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Senate Votes Expected This Week on Pryor, Owen

As the Senate wraps up business in the last week before its traditional month-long summer recess, the Senate Republican leadership has voiced plans to bring several contentious judicial nominations to the floor for a vote.

Senate Republicans are expected to file a cloture motion today on William Pryor, President Bush’s extremist right-wing nominee to the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, according to CongressDaily. Pryor’s nomination, which could be blocked by a Senate filibuster, could come to the floor for a vote on Wednesday. “We’re ready to go,” Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) told CongressDaily. “I think the majority leader is ready to go.” Pryor was approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee just last week in a party-line vote.

On Friday, Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT), chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, filed a third cloture motion on Priscilla Owen, President Bush’s far-right nominee to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. Senate Democrats have held a filibuster on Owen since April, despite two attempts by Senate Republicans to break that filibuster with a cloture vote.

Currently a justice on the Texas Supreme Court, Owen was rejected by the Democratic-controlled Senate Judiciary Committee last year for her consistently anti-women’s rights and anti-workers’ rights rulings. Despite this, Bush renominated Owen after the Republicans won control of the Senate in the 2002 elections.

TAKE ACTION Urge Your Senators to Filibuster Far Right Extremist Pryor

Sources:

CongressDaily 7/25/03; New York Times 7/26/03; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 7/25/03

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