A Supreme Court nomination may not have been the ideal time for Laura Bush to start acting like "Buy One, Get One Free" Hillary Clinton. At least President Clinton only allowed his wife to choose the attorney general. (Remember the good old days when first ladies only got to pick the poet laureate and the White House china pattern?)

Between cooking segments on the "Today" show this week, Laura rolled out the straw man – sorry, "straw person" – argument that the criticism of Miers was rooted in "sexism" (which is such a chick thing to say).

I'm a gyno-American, and I strenuously object.

The only sexism involved in the Miers nomination is the administration's claim that once they decided they wanted a woman, Miers was the best they could do. Let me just say, if the top male lawyer in the country is John Roberts and the top female lawyer is Harriet Miers, we may as well stop allowing girls to go to law school.

Ah, but perhaps you were unaware of Miers' many other accomplishments. Apparently she was THE FIRST WOMAN in Dallas to have a swimming pool in her back yard! And she was THE FIRST WOMAN with a safety deposit box at the Dallas National Bank! And she was THE FIRST WOMAN to wear pants at her law firm! It's simply amazing! And did you know she did all this while being a woman?

I don't know when Republicans became the party that condescends to women, but I am not at all happy about this development. This isn't the year 1880. And by the way, even in 1880, Miers would not have been the "most qualified" of all women lawyers in the U.S., of which there were 75.

By 1950, there were more than 6,000 women lawyers, three female partners at major law firms and three female federal judges. She may be a nut who belonged to a subversive organization, but Ruth Bader Ginsburg graduated first in her class from Columbia Law School – and that was before Harriet Miers was applying to law school.

Women have been graduating at the top of their classes at the best law schools for 50 years. Today, women make up about 45 percent of the students at the nation's top law schools (and more than 50 percent at all law schools).

Which brings us to the other enraging argument being made by the Bush administration and its few remaining defenders – the claim of "elitism." I also don't know when the Republican Party stopped being the party of merit and excellence and became the party of quotas and lying about test scores, but I don't like that development, either.

The average LSAT score at SMU Law School is 155. The average LSAT at Harvard is 170. That's a difference of approximately 1 1/2 standard deviations, a differential IQ experts routinely refer to as "big-ass" or "humongous." Whatever else you think of them, the average Harvard Law School student is very smart. I gather I have just committed a hate crime by saying so.

Contrary to the Bush administration's disingenuous arguments, it's not simply that Miers did not attend a top law school that makes her unqualified for the Supreme Court. (But that's a good start!) It's that she did not go on to rack up any major accomplishments since then, either. Continued...