Incestuous Administration

Everyone is all tied up with everyone else, and the same names keep popping up over and over in different scandals than the ones during which we may have learned their names—Abramoff’s got ties to the White House, Bolton’s got ties to Judy Miller, etc. Yesterday, MSNBC ran the following photo alongside an AP story on Harriet Miers with a cryptic caption:


Harriet Miers, at the time staff secretary, is seen on Aug. 6, 2001, briefing President Bush at his ranch in Crawford, Texas.
Familiar date, no? Today E&P notes:

Indeed, that was the date, a little over a month before 9/11, that President Bush was briefed on the now-famous “PDB” that declared that Osama Bin Laden was “determined” to attack the U.S. homeland, perhaps with hijacked planes. But does that mean that Miers had anything to do with that briefing?

As it turns out, yes, according to Tuesday's Los Angeles Times. An article by Richard A. Serrano and Scott Gold observes that early in the Bush presidency “Miers assumed such an insider role that in 2001 it was she who handed Bush the crucial 'presidential daily briefing' hinting at terrorist plots against America just a month before the Sept. 11 attacks.”

Awesome choice, Mr. President. You’ve done the nation proud.

Meanwhile, there’s no information at all at Give ‘Em Hell, Harry about Miers at all, no less an explanation as to why the Senate Minority Leader would endorse this woman.