This will makethe liberal denizens of this site cringe, but Ann Coulter is a must-read this morning:
The only sexism involved in the Miers nomination is the administration’s claim that once they decided they wanted a woman, Miers was the best they could do. Let me just say, if the top male lawyer in the country is John Roberts and the top female lawyer is Harriet Miers, we may as well stop allowing girls to go to law school.
Ah, but perhaps you were unaware of Miers’ many other accomplishments. Apparently she was THE FIRST WOMAN in Dallas to have a swimming pool in her back yard! And she was THE FIRST WOMAN with a safety deposit box at the Dallas National Bank! And she was THE FIRST WOMAN to wear pants at her law firm! It’s simply amazing! And did you know she did all this while being a woman?
I don’t know when Republicans became the party that condescends to women, but I am not at all happy about this development. This isn’t the year 1880. And by the way, even in 1880, Miers would not have been the “most qualified” of all women lawyers in the U.S., of which there were 75.
By 1950, there were more than 6,000 women lawyers, three female partners at major law firms and three female federal judges. She may be a nut who belonged to a subversive organization, but Ruth Bader Ginsburg graduated first in her class from Columbia Law School – and that was before Harriet Miers was applying to law school…
Which brings us to the other enraging argument being made by the Bush administration and its few remaining defenders – the claim of “elitism.” I also don’t know when the Republican Party stopped being the party of merit and excellence and became the party of quotas and lying about test scores, but I don’t like that development, either.
The average LSAT score at SMU Law School is 155. The average LSAT at Harvard is 170. That’s a difference of approximately 1 1/2 standard deviations, a differential IQ experts routinely refer to as “big-ass” or “humongous.” Whatever else you think of them, the average Harvard Law School student is very smart. I gather I have just committed a hate crime by saying so.
Contrary to the Bush administration’s disingenuous arguments, it’s not simply that Miers did not attend a top law school that makes her unqualified for the Supreme Court. (But that’s a good start!) It’s that she did not go on to rack up any major accomplishments since then, either.
Read the whole thing. And just to clear up somethings from other comments threads, Attorney General Gonzalez has a much more impressive resume than Miers. He was also, as it should be pointed out, opposed by a great number on the left and the right.
And this correspondence between Bush and Miers, in light of the position he has now nominated her for, makes me cringe. (via Drudge)
Also in Miers news, John Fund describes the botched vetting process for Harriet Miers.