A Nomination Implosion, and More on Harriet's Handwriting

Because Article III Groupie has been so busy at work this week, she has lost control over the Harriet Miers nomination. But then again, so has the White House!

A3G will now endeavor to dip her toe back in the Harriet Miers waters -- or swamp, as the case may be. Getting back up to speed is difficult, however, because this past week has been so full of disasters with respect to this nomination. Here are a few of the more prominent ones:

--the controversial conference call with Christian conservatives, as reported by John Fund (which could result in Justice Nathan Hecht and Judge Ed Kinkeade being hauled before the Senate Judiciary Committee);

--the cynical yet incompetent White House spin job concerning Miers, her religion, and her views on Roe;

--the embarrassing news that Harriet Miers failed to pay her Texas and D.C. bar dues (i.e., "Harriet Miers pulls a Thomas Griffith," not unlike "Kimba Wood pulls a Zoe Baird"*); and

--the humiliation of Harriet Miers having to redo many of her "inadequate," "incomplete," and "insulting" responses -- which she handed in late, by the way -- to the Senate Judiciary Committee questionnaire. (Miers is trying to frame this optimistically, but her take is unpersuasive.)

How can A3G ever catch up with her Harriet Miers blogging? There's just so much deserving of mockery!

Well, let's start small. In Harriet's Handwriting: She's One Loopy Lady!, A3G analyzed a few Harriet Miers-related documents that were recently released to the public. You can access the documents that A3G reviewed here (see the numbered links at the bottom of the page).

A3G would now like to supplement her earlier comments, by passing along these additional observations from a UTR reader (again, documents are identitifed by Bates number):

Miers's reputation in the White House as a grammarian and proofreader extraordinaire is quite undeserved. When it comes to both technical correctness and prose styling, she is no John Roberts.

--000059: "you are not younger than me." Me???

--000056: "Thank you very much for taking the time our [sic] of your busy schedule to meet Larry Littwin last week."

--000054: "All I hear is how great you and Laura are doing. The dinner here was great -- especially the speech! Keep up all the great work."

--000022: "The major drawback to speaking at this particular event is as I understand the event, the speaker has to include at least some remarks about me."

--000001: "Thanks also for yours and all your family's personal sacrifice."

--000004: "For example, charging unconscionably high fees are [sic] prohibited...."

--000005: "And an attempt to unjustifiably proscribe the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court in matters at the heart of the practice of law in this State is bad public policy, if allowed."

--000005: "The passage of this proposed law squarely raises the issue of the special interests laws for the benefit of those who have the wealth and power to cause to be passed self-protective legislation."

UGH!!! As David Brooks aptly observed in a recent New York Times column, in which he quoted at length from tortured prose penned by Harriet Miers, "Of all the words written about Harriet Miers, none are more disturbing than the ones she wrote herself.... [T]he quality of [her] thought and writing doesn't even rise to the level of pedestrian."

To paraphrase Green Day, A3G says: "Wake Me Up When [October] Ends..."

* Yes, you're right. Judge Wood and Zoe Baird should not be lumped together, as A3G has previously acknowledged:

In 1993, [Kimba Wood] was nominated for the post of Attorney General by President Clinton (who is known to have a weakness for dark-haired beauties). But she was forced to withdraw in the wake of a "Nannygate" scandal. As Lance Morrow of Time magazine explains in this column, Judge Wood had actually followed the law in her employment of a nanny. But the Clinton Administration abandoned her nomination anyway, having just been burned by the nanny scandal of Zoe Baird, the first nominee for the post.

Comments

[strat440]

Link

Grammarian is right; it should be "I," for the reason stated. But "me" is used often in speech and literature, according to this link.

Can someone please whip Grammarian with a wet noodle? I'm with Eh Nonymous on this one.

One thing we can all agree about, though: Harriet Miers is a pretty poor writer. (Or should that be "One thing about which we can all agree"?)

[Grammarian]

It should be: "You are not younger than I." There is an understood "am" at the end of that: "You are not younger than I [am]."

Similarly, if someone asks, "Who's there?", you should answer, "It is I," not "It is me."

[Eh Nonymous]

Just to heap scorn on this whole line of impeachment inquiry, what the heck is supposed to be wrong with "you are not younger than me"? Am I younger than you? Are you younger than me? No, you are not younger than me.

ME. Not I, me. Than me. Me is the object. You is the subject. I am young. Nobody is younger than me. Nobody is younger than I am. Every sentence above is grammatically correct, no matter whether formal or semiformal.

And anybody who says different should be given fifty strokes with a wet noodle. Y'all make me sic. [sic]

[Robert]

If it is true that Miers once described W as the "most brilliant man she ever met," that alone should disqualify her from serving on the on the Court. That says volumes about her supposed intellectual abilities. Or it suggests she doesn't get out much!