K'tiva V'Chatima Tovah, Wolfram, and all who are celebrating.

Thomas was considered unqualified by the Bar Assn, IIRC. Anyway, he got something like a C grade, which is not the lightbulb I want lighting my back stairs, you know?

I don't know a thing about how smart Miers is, but she was president of the Texas Bar Assn., so at least a bunch of people in Texas think she's qualified.

That flying fish is really neat, but did they need to spend $500,000 in taxpayer money to do it?

K'tiva V'Chatima Tovah, Wolfram, and all who are celebrating.

Ditto.

Er, but *is* she unqualified? I mean, how low is the bar set? Thomas is considered qualified, right? How does she measure up to him when he was first nominated?

Depends on your meaning of qualified-- these people should be the leading lights of the legal establishment. It's the Supreme Court! I don't think that Thomas *was* qualified-- at his confirmation hearing when asked what he thought the most important cases were between Roe and the hearing he could name Roe and a couple of employment cases-- but at least he was head of an agency, a federal judge and he went to the best law school in the country. Miers has never done any legal scholarship, never clerked, and never practiced in front of the Supreme Court, let alone written a decision. She has NO experience with the kind of problems and the kind of thinking that this job requires-- and that, to me, is unqualified. Rehnquist was not a judge before being nominated to the Court, but he graduated top of his class at Stanford, was clerk to Justice Jackson and worked for the Office of Legal Counsel (IIRC)-- all experience that led him to do quite a bit of thinking about those kind of issues. A commercial lawyer is just a different kettle of fish.

ETA: she did clerk, sorry for the error above.

Here's a profile: [link] She seems perfectly smart and accomplished, but.

I don't have a good sense of what her legal experience actually is, although she was a president of her law firm.

And even that is not a position in which you practice law, at least IME. It's a management position. At a firm with 400 lawyers she'd have her hands full.

Here's something from the "well, duh!" file. But it's nice that Bush has not managed to fuck up the GAO - so far, anyway.

GAO: Bush Team Broke Law With 'Covert Propaganda'

NEW YORK The Bush Administration violated laws prohibiting the use of covert propaganda when it secretly paid broadcaster/ columnist Armstrong Williams to promote its education policies, and by hiring a public relations company to analyze media perceptions of the Republican Party, the U.S. Government Accountability Office said Friday.

...

In its account Saturday, The New York Times said the report "provided the first definitive ruling on the legality of the activities....In a blistering report, the investigators, from the Government Accountability Office, said the administration had disseminated 'covert propaganda' in the United States, in violation of a statutory ban."

[link]

Depends on your meaning of qualified-- these people should be the leading lights of the legal establishment. It's the Supreme Court! I don't think that Thomas *was* qualified-- at his confirmation hearing when asked what he thought the most important cases were between Roe and the hearing he could name Roe and a couple of employment cases-- but at least he was head of an agency, a federal judge and he went to the best law school in the country. Miers has never done any legal scholarship, never clerked, and never practiced in front of the Supreme Court, let alone written a decision. She has NO experience with the kind of problems and the kind of thinking that this job requires-- and that, to me, is unqualified. Rehnquist was not a judge before being nominated to the Court, but he graduated top of his class at Stanford, was clerk to Justice Jackson and worked for the Office of Legal Counsel (IIRC)-- all experience that led him to do quite a bit of thinking about those kind of issues. A commercial lawyer is just a different kettle of fish.

Thanks, bon. So what you are saying is that, yeah, Thomas kinda lowered the bar in some ways, but that Miers is unqualified for different reasons, that she is a commercial lawyer, not a constitutional scholar.

And yeah, Consuela, her fierce loyalty to Bush gives me pause. I just don't have any faith for Congress to call her on it.

Excuse me while I take a brief moment to bitch.

OH MY GOD WILL YOU LISTEN TO ME? AND MY BOSS? AND YOUR BOSS? ALL OF WHOM HAVE SAID WE'RE NOT DOING THIS PROGRAM ANYMORE SO QUIT TELLING PEOPLE ABOUT IT!

OMG.

*deep breath*

...I definitely need to run this e-mail past my boss before sending.