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
While you're contacting your Senators, tell them to keep other RINO's like Chafee, Snow, etc. off the Judiciary Committee as well.
Bill Frist's office (friendly staff work for him, by the way): 202-224-3344; fax: 202-228-1264
Please start flooding Specter's office with e-mails denouncing his arrogance (last time I checked he didn't win a presidential election!!!), and please telephone these men's offices at every opportunity.
Regards . . . Penny
This article is "dust in the wind", libs are gonna feel the heat and they can't do a dang thing about it.
With 55 Senators, and popular vote for a mandate, they can cry and scream all they want, they have NO power.
Just shut up, Senator, and pass them through to the voting process.
Excellent point. He is the reason PA was lost. I didn't even think of that because I never viewed him as an asset.
Much better idea. Thanks!
Dear George,
Thanks for all the help in the Primary. Unfortunatly, no good turn goes unpunished. I look forward to working against you in the disloyal opposition for the next four years.
Up Yours, Arlen.
Specter would do well to consult Daschle about obstructing justice.
No, I wasn't clear. I wonder if Frist has seen the sign.
Just remember ARLEEN! There is something called a recall election.
What would happen if Bush nominated Specter for SC?
It is the peoples mandate that allows the president to make these kinds of appointments when the dems are requiring 60 votes to move things from committee to a vote.
In other words, WE can influence this even now. I'd like to see us here at FR mount a campaign against Specter, or for Bush's first nominee to the Court.
That kind of action would have an effect. We could target those senators who were dragging their feet with freeps and mail and PR.
Are you up for it?
Specter is a sphincter. He is only a cipher in the Republican senatorial majority.
"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.
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.
These two sentences alone tell me just what a jerk this guy loves to be. Not to mention calling himself a moderate republican, a mythical entity if ever there was one. You are either a Republican and are loyal to party principles, or you are a deceiving dem in republican clothes a situation that has gone on long enough.
Oh yea I'm an independent voice yada yada yada, that is the same line used by our democrat representative to the House, Stephanie Herseth, and is indicative of everything she stands for. To add to this, the fact that Roe of Roe v Wade
has for years recanted her lying testimony before said supreme court shows just what he knows about the case.
Haven't seen anyone in the congress suggest to the supreme court that it might be time to overturn such an illegal decision as Roe v Wade, since said decision was based purely on testimony given by one who will just as willingly testify was a manufactured lie.
No, this gentleman, and senator, unworthy of either title by virtue of his own condemning statements, and his historical position in the senate, by that I mean his presence during the sham impeachment trial of WJC, ought to go down in history as the first of his ilk to be drummed out of the party. After all, when you can't count on his vote when the chips are down, what good is number 55.
Mr Specter and mr Biden both are worthy of far more attention than I am going to give them on this forum, the word bum is too good a word to describe their well proven status.
I wonder if it was more about re-election positioning rather than positions on the issues. I faulted Bush for his non-descript answers to the tough questions. Ergo the "is being gay a choice" question in the debates. Freepers and evangelicals argued he was vague to not upset moderates. I claimed he simply was not being truthful. He knows and wouldn't say. And I don't think the answer is what most freepers and evangelicals wanted. He wasn't playing it safe against the middle, he was playing it safe against his base and the lapped it up.
I wish specter had lost, too. Why can't the majority leader appoint the heads of the committees ?
This was one of the few times I was pulling for a Democrat win.
There is the key phrase. After the President put his shoulder to the wheel to help Sphincter, he got absolutely no help in return in the main election. Somehow, I think Sen Sphincter may not even get onto the Senate Judiciary Committee this time!
I hope you are right, and I plan to help make that happen.
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