Senate's New Math May Aid Stalled Judicial Nominees

[Rose Siding]

snip>
Mr. Bush, who was regularly stymied in his first term by Senate Democrats, who blocked 10 of his appeals court choices by filibuster, comes to the fight this time with a larger Republican majority in the Senate and what many see as an increased opportunity to get some of those same nominees confirmed. One reason for that view is that the new chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator Arlen Specter, has been quietly building a strategy that could break the logjam over judicial nominations.

"I'm going to put up these nominees up in a particular order," he said.

He said the nominee he intended to bring up for a vote first, in a move he hoped would end the divisive partisan battle over judges, was William G. Myers III, a longtime lobbyist for mining and timber interests, nominated for a seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, based in San Francisco. Next in line, he suggested, would be William H. Pryor Jr., the former Alabama attorney general who was put on the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, in Atlanta, temporarily by Mr. Bush during a Congressional recess, after Democrats blocked his confirmation.
...
Mr. Specter said that he believed Mr. Myers had a strong chance of being confirmed because he would get 55 Republican votes along with the two to four votes of Democrats who sided with the Republicans on various nominees last term. He said that Senator Ken Salazar, the newly elected Democrat from Colorado, was expected to support Mr. Myers's nomination. "And that brings us pretty close," Mr. Specter said.

http://nytimes.com/2005/02/13/politics/13nominees.html

[UL_Approved]

1. If the supreme court gets RW extremists, we are in trouble

The Supreme Court was the only thing standing in the way of bringing slavery back to the south. If the radical appointees from the Bush plan get in, we will have most social laws overturned. This is crap.

[Charlie Brown]

2. I don't think the SC can overturn the 13th amendment

but yes, we certainly have a lot to lose w/more Scalias on the bench.