Welcome to Gonzales Watch - Blawging the Ex-Attorney General

In 2005, Senator Specter became Pennsylvania’s longest serving U.S. Senator. He is Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and a senior member of the Appropriations and Veterans Affairs committees.

Senator Specter has been a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee since he came to the Senate. As such, he has played an instrumental role in many of the Senate’s most important issues, including the confirmations of Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr. and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. In early 2006, he presided over the nomination hearings of Judge Samuel Alito to serve as Associate Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Senator Specter has also shepherded through the Judiciary Committee legislation on asbestos litigation reform to absolve what the Supreme Court once called an “elephantine mass” clogging our judicial system. Senator Specter has worked in a bi-partisan fashion to reauthorize key provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act, an important tool in United States’ war on terror. He has also authored legislation to help consumers better protect the privacy of their personal information in the face of recurrent data security breaches across the country.

On the Judiciary Committee, Senator Specter continues to build on his foundation as a lawyer and former district attorney. He is the author of the Armed Career Criminal Act, which has been praised for long prison terms for repeat offenders, and the Terrorist Prosecution Act, which authorizes criminal actions in U.S. Courts for assaulting, maiming or murdering Americans anywhere in the world.

As a senior member of the Appropriations Committee, Senator Specter also plays a key role as Ranking Member of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, which oversees federal funding for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Centers for Disease Control and educational programs like Head Start, Pell grants, and GEAR-UP. Under his leadership, funding for education has increased by more than 130%. The budget for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which has made major advances in curing Parkinson’s, cancer, heart disease and delaying the onset of Alzheimer’s, has more than doubled.

Senator Specter was born to immigrant parents in Wichita, Kansas, and grew up in the small town of Russell, Kansas. He is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and served as an editor of the Yale Law Journal. He began his career in public service as an Assistant Philadelphia District Attorney. While serving in that position, he was named Assistant Counsel on the Warren Commission investigation into President Kennedy’s assassination. Two years later, Senator Specter was elected District Attorney of Philadelphia at the age of 35.