Bush nominates Harriet Miers to Supreme Court
 

http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/10/...ers/index.html

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Bush nominated White House counsel Harriet Miers on Monday to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.

Bush announced his choice in a televised Oval Office event saying, "For the past five years Harriet Miers has served in critical roles in our nation's government."

He called on the Senate to "review her qualifications thoroughly and fairly and to vote on her nomination promptly."

Miers said she was grateful and humbled by the nomination.

"It is the responsibility of every generation to be true to the founders' vision of the proper role of the courts in our society," she said.

"If confirmed, I recognize that I will have a tremendous responsibility to keep our judicial system strong and to help ensure that the courts meet their obligations to strictly apply the laws and the Constitution."

If the Senate does confirm Miers, she would join Ruth Bader Ginsburg as the second sitting female justice on the bench. O'Connor became the court's first ever female justice in 1981.

Bush offered her the job Sunday night over dinner in the White House residence, White House sources told CNN's Dana Bash.

During the summer, a separate, private vetting process for Miers took place once the president started seriously considering her.

Bush took seriously suggestions by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pennsylvania, and ranking Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, that the president consider candidates from outside the appeals courts, the sources said.

Miers, 60, who has never been a judge, was the first woman to serve as president of the Texas State Bar and the Dallas Bar Association. She also served on the Dallas City Council.

More recently, Miers helped lead the administration's search for potential candidates to fill Supreme Court posts. A White House official said that -- at the same time -- Bush considered her as a nominee without her knowledge.

The choice to replace O'Connor could be pivotal. O'Connor has been a key swing vote and has, for example, voted to strike down abortion laws that failed to contain health exceptions.

The announcement came shortly before justices were to begin a new term with new Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, who is the youngest member of the high court.

The term is expected to include rulings on several controversial cases, said Edward Lazarus, a Supreme Court legal analyst.

"This is a situation where, from the very moment the justices start back up in October, they're going to be very divided," said Lazarus, who also authored "Closed Chambers," a book on the justices. "It's going to be a lot of friction inside the building."

Roberts was sworn in Thursday, less than four hours after the Senate voted 78-22 to confirm him. He got to work quickly, putting in a full day at the court on Friday.

The new chief has a lot of catching up to do, and fast: the court formally begins its work Monday, when oral arguments will be heard for the new term.

O'Connor announced her pending retirement last July. Bush initially chose Roberts for her seat, but the death of Chief Justice William Rehnquist on September 3 changed the White House's strategy and prolonged the confirmation process.

O'Connor has said she will stay on until she is replaced, making her role in the upcoming term unclear. Under court rules, a justice's vote does not count until a ruling is issued, a process than can take weeks or months. Officials have not said whether O'Connor will be on the bench Monday.

Many legal scholars question whether O'Connor would want to continue hearing cases if her replacement takes over before rulings are issued, thereby negating her vote.

A very interesting choice. I was watching Bill Kristol on Fox this morning and he thinks that conservatives might not be too happy about this choice. I was very surprised when he picked Miers. I'm not really sure what to think about her lack of judicial experience, maybe Bush is just trying to pick someone that the Democrats will have a tougher time opposing. Who knows, but this confirmation process will be fun to watch for sure.

It seems rediculous to me to nominate someone who has never been a judge. That makes no sense.

Well, werent most of the other top women mentioned known as being VERY conservative?

It seems ridiculous to me to nominate your own attorney. :laugh: If that isn't cronyism, what the hell is? :shrug:
As I heard someone else say, she looks like the kind of woman who would put a cigarette out in your eye. :shocked:

Just the good old boys, never meanin no harm............. ;) :lol:

Someday the mount lion'll get him but the law never will! Anyone got a mountain lion?

I just think the easiest point to go after is the complete lack of experience. You just don't hire someone that has not experience for what is arguably the most important job in this country. Common sense? They don't have it.

No, but I got me a Catamount... :lol:

When her name was being bandied about, I didn't think for an instant that she'd actually be nominated. It's ludicrous. The woman has had no judicial experience. :shrug: This administration doesn't seem to give two squirts of duck **** about the charges of cronyism, which is quite shocking after the Katrina debacle.

Historically, it is very common.

Her eyeliner is so bad, it looks like someone has put out cigarettes in *her* eyes.

She kinda looks like the Corpse Bride. :shrug:

I see the campaign to make her look like a moderate is now in full-swing, too.

Think about why he picked her for a minute. He had all the fundies and wingnuts available to him to choose from, yet he went with a relative unknown for the nomination. He opted to nominate someone that we haven't heard much about at all, someone who has been scratching his back since his Texas days, instead of choosing a known nutbag like Priscilla Owen. It was a suave move to choose an unknown nutbag.

If anyone thought that the Roberts hearings didn't yield any information about the man, just wait until the Miers hearings. I guarantee the most that we'll learn is that her first name is Harriet and that her last name is Miers.

Just a quick heads-up: I will DIE laughing the day this happens. In which case, I really enjoyed my time here with y'all. :D

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/10/3/175751/941

From the American Spectator blog, via Bull Moose:

Just spoke with a staffer for a conservative member of the Judiciary Committee whose boss is extremely unhappy about the nomination of Harriet Miers . . . There is now talk among some conservatives about a filibuster of the Miers nomination . . .

It won't happen. It's all bluster on their part to make her look like a moderate when she isn't.

There is no way she is a moderate. He cannot appoint a moderate. People tend to lose sight of that.

You and I know that, but Joe Schmoe doesn't. This is all theater. And bad summer stock at that.

Interestingly, the average person believes W is a moderate and Hillary is a liberal :shrug:

I want some of what they're smoking. Life must be so carefree when you're so delusional. :laugh:

I had a conversation with someone in my very conservative hometown last weekend. He was explaining that God had to be in the government and that to think differently was a liberal point of view. I tried to explain that the basic idea behind conservatism was less govt. interference in our lives and the enforcement of one religion went against that as well as the reason for the establishment of this country, etc. He could not get past that I was espousing a liberal idea and that I was smiting God, as if I had that power.

Oh my. That reminds of a documentary I saw the other night called "The God Who Wasn't There." I borrowed it from my friends who threw the dinner party on Saturday night and I watched it completely horrified. I swear I had nightmares. If you ever see it in the video store, grab it. It isn't a prticularly good documentary, it can be quite cloying, and David Byrne's music for it is shockingly bad, but it'll scare the pants off of you. It makes a lot of good points about why God should have nothing to do with government.

you should have rather reminded him that there is a built in separation between church and state. God's place is in Church. Oy. What is wrong with this country?

Oh I did - but he brought up the specific mention of God in the Dec. of Ind., to which I responded that was the prose of the day and the clear intent of the Const., which is the doc. establishing this country, was not to include a mention of any God, which is factually supported by the letters of the day. People just refuse to believe that though. They cannot imagine that religion is a personal thing and think instead that govt. ought to enforce it and any mention to the contrary means that your are hindering and denying the rights of religious people to practice their faith in any capacity in public. They cannot fathom that keeping the govt. out of religion has nothing to do with your right to practice whatever religion you want in private.

I will check it out :cool:

Did you see the ABC or some other network's special on the far religious right and how they raised their children. Their kids were filled with so much hate in the name of God I almost got physically sick.

Ok lets start the poll. Who's hotter, Miers or Ruth Bader Ginsburg..... :lol:

They were saying on the news earlier she donated money to Al Gore's primary campaign in 88

Chris

I'm opposed to parents teaching their children religion in the first place because I think it deprives them of independent thinking and conditions them in an unfair way (how many religious people out there now would still be religious if they weren't taught those things?), so I can only imagine how damaged and hateful some children are.

Ginsburg. Miers wears too much flair, man. :lol:

She was also opposed to decriminalizing anti-sodomy laws and attended a great number of anti-choice fundraisers.

:rolleyes: If only things were as simple as conservatives thought. Just write off all the people that don't agree with you because they are wrong and evil. That's alot easier than developing compassion and understanding.

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercu...s/12809508.htm

Miers said to be on `extreme end' of pro-life movement

BY DAVE LEVINTHAL

The Dallas Morning News


DALLAS - (KRT) - As political activists rush to mine Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers' slender public record, a former campaign manager says she opposed abortion rights while running for Dallas City Council in 1989.

"She is on the extreme end of the anti-choice movement," said Lorlee Bartos, who managed Miers' first and only political campaign and said they discussed abortion once during the race.

"I think Harriet's belief was pretty strongly felt," Bartos said Monday. "I suspect she is of the same cloth as the president."

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said she couldn't comment on Bartos' recollection but added that President Bush "does not have a litmus test for his judicial nominees."

Miers, a corporate lawyer who served on the City Council from 1989 to 1991, is something of a cipher as a judicial candidate, having never served on the bench or compiled extensive legal writings. That lack of a paper trail proved more vexing Monday to social conservatives, while many Democrats and liberal activists held their fire.

Bartos said Miers told her she was "pro-choice in her youth" but underwent "a born-again, profound experience" that caused her to oppose abortion.

Beyond their exchange in 1989, Bartos said she has no other insight into Miers' views on abortion.

With the Bush loyalist's stance on abortion publicly unknown, conservatives and liberals alike are voicing trepidation about the woman tapped to replace Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, a moderate abortion-rights supporter.

Some conservatives drew some comfort from Miers' effort in 1993, while Texas State Bar president, to persuade the American Bar Association to abandon its abortion-rights stance in favor of a neutral position.

"The ABA is a place where there was an awful lot of liberal activism, so it took some courage for a woman to take the position she did," said Leonard Leo of the conservative Federalist Society.

"Conservatives should be very happy with this selection," he said.

A friend who worked with Miers on the unsuccessful ABA fight said he did not know her view on abortion.

"Harriet's position was strictly about the appropriateness of any bar association taking a position on something like that," said Dallas lawyer Darrell Jordan. "It had nothing to do whether she was pro-choice or pro-life. That was irrelevant to the issue."

In 1989, Miers donated $150 to the Texans for Life Coalition.

"Does this alone tell me she has a strong philosophical pro-life commitment? No," the group's president, Kyleen Wright, said. "Opinions can change."

Though the majority of her campaign contributions have gone to Republicans, Miers did contribute to Democrat Al Gore's presidential campaign in 1988 as well as to the Democratic National Committee.

Ron Key, who has been Miers' pastor since the early 1980s, said his church is anti-abortion. Key, who recently left Valley View Christian Church to found a new church with Miers and others, stopped short, however, of saying that those beliefs would color her approach to the law.

"The Constitution would be her major influence, I'm sure," he said.

Miers' sister-in-law, state appellate Justice Elizabeth Lang-Miers of the Fifth Court of Appeals in Dallas, was circumspect in discussing Miers' views on abortion or Roe vs. Wade, the ruling that legalized abortion. "I think her judicial philosophy will be to apply the law," Lang-Miers said.

Colleen Parro, a Dallas resident and executive director of the Republican National Coalition for Life, said she agrees that a single donation to an anti-abortion group indicates little about Miers' philosophy.

"That was a long time ago. It's pretty hard to know where she is today. It's a blank slate, and I don't know what to expect now," Parro said. "We would have hoped the president would have chosen one of the many strong candidates out there, and he didn't."

Operation Rescue, an anti-abortion group, urged that Miers' candidacy be rejected, calling her insufficiently conservative.

Abortion-rights groups expressed concern but stopped short of opposing Miers.

"The burden is on the Bush administration and Harriet Miers to prove to the American people that she will respect and protect our fundamental freedoms, including a woman's right to choose," said Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America.

Miers is sure to be questioned on abortion by senators from both parties at her confirmation hearing.

Kansas Republican Sen. Sam Brownback, a strong foe of abortion, pointedly declined to issue a statement responding to the nomination. And officials said state and local Republican leaders peppered the White House with questions during a conference call, raising concerns about a lack of a documented Miers record on abortion and about her overall qualifications for the court.