After 40 hours of talk, more judge nominations stalled

WASHINGTON - After 40 hours of nonstop talking organized by Republicans to protest filibusters on judicial nominees, Senate Democrats added Friday to the list of judges they have stalled successfully.

Democrats declared the longest uninterrupted Senate debate in 15 years a victory for their side. Republicans warned that the Democrats' methods could come back to haunt them.

In each of three successive votes Friday morning, Republicans secured 53 votes to advance the judicial nominees to a final confirmation vote. That was seven short of the 60 needed to overcome Democratic resistance.

Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said Democrats were energized by the GOP-staged talkfest. "The other side seems to think they can just intimidate us," he said. "We are not going to let the president take the judiciary and move it out of the mainstream."

But Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., said some Republicans already are plotting revenge for the day when a Democratic president tries to get his judges approved.

The Senate votes failed to move the nominations of Texas judge Priscilla Owen and California judges Carolyn Kuhl and Janice Rogers Brown to appeals court positions. The action increased to six the number of appellate court nominations stalled by Democratic filibusters.

APOLOGY DEMANDED: A civil rights activist demanded that Georgia Sen. Zell Miller apologize for saying a conservative black woman's efforts to get a federal judicial seat will be "lynched" by her opponents in Congress.

Wade Henderson, executive director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, criticized Miller's 2 a.m. speech Friday.

"They're standing in the doorway and they've got a sign: conservative African-American women need not apply," the Atlanta Journal-Constitution quoted Miller as saying. "And if you have the temerity to do so, your reputation will be shattered and your dignity will be shredded.

"Gal, you will be lynched."

Henderson said Miller's use of the term was an insult to the families of blacks who were actually lynched.

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