Fondly Harriet

I'm one of those Democrats who's mostly amused by the nomination of Harriet Miers. The whole process has been surreal. My favorite twist so far is that confirmthem.com, a website devoted wholly to advocating the confirmation of Bush's court nominees, has come out against Miers (something I learned from Seth).

Anyway, here's another interesting little tidbit. You can read some correspondence between Bush and Miers at the Smoking Gun. [UPDATE: be sure to read the second item, in which Bush warns Miers, "No more public scatology."] In one letter, Miers thanks Bush for inviting her to the Juneteenth celebration.

Juneteenth is celebrated on June 19th every year. It commemorates the liberation of the Texas slaves by the Union army. Obviously it's a celebration with relevance mostly in Texas, although the descendants of Texas slaves have carried the tradition elsewhere.

I don't know exactly why I find this so striking, except that the symbolism is pretty complex, and Bush and Miers were in the thick of it 9 years ago. Of course some of it is just politics, but it's nice that a Republican governor of Texas saw fit to celebrate the defeat of the Confederacy and the arrival of the Union forces. And Harriet Miers was celebrating with him.