conservatives. He said he had told Mr. Norquist's meeting about her "distinguished career" as a lawyer, her work "shoulder to shoulder with the president" and her central work "moving forward conservative nominees to the federal judiciary."

"The more people on the conservative side of the spectrum know about her, the stronger their support will get," Mr. Gillespie said.

Christian conservatives, who see the vacancy left by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's retirement as the chance to turn the tide in 30 years of culture wars over abortion and social issues, continued to complain that Ms. Miers had no public record of her legal approach to such subjects.

Dr. Dobson, founder and chairman of Focus on the Family and one of a handful of prominent Christian conservatives to support the selection of Ms. Miers publicly, said in his radio program Wednesday: "There has been a firestorm of activity since then. This nomination has angered and disillusioned many conservatives, many Christian conservatives."

Explaining his reasons for supporting her and praying for guidance, Dr. Dobson cited her religious faith and said he knew her conservative evangelical church. "I know the person who brought her to the Lord," he said. "I have talked at length to people that know her and have known her for a long time."

Dr. Dobson acknowledged conversations with Karl Rove, the president's top political adviser, about the selection but declined to disclose their contents. "You will have to trust me on this one," he said, adding that if he was wrong, "the blood of those babies" - aborted fetuses - "will be on my hands to some degree."

But Gary Bauer, president of the Christian conservative group American Values, said that he remained unconvinced about Ms. Miers despite her religious views. "As of today, not one friend, associate, co-worker or White House official is able to produce one sentence she has written or spoken in criticism of Roe v. Wade," he wrote in an e-mail newsletter to supporters. "Her apparent silence is troubling - at least to me."

Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota, said he, too, was nervous about Ms. Miers but also about a fight within his party. "I don't think that an intraparty battle is what we need," he said. "But I think before too long the left is going to go off on her, and that will effectively bring everybody together."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/06/politics...l1/06miers.html

The President's Choice
Quiet Force for Change in a Male-Dominated Era

By LYNETTE CLEMETSON and JONATHAN D. GLATER
Published: October 6, 2005

WASHINGTON, Oct. 5 - Lynne Liberato, a Houston appellate lawyer, had just announced that she was running for president of the city's bar association in 1992 when she got a telephone call out of the blue from Harriet E. Miers, a well-known Dallas lawyer who had just become the first woman elected president of the State Bar of Texas.

The two women had never met or spoken. But Ms. Liberato, the first woman to run for the Houston office, said Ms. Miers offered her encouragement as well as some hard facts of life: No matter how much she talked about her vision for the bar association, people would want to talk only about her being a woman. No matter what she accomplished in her career, she said, she would always be known primarily as a female first. Accept it, Ms. Miers told her, but do not dwell on it.

"In those times you didn't want to make a big deal about it. You wanted to be one of the guys," said Ms. Liberato, 51, a Democrat who said she had maintained a professional friendship with Ms. Miers over the years. "It was her style. But it was also the style of the times."

When Ms. Miers, now 60, began pursuing a legal career, the times were downright hostile. In 1967, the year she started law school at Southern Methodist University, married women in Texas had just won the legal right to control property, bank accounts and business contracts without their husbands' consent. Older male professors openly criticized female students for taking men's places in the law school. And law firms rarely granted interviews to graduates who were women, let alone offered them jobs.

Ms. Miers, a disarmingly soft-spoken woman who, friends say, fancies Texas step dancing and makes mean brisket and candied sweet potatoes, was never one to rage against the system, said several former classmates and contemporaries. Instead, she quietly but determinedly found ways to change the chilly environment that surrounded her.

Joe Norton, now a professor at the Dedman School of Law at Southern Methodist, joined the law firm Locke Purnell Boren Laney & Neely a day after Ms. Miers in September 1973. The two later made partner at the same time in 1978. Mr. Norton had come to Dallas from the University of Michigan, touting radical liberalism. "But Harriet would always say to me, 'You need to work through the system, to influence systems from within, to open them up,' " he said.

When Ms. Miers was denied access to Dallas's major business clubs, which did not admit women at the time she joined the firm, she forged networks through the bar associations, which Mr. Norton said were only marginally more welcoming back then.

When the association of female law students at Southern Methodist filed a class-action discrimination lawsuit against Dallas firms in 1975, Ms. Miers, who earned her law degree there in 1970, stayed out of the public controversy. But in the years the case was being settled, she recruited women to her firm.

"If a door wasn't open, she wouldn't drive a truck through," said Judge Barbara Lynn, a district judge in Dallas, who started law school at Southern Methodist in 1973. "But she would find a diplomatic way to get the door open."

Beth Thornburg joined Locke Purnell in 1980, after Ms. Miers floated her name among staff. She became the first woman at the firm to return to work after having a baby, and it was Ms. Miers, she said, who helped her negotiate maternity leave and reduced hours upon her return.

"A number of well-meaning colleagues came and suggested that if I wanted to stay at home with my baby, they would certainly understand," said Ms. Thornburg, 51, now a law professor at Southern Methodist "If I had wanted to resign, Harriet wasn't the type to give me some feminist speech. But when I wanted to stay, she wanted to make it possible. She just said, 'Let's figure out a way to make it work.' "

Like the seven other women who graduated with her from a class of 97, Ms. Miers learned the hard way how to make things work.

"We were taking up a man's place in their minds. I had one professor who actually told me that," said Lynda Zimmerman, a Dallas lawyer and a classmate of Ms. Miers. Ms. Zimmerman was divorced and raising a 3-year-old son with no family support when she started law school.

David Sudbury, also a classmate and now vice president and general counsel with a metal company based in Dallas, said, "The women generally had to be a cut above most other law students to do well."

Ms. Miers built her private practice around commercial litigation, handling often costly disputes between large companies, contract disputes and, a few times, class-action lawsuits. Her commercial experience is an unlikely launching pad to the Supreme Court because her cases generally did not involve questions of constitutional law and were often settled out of court, leaving little in the way of public records.

"Very precise and disciplined," said Darrell E. Jordan, managing partner of Godwin Gruber, a Dallas law firm. "And she would, I think, work hard not to exaggerate or to tell you something she couldn't absolutely back up."

Jerry K. Clements, a partner at Ms. Miers's old law firm, offered a more colorful description of her in action: "She will work through details and be very nice about it while she is ripping your heart out on cross-examination," Ms. Clements said, "and you don't even know it's happened."

Ms. Miers rose to managing partner of the law firm Locke Purnell Rain Harrell in 1996. She preferred to govern by consensus, lawyers at the firm said. When the firm's partners weighed whether to merge with another firm, a combination that took place in 1999, she organized meetings to discuss the pros and cons, leading the discussion but letting her colleagues talk, Ms. Clements said.

From the time she joined her firm, Ms. Miers advocated for her colleagues to take pro bono cases and meet the needs of indigent clients. As president of the Dallas Bar Association, she appointed a young man named Will Pryor to head a committee on providing such legal services.

Mr. Pryor, now a mediator, said he litigated against Ms. Miers only once. The two sides to the commercial dispute spent all night negotiating a possible settlement. Trial was set for the next morning.

When the parties showed up at the courthouse, everybody, said Mr. Pryor, showed signs of wear and tear. But not Ms. Miers. "Harriet looked like a million bucks and was ready to roll," he said. She had long before learned to roll with the punches.

Several Republican senators warn they may vote against Miers, while activists challenge her qualifications. Some see pick as a win for the left.

By Maura Reynolds and Tom Hamburger
Times Staff Writers

October 6 2005

WASHINGTON; President Bush faced a growing Republican backlash Wednesday over the nomination of Harriet E. Miers to the Supreme Court, with several GOP senators threatening to oppose her confirmation and top conservative activists questioning her qualifications during a tense confrontation with White House advisors.

The complete article can be viewed at:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/na...-home-headlines

Since Miers is White House Counsel currently, this is fair game for questioning in the Senate Confirmation Process.



http://www.aljazeerah.info/6%20n/Bush%20Vo...20Prisoners.htm


Bush Vows to Veto Senate Measure Barring Soldiers From Torturing or Mistreating Prisoners

US Senate Passes Measure to Prevent Detainee Abuse

Khaleej Times, (AFP)

6 October 2005

WASHINGTON - The US Senate on Wednesday explicitly barred US soldiers from torturing or mistreating prisoners in a measure outlining strict military interrogation guidelines that passed by 90 votes to nine, despite White House opposition.

The measure -- an amendment to a 440 billion dollar defence spending bill being debated in Congress this week -- aims to prevent ”cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment of persons under custody or control of the United States government.”

Senator John McCain, who along with fellow Republican Lindsey Graham drafted the measure, had predicted easy passage.

“The effect would be that the men and women who are doing the interrogations would feel comfortable in knowing that they have exact instructions as to what they can and cannot do,” said McCain, a decorated war veteran who spent more than five years in a Vietnam prison camp.

“It would send a message throughout the world where America’s image is suffering that we will not condone any practice that is cruel or inhumane,” McCain said earlier in the day.

The bill was a response to the damaging 2004 prison abuse scandal that erupted following the publication of pictures that showed US military personnel humiliating and abusing inmates at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison.

The photos showed detainees piled up naked on the floor in front of US soldiers, cowering in front of snarling military dogs, chained to beds in stress positions and forced to stand naked in front of female guards.

The measure states that “no person in the custody or under the effective control of the Department of Defence or under detention in a Department of Defence facility shall be subject to any treatment or technique of interrogation not authorized by and listed in the United States