Harriet Miers is a Bear Market

The steady pace of bad news for Harriet Miers appears to have accelerated within the last 24 hours, based on the prices at an Internet gambling site trading on her nomination to the Supreme Court.

Tradesports, an Irish betting service that provides a system for speculating on current events, has a contract on the confirmation of Miers that has plummeted.

Prices in a bet like this range from 0 (no chance) to 100 (absolute lock), and Miers hit an all-time low of 11 today. The current price of 20, 30 percent below yesterday's price, means that only 1-in-5 bettors believes she'll make it to the Supreme Court (more graphs).

A skim of ConfirmThemButNotHer.Com shows recent events that might have prompted the drop, from the Wall Street Journal editorial calling her nomination a "blunder" to the bipartisan request to redo her questionnaire to an embarrassing factual gaffe in an answer about the Equal Protection Clause.

My money's on a story that ran yesterday in the Washington Times:

Harriet Miers -- whose courtesy calls with senators in their Capitol Hill offices have been more chaotic than courteous -- has finished the tour, the White House has told congressional aides.

Miss Miers will spend the next two weeks cramming for her Supreme Court confirmation hearings, Republican Senate staffers working on the nomination told The Washington Times yesterday.

The meetings have been fraught with misunderstandings and disagreements, giving ammunition to detractors, both liberal and conservative, that Miss Miers is in over her head.

I can't recall a Supreme Court nominee who stopped making courtesy calls to senators like this -- Miers has met half as many members as Roberts did. If the Bush administration can't get her safely through a private, generally cordial process, the confirmation hearings must be scaring the stare decisis out of them.

Comments

My money is betting on Harry Miers getting rubber stamped. This Republemming congress isnt going to break years of Pavlovian training just on an incompetant crony appointment.

Besides, if the fix is in on cronyism, than all the DeLays, Santorums, and Frists of the congress need to do is appeal all the way to the Supreme Court, where their fix will be in as payback for her confirmation.

The Republemmings were under the impression that nothing they could do would hurt anything, like electing an incompetant and corrupt elitist, or global warming, or whatever.

The sad thing, now that they are waking up, is that it's too late to do anything about it. The corruption is now entrenched, and throwing out the few bad apples won't save the barrel any longer.

I have a suspicion that the "Gang of 14" (The senators who created the compromise that stopped the so called "nuclear option" awhile back) are sending the white house an opportunity to back this one out in a (somewhat) face saving way. Have a look at this:

www.captainsquartersblog.com

The meat:


Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) are calling for the White House to turn over internal documents related to Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers's service as White House counsel, breaking with Republican colleagues who say the boundaries of executive privilege must not be pushed.

That would give the White House a way to pull the nomination, citing the requirements of executive priviledge.

I think what happened here was sloppy. The White House had some idea that they wanted this nomination business off the table quickly, so they tossed up a nominee that they thought would get confirmed in a no fuss, no muss fashion. They didn't do their homework on it, which is why it went from "no fuss" to "major problem". Now, add in the classic stubborn-ness of this administration (a property I like in other contexts, but which I think is serving them badly here) and you get to where we are now. Most administrations would have cut their losses on this one a week or two ago.

How To Bar-B-Que an Armadillo, Tex-Mex Style.

It's very hard to take Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales seriously, when he affirms the wisdom of Bush's choosing to nominate the inadequate Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court.

If I were Latino, I would watch Gonzales very carefully.

It's good that we have a Latino in such high office in this administration. It's bad that he isn't a credible champion of equal rights for Latinos in this country.

There is poetic justice in the rapid increase of the Mexican-American population in the U.S.

The Mexicans who migrate to the U.S. in search of jobs are the native "Indians" of Mexico.

They are socially discriminated against in their own ancestral homeland, just as the Native Americans in the U.S. were and are.

Those Mexicans of "European" ancestry (there is no such thing as racial purity), stay in Mexico, because they rule the country. Most social institutions are set up to benefit them, including, especially, the business structure of the whole nation.

Speaking as a citizen of the U.S. who proudly owns his 'per centage' of Native American heritage, I welcome the day that the Mexican-American people of this country take the reins of power.

Maybe then, we'll finally see social justice in the United States of America.

I say amen, brother! Right on! I am an American, too. And I'm from Peru!

Dig it.

I was looking for a place to ask my question, "Why do the 'Kiwis' always go barefooted?" , when I saw this.

I just had to jump in.

First, let me answer my own question. You can't do that around here, because of all the dogs.

Now, getting back to the point, there are living descendants of the Aztecs, the Mayans, the Mixtecs, the Toltecs, and many other groups in Mexico today.

Only certain ones knew Maria Sabina's joy. She was an old friend of mine. We used to drink tea, and talk about the stars. Those were the days.

You gentlemen scare me. Frankly, I think the inmates have taken over the asylum.

Where is the truth? Is it up, down, or all around? Personally, I think it's neither nor.

But that's just me.

Look, you guys. People think you're crazy if you laugh all the time.

So just chill a little, all right?

(They just don't understand, that Carlos Castaneda is the man with the plan).

Don Juan told me all about it. He said that our ally was near forty miles away, as the crow flies.

There's a riddle for you.

Well, Alan Watts had a few things to say about all that, but not in a Hispano-Americano context.

Cheers, oops.

You people are lame. Che' rules, dude.

I don't have anything to say, I just didn't want an anarchist to have the last word.

Good design!
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