A centrist?

Yahoo News: Feinstein Gears Up for Roberts Hearings:

John Roberts would replace the first woman on the Supreme Court at a time when interest groups are more focused than ever on the court's position on abortion. Only one female lawmaker will question Roberts publicly and then vote on whether his nomination should advance to the full Senate.

"It certainly gives me a big responsibility," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the lone woman on the 18-member Senate Judiciary Committee.

The committee will hold hearings on President Bush's pick to succeed the retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.

Feinstein, 72, a centrist, backed Roberts when Bush nominated him in early 2003 for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. But the senator also is a strong supporter of abortion rights.

Dianne Feinstein is a centrist? Since when?

Feinstein is a middle-of-the-road Democrat who sometimes breaks ranks with her party colleagues. Two years ago, she was one of six committee Democrats who voted in favor of Roberts for the appeals court.

Feinstein supported Bush on the Iraq war, on his Medicare prescription drug bill and on the Central American Free Trade Agreement. Recently, she has worked with the Judiciary Committee chairman, Sen. Arlen Specter R-Pa., on a rewrite of the terrorism-fighting Patriot Act.

"She's someone who pragmatically goes about the business of governing, and you can't have extreme ideological commitments to do that," said Elizabeth Garrett, a law professor at the University of Southern California.

Feinstein's vote on Roberts may require her to weigh her passion for pragmatism against her strongly felt support for abortion rights. She served on a California prison sentencing board in the early 1960s, and she remembers the damage caused by illegal abortions.

The former San Francisco mayor said it would be "very difficult" for her to support Roberts if she determines he would vote to overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion.

Well, since she worked with Arlen Specter . . .

What damage caused by illegal abortions? So a few stupid girls decided to murder their babies and could only do it illegally. If she thinks that was damage, what does she call the mass murder of millions of babies since the heinous Roe v. Wade decision? Those deaths aren't damage?

And this AP writer, Erica Werner, has obviously got a bias:

Feinstein was one of four new female senators sent to the Senate in 1992's "Year of the Woman," which followed the Supreme Court hearings in which the all-male Judiciary Committee questioned Anita Hill about her sexual harassment allegations against nominee Clarence Thomas.

Thomas ultimately was confirmed. Meanwhile, Feinstein has served on that committee ever since.

Really, what exactly has that got to do with the Roberts' Nomination?