Demagogue

The problem with a SCOTUS nominee without much of a paper trail is that the few odd items that are cobbled together may create a rather odd, uneven mosaic. For instance, by way of Americablog, we have this: a Texas GLBT group's questionairre (pdf) filled out by Harriet Miers in 1989 when she was running for Dallas city council. Frankly, it's sort of peculiar that she filled it out at all and a few of her answers are quite surprising by both Dallas and 1989 standards. I suspect more things like this will come to light and will likely get inordinate attention because her paper trail is so short. In less than 24 hours we've already read stories about her donations to Al Gore for President in 1988 and the things people who know her say about her, such as her pastor or friend/ex-boyfriend/SCOTX justice. People are going to be looking into all kinds of alternative sources to get a sense of who this woman is, what she is about and what she thinks.

I do wonder if that means questions about gay civil right are now fair game in the hearings, couldn't someone ask her directly about her answers on the survey?

Update: More info trickling out, her former campaign manager says that Miers "is on the extreme end of the anti-choice movement." Not shocking, but it proves my point that in leiu of a paper trail were going to get lots of odd, subjective stuff like this.

Also, Miers has written a few things, including a piece on combating criminal behavior by addressing its "root causes":

We all can be active in some way to address the social issues that foster criminal behavior, such as: lack of self-esteem or hope in some segments of our society, poverty, lack of health care (particularly mental health care), lack of education, and family dysfunction.

Sheesh, she sure sounds a little lefty to me! Uh oh!