Cronyism and Capitulation: The Scoop on Harriet Miers

So you thought that Harriet Miers, George W. Bush's new Supreme Court pick has no paper trail. You were wrong. One of Miers only qualifications for the high court -- as she hasn't an ounce of judicial experience -- is that she was the head of Locke, Liddell & Sapp; a sleazy corporate law firm based in Dallas, Texas.

According to the InterNet Bankruptcy Library (IBL), Locke Liddell & Sapp paid $22 million in a suit alleging it aided a client in defrauding investors. The Dallas-based firm agreed in April of 2000 to settle a suit stemming from its representation of Russell Erxleben, a former University of Texas football star whose foreign currency trading company, Austin Forex International, was a pyramid get-rich Ponzi scheme.

The Miers scandal laden past goes deeper than her ties to corporate crooks in Texas. According to Newsweek, she's also played a role in maintaining Bush's National Guard credibility. As Michael Isikoff wrote in July of 2000: