Dana Milbank on Specter and Warner

I had always thought that Senate Committee Chairs were powerful actors. Here we have Dana Milbank bemused as Chairs Warner and Specter act like errand boys, or assistant White House press secretaries:

Oversight for Sore Eyes : It sounded on Thursday as if Senate committee chairmen were about to flex their oversight muscles. An angry Armed Services Committee Chairman John W. Warner (R-Va.) summoned Pentagon officials for a briefing on the military's paying for favorable coverage in Iraqi newspapers. And a concerned Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) ordered President Bush's Supreme Court nominee, Samuel A. Alito Jr., to explain documents he wrote expressing his opposition to Roe v. Wade.

But the senators, looking for answers, emerged instead from their meetings yesterday with questions.

"We can't verify this question of payments to the journalists," Warner reported to journalists.... "More facts are needed." Does he see evidence of illegality? "We simply do not have all of the facts." Does the practice need to be stopped? "I wouldn't want to render judgment to stop something until I have all the facts." Was the distinction between propaganda and factual information blurred? "I don't have enough facts." What's the most important unanswered question that you have? "Well, seriously, there's so many questions that are unanswered," he replied. Part of the problem, Warner explained, is that pieces of the program in question are classified, "to protect the interests of our troops."This started a new line of questioning. If the purpose of the military project is to "get the truth and the facts out," as Warner put it, why is it classified? "That's the ultimate question you've got to answer," explained Warner, who had apparently not answered it himself. "And, at this moment, I can't give you any facts to help you on that. . . . I have only but a bare initial understanding of why classification is needed."

Specter fared little better... when he sat down with Alito to talk about the judge's 1985 statement that he did not believe that the Constitution protected a right to abortion, and the legal arguments he later made against the Roe decision but did not mention in his response to a questionnaire from the Judiciary Committee. Specter... gave an account of his hour-long meeting.... "With respect to his personal views on a woman's right to choose," Specter reported, "he says that that is not a matter to be considered in the deliberation on a constitutional issue of a woman's right to choose." A reporter raised some doubt about whether stating that "the Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion" is really a personal opinion rather than a legal opinion. "He identifies that as a personal opinion, as I said before," Specter repeated. "And he said that his personal opinion would not be a factor in his judicial decision." Well, does he still hold this "personal" opinion? "He did not indicate," Specter said.

The audience was growing more skeptical. "Senator, I'm curious," one of the reporters asked. "Are you here simply to report objectively on what his answers were to you today? Or are you here to say that you were satisfied, even reassured, by the answers he gave you?"

"I'm here to report on his answers," said Specter, who finally acknowledged that he did not share Alito's view that this was a matter of personal opinion. "Judge Alito categorizes it as a personal opinion; I don't," the senator said....

In fairness, they had tough tasks: The Pentagon gave Warner little information, and Alito left Specter with the difficult argument that his belief that a right to abortion is not protected by the Constitution is not a judicial opinion. Both men dutifully read from handwritten notes.... Though lacking answers to crucial questions, the chairmen were certain that nobody was hiding anything. Warner reported that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld "has been 100 percent cooperative," and he added: "I don't detect any effort on the part of Defense... of trying to cover up anything. They are working diligently to get the facts out." Specter, likewise, vouched that "there has not been a coverup" of Alito's abortion views. True, Alito did not include, in his response to the Senate questionnaire seeking any briefs he had worked on, his memo on a prominent abortion case. But, the chairman said, "I think it's a fair conclusion that there's no effort to make any concealment." Still, Specter couldn't pretend to be satisfied with Alito's answers. "I'm going to reserve judgment on the question as to whether Judge Alito can fairly judge an abortion case until he testifies," Specter said. "It will give considerably greater opportunity for discussion than I had with him today."

Comments

[robert waldmann]

Does this

Was the distinction between propaganda and factual information blurred? "I don't have enough facts."

sound like Warner accidentally said that "they didn't mix propaganda and information because they included only propaganda and no information" to you too ?

The guy needs better notes

[John Emerson]

The really craven responses of many politicians (above all "intelligent moderate" and "honest conservatives", but also Democrats) makes me wonder whether they have not all been threatened, or whether they know about things that we don't know about -- not classified information about Iraq, but preparations for purges and sweeps.

Other alternatives are that they are all so protective of their positions and careers that they will never take any risks for any reason, or that the conservatives have concluded that low taxes and an aggressive military policy are worth it no matter what harm is done in other areas. (Paging Sen. McCain!).

I really don't think that there's any more optimistic explanation.

[J Thomas]

Here's a more optimistic explanation. In Warner's case, the army hired private contractors to do stuff, likely with inadequate oversight.

Suddenly there's a scandal. The top military guys have to find out what their underlings took initiative about, and find out what the contractors did, and in the short run they simply don't know. So they need time to find out or to bury the bodies, as the case may be. Warner realises that the military simply isn't ready yet, that he's inside their OODA cycle so he needs to slow down.

They haven't tried to mislead him -- yet. They haven't tried to hide anything -- yet. They got caught pants down and he can't learn anything much from them because they just don't know.

[Ginger Yellow]

"A reporter raised some doubt about whether stating that "the Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion" is really a personal opinion rather than a legal opinion. "He identifies that as a personal opinion, as I said before," Specter repeated. "And he said that his personal opinion would not be a factor in his judicial decision." Well, does he still hold this "personal" opinion? "He did not indicate," Specter said."

Genuine question: is there any conceivable way in which a lawyer saying "the constitution does not protect a right to an abortion" is not a legal opinion? What does a "personal opinion" even mean in that context if not a personal opinion about the law, ie a legal opinion? In other words, what is the difference between a lawyer having a personal opinion that the constitution does not protect a right to an abortion and a legal opinion that the constitution does not protect a right to a constitution? The only possible difference I can see is that in the latter case a lawyer could be going against his beliefs to provide an opinion favourable to a client. If that's the case, the fact that Alito claims it's a personal opinion makes it even worse!

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/03/opinion/03sat1.html?ex=1291266000&en=a6f89f2192fe0c41&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

December 3, 2005

Judge Alito and Abortion

Judge Samuel Alito Jr., President Bush's Supreme Court nominee, promised yesterday that his personal views would not be a factor in how he approached abortion cases. The trouble is that there is mounting evidence that Judge Alito has been hoping for years to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark decision recognizing women's abortion rights. His attempts to explain away his record of insisting that the Constitution does not protect abortion are becoming more tortured, and harder to believe.

Judge Alito's personal views are too well known to be debated - his mother recently told The Associated Press, "Of course, he's against abortion." Many people personally oppose abortions while supporting a woman's right to reach her own decision. But when Judge Alito applied for a promotion to a legal position in the Reagan administration in 1985, he made it clear that he was not one of those people. He was "particularly proud," he wrote, of his work as a lawyer on cases arguing "that the Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion."

Judge Alito has tried to explain away that fairly unambiguous statement by saying he was simply an advocate seeking a job. That immediately raised questions about his credibility. Had he misrepresented his views to get a job? Is he misrepresenting them now since he is trying to get an even more important one?

In any case, a memo released later makes it clear that Judge Alito opposed Roe even when he wasn't a job applicant. In 1985, he told his boss that two pending cases provided an "opportunity to advance the goals of overruling Roe v. Wade and, in the meantime, of mitigating its effects." It is hard to believe that Judge Alito did not regard Roe as illegitimate when he wrote those words. If he agrees with Roe, it raises serious questions about what kind of lawyer he is, because in that case he would have been working to deny millions of women a fundamental right that he believed the Constitution guaranteed them.

Judge Alito is suggesting now that he may not vote to overturn Roe out of respect for precedent. But the Supreme Court reverses its own precedents with some frequency.

Justice Clarence Thomas spoke at his confirmation hearings about his respect for precedent. On the court he has opposed not only Roe, but also the 1965 case recognizing married people's constitutional right to buy birth control....