 | ||||||||||||||
| 
| | ||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||
| Miss out on one of the Daily Devotionals? View the online archives at: http://www.purposedrivenlife.com/devarchive.aspx Have questions regarding the Daily Devotionals? Browse our Frequently Asked Questions at: http://www.purposedrivenlife.com/absolutefm/afmtopics.asp |
| ________________________________________ |
October 5, 2005
In Midcareer, a Turn to Faith to Fill a Void By EDWARD WYATT and SIMON
ROMERO DALLAS, Oct. 4 - By 1979, Harriet E. Miers, then in her mid-30's, had
accomplished what some people take a lifetime to achieve. She was a partner
at Locke Purnell Boren Laney & Neely, one of the most prestigious law firms
in the South, with an office on the 35th floor of the Republic National Bank
Tower in downtown Dallas.
But she still felt something was missing in her life, and it was after a
series of long discussions - rambling conversations about family and
religion and other matters that typically stretched from early evening into
the night - with Nathan L. Hecht, a junior colleague at the law firm, that
she made a decision that many of the people around her say changed her life.
"She decided that she wanted faith to be a bigger part of her life,"
Justice Hecht, who now serves on the Texas Supreme Court, said in an
interview. "One evening she called me to her office and said she was ready
to make a commitment" to accept Jesus Christ as her savior and be born
again, he said. He walked down the hallway from his office to hers, and
there amid the legal briefs and court papers, Ms. Miers and Justice Hecht
"prayed and talked," he said.
She was baptized not long after that, at the Valley View Christian Church.
It was a pivotal personal transformation for the woman now named for a seat
on the United States Supreme Court, not entirely unlike that experienced by
President Bush and others in the Texas political and business establishment
of that time.
Ms. Miers, born Roman Catholic, became an evangelical Christian and began
identifying more with Republicans than with the Democrats who had long held
sway over Texas politics. She joined the missions committee of her church,
which is against legalized abortion, and friends and colleagues say she
rarely looked back at her past as a Democrat.
"There weren't that many Republicans in Texas in those days," said Merrie
Spaeth, a director of media relations at the White House under Ronald Reagan
who met Ms. Miers after moving to Dallas in 1985. "Harriet is what you would
call a Southern lady. It is marvelous to watch her in meetings with huge
egos, where she allows people to think good results are the product of their
own ideas."
To persuade the right to embrace Ms. Miers's selection despite her lack of a
clear record on social issues, representatives of the White House put
Justice Hecht on at least one conference call with influential social
conservative organizers on Monday to talk about her faith and character.
Some evangelical Protestants were heralding the possibility that one of
their own would have a seat on the court after decades of complaining that
their brand of Christianity met condescension and exclusion from the
American establishment.
In an interview Tuesday on the televangelist Pat Robertson's "700 Club,"
Jay Sekulow, chief counsel of the Christian conservative American Center for
Law and Justice, said Ms. Miers would be the first evangelical Protestant on
the court since the 1930's. "So this is a big opportunity for those of us
who have a conviction, that share an evangelical faith in Christianity, to
see someone with our positions put on the court," Mr.
Sekulow said.
But other conservatives were unappeased, looking for someone with clearly
stated public commitments on social issues like abortion.
While Ms. Miers rarely wore her religious thinking on her sleeve, her
gradual tilt toward conservative views resulted in some uneasy moments when
she took a break from a lucrative law practice and delved into politics with
a campaign for the Dallas City Council in 1989, running for a nonpartisan
post. She appeared as a candidate at the Dallas Gay and Lesbian Political
Caucus, but even though she said gays should have the same civil rights as
others in society, she stopped short of endorsing a repeal of a Texas law
criminalizing gay sexual activity.
Religion appears to have influenced her views on certain subjects. In a
discussion with her campaign manager in 1989, Ms. Miers said she had been in
favor in her younger years of a woman's right to have an abortion, but her
views evolved against abortion, influenced largely by her born-again
religious beliefs, said Lorlee Bartos, a Democratic campaign consultant in
Dallas who managed Ms. Miers's City Council campaign.
"She was someone whose view had shifted, and she explained that to me,"
Ms. Bartos said.
Still, pragmatism, not ideology, seems to have guided Ms. Miers on most
issues in her brief period in public office before she went on in 1995 to be
named by Gov. George W. Bush to head the Texas State Lottery and then
followed him to Washington.
One of the most controversial issues before the Dallas City Council during
Ms. Miers's single term that ended in 1991 was a battle over whether the
city should adopt a plan doing away with council members elected at large,
an election method that minority groups in Dallas criticized as
marginalizing them from municipal politics.
Ms. Miers, elected as an at-large council member, initially favored the
at-large system, but her position evolved to support a proposal that would
create a collection of different districts in the city. This was adopted and
eventually led to greater representation of blacks and Hispanics in Dallas.
While known as a moderate conservative, "Harriet didn't really distinguish
herself," said Domingo Garcia, a lawyer who was elected to the Council in
the early 1990's after the bitter redistricting fight. "She wasn't a leader
and wasn't furniture," said Mr. Garcia, a former mayoral candidate in Dallas
and the national civil rights chairman for the League of United Latin
American Citizens. "She was in between."
And yet Ms. Miers, known for her thorough study of the issues before the
Council, acquired the grudging respect of some colleagues across the
political spectrum. "You might think she's a pushover because she looks meek
and humble," said Al Lipscomb, a former city council member. "But can
America handle a Republican conservative who's fair? She is a tigress when
it comes to the law."
The Dallas of political battles over minority and gay rights, of course, was
substantially different from the predominantly white and segregated city
where she was born the fourth of five children. Few schools were more
emblematic of the old Dallas than Hillcrest High School, from which Ms.
Miers graduated in 1963.
"It was a school in the sense like schools were supposed to be," said Ron
Natinsky, a classmate of Ms. Miers who is now on the Dallas City Council,
referring to an atmosphere of respect and decorum. "Teachers were addressed
as ma'am or sir."
The strait-laced student body at Hillcrest was also almost entirely white,
with integration in that part of Dallas several years off when Ms. Miers
graduated, Mr. Natinsky said. Her yearbook from 1963 shows photographs of a
blond, smiling senior, described by classmates as "efficient, sweet and
sincere, good at sports from what we hear." Mr. Natinsky remembered her as
someone involved in clubs and school activities, but not part of the "cool
crowd."
"She was almost an unseen person at school," Mr. Natinsky said.
Ms. Miers sometimes attended Mass at St. Jude Chapel in downtown Dallas, but
before embracing evangelical Protestantism, her experience with religion was
lukewarm and her attendance sporadic, Justice Hecht said.
Her friends say that there is much about her world experience that shapes
her attitudes and views, from her rise in a male-dominated legal profession
to her years of loyalty and counsel to Mr. Bush in Texas and Washington.
But as important as her professional trajectory, friends and family of Ms.
Miers say, is the influence of religion on her approach to issues of
political and legal importance. After joining Valley View Christian Church,
she began teaching a Sunday night class for first, second and third graders
at the church, called Whirlybirds.
Vickie Wilson, the office manager at Valley View, knew Ms. Miers from the
time she began attending the church in 1979; Ms. Wilson's two daughters, now
27 and 30, were in Ms. Miers's Sunday youth group. Even though it was known
that she was a high-powered lawyer in Dallas, "she never used the church to
further her political career," Ms. Wilson said.
"She never took a role where she was trying to stand out front," Ms.
Wilson said. "She put herself in servant roles, making coffee every Sunday
morning and putting doughnuts out."
A close relationship with Justice Hecht - also a longtime member of Valley
View - who frequently appears with Ms. Miers at social functions in
Washington and in Texas, has been a steady feature of her life for nearly 30
years. Justice Hecht is known as one of the most conservative members of the
Republican-dominated Texas Supreme Court.
Newspapers in Texas have reported that Justice Hecht and Ms. Miers were
romantically involved, and when asked in an interview whether that was still
the case, Justice Hecht responded that they were close, without going into
great detail. "She works in Washington, I work in Austin,"
Justice Hecht said. "We have dinner when she's here; if she invites me to
Washington I happily go. We talk on the phone all the time."
Justice Hecht and Ms. Miers spoke on Sunday evening, but she did not tell
him about the pending announcement that she had been offered the nomination,
he said. "She's a stickler for the rules," he said. He never asked Ms. Miers
how she would vote on the issue of abortion if it came before the Supreme
Court, he said. "She probably wouldn't answer, she wouldn't view it as
appropriate."
"Yes, she goes to a pro-life church," Justice Hecht said, adding, "I know
Harriet is, too." The two attended "two or three" anti-abortion fund-raising
dinners in the early 1990's, he said, but added that she had not otherwise
been active in the anti-abortion movement. "You can be just as pro-life as
the day is long and can decide the Constitution requires Roe" to be upheld,
he said.
Apart from the questions about abortion and other issues Ms. Miers will face
in confirmation hearings, the strong tie she and Justice Hecht have to their
church is undergoing a test. The congregation at Valley View is in the
middle of a schism, and Mr. Hecht said he and Ms. Miers are siding with the
splinter groups that are forming a new church under Valley View's longtime
pastor, Ron Key.
Church members said in interviews that Mr. Key was fired several weeks ago
by the Valley View board of elders after he refused to take a less prominent
role in the church's leadership. The members said that the pastor and the
board members disagreed on several matters, including the appointments of
new ministers and whether the church should adopt more contemporary forms of
worship services to try to attract newer and younger members.
Dr. Barry McCarty, the Valley View pastor, said Ms. Miers has often asked
the congregation to pray for her and the president, and he added that even
if she is joining the roughly 150 members that have left to start a new
church, he believes that the Valley View members will continue those
prayers. "Our particular congregation is committed to starting new
churches," Dr. McCarty said. "It's something they do with our blessing."
David D. Kirkpatrick contributed reporting from Washington for this article.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
Contributed by WESLEY BELL...
IBS Director
Tuesday, October 4, 2005
Anger in
Legislators from the pro-independence Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) yesterday criticised international search engine Google for succumbing to mainland pressure and listing the island as a
They asked the public to support its "one person, one e-mail" campaign to protest against Google and demanded that it correct the reference.
"It is absurd for Google to ignore the fact that we are not a part of
In its map section, Google lists the island as "
The search engine once revised the description after a protest from a pro-independence group, but changed it back just days later, apparently under pressure from the mainland, Mr Huang said.
"Google should never have yielded to the pressure of
Mr Huang and TSU colleague Tseng Tsang-teng said Google should quickly drop the controversial reference and change it to "
The ministry and the office said they would ask their overseas representative offices to lodge formal protests with Google and demand a correction.
SCMP.com is the premier information resource on Greater China. With a click, you will be able to access information on Business, Markets, Technology and Property in the territory. Bookmark SCMP.com for more insightful and timely updates on
Published in the
