Saturday, October 22nd 2005
The Affirmative Action Nominee
What other surprises does Harriet Miers have in store for us? A revelation from the Washington Post:
As president of the State Bar of Texas, Harriet Miers wrote that “our legal community must reflect our population as a whole,” and under her leadership the organization embraced racial and gender set-asides and set numerical targets to achieve that goal.
The Supreme Court nominee’s words and actions from the early 1990s, when she held key leadership positions as president-elect and president of the state bar, provide the first window into her personal views on affirmative action, an area in which the Supreme Court is closely divided and where Miers could tip the court’s balance.
Now this isn’t going to go over very well…
John Yoo, a conservative law professor at University of California at Berkeley who served as deputy assistant attorney general during President Bush’s first term, said the fact that Miers did not object to the policy “is another worrying sign that her real views on the kind of issues she’ll decide on the Supreme Court are not as conservative as President Bush suggests.”
“When you start setting numbers like that, you can call it a goal or anything else, but it smells like a quota,” he said. “The message is pretty clear — you are encouraging hiring based on race.”
Tradesports is predicting that there’s a 30% chance that Miers will be confirmed, down from 90% at the beginning of the month. She’ll be gone by the end of the week.
Don’t forget, there’s more than one way to cut a turkey. She could pick up votes from moderate Democrats and still sail through.
Comment by Anonymous — 10/23/2005 @ 2:33 am