Conventional wisdom has held that Harriet Miers’ nomination is contentious, and an embarrassing distraction for the White House, but ultimately, she’ll be confirmed. Dems probably won’t filibuster and there’s little chance six Republicans would vote against her. Slowly but surely, the conventional wisdom is changing and confirmation is no longer assumed. Miers has gone from being an unqualified crony to being a genuine embarrassment.
The latest humiliation came when senators, from both parties, said that her formal, written responses to the Senate Judiciary Committee were something of a joke.
The Supreme Court nomination of Harriet E. Miers suffered another setback on Wednesday when the Republican and Democratic leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committee asked her to resubmit parts of her judicial questionnaire, saying various members had found her responses “inadequate,” “insufficient” and “insulting.”
Senators Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the committee chairman, and Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the senior Democrat, sent Ms. Miers a letter faulting what they called incomplete responses about her legal career, her work in the White House, her potential conflicts on cases involving the administration and the suspension of her license by the District of Columbia Bar.
Their letter also asked her to provide detailed accounts of private reassurances about her views given by the White House or its allies to some conservative supporters who have been anxious about her positions on abortion and other social issues.
When was the last time the Judiciary Committee sent back a nominee’s homework with a big “fix it” written on top? As far as anyone can tell, this is the first time ever.
To summarize the last few weeks, senators were unimpressed with Miers when her nomination was announced, they were even less impressed when she sat down with lawmakers individually, and they were even less impressed still when she submitted written responses to her questions.
I don’t know if Vegas is running odds on Miers, but the smart money has to be on withdrawal.
It’s not just incomplete information; Miers is getting the law wrong.
[S]everal constitutional law scholars said they were surprised and puzzled by Miers’s response to the committee’s request for information on cases she has handled dealing with constitutional issues. In describing one matter on the Dallas City Council, Miers referred to “the proportional representation requirement of the Equal Protection Clause” as it relates to the Voting Rights Act.
“There is no proportional representation requirement in the Equal Protection Clause,” said Cass R. Sunstein, a constitutional law professor at the University of Chicago. He and several other scholars said it appeared that Miers was confusing proportional representation — which typically deals with ethnic groups having members on elected bodies — with the one-man, one-vote Supreme Court ruling that requires, for example, legislative districts to have equal populations.
Complicating matters even more, two key Republican senators believe the Senate is entitled to Miers’ White House documents in order to better understand her qualifications.
Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) are calling for the White House to turn over internal documents related to Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers’s service as White House counsel, breaking with Republican colleagues who say the boundaries of executive privilege must not be pushed.
How long until Miers joins Bernie Kerik in the Embarrassing and Un-vetted Nominees Hall of Shame? Any minute now…