Senators talk tough before Alito hearings

WASHINGTON -- Samuel A. Alito Jr. has a lot of explaining to do before senators are ready to put him on the Supreme Court. And Democrats say if they don't like what the federal judge says -- or doesn't say -- at this week's confirmation hearing, the president's nominee could run into trouble.\n"This is basically up to Judge Alito. Does he answer the questions, or doesn't he?" said Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee. "I would hope he answers the questions. If he doesn't answer the questions, then we have a very real issue here." \nDemocrats say they will not decide whether to filibuster or try to delay a committee vote until after the committee's weeklong hearings that begin Monday.\nIf Democrats attempt a filibuster based on Alito's answers on abortion, at least one Republican is ready to vote for Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's plan to ban judicial filibusters.\n"I would consider that not only not an extraordinary circumstance, but a threat to the independence of the judiciary, and I would stop it in its tracks with my vote," said GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.\nGraham is one of the 14 senators -- seven from each party -- who joined to end an earlier Senate showdown of the stalling tactic for the president's judicial nominees.\nThat group of centrist lawmakers decided last year to support such filibusters only under "extraordinary circumstances."\nRepublicans say there is no reason to delay or filibuster Alito, the federal appeals court judge who is Bush's choice to succeed the retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. She often provided the swing vote on abortion, the death penalty, affirmative action and other contentious issues.\n"I have not seen any rational basis for filibustering Judge Alito," said the Judiciary Committee chairman, GOP Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, on CNN's "Late Edition."\nAlito will face at least two days of questioning from senators. The nominee and the lawmakers planned to give their opening statements at noon Monday, hours after Alito's scheduled breakfast meeting at the White House with the president.\nQuestioning begins Tuesday and is expected to go through at least Thursday.\nSpecter has called for a Jan. 17 committee vote. But Leahy would not promise that Democrats would stick to that schedule, which Senate leaders hope would lead to a final vote in the full Senate on Jan. 20.\n"Obviously, if he doesn't answer the questions, then it gets out of my control. Some senator would move to hold it over. Let's hope we get all the answers, so that doesn't happen," Leahy told CBS' "Face the Nation."\nAlito was the White House's second choice to replace O'Connor, the high court's first female justice. White House counsel Harriet Miers withdrew from consideration after conservatives questioned her judicial philosophy and qualifications for the Supreme Court.\nBush then turned to Alito, a 55-year-old conservative judge on the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia who previously worked as a federal prosecutor and a lawyer for the Reagan administration.\nEven with the current debate over the government's wiretapping without court approval and other uses of executive authority in the fight against terrorism, abortion was expected to be the most contentious topic at the hearings.\n"I believe that presidential power will be very, very important," said Specter, an abortion rights moderate.\nBut, he added, "I do not think that you can put aside the issue of a woman's right to choose. I think that that still, in the popular mind, on day-to-day activities, is still the bigger question."\nSenators who have met privately with Alito say he told them that his 1985 written comments stating that there was no constitutional right to an abortion were part of a job application for the Reagan administration, which opposed abortion.\nAt the same time, he wrote in a separate legal memo while at the Justice Department that the department should try to chip away at abortion rights rather than mount an all-out assault.\nAt least one committee Democrat said she would consider a filibuster if Alito's answers lead her to believe that he would overturn the Supreme Court's 1973 Roe v. Wade decision establishing a woman's right to an abortion.\n"If I believed he was going to go in there and overthrow Roe, the question is most likely yes," Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., told "Fox News Sunday."\nIt is unlikely that Alito will answer questions about how he would rule on abortion questions, said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas.