In my first week as a U.S. senator, I had the privilege of participating in the Supreme Court confirmation hearing for Judge Sonia Sotomayor.
When Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg was before us in 1993, she said that her standard was to give no hints, no forecasts, no previews, and declined to answer dozens of questions.
And in that confirmation process, I sat for 17 hours in front of a senate judiciary committee.
I'm very disturbed at the picture that was painted by Senator Ted Kennedy that Samuel Alito is not a man of his word, that he is dishonest. The implication that he is not reliable I don't think is a fair characterization of what I've read.
I served on the budget committee in the Senate, and I remember as vividly as if it were yesterday when we had a hearing in which Alan Greenspan came and justified increasing spending and cutting taxes, saying that we didn't really need to pay down the debt - outrageous in my view.
I think that the justices were totally answering the way that they should. I think that the senators, as best I could tell, for the most part, Democrat and Republican, respected that.
It’s like a Stalinist show trial. The senators all get up and make their speeches and then leave. No one listens.
I, for one, want to see Mr. Cruz as a Supreme Court appointee.
Nothing really happened - I was elected in '86 - until 1992, and that's when the Anita Hill debacle happened.
Mr. Gonzales' failure to respond to questions legitimately posed to him by the Senate raises grave doubts in my mind as to his fitness to serve the people of the United States as their Attorney General.
