Author: Dean Pajevic

Here it is, the laudatory statement from Minority Leader Harry Reid’s press office. So, Mier’s nomination was coordinated with some of the Democratic leadership. (And, Scott McClellan just mentioned Reid’s statement.) This is interesting in that Reid opposed Robert’s confirmation. What gives? ALSO: Since the first thread is filling up, this is the #2 thread.

STATEMENT OF SENATOR HARRY REID ON THE NOMINATION OF HARRIET MIERS TO THE U.S. SUPREME COURT

Monday, October 3, 2005

   “I like Harriet Miers. As White House Counsel, she has worked with me in a courteous and professional manner. I am also impressed with the fact that she was a trailblazer for women as managing partner of a major Dallas law firm and as the first woman president of the Texas Bar Association. Continued below:

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“A pitbull in size 6 shoes,” Bush calls her, according to an MSNBC reporter.¹ Harriet Miers is Bush’s nominee for the Supreme Court. Miers is currently White House counsel and, in keeping with the Cheney modus operandi, was charged with presenting prospective SCOTUS nominees to Bush. She is 60 years old and active in Exodus Ministries, a Christian help group for felons.

Update [2005-10-3 12:31:5 by susanhu]: Because the thread here is filling up, I’ve begun a second story above, with Harry Reid’s official statement on Harriet Miers.

What possible strategy can we adopt for this Bushite stratagem? (Miers’ stratagem was not unlike that of clever dictators and ruling class of ancient Rome. Atia lives (!), albeit without progeny, but with the savvy to position herself perfectly before Bush — who really, as she surely knows, can’t see much beyond what’s in front of him anyway — as she discussed possible nominees with him during several White House dinners.)

I suggest we all research her heavily. Given the White House’s embarrassing and shoddy track record of investigating its nominees, we may unearth something that could make a difference. She has no judicial paper trail, so we must look elsewhere.

And, since Miers has never been a judge, tough Senate questioning of her will be difficult because her only record is in the White House, in her performance as a private attorney for clients such as Microsoft and Walt Disney, and in her brief stints in local (city council) and state office. As its chairperson, she was considered a driving force in cleaning up the Texas state lottery commission, and she earned the “pit bull” moniker from then-Governor Bush. The National Law Journal “named her one of the Nation’s 100 most powerful attorneys, and as one of the Nation’s top 50 women lawyers.” Her bio, published in the Washington Post, via the White House, is below the fold.

Legal scholar Jonathan Turley on MSNBC shortly after 6am PT): “No one I know would have EVER put her on the list.”

(Well, Jonathan, except perhaps Harry Reid who reportedly urged Bush to consider her. But was this a White House leak? Was it another Rovian strategem to get us Democrats off to a flat-footed start? Will Harry let us know soon? Or perhaps Reid has had dealings with Miers that impressed him? Update [2005-10-3 12:43:8 by susanhu]: See Reid’s statement above.] And Turley has never met her?)

Turley continued, “The people who should be most aggrieved on this should be conservatives.” The George Washington University law professor and MSNBC analyst named several distinguished conservative judges, and commented, “These are people who were bright stars of the right .. and Bush walked past them and picked a personal attorney. It’s also a problem for Democrats like Patrick Leahy who voted for a person [Roberts] who danced around questions about his decisions [which, by inference, Miers needn’t because she’s never been a judge].” (See Ezra Klein via Daou Report: “The Right is ready to jump off a cliff.”)

As for Sen. Leahy’s “[unreasonable] leap of faith,” well, I suggest that we first consider history. Any frank disclosure of the views of judicial candidates ended with Bork. No SCOTUS candidate in his/her right mind would openly reveal his or her views before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Sen. Leahy knows that.

Turley, on the court’s current cases: “It is a mess. Miers will vote on cases before the court this term (?) … her votes could be negated, challenged … a logistical mess.” There was no follow-up question, so I’m unclear what Turley meant.

In a tape of Bush a half hour ago, he announced that she “will not legislate from the bench.” Prior to Bush’s announcement, her name was brought before a group of Senators. Miers herself said that she has great respect for the legislative branch.

Adds Wonkette via The Daou Report:

“For an instant, we thought there might be more to Miers’s rehabilitation — Bush mentioned her work with ‘Exodus Ministries’ in his nomination speech. But it’s NOT that Exodus (‘Freedom from homosexuality through the healing power of Jesus Christ.’), it’s Exodus Ministries who ‘encourage ex-offenders [and] empower them to become self-sustaining, productive, Christ-centered members of society’. Whew. [Law Dork]”

BELOW, the bio. See also: Monday Morning Horrorshow, by Brinnaine, who discusses Minority Leader Harry Ried’s views on Miers.


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¹ The MSNBC reporter apparently grabbed that sound bite from the title of this Sept. 27 article, “‘A pit bull in size 6 shoes’,” forwarded to me by Sybil.

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I hope I’m putting this up so that you all can watch. The East Coast slot starts now. OPEN THREAD:

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Let’s talk about our favorite movies — or, in my case, a movie I haven’t seen yet because it just opened, and only in major cities.

A couple evenings ago, I was treated to a half-hour interview by Charlie Rose of a very articulate and observantly attuned Philip Seymour Hoffman, one of my favorite actors, about his starring role in the new film, Capote. Hoffman studied for the role by viewing clips from Truman Capote‘s earlier years, and his years in Kansas while interviewing and writing the stunning book, In Cold Blood — a pioneering work of documentary novel or “nonfiction novel” and later a great film — with the considerable help of his friend since childhood, Harper Lee. Hoffman said he avoided the later clips of Capote, during his decline and his gossipy, sometimes drunken, TV interviews. Hoffman also said it took him two months to perfect Capote’s very different voice (and you can hear Hoffman as Capote in an All Things Considered clip on Sept. 30).

The film was written and directed by two of Hoffman’s oldest friends, neither of whom had written or directed a feature film before. The film also draws on the popular book by George Plimpton, Truman Capote: in which various friends, enemies, acquaintances, and detractors recall his turbulent career. Both the reviews — and the high ratings at IMDb — indicate that this is a must-see film.

About Hoffman’s acting, Rolling Stone says that “Hoffman gets the flamboyantly gay public image of the whiny-voiced gadfly who swanned through New York literary circles.”

“But his real triumph is inward, the way he finds the stillness in Capote and the emotions roiling in his eyes when what he sees in the world reduces him to awed silence. Nothing awed Capote more than the years (1959 to 1965) that he spent researching and writing In Cold Blood, his pioneering nonfiction novel about the murder of the Clutter family from Holcomb, Kansas, and the two ex-convict drifters who killed them.”

It surprised me to learn yesterday, as I looked up all of this, that Capote’s first novel was shunned by major book critics because it touched on homosexuality. Good lord! At least in that regard, times have changed. For now.

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I just saw her. Even though she’s lost her cover thanks to the dastardly White House, she still wears her mask. She didn’t have the three teenagers with her. I think they’re hiding in the tree because they’re afraid of the noise from the high school football game about 10 blocks away. She snacked on some purple grapes and dog kibble and then ran off, probably to watch the teens.

Just so you know, she doesn’t like peanut butter sandwiches and — as often happens in families — her teenagers don’t like them either. All of the other coonies love peanut butter though. And they all adore those small dark Italian plums, but those are out of season now, sigh. I also feed the wild birds. We’ve been stopping at Wild Birds Unlimited on Highway 101. Their bird seed is so much nicer than what’s sold in grocery stores. We get the “Olympic Mix,” specially formulated for birds on the Olympic Peninsula. It attracts every kind of bird — from quails to blue jays. Which creatures of the wild do you feed and watch? . . .  O P E N    T H R E A D . . .

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