Senate confirms Bush court nominee

'Not a treaty yet'
Lawmakers on both sides of the filibuster issue questioned whether the compromise would hold.

“This is merely a truce, it is not a treaty yet,” said Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, an advocate of restricting judicial filibusters. “An awful lot depends on good faith.”

Several Republican signers said the deal would survive only if Democrats abided by that vague condition. “The fact that you are a conservative is no longer an extraordinary circumstance,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.

Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, described Owen as an “exceptional jurist who is committed to the Constitution” and was widely admired across the state.

But Reid said he was voting against her because of her “extreme ideological approach to the law.” He said she consistently ruled in favor of big business and corporate interests and against consumers and workers.

Deal critics include some Democrats
Some Republicans voiced regret that they had been denied a chance to end what they said was an abusive use of the filibuster that thwarted 10 nominees during Bush’s first term.

George Allen, R-Va., like Frist a potential presidential candidate in 2008, said the deal was “disappointing for all of us who believe in the principle that persons should be accorded the fairness and due process of an up-or-down vote.”

Sen. Christopher Bond, R-Mo., said the agreement was a Band-Aid rather than “the scalpel need to fix the underlying problem.”

On the Democratic side, the House Congressional Black Caucus issued a statement saying it opposed a deal “that trades judges who oppose our civil rights for a temporary filibuster cease-fire.”

Owen was born in 1954 in Palacios, Texas, a small fishing and agriculture community on the Gulf Coast. Her father died of polio shortly before her first birthday.

She earned a law degree from Baylor University in 1977, finishing at the top of her class and scoring highest among those taking the bar before entering private practice in Houston.

She easily won election to the Texas Supreme Court in 1994 and re-election in 2000.

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