Posted on 11/04/2004 3:56:03 AM PST by joesbucks
PHILADELPHIA -- The Republican expected to chair the Senate Judiciary Committee next year bluntly warned newly re-elected President Bush today against putting forth Supreme Court nominees who would seek to overturn abortion rights or are otherwise too conservative to win confirmation.
Sen. Arlen Specter, fresh from winning a fifth term in Pennsylvania, also said the current Supreme Court now lacks legal "giants" on the bench.
"When you talk about judges who would change the right of a woman to choose, overturn Roe v. Wade, I think that is unlikely," Specter said, referring to the landmark 1973 Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion.
"The president is well aware of what happened, when a bunch of his nominees were sent up, with the filibuster," Specter added, referring to Senate Democrats' success over the past four years in blocking the confirmation of many of Bush's conservative judicial picks. "... And I would expect the president to be mindful of the considerations which I am mentioning."
With at least three Supreme Court justices rumored to be eyeing retirement, including ailing Chief Justice William Rehnquist, Specter, 74, would have broad authority to reshape the nation's highest court. He would have wide latitude to schedule hearings, call for votes and make the process as easy or as hard as he wants.
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., expressed confidence Wednesday that Bush will have more success his second term in winning the confirmation of his judicial nominees.
"I'm very confident that now we've gone from 51 seats to 55 seats, we will be able to overturn this what has become customary filibuster of judicial nominees," Frist said in Orlando, Fla.
Legal scholar Dennis Hutchinson said Specter's message to the White House appears to be "a way of asserting his authority" as he prepares to chair the Judiciary Committee when Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, is term-limited from keeping the post next year.
"What he may be trying to do is say, 'Don't just think that I'm going to process what you send through. I have standards, I'm going to take an independent look, you have to deal with me,'" said Hutchinson, a law professor at the University of Chicago.
When asked Wednesday about Specter's impending chairmanship, another Republican on the panel, Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, did not offer a ringing endorsement.
"We'll have to see where he stands," said Cornyn, a close friend of Bush who worked to get all of the president's nominees through the Senate. "I'm hoping that he will stand behind the president's nominees. I'm intending to sit down and discuss with him how things are going to work. We want to know what he's going do and how things are going to work."
While Specter is a loyal Republican -- Bush endorsed him in a tight Pennsylvania GOP primary -- he routinely crosses party lines to pass legislation and counts a Democrat, Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware, as one of his closest friends.
A self-proclaimed moderate, he helped kill President Reagan's nomination of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court and of Jeff Sessions to a federal judgeship. Specter called both nominees too extreme on civil rights issues. Sessions later became a Republican senator from Alabama and now sits on the Judiciary Committee with Specter.
Despite a bruising challenge from conservatives this year in Pennsylvania's GOP primary, Specter won re-election Tuesday by an 11-point margin by appealing to moderate Republicans and ticket-splitting Democrats, even as Pennsylvania chose Democrat John Kerry over Bush.
A former district attorney, Specter also bemoaned what he called the lack of any current justices comparable to legal heavyweights like Oliver Wendell Holmes, Louis Brandeis, Benjamin Cardozo and Thurgood Marshall, "who were giants of the Supreme Court."
"With all due respect to the (current) U.S. Supreme Court, we don't have one," he said.
Though he refused to describe the political leanings of the high court, Specter said he "would characterize myself as moderate; I'm in the political swim. I would look for justices who would interpret the Constitution, as Cardozo has said, reflecting the values of the people
Joanie, thank you for the excellent weaving of the Warren Commission-Sessions-Bork-Clinton problems altogether into an easily understandable picture. I had forgotten about sessions, and you wrote it in bold. ;)
I will be calling both of my senators and Frist on Monday. This cannot happen!
I like all three of yer proposed candidates, but I'd have to give Scalia the nod as the next Chief Justice...the man's simply the most brilliant defender of the Constitution in our lifetime, imho...MUD
I didn't know, or forgot, that Specter was part of the Warren Commission, and I didn't know that only one federal judge was borked between FDR and Sessions. That's amazing.
I'll be making a couple of phone calls on Monday.
Thanks, Joanie.
That's a great post.
NOW is the time to act on Specter because the decent humans have 55 Senate seats and the scumbags have a mere 45 (counting the mouse Jeffords). If Specter wants to jump to the scumbags (and make it official) then it's really no sweat. But Arlen isn't about to join the minority party and TOTALLY diminish his "power". So, to emphasize through repetition, NOW is the time to ACT on bouncing Specter from the judiciary chair.
Bump for excellent post #159
Do I sound like a broken record?
FGS
I just wrote Sen. Dole, and Sen.-elect Burr in opposition to Specter's nomination. I also signed the petition at GOPUSA (Over 5800 have signed so far.)
I get the feeling Bush's hand might've already felt the bite of the creep, Angel.
Sure would explain one thing, straight-away.
...his campaigning for the scumbag.
Let me say it one more time- You have an uncanny ability to get to the nitty gritty of a subject that other people see as cloudy. I agree with Minuteman, you would have been a fantastic lawyer. But don't take that as an insult because of what your fellow lawyers act like. ;)
I agree that those are the four most sick things he has done. When you put them together like that it's hard to miss.
Awesome post--deserves its own thread actually.
Arlen Specter's colleagues need to take him aside and remind him that not only does he need the party to vote him into the chair of the senate Judiciary Committee, it can also throw him out on his ear. Mr. Specter may also be held in check, as will others, by the fact that 55 seats may give the GOP the right to a two-vote majority on certain committees, thereby isolating party holdouts.
Ex-Senator (I love the sound of that) Daschle's demise came precisely because his opponent effectively explained to voters that it was Mr. Daschle who jammed the gears of the President's agenda. That's something to consider if you are pining for the chair of the senate Judiciary Committee.
Good points to heed Braveman for a reasoned, level & honest person.
But this Spector character?
He's really an odd duck.
Methinks when he dies?
...they'll have to bury him strapped to an auger.
Very informative esay, joanie, thanks.
I heard Spector on the Rush Limbaugh show, denying many of the things that you've disclosed about him. Methinks he wants it both ways, depending on his audience. Your point about his impeachment vote underscores that.
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