As expected, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted, 13-6, today to send the Supreme Court nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the full Senate with a favorable recommendation.
South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham joined all 12 Democrats on the panel to support Sotomayor's nomination. The full Senate is expected to take up the nomination the week of Aug. 3, and confirm Sotomayor before its August recess.
Oklahoma Republican Sen. Tom Coburn has announced he will oppose Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, making it likely that the Judiciary Committee will approve the nomination on a 13-6 vote.
Coburn was the last of seven Judiciary Committee Republicans to declare his position. The panel, which has 12 Democrats, is scheduled to vote on the nomination Tuesday morning. Only one panel Republican, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, plans to vote in favor of the nomination. All of the Democrats are expected to vote for it as well.
According to The Oklahoman newspaper Coburn opposes Sotomayor because of her views on gun rights and foreign law. Excerpts from her past speeches also demonstrate that Sotomayor will be unable to exercise impartiality, Coburn contends.
Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, has announced he will vote against the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, in an op-ed in USA Today.
"I don't believe that Judge Sotomayor has the deep-rooted convictions necessary to resist the siren call of judicial activism," Sessions wrote.
The Judiciary committee is scheduled to vote on the nomination on Tuesday. The panel, composed of 12 Democrats and seven Republicans, is expected to approve the nomination. The Senate is expected to confirm Sotomayor during the week of Aug. 3.
So far, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina is the only committee Republican to announce a yes vote on the nomination. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa and Tom Couburn of Oklahoma are the only Republicans on the panel who have not announced a position.
Now that the big push for a pre-recess Senate vote on health care overhaul has collapsed, it looks like the Democratic majority is saving debate and a vote on the Supreme Court nomination of Sonia Sotomayor for the week leading up to the scheduled August recess.
The Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to vote on the nomination on July 28. But Democratic leaders won't bring the nomination to the floor right away. Instead, it looks like they want to make the vote on her confirmation the last major Senate action before the recess, scheduled to begin Aug. 7. The nomination would not hit the floor until the week of Aug. 3, said a Senate Democratic aide.
Meanwhile, Sotomayor is killing time meeting privately with some of the 11 senators she did not get to talk to before her confirmation hearing began July 13.
The day after the Senate Judiciary Committee votes on the Supreme Court nomination of Sonia Sotomayor next week, it will turn its attention to other pending judicial nominations.
The committtee is holding a hearing July 29 on the nominations of Beverly Baldwin Martin to be a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, and Jeffrey L. Viken to be a district judge in South Dakota.
Sotomayor is on a glide path to confirmation before the Senate leaves for a long recess in August. But so far, none of President Obama's five appellate court and four district court nominations has seen Senate floor action. Martin and Viken were both nominated in June.
The Senate today met as a court of impeachment to dismiss four articles of impeachment against former U.S. District Judge Samuel B. Kent.
The House managers asked the Senate to drop the matter, because Kent has resigned his judgeship.
The House on July 20 adopted by voice vote a resolution (H Res 661) to tell the Senate that the process should be halted. Rep. Adam B. Schiff, D-Calif., today told the Senate, meeting as an impeachment court, that the House wished to discontinue the proceedings.
The Senate then adopted by voice vote a motion by Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., to dismiss the impeachment articles.
South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham on Wednesday announced he would vote in favor of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor.
Graham is the first Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee to come out in support of Sotomayor's nomination. He could provide some cover for other conservative Senate Republicans to vote for Sotomayor as well.
So far, only four other Republicans -- Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine, Richard G. Lugar of Indiana and Mel Martinez of Florida -- have announced they will vote for Sotomayor.
South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham is expected to announce his vote on Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor on the Senate floor later today.
Graham, who serves on the Senate Judiciary Committee, could be the first GOP committee member to endorse Sotomayor.
The only other Republican on the panel to have taken a position so far is Jon Kyl of Arizona, who will oppose Sotomayor. Kyl leaked his position to ABC News' Jan Crawford Greenburg.
Graham is expected to speak soon.
The House of Representatives is scheduled to vote later today on a resolution that is intended to halt Senate proceedings against an impeached federal judge.
Last month, the House passed four articles of impeachment against Samuel B. Kent, a Texas federal district judge who is serving a 33-month jail sentence on a charge stemming from allegations of sexual misconduct. The Senate quickly began the process of holding a trial.
Kent had hoped to hold onto his judgeship until next June, in order to receive his salary and benefits. But after the Senate began the trial process, Kent resigned his seat.
The brief House resolution instructs its impeachment managers to tell the Senate that the House "does not desire further to urge the articles of impeachment" against Kent.
Frank Ricci, the New Haven firefighter whose employment discrimination case is central to the Republican case against Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, will testify at her confirmation hearing next week.
Ricci is one of 14 witnesses who will testify at the invitation of Republicans, after Sotomayor finishes at least two days of questioning by the panel. Republicans have touted the Supreme Court's recent reversal of a 2nd Circuit decision in which Sotomayor participated. Sotomayor and two other judges upheld a district court dismissal of a discrimination case brought by Ricci and several other New Haven firefighters.
Ben Vargas, a Hispanic firefighter who participated in the lawsuit with Ricci and several others, is another GOP witnesses.
Former directors of a Latino legal advocacy group have attacked Alabama Republican Jeff Sessions' emphasis on the group's work as a means to criticize Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor.
In a letter, 11 former board members underscored that Sotomayor did not play a substantive role in the group's day-to-day activities, nor in the lawsuits it waged on behalf of Puerto Ricans.
"Neither the board as a whole nor any individual member selects any litigation to be undertaken or controls ongoing litigation," the former board members wrote.
Sotomayor served on the board of directors of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund -- now known as LatinoJustice PRLDEF -- from 1980 to 1992. Sessions and other Republicans have reached back past Sotomayor's subsequent 17 years as a federal judge to try to find something explosive in the group's history to hang around Sotomayor's neck.
Republicans scouring Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor's affiliation with a Latino advocacy group contend that documents released Wednesday show she played an active role in an organization they consider radical.
Hundreds of pages of documents LatinoJustice PRLDEF, formerly known as Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, delivered to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday are just the "tip of the iceberg" and show that she played "a substantive role" in the group, a Republican committee aide said Wednesday.
Sotomayor was a member and president of the board of directors of the group between 1980 and 1992 and in that capacity Republicans are trying to build the case that she was a pivotal player in the group's activities.