Memo to Sen. Specter: Without the President, You’d be Updating Your Resume     11/5/2004
By Jan LaRue, Chief Counsel

Specter ‘warns’ president about judicial nominees who would overturn abortion rights.

News and Comment

Sen. Arlen Specter (RINO-Pennsylvania) is spouting off to President Bush about the judicial nominees who would be acceptable to Specter as he anticipates becoming the Chairman of the Judiciary Committee next year. This isn’t a smart way to insure that happening.

Concerned Women for America sent a letter today to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tennessee) urging him to “use your considerable influence to prevent Sen. Specter from being placed in a position of trust to which he is clearly not suited.”

Specter barely survived a vigorous challenge in the Republican primary in Pennsylvania and wouldn’t have done so without the support of President Bush. Some pay-back. Specter earned no mandate to tell the president that he did not earn “a mandate” in his election victory.

It’s not likely that Specter will be receiving any invites to Supreme Court soirees either. The Associated Press quotes him as saying the current Supreme Court lacks legal “giants” on the bench. How sensitive, especially when the chief justice is battling cancer.

Specter’s “legal giants” are closet legislators who make up constitutional “rights” by laminating them onto the Constitution. It’s a spurious logic that finds it’s constitutional for judges to create rights but unconstitutional for others to reverse them.

Specter-vision looks for judges who are willing to compromise their impartiality by announcing ahead of time how they would vote on a particular matter. When Specter was a county prosecutor back in Pennsylvania, wonder what he would have done if a defense attorney tried to get a commitment from a judge to acquit his defendant before trial. As President Lincoln said, “We should never ask a judge his position on an issue, and if we did and he should answer, we should despise him for it.”

Specter went on to say, “The president is well aware of what happened, when a bunch of his nominees were sent up, with the filibuster.” Apparently Specter isn’t aware that Sen. Minority Leader Tom Daschle (Dem. South Dakota), who headed the filibustering obstructionists last term, will be left herding buffalo next term after losing his Senate seat to John Thune.

Given the president’s resounding victory by both popular and the Electoral College vote, and the Republicans’ increased margin in the Senate to 55 seats, filibusters should be out of the question to consider and easy to defeat. This makes it all the more traitorous for Specter to give aid and comfort to those who’ve opposed the president’s judicial nominees.

Specter-vision is clouded by a theory that treats the Constitution as if its words have no meaning. It permits unconstitutional amending by unelected judges who ebb and flow with the times rather than adhering to its text. President Bush rejects that theory and should reject Specter as chairman of such an important committee.

To read CWA’s media advisory, “Specter ‘Borks' Himself from Senate Judiciary Committee,” click here.

To read CWA’s letter to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tennessee), click here.

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