Reply #11: Miers Disavows Saying Constitution Protects Privacy [View All]

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http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&sid=an0PkYw.U3XI&refer=us

Oct. 18 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers disavows telling a U.S. senator that she believes there's a constitutional right to privacy and that a case the high court relied on when it legalized abortion was correctly decided, the lawmaker's spokesman said in a statement.

Senator Arlen Specter, Pennsylvania Republican and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, issued the statement after telling reporters that Miers, the White House counsel, had told him there was a right to privacy.

Specter's spokesman, Bill Reynolds, said Miers called the senator after reading news accounts of his comments about their conversation to say Specter had misunderstood her position about privacy or the 1965 decision in Griswold v. Connecticut.

``In their meeting this afternoon Sen. Specter thought Ms. Harriet Miers said she agreed with Griswold v. Connecticut and there was a right to privacy in the Constitution,'' Reynolds said in the statement emailed last night.

``Ms. Miers called him to say that he misunderstood her and that she had not taken a position on Griswold or the privacy issue. Sen. Specter accepts Ms. Miers's statement that he misunderstood what she said,'' Reynolds said in the statement.

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