Talk about stirring the pot. You know it's an interesting story when both the left and the right are invoking Chuck Schumer to describe Arlen Specter:
In the first hint of how he will steer the Supreme Court confirmation hearings of Judge John G. Roberts Jr., Senator Arlen Specter, the Judiciary Committee chairman, said Monday that he would press the nominee for his views on specific cases involving the authority of Congress to pass broad social legislation, a power that Democrats fear will be rolled back by a more conservative court.Restricting the interstate commerce clause has been a dream of the hard-core right wingers. For some of them, it equates to overturning the privacy cases.
In a three-page letter to Judge Roberts, Mr. Specter raises pointed questions about two recent court decisions invalidating legislation Congress passed under its authority to regulate interstate commerce. That power has for decades been used to produce expansive legislation, including environmental protections, civil rights laws and the Americans With Disabilities Act.
Democrats seemed more surprised by Specter's letter than Republicans did:
Democrats and liberal advocacy groups, caught off guard by Mr. Specter's letter, were elated.Arlen is going to be getting some big time heat from the White House and the right wingers for this. But he knew exactly what he was doing.
"Arlen Specter sounds exactly like Chuck Schumer," said Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York and a member of the Judiciary Committee.
Mr. Schumer said that he viewed the letter as "a vindication of the campaign I've been waging" to have the nominee answer detailed questions about cases....Conservatives, already wary of Mr. Specter and his moderate brand of Republican politics and generally supportive of the Rehnquist court decisions, were not pleased.
"It certainly sounds as if he's getting pulled into Chuck Schumer's demands for unprecedented specificity in case law," said Sean Rushton, executive director of the Committee for Justice, a conservative advocacy group. "To discuss recent cases and controversies and to have the Senate attempt to reject or confirm nominees based on a checklist of how they would rule on individual cases is clearly an attack on the judiciary's independence."
This is starting to get interesting. Roberts is going to have to answer the interstate commerce clause questions for the GOPers, not the Democrats. Same may be true for the right to privacy. I mean, after that work he did for the gays, he is going to have to establish his conservative credentials.
