Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers said in a speech more than a decade ago that "self-determination" should guide decisions about abortion and school prayer and that in cases where scientific facts are disputed and religious beliefs vary, "government should not act."

In a 1993 speech to a Dallas women's group, Miers talked about abortion, the separation of church and state, and how the issues play out in the legal system. "The underlying theme in most of these cases is the insistence of more self-determination," she said. "And the more I think about these issues, the more self-determination makes sense."

Harriet Miers withdrew this morning as a nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court.

ITEM! A super-secret source tells us that Patrick Fitzgerald will indict people today - in fact he will indict between none and fifty-seven suspects on charges which could range from Standing With Intent To Loiter to Genocide With a Loaded Meteor.

UPDATE! An even more super-secret source tells us that Dick Cheney will resign and be replaced, most likely by McCheese! Mayor McCheese is widely respected in Republican circles for his strong fiscal conservatism and his tough-on-hamburgling record. But how will this affect the Mayor's 2008 presidential prospects? Will this be seen as a concession to the powerful Fat Lobby? Stay with us, there is more to come!

UPDATE! Sources from the future have just emailed us with the news that President Bush will also resign and immediately appoint a more popular replacement in a cunning ploy to salvage his approval ratings! The new president: a newly-grown genetic hybrid of Santa Claus and Jesus. Your Fafblog insta-nalaysis!: Santa-Jesus has very high positives with a broad segment of Americans. But will his clone status hurt him with the Christian right?

UPDATE! Super-duper-ultra-secret sources from the inner brain of God have told us that the Santa-Jesus hybrid will devour Vice President McCheese in a televised feeding frenzy! This will spark a new federal investigation to determine whether a crime has been committed, and if so whether it was committed by the Santa half attempting to satiate his uncontrollable gluttonous urges, or the Jesus half in an attempt to atone for the sins of all McDonaldland. QUESTION: how does this fit into Karl Rove's master plan!

UPDATE! We have just been informed that Mayor McCheese is not an actual mayor but in fact a corporate mascot, and that Santa-Jesus is ineligible for the presidency on accounta bein grown in Korea. Other than that everything else oughtta check out just fine.

I certainly hope that if there is going to be an indictment that says something happened, that it is an indictment on a crime and not some perjury technicality where they couldn’t indict on the crime so they go to something just to show that their two years of investigation were not a waste of time and dollars.

Wal-Mart Turns in Student’s Anti-Bush Photo, Secret Service Investigates Him

Selina Jarvis is the chair of the social studies department at Currituck County High School in North Carolina, and she is not used to having the Secret Service question her or one of her students.

But that’s what happened on September 20.

Jarvis had assigned her senior civics and economics class “to take photographs to illustrate their rights in the Bill of Rights,” she says. One student “had taken a photo of George Bush out of a magazine and tacked the picture to a wall with a red thumb tack through his head. Then he made a thumb’s down sign with his own hand next to the President’s picture, and he had a photo taken of that, and he pasted it on a poster.”

According to Jarvis, the student, who remains anonymous, was just doing his assignment, illustrating the right to dissent.

But over at the Kitty Hawk Wal-Mart, where the student took his film to be developed, this right is evidently suspect.

An employee in that Wal-Mart photo department called the Kitty Hawk police on the student. And the Kitty Hawk police turned the matter over to the Secret Service.

On Tuesday, September 20, the Secret Service came to Currituck High.“At 1:35, the student came to me and told me that the Secret Service had taken his poster,” Jarvis says. “I didn’t believe him at first. But they had come into my room when I wasn’t there and had taken his poster, which was in a stack with all the others.”

She says the student was upset.

“He was nervous, he was scared, and his parents were out of town on business,” says Jarvis.

She, too, had to talk to the Secret Service.

“Halfway through my afternoon class, the assistant principal got me out of class and took me to the office conference room,” she says. “Two men from the Secret Service were there. They asked me what I knew about the student. I told them he was a great kid, that he was in the homecoming court, and that he’d never been in any trouble.”

Then they got down to his poster.

“They asked me, didn’t I think that it was suspicious,” she recalls. “I said no, it was a Bill of Rights project!”

At the end of the meeting, they told her the incident “would be interpreted by the U.S. attorney, who would decide whether the student could be indicted,” she says.

The student was not indicted, and the Secret Service did not pursue the case further.

“I blame Wal-Mart more than anybody,” she says. “I was really disgusted with them. But everyone was using poor judgment, from Wal-Mart up to the Secret Service.”

A person in the photo department at the Wal-Mart in Kitty Hawk said, “You have to call either the home office or the authorities to get any information about that.”

Jacquie Young, a spokesperson for Wal-Mart at company headquarters, did not provide comment within a 24-hour period.

Sharon Davenport of the Kitty Hawk Police Department said, “We just handed it over” to the Secret Service. “No investigative report was filed.”

Jonathan Scherry, spokesman for the Secret Service in Washington, D.C., said, “We ertainly respect artistic freedom, but we also have the responsibility to look into incidents when necessary. In this case, it was brought to our attention from a private citizen, a photo lab employee.”

Jarvis uses one word to describe the whole incident: “ridiculous.”