The Trouble With Harriet [NY Times Editorial]

[brooklynite]

When President Bush first nominated Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court, many people who were worried about her positions on hot-button issues cloaked that concern with talk about her credentials. But as time went on, it became increasingly clear that ideology aside, the qualification question looms large. So far this nominee has yet to demonstrate that she can even satisfactorily fill out a questionnaire about her attitude toward important constitutional questions. This page has urged that Ms. Miers be given a fair chance to prove that she is worthy of a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court. But based on the evidence so far, it is getting hard to believe that she is.

President Bush began his campaign of support badly, by talking about their close association and insisting that "I know her heart." It is only natural to have a high opinion of one's friends, but we have already learned that Mr. Bush is an imperfect judge of capability. The White House also wasted a lot of time early on emphasizing Ms. Miers's church membership, which - in addition to looking disturbingly as if there were a religious test for high office - said nothing about whether she would be fit to decide Supreme Court cases.

Ms. Miers had an opportunity to win over the skeptics this week with her answers to the Senate Judiciary Committee's questionnaire. But her responses were so unimpressive that the top Republican and Democrat on that committee took the extraordinary step yesterday of instructing her to give it another try, this time with more "particularity and precision." She thus became perhaps the most important judicial nominee in history to be offered what amounts to a do-over on a take-home quiz.

...snip...

President Bush has either picked a court nominee so underqualified that she cannot even go through the motions competently, or he believes that once he gives his personal endorsement to a candidate, the Senate will silently fall into line. But the founding fathers made it clear that filling vacancies in the judicial branch is the joint responsibility of the president and the Senate, and at this point the senators are beginning to look downright offended.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/20/opinion/20thur1.html

[Canuckistanian]

1. Pathetic, truly pathetic

As someone once surmised, the Miers nomination was supposedly done in a fit of pique on Georgie boys part. He was reacting to the charges of nepotism in the WH. His rationale was "I can appoint anyone I damn well please, so stop criticizing me".

Well, now that chicken has come home to roost.

[Demit]

2. "a do-over on a take-home quiz"

The whole affair, and the actors in it, is just so blatant & appalling I wonder if it isn't all just intended as a time-filler for some reason. I can't picture how it's going to end. She's not even trying to appear competent. A take-home quiz: the opportunity to, if not have somebody else fill it out for you, at least look up the answers. They say she's being heavily coached, that she's cramming. And she turns in a bad take-home quiz?

However this ends up, it won't end up good.

[Dhalgren]

3. And Specter is pissed.

I heard him on NPR this morning and he was being as polite as he could be under the circumstances, but his ire showed through. He used a lot of soft words, but essentially called Miers a liar. This is the dumbest thing Kim Il George has done so far - in a lifetime of dumb-ness...