More Info Demanded From Miers

One Senator Describes Nominee's Answers As 'Incomplete To Insulting'

(CBS/AP) 
Specter and Leahy also want her to explain how she would handle cases dealing with the Bush administration, which she serves now as White House counsel. In her questionnaire response, Miers said she would comply with the "spirit and letter of the law ... the Code of Conduct for United States Judges and other applicable requirements."

Specter and Leahy responded that decisions by a justice to withdraw from cases "are more complicated because they are not subject to further review. The committee would like you to address the issues specific to your situation."

The two committee leaders want the answers from Miers before Oct. 26.

Miers' private law practice consisted almost entirely of representing corporate clients. Many Republicans had hoped Bush would pick a prominent conservative with a record on abortion and other issues.

While not a single Senate Republicans has publicly opposed her nomination, the reaction among conservatives has been mostly tepid.

Democrats who support abortion rights also are beginning to question Miers after the disclosure that she pledged unflagging opposition to abortion as a candidate for the Dallas City Council in 1989. She backed a constitutional amendment to ban the procedure in most cases and promised to appear at "pro-life rallies and special events."

O'Connor has cast the pivotal vote in a string of 5-4 rulings in recent years that sustained abortion rights, upheld affirmative action and limited the application of the death penalty.

CBS News correspondent Gloria Borger reports that the 1989 questionnaire revealing Miers' opposition to abortion gave some skeptical Democrats an opening to call for complete candor at her confirmation hearings.

"The questionnaire means one thing: that Harriet Miers needs to make clear to the American people her judicial philosophy, her ideology on a whole range of constitutional issues," said Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.

Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., said Miers has taken "the most extreme position of anyone I have ever known on abortion, assuming she believes that there ought to be a constitutional ban on abortion which would make it a crime except if a woman's life is at stake."

Specter refused to guarantee when a vote would take place.

"There is a keen interest in many quarters on concluding before Thanksgiving, and that's a fine target if it can be accomplished," he said. "But we're going to do it right. We're not going to do it fast."

Democrats and Republicans have refused to give up their rights to hold up Miers' confirmation vote in committee, which was done for now-Chief Justice John Roberts, Leahy said. That means that a committee vote could come as late as two weeks after the completion of the hearings.

"I think that's appropriate," Leahy said. "This is not a John Roberts where we've had a whole lot of material — still not as much as I would have liked — but a whole lot of material, the August recess time to go through it, and a person of a different nature."

Senators have yet to get the confidential FBI background report on Miers, Specter said, and the American Bar Association rating of her suitability to serve as a justice will probably be finished right before hearings begin.