Bush won and got re-elected, and the Senate got more Republicans. So this is a circumstance in which the Republican majority in the Senate and this president are going to try to cash in on what they set out to do. |
For the Republicans to say it's not about ideology is going to sound hollow. |
He thought he could have a complete and full dialogue. He created landmines for himself. |
I don't know that we've had a circumstance where the president may be signing a bill that one of the chambers didn't actually approve. That's the unique wrinkle here. |
I think it's an open-and-shut case. It would be a horrible precedent to set if this is how Congress is allowed to make laws. |
If Bush is re-elected, I would suspect several justices would step down in the next four years. |
is Justice Scalia, but maybe with a smile and a little more polite and less temperamental. |
It strikes me as quite unusual that she would have a process unlike that for any other one under consideration. |
It's got new members and big cases, and the combination of those things will make it historic. |
That bill ... is actually not a properly enacted law. It wouldn't surprise me if a court struck it down. That bill was not approved by the House. |
The far right has been itching for a fight for some time, ... They want to erase what happened to Bork, and they want to have somebody whose nomination will provoke a debate about all these big issues, and if they win, then they feel that vindicates their philosophy and its opens doors to other like nominees. |
The norm is to do as much of a background check as possible to prepare yourself for all possible attacks. They did not do that here. |
There are a number of relatively big cases already. These and other upcoming cases will test some important characteristics of the [Chief Justice William H.] Rehnquist court, one I think still remains fractured along ideological lines. |
This shows that President Bush prizes legal philosophy above all else. |
This was an incredibly high-profile case -- one could not even imagine a more high-profile case -- and look at the fact that we had this major screw-up, |