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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (101521)	2/21/2005 7:32:13 PM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793900

Specter as ghoul in the middle? By Beldar on Politics A regular reader from Dubya's hometown of Midland, Texas, emailed me with this link to a USA Today article quoting Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA), the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee (internal hyperlinks omitted; ellipsis by USA Today, although it's unclear whether it's to indicate a verbal pause or a deletion): [Sen. Specter] said he hopes Bush will consult not only Republicans about the next Supreme Court nominee but also Democrats like Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and Vermont's Sen. Patrick Leahy, the top Judiciary Committee Democrat. Chief Justice William Rehnquist, ailing with thyroid cancer, announced Friday that he'll miss the next two weeks of oral arguments. "My hope would be ... that there's an orderly transition at the end of the term" in June, Specter said. One can only hope that Sen. Specter was quoted out of context here — i.e., that he's not hoping for Chief Justice Rehnquist's imminent death or resignation due to illness. As my reader wrote in her email: "I wonder how Sen. Specter would feel if the Supreme Court Justices speculated on how Sen. Specter has cancer and thus will need to be eased out at the end of the current Senate term?" It's hard to imagine how the last paragraph of this article might have taken Sen. Specter's statements out of context, however. Rather, it appears to be frighteningly candid (ellipsis again by USA Today): Next week, [Sen. Specter] plans to open hearings on the first of 20 judicial candidates renominated by Bush after their failure to win confirmation last year. He hopes to dissuade Democrats from filibustering. "I think I may be helpful ... as the man in the middle," he said. Denny Crane would have no trouble pegging Sen. Specter as a "nanzy-panzy." I wish the Senator a swift and full recovery from his own medical problems. But I also wish, in the meantime, that he didn't see himself as some sort of Jim Jeffords clone. I'm fairly certain that the Senate Republicans who entrusted him with the Judiciary Committee chair expected him to at least try to actually lead it, not play "the man in the middle."