by TChris

Harriet Miers served one term on the Dallas City Council. A WaPo article summarizes her mixed record.

She would meet with abortion rights advocates and gay rights activists but tell them firmly she did not agree with them. She backed a redistricting plan aimed at electing more minorities even though conservatives called it a quota system. She voted to raise taxes two years in a row, disagreeing with some colleagues who favored deeper budget cuts.

Miers told gay activists that she could not support the repeal of a Texas law banning sodomy. On the other hand, she stated in a questionnaire for the Lesbian/Gay Political Coalition of Dallas that she supported equal rights for gays.

Abortion rights activists asked Miers if she supported an ordinance that protected abortion clinic patients from harassment.

by TChris

A new AP-Ipsos poll shows that the president's base is increasingly disappointed with his job performance:

The number of people who strongly approve of Bush's job performance has eroded over the last year, most notably among key groups like evangelical voters, down from 49 percent who strongly approved in January to 33 percent now; Republican men, down from 57 percent to 42 percent; Protestants, down from 36 percent to 25 percent; and Southerners, down from 32 percent to 22 percent.

New York City Mayoral candidate Fernando Ferrer came under fire Friday from death penalty opponents for saying that the death penalty is justified in some cases.

"After 10 years of experience with the death penalty, New Yorkers have rethought their position on the issue, and Mr. Ferrer should, too," said David Kaczynski, executive director of New Yorkers Against the Death Penalty, which was influential in virtually scuttling the state's death penalty law this year. "We would welcome the opportunity to sit down with Mr. Ferrer to help him sort through the various issues."

Ferrer has flip-flopped before on capital punishment. He has said he's opposed to the death penalty. He's also said he supports it in some cases. At other times he has said he supports a moratorium until flaws can be removed.

Murray Waas has a new RoveGate article today at National Journal (free link). He adds another aspect: Did Rove intentionally mislead Bush and could that be a crime in itself?

In his own interview with prosecutors on June 24, 2004, Bush testified that Rove assured him he had not disclosed Plame as a CIA employee and had said nothing to the press to discredit Wilson, according to sources familiar with the president's interview. Bush said that Rove never mentioned the conversation with Cooper. James E. Sharp, Bush's private attorney, who was present at the president's interview with prosecutors, declined to comment for this story.

If you are in Houston, Nogales, AZ, Nogales, Sonora, MX, Sunland Park, NM or Anapra, Chihuahua, MX, organizations from both sides of the border will rally for social justice and against the anti-immigrant actions of the so-called “Minutemen Project” tomorrow.

Houston:

On Saturday, October 8, from 3 pm to 5 pm, at Burnett Bayland Park(Chimney Rock & Gulfton), there will be speakers, poets and music to rally supporters of immigrants and against the Minuteman Project's call to patrol Houston streets and US/Mexico border areas. Rally speakers include Juan Alvarez, Teodoro Aguiluz, Rev. Jezer Urena, poets Joe B., Claudia Peña, and singers Chuy Negrete and Xavier Herrera.

by TChris

It is increasingly uncomfortable for Republics to act like, well, Republicans. House Republicans today narrowly passed the kind of bill that, in better times, would have easily prevailed. Clouded in the political cover provided by Hurricane Katrina, Republicans claim the bill will encourage oil companies to build new refineries. Among other obnoxious provisions, it requires citizen's groups that challenge new refineries to pay the refinery's hefty legal bills, win or lose.

Ignoring the rules once again, Republicans held open the vote until they could lobby enough party members to change their votes. Democrats, finally showing signs of life, chanted "shame, shame" as Republicans rejected demands to close the vote. Democrats held together, unanimously opposing the bill.

Finally, long after the vote had been scheduled to close, two GOP votes switched, providing the Republican victory.

Final vote to provide outrageous giveaways to Republican-friendly oil companies: 212-210.

Tom DeLay has moved to dismiss the Indictments against him on grounds of misconduct by prosecutor Ronnie Earle:

DeLay's attorney, Dick DeGuerin, alleged in a court motion that Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle unlawfully participated in grand jury deliberations when he went to a second grand jury last week to seek a second indictment against the congressman.

DeGuerin also alleged that Earle "attempted to browbeat and coerce" the second grand jury to change its decision not to indict DeLay so there would be no public record of a rejection. DeGuerin said the indictment forced DeLay to step down from his job as majority leader, the No. 2 position in the U.S. House, for a crime that did not exist in Texas law.

It's pretty amazing that Texas doesn't have a law gagging grand jurors until after the case is over.

Uh-oh. For Scooter Libby. Reuters reports that Judith Miller has found and turned over notes on an earlier conversation from June, 2003 with Scooter Libby.

Miller's notes about a June 2003 conversation with Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, could be important to prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's case by establishing exactly when Libby and other administration officials first started talking to reporters about CIA operative Valerie Plame and her diplomat husband, Joseph Wilson.

What else happened in June, 2003? One thing is the classified State Department memo that mentioned Valerie Plame. WAPO reported

Great news. President Bush has withdrawn Timothy Flanigan's nomination for Deputy Attorney General. (Background here.) Senator Dick Durbin has just released this statement (received by e-mail.)

“Earlier this week, I asked for a follow-up hearing on the nomination of Timothy Flanigan to be Deputy Attorney General because serious concerns had been raised about his relationship with indicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff and about his role in crafting the Bush administration’s policies on torture. I wanted to make certain that no conflicts of interest would have prevented Mr. Flanigan from performing his duties.”

“While Mr. Flanigan’s nomination has been withdrawn, troubling questions remain about the Bush administration’s torture policies and Abramoff’s dealings with the administration and the Republican leadership of Congress. We have to answer these questions in order to restore the trust of the American people’s trust in their government. I encourage the President to nominate an individual of unimpeachable integrity as Deputy Attorney General. At this difficult time, the American people deserve no less.”

by TChris

Speculation has been that the government indicted David Safavian to pressure him to roll over on Jack Abramoff. Safavian's lawyer today endorsed that suspicion:

"If it wasn't for the open, active investigation into Mr. Abramoff, Mr. Safavian would not have had to enter a not-guilty plea today," [Barbara] Van Gelder, of Wiley, Rein & Fielding LLP in Washington, told reporters following the hearing. "I think it is a leveraging maneuver."

Safavian entered "not guilty" pleas today to charges of obstructing and making false statements.

Eric Muller at Is That Legal goes negative on Miers as a result of the RNC conference call I mentioned yesterday. Armando at Daily Kos says Eric makes some good points. The telephone conference was spin (not fact) by Republicans to garner support amongst their own for Miers. I think we should let Ms. Miers speak for herself at the confirmation hearings before deciding whether to support or oppose her nomination.

I prefer Law Prof Marci Hamilton's take - that all indications are that she's a centrist in the mold that George Bush used to be before the radical right got ahold of him. And that she'll stay that way.

As to what kind of judge she would be, Professor Hamilton writes:

In any event, she is clearly not an ideologue who has devoted her life to the goal of overturning Roe....What will happen if (and when) Miers's personal independence is combined with the independence of the judiciary? I think one can expect that she will not follow political guidelines, but rather, keep her own counsel and make her own, independent decisions. One can only wait in tense anticipation to see what Senator Santorum will have to say about having such a woman on the Supreme Court!

by TChris

From Eleanor Clift:

More evidence they’re drinking Kool-Aid in the White House: David Frum, a former White House speechwriter, reported on his blog that [Harriet] Miers once told him that Bush was “the most brilliant man she’d ever met.” What will happen when she has a conversation with Justice Antonin Scalia? Will her head explode?