Sen. Arlen Spector, 74, R-PA, has been a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee for many years. He was District Attorney of Philadelphia before being elected to the Senate. Yet the conservative Republican right wing cannot tolerate him, apparently, because he tries to take a moderate line on social issues.
He gets reelected that way.
Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-UT, has been Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee for the past six years, but is term-limited out.
Spector would like to replace Hatch as Chairman of the Judiciary Committee.
Supreme Court nominees must clear the Senate Judiciary Committee, which typically, in recent times, holds hearings and then votes to recommend or not recommend; Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas each experienced such hearings. Thomas was scarred for life: Nothing but a"high-tech lynching" as far as he was concerned.
As we know, there hasn't been a vacancy on the Supreme Court in a decade. But now Chief Justice Rehnquist, 80, has been diagnosed with cancer of the larynx, and following throat surgery, a tracheotomy, failed to return to the court last Monday as he'd hoped.
President Bush, re-elected Tuesday, Nov. 2, for another four year term, is likely to have the opportunity to appoint one or more justices, assuming retirements of some of the more elderly justices.
After the Judiciary Committee, the full Senate then votes.
The other day Sen. Spector came out with a statement likening Roe v. Wade to Brown v. Board, a case so fundamental to individual liberties that it can never be repealed, he asserted.
Now there's a rebellion on the Senate Judiciary Committee against Spector becoming Chairman, because if there's one thing that the Republican-right feels it has bought and paid for, it's the overruling of Roe v. Wade.
The Philadelphia Inquirer article reporting this development is here.
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It seems that Sen. Spector committed heresy against the moral beliefs of the GOP right-wing, which seems to have just won a resounding victory against Gavin Newsom, the young mayor of San Francisco who happens not to have been running against Pres. Bush on Tuesday.
As previously pointed out Sen. Kerry tried to run on reason, always risky in this country, against Pres. Bush, who ran on morality, a sure bet if you're on the side of the angels, which he clearly was, to the tune of 51:48 percent of the voters.
Spector is now back-peddling like crazy. What you thought you heard me say was not what I thought you'd understand I meant, he seems to be saying. He wants that job, baaad, it seems.
I'm afraid that Arlen is just a tad too heretical for his own right wing.
Expect to see him burn at the GOP stake before too long.
You can't say that, Arlen Spector!
This is America.