Item: In the New York Times this morning, my good friend Matt Scully argues, persuasively, that Harriet Miers is a very good and very hard-working person. (I’d add that she’s charming: The one time I met her, it was Matt who introduced us, and, really, she couldn’t have been nicer.) But as David Frum, Jonah, and K-Lo have already pointed out, those just aren’t arguments for putting her on the highest court in the land. I’m sorry. They just aren’t.

Item: On Brit Hume’s show last night, Fred Barnes announced that Miers might have trouble during her hearings, but only if senators set out to embarrass her by asking her about “the third amendment,” “the seventh amendment,” and other, lesser-known aspects of the Constitution. Think about that for a moment. I mean, really. Just think about it. The third and seventh amendment are parts of the Bill of Rights. Asking Ms. Miers to demonstrate at least rudimentary knowledge of the Bill of Rights would represent an unfair and hostile action? This is what the Miers nomination is doing to us.

Item: On his website late yesterday, Hugh Hewitt (who is, lest readers think that those of us on opposite sides of the Miers nomination have fallen into loathing one another, one of my oldest and closest friends) put up this post:

I spoke to Karl Rove an hour ago. His support for the Miers nomination is not merely enthusiastic, but adamant and even vehement. The judicial philosophy question? She has been a member of the White House’s judicial selection committee for three years….Every judicial nomination the president has made for the past three years has come through this committee….The committee pores over the binders and then meets and debates the candidates, and a recommendation is made to the president. Rove described her role as detailed and deep….

Have I got this right? As the result of sitting on a committee with him–a committee that involved poring over great big binders–Harriet Miers is now just as thoroughly qualified to sit on the highest court in the land as is…Karl Rove.