On October 11, Hugh Hewitt wrote:

University of Wisconsin Professor of Law Ann Althouse has a very important post today, because it is the first “turning” post I have seen on Harriet Miers, proving that such “mellowing” is in fact possible, and from within the Academy.

I wonder if Hewitt will consider it important that Prof. Althouse today firmly came out against the Miers nomination, in a post titled I oppose the Miers nomination:

I have seen no evidence of the level of ability that we have an obligation to demand from a Supreme Court justice. This is not a time to be nice or to give an unknown a chance. It’s a lifetime appointment. President Bush made a terrible choice, and Miers did not decline. I was willing to wait for the hearings to make a final call, but the handling of the nomination has been so abysmal: the botched questionnaire, the bolstering with religion, the lack of any coherent defense in the face of weeks of criticism. It’s just too much! End it, already!

Over to you, Hugh . . .

I oppose the Miers nomination.

Regular readers already know this. But N.Z. Bear is asking bloggers to state their position on the Miers nomination in an unmistakable fashion. Hence, this post.

One of these days soon, I plan to collect my reasons in one post. For now, the reasons are summed up in my Judiciary category, or by simply searching my blog for the term “Miers.”

If you have a blog and an opinion on the Miers nomination, go to the N.Z. Bear link above and follow the instructions. You can see which bloggers are taking which positions at the tracking page, here.

Incidentally, Armed Liberal opposes her nomination too.

Via Orin Kerr comes a link to a really cool optical illusion.

[“Postcards from the Ledge” is a semi-regular feature of this site, detailing revelations about Harriet Miers that have driven your gentle host out onto the window ledge.]

I’m still on the ledge. And I have no intention of coming back in — so don’t try to make me!

Here’s the latest reason for my distress: the Washington Post reports today that Harriet Miers favored set-asides for minorities and women while on the Texas State Bar. I had previously noted Miers’s effusive praise for what she considered the imperative of diversity, and the similarity of that rhetoric to that in Justice O’Connor’s opinion upholding affirmative action in Grutter. But this is the first evidence I have seen that she positively favored set-asides.

The set-asides that Miers supported were apparently private set-asides. But today’s article is circumstantial evidence that corroborates previous reports that Miers argued for the Administration position in Grutter, which dealt with affirmative action by the Government.

As I have said before: she’s Alberto Gonzales in a dress.

Folks, this gets worse with each passing day. I was considering coming in from the ledge after people argued that Miers might be merely sloppy with her language, rather than criminally ignorant of the terms of the Constitution. But reports like this don’t do anything to coax me inside.

You shouldn’t have let me bring a computer out here.

UPDATE: More from Captain Ed, and snark from Jeff Goldstein.

UPDATE x2: Ed notes that the Texas State Bar’s policy of encouraging set-asides did have an aspect of governmental involvement:

However, the White House has it incorrect when they claim this as a private enterprise issue. No one can practice law in Texas or anywhere else without membership in the Bar. That doesn’t mean that firms have to remain active in the association, but it doesn’t exactly make the Texas State Bar a voluntary association, either. The government in every state relies heavily on bar associations to license attorneys. That lends an official tenor to the actions of these groups that the Kiwanis or the Elks do not get.

It’s also worth noting that, according to its own web site, the Texas State Bar is “an administrative agency of the judicial branch in Texas.”