White House legal counsel Harriet Miers resigned from her post Thursday effective January 31. Press Secretary Tony Snow gave no specific reason for her departure except to say that she has been working at the White House for six years. In a White House press briefing he added: Harriet is a very special person in this White House. She is beloved not only because she is a really good human being, she's an extraordinarily wonderful human being, but also somebody who is a very careful and scrupulous lawyer, a ferocious defender of the Constitution, and somebody who was also deeply loyal to the President, and just somebody who is a delight to work with. So it is one of these things where everybody really -- it's very bittersweet, and you can get that from the tenure of the -- tenor of her note. She has decided that it's time to move on. She and Josh Bolten have had a series of conversations in recent days about this, and she made her decision yesterday.
Miers, formerly President Bush's personal lawyer and the first female president of the Texas State Bar Association, was Bush's first nominee to replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor on the Supreme Court in 2005. The soft-spoken Miers has described herself as a "Texan through and through." White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove said she can be "tough as nails." Bush once called her "a pit bull in size 6 shoes." She was Bush‘s personal lawyer in Texas, took on the thankless job of cleaning up the Texas Lottery when he was governor, and followed him to Washington to serve as staff secretary until Bush appointed her White House counsel, succeeding Alberto Gonzales when he was named attorney general. Miers withdrew her nomination after intense scrutiny by lawmakers and observers wary of her lack of judicial experience.
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