http://www.latimes.com/news/nationw...4oct04,0,6198714.story?coll=la-home-headlines Kind of disturbing, but who knows what she's really thinking....
Miers supported civil rights for gays, lesbians Posted: 2:27 p.m. ET From Robert Yoon, CNN Political Unit Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers indicated that she supported full civil rights for gays and lesbians in a 1989 questionnaire she completed as a candidate for the Dallas City Council. Miers, who won the seat and served one term, said that the city had a responsibility to fund AIDS education programs and support services for AIDS patients. She also said she supported increasing the funding for these programs "assuming need and resources. I do consider the AIDS illness as a serious total community problem." The survey also asked candidates whether they supported overturning a Texas law criminalizing "deviant sexual behavior" between members of the same sex. Miers indicated that she did not support overturning the ban, and would not advocate for overturning the ban as a part of the city's legislative agenda. At the time, many prominent state Democrats, including future governor Ann Richards, also opposed overturning the ban. On employment discrimination based on sexual orientation, Miers said, "I believe that employers should be able to pick the best qualified person for any position to be filled considering all relevant factors." "It's a small window, but it's a window into the heart of this woman who in 1989 was not thinking about serving on the Supreme Court," said Joe Solomonese, President of the Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights organization. Solomonese is "cautiously optimistic" that the survey indicates that Miers will have an "open mind" on gay rights issues if confirmed to the Court. The questionnaire was administered by the Lesbian/Gay Political Coalition of Dallas, which has since disbanded. Miers completed the survey but did not seek the group's endorsement in the race. http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/10/04/sr.tues/index.html
Maybe bush and Rove are gonna run some evil "whisper" campaign on her like they did to Anne Richards, cause a distraction and get their real candidate in.
I want to be a Justice! arkoe for Justice! I'm qualified! I have almost graduatted college! Yay!!! arkoe for Justice!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I can't wait to see her try and answer constitutional questions at the Senate Confirmation hearings. I think she will crash and burn.
This should come as no surprise if one has looked at the history of Miers' political campaign contributions.
Most corporate lawyers will contribute to both parties, and a lot of this is doen by the firm/corporation's choosing and not the individual's. Don't read too much into these contributions.
At my old firm, it was pretty easy to tell who was for who by contributions like that. Sure,some people donated to both, a la Ken Lay, but it wasn't hard to tell where loyalties lie, especially in this case.
Revolt on the Right? By Howard Kurtz Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, October 4, 2005 An hour after Bush nominated Harriet Miers at the deeply strange hour of 8 a.m. eastern, I realized the nomination had problems. Not on the left, but on the right. Weekly Standard Editor Bill Kristol was on Fox, saying the conservatives he'd talked to were demoralized, and that the president had "flinched" from nominating a more qualified and hard-line conservative. Laura Ingraham was unenthusiastic. The right-leaning bloggers sounded deflated. The libs were limiting themselves to saying the White House counsel didn't have much of a record--which of course is confirmation gold. (By the way, after a prime-time rollout for John Roberts, why would Bush have announced Miers on television at 8, which is 5 a.m. on the West Coast? Was the thinking to have clips of her dominate the cable/evening news cycle all day before today's papers could weigh in? Her schoolmarm persona has got to be a plus--she just doesn't look threatening. The cable networks soon moved on to weather reports, hurricane cleanup, etc. Everyone knew so little about Miers that the commentators soon ran out of things to say.) What's really struck me is that, in sharp contrast to the Roberts pick, no one that I've seen is saying this is a home run or a brilliant nominee. The most positive arguments in favor of Miers seem to be 1) she may be better than we think because we don't really know her views, and 2) Bush has known her a long time and we trust him to do the right thing, if not the Right thing. National Review's David Frum , who worked with Miers in the Bush White House, was up early with negative reaction, calling the nomination "an unforced error. Unlike the Roberts' nomination, which confirmed the previous balance on the court, the O'Connor resignation offered an opportunity to change the balance. This is the moment for which the conservative legal movement has been waiting for two decades - two decades in which a generation of conservative legal intellects of the highest ability have moved to the most distinguished heights in the legal profession. On the nation's appellate courts, in legal academia, in private practice, there are dozens and dozens of principled conservative jurists in their 40s and 50s unassailably qualified for the nation's highest court. "Yes, Democrats might have complained. But if Democrats had gone to war against a Michael Luttig or a Sam Alito or a Michael McConnell, they would have had to fight without weapons: the personal and intellectual excellence of these candidates would have made it obvious that the Democrats' only real principle was a kind of legal Brezhnev doctrine: that the court's balance must remain forever what it was in the days when Democrats had a majority of the votes in the US Senate - in other words, what we have, we hold. Not a very attractive doctrine, and not very winnable either. . . . "As for the diversity argument, it just seems incredible to imagine that anybody would have criticized this president of all people for his lack of devotion to that doctrine. He has appointed minorities and women to the highest offices in the land, relied on women as his closest advisers, and staffed his administration through and through with Americans of every race, sex, faith, and national origin. He had nothing to apologize for on that score. So the question must be asked, as Admiral Rickover once demanded of Jimmy Carter: Why not the best ? "I worked with Harriet Miers. She's a lovely person: intelligent, honest, capable, loyal, discreet, dedicated . . . I could pile on the praise all morning. But there is no reason at all to believe either that she is a legal conservative or - and more importantly - that she has the spine and steel necessary to resist the pressures that constantly bend the American legal system toward the left." Kristol was soon up with his own piece that pulled no punches: "I'm disappointed, depressed and demoralized. "I'm disappointed because I expected President Bush to nominate someone with a visible and distinguished constitutionalist track record--someone like Maura Corrigan, Alice Batchelder, Edith Jones, Priscilla Owen, or Janice Rogers Brown--to say nothing of Michael Luttig, Michael McConnell, or Samuel Alito. Harriet Miers has an impressive record as a corporate attorney and Bush administration official. She has no constitutionalist credentials that I know of. "I'm depressed. Roberts for O'Connor was an unambiguous improvement. Roberts for Rehnquist was an appropriate replacement. But moving Roberts over to the Rehnquist seat meant everything rode on this nomination--and that the president had to be ready to fight on constitutional grounds for a strong nominee. Apparently, he wasn't. It is very hard to avoid the conclusion that President Bush flinched from a fight on constitutional philosophy. Miers is undoubtedly a decent and competent person. But her selection will unavoidably be judged as reflecting a combination of cronyism and capitulation on the part of the president. "I'm demoralized. What does this say about the next three years of the Bush administration--leaving aside for a moment the future of the Court? Surely this is a pick from weakness." Can anyone suggest a good therapist for Bill? John Hinderaker of Power Line begins by looking at Democratic strategy, but he's bummed too: "It is going to be very hard to explain publicly the rationale for a filibuster of Ms. Miers. Beyond her being (presumably) a Republican, what would the stated grounds be? She has little or no paper trail, and no track record, obviously, as a judge. So I would think the Dems will have to seize on something that comes up during her Judiciary Committee hearing. "Regardless of what the Democrats do, many Republicans will have misgivings about this nomination. 'Stealth' nominees have not turned out well for Republicans." His colleague Paul Mirengoff sounds more despondent: "This nominee is a two-fer -- she would not have been selected but for her gender, and she would not have been selected but for her status as a Bush crony. So instead of a 50-year old conservative experienced jurist we get a 60-year old with no judicial experience who may or may not be conservative." Andrew Sullivan says Bush "really does believe he is above the usual sense of accountability...This guy will do what he wants. If he wants to pick a close friend and flunky, whatever her virtues, as a Supreme Court Justice, passing over dozens of other brilliant legal minds and more experienced jurists more acceptable to his base, that's what he'll do." Ed Morrissey at Captain's Quarters : "Not only does Harriet Miers not look like the best candidate for the job, she doesn't even look like the best female candidate for the job." Rush Limbaugh (who interviewed Cheney on the subject) is underwhelmed: "I think the pick makes President Bush look weak. I think the pick is designed to avoid more controversy; the pick is designed to appease. I can't tell you how that disappoints me." And all this reaction was just by a little after noon. A couple of liberal reactions and we'll get to the MSM. Kos gives his qualified OK: "Several Democrats, including Reid, have already come out praising Miers, which ultimately will only fuel the right-wing meltdown on the decision. "I reserve the right to change my mind, but Miers' biggest sin, at this early juncture, is her allegiance to Bush. That her appointment is an act of cronyism is without a doubt, but if that's the price of admission to another Souter or moderate justice, I'm willing to pay it." Ryan Lizza calls Miers a "pro-business pick" on the New Republic's blog but notes: "economic conservatives pleased by her corporate law background may find it distressing that in 1990 Miers voted for a 7 percent property tax increase during her short tenure on the Dallas City Council." Now for the morning papers, starting with the New York Times ,which suggests timidity: "There is still much to learn about Harriet E. Miers, but in naming her to the Supreme Court, President Bush revealed something about himself: that he has no appetite, at a time when he and his party are besieged by problems, for an all-out ideological fight. "Many of his most passionate supporters on the right had hoped and expected that he would make an unambiguously conservative choice to fulfill their goal of clearly altering the court's balance, even at the cost of a bitter confirmation battle. By instead settling on a loyalist with no experience as a judge and little substantive record on abortion, affirmative action, religion and other socially divisive issues, Mr. Bush shied away from a direct confrontation with liberals and in effect asked his base on the right to trust him on this one... "In selecting Ms. Miers, Mr. Bush stepped deeper into a political thicket that had already scratched up his well-tended image of competence, the criticism that he is prone to stocking the government with cronies rather than people selected solely for their qualifications." The Los Angeles Times mentions Miers in the same vein as . . . Michael Brown? "Although past presidents often named close friends and associates to the court before the 1970s, Bush is the first president to do so since President Lyndon B. Johnson made two ill-fated nominations from his inner circle, including Abe Fortas. "For Bush, the perception of possible cronyism is especially risky because it comes at a time when he has been accused of putting under-qualified political associates in top positions throughout the government -- especially at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, where former director Michael Brown quit after coming under fire for his handling of the response to Hurricane Katrina. "The cronyism charge was one of the first lines of attack seized by critics of Miers -- both on the right and the left -- who were frustrated by the appointment of a person whose views and record are little known." The Boston Globe : "President Bush yesterday once again backed away from an open confrontation over the future of the Supreme Court, choosing a nominee whose lack of a record on divisive social issues guarantees that activists on both sides of the fierce battle over judicial nominations will be frustrated and angry -- with the White House, and not necessarily with each other." The Philadelphia Inquirer : "In choosing Harriet Miers, his longtime legal aide, to be the next Supreme Court justice, President Bush confounded partisans on both sides of the liberal-conservative divide in American politics who had been expecting a well-known and predictable conservative." USA Today comes up with the out-of-sync headline, "Early reaction fairly positive on Bush's choice of Miers." From Harry Reid, maybe. Slate's Emily Bazelon : "She may turn out to have a great legal mind. She may be a thoughtful, incisive Supreme Court justice. But there's no reason to think so now. The problem isn't that Miers hasn't been a federal judge or a Supreme Court lawyer. It's that she isn't those things and she also doesn't bring with her the breadth of experience that the other justices lack. Can anyone really imagine that she'd be the nominee if she weren't a woman and the president's friend and loyal adviser? Cronyism and affirmative action: It's a nasty mix." Adds John Dickerson : "Showboating senators who might want to derail the president's nominee should tread very carefully. The caricature of Miers that is emerging is so pathetic, her inadequacies so exaggerated, her inarticulateness so certain, that by the time she speaks in the committee room, she's almost certain to seem appealing." Ah, the old expectations game. And let's not forget Pat Buchanan : "Her qualifications for the Supreme Court are non-existent . . . Were she not a friend of Bush, and female, she would never have even been considered." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2005/10/04/BL2005100400385_pf.html
I knew this nominee would be worse than Roberts, but I didn't think that it would be Bush's personal attorney that nobody knows anything about. So if she makes it we would have an Attorney General and Supreme Court Justice who were Bush's personal legal counsel when he was in Texas. That is just odd.
Kos gives his qualified OK: "Several Democrats, including Reid, have already come out praising Miers, which ultimately will only fuel the right-wing meltdown on the decision. "I reserve the right to change my mind, but Miers' biggest sin, at this early juncture, is her allegiance to Bush. That her appointment is an act of cronyism is without a doubt, but if that's the price of admission to another Souter or moderate justice, I'm willing to pay it." If the Left wants to defeat Miers, all they have to do is give her their unconditional support. Gay progressives should start a PAC to support her nomination, claiming that they can't wait to have a gay rights activist on the Supreme Court. The Republican meltdown that would pursue would be fun to watch. No matter how much crap GWB gets from his base, I don't see him changing his mind. W is funny that way.
This is fun! George Will weighs in... -------------- Can This Nomination Be Justified? By George F. Will Wednesday, October 5, 2005; A23 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? http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/04/AR2005100400954_pf.html
even the founding fathers are against this nomination Federalist Papers, #76 Alexander Hamilton "[The President] 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."
One thing I will say though is that she seems more accomplished and a better lawyer than Clarence Thomas was when he was nominated. That's not saying too much but its something to keep in mind.
Hell-b**** feeds on other conservatives ... THIS IS WHAT 'ADVICE AND CONSENT' MEANS October 5, 2005 I eagerly await the announcement of President Bush's real nominee to the Supreme Court. If the president meant Harriet Miers seriously, I have to assume Bush wants to go back to Crawford and let Dick Cheney run the country. Unfortunately for Bush, he could nominate his Scottish terrier Barney, and some conservatives would rush to defend him, claiming to be in possession of secret information convincing them that the pooch is a true conservative and listing Barney's many virtues — loyalty, courage, never jumps on the furniture ... Harriet Miers went to Southern Methodist University Law School, which is not ranked at all by the serious law school reports and ranked No. 52 by US News and World Report. Her greatest legal accomplishment is being the first woman commissioner of the Texas Lottery. I know conservatives have been trained to hate people who went to elite universities, and generally that's a good rule of thumb. But not when it comes to the Supreme Court. First, Bush has no right to say "Trust me." He was elected to represent the American people, not to be dictator for eight years. Among the coalitions that elected Bush are people who have been laboring in the trenches for a quarter-century to change the legal order in America. While Bush was still boozing it up in the early '80s, Ed Meese, Antonin Scalia, Robert Bork and all the founders of the Federalist Society began creating a farm team of massive legal talent on the right. To casually spurn the people who have been taking slings and arrows all these years and instead reward the former commissioner of the Texas Lottery with a Supreme Court appointment is like pinning a medal of honor on some flunky paper-pusher with a desk job at the Pentagon — or on John Kerry — while ignoring your infantrymen doing the fighting and dying. Second, even if you take seriously William F. Buckley's line about preferring to be governed by the first 200 names in the Boston telephone book than by the Harvard faculty, the Supreme Court is not supposed to govern us. Being a Supreme Court justice ought to be a mind-numbingly tedious job suitable only for super-nerds trained in legal reasoning like John Roberts. Being on the Supreme Court isn't like winning a "Best Employee of the Month" award. It's a real job. One Web site defending Bush's choice of a graduate from an undistinguished law school complains that Miers' critics "are playing the Democrats' game," claiming that the "GOP is not the party which idolizes Ivy League acceptability as the criterion of intellectual and mental fitness." (In the sort of error that results from trying to sound "Ivy League" rather than being clear, that sentence uses the grammatically incorrect "which" instead of "that." Web sites defending the academically mediocre would be a lot more convincing without all the grammatical errors.) Actually, all the intellectual firepower in the law is coming from conservatives right now — and thanks for noticing! Liberals got stuck trying to explain Roe v. Wade and are still at work 30 years later trying to come up with a good argument. But the main point is: Au contraire! It is conservatives defending Miers' mediocre resume who are playing the Democrats' game. Contrary to recent practice, the job of being a Supreme Court justice is not to be a philosopher-king. Only someone who buys into the liberals' view of Supreme Court justices as philosopher-kings could hold legal training irrelevant to a job on the Supreme Court. To be sure, if we were looking for philosopher-kings, an SMU law grad would probably be preferable to a graduate from an elite law school. But if we're looking for lawyers with giant brains to memorize obscure legal cases and to compose clearly reasoned opinions about ERISA pre-emption, the doctrine of equivalents in patent law, limitation of liability in admiralty, and supplemental jurisdiction under Section 1367 — I think we want the nerd from an elite law school. Bush may as well appoint his chauffeur head of NASA as put Miers on the Supreme Court. Third and finally, some jobs are so dirty, you can only send in someone who has the finely honed hatred of liberals acquired at elite universities to do them. The devil is an abstraction for normal, decent Americans living in the red states. By contrast, at the top universities, you come face to face with the devil every day, and you learn all his little tropes and tricks. Conservatives from elite schools have already been subjected to liberal blandishments and haven't blinked. These are right-wingers who have fought off the best and the brightest the blue states have to offer. The New York Times isn't going to mau-mau them — as it does intellectual lightweights like Jim Jeffords and Lincoln Chafee — by dangling fawning profiles before them. They aren't waiting for a pat on the head from Nina Totenberg or Linda Greenhouse. To paraphrase Archie Bunker, when you find a conservative from an elite law school, you've really got something. However nice, helpful, prompt and tidy she is, Harriet Miers isn't qualified to play a Supreme Court justice on "The West Wing," let alone to be a real one. Both Republicans and Democrats should be alarmed that Bush seems to believe his power to appoint judges is absolute. This is what "advice and consent" means. COPYRIGHT 2005 ANN COULTER
http://news.yahoo.com/s/latimests/20051013/ts_latimes/miersfaithinspotlight Miers' Faith in Spotlight By Maura Reynolds Times Staff Writer 1 hour, 29 minutes ago WASHINGTON — President Bush indicated Wednesday that Harriet E. Miers' religious beliefs were one reason he nominated her to the Supreme Court — comments that drew quick criticism from liberal groups, which said religion should not be considered a qualification to sit on the nation's highest bench. Bush's remarks came on the same day that Christian leader James C. Dobson, president of Focus on the Family, told his radio show listeners that White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove had assured him before the announcement of Miers' selection that she was a committed evangelical Christian. "People ask me why I picked Harriet Miers," Bush said when reporters asked about those assurances. "They want to know Harriet Miers' background. They want to know as much as they possibly can before they form opinions. And part of Harriet Miers' life is her religion. Part of it has to do with the fact that she was a pioneer woman and a trailblazer in the law in Texas." Bush previously has stressed his knowledge of her character, but this was the first time he publicly referred to her faith when asked about picking her. His comment about Miers as a trailblazer refers to her being the first woman to head a major law firm in Dallas and the first woman to be elected president of the Texas state bar. After Bush's comments Wednesday, White House spokesman Scott McClellan did not answer directly when asked if Miers' religion played "no role at all" in Bush's decision. He responded: "That's part of who she is. That's part of her background. That's what the president was talking about in his remarks in the Oval Office." McClellan added: "Faith is very important to Harriet Miers. But she recognizes that faith and that her religion and that her personal views don't have a role to play when it comes to making decisions." Liberal groups, which have taken a low profile since the nomination was announced, noted that White House officials took issue with Democratic senators who wanted to discuss John G. Roberts' religious beliefs during his recent confirmation process to be chief justice. Roberts is Roman Catholic. "We were told we weren't even allowed to bring up the topic of religion when John G. Roberts was nominated for the Supreme Court," the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said in a statement. "Anyone who did was quickly labeled a bigot. Now Bush and Rove are touting where Miers goes to church and using that as a selling point. The hypocrisy is staggering." Ralph G. Neas, president of the liberal group People for the American Way, cited Article 6 of the Constitution, which states that "no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust." "The president and his people are using repeated assurances about Miers' religion to send not-so-subtle messages about how she might rule on the court on issues important to the president's political supporters," Neas said. "It's a shabby ploy unworthy of the debate over a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court." Kermit Hall, president of the State University of New York at Albany and editor of the "Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States," said it was unusual for a president to emphasize the religious beliefs or affiliation of a nominee to the Supreme Court. Since President Wilson named Louis Brandeis to the high court, "tacitly there has been some understanding that we should have some Jewish representation on the court, just as nowadays there is some representation of gender and African American background," Hall said. "But I cannot think of any president who has ever made a nomination because of the religious beliefs that a person held." Miers' nomination has aroused little enthusiasm among some of Bush's core supporters, who had hoped the president would rely on GOP control of the Senate to pick a conservative with a well-known legal record. Miers, a Bush aide for several years who now serves as White House counsel, has never been a judge. "There are three categories of conservatives: those who are opposing her, those in favor and those taking a wait-and-see approach," said Tony Perkins, president of the influential Family Research Council, in an interview. "By far the largest category is the last one." White House officials have asked Perkins and other undecided conservatives to make up their minds after the Senate Judiciary Committee holds hearings on Miers' nomination. The officials note that Miers is little-known outside the White House, and they say that the more Republicans learn about her, the more they will like her. "Harriet Miers is not someone who has sought the limelight. So there are a lot of Americans who are just beginning to get to know who she is," McClellan told reporters. "And we're confident that, as they do, they will see what the president has known for some time now — which is that she will make an outstanding Supreme Court justice." Miers' nomination also was promoted Wednesday by Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales, who said on MSNBC that he believed that Miers personally opposed abortion. Gonzales did not say whether he had discussed the issue with her. He also said: "But the question as to whether or not she's pro-life or not has no bearing and should have no bearing as to … how she would rule on a particular case interpreting the right to an abortion." Despite the discord among the president's conservative supporters, the nomination is proceeding according to schedule. The Senate Judiciary Committee sent Miers a questionnaire Wednesday that had several inquiries tailored for her — including one about her experience with constitutional issues, and another asking what her criteria would be for recusing herself from matters that might relate to her service in the Bush administration. Some conservative leaders said they expected the dismay on the right to ease with time. "There are going to be some bruised feelings," said Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform. "There's a sense that the White House … asked us to salute without any preparation. But those bruised feelings will get better over time." =============== I'm aghast. Does this mean that a muslim or buddhist has no chance regardless of qualifiaations? Why should one's religion matter with regard to government positions in America? Anyone else smelling hypocrisy here?
Liberal groups, which have taken a low profile since the nomination was announced, noted that White House officials took issue with Democratic senators who wanted to discuss John G. Roberts' religious beliefs during his recent confirmation process to be chief justice. Roberts is Roman Catholic. "We were told we weren't even allowed to bring up the topic of religion when John G. Roberts was nominated for the Supreme Court," the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said in a statement. "Anyone who did was quickly labeled a bigot. Now Bush and Rove are touting where Miers goes to church and using that as a selling point. The hypocrisy is staggering." "The president and his people are using repeated assurances about Miers' religion to send not-so-subtle messages about how she might rule on the court on issues important to the president's political supporters," Neas said. "It's a shabby ploy unworthy of the debate over a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court." http://news.yahoo.com/s/latimests/20051013/ts_latimes/miersfaithinspotlight
