BREAKING: Miers Also Suspended from Texas Bar
BREAKING: Miers Also Suspended from Texas Bar
Yesterday, Harriet Miers revealed on a Senate questionnaire that she was suspended this year from D.C. bar for late payment of dues:
U.S. Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers told the U.S. Senate on Tuesday her ability to practice law in the District of Columbia was briefly suspended this year because of nonpayment of bar association dues.
But she left out one thing. Miers was also suspended from the Texas bar for late payment of dues in 1989. She sent a letter to Pat Leahy today revealing her suspension and blaming it on an “administrative error.” You can read the letter HERE.
It’s not a good development for a nominee whose supporters have been trumpeting her as extremely conscientious –
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales:
[Gonzales] said Miers will do well because she is ‘very detail oriented’ and ‘very meticulous.’
Assistant Secretary of State Kristen Silverberg:
She’s very meticulous…It’s always about making sure that everything is perfect…
Looks like it’s time for a new set of talking points.
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This sort of flies in the face of claims that she is meticulous doesn’t it?
October 19th, 2005 at 6:25 pmIn my working career, one of my jobs was to make certain that my employer maintained his credits, his dues, and his license to practice in two states. It doesn’t take more than a little organization that an aide could have tracked and submitted to her for signature. If Miers is a control freak, then she would be entirely responsible for keeping track of these details.
This may shock you all… but, Miers is a disgrace. It’s truly saddening that Bush has chosen this route. At least with someone like Michael Luttig or Janice Rogers Brown, people could agree they were qualified. (AND then trash them….)
October 19th, 2005 at 6:26 pmSenators demand more information from Miers
Seems like Specter and Leahy have other detail-oriented issues about our “conscientious” nominee.
October 19th, 2005 at 6:27 pmMore incompetence in the FUBAR Bush Whitehouse?
October 19th, 2005 at 6:27 pmI am SHOCKED, SHOCKED that should could not even
stay legal in her profession!
Question: If she processed legal documents
while suspended from the DC Bar (as WH layer)
are they invalid?
Opps, should read:
October 19th, 2005 at 6:29 pmthat she could not even….
What about lawyer client privilege if
October 19th, 2005 at 6:31 pmyou are not a legal lawyer?
#6 – Yes, that is a problem. But, she would go to the Courts who would likely extend the privelege if Bush claimed he did not know. It would be a PR disaster though.
WITHDRAW MIERS!
October 19th, 2005 at 6:33 pmI work at a hospital and most people would be shocked to find out how many doctors briefly lose their hospital privileges due to not paying their licensing fees. The renewal fees here in Massachusetts are $400 and $600 for a lapsed renewal.
I get a list of between 5 and 10 physicians every month. I’m sure lawyers aren’t much better when it comes to keeping on top of this kind of thing.
October 19th, 2005 at 6:35 pm#8 – if that lawyer wants to sit on the Supreme Court, it’s the least they could do…
October 19th, 2005 at 6:38 pmDetail oriented in everything but paying her bills, apparently. Can we get a credit report on this girl?
I hope Harriet’s not trying to blame this oversight on her assistant. My dear old Judge Daddy used to make attorneys whip out the checkbook and write a $50 check for contempt of court if they blamed their support staff for ANYTHING. They learned slowly.
October 19th, 2005 at 6:50 pm#10: Is dad available for SCOTUS? He sounds like a good candidate!
October 19th, 2005 at 7:03 pmBeing temporarily suspended for not paying bar dues is not that rare, even among top-notch lawyers. It usually happens when the mail doesn’t get sorted correctly and the dues notice falls through the cracks. Paying one’s bar dues is something that lawyers should stay on top of, but forgetting to usually has little consequence besides embarassing the lawyer in question. In short, this would concern me about Miers only if her lapses were lengthy or frequently repeated.
October 19th, 2005 at 7:09 pmNED,
Of course she’s a bad pick, she’s a republican. All of you are a bunch of whiney lying incompetents! What kind of moron doesn’t pay their fees and loses their license to practice? If your license isn’t valid, and you practice law, not only is that unethical, but it’s illegal! That’s not just bad, it’s incompetent! Eg. it’s republican!
October 19th, 2005 at 7:11 pmKF,
It happened in at least 2 states. Not a good sign! Then again, who knows, aunt bea on the court might be entertaining!
October 19th, 2005 at 7:14 pmD.C. is not a state. Anyway, doesn’t this “meticulous” lawyer know how to keep a calendar?
October 19th, 2005 at 7:22 pmyou might say she was suspended for not paying her bar tab…
October 19th, 2005 at 7:24 pmhow hard is it to mark it on a calendar or a palm pilot? i have to pay my bills on time, so should lawyers.
i have to say though, it’s tough to bake cookies and send birthday cards AND keep up with stupid things like dues.
October 19th, 2005 at 7:25 pmsmoking gun had the stuff posted yesterday about her dues.
October 19th, 2005 at 7:27 pmwell, damn, ryan 13…i really hate to say this, but you broke the spell… maybe …..these posts by n.e.d. have, HAD, been the most coherant and amiable i’ve EVER read by her/him/it…miracles never cease…
October 19th, 2005 at 7:28 pmthe thing that bothers me most is what is to become of “us” and “them” in the future…will we EVER get along? dream on, i suppose….”imagine”
ok, so she’s been deliquent on different bar dues at different times… sorry… she’s probably got a tab at the local bar as well…
October 19th, 2005 at 7:28 pmGood God, suspended from two bars and fined for not keeping up her property in Dallas.
I’ve been thrown out of a few bars and my home owners association is always up my ass about something.
I may be supreme court material.
New on EWM: DeLay Releases “Earle’s Gone Wild†Video
October 19th, 2005 at 7:42 pmHonestly, if we are going to use the fact that Harriet Mier is not qualified because she is suspend from the Texas Bar on the techinically of her forgetting to pay her dues is nothing but redudant
It’s not different than the comparation that just because the United States has been paid their United Nation’s dues for the passed forty years (thank you Jesse Helms), therefore we are not qualified to be on the council.
October 19th, 2005 at 8:04 pmI know, I know the new talking point will be that she’s a trusted friend of Georgie…ohhh…wait…how about she’s a really hard worker and pays attention to details…oh wait…how about she has an excellent legal mind…oh…wait….
Now the dues thing is a bit of blunder but I can see how it happens. I mean in my line of work the dean via the dept. head via the various other admin people in the dept. send out a constant barrage of emails at the end of the term reminding people to submit grades for the courses they are teaching. Mostly it happens when someone isn’t teaching but has graduate students doing research, etc. You know the student needs a grade, but…. Then again, we are talking about someone nominated to the SCOTUS.
October 19th, 2005 at 8:09 pmSorry to disappoint, but i dont know of any competent practicing atty, in any firm size – large, midsize,or small, that has been suspended for not paying dues on time. I’ve been practicing 15 years. Its really not that hard. You get the bill (and the mandatory disclosure page, which you have to sign), sign where applicable and either pay it or give it to the office manager to pay it.
Now, if you dont have a system in place to pay bills on a timely basis, I guess you might be delinquent. But when you get the second letter, you would expect that there would be holy hell to pay for the person who failed to get the materials turned into the state bar on time.
If you still dont pay, and get suspended, then whose fault is it? In law, an attorney is responsible for the mistakes of his/her staff.
Oh, and is she being reprimanded by the dc bar for practicing law in the district for 4 months without a license?
October 19th, 2005 at 11:43 pmisn’t harriet miers inability to “pay her dues” just a metaphor for her larger failure to “pay her dues”? seriously. the blatent cronyism that launched her and her benefactor to the white house have immunized them to the small details that afflict the ‘reality-based’ community.
October 19th, 2005 at 11:51 pmOops, I forgot to pay my taxes…please forgive me and give me a lifetime highpaying job.
October 20th, 2005 at 12:07 amI’m quite sure most of us here would just love to not pay our bills or dues or whatever and get handsomely rewarded for it! What a joke.
October 20th, 2005 at 2:07 am#28 — Dude… chill out a bit.
October 20th, 2005 at 7:26 amThis is just one more piece in the elegant strategy of “The Ugly Girlfriend” Scheme. After Miers is trashed soundly by a newly united and invigorated Republican base Rove will just trot out a far-right wunderkind who will look like unto a God after Miers. Watch for it, its going to happen.
October 20th, 2005 at 8:43 amSo this is actually three instances of Miers lack of attention to details. She twice forgot to pay dues until suspension 1]from the Texas bar and 2]then the DC bar. Also, 2]she forgot to take mowing/weed removal care of the properties for which she holds responsibility [power of attorney for her Mom who is in a nursing home] until the local government had to do the clean-up and cite and charge Miers for her negligence [I think this may have also involved multiple instances].
October 20th, 2005 at 9:19 amYou don’t have only one shot to pay the dues. They ACTUALLY send a second notice and, if the attorney is of any note at all, the bar director will give a courtesy call and make sure you have received the notice and see if there is a problem. Also, this comes up EVERY year. It’s kind of ON THE CALENDAR, of which every attorney keeps, usually, at least two – one virtual and one “hard” calendar. If the firm has more than a couple of attorneys, the secretary and/or the receptionist will also have a copy of the calendar.
C’mon, I have never heard of any COMPETENT attorney “forgetting” to pay. And twice? Well, if there is a first time, there should NEVER be a second time.
October 20th, 2005 at 11:16 amAccording to her official bio at:
http://pview.findlaw.com/view/2172806_1?channel=LP
…she was a Director of the Texas Bar at the time of her suspension. Can anyone confirm this?
October 20th, 2005 at 11:36 am[...] I’ve been impressed time and again by the power of the progressive network of bloggers and I’m saddened that I will not get to be a big part of the great blogosphere debates on the horizon (Prop 2, the House District 143 race, the Miers nomination hearings, the primary race in the 28th TX congressional district, Abramhoff and DeLay’s indictments, Rove and Cheney’s possible indictments, the Matt Santos for President campaign…) [...]
October 20th, 2005 at 2:57 pmI absolutely refuse to believe that the President would nominate someone this incompetent and so obviously tied to the White House’s fate as Miers without some ulterior motive.
October 20th, 2005 at 4:33 pm1: The unholy Allian of Scalia, Thomas, and Miers protecting everybody from indictment and setting the country back 50 years…
2: Making the next guy look so good that he is a lock. This is where the real stealth loon gets dropped on us.
what a joke of a story. its like not paying blockbuster of something.
October 20th, 2005 at 9:26 pmI am a professional license holder in health Industry and I wonder if I would ever be allowed to practice my trade with a suspended license. It is a disgrace to see our country being reduces to the status of a third world.
October 20th, 2005 at 11:41 pmAnyone who is a member of a state bar associaton (and I belong to three) knows that you would have to ignore dozens of emails, letters, and reminders (including, in most states, certified letters) to fail to pay your dues and get suspended. Very weak. Very weak indeed.
October 21st, 2005 at 3:31 pmI have held a dental license for over 20 years, and I have NEVER failed to pay for its renewal! Furthermore, I do not believe the person above who claims to work at a hospital where 5 to 10 physicians lose their privileges every month for failure to keep their licenses current. That would mean that between 60 and 120 physicians at that particular hospital lose their privileges every year because of tardiness in paying their license renewal. Unless the hospital in question is a large urban hospital like Mass General or Boston Medical Center, such a large number would constitute most of the physicians actively practicing in a hospital, which I find VERY hard to believe!
If this particular lapse had occurred only once with Miers, one might be able to explain it away somehow. But for a nominee to the SCOTUS whose resume is already pretty thin, this only reinforces that Miers is not a suitable candidate–especially when her strongest asset is supposed to be that she is “very meticulous”. (After all, it’s hardly meticulous to forget to pay for your law license renewal.) If Miers had any sense at all, she would withdraw her name herself BEFORE the Senate Judiciary Committee makes her look like a fool!
October 22nd, 2005 at 4:31 am