Capital Briefs

* MANNING THE BORDER: The U.S. Border Patrol plans to begin deploying more than 500 additional Border Patrol agents along the U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona just as a group of volunteers, known as the Minuteman Project, begins monitoring for illegal aliens along the same stretch of border. About 155 veteran agents will be sent to Arizona immediately on permanent assignment. They will be followed by another 200 veterans to be placed on temporary assignment in Arizona later this spring and summer.

Some time this year about 370 newly trained Border Patrol agents will be assigned to Arizona to replace the 200 veterans on temporary assignment. These new agents will be added to the Border Patrol over and above the 210 new agents President Bush requested in his fiscal 2006 budget. These combined Border Patrol additions, however, still fall far short of the 2,000 new Border Patrol agents for next year (and 10,000 over five years) authorized in the 9/11 Commission law President Bush signed in December.

* SUPPLEMENTAL SHOWDOWN: Atop the Senate's agenda in April is the $81-billion supplemental budget request to cover the costs of U.S. activities in Iraq and Afghanistan. The House version of the supplemental includes the REAL ID Act, sponsored by House Judiciary Chairman James Sensenbrenner (R.-Wis.), which prohibits federal agencies from accepting driver's licenses from states that give licenses to illegal aliens, tightens asylum laws and closes a gap in a fence along the U.S.-Mexico border near San Diego.

Some GOP senators oppose including REAL ID in the supplemental and may use its inclusion in the House version of the bill as an excuse to try to push an illegal-alien amnesty into law. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R.-Tenn.) spoke to Fox News about the REAL ID provisions: "We will look at each and every one of those through our committee process. And if it makes sense, we may go ahead and pass them in some way. If not, it may even be more likely we'll do a little bit broader immigration reform, instead of just those specific ones."

* SPECTER'S SCHEDULE: Upon returning from a two-week congressional recess, Senate Judiciary Chairman Arlen Specter (R.-Pa.) plans to move forward with votes on seven judicial nominees.

Specter's committee plans to start voting on the nominees on April 7 with appellate court nominee Thomas Griffith and district court nominees Robert Conrad and James Dever Ill. On April 14, the committee plans to vote on appellate court nominees Terrence Boyle and Priscilla Owen, and finally, on April 21, it will vote on appellate court nominees William Pryor and Janice Rogers Brown. (Specter is allowing Owen, Brown and Pryor to proceed without rehearings against Democrats' wishes.) If all goes as planned, Majority Leader Frist will finally be in position to bring a nominee to a floor vote-only two months later than he vowed when this Congress convened.

* HERE COME THE ADS: Frist's two-month delay has given liberals a chance to strategize, raise money and air television ads attacking GOP senators (see Page 3) who might be vulnerable on the "nuclear option"-a Senate rule change that would prohibit the filibuster of judges. People For the American Way is spending $5 million on ads, including one launched last Wednesday featuring the fictional Sen. Jefferson Smith (Jimmy Stewart), who made the filibuster famous in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. There's only one problem, notes the conservative Committee for Justice: The filibuster in the movie was directed at legislation, not judicial nominees. "While the legislative filibuster does have a long pedigree," said CFJ chairman C. Boyden Gray, "permanent filibuster of judicial nominees with clear majority support is unprecedented in Senate history before 2003, when Democrats employed filibusters against 10 of the President's 34 appellate nominees."

* CASTLE'S COUP: Liberal House Republicans, led by Rep. Mike Castle (Del.), secured a promise from the GOP leadership to have a floor vote later this year on a measure to provide federal funding for so-called "stem cell" research. In reality, this means cloning and killing human embryos with tax dollars.

President Bush's policy opposing federal funding of this research, implemented in August 2001, has long been a target of liberals. But up until now, Congress has not challenged the President on the issue. House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R.-III.) made the concession when Castle's band of agitators-drawn from the liberal Tuesday Group and the liberal Republican Main Street Partnership-threatened to withhold their votes for the fiscal 2006 budget, which was narrowly adopted before the House adjourned last month. "With Hastert removing the House roadblock, legislation funding human embryos for medical research could pass both the House and Senate despite opposition from Republican leaders and the White House," columnist Robert Novak wrote last week. "And Bush almost certainly would have to cast his first veto."

* READ THIS POLL: According to a USA Today/CNN/Gallup Poll completed March 23, President Bush's job approval rating fell to an all-time low of 45%. This was a precipitous drop from the previous week's 52%. It was little reported, however, that the latest poll had a disproportionate number of Democratic respondents. "In this survey, 37% said they were Democrats and 32% said they were Republicans," noted USA Today. "Last week, 32% said they were Democrats and 35% said they were Republicans."