Word: specter
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...reassuring centrist Republicans who are the key to his confirmation. Roberts' six-minute opening remarks today managed to cram in tips of the hat to both groups. For the hardliners, he argued the importance of rule of law over individual rights. For the centrists, like Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, he emphasized his respect for the opinions of current and past judicial decisions. "His goal is to reassure the skeptics in the 45-50 vote range," says McIntosh, "Those are the votes he has to keep to get through and he'll stay focused on them...
...Above the reporters and general public in the field seats, a handful of glass-fronted booths had been doled out to politicians and Washington insiders. Judiciary Chair Arlen Specter grilled Roberts on Roe v. Wade right from the start, as skybox onlookers such as former Solicitor General Ted Olson, former Presidential candidate Gary Bauer and former Indiana Representative David McIntosh crammed into Box 3e to watch the hearing on closed circuit television. It was a private setting, which Bauer and McIntosh, for their part, put to use for a quick briefing by nomination-strategy staffers from the offices of Senate...
...From the conservative vantage point, the hearing looked good. Roberts wriggled out of each creative whack-a-mole attempt by senators to get him to explain his view of Roe. Specter, whose vote is considered safe but certainly key to Roberts' success, dove into the Roe line of questioning immediately, asking the judge whether he believed in such a thing as a right to privacy in the Constitution, and whether Roe qualifies as, in Specter's words, ?a super-duper precedent? thanks to 38 opportunities the Court has had to overturn it. (Roberts, in one of his Reagan-era memos...
Equally controversial plans could move beyond mere talk in other Western cities. A multiyear drought, which eased only this year, dropped water levels in the Colorado River's vast reservoirs to historic lows, raising the specter of involuntary rationing. It was a shock that rattled water managers in numerous states, causing Denver, for example, to eye the headwaters of the Gunnison River, clear across the Continental Divide, and Los Angeles to consider exploiting a groundwater field in the Mojave Desert. These and other communities will thus be watching Las Vegas closely, as will environmentalists who question, among other things...
This national ignorance is chilling because it is just as important to remember what happened at Hiroshima and Nagasaki today as it was 50 years ago. Unlike during the Cold War, when we felt the specter of atomic warfare breathing down our backs every day and marshaled our country’s whole attention to fight it, today we live in an insulated world where Dr. Strangelove’s doomsday scenario seems like fiction. Although we hear of dirty bombs and nuclear programs, and polls have shown that most Americans fear a nuclear attack, there is not nearly...