Owen confirmed to appeals court

WASHINGTON -- The Senate likes to call itself the world's greatest deliberative body. Anyone needing a reference on that should check with Priscilla Owen.

Nominated to the federal appeals court in May 2001 -- so long ago that "The Mummy Returns" was the nation's top-grossing movie -- Owen finally got her vote Wednesday.

She won, too, a personal triumph over Democratic opposition, marking a victory for President Bush in his drive to install conservatives on the nation's highest courts.

The 55-43 vote was largely along party lines, and made the 50-year-old jurist the first of Bush's long-blocked nominees to win approval under a newly minted agreement by Senate centrists meant to end years of partisan gridlock.

"We cannot stop with this single step," Majority Leader Bill Frist said in a written statement soon after the vote. The Tennessee Republican resurrected a threat to strip Democrats of their right to filibuster Bush's picks for the nation's highest courts if they violate the two-day-old accord.

"We must give fair up-or-down votes to other previously blocked nominees. It is the only way to close this miserable and unprecedented chapter in Senate history," Frist said.

Democratic Leader Harry Reid said he was "ready to put all this behind us and move on."

"I would hope the president would move on," he added later at a news conference in which Democratic leaders urged renewed attention to the economy, health care, defense and other issues.

For his part, Frist told reporters he intended to seek votes early next month for Janice Rogers Brown and William Pryor, two other nominees long blocked by Democrats but now protected by Monday night's bipartisan agreement.

In addition, the Senate's top Republican said he would press for votes on the nominations of William Myers and Henry Saad -- two of the president's selections who were not guaranteed final votes in the centrists' deal.

Republican officials also said they expected Frist to push for votes on Brett Kavanaugh and William Haynes. Both are appeals court nominees strongly opposed by Democrats and have yet to clear the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Beyond that, there is a widespread expectation that one or more Supreme Court vacancies will occur in the coming months, any one of which has the potential to reignite partisan warfare over the future of the judiciary.

Reid, the Democratic leader from Nevada, sounded less than eager to continue debating judicial nominees opposed by many senators in his party as well as independent groups aligned with his party.

The final debate over Owen's nomination was utterly without suspense following Monday's 81-18 vote to advance her nomination to the brink of confirmation.

Since her original nomination in 2001, to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, Democrats have argued that Owen has displayed a tendency for judicial activism, allowing her own political beliefs to color her rulings. In particular, they pointed to an abortion-related case in which she sided with a minority of the court that wanted to make it harder for teens to have an abortion without parental permission.

Republicans countered that such claims were politically motivated, and noted she easily won election to the Texas Supreme Court in 1994 and re-election in 2000.

Owen was one of 10 first-term appeals court appointments made by Bush who were denied votes by Democratic filibusters.

Renominated by Bush after his re-election, Owen logged nine hours of hearings before the Judiciary Committee in all, and filed 900 pages of written answers to questions posed by individual members of the panel.

Republicans said that over the years the Senate spent parts or all of 22 days debating her nomination -- a total that Frist said exceeded the time devoted to all of the nine sitting members of the Supreme Court.

On the final vote Owen drew support from 53 of the Senate's Republicans, as well as Democratic Sens. Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia and Mary Landrieu of Louisiana. Opposed were 41 Democrats, Republican Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island and James Jeffords of Vermont, an independent. Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, did not vote; Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, originally voted "yes" but later changed his vote to "present."

Beyond Owen's nomination, Frist's statements during the day appeared to mark an effort to stake his ground for confirmation battles ahead.

The majority leader has repeatedly said he was not involved in Monday night's agreement, which fell short of his own goal of guaranteeing yes-or-no votes for all of Bush's nominees. Seven Democrats and seven Republicans signed the pact, pledging not to filibuster judicial nominees except in extraordinary circumstances. At the same time, they agreed to oppose attempts to change filibuster procedures.

The wording of the agreement was deliberately vague, prompting critics to claim it would not be able to survive.

But participants in the negotiations said their accomplishment was underestimated.

"Certainly it's a very good sign that 81 senators voted for" ending the filibuster against Owen on Tuesday, said Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine.

And Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., said that if a future nominee comes before the Senate that some centrist Democrats want to filibuster, they will "talk to others in the group and I think we'll pass the test."