More Top Picks Pellet Stove
player ready...Republican members of the Senate on Sunday braced for partisan controversy over President Bush’s next Supreme Court nominee, and at least one GOP senator urged the White House to bring in new staff, given the problems with the previous nominee as well as the ongoing investigation into the leak of a CIA operative’s identity.
“You should always be looking for … new blood, new energy, qualified staff, new people in administration,” Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) said on “Fox News Sunday.” “I’m not talking about wholesale changes, but you’ve got to reach out and bring in more advice and counsel.”
“You know, maybe that’s why we did have the Harriet Miers nomination,” Lott added. “Maybe there wasn’t enough consultation or enough good, strong people … advising the president. But he will deal with that problem.”
Bush is expected to name his latest choice to succeed retiring Justice Sandra Day O’Connor before leaving Thursday on a trip to Latin America.
His first nominee for the seat, Judge John Roberts Jr., instead was chosen to replace Chief Justice William Rehnquist.
Earlier this month Bush nominated Miers, his White House counsel and longtime confidant. She withdrew from consideration on Thursday.
Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democrats’ leader in the Senate, urged Bush on Sunday to choose a Supreme Court candidate with appeal across the political spectrum.
“The president should come forward with some middle-of-the-road person, somebody [who] is going to be a good Supreme Court justice, not somebody [who is ] going to be writing the law from the bench,” Reid told ABC’s “This Week.”
The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), expressed concern Sunday that Democrats might filibuster a staunchly conservative nominee over the issue of abortion.
“I’m very worried about that,” he told CNN’s “Late Edition.” “The topic, which dominates the discussion, as we all know, is a woman’s right to choose. And you have both sides poles apart, and insistent on finding some answer to that question in advance of the hearing, which no one is entitled to.”
Earlier this year, Democrats agreed to forestall filibusters of Bush’s nominees except in “extraordinary circumstances.”