Here’s another one of those stories that makes me want to give Harriet Miers the benefit of the doubt because it’ll really, really piss off conservatives (via DailyKos):

For someone both heralded and feared as a potentially conservative voice on the U.S. Supreme Court, Harriet E. Miers has played a key role in exposing college students to some unmistakably liberal ideas.

In the late 1990s, as a member of the advisory board for Southern Methodist University’s law school, Ms. Miers pushed for the creation of an endowed lecture series in women’s studies named for Louise B. Raggio, one of the first women to rise to prominence in the Texas legal community. A strong advocate for women, Ms. Raggio helped persuade state lawmakers to revise Texas laws to give women new rights over property and in the event of divorce.
. . .
A feminist icon, Gloria Steinem, delivered the series’s first lecture, in 1998. In the following two years, the speakers were Patricia S. Schroeder, the former Democratic congresswoman widely associated with women’s causes, and Susan Faludi, the author of Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women (1991). Ann W. Richards, the Democrat whom George W. Bush unseated as governor of Texas in 1994, delivered the lecture in 2003.

As many have already pointed out, this is after she supposedly found Jesus and started hating the right people. Even more troubling for conservatives might be this amusing anecdote (via Kevin) :

Harriet used to keep a humidor full of M&Ms in her West Wing office. It wasn’t a huge secret. She’d stash some boxes of the coveted red, white, and blue M&Ms in specially made boxes bearing George W. Bush’s reprinted signature. Her door was always open and the M&Ms were always available. I dared ask one time why they were there. Her answer: “I like M&Ms and I like sharing.”

Do these things matter at all when it comes to her qualifications for being an Associate Justice on the United States Supreme Court? Yes. They speak to her character. And in matters of justice, matters of character count.

M&M’s?! This is outrageous! When the President was campaigning, he promised a jurist who loves jellybeans….