This is not a comment on Harriet Miers, but I don't think Sen. Specter expressed himself as well as he might have. He's been a Senator since 1981 and has sat in thousands of meetings. He must have walked out of some of them with a disagreement as to what was said. Maybe his staff were afraid to tell him.

If she's so detail oriented how'd she forget to pay her dues to the District of Columbia bar? The right to practice law of the chief counsel to the President of the United States was suspended in Waashington. Yes, this is a technicality maybe even a trivial one, but it gives me pause since this is supposed to be Ms. Miers's strength.

Bush is probably the most incompetent human on the planet. He was incompetent on the first day of his presidency, he still is today, and he will be in the future. He is basically a shaved monkey (though probably not as good with tools as a monkey). As sad as this fact is for our country and the world, the ridiculous part is that republicans and conservatives are just realizing it now.

For God’s sake, will somebody give him a blow job so we can finally have him impeached!

For me the most fascinating aspect of the Miers confirmation will be how the Democrats deal with this.

Do they support her and watch the Republicans tear each other apart thereby appearing opportunistic or do they reject her on principle and risk a more right-wing appointment? I'm personally leaning towards the latter but I wouldn't criticise anyone for going the first route.

When someone mentions "attention to detail" as a great virtue--unless it's accompanied by something more definitive, like "powerful insight" or "unquenchable curiosity"--my mind's eye conjures up an image of Reese Witherspoon in "Election", sharpening pencil after pencil with mind-numbing precision.

Attention to detail and "discretion" (another fraught word when applied to high-level apparatchiks) are the booby prizes of the lonely and the untalented. Real people don't have time to be unremitting perfectionists and people who have honest attachments to friends and family cannot dedicate their lives, vestal-virgin style, to a political hack of any stripe.

Lose this nominee. Blame it on Scooter Libby as he sinks helplessly to the bottom of the Potomac, a warning to all who would be discreet at the expense of integrity.

Specter didn't say there were typos in the responses, just that they were inadequate. I think he means from a political point of view. Seeing as how Miers has also be touted as someone who plays with her cards glued to her chest, I can see how opening up now might be a hard habit to break.

If Byron York's sources are correct, Meiers has flunked her second test as well: the interviews on the hill are going so badly they're being cut back.
Will she next flunk the big test and during the hearings see not only her ignorance of constitutional issues exposed but also a rather severe deficiency in what the British call cleverness?
How did Bush contrive this doozy?
Another Carswell? But did Nixon know what he was doing, and intend to demean the court?

If the White House council is so sharp and gives such sage legal advice, how in the f#%! did she get the Valerie Plame and Special Prosecutor thing so absolutely wrong? Um, don't you think the wise decision, a decision that could only protect the White House for a variety of potential outcomes down the road, would be to let Libby and Rove go when this stuff happened. Just say they acted alone and are being let go. Why keep them on, stonewall the press about it, have your the press secretary say they did not do anything wrong and then have everything blow up 2 years down the road. Wow, she is really bright! Exactly the type of person you want on the Supreme Court for twenty years.

If the White House council is so sharp and gives such sage legal advice, how in the f#%! did she get the Valerie Plame and Special Prosecutor thing so absolutely wrong? Um, don't you think the wise decision, a decision that could only protect the White House for a variety of potential outcomes down the road, would be to let Libby and Rove go when this stuff happened. Just say they acted alone and are being let go. Why keep them on, stonewall the press about it, have your the press secretary say they did not do anything wrong and then have everything blow up 2 years down the road. Wow, she is really bright! Exactly the type of person you want on the Supreme Court for twenty years.

One of the strangest things to emerge from the hearings on Brownie Miers just came out of her financial information. this post at Slate via of Tapped by Henry Blodget came out today: http://slate.msn.com/id/2128418/nav/tap1/

Now this is the same Blodget of Internet infamy so I hope he really is telling the truth. that said he points out that Miers' is essentially broke because she is the sole caretaker of her mother and has spent down her IRA and played the mortgage game to do so. If the intersection of issues Social Security, healthcare, retirement and the bankruptcy laws are not fortune smiling on the progressive movement nothing is for this is a situation all to many of us are or will face in the very near future. It should also go to debunk the idea that the Boomers are looking forward to some wad of cash from their parents.

Yes! The tipping point has been reached and for the love please end this and put all of us out of our misery. It seems to be the President is being poorly served during these recent months in office. After the Mike Brown FEMA fiascoe how could he have blundered into this mess...