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WASHINGTON — Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers collected more than 10 times the market value for a small slice of family-owned land in a large Superfund pollution cleanup site in Dallas where the state wanted to build a highway off-ramp.
The windfall came after a judge who received thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from Miers' law firm appointed a close professional associate of Miers and an outspoken property-rights activist to the three-person panel that determined how much the state should pay.
The resulting six-figure payout to the Miers family in 2000 was despite the state’s objections to the "excessive” amount and to the process used to set the price. The panel recommended paying nearly $5 a square foot for land that was valued at less than 30 cents a square foot.
Mediation efforts in 2003 reduced the award from $106,915 to $80,915, but Miers, who controls the family’s interest in the land, hasn’t reimbursed the state for the $26,000 difference, even after Bush appointed her to the Supreme Court.
The case raises new questions about Miers’ judgment at a time when her nomination is troubled by doubts about her qualifications for the nation’s highest court and accusations that she was chosen mostly because of her close friendship with President Bush.
Nothing indicates that Miers sought out the judge or engineered the appointments to the panel, but there’s also no indication that she reported the potential conflicts of interest in the case or tried to avoid them.
Supreme Court justices, unlike other government officials, define potential conflicts of interest for themselves and are responsible for policing their own ethics.
“If Harriet Miers is confirmed, she’ll be entrusted to make a large number of un-reviewable decisions about which cases to sit on,” said Doug Kendall, the executive director of the Community Rights Counsel, a public-interest law firm in Washington. Kendall said the fact that Miers raised no red flags in the face of “clearly disturbing facts” in the land condemnation case doesn’t say much for her ethical acumen.
Miers quickly replied, writing that she would comply with the new request. She also wrote 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 disclosed that her D.C. law license was briefly suspended last year because of unpaid annual dues.
Originally posted by Carseller4
Harriet Miers is a terrible pick and will not be confirmed for the Supreme Court.
President Bush is such a genius.
Miers' law firm profited from Bush campaign work
George W. Bush's rising political fortunes provided a windfall for Harriet Miers' law firm.
Campaign records show Bush's Texas gubernatorial campaigns paid Miers' firm $163,000 in legal fees, most of it for work done during Bush's 1998 re-election bid
So it wouldn't surprise me if this was all planned out to get a more conservative justice!
Originally posted by Carseller4
President Bush is such a genius.
Originally posted by Carseller4
Harriet Miers is a terrible pick and will not be confirmed for the Supreme Court.