First Door on the Left

Grand Jury Indicts DeLay on New Charge

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) - A Texas grand jury on Monday re-indicted Rep. Tom DeLay on charges of conspiring to launder money and money laundering after the former majority leader attacked last week’s indictment on technical grounds.

The new indictment, handed up by a grand jury seated Monday, contains two counts: conspiring to launder money and money laundering. The latter charge carries a penalty of up to life in prison. Last week, DeLay was charged with conspiracy to violate campaign finance laws.

Mmmm… life in prison. He could go back to doing what he does best: squishing bugs.

Tom DeLay

Captain Ed:

All that being said, I find this pick mystifying. Miers just turned 60 years old, not exactly ready to retire but potentially giving up at least a decade for the Bush legacy on the Supreme Court. Other women with judicial experience and/or a stronger track record of conservatism could have been found. She didn’t graduate from a top-drawer legal school (SMU), and she didn’t clerk for a highly influential jurist (US District Judge Joe Estes).

Not only does Harriet Miers not look like the best candidate for the job, she doesn’t even look like the best female candidate for the job…

Miers may make a great stealth candidate, but right now she looks more like a political ploy. Color me disappointed in the first blush.

John Hawkins:

George Bush’s decision to appoint Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court is bitterly disappointing.

Miers is a Bush crony with no real conservative credentials, who leapfrogged legions of more deserving judges just because she was Bush’s pal. She used to be Bush’s staff secretary for God’s sake and now she’s going to the Supreme Court while people like Michael Luttig, Priscilla Owen, Janice Rogers Brown & Emilio Garza are being left on the sidelines.

To merely describe Miers as a terrible pick is to underestimate her sheer awfulness as a selection.

Michelle Malkin:

What Julie Myers is to the Department of Homeland Security, Harriet Miers is to the Supreme Court. It’s not just that Miers has zero judicial experience. It’s that she’s so transparently a crony/”diversity” pick while so many other vastly more qualified and impressive candidates went to waste. If this is President Bush’s bright idea to buck up his sagging popularity–among conservatives as well as the nation at large–one wonders whom he would have picked in rosier times. Shudder.

There are countless other rabid righties who are not happy with the nomination of Ms. Miers, but these three give you the general idea. George really let his base down with this one.

I think Atrios pretty much nails it…

Wingnuttia is rather angry at the choice. I don’t think this is because they’re really concerned that she’s not conservative enough for their tastes, although that’s part of it. They’re angry because this was supposed to be their nomination. This is was their moment. They didn’t just want a stealth victory, they wanted parades and fireworks. They wanted Bush to find the wingnuttiest wingnut on the planet, fully clothed and accessorized in all the latest wingnut fashions, not just to give them their desired Court rulings, but also to publicly validate their influence and power. They didn’t just want substantive results, what they wanted even more were symbolic ones. They wanted Bush to extend a giant middle finger to everyone to the left of John Ashcroft. They wanted to watch Democrats howl and scream and then ultimately lose a nasty confirmation battle. They wanted this to be their “WE RUN THE COUNTRY AND THERE’S NOTHING YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT” moment.

Whatever kind of judge she would be, she doesn’t provide them with that.

Bush Chooses Miers for Supreme Court

Miers and Bush

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush chose Harriet Miers, White House counsel and a loyal member of the president’s inner circle, to replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O’Connor on the Supreme Court, senior administration officials said Monday.

If confirmed by the Republican-controlled Senate, Miers, 60, would join Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg as the second woman on the nation’s highest court. Miers, who has never been a judge, was the first woman to serve as president of the Texas State Bar and the Dallas Bar Association…

Formerly Bush’s personal lawyer in Texas, Miers came with the president to the White House as his staff secretary, the person in charge of all the paperwork that crosses the Oval Office desk. Miers was promoted to deputy chief of staff in June 2003.

Miers, a single, soft-spoken woman who guards her personal privacy, has led a trailblazing career. She grew up in Dallas, earning her undergraduate and law degrees from Southern Methodist University.

As an attorney in Dallas, Miers became president in 1996 of Locke Purnell, Rain & Harrell a firm with more than 200 lawyers where she worked starting in 1972. After it merged a few years later, she became co-manager of Locke Liddell & Sapp.

When Bush was governor of Texas, she represented him in a case involving a fishing house. In 1995, he appointed her to a six-year term on the Texas Lottery Commission.

Ms. Miers has had a long and interesting career. She has, without doubt, met a lot of people. Yet she believes that George W. Bush is the most brilliant man she has ever met.

We know one thing for certain: Ms. Miers is a terrible judge of character. (And she appears to be terribly fond of eyeliner.)