Mental Meanderings

Sen. Lindsey Graham has been a staunch and public supporter of this nominee. Yet on Wednesday he joined Brownback in demanding privileged documents from Miers's White House tenure.

Finally, a way out: irreconcilable differences over documents.

For a nominee who, unlike John Roberts, has practically no record on constitutional issues, such documentation is essential for the Senate to judge her thinking and legal acumen. But there is no way that any president would release this kind of information -- "policy documents" and "legal analysis" -- from such a close confidante. It would forever undermine the ability of any president to get unguarded advice.

That creates a classic conflict, not of personality, not of competence, not of ideology, but of simple constitutional prerogatives: The Senate cannot confirm her unless it has this information. And the White House cannot allow release of this information lest it jeopardize executive privilege. Hence the perfectly honorable way to solve the conundrum: Miers withdraws out of respect for both the Senate and the executive's prerogatives, the Senate expresses appreciation for this gracious acknowledgment of its needs and responsibilities, and the White House accepts her decision with the deepest regret and with gratitude for Miers's putting preservation of executive prerogative above personal ambition.

What I am wondering, however, is whether this might have been the desired outcome from the start. Could it be that Miers offered herself as a sacrificial lamb: someone who knew that her nomination would cause consternation particularly among those hard-right conservatives who wanted (and, to be fair, were promised) a pro-life, anti-gay, strict-constructionist Scalia clone but who was willing to put herself out there so that this (surely predicted) conflict over documents could give rise to her withdrawal the day before Patrick Fitzgerald serves indictments on some top Bush officials, divert attention for a little while, and let Bush nominate that hard-right nominee they want and have a fight in the Senate (which Fred Barnes thinks he needs).

Sound far fetched? Maybe – but would anything surprise us about this Administration anymore? If this is the case – and it’s only a hypothesis – I think it’s a pity that she would sacrifice her career like this and that the door would have been so easily opened for a Supreme Court justice who might well wreck social reformation in America for the next thirty years or more.

The European Commission says it will "attentively" monitor Poland's treatment of lesbian and gay people, in light of the election of Lech Kaczynski as the country's president.

The hard-line approach would be permissible under the Treaty of Nice, which includes guidelines that ensure member states maintain a positive stance on minority issues."We are going to follow the situation very attentively," said Jonathan Todd, the principal commission spokesman.

It is thought that other member states fear a rise in power of Kaczynski's Law and Justice party. The party, which is led by Kaczynski's twin brother, is now expected to enter coalition talks with the country's other right-wing party, Civic Platform.

Lesbian and gay activists across Europe have already warned of the rise of anti-gay sentiment in Poland. Additionally, Pride organizers from across the continent will meet at London's EuroPride celebrations next year to discuss in what ways they can reach out to those in Poland and other Eastern European countries.

The House bill that would reauthorize the USA Patriot Act anti-terrorism law includes several little-noticed provisions that would dramatically transform the federal death penalty system, allowing smaller juries to decide on executions and giving prosecutors the ability to try again if a jury deadlocks on sentencing.

The bill also triples the number of terrorism-related crimes eligible for the death penalty, adding, among others, the material support law that has been the core of the government's legal strategy against terrorism

The Bush administration, concerned that vocal critics are wounding Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers while she quietly prepares for her Senate hearing 12 days from now, is considering ways to fight back -- possibly by having her make a speech - sources familiar with the discussions said yesterday.

Some presidential advisers and senators think it would be unwise for Miers to speak out before the hearing, and it was unclear yesterday how strongly key decision-makers were considering the idea of her making a speech, according to three people who have discussed the matter with White House officials. But the fact that presidential aides are considering the unorthodox tactic of having a court nominee speak publicly in advance of a Senate confirmation hearing is a sign of the concern surrounding the appointment, the sources said.

U.S. District Court Judge Gladys Kessler acted after lawyers representing about a dozen men held at the prison for foreign terrorism suspects at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, expressed urgent concern over their deteriorating health amid a hunger strike launched in early August.

Kessler stated in her opinion that the detainees' lawyers had presented "deeply troubling" allegations of forced feedings in which U.S. personnel violently shoved tubes as thick as a finger through the men's noses and into their stomachs without anesthesia or sedatives.

"If the allegations are true -- and they are all explicitly, specifically and vigorously denied by the government -- they describe conduct of which the United States can hardly be proud," the judge wrote.

The specter of losing Rove, his only truly irreplaceable assistant, lies at the heart of Bush's distress. But a string of political reversals, including growing opposition to the Iraq war, Hurricane Katrina's aftermath and Harriet Miers' bungled Supreme Court nomination, have also exacted a personal toll.

Presidential advisers and friends say Bush is a mass of contradictions: cheerful and serene, peevish and melancholy, occasionally lapsing into what he once derided as the "blame game." They describe him as beset but unbowed, convinced that history will vindicate the major decisions of his presidency even if they damage him and his party in the 2006 and 2008 elections.

At the same time, these sources say Bush, who has a long history of keeping staffers in their place, has lashed out at aides as his political woes have mounted.

That the former TD, from Lucan, Dublin, died in the company of a woman likely to be a prostitute will only serve to add to the sense of danger and controversy which always accompanied his entwined political and business careers.

Decisions that send men and women to die, decisions that have the potential to send men and women to die, decisions that confront situations like natural disasters and cause needless death or cause people to suffer misery that they shouldn’t have to suffer, domestic and international decisions, should not be made in a secret way. That’s a very, very provocative statement, I think. All my life I’ve been taught to guard the nation’s secrets. All my life I have followed the rules. I’ve gone through my special background investigations and all the other things that you need to do and I understand that the nation’s secrets need guarding. But fundamental decisions about foreign policy should not be made in secret....

[T]he case that I saw for 4 plus years was a case that I have never seen in my studies of aberration, bastardizations, [inaudible], changes to the national security [inaudible] process. What I saw was a cabal between the Vice President of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the Secretary of Defense and [inaudible] on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made.

And then when the bureaucracy was presented with those decisions and carried them out, it was presented in such a disjointed incredible way that the bureaucracy often didn’t know what it was doing as it moved to carry them out.

Read George Packer’s book The Assassin’s [inaudible] if you haven’t already. George Packer, a New Yorker, reporter for The New Yorker, has got it right. I just finished it and I usually put marginalia in a book but, let me tell you, I had to get extra pages to write on. And I wish, I wish I had been able to help George Packer write that book. In some places I could have given him a hell of a lot more specifics than he’s got. But if you want to read how the Cheney Rumsfeld cabal flummoxed the process, read that book. And, of course, there are other names in there, Under Secretary of Defense Douglas [inaudible], whom most of you probably know Tommy Frank said was stupidest blankety blank man in the world. He was. Let me testify to that. He was. Seldom in my life have I met a dumber man.

And yet, and yet, after the Secretary of State agrees to a $400 billion department, rather than a $30 billion department, having control, at least in the immediate post-war period in Iraq, this man is put in charge. Not only is he put in charge, he is given carte blanche to tell the State Department to go screw themselves in a closet somewhere. That’s not making excuses for the State Department.

That’s telling you how decisions were made and telling you how things got accomplished. Read George’s book. In so many ways I wanted to believe for 4 years that what I was seeing, as an academic, what I was seeing was an extremely weak national security [inaudible]. And an extremely powerful Vice President and an extremely powerful in the issues that impacted him, Secretary of Defense, remember a Vice President who’s been Secretary of Defense, too, and obviously has an inclination that way and also has known the Secretary of Defense for a long time....

[inaudible] tell you how many contractors who did billion dollars or so business with the Defense Department that we have in 1988 and how many do we have now. And they’re always working together. If one of them is the lead on the satellite program, I hope there’s some Lockheed and Grumman and others here today [inaudible] if one of them’s a lead on satellites, the others are subs. And they’ve learned their lesson there in every state.

They’ve got every Congressman, every Senator, they got it covered. Now, it’s not to say that they aren’t smart businessmen. They are, and women. They are. But it’s something we should be looking at, something we should be looking at. So you’ve got this collegiality there between the Secretary of Defense and the Vice President. And then you’ve got a President who is not versed in international relations. And not too much interested in them either.

This is a true honour. Wilfred Owen was a great poet. He articulated the tragedy, the horror and indeed the pity – of war – in a way no other poet has. Yet we have learnt nothing. Nearly 100 years after his death the world has become more savage, more brutal, more pitiless. But the “free world” we are told (as embodied in the United States and Great Britain) is different to the rest of the world since our actions are dictated and sanctioned by a moral authority and a moral passion condoned by someone called God. Some people may find this difficult to comprehend but Osama Bin Laden finds it easy.

What would Wilfred Owen make of the invasion of Iraq? A bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism, demonstrating absolute contempt for the concept of international Law. An arbitrary military action inspired by a series of lies upon lies and gross manipulation of the media and therefore of the public. An act intended to consolidate American military and economic control of the Middle East masquerading – as a last resort (all other justifications having failed to justify themselves) – as liberation. A formidable assertion of military force responsible for the death and mutilation of thousands upon thousands of innocent people.

An independent and totally objective account of the Iraqi civilian dead in the medical magazine The Lancet estimates that the figure approaches 100,000. But neither the US or the UK bother to count the Iraqi dead. As General Tommy Franks (US Central Command) memorably said: “We don't do body counts”.

We have brought torture, cluster bombs, depleted uranium, innumerable acts of random murder, misery and degradation to the Iraqi people and call it “bringing freedom and democracy to the Middle East”. But, as we all know, we have not been welcomed with the predicted flowers. What we have unleashed is a ferocious and unremitting resistance, mayhem and chaos.

You may say at this point: what about the Iraqi elections? Well President Bush himself answered this question only the other day when he said “We cannot accept that there can be free democratic elections in a country under foreign military occupation”. I had to read that statement twice before I realised that he was talking about Lebanon and Syria.

What do Bush and Blair actually see when they look at themselves in the mirror?

I believe Wilfred Owen would share our contempt, our revulsion, our nausea and our shame at both the language and the actions of the American and British governments.

A few key themes recur in these short essays: Miers' aversion to conflict, or even outspoken debate; her devotion to the ideal of "diversity"; and her commitment to the interests of the legal profession above all else.

It may not be the world's most vivid self-portrait, but it is a telling one. And those who imagine that it is the self-portrait of a woman who might be inclined to do anything as bold, as risky, as controversial, as dangerous as vote to overturn Roe v. Wade really ought to read these essays in full. After all: that's just about all the record there is

According to the eyewitnesses, when the tower collapsed, the passersby started picking up the belongings of the people instead of helping them. Examples where people desperately tried to save their lives abound. My friend's name is Bilal Ahmad. His real uncle's name is Irfan Ahmad. He and several people like him tried to jump from their respective houses to save their lives. I met a boy Imran Ali by name. When he saw walls collapsing, he jumped from the 3rd floor of his house and broke his leg. Reaching the ground he collapsed and bled a lot. He is in the hospital. I met him there.

Unfortunately no one could jump successfully. Some jumped and died. So this was not a success. But some jumped and were wounded. Since they did not die, in that sense it was a successful escape. I just returned after completing my second trip to the affected site. It is now becoming difficult to carry out rescue work because the sun has set. The way relief work is going on it will take months to clear the rubble. People are removing pieces of stones with hands because there are no machines. I spoke to Major Ishaq of Engineering Corps. He says that if cranes were used, the pieces of roofs will fall on those who are stranded inside. The tower collapsed in such a way that there is space underneath two columns.

Nearly half of Senate Republicans say they remain unconvinced that Harriet Miers is worthy of being confirmed to the Supreme Court, according to a survey conducted by The Washington Times….What's troubling for President Bush, however, is that 27 Republican senators -- almost half of his party's members in the chamber -- have publicly expressed specific doubts about Miss Miers or said they must withhold any support whatsoever for her nomination until after the hearings.

When President Bush nominated Harriet Miers on Monday, we saw it as a missed opportunity. It left us underwhelmed, not appalled. But having spent last evening communing here with some 1,000 conservatives at National Review's 50th anniversary dinner, we see a political disaster in the making.

We talked to quite a few people, and we heard not a single kind word about the nomination from anyone who wasn't on the White House staff. A couple of our soundings led us to think that such support as it has received has been more sycophantic than sincere. One putative proponent privately distanced himself from his public praise of Miers. Another person, whose employer has strongly backed the Miers nomination, told us, "Of course, I disagree wholeheartedly."

In President Bush's current circumstances, pressed from the right and wishing to avoid a divisive fight that will highlight the disarray his administration is teetering toward, this means staying well within the boundaries defined by the Gang. There are two ways to do this: one, nominate a minimalist conservative (one who avoids legislating from the bench and would have a preference for
staying within precedent where possible, in contrast to one who wants to rewrite law to enshrine an earlier, or perhaps unprecedented, view of the Constitution) who so stellar that the only possible objection to him is extreme ideology of the left or right. Enter Mr. Chief Justice Roberts. Two, nominate someone whose views are known well only to the President, allowing him to defend her to the right by saying he really knows her and they should trust him and to defend her to the left by making sure that she has left no imprint that would suggest that she is an ideologue. Enter Mme. Meier.

What kind of woman is Harriet Miers? Here is a choice perspective from a
co-worker. From Texas Lawyer, December 16, 1996:

Miers played marathon games on the firm's softball team and is remembered as the first woman to take part in the firm's retreat at Possum Kingdom Lake. Despite some trepidation all around, the outing apparently went smoothly, and yes, Miers was given her own bedroom." She laughed with us and kidded with us. She was anything but overbearing," Locke Purnell shareholder Joe H. Staley Jr. says. "She just instantly was one of the guys. Always has been."

I bet Phyllis Schlafly is going to love hearing that.
PS Not that there's anything wrong with that