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
You.......The Constitution is not meant to be interpretetd to reflect the values of the people. It is meant to be interpreted to reflect the intent of the law itself.......
I like to say that the Constitution is not meant to be interpreted. It is meant to be read.
Ivory
jerk specter should just shut his mouth ... I guess he really to blackmail Bush and Santorum during his primary race against Toomey ... otherwise, jerk face specter would be gracious and feel he owns some goodwill to bush.
I had a chance to go to an event for Specter and meet him in person ... I said forget about it.!
Looks like our activism for the next couple of months will be to lobby Frist to keep darlin' Arlen from assuming the Judiciary chair - and we can point out that Specter probably cost Bush Pennsylvania by not campaigning for Bush and cutting the legs out from underneath the pro-life issue in a pro-life state.
I sent my email to the Majority Leader, Senator Bill Frist, on his contact form at frist.senate.gov. He is happy to hear from voters all over the U.S., not just Tennessee.
I seem to recall he is the chair. Bush helped this guy and this is how he returns the favor. Another democrat if you ask me!
Arleen needs to sit down and shut up or he will get dascheled.
He is.
He has the seniority and is in the majority party. If he's on the committee he has the chair.
Get him off THIS committee.
ya git what ya pay fer.
You got it. Bush will reap what he has sewn here.
Those of us who got jumped by the Bush-bots when we raised a ruckus about this before the primary are now vindicated.
Unfortunately, that vindication comes at a steep cost.
We were all...except the bots...incredulous when Bush stupidly supported this baby-killing RINO instead of his pro-life opponent.
When will President Bush ever learn that compromising your principles..with RINOs or Ted Kennedy...will get you nothing but Ceasar's fate from these jackals!
Agreed. What was Bush thinking by campaigning with this bozo?
"Electable" Republican bump.
All I can tell you - promise you - is that the millions of Evangelicals, and Catholics, who gave George W. Bush and Republicans these recent victories will rise up with torches and pitchforks and burn down the Republican house if Spector does this!
You better believe this is not an idle threat. If Spector is allowed to do this I can promise you Republicans will suffer devistating losses in the mid-term elections and will begin to cease being a majority party.
Let this solemn post serve as a strong warning.
Absolutely.
Joesbucks, et al,
Bill Frist has the opportunity to rewrite the Senate rules at the start of the session. Please hammer Bill Frist with demands that Arlen Specter be relagated to the Senate equivalent of dog-catcher:
http://frist.senate.gov/index.cfm?FuseAction=AboutSenatorFrist.ContactForm
We have to turn our guns immediately on Specter. WE have to do all we can to prevent him from chairing the committee, or all of our work is for nothing.
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