AP: Harriet Miers Not Rich Enough for the Court?

The nomination of Harriet Miers to the U.S. Supreme Court has produced lots of reaction from the left and particularly from the right. There have been charges that she lacks an education from a top-rated law school, lacks a certifiably conservative background and, since she has never been a judge, might be lax in adhering to the Constitution.

And now she lacks what the Associated Press apparently considers an important factor: the financial wherewithal necessary for the position. That’s right, the AP is questioning whether Harriet Miers is rich enough to sit on the highest court in the land.

In a sneeringly elitist piece titled, “Miers Wealth Shrank During Time in D.C.,” the AP, after years of denigrating President Bush, Dick Cheney and anyone else in the Administration as rich, greedy tools of corporate America, now informs us that:

Harriet Miers came to the White House in 2001 from a major Texas law firm, boasting a nearly $624,000-a-year salary and assets of as much as $1.1 million. More than four years later, as Bush's nominee for the Supreme Court and his White House counsel, Miers makes just $161,000 and her holdings could be as little as half what they were.

Not only is she insufficiently wealthy, they consider her recent middle-classness a “mystery:”

A mystery since the president announced Miers as his pick to replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor is how someone who was a lawyer for 28 years at one of the South's largest firms -- representing major corporate clients and including stints as the firm's president and co-managing partner -- has come to have relatively little wealth.

Having whetted the reader’s suspicion as to how Miss Miers might have illicitly squandered her former holdings, author Jennifer Loven then speculates that the cash might have gone for the loving and expensive care of her elderly mother, or worse; “Miers also has given 10 percent to 12 percent of her earnings – ‘if not more’ -- to the evangelical Valley View Christian Church in Dallas.”

Following on the heels of last month’s story on John Roberts’ hometown being too white, these important financial revelations of Miss Miers demonstrate that the AP truly recognizes the vital issues pertinent to one’s fitness to serve on the high court.