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Don’t you just love a good catfight? Another one is shaping up between evangelical leader James Dobson and Sen. Ken Salazar over Harriet Miers’ nomination to the Supreme Court.
Dobson, who got a heads-up from Karl Rove this past weekend, before the President announced her nomination, has given Miers an initial thumbs-up.
Afterwards, Dobson told the New York Times he supported her because of her religious faith and because he has reason to believe she opposes abortion. “Some of what I know I am not at liberty to talk about,” he told the newspaper.
Now Salazar wants to know what information Dobson got from the White House that he’s not sharing.
“It’s troublesome to me the comment would be made,” Salazar said at a Tuesday press conference in Denver. “It seems to me, all of the (information) the White House knows about Harriet Miers should be made available to the Senate and the American people. If they’re making information available to Dr. Dobson — whom I respect and disagree with from time to time — I believe that information should be shared equally with a U.S. Senator.”
….”If information is being shared with people in a hidden and secretive way, I think that’s wrong,” Salazar said. “We need to know who it is that we’re confirming to this lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court.”
The New York Times reported that the White House began a series of conference calls to right wing groups early Monday morning, to assure them Miers was one of them. Dobson’s rep now says there was no secret information. There’s a piece missing from this puzzle. Keep digging, Sen. Salazar.
For the record, I met Ms. Miers through a legal organizations whose board we both served on. She resigned around 2000, and we sat next to each other at the last meeting she attended and chatted at length. Not about politics, she knew I was a liberal and I knew she was President Bush’s personal lawyer, so we didn’t go there, but we covered a lot of other subjects, both law and non-law related. I have no doubt she has both the legal intellect and integrity necessary to be a Supreme Court Justice. I also don’t think she’d let her faith interfere with her duties as a Justice. I think the other distinguished members of that board would agree.
Nonetheless, we’re talking about one of the most important jobs in the country — to all Americans. The Senate needs to obtain as much information about her as possible. The White House shouldn’t be whispering in private what they won’t tell Senators or the rest of us in public.