I just read that second speech, Kate. I actually think Miers uses the Streisand quote to good effect. “[Streisand] was saying [she] ‘would be glad when there did not have to be a “Year of the Woman,”‘ when there were so many women involved in her industry . . . that such an epithet would have no relevance. And how many times have we heard other women express the same sentiment. . .” That’s right. The point of being a trailblazer is not to keep getting awards for your trailblazing. It is to make it possible for members of the group for whom you blazed a trail to be considered, and to make it, on their merits.

Not that it’s relevant to any jurisprudential questions, but it’s interesting that in the same speech she seems pretty strongly to imply that Texas needed to increase spending on anti-poverty programs.