A Stitch in Haste

For the first time, I genuinely believe that Harriet Miers will not be confirmed to the Supreme Court.

For the first time, the only issue that truly matters (other than any ethics concerns, which so far have not emerged) has crowded out all the gobbledygook about Miers' "stellar" résumé as a "trailblazer" and "glass ceiling penetrator."

For the first time, everyone (except the President, of course) is fessing up and acknowledging what some of us have said from the beginning.

Harriet Miers has zero significant constitutional law experience.

Senate Judiciary Committee leaders Arlen Specter and Pat Leahy have peeled back the layers of veneer from the Miers nomination and found cardboard where hardwood should be.

And they are not pleased:

Barely concealing their irritation during a 35-minute news conference at the Capitol, Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) and ranking Democrat Patrick J. Leahy (Vt.) called the lobbying on Miers's behalf "chaotic," and said the answers she provided Monday to a lengthy questionnaire were inadequate. "The comments I have heard range from incomplete to insulting," Leahy said.

They sent Miers a three-page letter asking for more detailed responses in several areas, and Specter said he has asked the Bush administration for more documents concerning her work as White House counsel. Specter said Miers must provide "amplification on many, many of the items" included in the first questionnaire.

Here is the letter's smoking gun:

In answer to question 17, you explained that as Counsel to the President you are regularly faced with issues involving constitutional questions, but gave no specifics about the issues themselves, or the work that you personally did. Please provide the Committee with details concerning the specific matters you handled, the constitutional issues presented in those matters, and the positions you took related to those issues.

The reason I now firmly believe Miers will not be confirmed is not that she will refuse to answer that question, but because she has no answer to give. There is no there there.

The next step is of course the confirmation hearings themselves (assuming Miers does not withdraw her nomination before then). If the senators on the Judiciary Committee throw her nothing but softball questions about her résumé, background and supposed "judicial philosophy," then she might squeak by. But if they do their job and turn the hearings into what they now must become — a multiday oral examination on constitutional law — then Miers (who would undoubtedly flunk such an examination) is doomed.

More thoughts at SCOTUSblog, PurpleScarf.

POST SCRIPT: Believe it or not, I can actually cut Miers some slack about the late-dues suspension of her law licenses in D.C. and Texas. Stuff happens. Her mislabeling of "one-person, one vote" Fourteenth Amendment jurisprudence as the "proportional representation requirement" is somewhat more troubling, especially considering that there's no such thing as a "proportional representation requirement" in either the Constitution or the Voting Rights Act, which she cites. Not a good start.

(Cross-posted at N.Z. Bear.)