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Harriet Miers nominated to replace O'Connor

15:00 / 03.10.05

Harriet Miers has been nominated to replace Justice O'Connor on the Supreme Court. Miers is a lawyer and has served as White House legal counsel, but has no experience as a judge on any court.

Early reactions appear to be mixed on all sides. It's going to be interesting to see how Congress will go about evaluating a candidate with no judicial record at all. All in all, it's a pretty frustrating pick given the importance of the position (replacing the swing voter on the Court). Any info that anyone can dig up on Miers will be useful & appreciated....

15:08 / 03.10.05

Moddy note: should we fold this thread into the Supreme Court thread, or keep a dedicated Miers thread? I can go either way -- but I posted research links on the Supreme Court thread.

15:40 / 03.10.05

I vote dedicated Miers thread. We're going to have a lot to talk about, I reckon.

subcultureofone

16:46 / 03.10.05

gee it's nice that he nominated a woman. with no experience. so she'll be about as effective as the former fema director. in fact, are we sure this isn't brownie in drag?

her undergrad and law degrees are from southern methodist university. before her current position as white house counsel, she was deputy chief of staff for policy and had this to say about education:

"Our reforms were designed to challenge what the President calls the "soft bigotry of low expectations," and the early results show that we're making incredible progress."

before that she was chair of the texas lottery commission.

info on lottery scandal involving gtech here with connections to bush's national guard service or lack thereof.

20:17 / 04.10.05

Talking Points Memo makes the following interesting observation, which lines up with what I've heard from other sources:

In the case of John Roberts the president served up a nominee who was pretty clearly a down-the-line conservative but also, in the sense of value-neutral credentials and qualifications, certainly qualified for the job. With Miers, you have someone with what might be real moderate tendencies, but also someone who on pretty much every count seems unqualified for the position.

So what to do?

Certainly one thing to do is sit back and relish the brewing fight between the principled wingnuts and the confirmed Bush toadies. At the same time, it must be occurring to at least some Dems that, at least in ideological terms, they could likely do far worse than Miers. In any case, set that all aside and focus on the fact that Miers has been involved -- often deeply involved -- in pretty much everything that the White House has been trying to keep secret for going on five years. That should make for interesting questioning.

The Bull Moose Blog fella was sort of talking up this line yesterday... there's going to be a split between the real right wing and the neo-con/Bush loyalist factions within the Republican party.

23:45 / 05.10.05

It doesn't answer either the question of whether or not Miers would be a good nominee (or more accurately, from a liberal POV, whether she's the best we're going to get given the situation) or address that might be raised by her previous legal experience, BUT a Supreme Court nominee without prior judicial experience isn't particularly unusual. I believe (will need to go find my source) that 35 previous justices, including Chief Justices Warren and Renqhuist, were elevated with no prior judicial experience.

The right-wing certainly seems split, and violently so, on this one. Check out redstate.org. Despite a normally lock-step endorsement of whatever insanity Bush happens to be peddling at the moment that's not at all the case here.

For my part, I have no idea what to think. I'm incapable of imagining a Bush nominee as anything other than terrible, but whether she will prove terrible due to fanatical conservatism or gross incompetence I can't even guess. Could be both I suppose.

10:32 / 08.10.05

ADVANTAGES OF BEING A JUSTICE ON THE SUPREME COURT #2
if you meet someone who says Danger is my middle name, you can say yeah well my first name is Justice!!

12:04 / 27.10.05

Breaking news -

Miers withdrawing her nomination.

I guess she didn't need her own thread after all.

13:56 / 27.10.05

<conspiracy wank>

So, who wants to bet that this was the plan all along? That Bush paid his lawyer to stand in as the nominee so as to get the right wing all riled up about her lack of qualifications and to confuse the dems with a dark horse.

Now, she does her job and withdraws her nomination so that in her place he can appoint a religious nutjob with qualifying judicial experience?

</conspiracy wank>

15:20 / 27.10.05

<conspiracy 2.0>Wondering if O'Connor forced their hand by retiring before what-his-face died. They then had to use their shoe-in John Roberts and were left at square 1 for her replacement. Meanwhile she's indicated she wouldn't actually leave until a replacement's been found. </conspiracy 2.0>

10:42 / 28.10.05

He's learning from Tony and Ken.