Editorial: Self-inflicted wounds

Friday, Oct. 21, 2005 | 8:20 a.m.

This has been a week that President Bush's nominee to the Supreme Court, Harriet Miers, would probably just as soon forget.

It all started on Monday, when Bloomberg News reported that Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., said Miers had told him that the Supreme Court had correctly decided two privacy rights' cases that had laid the legal groundwork for Roe v. Wade. Specter's account was bound to rile many social conservatives who already were leery of Miers because they don't believe she will overturn the landmark decision that legalized abortion.

A short time later on Monday, Miers disputed Specter's account of their meeting, saying that she never had made such a statement. Although Specter hasn't retreated from his recollection of her remarks, he did try to soften the blow to her and the White House by issuing a statement that he "accepts Ms. Miers statement that he misunderstood what she said."

Then, on Wednesday, both the Democratic and Republican leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committee directed Miers to resubmit answers to the judicial questionnaire she had already turned in. Some of the adjectives to describe her responses? "Insufficient," "inadequate" and "insulting." Ouch.

The senators didn't believe she gave them a full enough description of her legal career, particularly regarding the work she has done in the White House. They also want a much more detailed accounting of whether she or anyone else in the White House gave private assurances to interest groups and others that she would be a reliable vote on abortion and other issues that social conservatives are concerned about.

The doubts keep growing about Miers' nomination and, as it stands now, it appears to be in jeopardy.