The Specter of the Supreme Court

[livius drusus]

Check out this article. It's the first time I've taken a breath while thinking about Bush's SC appointments.

"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.''

I wonder if moderate Republicans aren't going to turn out to be opposition party over the next 4 years.

P.S. - Sorry for the crappy pun in the title. Sometimes, one simply has no choice.

[D. Scarlatti]

Damn you, I was about to post that this very minute!

For the Salon-challenged:

Specter warns Bush on high court nominations

This is a glimmer of hope in an otherwise dismal electoral aftermath. If Bush thought he had a mandate after "winning" by 537 questionable ballots, I can imagine what sort of delusions of imperial grandeur he's entertaining with a 3-1/2 million vote plurality.

At the very least Specter may have a chilling effect on the president's track record of naked arrogance and cynicism when it comes to federal judicial nominations, best exemplified by his attempt to seat Brett Kavanaugh, a 38-year-old partisan hack whose main claim to fame is partial authorship of the world's costliest one handed magazine, the Starr Report, on the second most powerful court in the nation.

And we (the liberal elite) should all be happy to see the ass end of that whining hypocrite Orrin Hatch.

[D. Scarlatti]

This is the best story of the day:

"Concerned Women for America, a conservative group, issued a statement saying Specter had disqualified himself from the chairmanship and stuck by that statement even after Specter issued his clarification. 'He's a desperate man trying to pull himself out of a hole he dug himself into,' said Jan LaRue, the group's chief counsel."

Specter Denies Warning Bush Over Court Nominees

"James C. Dobson, head of the arch-conservative Focus on the Family lobbying organization, called Specter's comments 'the worst kind of political bullying.'"

Specter's tough talk angers GOP

Low comedy from the bottom feeders at lucianne.com:

Specter backtracks from advice on judges

They control the White House, the Senate, the House of Representatives (and with them every Congressional committee), the Supreme Court, a substantial portion of the U.S. Courts of Appeal, and when one venerable Senator, one who probably knows more about the judicial selection process than anybody in Washington, D.C., speaks briefly out of turn, they call for his head.

Rush Limbaugh goes so far as to suggest the original story was a "trick" by the liberal media to present the GOP as a party in disarray:

"There's also the possibility that the press, on the president's first day after the election, would love a story showing how there's no unity in his own party. You know how the press loves that, when there's a riff in the Republican Party, oh, man it's front-page news, and you go to talk to Bill Kristol and anybody else who will comment on it inside the Beltway. * * *

"Everybody knows when I start predicting things I'm generally right. And so I'm giving you the benefit of my insight here. It does sound like something Specter would believe. But whether he would say it is another thing, but the press has him saying it, fills their template of, 'The Republicans really don't like each other and, look, here's a real Republican, Specter, he knows country, he knows, and he's challenging Bush. Bush doesn't have all this unity.' I mean, that's the underlying theme of this."

Someone's got it in for me / They're planting stories in the press

[livius drusus]

Strange days indeed.