Hugh Hewitt is on vacation this week, so somebody else will have to step up to the plate to come up with some defense — any defense — of the viability of Miers’s nomination in light of her performance on Capitol Hill yesterday.

The most discouraging story has to do with her discussion of the landmark case, Griswold v. Connecticut, with Sen. Arlen Specter.

She confused Specter with her answer about Griswold, which he took to be supportive — only later issuing a statement through his press secretary saying he had misunderstood Miers and that she had taken no position on Griswold..

That was actually kind of Specter. Miers has no business — no business whatsoever — going to discuss matters with Senate Judiciary Committee members if she can’t speak clearly about this case, which has been a central discussion point not only in constitutional law but in the Supreme-Court-nomination hijinks of the past 20 years. Griswold is not an obscure matter. This is the famous — or notorious — marital-privacy case that the ruthlessly honest Robert Bork criticized in his hearings for locating a right that is nowhere to be found in the Constitution.

Bork’s criticism of Griswold was used as a truncheon to beat him with, and ever since, conservative nominees have been compelled to say (doubtless with some disingenuousness) that they support Griswold. Clarence Thomas and John Roberts gave nearly identical answers in relation to the matter 14 years apart.

Miers clearly didn’t know what to say about it. If she can’t handle a simple question about Griswold clearly, how on earth will she survive a few days of hearings?

Add to that calamity an exchange with Sen. Chuck Schumer, who tried to trip her up by asking her a question about an obscure 1923 case called Meyer v. Nebraska (so obscure that Schumer himself confused its name with that of the nominee, as a hilarious story in my own paper recounts). If Schumer is telling the truth, Miers admitted she needed to “bone up a little” before hearings start.

Let’s talk turkey here. If Miers doesn’t get real better real fast, there’s no way she is confirmed by the full Senate.