CAPITOL HILL - What's Teddy Done Now?: Sen. Kennedy shafts Scalia's son.(politics behind confirmation of nomination of attorney Eugene Scalia to Labor Department post)

A majority of the Senate would vote to confirm Eugene Scalia for the post of top lawyer at the Labor Department, so Senate majority leader Tom Daschle blithely announced an extraordinary confirmation standard in the case of this nominee (who happens to be Justice Antonin Scalia's son). "I don't believe he has the 60 votes that are required," Daschle announced before labeling the 38-year-old lawyer a "very controversial nominee." To bolster this assertion, Daschle lied about the nominee's record, claiming that Scalia refused to commit to enforcing all relevant laws.

Eugene Scalia's ordeal is a cautionary story of payback that illustrates the tactics Senate Democrats are prepared to employ to block not "controversial" but consequential nominees-like those for appellate courts.

Presidential politics, past and future, have made Scalia the longest- pending Bush nominee. Daschle is playing the 2001 version of Sore Loserman in his determination to exact revenge on the son for the sins of the father (in December 2000, Justice Scalia cast the deciding vote that made George W. Bush president), and playing up to the AFL-CIO's John Sweeney (whose support Daschle will need if he challenges Bush in 2004). Nominated on April 30, Scalia finally had a twice-postponed Labor Committee hearing on October 2-and even then only because Republican senator Judd Gregg warned Chairman Ted Kennedy that Republicans would block the panel's work until it took up the nomination.

During the hearing, Kennedy acknowledged the nominee's impressive credentials. Scalia is a 1990 graduate of the University of Chicago Law School, where he was editor in chief of the law review. His government service includes working for education secretary William Bennett and attorney general William Barr. When nominated, Scalia was practicing employment law as a partner in the Washington office of the L.A.-based firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher.

Sen. Gregg points out that "we are unaware of any prior solicitor nominee with his combination of academic accomplishment, prolific writing on labor and employment matters, and many years of practice as a labor and employment lawyer." Gregg's assertion has not been challenged; five former Labor Department solicitors have enthusiastically endorsed Scalia.

Scalia's qualifications aren't the problem; his unremarkable views and his admittedly remarkable pedigree are. Kennedy declared Scalia's opinions "outside the mainstream," echoing hostile labor unions by citing Scalia's "very strong opposition" to ergonomics regulations aimed at protecting workers from repetitive-motion injuries. Here, Kennedy noted that "many of us on the committee and in Congress respectfully disagree." Many, but not most: A majority of the Senate agrees with Scalia, having voted by a 56-44 margin to repeal the ergonomics regulations that President Clinton imposed by executive order a few days before he left office. "Gene Scalia is not as adamantly opposed to that order as I was," notes Oklahoma Republican senator Don Nickles, who saw Clinton's action as an illegal attempt to circumvent Congress's legislative authority. In backing the repeal, Louisiana Democratic senator John Breaux explained, "I don't want someone who is injured in a water-skiing accident on Sunday to go to work on Monday and complain that the back problem was generated in the workplace."

During his hearing, Scalia repeatedly pledged to enforce all of the over 200 existing federal workplace laws and regulations, none of which he has ever publicly criticized. While Senate Democrats took up AFL-CIO president Sweeney's charge that Scalia opposed "vital worker protections including ergonomics," other liberals made the disqualifying-surname case. In a column headlined, "Two Scalias in Our Government Are Two Too Many," Marianne Means saw the nomination of Eugene Scalia as a "deliberately vengeful move" by the president. "Looming over the selection is the dark shadow of his cranky father . . . the mastermind of the ...