So, back here when I was wondering why so many people were doing GOOGLE searches for “harriet miers and bob dylan,” I decided to e-mail Harriet at her blog. After all, who better to ask about any possible association between the first woman president of the State Bar of Texas and the artist who brought us Street Legal than the actual SCOTUS nominee herself?

She finally responded, but has cleverly side-stepped the whole Dylan question by, well, er, side-stepping it. She says (and I copy and paste), “Sorry it took me so long to right back, I was really busy…of-course now I’m even busier with my do-over but I’m PROCRASTINATING!!” She thanks me for defending her and promises a mention in her Blog Roll. Thanks, Harriet!

I must say that my sympathy for Harriet has only increased since glancing over the 57 page questionnaire she had to fill out for the Judiciary Committee (hosted in pdf form at NRO here). I mean, dig this (and the following is not a parody):

NOMINEE FOR THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
GENERAL (PUBLIC)
1. Name: Full name (include any former names used).
Harriet Ellan Miers
2. Position: State the position for which you have been nominated.
Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States
3. Address: List current office address. If state of residence differs from your place of employment, please list the state where you currently reside.
The White House
Washington, D.C. 20502
I currently reside in Virginia, but also maintain a home in Texas.
4. Birthplace: State date and place of birth.August 10, 1945
Dallas, Texas
5. Marital Status: (include maiden name of wife, or husband’s name). List spouse’s occupation, employer’s name and business address(es). Please, also indicate the number of dependent children.Single
6. Education: List in reverse chronological order, with most recent first, each college, law school, and any other institutions of higher education attended and indicate for each the dates of attendance, whether a degree was received, and the date each degree was received.Southern Methodist University School of Law, 1967-1970, JD, May 24, 1970
Southern Methodist University, 1963-1967, BS in Mathematics, May 21, 1967
7. Employment Record: List in reverse chronological order, listing most recent first, all governmental agencies, business or professional corporations, companies, firms, or other enterprises, partnerships, institutions and organizations, non-profit or otherwise, with which you have been affiliated as an officer, director, partner, proprietor, elected official or employee since graduation from college, whether or not you received payment for your services. Include the name and address of the employer and job title or job description, or the name and address of the institution or organization and your title and responsibilities, where appropriate.

… etc!!

It gives me the vaguely sick feeling I’ve always had when looking at a job application. You would think, having reached the stage in life where the President of the United States nominates you to be on the Supreme Court, that you would not have to jump through the same kinds of mundane hoops as someone applying for a job at Krispy Kreme. I mean, really. And when did the “advice and consent” of the U.S. Senate come to mean this level of intrusion and scrutiny?

A long time ago, huh?

And just to add insult to it all, every peremptory demand for voluminous documentation made of Harriet by the senators includes this addendum: “Please provide four (4) copies of X,” as in:

Please also provide four (4) copies of any resolutions on which you voted, the corresponding votes and minutes, as well as any speeches or statements you made with regard to policy decisions or positions taken by the association, committee or conference that you participated in. “Participation” includes, but is not limited to, membership in any working group of any such association, committee or conference which produced a report, memorandum or policy statement even where you did not contribute to it.

What - the senators aren’t equipped with photocopiers, and hordes of interns who know how to use them? Doesn’t Harriet have enough to worry about just finding all this stuff in whatever shoebox it might be stuffed in, without having to pull out all the staples and paperclips and run off four copies of it all for Specter, Leahy and friends?

I don’t know. Whatever ambition I had to be on the Supreme Court has been severely tempered by getting this close-up view of the nominating process.

In all seriousness, things are not looking great for Harriet Miers, and perhaps that is for good reason … or perhaps not. It’s very hard for one’s skin not to crawl when Senator Specter (R - PA) and Senator Leahy (D - VT) are preening and complimenting one another on their own reasonableness and depth of legal knowledge while piling on against Bush’s nominee. While I’ve been queasy about the nomination from the start, I’ve continued hoping people like Hugh Hewitt are right, and so I’ll certainly be pleased if, when the confirmation hearings actually begin, Harriet hits it out of the park. A point to remember is that a major part of Bush’s rationale for nominating her is that she has never been a judge, but instead is someone who has lived in the “real” world. Yet, much of the current criticism centers on the fact that she is not displaying the qualities of a constitutional scholar. Well, to revert to Harriet Miers Blog!!-speak for a minute: duh!!

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