This:
Religious Background
In Midcareer, a Turn to Faith to Fill a Void
By EDWARD WYATT and SIMON ROMERO
Published: October 5, 2005
DALLAS, Oct. 4 - By 1979, Harriet E. Miers, then in her mid-30's, had accomplished what some people take a lifetime to achieve. She was a partner at Locke Purnell Boren Laney & Neely, one of the most prestigious law firms in the South, with an office on the 35th floor of the Republic National Bank Tower in downtown Dallas.
The Miers Nomination
The Times's Richard W. Stevenson discusses the nomination of Harriet E. Miers to the Supreme Court. Plus video of the president and the nominee.
TRANSCRIPTS
President Bush | Harriet Miers But she still felt something was missing in her life, and it was after a series of long discussions - rambling conversations about family and religion and other matters that typically stretched from early evening into the night - with Nathan L. Hecht, a junior colleague at the law firm, that she made a decision that many of the people around her say changed her life.
"She decided that she wanted faith to be a bigger part of her life," Justice Hecht, who now serves on the Texas Supreme Court, said in an interview. "One evening she called me to her office and said she was ready to make a commitment" to accept Jesus Christ as her savior and be born again, he said. He walked down the hallway from his office to hers, and there amid the legal briefs and court papers, Ms. Miers and Justice Hecht "prayed and talked," he said.
She was baptized not long after that, at the Valley View Christian Church.
It was a pivotal personal transformation for the woman now named for a seat on the United States Supreme Court, not entirely unlike that experienced by President Bush and others in the Texas political and business establishment of that time.
Ms. Miers, born Roman Catholic, became an evangelical Christian and began identifying more with Republicans than with the Democrats who had long held sway over Texas politics. She joined the missions committee of her church, which is against legalized abortion, and friends and colleagues say she rarely looked back at her past as a Democrat.
"There weren't that many Republicans in Texas in those days," said Merrie Spaeth, a director of media relations at the White House under Ronald Reagan who met Ms. Miers after moving to Dallas in 1985. "Harriet is what you would call a Southern lady. It is marvelous to watch her in meetings with huge egos, where she allows people to think good results are the product of their own ideas."
To persuade the right to embrace Ms. Miers's selection despite her lack of a clear record on social issues, representatives of the White House put Justice Hecht on at least one conference call with influential social conservative organizers on Monday to talk about her faith and character.
Some evangelical Protestants were heralding the possibility that one of their own would have a seat on the court after decades of complaining that their brand of Christianity met condescension and exclusion from the American establishment.
In an interview Tuesday on the televangelist Pat Robertson's "700 Club," Jay Sekulow, chief counsel of the Christian conservative American Center for Law and Justice, said Ms. Miers would be the first evangelical Protestant on the court since the 1930's. "So this is a big opportunity for those of us who have a conviction, that share an evangelical faith in Christianity, to see someone with our positions put on the court," Mr. Sekulow said.
But other conservatives were unappeased, looking for someone with clearly stated public commitments on social issues like abortion.
While Ms. Miers rarely wore her religious thinking on her sleeve, her gradual tilt toward conservative views resulted in some uneasy moments when she took a break from a lucrative law practice and delved into politics with a campaign for the Dallas City Council in 1989, running for a nonpartisan post. She appeared as a candidate at the Dallas Gay and Lesbian Political Caucus, but even though she said gays should have the same civil rights as others in society, she stopped short of endorsing a repeal of a Texas law criminalizing gay sexual activity.
Religion appears to have influenced her views on certain subjects. In a discussion with her campaign manager in 1989, Ms. Miers said she had been in favor in her younger years of a woman's right to have an abortion, but her views evolved against abortion, influenced largely by her born-again religious beliefs, said Lorlee Bartos, a Democratic campaign consultant in Dallas who managed Ms. Miers's City Council campaign.
"She was someone whose view had shifted, and she explained that to me," Ms. Bartos said.
oh, i missed that. i definitely owe budapest a visit. one pair of friends got married, another pair of friends just had a baby and a nimh moved there! thinking one of the upcoming weekends.... we'll see.
My mates grimacing and gritting their teeth.
What didn't make me G&G today?
On the airplane today, get a cup of water, almost immediately dump the whole thing on my lap. Awesome.
Slappy, Were you nasty to another stewardess today?
Slappy, did you you have a spare set of clothes in your carry on?
I've been "nasty" to a stewardess before, but not tonight, unfortunately.
And no clothes in the carry-on. It surprisingly dried very quickly, and even if I did have clothes I think I would have been a little embarrassed walking to the bathroom with huge wet stains on my pants.
I guess the latex pants were a good idea, then.
Yes. Assless latex pants.
A wise letter from my cousin. Don't get me started.
I always have to gird my loins or the equivalent, become more my flighty attention missing self (her diagnosis of us all, it's her specialty), become more spastic in my writing to contrast with her logical sequencing and clear command of vocabulary, grammar, and penmanship (all to control her self attention).
what is it... my mother told me she was envious of me at seven, and so on. Ok, I give up, she's better. What was it we were vying for?
I can't answer the letter tonight. Well, I can, but I can't click on send.
Basically sad about all this, the distance is further than I thought.
OK, so what is it with, when you're standing in the tram, and you're in there for the long ride, so you especially went to stand mid-way between two exit doors, so you wouldnt be pushed this way and that as people got in or got out, there's always still a baffling number of people who, for some to me unfathomable reason, insist on making their way across to the exit thats further from them, pushing you aside as they do so?
Huh?
osso, don't play her game. just praise her and tell her that yes, indeed, she is so much better. if she has an iota of a brain, which it seems she does, perhaps she will realize her condescending tone... or not, but you will not step down to her level at least.
nimh, it is the game. our seniors play musical chairs each time the tram stops and some seats get empty. you will see the spark return to their faded eyes, they spring up from the perfectly good seat they hitherto occupy and run half across the tram for a seat just like the one they left. some of them are equipped with walking sticks - and they don't hesitate to use them to wipe out anyone who'd dare to stand in their way. thouse without sticks use umbrellas, fully loaded plastic bags or elbows.
i have learned to get on the tram last. it's no use, you get run over by the seniors if you attempt to get in before them. and looks that could kill, or nasty comments about the 'youth these days...'
one funny episode, perhaps i told you this already: a youngster was sitting down in a half full tram, so that all seats were taken. A grandma gets on, hovers above the youngster and says: "Don't you know you should give up your seat for the elderly?" Youngster turns around, eyes grandma up and down and says: "The elderly can kiss my a$$. They elected Mečiar to be my Prime Minister." Grandma turned pale and buggered off to the other end of the vehicle. Not a peep from her.
(Meciar was a semi-athoritarian populist who got votes mostly from old and rural folks...)
i see procrastination is raging in central europe...
haha. i'm on a spell. it's been raging for days here. i can't seem to snap out. i need an evil boss with deadlines and penalties! puhleeeeeaze!
ummm. under a spell, rather. not on... can't even think anymore...
yer just having a spell ...
