Bush urges a quick vote on Alito confirmation
WASHINGTON -- President Bush yesterday praised his latest Supreme Court nominee, Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr., as ''a man of character and intelligence." He urged members of the Senate to give the judge a ''prompt" vote on confirmation.
The Senate Judiciary Committee completed the confirmation hearing for Alito on Friday, after grilling him for four days about his views on presidential authority, abortion, and his membership in a Princeton University alumni group, among other issues.
''During this week's hearings and over the course of his career, Judge Alito has demonstrated that he is eminently qualified to serve on our nation's highest court," Bush said in his weekly radio address.
''Judge Alito always approaches the law in a thoughtful, fair and open-minded way," Bush said of the judge, who had served since 1990 on the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, and whowould take the seat of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.
The Judiciary Committee's senior Democrat, Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, said yesterday that members of his party would exercise their right under the rules to delay the committee's scheduled Jan. 17 vote for a week. That would force a week's delay in the final Senate vote.
Leahy declined to say how he would vote when speaking to reporters yesterday, and later issued a statement saying that ''the concerns I had at the start of the hearings have not gone away about his views on the importance of the court's role as an effective check on overreaching presidential power, and on government intrusion into the lives and privacy of Americans."
Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican who is the committee chairman and a supporter of abortion rights, said he will vote to confirm Alito to replace Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.
Specter predicted an 10-to-8 party-line vote in favor of Alito, 55, in the committee.
Specter also said he expects that, in the full Senate, Alito would get the votes of some Democrats representing states Bush carried in the 2004 election.
The Senate Democratic leader, Harry Reid, said Thursday: ''Alito's responses did little to address" issues such as civil rights, privacy, and presidential power.
Reid said that Democrats would meet next week to discuss their strategy on the nomination of Alito.
The prospects of a Democratic filibuster diminished further when a spokeswoman for Senator Mark L. Pryor of Arkansas, a Democrat, said Pryor did not feel Alito's nomination posed extraordinary circumstances that would justify a filibuster.
