FOCUS | Roberts Hearing a Test for Senate DemocratsMon Sep 12, 2005 12:2064.140.158.152
FOCUS | Roberts Hearing a Test for Senate Democrats
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/091205Z.shtml
Roberts Spotlight Falls on Senators, Too
By Sheryl Gay Stolberg
The New York Times
Monday 12 September 2005
Washington - When Judge John G. Roberts Jr. arrives in the historic Russell Caucus Room on Monday for hearings that will determine whether he becomes the 17th chief justice of the United States, he will face a panel of senators whose questions will be colored by their personal histories and electoral ambitions and tinged with the political fallout from Hurricane Katrina.
The 18 senators on the Judiciary Committee, 10 Republicans and 8 Democrats, are keenly aware that they too will be judged. The proceedings will be the first Supreme Court confirmation hearings in 11 years, and they will occur not only against the backdrop of public furor over the federal response to the hurricane but also with a second opening on the court.
Democrats, who were already planning to press Judge Roberts on civil rights, are likely to be even more aggressive on that front, citing the racial divisions exposed by the hurricane. But they must be careful not to push too hard, some political analysts say, because the suffering on the Gulf Coast has left the public with little appetite for a partisan slugfest.
A survey last week by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that 71 percent of Americans were paying attention to stories about gasoline prices and 70 percent to the hurricane, but only 18 percent to the Roberts nomination. So it will be all the more difficult for senators intent on using the hearings to reshape their public personas.
One Democrat, Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, was so concerned with his performance that he held a mock hearing in his office on Sunday, with a Harvard law professor playing Judge Roberts. As chairman of the committee charged with electing Democrats to the Senate in 2006, Mr. Schumer has used the confirmation battle to raise money for campaigns and to solidify his standing as a party leader.
The members of the committee are not an especially diverse group; all are white, all but four are lawyers, and only one is a woman, Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California. Some, like Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, and Senator John Cornyn, the freshman Republican from Texas, are trying to carve out national identities. Others, like Senators Joseph R. Biden Jr., Democrat of Delaware; Russell D. Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin; and Sam Brownback, Republican of Kansas, have White House ambitions.
At least one member - Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts - has little to lose. After 40 years on the panel and 18 confirmation hearings, Mr. Kennedy has a solidly established reputation. He is widely expected to take the lead on civil rights questions, and has already drawn a link to the storm.
"As a nation, we must be sensitive to this inequality, sensitive as we respond to Katrina and sensitive, too, as we select new justices for the Supreme Court," Mr. Kennedy said last week in a speech on the Senate floor. "That's a critical question for Judge Roberts: Can he unite America for the future?"
When Judge Roberts was first nominated to the court in July, President Bush asked him to fill the vacancy created by the retirement of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, a change that might have shifted the political balance of the court. The balance is unlikely to change with Judge Roberts now nominated to replace the more reliably conservative Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist.
So Democrats may be more likely to hold their fire, said Doug Schoen, a Democratic pollster, particularly given that polls show that most Americans expect Judge Roberts to be confirmed.
"In the absence of specifics that would throw his nomination into doubt, Democrats will be loath to want to be as combative and confrontational as they might otherwise be," Mr. Schoen said.
Yet while it may appear at the outset that the confirmation of Judge Roberts is all but assured, memories of bitterly contested confirmation hearings for Robert H. Bork in 1987 and Clarence Thomas in 1991 are still fresh on Capitol Hill, and many senators know from experience that there are no guarantees.
Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa and a committee member, recounted a recent conversation with Justice Thomas: "I said, 'It looks like the Roberts nomination is going pretty smooth.' He said, 'Chuck, remember, I was nominated in July, and I didn't become controversial until October.' "
The senator with the most at stake in the Roberts hearings may be the committee chairman, Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania. A supporter of abortion rights who nearly lost his chairmanship in January after a dispute with his party's right wing, Mr. Specter, who has tried to play the role of neutral arbiter in the run-up to the hearings, is trying to redeem himself with both the right and the left.
He is remembered for dooming the nomination of Judge Bork and assuring the confirmation of Justice Thomas; the Roberts hearings afford him the opportunity to rewrite his Judiciary Committee legacy. He has spent much of this year undergoing chemotherapy for Hodgkin's disease and is now cancer free, his aides said. Some say Mr. Specter, always a maverick, seems to have been liberated by his bout with illness.
"It's not that he is going to stick the thumb in the eye of his president," said Norman J. Ornstein, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, "but I think Specter is not feeling as if he's got to do everything to please the right wing of his party."
The hearings are to begin at noon, with opening statements from each senator and then from Judge Roberts. The formal questioning will not begin until Tuesday. Committee members are likely to raise questions on a wide variety of issues.
Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the senior Democrat on the panel, has said he will question Judge Roberts on the so-called Bybee memorandum, a document, now disavowed by the Bush administration, that outlined a narrow definition of torture.
Ms. Feinstein is likely to carry the banner on Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court case that legalized abortion. Judge Roberts has written that the case was "wrongly decided" but has also remarked that it is "settled law," seemingly contradictory statements that Ms. Feinstein is likely to explore.
Mr. Brownback, the Kansas Republican with presidential aspirations, is a favorite of conservatives, who will be looking to him to press Judge Roberts to declare that his remark about the Roe decision is his personal belief and not simply that of President Ronald Reagan, for whom he was working at the time.
Beyond the senators and their parties, the hearings offer the entire Senate an opportunity for a political makeover. After senators have spent years of bickering over President Bush's judicial nominees, the Senate's image is badly in need of repair, Mr. Graham said.
His wish for the hearings was simple: "I just hope we don't break down into a partisan food fight."
Mayday Mississippi Delta
http://www.truthout.org/mayday.shtml
TO begins round-the-clock information support for everyone impacted by Katrina. We will provide the best sources available for the most up-to-date and expansive coverage possible.
Go directly to our coverage of Cindy Sheehan's courageous stand.
http://truthout.org/cindy.shtml
==============================
Charles, I'm getting tired of setting my f-ing pre-sets. Could you stay in one place for awhile?
Welcome back...again :)
- Troy
http://www.charlesgoyette.com/
- ACTION ALERT: Misjudging Roberts — Mon Sep 12 16:42
- Bush, Dems both hope to gain from Roberts hearings — Mon Sep 12 13:10
Message Board by American Patriot Friends Network [APFN]
