Afraid that he would be violated on his probation if he refused, McCowen reluctantly agreed. |
It was a complete knockdown on a controversial question. It's really quite astonishing. |
No matter what the relationship was like in the past, there was no evidence the defendant was pushed into that situation. |
Red state Democrats have a very strong image in their mind of what happened to colleague [Sen. Tom] Daschle [D-S.D.], who was defeated by a candidate who defeated him on grounds that he was too liberal and who made the judiciary a major issue. |
The circumstances of the event left Mr. McCowen with no choice but to give the DNA, which made his consent involuntary under the law. |
The main audience is the public, and what it's fundamentally interested in is looking at a nominee, sizing him up. And that's what hearings do: see if he stands up under fire, see if seems like a decent, intelligent, upright person. He seems to have hit a home run. |
The reason I would expect a concurrence from the liberal justices would be to kind of soften the blow for the losers to indicate ... that they themselves interpreted the opinion narrowly. |
They needed to show their base and activist organizations on the liberal side that they were true-blue, and that explains how they behaved as they did. |