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Senate Moments...

Filibuster Derails Nomination
To Supreme Court

In June 1968, Chief Justice Earl Warren informed President Lyndon Johnson that he planned to retire from the Supreme Court. Concern that Richard Nixon might win the presidency later that year and get to choose his successor dictated Warren's timing.

In the final months of his presidency, Johnson shared Warren's concerns about Nixon and welcomed the opportunity to add his third appointee to the Court. To replace Warren, he nominated Associate Justice Abe Fortas, his longtime confidant. Anticipating Senate concerns about the prospective chief justice's liberal opinions, Johnson simultaneously declared his intention to fill the vacancy created by Fortas' elevation with Appeals Court Judge Homer Thornberry. The president believed that Thornberry, a Texan, would mollify skeptical southern senators.

A seasoned Senate vote-counter, Johnson concluded that despite filibuster warnings he just barely had the support to confirm Fortas. The president took encouragement from indications that his former Senate mentor, Richard Russell, and Republican Minority Leader Everett Dirksen would support Fortas, whose legal brilliance both men respected.

The president soon lost Russell's support, however, because of administration delays in nominating the senator's candidate to a Georgia federal judgeship. Johnson urged Senate leaders to waste no time in convening Fortas' confirmation hearings. Responding to staff assurances of Dirksen's continued support, Johnson told an aide, "Just take my word for it. I know [Dirksen]. I know the Senate. If they get this thing drug out very long, we're going to get beat. Dirksen will leave us."

Fortas became the first sitting associate justice, nominated for chief justice, to testify at his own confirmation hearing. Those hearings reinforced what some senators already knew about the nominee. As a sitting justice, he regularly attended White House staff meetings; he briefed the president on secret Court deliberations; and, on behalf of the president, he pressured senators who opposed the war in Vietnam. When the Judiciary Committee revealed that Fortas received a privately funded stipend, equivalent to 40 percent of his Court salary, to teach an American University summer course, Dirksen and others withdrew their support. Although the committee recommended confirmation, floor consideration sparked the first filibuster in Senate history on a Supreme Court nomination.

On October 1, 1968, the Senate failed to invoke cloture. Johnson then withdrew the nomination, privately observing that if he had another term, "the Fortas appointment would have been different."

Cockfighting May Decide Senate Seat

Should cockfighting be legal? Should it be regulated at the state or federal level? And exactly where, in the moral hierarchy, does it rank in relation to hog-dog rodeos?

Perhaps you have not spent a lot of time contemplating these ethical quandaries. But since cockfighting is now a political issue that might help determine control of the United States Senate next year, you may want to get up to speed.

The Louisiana Legislature is considering a bill to ban hog-dog rodeos, in which a boar, after having its tusks cut off, is chased around a pen by a pit bull. The proposed ban is not especially controversial -- it has passed one chamber and is expected to pass the other soon -- but it has helped renew another debate. Why, if it is wrong for a dog to fight a hog, is it still legal in Louisiana for roosters to go after each other with blades attached to their legs? Hog-dog fans (yes, there are a few) indignantly protest that while the hog usually survives their event (because handlers intervene once the dog has the hog between his teeth), fighting roosters often kill each other.

One of the Democrats running for the Senate in Louisiana, John Kennedy, has come out against cockfighting and criticized one of his rivals, Representative Chris John, who once called cockfighting a "cultural, family-type thing" and opposed efforts in Congress to ban the interstate shipment of fighting birds. A political action committee run by Wayne Pacelle, the chief executive of the Humane Society of the United States, is also taking aim at Mr. John. A poll commissioned by the Humane Society showed that 82 percent of Louisianans favored banning cockfights.

Mr. John, understandably, seems reluctant to be labeled the cockfighting candidate. "They're trying to make this a campaign issue, but it really isn't one," said his campaign manager, Scott Arceneaux. "Chris has taken no position on the state law. He has simply been against federal legislation that would outlaw the practice. He believes this is an issue for the states to decide."

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HISTORY SCRAMBLE

Pets of
the Month