From
Yahoo:
Specter said he suggested the president delay picking O'Connor's replacement until more is known about the judicial philosophy of Roberts.
"The president was noncommittal," the Pennsylvania Republican said. "The body language was not very positive."
I'll bet. Why should President Bush give up his constitutional prerogative to appoint new Supreme Court Justices simply so as to satisfy Specter's idiosyncratic and personal feelings?
Specter said he has talked to O'Connor about staying on through the June term. "I talked to her and she's prepared to do that. It would be quite a sacrifice for her, but she's prepared to do it if she is asked. By next June we'll know a lot more about Judge Roberts ... than we do today."
Doesn't this take a bit of gall? O'Connor clearly wants to retire, and Specter is privately urging her to stay simply because of his own ideological agenda? Amazing.
Well, yes, I've never heard of a Senator going behind his own President's back (Specter and Bush are both Republicans, you know) to ask a Supreme Court Justice not to resign even though she/he has already submitted her resignation. I guess I'm mostly puzzled that the Republicans would allow someone like Specter to chair the Judiciary Committee.
ReplyDelete"Doesn't this take a bit of gall? "
ReplyDeleteIt doesn't take that much gall to tell the president to do something. I'd suspect the president gets it all the time.
Actus -- I thought it was rather obvious that asking a Supreme Court Justice not to resign even after she has already done so, and asking the President not to nominate a replacement, goes quite a bit beyond merely asking the President "to do something."
ReplyDeleteThis strikes me as a tempest in a teapot. As surely as the right to vote entails the right to vote for idiots, advice and consent entails the right to provide bad, unsolicited advice, which I trust President Bush will take for whatever it is(n't) worth.
ReplyDeleteJustice O'Connor needs to nip this game-playing in the bud and retire effective immediately. If she stays on the bench for just part of the coming year, she won't be able to participate in the decisions next spring, anyway.
ReplyDeleteOne is not amazed at the viper striking at a person's breast, but instead at the person's decision to take that viper to their breast. Spector's behavior is perfectly in character, a character which was well known before Bush exerted himself to save the man's political career from a nearly successful primary challenge.
ReplyDeleteI've sometimes wondered if Spector isn't there just to provide the President with a plausible excuse for not delivering judicial nominees who are as conservative as he promised...
advice and consent entails the right to provide bad, unsolicited advice,
ReplyDeleteYes, but the senate has no "advice" role in the nomination and appointment of judges. The president is supposed to do that all on his own, and all the senate is supposed to supply is "consent".
If you go back to the framers' discussions, it appears that the purpose of giving the senate any role at all, was just in case the president appointed a personal crony who was either a crook or utterly unqualified. The expectation was always that so long as the president picked someone normal, who knew the law and wasn't a mafia consigliere, the senate would consent to the appointment. The idea that a nominee would actually be called to appear before a senate committee, as if they were interviewing him for a job and needed to hear his views, never occured to anyone until about 50 years ago.