Harriet Miers' friend doubts she'd overturn Roe v. Wade

Na na na na na.

Man, this is just getting way too easy. From today's Hotline:

Miers' Friend "Doubts" She'd Overturn Roe v. Wade

Dallas board of adjustment member/ex-city plan comm. Sharon Boyd who says she is a "close" friend of Miers, appeared on Michelangelo Signorile's radio show on Sirius OutQ channel, said that while Miers is certainly pro-life, "social issues are not her primary expertise or concern." Boyd: "She told me: the more she read about it, the more she learned about the procedures, she just could no longer be pro-choice." Boyd said that if Miers were asked to revisit Lawrence v. Texas, which overturned state sodomy laws, she doubted Miers would vote to allow states to regulate the conduct. Boyd: "She believes in equal rights for everyone." Boyd said Miers had many gay friends and "was not uncomfortable with gay people." When she spoke before a group in 1989, "it was pretty brave for a conservative like Harriet".

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Evening Open Thread

In honor of your poll numbers Mr. President, may we suggest the following this evening?

Look Out Below

Scale ingredients to servings
1 1/2 oz Bacardi® 151 rum
2 tsp fresh lime juice
1 tsp grenadine syrup

Pour the Bacardi 151 rum, lime juice and grenadine into a cocktail shaker half-filled with cracked ice. Shake well, strain into an old-fashioned glass 1/2 filled with ice cubes, and serve.

I hope this isn't one of those "umbrella" drinks I've been getting complaints about. There are some people who are still looking out for you Mr. President. They want to make sure that I'm not suggesting something too girlie for you.

Open thread away. Real Time with Bill Maher is on in an hour! Read More......

Everybody hates George

New poll. Even the Republicans hate him now.

Evangelicals, Republican women, Southerners and other critical groups in
President Bush's political coalition are worried about the direction the nation is headed and disappointed with his performance, an AP-Ipsos poll found....

nly 28 percent say the country is headed in the right direction while two-thirds, 66 percent, say it is on the wrong track, the poll found.

"There is a growing, deep-seated discontentment and pessimism about the direction of the country," said Republican strategist Tony Fabrizio, who believes the reasons for their pessimism differ for those in one political party or another.

Among those most likely to have lost confidence about the nation's direction over the past year are white evangelicals, down 30 percentage points since November, Republican women, down 28 points, Southerners, down 26 points, and suburban men, down 20 points.

Bush's supporters are uneasy about issues such as federal deficits, immigration and his latest nomination for the Supreme Court. Social conservatives are concerned about his choice of Miers, a relatively unknown lawyer who has most recently served as White House counsel.

Really sucks to have that epiphany five years too late that you voted for an idiot. Read More......

Excellent Murray Waas update on RoveGate - Rove lied to Bush, supposedly...

Though I wonder if this isn't an effort to get Bush off the hook - oh, Rove lied to him, you see, thus Bush didn't lie to the American people or the special prosecutor when his White House exonerated Rove, Bush was simply misled by Rove. Uh huh. Then why hasn't Rove been fired if he truly lied to Bush? Or is it now all lies that Rove supposedly didn't tell Bush the truth? Bush sure isn't acting like someone who was lied to about a criminal matter by a senior staffer.

Very interesting stuff. The story is massive, and also provides lots of good background on the case. It's a good read:

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove personally assured President Bush in the early fall of 2003 that he had not disclosed to anyone in the press that Valerie Plame, the wife of an administration critic, was a CIA employee, according to legal sources with firsthand knowledge of the accounts that both Rove and Bush independently provided to federal prosecutors....

In his first interview with FBI agents working on the leak probe, Rove similarly did not disclose that he had spoken to Cooper, according to sources close to the investigation,

But in subsequent interviews with federal investigators and in his testimony to the grand jury, Rove changed his account, asserting that when the FBI first questioned him, he had simply forgotten about his phone conversation with Cooper. Rove also told prosecutors that he had forgotten about the Cooper conversation when he talked to the president about the matter in the fall of 2003.

In his own interview with prosecutors on June 24, 2004, Bush testified that Rove assured him he had not disclosed Plame as a CIA employee and had said nothing to the press to discredit Wilson, according to sources familiar with the president's interview. Bush said that Rove never mentioned the conversation with Cooper....

Sources close to the leak investigation being run by Special Prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald say it was the discovery of one of Rove's White House e-mails-in which the senior Bush adviser referred to his July 2003 conversation with Cooper-that prompted Rove to contact prosecutors and to revise his account to include the Cooper conversation.

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A Bush Appointee Bites the Dust

No, not Harriet, not yet anyway.

This one was going to be Deputy Attorney General, but he had too many ties to Abramoff:

The Bush administration's choice to be deputy attorney general has withdrawn his nomination, which had been delayed amid questions over his dealings with indicted Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff, officials said today.

Timothy E. Flanigan wrote in a letter to President Bush yesterday that he was withdrawing as a candidate because of "uncertainty concerning the timing of my confirmation."

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Open Thread

Threading our way to the weekend...what a week it was... Read More......

It's time to subpoena the religious right leaders and demand they tell the nation what they know about Harriet Miers

UPDATE: Pat Buchanan mentions possibility of Judiciary Committee subpoenaing James Dobson!

From their own quotes it sounds like religious right and other conservative leaders are getting confidential White House briefings and inside information about how Miers will decide key issues on the Supreme Court. Great. Let's subpoena them and have them testify before the Senate, under oath, about what they know.

The Alliance for Justice has compiled a list of key quotes suggesting these people have insider knowledge of what Miers really believes - it's time to subpoena them all. Either they know something the Senate doesn't - something the Senate needs to know. Or they're publicly lying to the rest of the conservative movement about how they should "trust" that Miers holds quite conservative judicial views.

So which one is it? Are Bush's surrogates in the religious right lying about the fact that they "know" Miers' is really one of them, or do they have some secret insider info that they should be forced to share with the Senate?

Here's my subpoena list:

- James Dobson, head of Focus on the Family

- Nathan Hecht, longtime "friend" of Harriet Miers (they keep trying to spin him like he's some boyfriend or something, it's very weird).

- Vice President Dick Cheney

- Senator Orrin Hatch

- President Bush

- RNC Chair Ken Mehlman

- Jay Sekulow, one of Pat Robertson's people

Finally, what is this "trust me" bs coming from Bush? If he knows Harriet Miers' views then he ought to tell the nation what they are, rather than playing some weird cryptic game. The Supreme Court is too important a position to be playing games with.

PS My "spell check" on Blogger tried to change "Sekulow" to "sexually." Nice. Read More......

Dallas gay leaders are a-okay with Miers serving on the court

Kiss that confirmation buh-bye.

None of Dallas’ gay City Council members served at the same time as Miers. But they all said they have met her and respect her abilities and accomplishments. All said they would be comfortable with her appointment to the Supreme Court....

Chris Luna, a Dallas attorney, worked with Miers more closely than any of the other gay council members. She chaired the city’s Judicial Nominating Commission when he was a council member, Luna said..

“She is judicious, she listens to people, gets all of the facts, doesn’t jump to conclusions. Then she makes a decision,” he said.

And Miers apparently will "grow" in the job :-)

“When she has made the wrong decision she has no problem in doing a 180 and saying ‘I’ve learned more, and now I understand more about the facts,’” Luna said.

And she likes gays!

Luna said that Miers has always been accepting of him.

“She certainly knows I’m gay,” Luna said. “She wrote a glowing letter of recommendation for me to the Texas Bar Association.”

Another gay leader says "confirm her!"

Former council member Craig McDaniel said he also found Miers to be cordial. He said it will be difficult for anyone on the right or the left “to mobilize the masses” against Miers because she gets along well with many different types of people.

“A lot of the women in Dallas who have emerged as leaders have seemed to have that same type of personality,” McDaniel said. “They seem to have a comfortableness with lots of different situations and views.”

McDaniel said he is delighted that the president nominated Miers.
“This is as good as we would ever get out of a Republican administration,” McDaniel said.

And Miers has always been known as a moderate:

Political consultant Pat Cotton said Miers has always been viewed as a moderate. Miers impressed people because she is “very smart, quiet and does her homework,” Cotton said.

Buh bye. Read More......

Friday orchid blogging

For those of you new folks visiting the blog, Friday Orchid Blogging is an AMERICAblog tradition. Cat-blogging is the big tradition among blogs - every Friday, you post some cute pics of your cat. But as I have no cat, you get the next best thing - my pets, my orchids. So there you have it. Sure, it's a bit gay, but it's also a bit pretty. :-) Enjoy.



Paph Charles Sladden

This is finally one of my plants. It's currently just starting to bloom, so the flower isn't fully open yet. You'll get an update on it next week. These are relatively low-light plants, so this will be quite happy with my new lighting set-up. They like to be kept somewhat moist - you don't let them totally dry out, but you don't want them always wet either. Other than that, you just enjoy the flowers (it has great foliage too). It has sequential flowers - meaning, one blooms, then dies, then a second blooms, etc. There are 3 buds, so I'm expecting 3. And finally, the flowers will hopefully last for at least several weeks each, if not a few months.

Stay tuned. Read More......

Interesting that the Oklahoma Univ bombing happened days before NYC goes on alert

Coincidence? Read More......

Audio of Mehlman's conference call yesterday with the religious wingnuts in order to convince them that Harriet is okay

Someone needs to transcribe this audio, it's 35 minutes. I haven't listened yet, please do post good snippets - I'll listen to it later when I get a chance.

PFAW has some excerpts here. Read More......

Body bag count from offensive in Iraq

Wow, US forces have killed 71 in this latest offensive so this must mean we're winning, right?

Rummy is really looking for something to pump out if the previously undiscussed, but now suddenly discussed, body bag count is being churned out to the media. It's all part of the "we're winning the war regardless of what you see with your own eyes" propaganda. How about they just scrap the silly body bag counts which mean absolutely nothing and focus on real progress? Are Iraqi people living better and safer or not?

How about: not. Read More......

Morning open thread

I think Harriet's toast. This is just way more fun than a Democratic deserves :-) Read More......

Bush is crushing the dreams of wingers

And they seemed so happy together. The wingers loved and trusted him. But, then, he found her, that Harriet thing:

If there has been a unifying cause in American conservatism over the past three decades, it has been a passionate desire to change the Supreme Court. When there were arguments over tax cuts and deficits, when libertarians clashed with religious conservatives, when disputes over foreign policy erupted, reshaping the judiciary bound the movement together.

Until Monday, that is. Now conservatives are in a roiling fight with the White House over President Bush's nomination of White House counsel Harriet Miers to the high court. They fear that the president may have jeopardized their dream of fundamentally shifting the court by nominating someone with no known experience in constitutional issues rather than any one of a number of better-known jurists with unquestioned records.

This could be an ugly break up.

This morning, Bill Kristol said on the Today Show that Harriet should withdraw her nomination. He said the same thing to the NY Times:

After the event, Mr. Kristol said it was "not out of the question" that Ms. Miers could withdraw.

"She did not come to Washington to be a Supreme Court justice," he said in a telephone interview as he drove to Richmond, Va. "And she could well decide that this is hurting the president, and could continue to hurt the president, and that the best thing to do would be to step aside and go back to serving the president and let him make another pick."

See, she can solve this whole problem. Watch to see if that drumbeat grows over the weekend. Read More......

Ominous signs and Genuine concerns

Oh, this is getting so good. Lots of news about Rove and it is really fun reading the articles. Tucked in to all the spin from the lawyers and White House staffers (on super double secret background, of course), there are some really juicy nuggets. Here are several of the snippets that have me even more hopeful that we'll see Karl doing the perp walk. From AP:

Stephen Gillers, a New York University law professor, said that it was unusual for a witness to be called back to the grand jury four times and that the prosecutor's legally required warning to Rove before this next appearance is "an ominous sign" for the presidential adviser.

From the Washington Post:

A source close to Rove said Bush's chief political adviser and his legal team are now genuinely concerned he could face charges.

And from the New York Times:

Mr. Fitzgerald's conversations with lawyers in recent days have cast a cloud over the inquiry, sweeping away the confidence once expressed by a number of officials and their lawyers who have said that he was unlikely to find any illegality.

and this from that same Times article:

Several lawyers who have been involved in the case expressed surprise and concern over the recent turn of events and are increasingly convinced that Mr. Fitzgerald could be poised to charge someone with a crime for discussing with journalists the identity of an undercover C.I.A. officer.

Read More......

Consumer confidence stays low

Slightly better than last month but that's not saying much since it was the lowest since just before the invasion of Iraq. At 66.8%, it's still well below even last years 97.4%. Uh huh, Greenspan was right that the high oil prices are nothing to worry about. Right again. With prices staying high and the budget experts in control in Washington, we're in for a bumpy ride. Read More......

Why does the GOP want to give away even more to Big Oil?

C'mon, this is getting to be so damned insane and out of control. More handouts to Big Oil? What, didn't the GOP think that record profits across the industry at the expense of average Americans was enough? These people are such tools of the industry and just have no shame sticking it to American taxpayers time and time again. Why should the middle class fork over their tax dollars to GOP special interest groups who don't even need it? It's not like this is going to have an impact any time soon because to get the refineries productive will take at least five years. How about a little more effort with conservation for starters, which will be better for the environment and cut to the heart of the problem faster?

Nice job by Joe Barton, Congressman from Shell/Exxon. Why do you hate average Americans so much? Read More......

37%

Worst. President. Ever.

(Hat tip to Atrios) Read More......