Time Running Out For Judges Deal

The long Senate showdown over President Bush's federal court nominations is inching closer to a showdown.

Senators from both parties have scheduled a meeting for Monday, hoping to reach a compromise that would head off the so-called "nuclear option" of changing the rules on judicial nominees, reports CBS News Correspondent Thalia Assuras.

Among those holding out hope for a deal is Democratic Sen. Joseph Lieberman.

"I would predict that the odds are better than 50-50 that there will be a centrist compromise that will avoid the nuclear option," Leiberman told CBS News' The Early Show.

Many Republicans, on the other, hand, feel that the time for talking has passed.

"What we're going to have to do on Tuesday is protect the Constitution, also exercise our duties and responsibilities as senators to get off our haunches, show some spine, show some backbone and vote," said Sen. George Allen, R-Va.

Party leaders wished the group of at least 12 compromise-seeking senators well, but they predicted victory in the fierce floor fight that would result if talks fail.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist has given Democrats an ultimatum: Stand aside and allow an up-or-down vote on Mr. Bush's designees or prepare for an end to filibusters on judicial nominees – the so-called nuclear option.

Democrats have refused to comply, insisting that the filibuster be preserved as a check on the rights of the Senate minority.

Frist's timetable calls for the critical votes on one nominee, conservative Texas Supreme Court Justice Priscilla Owen, to be cast Tuesday and Wednesday.

It takes 60 votes to end a filibuster and proceed to a vote. Republicans gained four seats in the November elections, bringing the party split in the Senate to 55 Republicans, 44 Democrats and one independent.

"The contempt for the rule of law and the law of rules will set a new precedent — an illegal precedent," Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada told new graduates of George Washington University law school, his alma mater, on Sunday."If a compromise cannot be reached, Democrats and responsible Republicans will cast a historic vote for the Constitution and against the nuclear option," Reid added.

Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Republicans' vote counter, said Frist, R-Tenn., would have enough votes to stop a filibuster of Owen's nomination to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans.

"If Senator Frist has to exercise (that) option, I believe we'll have the votes," McConnell, R-Ky., said on CBS' Face the Nation.

Six senators from each party are needed to force a deal whereby future judicial nominees are not blocked and current filibuster procedures remain unchanged.

Republican Sen. John McCain is one of those leading the effort to find a compromise.

"I don't think any of us know exactly how this is going to play out," said McCain, R-Ariz.

But if he can't get enough of his colleagues to join him, everything in the Senate could change.

"It's nuclear, both in the way that it will change the way filibusters work in the Senate, but also in how Democrats say how they will react," McCain said, "which is to use all their other ways of obstructing, not nominations, but legislation."