Posted on 07/03/2005 8:14:34 AM PDT by colonel mosby
Go to www.senate.gov and follow the links to the Judiciary Committee. Next in line is Hatch but he may have another committee. That would mean Kyl of AZ would follow, etc.
Hatch was Chairman and had to step down at the beginning of this Congress due to GOP adopted rules about how long anyone could serve as Chairman ... so I guess the answer is Kyl. That would be a good thing.
Ah yes, that's right. I suppose Kyl would be good, though he lacks experience. Just ask Bill Frist!
Alberto Gonzales would be a fine pick to replace Ruth B. Ginsberg.
I'm sure he and the other Dems will be doing it because they know it will rile Conservatives.
WP.com
Conservatives have long been wary of Gonzales. The journal Human Events accused him of sounding "like Mario Cuomo." The National Review said a joke among GOP aides in the Senate was "Gonzales is Spanish for Souter," a reference to David H. Souter, the Supreme Court justice nominated by President George H.W. Bush who joined the court's liberal wing.
The distrust dates from Gonzales's days on the Texas Supreme Court in 2000, when he joined a majority of the judges in upholding a pregnant teenager's right to seek an abortion without notifying her parents. Taking aim at two conservative dissenters in the case, Gonzales wrote that they were engaged in "unconscionable judicial activism."
Those words came back to haunt Bush when he appointed one of the two dissenters, Priscilla R. Owen, to a federal appeals court -- and Senate Democrats threw Gonzales's words back in the White House's face. The Owen nomination failed.
Gonzales also has squabbled with conservatives in the administration over affirmative action. When the use of race in admissions at the University of Michigan came before the Supreme Court in 2003, Gonzales argued fiercely that the administration should not take a hard-line position in favor of the white students who were claiming that the school had made them victims of "reverse discrimination."
This put him at odds with administration conservatives led by Ashcroft and then-Solicitor General Theodore B. Olson, but Gonzales ultimately prevailed in the sense that the administration ended up pressing a narrow argument that objected only to the way in which Michigan had pursued diversity, not to the diversity rationale for affirmative action itself. The court sided with the Michigan law school in a 5 to 4 ruling.
Behind the scenes, Gonzales clashed frequently with Ashcroft's Justice Department. He felt blindsided when Ashcroft, early in the administration, announced that the department would embrace, for the first time ever, a view of the Second Amendment that regards gun possession as an individual right on a par with freedom of speech or religion.
Gonzales and Ashcroft were in an ongoing wrangle over control of the pivotal Office of Legal Counsel, the Justice Department's in-house adviser on constitutional matters. The OLC became particularly important after Sept. 11, 2001, when the administration was pushing for new legal authority to pursue the war on terrorism. Gonzales's most public controversy was his role in administration memos regarding the treatment of prisoners taken in the war on terrorism.
But many of the controversies on his watch were less his doing than those of underlings and other young conservative lawyers in the administration.
"I don't think he's ever really had a chance to express his views on major policy issues," said Edwin Meese III, the Reagan administration attorney general now with the Heritage Foundation. "The job of the White House counsel is to be an attorney." If he goes from being the president's abogado to the country's, all signs are that Gonzales would remain faithful -- not necessarily to conservative ideology, but to Bush.
Staff writer Charles Lane contributed to this report.
I wonder what the President sees in him?
It isn't going to happen.
Juan Williams was pushing for Gonzales on Fox News Sunday.
But maybe it's all a trap - the Republican base will oppose Gonzales or at least sit on its hands; then the Democrats can turn around and defeat Gonzales so as to humiliate Bush and make him look like a lame duck.
Beware of Greeks (or Democrats) bearing gifts.
Kyl's been around since around '86 .. I remember his first run for Congress. I'm not nearly so concerned with long term experience as judgment and philosophy, and just plain old decency with the smarts not to get snookered by the likes of Leaky. Is that too much to ask ?
I wonder what the President sees in him?
JMO, but it's connected to race.
The coveted "hispanic vote" and all.
La Raza supports Gonzales, so..
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