Harriet Miers Withdraws Nomination

Breaking news! [*cue newscast theme music*]

Harriet Miers has withdrawn her nomination to the Supreme Court.

Let's all hope Bush doesn't nominate someone worse to give us all the finger.

Miers Withdraws Under Mounting Criticism

Under withering attack from conservatives, President Bush abandoned his push to put loyalist Harriet Miers on the Supreme Court and promised a quick replacement Thursday. Democrats accused him of bowing to the "radical right wing of the Republican Party."

The White House said Miers had withdrawn because of senators' demands to see internal documents related to her role as counsel to the president. But politics played a larger role: Bush's conservative backers had doubts about her ideological purity, and Democrats had little incentive to help the nominee or the embattled GOP president...

...The withdrawal stunned Washington on a day when the capital was awaiting potential bad news for the administration on another front — the possible indictments of senior White House aides in the CIA leak case. Earlier in the week, the U.S. military death toll in Iraq hit 2,000...

...Democrats urged Bush to nominate a moderate. "The president has an opportunity now to unite the country. In appointing the next nominee, he must listen to all Americans, not just the far right," said Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts.

Bush, after weeks of insisting he did not want Miers to withdraw, blamed the Senate.

"It is clear that senators would not be satisfied until they gained access to internal documents concerning advice provided during her tenure at the White House — disclosures that would undermine a president's ability to receive candid counsel," Bush said shortly before leaving for Florida to assess hurricane damage...

...White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Miers came to the decision on her own. The administration officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the nomination, said it was clear to everybody in the White House that Bush could not afford the fight.

Awww, poor Bushie. He didn't do wrong, it was da mean ol' Senate. :-(