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Newsweek reports in today's edition that part of the reason the Harriet Miers Supreme Court nomination is going so badly — in addition to the obvious fact that it's because she's blatantly unqualified — is that the White House Counsel's office, which she heads, and which gathers information to support the president's court nominations, is just too overloaded right now. "They really should have just said, 'We have too much on our plate,'" a former White House official told the mag.

Why is the office quite so unusually busy? Well, there's document searches related to Katrina inquiries, Newsweek reports, but you'll have to turn to today's Times to learn what's really tying up the president's lawyers.

"It has come to my attention that The Onion is using the presidential seal on its Web site," Grant M. Dixton, associate counsel to the president, wrote to The Onion on Sept. 28. (At the time, Mr. Dixton's office was also helping Mr. Bush find a Supreme Court nominee; days later his boss, Harriet E. Miers, was nominated.)

Citing the United States Code, Mr. Dixton wrote that the seal "is not to be used in connection with commercial ventures or products in any way that suggests presidential support or endorsement." Exceptions may be made, he noted, but The Onion had never applied for such an exception.

The article notes that The Onion is both rejecting the charge — would anyone reading The Onion possible confuse it with presidentially endorsed material? — and simultaneously applying for the exception outlined.

Meantime, we'd like to do our softballing pals a favor and note, formally and for the record, that The Onion's parodic use of the presidential seal is in fact parodic, and does not connote the endorsement of George W. Bush.

Got that, easily confused Chicago Sun-Times columnist?

Protecting the Presidential Seal [NYT]
Related:
 The Gathering Storm [Newsweek]
Target, New Yorker Cross Line [CS-T via FindArticles]