Sen. Arlen Specter’s latest hire is former NAACP assistant general counsel Hannibal G. Williams II Kemerer. The American Prowler has the gory details:

Kemerer was a protégé of Elaine Jones, who three years ago, as head of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, lobbied Sen. Ted Kennedy to delay confirmation of many of President Bush’s judicial nominees to a federal circuit court where her group had pending litigation. When Jones and Kennedy’s deal was revealed, she was forced to resign.

Specter hired Kemerer to deal specifically with the nominations and vetting of federal judicial nominees, a position many conservatives were led to believe by Specter would go, at the very least, to a Republican, and most likely to a conservative.

Specter, according to a longtime conservative judicial observer, made those promises during a meeting in late 2004 at which Specter was pleading for an opportunity to serve as Judiciary Chairman.

When word of Kemerer’s hiring spread within the NAACP and Democratic Senate ranks, virtual whoops of glee were being emailed about.

As word earlier this week began to leak of Kemerer’s employment, Specter slid his new hire into a staff position on the committee dealing with civil litigation issues and tort reform. And according to the Judiciary source, word is that all remarks made to the press are to make clear that Kemerer will not be working on judicial nominations.

But Specter, according to some close advisers, has told them as well as Kemerer that Kemerer will play a “critical” role on the Judiciary Committee.

“What everybody seems to be forgetting is that this guy is going to have access to all of our files, to all of our briefings. He will have access to everything because he is on the majority staff. If he were a Democratic hire, it might be another matter,” says the Judiciary staffer. “But theoretically he is one of us.”

Specter has further inflamed both the White House and Republican leadership in the Senate by his request that all judicial nominees — even those who previously were cleared by the Judiciary Committee — go through committee hearings. This would mean that someone like filibustered Texas supreme court justice Priscilla Owen would have to face full committee once again. “That hasn’t gotten out too far, as far as I know,” says the committee staffer. “But conservative legal groups are livid.”

Looks like those of us who warned about the bane of Specter are being proven right. Will any of the conservatives who supported giving the Judiciary Committee chairmanship to Specter now admit to having second thoughts?

Ramesh Ponnuru is on top of it, as usual, while Sabertooth notes a separate disturbing Specter appointment.

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