[Mb-civic] Decoding Miers - Richard Cohen - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

Decoding Miers

By Richard Cohen
Tuesday, October 11, 2005; Page A17

Back in the civil rights era, a transplanted New Yorker living in North 
Carolina named Harry Golden published an odd newspaper called the 
Carolina Israelite. With the keen eye of an outsider, he noticed that 
while whites would not sit down with blacks at lunch counters and other 
places, they would stand with them in bank lines or supermarkets. So 
Golden concocted the "vertical integration plan," which mocked racial 
segregation and which, to my surprise, is apparently known to George W. 
Bush. He has adopted it to discuss abortion.

You think I jest, but I do not. A careful reading of the White House 
transcript from the president's recent news conference strongly suggests 
that Bush will not discuss abortion while sitting down, but might while 
standing up. Let's go to what Bush said when he was asked whether, over 
the course of his long friendship with Harriet Miers, he had ever 
discussed abortion with her: "Not to my recollection have I ever sat 
down with her."

Miers, of course, has been the White House counsel and a longtime member 
of Bush's legal team -- both in Washington and, before that, in Austin. 
She was the one who helped him vet judicial appointments, including the 
most recent and momentous of them, the elevation of John Roberts from 
federal appellate judge to chief justice of the United States. It is 
impossible to believe that Roberts and others were discussed without 
either Bush or Miers mentioning abortion. They must have stood the 
entire time.

There is, however, another possibility: code. It's conceivable that Bush 
and Miers developed a secret language for talking about abortion. For 
instance, when vetting judicial appointees, Bush might have asked, "Is 
he pro-banana or anti-banana?" Miers would then look around, point to 
the walls (which have ears even in the White House) and say, 
"anti-banana." Then she would take another file from the pile marked 
"anti-banana" and recommend that person to the bench. Bush, knowing the 
code, might then ask, "Where does he stand on late-term bananas," or 
"bananas on demand?" or something really clever like that. Maybe this 
code was developed by George Tenet, late of the CIA and the recipient of 
a presidential medal for getting nearly everything wrong about Iraq. The 
CIA knows some dandy codes.

The clever use of code words or the ability to stand for a long time 
while discussing abortion might seem far-fetched, but there is no other 
way to explain the assurances that the very important James C. Dobson 
has offered his fellow conservative Christians regarding Miers. "When 
you know some of the things that I know -- that I probably shouldn't 
know -- you will understand why I have said, with fear and trepidation, 
that Harriet Miers will be a good justice," he told his radio listeners. 
Then, referring to aborted fetuses, he added, "If I have made a mistake 
here, I will never forget the blood of those babies that will die will 
be on my hands to some degree." So said the founder of Focus on the 
Family about a Supreme Court nominee who has none at all.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/10/AR2005101001225.html?nav=hcmodule
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