Wouldn't the real analogue be for Leahy to recommend a couple of conservatiive candidates whose approval would sail through? If Hatch gave the "liberal" Clinton a couple of names of "liberal" judges who would be agreeable to the Senate, isn't the onus on Leahy to do the same with Conservative nominees for President Bush? If not, this would fit in with the prevailing notion that compromise is only achieved by "Conservatives" migrating into the "Liberal" camp.
on Faux News The undertext on the above is that when liberals "compromise" with conservatives they are merely seeing the light and coming to their senses.
The President has the right to either nominate someone outside of the Court, which has predominately been the case in our history. A good example of this is Earl Warren who was Governor of California prior to becoming Chief Justice. The second option is to elevate a current justice to Chief Justice and then nominate an Associate Justice. Our current Chief Justice was put on the Court by Nixon and then elevated by Reagan.
Bush starts formal process of Supreme Court pick President Bush began the formal process of picking a nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday by reviewing key rulings and background information on more than half a dozen candidates, and the White House said a decision could be weeks away. "He's going to hone in on a handful of potential nominees over the next few weeks," McClellan said. "He's going to move forward in a timely manner." After picking the final candidates, Bush will sit down with them for formal interviews, said McClellan. The president, he said, "will move forward in a way to get this nominee in place by the time the court reconvenes." Bush is to meet a group of Republican and Democratic senators at the White House next Monday to listen to their views on the Supreme Court opening. Members of both parties have complained in the past that Bush has not sufficiently consulted them on judicial nominees. White House officials have made clear that while Bush will consult, the decision on who to pick will be his to make. McClellan said Bush did not like the criticism that conservatives have been making of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who he said is one of Bush's key advisors on making the appointment, along with his chief of staff, Andy Card, deputy chief of staff Karl Rove, legal counsel Harriet Miers and counsellor Dan Bartlett. Gonzales has been considered as a potential Supreme Court nominee. He is close to Bush and offers the possibility of being the first Hispanic on the high court. But conservatives who helped re-elect Bush last November worry that he is too moderate. "He doesn't like it obviously when a good friend such as General Gonzales is attacked," McClellan said. Asked if Gonzales was conservative enough to be on the Supreme Court, McClellan said he would not speculate. "General Gonzales is doing a great job as attorney general and the president greatly appreciates the job he is doing. He is someone he knows very well." A vacancy on the Supreme Court was created by the announcement of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor last week that she was retiring. O'Connor was a crucial swing vote on the divided nine-member court. Her departure gives Bush and conservatives a long-awaited opportunity to dramatically shift the court to the right on hot-button social issues like abortion, affirmative action and civil liberties. But Democrats and interest groups on the left promise an all-out battle to block any nominee they view as too conservative. They have called on Bush to appoint a new justice in the stamp of O'Connor, who at times sided against the court's most conservative members on a series of crucial 5-4 votes. With interest groups preparing advertising campaigns and grass-roots efforts to try to derail any nominee they do not like, McClellan called on all sides to elevate the discourse over the Supreme Court opening. "This is a time when we need to tone down the rhetoric. This is a nomination for the highest court and it should be a dignified process and that's what the president is urging everyone to follow," McClellan said. He would not describe who was on the list that Bush reviewed other than to say it was about a half dozen names from "all walks of life." "The president is going to look at a diverse group of individuals that meet the criteria that he outlined. He wants someone of high intellect, great legal ability, a person of integrity and someone who will faithfully interpret our constitution and laws," McClellan said. full article
Does anyone know if a Justice has to be appointed by the time the Supreme Court meets again, I think in October? Can the court hear cases with only 8 members?
Damn Women! O'Connor Urged to Reconsider Retirement By JESSE J. HOLLAND, Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON - Four female senators called Thursday for retiring Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor to stay on the court and try for chief justice if the ailing William Rehnquist steps down. In a letter to O'Connor, Republicans Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine and Democrats Mary Landrieu of Louisiana and Barbara Boxer of California asked the nation's first female justice to consider staying on the high court if Chief Justice Rehnquist relinquishes the top spot. Rehnquist was discharged Thursday after two nights in the hospital for treatment of a fever. O'Connor announced her retirement on July 1, but has made it conditional on a replacement being confirmed. "We urge you to reconsider your resignation and return to the Supreme Court to serve as chief justice, should there be a vacancy," the senators said in the Thursday letter. The four senators also said they will "strongly recommend" to President Bush that O'Connor become the next chief justice if Rehnquist steps down. "We believe such a history-making nomination by the president would demonstrate leadership that unites Americans around the shared values of liberty, the rule of law and the preservation of our constitutional freedoms," they said. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., and top Judiciary Democrat Patrick Leahy of Vermont first publicly stoked speculation about a possible O'Connor candidacy for chief justice on Sunday. "I think it would be quite a capping to her career if she served for a time, maybe a year or so," Specter said. Given the praise O'Connor has received since her retirement announcement, she would be a lock to be confirmed as chief justice, Leahy said. "I think it would be a very doable thing," he said Sunday. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050714/ap_on_go_su_co/scotus_senate
Thoughts? Opinions? http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8625492/ Washington speculating about Judge Clement as pick for Supreme Court WASHINGTON - President Bush has made his decision about whom he plans to nominate to take Sandra Day O'Connor's place on the Supreme Court and will announce his pick to the nation in a prime-time address Tuesday night. White House press secretary Scott McClellan said the Bush administration was asking television outlets to broadcast the speech live across the country when he speaks at 9 p.m. ET. Bush's spokesman would not identify the president's choice. But there was intense speculation Tuesday that it would be Judge Edith Clement of the U.S. Court of Appeals in New Orleans. Bush was expected to speak for 10 minutes with the nominee at his side, but would take no questions, NBC News reported. In anticipation of a selection, officials said the White House had contacted selected Republican senators they hoped would serve as advocates for the nominee in media interviews in the initial time following an announcement. Democrats scoured the rulings and writings of leading contenders, including Clement, a 57-year-old jurist who was confirmed on a 99-0 vote by the Senate when she was elevated to the appeals court in 2001. Bush wants to ‘get process moving’ On Monday, the president said he had spoken to some possible candidates. “My desire is to get this process moving so that someone will be confirmed — whoever he or she is — when the court reconvenes,” in October, he said. Known as a conservative and a strict constructionist in legal circles, Clement has eased fears among some abortion-rights advocates. She has stated that the Supreme Court "has clearly held that the right to privacy guaranteed by the Constitution includes the right to have an abortion" and that "the law is settled in that regard." Still, Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, said that Clement's record raises "seriously troubling" questions about her commitment to protecting personal freedom. "Unless she was able to put those concerns to rest in Senate hearings, pro-choice Americans would oppose her nomination," Keenan said. At Clement's office in New Orleans, a man who identified himself as a law clerk said the judge was not available. "That's what I've been instructed to say," he told a caller who asked if she were in Washington. The officials said all of the candidates on Bush’s short list are judges, both men and women; there had been speculation that he might put a nonjudicial political figure on the bench. Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., chairman of the Judiciary Committee, was called to the White House Monday. Specter confirmed that to ABC News but said he couldn’t talk about the meeting. The announcement will turn the spotlight in Washington toward the Supreme Court vacancy and away from news about Bush’s top political adviser Karl Rove and the ongoing federal probe into who leaked the name of a CIA officer.
Edith Clement is the best choice Bush could make at this point in time. She would win confirmation quite easily, and is tailor-made for filling the "swing vote" seat previously held by Sandra Day O'Connor. If she is the choice, then Bush made the right choice. That being said, her selection will keep Karl Rove off the front page for, oh, about 12 hours!
I could live with that. If she's the pick I say the dems could do themselves a favor and not fight her. Let her go through without any hassle.
No. I was willing to vote for McCain in the last election, and he holds many views I am adamately opposed to. If Democrats held the House or the Senate (or if Shrub hadn't been reelected), we would be looking at a whole 'nother raft of possibilities. Things being how they are, at least until the next election, sometimes you have to go with the least offensive of a bad lot. We may be looking at something like that here. Clearly, this is designed to attempt to take the heat off of Rove and company. It won't work. Keep D&D Civil!!
My point is if we were allowed to have only 1 litmus test for Supreme Court justice, abortion should not be the one.
being a liberal im disgusted by this abortion only approach that the dems have adopted. this lady is stauncly conservative and though i understand that a conservative president would nominate a fellow conservative...lets not start signing her praise. she sucks horrendously on every other issue. im disturbed by the praise sandra day o'conner gets too.
No one is adopting an abortion only approach and I'm certainly not singing her praise. But it's the first thing I've read about her and it's a positive start. If she indeed gets the nod, I'll have to do some more reading for a more informed opinion. insane man have a link to her background?
mc i wasn't speaking specifically about you but in general. actually i was very pissed at the democrats seeming joy at the possibility of AG being the candidate in the previous few weeks. on cnn they had some 'analyst' discussing the issues 'liberal leaning' groups had with clement. primarily civil rights/secretive nature of the government etc. she seemed to support the administration on most of those. and again i expect bush to nominate such a person but i also wish the democrats would fight it. anyway heres's her info from slate. http://www.slate.com/id/2121270/ Edith Brown Clement Age: 57 Graduated from: Tulane Law School. She clerked for: Judge Herbert W. Christenberry. She used to be: a judge on the U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Louisiana. She's now: a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit (appointed 2001). Her confirmation battle: Clement doesn't provide much ammunition for opposition groups, but perhaps not much for conservatives to get excited about either. She hasn't written anything notable off the bench (or at least nothing that's come to light yet), and most of her judicial decisions have been in relatively routine and uncontroversial cases. Civil Rights and Liberties For a unanimous panel, allowed a plaintiff who sued the police for violating his right to due process to proceed with his claim that the officers who arrested him used excessive force when they allegedly injured him by slamming the door of their car against his head. Reversed the district court's finding that the plaintiff could also sue for unlawful arrest and excessive force involving the use of handcuffs. (Tarver v. City of Edna, 2005) Environmental Protection and Property Rights Voted for the 5th Circuit to rehear a decision blocking developers from building on a site where six endangered bug species lived in a cluster of limestone caves. Clement joined a dissent that argued that the decision's rationale for protecting the bugs—to preserve the interdependent web of species—bore no relationship to Congress' power to regulate interstate commerce. (GDF Realty Investments v. Norton, 2004) Criminal Law For a unanimous panel, rejected the claim of a man flying to Nigeria that his luggage was unlawfully searched at the border. Clement ruled broadly that customs inspectors need not have probable cause to search the bags of people who are leaving the country. (U.S. v. Odutayo, 2005) Agreed with a unanimous panel that an asylum applicant who was 20 minutes late to a hearing because he'd taken the wrong highway exit should not have been ordered deported in absentia and was entitled to a new hearing. (Alarcon-Chavez v. Gonzales, 2005) Habeas Corpus Over a dissent, ruled that a death-row inmate who claimed to be mentally r****ded was entitled to a lawyer to develop that claim in a habeas petition. Clement's ruling followed the Supreme Court's 2002 decision barring the execution of the mentally r****ded. She followed up with a second opinion that limited the significance of her ruling by stating "this is a fact-bound case." (Hearn v. Dretke, 2004) For a unanimous panel, reversed a decision of the district court finding that a police officer convicted of civil rights violation, for hitting a drunk suspect in the head with his baton, was entitled to a new trial because his lawyer was ineffective. The officer argued that his lawyer erred by failing to call character witnesses to rebut testimony that he'd complained about the need to control Mexicans in the United States. Clement said the rebuttal evidence would have been irrelevant because the officer was not charged with a hate crime. (U.S. v. Harris, 2005) Damage Awards Over a partial dissent, in reviewing a jury verdict in favor of a man whose wife and 3-year-old daughter were killed in a car crash, affirmed damage awards of $1.9 million for the man's loss of his wife and $1.5 million for the loss of his daughter. Reduced from $200,000 to $30,000 an award to the wife's estate for her pain and mental anguish before her death and eliminated a $200,000 award to the daughter's estate for her pain and mental anguish. (Vogler v. Blackmore, 2003)
Well if Bush used his head and nominated someone relatively moderate, like this Clement woman, it might just be the one positive that he could claim to some sort of legacy.
