Posted on 11/04/2004 11:14:25 AM PST by franky
IMMEDIATE ACTION NEEDED
BACKGROUND:
It was reported in an AP story (11/3/04) that Senator Arlen Specter, who is in line to be chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, "bluntly warned President Bush .. against putting forth Supreme Court nominees who would seek to overturn abortion rights or are otherwise too conservative to win confirmation."
President Bush was re-elected with the largest vote for a president in history. Exit polls showed a large percentage of the people considered moral values important. Yet, Specter said: "When you talk about judges who would change the right of a woman to choose, overturn Roe v. Wade, I think that is unlikely."
In the same article, a University of Chicago law professor said, "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."
ACTION:
CALL: SENATE MAJORITY LEADER BILL FRIST AT HIS LEADERSHIP OFFICE --- 202-224-3135
SAY: "SENATOR ARLEN SPECTER JUST WARNED PRESIDENT BUSH NOT TO APPOINT SUPREME COURT JUSTICES THAT WOULD BE STRICT CONSTRUCTIONISTS. I URGE YOU NOT TO APPOINT SENATOR SPECTER AS CHAIRMAN OF THE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE, SINCE HE EVIDENTLY HAS A LITMUS TEST FOR JUDGES."
202 228-1264
615 352-9985 (NASHVILLE)
If Bush wouldn't have appeared with Specter at that rally late in the PA Republican Primary, we'd be talking about Senator Toomey right now.
Specter owes Bush. Big time.
Ping to read later
listening to Rush today, said Spec's office is going back over tape...could be a misquote my MSM....
Specter has to be removed from Judiciary ASAP for the good of the country.
And Specter didn't even help Bush in Penns.
So what was it worth?
I'm proud to say I DID NOT vote for specter. You couldn't talk to those republicans here in PA who insisted on voting for him.
I contacted my Senator, Saxby Chambliss to let him know how I feel. Isakson is still out celebrating.
Can you post an e-mail address?
Put Sen. SANTORUM in charge of Judiciary!!! That'll shake the house down.
GOP Senator Warns Bush on Anti-Abortion Justices
By LARA JAKES JORDAN, AP
PHILADELPHIA (Nov. 4) - The Republican expected to chair the Senate Judiciary Committee next year bluntly warned newly re-elected President Bush on Wednesday 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 number 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."
Eds: Associated Press writer Jesse J. Holland in Washington contributed to this report.
(SUBS graf 4, "The president, to correct quote to 'number of his nominees' sted 'bunch')
11-04-04 1032EST
Click on and scroll to bottom for email. Not as good as a fax. MOF, it may never be read???
http://frist.senate.gov/index.cfm?FuseAction=AboutSenatorFrist.ContactForm
already contacted Frist via email this am. I'm ready to protest Specter as long as we need to. He is despicable.
Thanks for posting that.........Specter can NOT be allowed to chair the Judiciary Committee. Hatch was bad enough, Specter would be a disaster.
This freaking high-wire act Specter has been performing as far back as one can remember, leveraging his role as a majority-maker on so many social issues between Democrates and Republicans, has got to come to an end somehow.
The problem is that the clubishness of the Senate with their self serving rules and traditions have always trumped reason.
Political actors like Spector only have leverage when things are evenly balanced betweent he Pubs and Dems. And, as Bob Packwood found out, quickly become expendable when a clear majority exists on either side. The new political dynamics should be allowed to work somehow.
Bush gave up Toomey who would have been a better ally to him than Specter. And what did he get for it? Not Pennsylvania - just Specter.
I suggest that everybody e-mail their two senators as well as Frist. I have already e-mailed Frist, DeWine and Voinovich.
Faxing it now. Good job.
DeWine and Voinovich? Good lord, they're 60 percent as bad as Specter (which is not to say they're any good at all, just that Specter is very, very bad). The only time they make any news is when they criticize Bush for tax cuts.
Did you hear Voinovich's ads? He bragged about the "unprecedented accomplishment" of gaining federal funds for a school building (hazardous waste was found on a school site). Somehow, I don't think federal pork is an unprecdented accomplishment. Maybe it was unprecedented because no one's had the (pardon me) balls to use it for a school building before, or maybe it's the first to be named the George Voinovich Middle School.
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