January 12, 2006

How many Democrats on this committee could be confirmed using their own standards?

RealClearPolitics has an excellent post questioning how many Democrat members of the Senate Judiciary Committee could be confirmed to the SCOTUS using their own standards. Answer, maybe two.

"Not Ted Kennedy: for obvious reasons.
Not Joe Biden: he has a plagiarism problem.
Not Dianne Feinstein: she's had a Guatemalan houskeeper issue, was fined $190,000 in 1992 for failing to properly report $3.5 million in campaign expenditures, and her husband runs a company that scored a $600 million Iraq war contract in 2003. Imagine what the Dems would do with this last one.
Not Charles Schumer: two of the people under his employ at the DSCC are currently being investigated for illegally obtaining Michael Steele's credit report last year. In 1983, Schumer narrowly escaped indictment for misusing state funds in his 1980 Congressional race. The U.S. Attorney in the case, Raymond J. Dearie, actually recommended that Schumer be indicted, but the Reagan Justice Department turned down the request citing 'lack of jurisdiction.'
Not Dick Durbin: he would never get around his pro-life past. Durbin is on the record in the 1980's saying that he 'believed that Roe v. Wade was incorrectly decided" and that "the right to an abortion is not guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution.'...
Pat Leahy's 1987 resignation as Vice Chairman of the Senate Intelligence
Committee
for leaking classified information to a reporter."