Free Republic

WASHINGTON (AP) — Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., wants to make his case to be chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee directly to the panel's GOP members next week. Conservative groups want senators to pass over Specter for the chairmanship because of his postelection comment that anti-abortion judges would be unlikely to be confirmed by the Senate. Specter, who is an abortion rights moderate, has been calling and meeting with senators individually to assure them he wouldn't personally block Bush nominees from being voted on by the full Senate. The senator now wants to go in front of the GOP's Judiciary...

Except for the presidential election, the most important election this year will take place on April 27 in Pennsylvania. No, it's not the "American Idol" finals. It's even more important than that. That's the day of the Republican primary pitting a great Republican, Pat Toomey, against the 74-year-old, Ira Einhorn-defending alleged "Republican," Arlen Specter. Thanks to Arlen Specter: States can't prohibit partial-birth abortion; Voluntary prayer is banned at high-school football games; Flag-burning is a constitutional right; The government is allowed to engage in race discrimination in college admissions; The nation has been forced into a public debate about gay marriage;...

Tumble ahead for 'values' agenda Now, reelection safely secured, it’s time for Lucy to yank away the football. The social-issue conservative Charlie Browns who provided George W. Bush’s comfortable popular vote margin last week are poised for yet another big tumble. Does anyone really believe that President Bush will put abortion or marriage ahead of the things he demonstrably values, like tax cuts and war? For those who do, we advise both inhaling and exhaling. On Nov. 3, having barely accepted John Kerry’s concession, the reelected president got a sobering if not surprising message from Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter, chairman...

Human Events just linked GrassrootsPA's Specter campaign letter at the very to of their website, writing: Specter 1995 Fundraising Letter:Slammed Anti-Abortion Policies; Labeled Pro-Life Activists 'Extremists'from GrassrootsPA9-year-old letter uncovered -- Specter's biases revealed

FL -- Mel Martinez, 305-443-3611 GA -- Johnny Isakson, 202-225-4501, 404-252-5239 LA -- David Vitter, 504-833-1163 NC -- Richard Burr, 336-777-1170 OK -- Tom Coburn, 918-684-4308, 405-721-4281, 580-353-2858 SC -- Jim DeMint, 866-546-2004 SD -- John Thune, 605-221-1010, 605-718-7000

With the chairmanship of the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee at stake, activists from both sides of the abortion debate weighed in Tuesday on the qualifications of Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Arlen Specter. The growing controversy over Specter's possible ascendancy to the post includes a May 1995 campaign fundraising letter that Specter mailed at a time when he was seeking the 1996 Republican nomination for president. The letter, which slammed anti-abortion policies and labeled pro-life activists "extremists," was re-published Friday by a conservative website, GrassrootsPA.com, and authenticated Tuesday for CNSNews.com by a former member of the Pennsylvania Republican State Committee. Ted Meehan,...

Exit polls reveal that President Bush may have miscalculated earlier this year by endorsing pro-abortion Senator Arlen Specter in his primary battle against conservative challenger Pat Toomey. Immediately following his narrow primary win, Specter was quick to declare his independence from the president and reassert his pro-abortion credentials. After his November 2 win, Specter added insult to injury, asserting that if he were to become chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, pro-life judges need not apply. Originally believing that a strong GOP Senate candidate in Pennsylvania could put the state's 21 electoral votes in the Bush column, the president campaigned...

If you go to this story and click on the video you can actually see them showing clips of all the various anti-Specter sites, like StopSpecterNow.com, NotSpecter.com, and StopSpecter.org. Talk about a team effort! Fox News:Hundreds of Web sites produced by people who remember when Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter opposed the nomination of Robert Bork are part of a new Internet campaign aimed to prevent the Republican from becoming chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. ... Senate GOP leadership could probably quell this rebellion by openly supporting Specter, but two independent Republican sources told Fox News that will probably not...

Holy Toledo, Batman! Mark Harris's StopSpeecterNow.com has over 1014 members in only a few days! Harris started the site late last week, which lists numbers you can call and petitions you can sign to stop liberal Senator Arlen Specter from chairing the Senate Judiciary Committee. You can join right here.

Reagan-era Supreme Court nominee Judge Robert Bork blasted Sen. Arlen Specter yesterday as a "deceptive" liberal who won't fight for President Bush's judicial appointments if he becomes chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Specter was one of the few Republicans to oppose Bork's nomination in 1986 - an act that has become a central focus of complaints that the Pennsylvania liberal would likewise turn his back on Bush's picks for the court. On Monday Sen. Specter told ABC radio host Sean Hannity that he was one of 58 senators who opposed Bork because he was "outside the constitutional continuum on...

StopSpecterNow.com has a story on George Soros funding the liberal Arlen Specter: Conservative hero Robert Novak wrote about this story in April. (Also read about it here, and here) It turns out that Arlen Specter took money from an organization of 'center-left' Republicans funded by one billionaire 'philanthropist' George Soros! Don't just take my word for it, look at the reporting, courtesy of Opensecrets.orgMr. Soros knows plenty about hedging his bets. His $15.5 million gambit to defeat the President failed, but if his $50,000 donation to Specter prevents the President from actually governing then I would say it was money...

Keep those calls coming! Make sure you call Rick Santorum's DC office (202-224-6324) since he seems to think he is too good to listen to grassroots conservatives. ABC's The Note:The Specter spectacle continues Aides to a couple of Republican senators tell ABCNews' Linda Douglass that the calls from conservativeswho do not want Senator Arlen Specter to becomechairman of the Judiciary Committee are coming in at arate of 2 to 3 a minute. Douglass reports that the protest calls appear to beaimed primarily at leadership offices and members ofthe Judiciary Committee. An aide to Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) says the callsare...

According to NotSpecter.com, Specter still doesn't have a single Senate Judiciary Committee member willing to publicly say that he will support him: A journalist who has interviewed all nine reports that none of the nine other members of the Judiciary Committee is willing to endorse Arlen. That means they are waiting for orders. Let's make those orders clear.

Looks like we supplied some serious heat! Associated Press:Republican Conference chairman Rick Santorum, a fellow Pennsylvanian and one of the Senate's leading conservatives, put out a general statement of support for Specter last Thursday. "I look forward to working with Senator Specter to guarantee that every judicial nominee put forth by President Bush has an up or down vote," he said.An aide said Monday that Santorum would defer to the decision of the Senate Judiciary Republicans, who will vote on who their chairman should be.Conservatives are inundating those senators with calls and e-mails trying to sway those votes. One GOP...

Reuters:The Senate is expected to pick a chairman next week. First, the Republican members of the committee must nominate the chairman by secret ballot. Then, according to party rules, another secret ballot vote is taken by all Senate Republicans.If they reject the committee's recommendation, the matter is sent back to committee with instructions for it to nominate someone else. PLEASE call these members below and ask them to support ANYONE but Specter! Senator Orrin Hatch 202-224-5251Senator Charles Grassley 202-224-3744Senator Jon Kyl 202-224-4521 Senator Mike DeWine 202-224-2315Senator Jeff Sessions 202-224-4124Senator Lindsey Graham 202-224-5972 Senator Larry Craig 202-224-2752Senator Saxby Chambliss 202-224-3521 Senator...

From Republicans for Choice (joining Hugh Hewitt?!!--what's wrong with this picture?): Dear Friend of Choice, Please help to counter the anti-choice activist groups efforts to derail Senator Arlen Specter from becoming Judiciary Committee Chair. Please forward this alert on to friends of yours that want to have federal and Supreme Court Justices that are going to be fair and uphold the current law of the land on a woman's right to choose! In other words, Justices in the tradition of Anthony Kennedy, or Sandra Day O'Connor who wrote the majority opinion in Casey vs. Planned Parenthood (1992) where she said...

"I believe that the precedent of Roe v. Wade, a woman's right to choose, is a fundamental right and I think it will be maintained," Specter said during the Oct. 9 debate with Democratic challenger Rep. Joseph M. Hoeffel. "And, if someone has applied a litmus test, I would be opposed." Specter went on to say he recommended judges for the federal bench in Pennsylvania who "have been acceptable to the president as strict constructionist and have still satisfied the test of not being extremist on either end." During the primary campaign, Specter most often addressed the question by saying...

According to this AP story, Santorum and other GOP Senate leaders are deferring to the decision made by the GOP Senate Judiciary Committee members on who should be their chair. PLEASE call these members below and ask them to support ANYONE but Specter! Senator Orrin Hatch 202-224-5251Senator Charles Grassley 202-224-3744Senator Jon Kyl 202-224-4521 Senator Mike DeWine 202-224-2315Senator Jeff Sessions 202-224-4124Senator Lindsey Graham 202-224-5972 Senator Larry Craig 202-224-2752Senator Saxby Chambliss 202-224-3521 Senator John Cornyn 202-224-2934

"We'll take him at his word." That works. Rove was accepting Specter's statement assuring Republicans that he will not have a litmus test — and has never had a litmus test — for judges. But that was Specter's telling-Senate-Republicans-what-they-wanted-to-hear backtracking word the day the heat was turned up on him in the form of colleague pressure and jammed Senate phone lines. That's not what conservatives should be paying most attention to when considering who the next Senate Judiciary Committee chairman should be. Conservatives should take Specter at his other word — his words to reporters the morning after his reelection...

StopSpecterNow.com has 786 Members since Friday! This is absolutely amazing!