My Tropical Depression

On the other hand, lawyers will like this one:

"As a corporate lawyer," says the Washington Post , "Harriet Miers once urged then-Gov. George W. Bush to veto legislation that would have prohibited the Texas Supreme Court from regulating or capping attorneys' fees, charging that the legislation did 'violence to the balance of power between the legislative and judicial branch.' Miers, President Bush's nominee to the Supreme Court, said in her 1995 letter to Bush that the legislation was a blatant attempt to protect a 'handful of greedy, but immensely rich and powerful' trial lawyers."

But the New York Times lead will bolster those who see the White House counsel as the ultimate crony:

" 'You are the best governor ever-- deserving of great respect,' Harriet E. Miers wrote to George W. Bush days after his 51st birthday in July 1997. She also found him 'cool,' said he and his wife, Laura, were 'the greatest!' and told him: 'Keep up the great work. Texas is blessed.' "

Very cool discovery.

I notice that MSM accounts are now using words like "revolt" and "uprising" to describe the conservative opposition to Harriet Miers. OpinionJournal's John Fund says that after interviewing friends and colleagues in Texas, "I came away convinced that questions about Ms. Miers should be raised now-- and loudly-- because she has spent her entire life avoiding giving a clear picture of herself. 'She is unrevealing to the point that it's an obsession,' says one of her close colleagues at her law firm.

"White House aides who have worked with her for five years report she zealously advocated the president's views, but never gave any hint of her own . . . The evidence of Ms. Miers's views on jurisprudence resemble a beach on which someone has walked without leaving any footprints: no court opinions, no law review articles, and no internal memos that President Bush is going to share with the Senate . . .

"The White House spin team has been pathetic, dismissing much of the criticism of Ms. Miers as 'elitism' or even echoing Democratic senators who view it as 'sexist.' "

InstaPundit Glenn Reynolds sees no socially redeeming value in the nomination:

"More and more, I have to wonder what the White House was thinking with this. First of all, when you're already under fire for cronyism, and you nominate someone who's, well, a crony, you ought to be locked-and-loaded in terms of response. They weren't.

"Second of all, they seem to have managed to convince a lot of people on the social right that she's too liberal, while people on the libertarian-right worry that she's too much a fan of government power. Third, their response to critics and complaints has been slow and weak . . .

"Her nomination looks like a major political blunder for the Administration, which has yet to provide any very convincing reasons why she belongs on the court more than any of several thousand other lawyers with similar credentials."