Specter warns Bush on high court nominations

[Cool Hand Luke 22:36]

Some way needs to be found to keep Specter, RINO-PA, from chairing Judiciary, and keeping the other backstabbers like Warner, Lugar, Snow, etc. off also.

Anyone who would describe Thurgood Marshall, who was selected for the Court based in large part on his skin color, as a "legal heavyweight" should play absolutely no role in selecting new Justices for the Court.

_______________________________________________

Nov. 3, 2004, 5:10PM

Specter warns Bush on high court nominations
By LARA JAKES JORDAN
Associated Press

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. ADVERTISEMENT


"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."


http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/politics/2883040

 

[Aguila Blanca]

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."

Wrong from the get-go.

How's about looking for judges who would interpret the Constitution to reflect what it says, and the values of the people who wrote it?

 

[riverdog]

We may have been better off if he'd lost his Senate seat to a Democrat that runs as one. Is there some Senate procedure which would allow Frist to skip Specter as head of the Judiciary committee?

 

[Don Gwinn]

Well, they backed him against his conservative challenger in the Republican primary, so they must have thought they could get some benefit out of him. It's tempting to say they got no more than they deserved for backing that weasel over a man who appeared to be an actual Republican.

Marshall was not considered a great legal mind (this is all relative, of course, by the standards of the Supreme Court. He was a heck of a lot better than I am!) according to Woodward's book on the Supreme Court, The Brethren. Kind of an annoying loud guy who tended to laugh at his own jokes and figured the legal issues would mostly sort themselves out.

 

[SUE ROVR]

"Anyone who would describe Thurgood Marshall, who was selected for the Court based in large part on his skin color, as a "legal heavyweight" should play absolutely no role in selecting new Justices for the Court."

Niether is Clarence Thomas. But, outside of Scalia, and maybe even including Scalia, I agree with Thomas more than any other justice on the supreme court.

Personally I want the least activist, lemmings we can get--like Thomas.

Posner is another one I like, but he definately thinks for himself.

Thomas is widely regarded as one of the least inteligent people ever to reach the court. BUT he interprets the constitution with a rigerously originalist viewpoint. GOOD ENOUGH FOR ME!

Basically we need some really really right wing, overturn Roe v Wade, overturn any gun legislation, push hard.

 

[Bubbles]

Some way needs to be found to keep Specter, RINO-PA, from chairing Judiciary, and keeping the other backstabbers like Warner, Lugar, Snow, etc. off also.

If you have Republican senators, contact them and let them know.

Don't forget to add Chafee and Warner (VA) to that list. Chafee even is quoted in the Washington (com)Post today as saying he might switch his party affiliation to Dem.

 

[Langenator]

The national GOP backed Specter against Toomey because they thought he could help Bush win in PA. Personally, I think it might have worked better the other way around, since Specter is hated by conservative Republicans.

 

[HankB]

Thomas is widely regarded as one of the least inteligent people ever to reach the court.

Widely regarded? By who - liberals who absolutely HATE the idea of an uppity black man who was dumb enough to move off the liberal plantation?

BUT he interprets the constitution with a rigerously originalist viewpoint.

Aha, here's the problem - he has no imagination like smart people do, and unlike the sterling intellects of the liberal elite, the dummy can't see things that aren't there.

GOOD ENOUGH FOR ME!

Me too.

 

[BigG]

Thoroughgood self-shortened to Thurgood Marshall was appointed solicitor general (IIRC) by Lyndon Johnson who reportedly did it so "every time J. Edgar Hoover walks around that corner he's going to see that n*** sitting there." Yeah, LBJ was a great guy.

 

[buzz_knox]

Thurgood Marshall is revered for his historical significance, not his legal mind.

As for Thomas, I made the same comment about his lack of intelligence once: I was instantly called on the carpet by a law professor as having never read any from him.

 

[Waitone]

The chances of getting a constitutionally constrained justice on the court is slim. Start with a president who looked an unconstitutional bill right square in the face (Campaign finance control), said it was probably unconstitutional, and signed it anyhow relying on SCOTUS to kill it. This is the same president who when asked if he would sign an unconstitutional bill responed, "How would I know if it is unconstitutional?"

This same president now has to nominate judges to get past Specter who is no friend of constitutional principals.

Then we get to see what kind of rules the committee uses. Will it continue with the super majority to report nominations to the senate for a vote? Frist and co. could have changed the rules last congress but didn't (all the while bellyaching about the lack of progress of judge approvals).

No, we will not get constitutionally constrained judges on SCOTUS. We will get something far worse. Side tracking Specter as was done to Trent Lott will not solve the problem. The ultimate problem is Bush. He can shut Specter up any time he wants.

 

[matis]

The ultimate problem is Bush. He can shut Specter up any time he wants.
___________________________________________________________

How, Waitone?

I'm serious in asking this. Is there a way to block Spector from getting that position?

I'd sure like to know that and if so, how?


matis

 

[Mr. James]

This about says it all...

From National Review Online

Thank You, Arlen
We reelected the worst Republican Senator, and still lost Pennsylvania.

Rick Santorum and George W. Bush told us that the GOP needed Arlen Specter. We needed Arlen Specter to deliver Pennsylvania for Bush. We needed Arlen Specter to boost the party in the Keystone State. We needed Arlen Specter to keep the Senate majority.

Santorum and Bush were wrong. They were wrong morally, and they were wrong politically. These men saved the man who saved Roe v. Wade, and now the costs to the pro-life cause, the conservative movement, and the Republican party - for so little benefit - could be deep and long-lasting.

Pennsylvania was always a stretch for Bush, and any decent political analyst knew that before Specter won the nomination in late April. The biweekly Evans-Novak Political Report, for which I write, said long ago that Bush would win Pennsylvania only if he somehow got a nationwide landslide. In other words, Pennsylvania would not be Bush's margin of victory, it was clear.

Not only should the GOP leadership have known Bush would lose Pennsylvania, they should have known that having Specter on the ballot would not help. It is an odd assumption that liberal voters would go to the ballot box to vote for Specter and think: "As long I'm voting for the Republican Senate candidate, I may as well vote for the presidential nominee in the same column."

It is more reasonable, in a year in which the base's motivation was questionable, to argue that Specter's primary challenger, conservative Rep. Pat Toomey, would have helped more by making sure the base, as well as the pro-life Bob Casey Democrats, showed up and pulled the Bush lever.

Specter's unhelpfulness on the presidential level also showed itself in some very concrete and visible ways. Most striking were the "Kerry and Specter for Working Families" signs posted around Southeastern Pennsylvania. Was the culprit some particularly ambitious freelance ticket-splitter? The signs were created, paid for, and posted by a 527 created by Roger Stone, chairman of Specter's 1996 presidential campaign.

Dick Cheney went to Pennsylvania in the final week before the election, and NRO's The Corner caught the priceless transcript:

THE VICE PRESIDENT: The president and I are delighted to be part of a great Republican ticket here in Pennsylvania this year. I want to thank Congressman Tim Murphy for his kind words and the great leadership he provides. (Applause.) And I also want to put in a good word for Senator Arlen Specter, although he couldn't be here today.

AUDIENCE: Booo!

THE VICE PRESIDENT: This is a tough crowd.


A poll released on the day of Cheney's appearance showed Specter up by 20 points, and yet Specter didn't have the time to help the top of his ticket, which was trailing by five that same day.

Yet Santorum and Bush told us we needed Specter to help the president win reelection.

Nor did Specter provide any help down-ticket. He didn't do any rallies or fundraisers with the embattled congressional candidates around the Keystone State. Most notably, Republican Melissa Brown lost to EMILY's List favorite Allyson Schwartz in Specter's base of Northeast Philly and some of the suburbs, and Specter never leant a hand. Republican Scott Paterno also got no Specter help in his hard-fought losing bid in Harrisburg.

Toomey, Santorum told us, would lose to Hoeffel, while Specter was a sure thing. To begin with, considering Hoeffel's political mediocrity there is no reason to assume Toomey would have lost.

Second, losing Specter's seat to a Democrat would not have been all bad. A top Republican Senator, in explaining his difficulty in winning votes in the upper chamber, recently told a crowd, "I only have 51 votes - really only 47." That was an admission that Specter - like Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, and Lincoln Chafee - is a Republican in Name Only. Hoeffel would not have detracted from Bill Frist's functional majority.

It was clear as early as April that the GOP would be expanding its majority. Of the eight open seats this year, seven were in states Bush won. Of the highly competitive Senate races, all were in Red states, and nearly all were in states that were never in play in the 2004 presidential election.

In January, the Evans-Novak Political Report wrote: "In other words, Republicans have almost guaranteed an expanded Senate majority."

Would we really be worse off were Hoeffel a U.S. Senator now? While certainly more liberal than Specter, Hoeffel would do less harm. It is precisely the "clout" Specter bragged about that should worry conservatives around the country.

Specifically, Specter is in line to chair the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is in charge of confirming judicial appointments. There is no doubt that we would be better off with 54 Republican Senators and Judiciary Chairman Jon Kyl than 55 and Chairman Specter.

But Bush and Santorum insisted we needed Specter in the Senate.

Exactly as conservatives said throughout the contest, there is no good reason to trust Arlen Specter. When we brought up that Specter sank Bork, he didn't defend himself, but instead pointed to what he did to Anita Hill. For any pro-lifer, the Borking of Bork should be an unforgivable sin.

Instead of Bork, we got Anthony Kennedy, who changed his mind at the last moment in the 1992 case Planned Parenthood v. Casey and cast the deciding vote to save Roe v. Wade. So Arlen Specter saved Roe v. Wade, a ruling he has repeatedly gone on record saying was rightly decided and ought not be overturned.

Still, Bush and Santorum told us Specter would play nice as judiciary chairman. Yet in a debate this October, Specter promised to deliver us "centrist" judges. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette says he told them he would not allow any "extremist" judges on the court. Both the Post-Gazette and the Philadelphia Inquirer endorsed him on the grounds he would save Roe again and block more Antonin Scalias and Clarence Thomases.

Either Specter is misleading the papers and debate watchers or he is not really planning on supporting Bush. Bush has held up Scalia and Thomas as his model justices. The media do not consider them "centrist" and the Post-Gazette surely considers them "extremist." He has led the media to believe he would oppose another Scalia while leading conservatives to believe he would support one.

So either Specter's fooling someone, or Bush is fooling everyone. That is, Specter's actions and comments are only consistent if Bush already plans on giving us another Anthony Kennedy.

Considering this picture, one has to wonder what thoughts ran through Rick Santorum's mind as he tried to go to sleep on Election Night. Was Santorum surprised that Specter didn't help Bush? Did he really believe Specter could deliver Pennsylvania to the president?

Does Santorum feel betrayed by Specter's remarks on judges? Is Santorum ready to bear the blame for Specter's performance for the next six years?

Arlen Specter owes Bush and Santorum his career, but he isn't acting like it. Once we see what sort of Supreme Court Specter's committee gives us, conservatives will know what we owe Santorum.

- Timothy P. Carney is a reporter for the Evans-Novak Political Report.

http://www.nationalreview.com/carney/carney200411031005.asp

 

[R.H. Lee]

How is Spector on RKBA?

 

[buzz_knox]

How is Spector on RKBA?

Not good, from all reports I've heard.

 

[Mute]

Bush should spite this jackass by electing Alan Keyes to the USSC.

 

[Bruce H]

President Bush, being in his second term, should look Specter in the eye and say"Go ahead and cross me". Make the implication clear. Maybe Specter needs to look at the mindset of the four new senators. Far as I'm concerned the GOP bent over helping Specters reelection. Time to call in the markers.

 

[R.H. Lee]

What rule says Spector has to chair the Senate Judiciary Committee? Is it "his turn", or is he chosen by other Senators? Can they select someone else?

 

[Selfdfenz]

Saw the Senators comments on Drudge. Very upsetting.
IF there were some way to bypass Specter he would never have made those statments.

I fear we are stuck with this roadblock.

Were it not for this RINO from PA amazing things might be accomplished in terms of SC noms. Still might, but one has to wonder.

I'm not totally convinced W would know a real conservative SC pick if he stepped on one, being the brand of "conservative" he is himself.

S-

 

[Rebar]

What the RKBA community should do, is identify who we want in, and as a community really push for that person with all our resources.

 

[Waitone]

President Bush, being in his second term, should look Specter in the eye and say"Go ahead and cross me". Make the implication clear

Wouldn't work. Bush should call up Frist and tell him that Specter is unacceptable, period. Make Frist can him just like he canned Lott. Looking at the makeup of the senate, the presidency, and public opinion; I would say now is not the time for some screwball leftist to stage a temper tantrum. Bush is capable of passing the message on to other "free spirits" if he wants to.

If Bush is serious about his agenda he would do well to remember a time honored management technique particularly effective in dealing with a stable of self-important individuals. It is quite therapeutic stepping over a body on the way to the parking lot. Tends to focus one's attention and instills a sense of team playing. Specter is just the guy to implement such a plan.

 

[Frohickey]

I knew this was coming from RINO Spectre...

Thats why I tried and helped out in the Pat Toomey campaign, even though I'm from the PRK.

 

[Brett Bellmore]

Bush should spite this jackass by electing Alan Keyes to the USSC.

What, so that he can defend the constitutionality of racial "reparations"? The Alan Keyes we had some reason to respect died a long time ago, the embarassing campaign that just ended was merely a long delayed obit.

 

[Bubbles]

What the RKBA community should do, is identify who we want in, and as a community really push for that person with all our resources.

Senators Chambliss (R-GA), Inhofe (R-OK), and Enzi (R-WY) all have GOA A ratings.

All three of these Senators also have a 0% NARAL rating, so we can get help from the religious right in this battle also.

 

[Smurfslayer]

Imagine this call...

Pres. dials up Dr. Frist...

Sen. Frist's Office, may I help you.
Pres "Yes Ma'am, this is President Bush, may Speak to the maj..."
I'll put you right through Mr. President.

Sen. Frist "Mr. President, what can I do for you"

Pres "Well, Bill, you can start by creating a new committee on Senate toiletry, and I would take it as a personal favor if you would appoint that tin hat Senator from Pennsylvania, Arlen Spector as the Chairman".

Sen. Frist "Well, Mr. President, I'm sure Senator Specter..."
Pres " And antoher thing, Bill. You wanted us to get that Dashcle character out of the way, and we did it. Just what's going on over there?"

Sen. Frist "Mr. President, Senator Specter chairs the Judiciary..."

Pres "Not anymore. Now you get Senator Specter on that toiletry committee yesterday and get Judicary straightened out... What's that honey? <1st Lady in background> Hold on Bill"...

Pres "Bill?"
Sen. Frist "Yes Mr. President"

Pres "Laura said to tell you All your committee are belong to us"