The Purple Specter

[avram]

The world keeps surprising me.

If you’d told me, in January of 2001, that there’d be war between the CIA and Baby Bush, I’d have said you were nuts. And yet, that’s pretty much what happened. (The CIA lost, BTW.)

Anyway, we here in Blue Country have been talking a lot for the past couple days about our new Theocrat Overlords, who’re gonna use their new mandate to ban abortion, put creationism back in the schools, make us all tongue-kiss Jesus, whatever. So I was pleasantly surprised to see this AP story about Arlen Specter warning Bush not to nominate overly-right-wing Supreme Court nominees:

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.

"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." [...]

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.

It’s not clear here whether Specter is actually threatening to oppose right-wing nominees personally, or just warning Bush that he doesn’t have a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. Naturally, the wing-nuts are already starting to froth over it.

Update: Never mind.

Comments

[pnh.livejournal.com]

I trust you've seen this (via Atrios).

Short version: "I never said I planned to oppose the President on anything, I'm really really sorry, and if I sign this statement I really do hope you'll take the barrel of that gun out of my mouth."

[avram]

Aw fuck.