WASHINGTON -- President Bush's effort to shift the discussion of Harriet Miers' Supreme Court nomination toward her résumé and away from her views on abortion ran headlong Monday into a report that two of her friends had assured conservatives that she would vote to overturn the landmark ruling legalizing abortion.

The White House distanced itself from an Oct. 3 conference call that The Wall Street Journal said involved conservative leaders and Miers' friends: federal Judge Ed Kinkeade of Dallas and Texas Supreme Court Justice Nathan Hecht.

"She disavowed that completely," Schumer said after meeting with Miers for an hour. "She said, 'Nobody knows my views on Roe v. Wade; nobody can speak for me on Roe v. Wade.' "

Miers reportedly also assured the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Arlen Specter, R-Pa., that she believes there's a right to privacy in the Constitution, a basic underpinning of the Roe decision.

Specter, who supports abortion rights, said that during a nearly two-hour private meeting, Miers told him that she believed that the court had properly decided the 1965 privacy case, Griswold v. Connecticut, which established the legal foundation that led to Roe v. Wade.

But after Specter's comments made news, Miers called him to say she had not taken a position on that case. Specter's office issued a statement saying he "accepts Ms. Miers' statement that he misunderstood what she said."

In the two weeks since her nomination, the administration had reached out to some conservative groups to address the abortion issue by highlighting her evangelical Christian beliefs, including her membership in a Dallas church that actively opposes abortion rights.

But on Monday, the White House brought six former Texas Supreme Court justices to the White House to push the discussion about Miers toward her résumé, which includes leadership of the Texas Bar Association and the Texas Lottery Commission.

"They're here to send a message here in Washington that the person I picked to take (retiring Justice) Sandra Day O'Connor's place is not only a person of high character and of integrity, but a person who can get the job done," Bush said in the Oval Office.

The Texas six, including two judges Bush appointed to the state high court, delivered their message at the White House and to senators on Capitol Hill.

"The surprising thing about all of us is we actually know Harriet Miers," said former Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice John Hill after his meeting with Bush. "I hope that still counts for something somewhere."

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the Oct. 3 conference call "was not a call organized by the White House," but he acknowledged that White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove encouraged conservatives to contact Hecht and Kinkeade to ask about Miers.

The White House insists that neither Bush nor anyone involved in the judicial selection process has asked Miers how she would vote on Roe v. Wade.

Former Texas Supreme Court Justice Craig Enoch, one of the six jurists who met with Bush, said there is no way that she has given anybody any assurance on how she would vote on abortion-related cases.

In addition to Hill and Enoch, Bush met with former Texas Supreme Court Justices Eugene Cook, Raul Gonzalez, James Baker and Greg Abbott, who is now Texas attorney general.

Hill had never served as a judge -- but was Texas attorney general -- before being elected chief justice in 1984. Although a Democrat, Hill was appointed by then-Gov. Bush to the Texas Lottery Commission.

In a separate development, a New York newspaper has reported that Dallas city records show that officials there placed liens on property Miers controlled in a low-income Dallas neighborhood in 2001 to seek reimbursement for the clearing of weeds, tall grass and debris.

The city had placed 10 liens, totaling less than $2,000, on properties Miers controlled for her ailing mother, according to Newsday. All of the liens have been paid by Miers.

This is cache, read story here