Specter: Alito will get grilling

The Pa. Republican said he will start the hearing with the abortion issue.
WASHINGTON POST
WASHINGTON -- The Senate Judiciary Committee will demand that Supreme Court nominee Samuel A. Alito Jr. answer more questions than did Chief Justice John Roberts Jr., and it may subject him to extra hours of grilling to do so, the panel's chairman said Wednesday.
But Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., said he senses little enthusiasm among Democrats for a filibuster to block Alito, and he thinks the nominee's fate will largely turn on "how credible he is" at the panel's confirmation hearing, which begins Jan. 9.
"His nomination faces some real hurdles," Specter said in an hour-long interview with Washington Post editors and reporters. Senators will not allow Alito to sidestep as many questions as Roberts did during his confirmation hearing, he said, because Alito has far more judicial opinions to defend and because he wrote two controversial memos on abortion and other matters in 1985.
Excerpts
One memo asserted that the Constitution "does not protect a right to an abortion." The other, which Specter described as "a very strident advocacy memo," outlined Alito's advice on how "to advance the goals of bringing about the eventual overruling of Roe v. Wade," the landmark 1973 decision that legalized abortion in all 50 states.
Both memos were written when Alito, now 55, was a lawyer in the Reagan administration's Justice Department.
Specter, who supports abortion rights, said he will start the hearing by pressing Alito on his abortion views. "There are a lot of big, big issues that he has to answer, but this is the one which has captured the public's imagination," the chairman said.
"Judge Alito will have to answer more questions than Judge Roberts did," Specter said.