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My, My! Miers Morphs Carol Turoff October 28, 2005 Since the withdrawal of Harriet Meirs’s nomination to fill the O’Connor supreme court vacancy, spin has centered on the enormity of the conservative clout. It is no secret that many were dissatisfied with her lack of demonstrable qualifications or even an inkling of her judicial philosophy. Service as the Texas lottery director, a stint as an at-large city council representative and personal lawyer to George W. Bush is hardly the background one expects for a U.S. Supreme Court justice. But those meager qualifications alone were not enough to energize the onslaught...

WASHINGTON - President Bush's bad week may yet prove the administration's great turning point. None of the reverses need be fatal; each of them contains an opportunity to move back on to a more successful path. Everything depends on the wisdom, self-discipline, and perspective of the President himself. Yesterday's indictments of Lewis Libby are one opportunity. For while Mr. Libby now stands in serious legal peril, the broader administration has been exonerated of intentional wrongdoing. From the start, there have been two competing theories of what happened in the CIA leak scandal. Call them the "big" theory and the "little"...

WASHINGTON -- Managers of the failed Harriet Miers nomination for the Supreme Court set the actual day of her demise as Oct. 18, when conservative Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Sam Brownback of Kansas called for the release of her work product as White House counsel to justify her confirmation.  Miers's strategists at that point felt the game was over because of inability to fight congressional demands for documents that the White House would not release. This was compounded when her visits to Republican senators went so badly that further sessions had to be suspended.  A footnote:...

Whether it was an accident, or a sheer stroke of genius, the historical record of what nominating Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court will mean to the nation may look very different than what most liberals would like to see. For the last five weeks, the Chuck Schumers and Pat Leahys of the universe have driven to their Georgetown brownstones and chuckled to themselves as to how the conservatives in America could have ended up in such disarray. Over cocktails, you could see the arrogance slipping into the conversation. They believed themselves to be watching the self-destruction of the conservative...

'We are proud of her'07:26 AM CDT on Friday, October 28, 2005 By KIMBERLY DURNAN / DallasNews.com Putting their political leanings and ideologies aside, students and professors at Southern Methodist University had taken pride in the idea that one of their own might become one of the most important judicial decision-makers in the nation. On Thursday, their hearts were heavy as news spread that the woman who had attended SMU as an undergraduate and law student had pulled out of the contentious battle for a spot on the U.S. Supreme Court. *snip* Joseph F. Kobylka, an associate professor in the...

For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for usAn eternal glory that far outweighs them all.So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen.For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. II Corinthians 4: 17-18

When Harriet Miers, essentially an unknown in the legal world, was nominated for the US Supreme Court, this writer’s first reaction was that either President Bush has had the proverbial ace up his sleeve, or he is being extremely foolish. It now looks as if the latter possibility was correct. First it was the fact that she was unknown, and had no reputation as a judge or scholar to evaluate her by. That might have been a plus, except that things began to appear, rather like the Clinton era bimbo eruptions. Miers’ background began to look rather shady. Her implication...

It's been a difficult few weeks for the president, his conservative base, and Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers herself, said American Values President Gary Bauer on Thursday. Bauer said President Bush did the right thing and showed "real leadership" in accepting Miers' withdrawal.

<p>By E. J. Dionne Jr.</p> <p>WASHINGTON -- The damage President Bush and the conservative movement have inflicted on their drive to pack the U.S. Supreme Court with allies will not be undone by Harriet Miers' decision to withdraw her nomination.</p>

For good or evil, George W. Bush will have to cross the Rubicon on judicial nominations, politicized indictments, Iraq, the greater Middle East, and the constant frenzy of the Howard Dean wing of the Democratic party — and now march on his various adversaries as never before. He can choose either to be nicked and slowly bled to death in his second term, or to bare his fangs and like some cornered carnivore start slashing back. Before Harriet Miers, conservatives pined for a Chief Justice Antonin Scalia, with a Justice Roberts and someone like a Janice Rogers Brown rounding out...

OVER the last two elections, the Republican Party regained control of the United States Senate by electing new senators in Florida, Georgia, Minnesota, Missouri, North Carolina, South Carolina, South Dakota and Texas. These victories were attributable in large measure to the central demand made by Republican candidates, and heard and embraced by voters, that President Bush's nominees deserved an up-or-down decision on the floor of the Senate. Now, with the withdrawal of Harriet Miers under an instant, fierce and sometimes false assault from conservative pundits and activists, it will be difficult for Republican candidates to continue to make this winning...

The good news is that none of these senators went public with a demand for withdrawal without an up-or-down vote, and it is crucial that the GOP remains formally committed to that standard. The damage is that some our most talented pundits will be DQed in future conflicts with Dems. Will the imminent statehouse races in New Jersey and Virginia suffer as a result of a run of three weeks of incessant blasting of a Bush nominee? Hard to say, but the results cannot be as strong as they would have been, and as proof I offer the negative e-mails...

If there was a single thread that ran through President Bush's two very different picks for the Supreme Court, it was stealth. Neither Roberts nor Miers had committed themselves on Roe v. Wade. Is the president ducking a fight? If so, in this he is not his best self. He hasn't shrunk from confrontations over taxes, or war, or medical research, and his forceful arguments in those areas have amounted to leadership. Seeking a stealth candidate for the most important seat (i.e., the swing vote) on the Supreme Court certainly looks like weakness. And it's borrowed trouble. Despite the accumulating...

Conservative leaders who helped force the withdrawal of Harriet Miers said yesterday that President Bush must now appoint someone whose judicial philosophy matches that of the two most conservative justices on the Supreme Court -- and said they would accept nothing less. "We want Bush to fulfill his campaign commitment to give us a nominee like Antonin Scalia or Clarence Thomas," said Eagle Forum President Phyllis Schlafly. "Conservatives have this old-fashioned notion that candidates should fulfill the promises they made once they get elected."< /SNIP> Yesterday, Mr. Dobson called Miss Miers' withdrawal "a wise decision" and cited news reports of...

When President Bush shocked supporters and opponents alike a month ago by nominating Harriet Miers, his White House Counsel, to the vacancy on the Supreme Court, an intriguing conspiracy theory did the rounds in Washington. Ms Miers, so self-evidently unqualified for a seat on the nation’s highest court, was a kind of stalking horse, the theory went. The real Bush plan, masterminded no doubt by his Machiavellian amanuensis Karl Rove, was to put an extreme conservative jurist on the court, someone who would vote to overturn abortion rights, outlaw affirmative action and break down the barriers between Church and State....

In choosing a replacement for Harriet E. Miers, President Bush may feel less of a need to select a woman to fill the seat of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, several lawyers and analysts said Thursday. The lawyers and analysts, all of whom have been involved in directly or indirectly counseling the White House about Supreme Court selections, also said that because of Mr. Bush's desire to move quickly, he would probably choose from the roster of candidates whom he has considered before and whose backgrounds and records have been extensively researched. SNIP One lawyer close to the president said that...

Lawmakers and special interest groups started positioning themselves for President Bush's next pick for U.S. Supreme Court justice the same day a fumbled nomination ended in Harriet Miers (search) withdrawing from the confirmation process. Miers, who will remain as White House counsel, made a surprise announcement Thursday morning that she is withdrawing her name from consideration to replace Supreme Court Associate Justice Sandra Day O'Connor (search), who announced over the summer that she wanted to retire from the bench. O'Connor agreed to stay on while her replacement was vetted through the confirmation process. In her withdrawal letter dated Thursday, Miers...

Anaheim, Calif. – Over the last two elections, the Republican Party regained control of the United States Senate by electing new senators in Florida, Georgia, Minnesota, Missouri, North Carolina, South Carolina, South Dakota and Texas. These victories were attributable in large measure to the central demand made by Republican candidates, and heard and embraced by voters, that President Bush's nominees deserved an up-or-down decision on the floor of the Senate. Now, with the withdrawal of Harriet Miers under an instant, fierce and sometimes false assault from conservative pundits and activists, it will be difficult for Republican candidates to continue to...

Well, she was a Protestant, the Trinitarian variety from all reports (the kind comfortable with Paul's letters, instead of finding them the most offensive written words on earth). She was a daughter of the South. Bush said she was someone that would be worthy of 'trust' for a long, long time. We were also told she was pro-life. By many, many people. We were also told she belonged to an 'Evangelical' Church. But now the Southern Protestant Trinitarian Conservative has been removed from consideration. Her Southern drawl will not be heard during the confirmation hearings. What does this mean? It...

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's retirement has been delayed again, putting her at the center of upcoming Supreme Court debates on abortion, the death penalty and gay rights. Until Thursday, the White House had been pushing to have Harriet Miers confirmed before the court took up some of the most contentious cases of the year. Miers' withdrawal means O'Connor will hear those cases - and could control the outcome. O'Connor said Thursday of her stay on the high court, "It sounds like it may go on a little longer." She is a moderate who has backed abortion rights and limits on...