SUPREME COURT NOMINEE, HARRIET MIERS: THE WOMAN HAS NEVER EVEN BEEN A JUDGE!

Does anyone know what CRONYISM is??? Bush has packed his administration with "friends" and personal associates who have NO CLUE or any worthwhile EXPERIENCE in their appointments.

Cronyism is partiality to long-standing friends, especially by appointing them to public office without regard for their qualifications. The word "cronyism" is always used derogatorily. (source: Wikipedia Dictionary)

President Bush nominated Harriet Ellan Miers, his White House counsel and former personal attorney, to the Supreme Court yesterday, choosing a woman who broke barriers in the male-dominated Texas legal world but brings no judicial experience or constitutional background to her new assignment.


Bush announced his choice for the nation's 110th justice from the Oval Office shortly before the court opened its new term under newly installed Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. In Bush's nationally televised statement, he simultaneously introduced Miers and defended her legal résumé, which came under immediate attack from some conservative groups.

In succeeding Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, one of the court's swing voters, Miers would be in a position to move it decisively to the right. Bush said she would bring a distinctive perspective to the high court while strictly interpreting the Constitution and not legislating from the bench.

"In selecting a nominee, I've sought to find an American of grace, judgment and unwavering devotion to the Constitution and laws of our country. Harriet Miers is just such a person," Bush said. "I've known Harriet for more than a decade. I know her heart. I know her character."

There was widespread dissent among Bush's usual allies on the right, who questioned whether the 60-year-old former corporate lawyer possessed the distinguished qualifications and conservative credentials they are looking for in a court nominee.

Advocates on the left and their allies in the Senate also urged caution, pronouncing Miers's judicial philosophy and constitutional views a mystery. "We know next to nothing about the legal philosophy of the person President Bush has selected to replace Justice O'Connor casting the deciding votes on the most difficult issues confronting our nation," said Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.). "America can't afford a replay of the unrevealing confirmation process that preceded Chief Justice Roberts's confirmation."

Bush described Miers, who if confirmed would be the third woman to sit on the Supreme Court, as a legal pioneer who repeatedly overcame gender barriers to reach the highest levels of her profession. Before being named White House counsel last year, she served as White House deputy chief of staff as well as staff secretary, a job in which she reviewed virtually every document that went before the president.

Before joining the Bush administration, Miers was Bush's personal attorney in Texas and served as general counsel of his gubernatorial campaign committee. As governor, Bush appointed Miers chairman of the scandal-plagued Texas Lottery Commission, where she earned a reputation as a tough manager after firing two executive directors.

Outside her political work for Bush, Miers was a partner at the Texas law firm of Locke Liddell & Sapp, served two years on the Dallas City Council and was the first woman to be head of the Texas Bar Association.

"One of the things that I believe the president admires about Harriet is that she has spent her entire career breaking through glass ceilings," said James B. Francis Jr., who heads a Dallas investment firm and introduced Miers to Bush in 1993.

(Who cares if she broke the glass ceiling? She’s never been a judge for crying out loud!)

Skeptics questioned her past donations to Anti-Abortion organizations and bemoaned her lack of judicial experience.

"The reaction of many conservatives today will be that the president has made possibly the most unqualified choice since Abe Fortas, who had been the president's lawyer," said Manuel Miranda, chairman of the Third Branch Conference. "The nomination of a nominee with no judicial record is a significant failure for the advisers that the White House gathered around it..."

Amid so much uncertainty among the president's own allies, Vice President Cheney was dispatched to interviews with such conservative commentators as Rush Limbaugh, who made plain his skepticism. "I'm confident that she has a conservative judicial philosophy that you'd be comfortable with, Rush," Cheney said. He added: "This president will have done more to change the court and, in fact, put on it individuals who share his judicial philosophy than any of his predecessors in modern times."

(Bush was elected to run the government...not to appoint Supreme Court Justices that meet his personal philosophies!)

If confirmed, Miers will become the first Supreme Court justice in more than three decades with no experience as a judge at any level.

Among the non-judges appointed in modern history are the late William H. Rehnquist, who was a top Justice Department official in the Nixon administration, and Fortas, an influential Washington lawyer and close adviser to Lyndon B. Johnson, who nominated him to the high court in 1965. The talking points of White House aides said the closest analogy was Lewis F. Powell Jr., who served as head of the Virginia Bar Association and the Richmond school board before being sent to the court by Richard M. Nixon.