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Thursday, October 20, 2005

Miers having more trouble

Our Lady of the Perpetual Adoration of Dubya didn't do so well in her response to the initial round of written questions from the Senate Judiciary Committee: Unhappy senators demand more from Miers: They ask for details of her cases, copies of her written documents and an explanation for her bar suspension this year by Bill Adair St. Petersburg Times 10/20/05.

As leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committee criticized Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers for submitting an incomplete questionnaire, she reported Wednesday that her Texas Bar license was suspended in 1989 because she was late paying her dues.

The Republican and Democratic leaders of the committee complained that Miers failed to provide enough information on the questionnaire, which they received Tuesday. Chairman Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican, called it an "insufficient response." Patrick Leahy, the ranking Democrat, said senators from both parties were unhappy.

"The comments I have heard range from "incomplete' to "insulting,'" Leahy said.

It's not a great start when the Republican chairman of the Judiciary Committee is upset with her before the hearings on her even start. Specter hinted not-so-subtly that he would postpone the hearings set for next month if they didn't get more complete answers. He's clearly irritated by the conduct of Miers, the White House and her Christian Right supporters:
Miers' brevity fails to impress Senate panelists: Frustrated Specter and Leahy find her answers inadequate by Carolyn Lochhead San Francisco Chronicle 10/20/05.

Specter, despite his dissatisfaction with the Miers' answers submitted Monday to a lengthy committee questionnaire, said hearings will begin Nov. 7.

The aim is to clear up discrepancies between what Miers and Specter believe she said in their private conversations and to stop what Specter characterized as a backroom campaign by proxies to assure people of her opposition to abortion.

"I am very anxious to get this hearing into the hearing room, where we have a stenographer and we have a witness and we have orderly procedures," Specter said, "and take the proceedings away from the back rooms and away from the conference calls and away from the corridors and do it like the Constitution says it ought be done."

Specter, a pro-abortion-rights moderate, said he was shocked by reports of conference calls among conservatives asking for "guarantees" that Miers would seek to overturn Roe vs. Wade.

"It sounds like you're buying a washing machine," he said.

So far, of course, the alleged Republican "moderates" like Specter haven't been able to find it in themselves to do much more than grumble about Bush administration actions they didn't like.

posted at 8:12:00 AM by Bruce Miller

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