US: A sharply-divided US Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday approved President Bush's nomination of Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court, moving the 55-year-old conservative a step closer to confirmation by the full Republican-led Senate.
On a party-line vote of 10-8, the committee sent the nomination of Judge Alito to the 100-member Senate. The full chamber is to begin debate today, with a confirmation vote expected as early as the end of this week.
If confirmed, Mr Alito, a federal appeals judge since 1990, would replace moderate conservative Justice Sandra Day O'Connor and could help to move the country's highest court to the right on abortion, civil rights and other controversial issues.
Democrats charged that Judge Alito had taken extreme positions on matters such as abortion and civil rights and expressed fears that he would not provide an effective check on presidential powers.
Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the leading Democrat on the committee, said: "I will not lend my support to an effort by this president to move the Supreme Court and the law radically to the right and to remove the final check within our democracy."
The chairman of the committee, senator Arlen Specter, a moderate Pennsylvania Republican who has raised his own concerns about Mr Bush's domestic spying programme, said he believed that Judge Alito's colleagues on the 3rd US Circuit Court of Appeals had answered many critics when they testified at his confirmation hearing that he "was not an ideologue and that he does have an open mind". - (Reuters)