I didn't expect the nomination of Harriet Miers to be a breeze, but I didn't expect a hurricane either. Well, no one did. She seemed so - bland. Sure, she called President Bush the most brilliant man she'd ever met, and there's that religious trajectory from Catholic to Evangelical Christian, but everyone knows we don't mix religion and government in America - that's the very thing we're wasting lives and money trying to prevent in Iraq. Right?

Well, not so much, as Jon Stewart of the Daily Show would say.

Although the administration's attempts to soothe the riled-up base with Miers's evangelical faith have been hushed, Bush supporters outside the Beltway continue to offer it as her primary qualification.

Former Whitewater prosecutor Kenneth Starr, who hog-tied much of Bill Clinton's second term trying to prove that Clinton had the sexual ethics of a pro athlete, (something most people knew when they voted for him) got into the act saying that Ms. Miers deserves support because she is a “very, very strong Christian.” Let's try that with a Jew next time, or even better, a Muslim.

But it's Miers's role as counsel and conscience to her “cool” boss that ought to be of most concern. Whether overseeing executions in Texas or torture in Iraq, Bush has paid lip service to the “culture of life” while consistently choosing the culture of death.

As governor of Texas, Bush earned the nickname Governor Death for overseeing 152 executions in six years. Although Texas is notably lax in its lab work and defense attorneys occasionally slept through their clients' trials, this compassionate conservative chose death again and again, reportedly even mocking the pleas of Karla Faye Tucker shortly after he refused to commute her death sentence.

Although Miers was running a lottery of another sort at the time, was she there as a friend to offer legal or religious guidance? Putting abortion aside for a moment -- if anyone can - is Miers as pro-death as her boss when it comes to executions?

As president, George Bush continues to err on the side of death. Not only has he brushed aside health care and environmental protections that value life in the broadest sense, he has sent our troops into a war that they cannot win on a pack of lies as thin as their armor.

And while Katrina exposed the lethal neglect and bungling on the home front, some worry that with Bush dragging his feet on anything other than photo ops, the worst is yet to come.

This week the former members of the non-partisan 9/11 commission released a report sharply critical of the Bush administration, Congress, and the F.B.I., for their failure to take action on most of the commission's recommendations to guard against another terror attack.

In the same week, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell until last January, blasted the “Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal” for its disastrous foreign policy and President Bush for his lack of interest in international relations, adding, “If there is a nuclear terrorist attack or a major pandemic you are going to see the ineptitude of this government in a way that'll take you back to the Declaration of Independence."

Finally, as a recent PBS Frontline program reported in sickening detail, this administration has shown its reverence for life by authorizing the use of torture and sexual humiliation at both Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, all in violation of the Geneva Accords as well as human decency.

Despite the Pentagon's attempt to portray the offenses as isolated incidents, documents detailing and approving the new brutal techniques were signed by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and were justified to President Bush by former White House counsel, now Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales.

When Ms. Miers's colleagues were asked to flesh out her resume, they told the New York Times that they couldn't cite an example of her influence on a particular policy or program because she affected them all, that her fingerprints are all over Mr. Bush's record in office.

If that's the case it doesn't matter what her guarded stand on abortion may be or how fervently she embraces her lord. She is as unfit for a seat on the Supreme Court as her boss is for a seat in the Oval Office.

Susan Lenfestey is a Minneapolis writer.