Judiciary committee backs Pryor nomination
Senate moves closer to filibuster showdown
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Senate Judiciary Committee voted 10 to 8 Thursday to send the nomination of former Alabama Attorney General William Pryor, Jr. to the Senate floor.
The vote adds Pryor's name to the list of four other judicial nominations passed out of the committee -- all on the same party-line vote -- and brings the Senate ever closer to a showdown over the Democrats' use of filibusters to block President Bush's nominations.
Several Republican senators -- including Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist -- have at the least intimated that Democrats are applying a "religious" test to the president's nominees, rejecting them for their personal views.
Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Alabama, gave a spirited defense of Pryor, who succeeded him as Alabama's attorney general, saying "more than anybody that I know. he was committed to the ideals of law."
Sessions noted that Pryor opposed Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore when Moore put a large stone monument to the Ten Commandments in a prominent position in the state Justice Center.
"About the only people (in Alabama) who have opposed Judge Pryor are conservative Gov. Fob James and former Chief Justice Roy Moore," he said. "Even though he is pro-life in his views, he understands where the authority of law is and is committed to follow it."
Democrats on the committee, however, said religious views had nothing to do with their objection to Pryor, citing instead his record and comments, including his opposition to the Violence Against Women Act and his ridiculing of the U.S. Supreme Court as "nine octogenarian lawyers who happen to sit on the Supreme Court" when they granted a temporary stay of execution in an Alabama capital murder case.
Sen. Charles Schumer, D-New York, said the complaints that Democrats are employing a religious test come from "outlier groups who somehow have undue influence on the Republicans in this Senate."
"They are petulant," he said. "They want their way. They think they can read the heavens, and anyone who disagrees with them lacks in faith or doesn't have the right to be heard.
"This is what are our patriotic founding fathers were not about."
Republicans, however, countered that Pryor's decisions and comments were taken out of context and that he was being rejected for doing his job. Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said Pryor was being "demonized" by the Democrats, while Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Arizona, objected to hearing him characterized as an "extremist."
"At a minimum, we should tone down the rhetoric," he said.
Before the vote, committee chairman Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pennsylvania, urged an end to party-line voting.
"It continues to be my hope that both leaders would liberate their caucuses from party-line voting," Specter said. "We would not have filibusters if Democrats voted their consciences.
"Similarly, if Republicans were freed from the party-line straitjacket, there would not be support" for Republican threats to invoke a 'nuclear option'" and eliminate the Senate's 67-vote requirement to end a filibuster.
During debate before the vote, Democrats noted that 208 of President Bush's 218 nominees for judicial positions have been confirmed by the Senate and objected to Republican characterization of them as obstructionists.
Schumer said passing Pryor out of the committee was "nothing more than a stage-setting for an attempt to undo what the Senate's been about for all these years," setting up Frist's threat to impose the "nuclear option" to eliminate the use of the filibuster to block the nominations.
"We stand on the precipice of a constitutional crisis," Schumer said. "Bill Pryor is the last of the four most controversial nominees."
Those other "controversial" nominees are former Interior Department lawyer William Myers, for the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco; Texas judge Priscilla Owen, for the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals; and California judge Janice Rogers Brown, for the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.
The committee also sent to the full Senate the nomination of former Senate lawyer Thomas Griffith for the D.C. circuit.
Last month, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid offered a compromise to Frist: allow a vote on four nominees -- Richard Griffin, David McKeague, Susan Neilson and Griffith, plus one of the four controversial nominees -- and the remaining five would be dropped.
Frist rejected the offer, saying all the nominees should have an "up-or-down" vote.
The judiciary committee originally intended to consider Brent Kavanaugh's nomination to the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals and Terrence Boyle II's nomination to the 4th Circuit Court.
