Specter cannot be trusted - he is a dishonest LIAR who practices Scottish Law and has violated his oath of office. He is welcome to serve in the conference at large but ill-suited to serve with the honor beholden to chairman of the Judiciary Committee.
ODOM: If he wants anti-abortion judges up there, you are caught in the middle of it what are you going to do? The party is going one way and you are saying this.
SPECTER: When you talk about judges who would change the right of a woman to choose, overturn Roe v Wade, I think that is unlikely. And I have said that bluntly during the course of the campaign and before. When the Inquirer endorsed me, they quoted my statement that Roe v Wade was inviolate. And that 1973 decision, which has been in effect now for 33 years, was buttressed by the 1992 decision, written by three Republican justices-O'Conner, Souter, and Kennedy-and nobody can doubt Anthony Kennedy's conservativism or pro-life position, but that's the fabric of the country. Nobody can be confirmed today who didn't agree with Brown v. Board of Education on integration, and I believe that while you traditionally do not ask a nominee how they're going to decide a specific case, there's a doctorate and a fancy label term, stari decisis, precedent which I think protects that issue. That is my view, now, before, and always.
The question is whether he's on board, or he's just tempering his rhetoric. I'm betting the latter.
That would be nice, but I don't think Frist has it in him. He certainly didn't show me much with his "support" of the judicial nominees Bush has put up so far.
Britt Hume reported that there was a conference call with (I don't remember the contingent) and Frist apparently did bitch slap him badly, but I didn't get the exact Senatorial nuance Britt used. It was good.
My guess is that Specter was reminded by George W. Bush that John Kerry won Pennsylvania, so this White House doesn't owe that state sh!t without some concessions from its members of Congress.