The main audience is the public, and what it's fundamentally interested in is looking at a nominee, sizing him up. And that's what hearings do: see if he stands up under fire, see if seems like a decent, intelligent, upright person. He seems to have hit a home run.

Afraid that he would be violated on his probation if he refused, McCowen reluctantly agreed.

They needed to show their base and activist organizations on the liberal side that they were true-blue, and that explains how they behaved as they did.

The reason I would expect a concurrence from the liberal justices would be to kind of soften the blow for the losers to indicate ... that they themselves interpreted the opinion narrowly.

It was a complete knockdown on a controversial question. It's really quite astonishing.

Red state Democrats have a very strong image in their mind of what happened to colleague [Sen. Tom] Daschle [D-S.D.], who was defeated by a candidate who defeated him on grounds that he was too liberal and who made the judiciary a major issue.

The circumstances of the event left Mr. McCowen with no choice but to give the DNA, which made his consent involuntary under the law.