Harriet E Miers

Republican and Democratic senators called on President Bush on Sunday to release documents relating to Supreme Court nominee Harriet E. Miers' service as White House counsel, with some warning that she might not win confirmation otherwise. In discussions on television talk shows, senators of both parties said the biggest obstacle to Miers' confirmation was a lack of information about her capabilities. Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.

House Democrats began laying the groundwork for finding former White House counsel Harriet E. Miers in contempt of Congress on Thursday when, as expected, she failed to appear at a congressional hearing on the firing of eight U.S. attorneys last year. In a party-line 7-5 vote, a House judiciary subcommittee dismissed claims of executive privilege that Miers invoked through her lawyer in refusing to appear despite a subpoena.

Harriet E. Miers, a member of a diminishing circle of allies who came to Washington in 2001 with President Bush, is resigning as White House counsel at the end of this month, the White House announced Thursday. The ill-fated nomination of Miers to the Supreme Court, in 2005, left Bush tangled in complaints of cronyism and in dispute with his conservative allies.

Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, offered an unusual defense Sunday of Supreme Court nominee Harriet E. Miers, saying Miers' critics had put together "one of the toughest lynch mobs" he had ever seen. "What you've had here on Harriet Miers is not a rush to judgment. It's a stampede to judgment," Specter said on the ABC News program "This Week." Miers was being attacked by "one of the toughest lynch mobs ever assembled in Washington, D.C.

The House Judiciary Committee said Monday that it would move forward with contempt-of-Congress proceedings against President Bush's chief of staff, Joshua Bolten, and former White House Counsel Harriet E. Miers for refusing to comply with congressional subpoenas pertaining to the probe of the firing of eight U.S. attorneys last year. Chairman John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.

The investigation into the firing last year of eight U.S. attorneys could soon be moving from congressional hearing rooms to the courts. Congress is threatening to hold former White House Counsel Harriet E. Miers in contempt of Congress for failing to honor a congressional subpoena. Miers, acting on orders from President Bush, cited the doctrine of executive privilege in explaining her decision not to appear before a House panel last week. Congressional leaders have given her until Tuesday to change her mind.

Seeking to quell unrest on his conservative flank, President Bush mounted a defense Tuesday of Supreme Court nominee Harriet E. Miers, insisting that his friend and former personal lawyer was "the best person I could find" for the job. "I can understand people not knowing Harriet. She hasn't been one of these publicity hounds," Bush said during a Rose Garden news conference, his first in more than four months. "She's been somebody who just quietly does her job.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter emerged from a lengthy meeting Monday with Supreme Court nominee Harriet E. Miers saying she told him she believed that the Constitution includes a right to privacy -- an account of the meeting that was later disputed. "She said she believes there is a right to privacy in the Constitution," the Pennsylvania Republican told reporters after a meeting with Miers that lasted 1 hour and 40 minutes.

The Supreme Court nomination of Harriet E. Miers, already troubled by a lack of enthusiasm on Capitol Hill, ran into more rough ground Wednesday when senators from both parties rejected her responses to a questionnaire as insufficient. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) and the panel's top Democrat, Patrick J.

In new signs of eroding support for Harriet E. Miers, the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman sent her a sharply worded list of questions Wednesday on constitutional law, and one of the nation's leading grass-roots evangelical organizations called for the withdrawal of her Supreme Court nomination.