WASHINGTON — The Senate moved closer Thursday to a constitutional confrontation over how to choose federal judges after a committee approved two of President Bush's controversial judicial nominees.
In the coming days, Republican leaders are expected to decide whether to bring one of those nominees up for a floor vote. Members of both parties say scheduling a vote would trigger a parliamentary battle so potentially explosive that it has become known as the "nuclear option."
Democrats plan to filibuster either of the nominees -- one of them a Californian, state Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers Brown. Republicans say they would retaliate by trying to change the rules of the Senate to bar use of the filibuster to oppose judicial nominations.
In response, Democrats say they would bring much of the chamber's work to a halt.
Republican leaders signaled that the conflict could come to a head soon, perhaps as early as next week. The decision belongs to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), who will decide when to place the judges on the Senate agenda.
On Thursday, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted along party lines to approve the nominations of Rogers Brown and Priscilla Owen, a member of the Texas Supreme Court, to the federal appellate bench. All 10 committee Republicans voted for the pair; all eight Democrats on the panel, including California's Dianne Feinstein, voted against them.
Democrats accuse both judges of being extremists and judicial activists whose legal decisions are based more on conservative ideologies than the merits of cases.
The Democrats said that in speeches and court decisions, Rogers Brown expressed hostility toward government programs and ordinary business regulation, describing local zoning laws as "thievery" and seniors on Social Security as people who "blithely cannibalize their grandchildren."
Feinstein said: "In my days on this committee, I have never seen a nominee who expresses such extreme views, views that are clearly out of the mainstream of American thought."
Relying on a frequent Republican charge about federal judges, Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) accused Owen of being "willing and sometimes eager to make law from the bench."
Eager to pass the nominees out of the committee, Republicans largely kept quiet. One exception was Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.), who rose to Owen's defense.
"I think this is the type of judge we're looking for," he said.
