Harriet Miers' 1993 Speech

Here's the link. No -- I'm not impressed, and I'm beginning to doubt all those reports of Ms. Miers' obsessive attention to detail.

But I'm not about to slit my wrists. It seems to me that Harriet Miers is not advocating judicial activism, as much as she's attacking legislative laziness or cowardice that results in the tough political decisions being shunted to the courts.

As to all the "self-determination" stuff contained nearer the speech's end: Who knows? To me, it's hard to imagine that she's arguing against outlawing abortion as a political matter, given that, as this Washington Post piece points out, four years earlier she had "told activists at the Texans for Life Coalition she personally believed that abortion was murder and filled out a questionnaire for an antiabortion group in which she checked a box pledging to 'actively support' a constitutional amendment banning abortions except to save a woman's life."

It's also inconsistent with her 2000 donation to Donald Stenberg, running for the Senate in Nebraska. Yes, that Donald Stenberg . . . the one who defended Nebraska's law banning partial birth abortions in most circumstances in Stenberg v. Carhart.

It doesn't make sense. And that means she needs to be asked about it at the hearing. Roger Clegg wrote here that "I cannot prove that Miers will be a bad justice. But that is not where the burden of proof lies."

Fair enough. But conservatives who are trying to deny Harriet Miers a hearing aren't just quibbling about where the burden of proof in this particular case lies. To take the analogy just one step further, they're trying to deny one party to the dispute access to the courthouse.