Can you believe it?

"Um, Chicken Little, . . . the boy who cried wolf, . . . corporate executives, . . . the boy who cried wolf, . . . Rafael Palmeiro, um . . . " Come on, you can get this. Joanne Worley is feeding you great hints, Dick Clark is perched on that horseshoe-shaped railing like the grim reaper, and you're one triangle away from the pyramid. " . . . Um, . . . oh-oh!, . . . . the Bush Administration, . . . Ashlee Simp--." Rush the stage girlfriend, we have a winner. "Things that have lost all credibility" you shout triumphantly. And so it is.

It used to be that their cynical and manipulative handling of the people's business was lauded as a sign of strength and purpose and resolve, but lately the Administration's lies have finally flooded the White House basement and are bubbling out into public view. Enveloped in an ever-thickening cloud of backpedaling damage control, the Administration finds that now even soccer moms, NASCAR dads, and the Main Stream Media (MSM) are starting to pick up on the fact that it is completely full of shit.

On that note, unidentified low-level sources have revealed to Page A-26 that Harriet Miers did not provide a complete work history in her Senate Judiciary Committee questionnaire.

Sources indicate that Ms. Miers failed to mention her tenure as a member of the Martindale-Hubbell/Lexis-Nexis Legal Advisory Board.

In and of itself this may or may not be significant,
however, it absolutely is significant in that this
Administration has already proven that it's word
cannot be taken at face value, so Ms. Miers' exclusion
of her work with Martindale-Hubbell/Lexis-Nexis (a key source of information for many researchers and
journalists -- if knowledge is power then having
oversight and control over the distribution of
information is a pretty significant thing) begs the
question: what else isn't she telling us?

Of course, being the lawyer that she is, her answer to the Employment Record question (#7) is capped off by a nice little disclaimer: "I have made my best efforts to include all organizations of which I was a member. However, I may have been a member of other organizations for which I no longer have records." Sing it sister, consider your ass covered.

It is reasonable that she may not be able to recall every detail about every thing she's ever done -- on the other hand, lawyers usually keep pretty detailed records of things, especially things they're getting paid for, soooo . . .

This is of particular interest given that Ms. Miers was able to give the exact dates for obscure and dated gigs such as her many different positions with the Pioneer Bible Translators dating back to 1983 and a three-month law clerkship in 1969, but drew a complete blank on her time with Martindale-Hubbell just five years ago?



Elsewhere in the bowels of her answer to question #7, she remembers the exact address for the computer lab she worked at from 1963 to 1972, but can't quite seem to remember when she served as a board member for Comerica Bank. She provides details for her association with Dallas Legal Services in 1974, but can recall no dates for her membership on the Tyler Cabot Mortgage Securities board.

Is this total recall or selective memory?

Here's where the Bush Administration now has to reapeth what it hath soweth, baby. If not for the five steady years of lies and deception (examples are numerous, but can be summed up in one word: Iraq), it might be OK to let stuff like this slide, but this is the Administration (and the Congress [yeah, including Democrats]) that nominated and confirmed Michael Brown.

A harmless omission or the tip of the iceberg? What other information has she forgotten, or failed to disclose? And why? Somebody, somewhere should be looking into the discrepancies in Ms. Miers' answers before she is rotely confirmed to a lifetime position on the Supreme freakin' Court. This ain't no FEMA directorship that you can toss around like Mardi Gras beads, this is for life.

For example, did Ms. Miers' time with financial institutions Comerica and Tyler Cabot correspond with any scandals at those institutions? Say maybe during the late 1990s at a time when, say, they might have had dealings with now unsavory corporate characters such as Enron or Service Corporation International (SCI).

Maybe she just forgot. Evidence of her time with Martindale-Hubbell is all over the Internet, as is mention of her insignificant Comerica stock ownership, so it's not like this information is impossible to find. It's not necessarily about these specific blips on her questionnaire -- it's about the fact that there are blips, blips that should be aggressively investigated by the press.

Case in point. Ms. Miers stated in her questionnaire that she served on the Board of Directors for the Tyler Cabot Mortgage Securities Fund, but she could not provide any dates. A seemingly innocent omission, until you start poking around.

In a tiny sampling of the possiblities, the 1995 Capstead Annual Report provides a timeline for the company's first ten years. Turns out that the Tyler Cabot Mortgage Securities Fund was created under the Capstead umbrella in 1991. The report also notes that Kay Bailey Hutchison, currently U.S. Senator from Texas, was elected Texas State Treasurer while serving on Capstead's Board of Directors in 1991. Conflict of interest? Was Ms. Miers with Tyler Cabot at this time? Did she cross paths with an up-and-coming Hutchison accidentally or was Tyler Cabot/Capstead a front for Republican political interests in the early 90s? What influence did Tyler Cabot/Capstead have on the Texas political process and what, if any, part did Miers have in their political activities.

The point is, leaving out the dates for her tenure with Tyler Cabot, a seemingly innocent omission of some seemingly irrelevant information, could be part of a strategy to obfuscate and deceive. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't, but this Administration has lost it's benefit of the doubt and everything about it should be filtered through extreme skepticism.

So with Harriet Miers, are we getting the whole truth, or is it Bushiness as usual? Guess that's the $10,000 question, or maybe the $20,000 question, or is it the $25,000 question?

ADDENDUM (October 20, 2005)

"The real costs of the Medicare prescription drug bill, . . . Armstrong Williams' conflict of interest . . . um, the real costs of the Medicare prescription drug bill, . . . um . . . Jeff Gannon's real identi--"

"Administration lies that the American public found out about after the fact!" Ding ding ding.

Turns out that Page A-26 is not the only one dissatisfied with the level of information provided. Senate Judiciary Committee co-chairs Arlen "The Joker" Spector and Patrick "Cheney told me to go fuck myself" Leahy are also a bit tweaked.

Under pressure from Spector, Leahy, and others to be a little more forthcoming, Miers revealed today "that as a result of an administrative oversight, her Texas law license was suspended for 26 days in 1989 because of unpaid dues." On Monday, Miers also "disclosed that her D.C. law license was briefly suspended last year because of unpaid annual dues."

Again, this is not Rationale for War level deception here, but is does indicate that Congress and the American public are not getting the whole story from Ms. Miers and her Republican handlers. The woman that is Bush's work wife, the one that spoon feeds information to him and is responsible for managing Oval Office paper flow can't even keep her law licenses current?

Why didn't she supply this information in her original questionnaire responses? And why was she immediately able to provide it when questioned about the lack of detail in her answers?

What else isn't she telling us? There's no way to know unless somebody starts poring over her questionnaire with a fine-toothed comb and the Senate Judiciary Committee (including all 10 righteous Republicans) does its job and fully investigates the nominee before confirming a lifetime appointment on her.

Is that too much to ask?