James Dobson has claimed on more than one occasion to have been given secret insights into Harriet Miers’ Supreme Court nomination by Karl Rove and the Bush White House. Senate Judiciary Committee Arlen Specter apparently wants to know more about those conversations.
The Senate Judiciary Committee is likely to summon a leading conservative Christian to explain the private assurances he says he received from the White House about Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers, the committee’s chairman said yesterday. […]
[Dobson] spoke with Deputy White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove shortly before President Bush announced the nomination, and later hinted he had received privileged information. “When you know some of the things that I know — that I probably shouldn’t know — you will understand why I have said, with fear and trepidation, that Harriet Miers will be a good justice,” Dobson said told his national radio audience Oct. 5.
Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) said yesterday that his panel is likely to require Dobson and perhaps others to testify about such purported conversations. Asked on CBS’s “Face the Nation” whether the committee will “bring some of these people who said they were told things that perhaps they shouldn’t have been told, like Mr. Dobson,” Specter replied: “my instinct is that they’ll be called. And the American people are entitled to clarification.”
Exactly how interesting this becomes could depend on how vengeful a mood Specter is in. You may recall that shortly after last year’s election, conservative heavyweights launched a fairly serious campaign to prevent Specter from becoming chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. It didn’t work.
And who helped lead the way? Dobson did.
Payback time?