After four years, Owen gets vote

By JIM ABRAMSAssociated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) — The filibuster fight over for now, the Senate finally is ready to confirm Priscilla Owen as a federal judge, ending a four-year effort by Democrats to derail one of President Bush's prime judicial nominees.

It wasn't easy for Owen, 50, to get to this point. The Texas Supreme Court justice was subjected to nine hours of hearings, answered more than 500 questions and endured 22 days of floor debate.

Wednesday's vote to confirm her to the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals comes a day after the Senate, in line with a far-reaching compromise on judicial filibusters, agreed to break the filibuster that had kept her off the federal bench. The vote Tuesday to end debate and move to confirmation was 81-18.

Owen celebrated that breakthrough with a visit to the White House, where she told the president she would remember “that you expect judges to follow the law.”

“She is my friend, and more importantly, she's a great judge,” Bush said.

Four times in the past the Republican majority had failed to come up with the 60 votes needed to cut off debate and bring Owen's nomination to a vote. Democratic opponents said her views were too conservative for the lifetime appointment.

A compromise reached Monday night also could open the way for votes in the days ahead on other long-stalled nominees, including William Pryor Jr. for the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals and Janice Rogers Brown for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

Senate leaders also announced Tuesday that they had agreed to take up the long-pending nominations of three Michigan judges.

Lawmakers on both sides of the filibuster issue, which had threatened to split the Senate apart, questioned whether the compromise, crafted by seven Republican and seven Democratic senators, would hold.

“This is merely a truce, it is not a treaty yet,” said Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, who with Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., had advocated a new procedure that would have deprived the minority of the filibuster to block judicial nominations. “An awful lot depends on good faith.”

Loss of the votes of the seven Republicans who signed onto the agreement stopped Frist from moving forward with the new procedure, which Democrats said would seriously erode minority rights and negate the minority's voice on future Supreme Court nominations. In turn, the seven Democratic signers pledged that they would resort to judicial filibusters only in “extraordinary circumstances.”

Several Republican signers said the deal would survive only if Democrats abided by that vague condition. “The fact that you are a conservative is no longer an extraordinary circumstance,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.

Owen was expected to win confirmation, if narrowly. Fellow Texan Kay Bailey Hutchison described her as an “exceptional jurist who is committed to the Constitution” and was widely admired across the state.

But Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada said he would vote against her because of her “extreme ideological approach to the law.” He said she consistently ruled in favor of big business and corporate interests and against consumers and workers.

Reid also joined three other Democratic leaders, Dick Durbin, D-Ill., Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., and Debby Stabenow, D-Mich., in writing to Bush, urging him to take advantage of the compromise to “engage in real consultation with the Senate on future judicial nominations.”

Bush welcomed the agreement, saying “these nominees have waited years for an up-or-down on the Senate floor, and now they'll get one.”

Some Republicans voiced regret that they had been denied a chance to end what they said was an abusive use of the filibuster that thwarted 10 nominees during Bush's first term.

George Allen, R-Va., like Frist a potential presidential candidate in 2008, said the deal was “disappointing for all of us who believe in the principle that persons should be accorded the fairness and due process of an up-or-down vote.”

On the Democratic side, the House Congressional Black Caucus issued a statement saying it opposed a deal “that trades judges who oppose our civil rights for a temporary filibuster cease-fire.”

Owen was born in 1954 in Palacios, Texas, a small fishing and agriculture community on the Gulf Coast. Her father died of polio shortly before her first birthday.

She earned a law degree from Baylor University in 1977, finishing at the top of her class and scoring highest among those taking the bar before entering private practice in Houston.

She easily won election to the Texas Supreme Court in 1994 and re-election in 2000.