hite House strategists and Senate allies have launched a new effort to have four of President Bush's most controversial judicial nominees confirmed prior to the start of next week's summer recess.

   Among them is Alabama Attorney General Bill Pryor, who survived a 10-9 vote by the Senate Judiciary Committee last week. Bush wants Mr. Pryor to serve on the 11th U.S. District Court of Appeals; but the nominee's views on hot-button issues like abortion, civil rights and state-church separation have brought together a coalition of groups charging that he is unfit for the federal bench.

   Other candidates having a rough go in the Senate are Texas judge Priscilla Owen; appellate lawyer Miguel Estrada; and California judge Carolyn Kuhl. So far, Republicans have failed to win seven filibuster votes on Owen and Estrada, falling short of the mandatory 60 "ayes" needed to stop debate. GOP leadership has suggested that filibustering federal court nominees is unconstitutional, and even charged that in the case of Attorney General Pryor -- who is a Roman Catholic -- religious animus is at work.    Democrats dismiss those accusations, pointing out that the controversy focuses on a handful of President Bush's picks for the federal bench. They say that the Senate has confirmed 140 U.S. District Court and U.S. Appeals Court candidates.

   "Democrats have stopped two of President Bush's nominees, Republicans stopped 60 -- six zero -- of President Clinton's," said Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.).

   The Senate may vote on Owen today, with a Wednesday vote slated for Estrada. Procedural fireworks may break out on Thursday, though, as Republicans try to obtain consent on Bill Pryor's nomination.

   Charges of religious bias have become part of the debate over the Pryor nomination. The nominee himself may have encouraged such rhetoric, though, due to his own strident views concerning the First Amendment, and his support for public display of monuments to the Ten Commandments. In Alabama, Pryor has been a strong backer of current state Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore, who arranged placement of a two-ton, machine washer sized granite monument of the Decalogue in the state Judicial Building. That fulfilled a campaign promise from Moore, who ran for the judicial post after serving as an Etowah County judge and posted a hand-carved Decalogue plaque on the walls of his courtroom.

   Pryor told a 1997 Ten Commandments rally organized to build support for Moore: "God has chosen, through his son Jesus Christ, this time, this place for all Christians -- Protestants, Catholics and Orthodox -- to save our country and save our courts."

   Despite such blatant statements peppering Pryor's record of public service, religious right groups and Bush partisans in the Senate have accused Democrats of filibustering the nominee on purely theological grounds.

   A report on Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network web site suggests that "Republicans are beginning to wonder if there's a deliberate plot to keep people of deep Christian faith like Pryor and Judge Priscilla Owen off the federal bench."

   Manuel Miranda, who serves as official counsel to Majority Leader Bill Frist blustered, "The opposition to Attorney General Bill Pryor of Alabama is really about religion. When people say that they're concerned about his pro-life views, what they're really saying is that they're concerned about the fact that he is a devout Catholic."

   "Are we not saying then 'Good Catholics need not apply?' " asked GOP Senator Jeff Sessions at the confirmation hearing for Pryor before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

   "This has nothing to do with where Bill Pryor prays or what church he belongs to," responded Ellen Johnson, President of American Atheists. "It IS all about the separation of church and state, though, and Bill Pryor seems unable or unwilling to separate his personal religious ideology from his political life."

   Johnson also questioned whether Pryor was fit to serve on the federal bench.

   "Federal judges must be guided by the Constitution and legal precedent, not by what the Pope or neighborhood Bishop tells them to do," said Johnson.

   Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois challenged claims that personal religious belief per se was the reason for why Pryor's nomination is being questioned.

   "I don't know this nominee's religion. I didn't ask nor did I plan to. You've made an issue of it," he told Pryor supporters.

   Indeed, the "religion card" strategy seems to have originated with a shadowy group called the Committee for Justice, headed by White House political operative Boyden Gray. Gray served as legal counsel to former President George H.W. Bush. The Committee launched a publicity offensive on behalf of the Pryor nomination, and ran newspapers ads in Rhode Island and Maine claiming that "some in the Senate" opposed the appointee because he was Roman Catholic. The ads featured a photo with a sign declaring "Catholics need not apply" hanging on a courthouse door.

   Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.) called the ads "diabolical," and insisted that they were designed to create a "wedge" dividing Catholic voters in the Democratic Party. She and other lawmakers called upon supporters of Pryor to denounce Boyden Gray's smear campaign.

   This may be just a warm-up, though, for when a current U.S. Supreme Court justice dies or announces retirement. Critics say that President Bush is attempting to "pack the courts" with jurists reflecting a religious-right agenda on issues ranging from abortion and gay marriage to affirmative action, civil rights and separation of church and state. Conservatives have denounced a number of court rulings such as a U.S. Ninth Circuit Court decision that declared the phrase "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance to violate the First Amendment. Others are distressed at a recent ruling that struck down a Texas law banning sodomy, a precedent that could ignite lawsuits over the issue of same-sex marriages.

   And the issue has become even more contentious as religious right groups weigh in. Televangelist Pat Robertson recently announced a 21-day "prayer offensive" asking God to remove three justices from the high court so they could be replaced by jurists more to Robertson's religious litmus test.

   "We ask for miracles in regard to the Supreme Court," Robertson told viewers of his "700 Club" television program. He said that the high court's recent 6-3 ruling on the Texas sodomy statute "has opened the door to homosexual marriage, bigamy, legalized prostitution and even incest."

   Pryor made similar statements about the sodomy decision, providing critics more ammunition in their fight to block his Court of Appeals appointment. In a brief filed with the Supreme Court to uphold the invasive Texas law, Pryor compared homosexuality with "prostitution, adultery, necrophilia, bestiality, possession of child pornography and even incest and pedophilia."

   Robertson's "prayer offensive" reflects a supernatural view that Christians can engage in "spiritual warfare" in order to affect worldly events. A letter posted on the Christian Broadcasting Network web site declares: "One justice is 83-years -old, another has cancer and another has a heart condition. Would it not be possible for God to put in the minds of these three judges that the time has come to retire?

   The letter did not ask God to cure the justices, or relieve them of pain and discomfort. Robertson was likely referring to Justice John Paul Stevens who is 83, and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg who underwent surgery for colon cancer in 1999.

   Robertson dubbed the prayer offensive "Operation Supreme Court Freedom."

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