Posted on 11/14/2006 8:37:38 PM PST by neverdem
A week after Democratic candidates deposed six sitting Republican senators to give the Dems control of the upper house of Congress, a ferocious battle is shaping up over nominations to federal courts. Fortunately, the man in the center of the coming storm will be Sen. Chuck Schumer.
Come January, Schumer, who masterminded his party's victories as chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, becomes chairman of the powerful subcommittee on administrative oversight and the courts, the first stop for all nominations to the federal bench, including the Supreme Court.
That will put a feisty and much-needed roadblock in the path of conservatives who have been openly fighting to have judges appointed according to a religious litmus test, in violation of America's long tradition of separating church and state.
The battle hasn't started yet, and Schumer is still dutifully sticking to his party's conciliatory talking points about hoping to work with the Republicans in relative harmony over the next two years.
"I'm hopeful the Republicans, especially the more mainstream among them, will see the handwriting on the wall and join us. And we'd welcome it," Schumer told me recently.
But on one issue, Schumer sounds ready for a scrap.
"There will be no more right-wing judges, period," he promised.
That's sure to cause wailing and gnashing of teeth among far-right conservatives, who have spent a generation trying - with considerable success - to get anti-abortion, fundamentalist zealots named as federal judges.
Republicans ready to compromise on a host of issues - including immigration, the war in Iraq, even tax cuts - know that the party's hard-right conservative base won't let them waver on judicial nominations.
James Dobson, president of Focus on the Family and one of the nation's most powerful evangelical political operators, made that clear just after President Bush's reelection in 2004, when he took to the airwaves on ABC's "This Week." "Putting conservative judges on the judiciary - that is the key to everything," he said.
The Rev. Jerry Falwell echoed the same call to arms this year at one of Dobson's "Justice Sunday" rallies, at which believers pray - and promise to lobby and vote - for senators to confirm judges who favor prayer in schools and oppose abortion, civil rights for gays and the teaching of the theory of evolution.
"We're looking at what we really started on 30 years ago - a reconstruction of a court system gone awry," Falwell told the assembled worshipers.
Schumer, a Harvard Law grad, agrees about the importance of the courts - federal judges, after all, have life tenure, meaning they can continue to hand down rulings long after any given President or Congress has moved on.
"One of the main reasons we were worried about control of the Senate was that if we lost more seats we could get a Supreme Court that could turn back the clock for a generation," said Schumer.
That's why last year, when Bush tried to foist the spectacularly unqualified Harriet Miers on the public as a Supreme Court nominee, Schumer led the fight that led to Miers' humiliating withdrawal 25 days later.
More than 50 federal judicial seats are vacant. Every one of Bush's nominees must make it past Schumer's panel - and Schumer will control the interview process and the votes to delay or kill nominations.
In other words, New York's senior senator is poised to become the worst nightmare of Dobson, Falwell and their followers.
And not a moment too soon.
What's he smoking?
Republicans.
I find Schumer to be one of the most repulsive figures in politics.
"One of the main reasons we were worried about control of the Senate was that if we lost more seats we could get a Supreme Court that could turn back the clock for a generation," said Schumer
_________________________
Turn the clock back?
This is the party that is still views everything through the lenses of the 60's and 70's.
---Republicans ready to compromise on a host of issues - including immigration, the war in Iraq, even tax cuts---
I'm in favor of fighting them on every single issue down to the last bitter vote.
Biased much?
People who literally interpret the constitution are now "zealots." It's a brave, new world we live in.
I doubt more folks could be more disgusted than me. I had the miserable luck of watching this putzhead go from being my Representative to Senator.
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