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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: paret who wrote (713570)	11/16/2005 4:58:05 PM
From: Mr. Palau	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

Oops. There goes another one. "Republican Senator Questions Alito's Views on Abortion Ruling Nov. 16 (Bloomberg) -- Republican Senator Olympia Snowe said there is a ``major question'' whether U.S. Supreme Court nominee Samuel A. Alito Jr. would respect precedents and vote to uphold the high court's 1973 decision legalizing abortion. Snowe said she asked Alito in their private meeting today to explain his comments in a 1985 memo that the Constitution didn't contain a right to abortion. Meanwhile, Democrats took the Senate floor to argue that Alito's 15-year record as an appeals court judge suggests he is a conservative ideologue. One of a handful of Republicans who support abortion rights, Snowe said Alito's nomination is a ``pivotal moment'' because he would succeed retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, a key vote to uphold the Supreme Court's 1973 abortion decision in Roe v. Wade. Republicans control the Senate 55-45. ``We would hope that the force of the law and precedent that's been established will be something he abides by,'' Snowe of Maine told reporters in Washington. ``That's a major question and one I will have to give careful consideration to.'' Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and other Democrats argued in floor speeches that President George W. Bush picked Alito to appease right-wing Republicans, who pressured the White House to withdraw the nomination of Harriet Miers for the vacancy. ``The Senate needs to take a long, hard look at the Alito nomination,'' Reid said. ``The picture of Samuel Alito that is emerging may explain why the extreme right is popping champagne corks.'' `Slam Dunk' New York Democrat Charles E. Schumer said, ``There are too many questions still to be answered, too many doubts still to be alleviated to say this nomination is a slam dunk.'' Schumer said that ``in case after case after case, Judge Alito gives the impression of applying meticulous legal reasoning, but each time he happens to reach the most conservative result.'' Snowe said Alito told her that, since he wrote the 1985 memo to get a job as a deputy assistant attorney general at the Justice Department, ``he has changed over the years.'' ``He didn't repudiate what he said. What he did say is he has changed,'' Snowe said. Alito said ```he has enormous respect for precedent and said he could set aside his personal beliefs,'' she said. ``The question is how he would approach precedent'' on the Supreme Court, when he isn't bound to observe it, she said. Snowe said she asked Alito if he agreed with an opinion by late Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist that some precedents shouldn't be overruled because they have become so embedded in society. `Embedded' Precedent ``He agreed with that statement that you wouldn't overturn precedent because of the effect it would have on our American culture,'' Snowe said. In 2000, Rehnquist wrote for a 7-2 majority that upheld a requirement that police advise criminal suspects of their constitutional right against self-incrimination. The right ``has become embedded in routine police practice to the point where the warnings have become part of our national culture,'' Rehnquist wrote. He was referring to the so-called Miranda warnings that resulted from a 1966 Supreme Court ruling. In his 1985 memo to then-Attorney General Edwin Meese III, Alito wrote that he developed an interest in constitutional law because he disagreed with many such decisions of the court during the 1960s when it was led by Chief Justice Earl Warren. Voicing Concerns Snowe and two other New England Republicans who support abortion rights, Susan Collins of Maine and Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, have voiced concerns about Alito's nomination. Collins said Alito should be asked to reconcile the views in the 1985 memo with his ``assurances to me'' that the Constitution supports a right to privacy, a basis for the Roe v. Wade ruling. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican, said Alito's views on abortion will be the ``dominant question'' at his confirmation hearings in January. Specter downplayed the controversy over Alito's 20-year- old Justice Department job application. ``Views do change,'' Specter said during a speech in Washington to a U.S. Chamber of Commerce meeting. ``A lot has happened since 1985.'' Senate John Cornyn, a Texas Republican, said Alito's ``personal opinion on the constitutionality of Roe v. Wade does not tell you how he would rule on a challenge to Roe v. Wade if he were sitting on the Supreme Court.'' Alito's opponents also cite his 1990 dissent from a 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision that struck down a Pennsylvania law requiring women to tell their husbands before having an abortion. In a later opinion written by O'Connor, the high court said the Pennsylvania law imposed an ``undue burden'' on women."