I'm amazed the White House, Dan Coats, or a really good undergraduate intern didn't edit that for her....

Cmon. We've all seen typos from highly regarded lawyers (maybe this wasn't a typo, but comma abuse, isn't the end of the world).

Heck we've seen typos and misplaced commas in SCOTUS opinions.

Yes, "typos" are hard to avoid 100%; I hate re-reading my own writing after the fact because invariably I find a typo or two that eight proof-reads somehow didn't catch. But in Ms. Miers's questionnaire we see (a) a number of errors (not just one) (b) that seem like common grammatical errors (rather than true "typos") (c) coming from a person whose published articles featured similarly odd grammar and syntax.

I think the evidence is pretty clear: Harriet Miers just can't write.

Were the women and minority-owned businesses burning flags? Did we switch topics? I'm confused.

Yes, everyone makes typos/spelling errors. However, most of us catch them before we hand them to the Senate in our application for one of the most powerful positions in the country, which is the most powerful in the world.

The errors are odd. But they are not as deeply troubling (at least not to me) as the proposition that, when voting as a member of the Dallas City Council, she did not need to give a fig for the constitutionality of what she was voting on. Given the central constitutional role that state and local governments are required to play in, e.g., the takings area (can you say Kelo?), her blithe disregard for the supreme law of the land is passing strange.

"Were the women and minority-owned businesses burning flags? Did we switch topics? I'm confused."

Professor Hurt, you made my day!

Obviously the City Council was trying to encourage women and minority-owned businesses NOT to burn flags, but they (the City Council) had to wait to first conform to equal protection requirements.
(tongue firmly in cheek)

"The Council was free to state its policy position, we were against flag burning."

Poor construction here. She changes the number of the actor (council) in the middle of a sentence. Puts a lot of stress on the reader and also makes one wonder about the plural pronoun. Is it refering to the singular council?

I prefer: "The Council was free to state its opinion: It was against flag burning." (colon works better here than semicolon since the second clause is in apposition to "opinion").

P.s. I know my post is poorly written. But my points about her style are relevant.

P.s. Bushitlerchimperorshrubya is a lightweight. I'm really tired of him...

Now I'm getting a bit paranoid: Am I acting like an obsessive law review editor by caring about commas, spelling, and all that?

Phrased differently, in the medical field, for example, I am not convinced that all of the brilliant, top top oncologists out there have actually mastered how to make a cursive "m." They write the top textbooks, they put out cutting edge treatment protocols, they teach and give exams to the next generation of brilliant oncologists, but they often do it by dictating into a hand-held tape recorder.

Does that influence my view of their intellectual firepower? If not, then why is Miers different?

It is not because she has to write for a living - so do the oncologists, and they manage by dictating. It is not because she, through her lousy punctuation, might improperly punctuate and thereby change the law. She is protected by her super-skilled Law Review editor salivating by her side, Strunk and White and the Bluebook in hand, and the clerks of the other Justices.

So maybe I am just a dork, who cannot see the forest through the trees, because I actually cringed when I tried to read the portion of her statement that was cut-and-pasted in this thread. Maybe I need to revisit my instinctual response, or maybe I should at least cut the woman some slack.

Elizabeth, I think you're right to value your snap judgment. Manipulating a pen is different than manipulating your thoughts into words. Doctors aren't valued on their penmanship, but lawyers are valued on their ability to get clear thoughts onto paper in clear syntax. Yes, sometimes lawyers collaborate with others who help them refine their prose, just as doctors may collaborate with others to refine a diagnosis or prognosis. If these errors were in a timed writing that Miers had done in an LSAT environment, that's one thing. However, she had a lot of time to fill out the questionnaire and I assume that she was able to ask others to look over it.

Of course, I taught legal writing, so I am biased by my experiment to believe that at some point, awkward writing represents awkward thinking.

Christine nailed it. The problem isn't misplaced commas and semi-colons. Even excellent writers make those mistakes. What is disturbing is that her writing exhibits mushy, unfocused thinking.

Thinking about how your favorite writers approach a topic; especially writers who deal with complex topics. The very best writers are able to take a complex subject, break it down, and lead the reader through it step by step until the reader understands the subject. They are able to do this because they have a firm understanding of the facts and how they fit together.

A Supreme Court judge must take this ability to another level. They do not start with well understood facts. They are presented with very convoluted arguments, contradictory statements, true and false statements about facts, and frequently contradictory laws, interpretations of laws, and previous decisions. A good judge must be able to separate the fact from the fiction, determine whether claimed laws and decisions are relevant, parse and prioritize laws, and clearly identify whether or not an applicable previous decision was correct or not, and why. After all these steps, the judge must be able to clearly state (in writing!) the facts, logic and supporting laws so that judges in lower courts will be able apply the decision in cases which come before them.

Miers' writing indicates that she is extremely lacking in these skills. She is unable to carry a single idea even through one sentence, let alone through an entire paragraph. If she cannot accomplish even a simple intellectual task like writing coherently, I certainly cannot expect her to perform a much more difficult yet similar job: marshalling the web of facts, laws and opinions to build a coherent and logical understanding of a case in order to correctly judge what the correct outcome should be.

In short, her muddled writing reflects muddled thinking.

And of course, I found a typoin my own writing right after I posted it, in spite of proofreading it! The start of the second paragraph should read, "Think about how your favorite writers approach a topic;"

"If Miers had written Brown v. Board, the doctrine of 'separate but, equal' [sic] would be unconstitutional. Or, perhaps, constitutional. Is segregation a policy decision, or a constitutional issue?"

Oops. Feet of clay. Should have been ". . . it's up to the courts to (1) rule on constitutional cases properly presented to them . . ."

I was earlier thinking that our "conservative" "Republican" president should withdraw Miers, and put in Janice Rogers Brown.

But more recently, I had a better idea...

Bring Back Bork!

Dear Mr Jettison,

Regarding your comments on Mr Fleisher's opinion that "If Miers had written Brown v. Board, the doctrine of 'separate but, equal' would be unconstitutional"; I believe that on closer inspection you will find the entire paragraph to be but a light-hearted parody of Ms Miers interesting approach to sentence structure and punctuation, so well illustrated throughout her written answers to the Senate. You need not trouble yourself with a response to Mr Fleisher on this. He was merely being humorous. A complicated concept, at times, especially, I am aware, for those on the West side of the Atlantic.