Half of Senate Republicans Have Doubts About Miers & Dobson May Be Asked To Testify in Today's Details 10/10/05

- Nearly half of Senate Republicans say they remain unconvinced that Harriet Miers is worthy of being confirmed to the Supreme Court, according to a survey conducted by The Washington Times.

- Shopkeepers clashed with looters Monday, and hungry families huddled under tents while waiting for relief supplies after Pakistan's worst earthquake razed entire villages and buried roads in rubble. Death toll estimates ranged from 20,000 to 30,000.

- Senator Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican who is chairman of the Judiciary Committee, and several Democrats on the committee said Sunday that they were considering calling the evangelical conservative James C. Dobson to testify on what he has been told about Harriet E. Miers, the president's Supreme Court nominee.

- Republican politicians in multiple states have recently decided not to run for Senate next year, stirring anxiety among Washington operatives about the effectiveness of the party's recruiting efforts and whether this signals a broader decline in GOP congressional prospects. Prominent Republicans have passed up races in North Dakota and West Virginia, both GOP-leaning states with potentially vulnerable Democratic incumbents. Earlier, Republican recruiters on Capitol Hill and at the White House failed to lure their first choices to run in Florida, Michigan and Vermont.

- For months, North Dakota Gov. John Hoeven had received the red carpet treatment in the nation's capital: President Bush invited the popular Republican to spend the night at the White House, gave him a ride on Air Force One, arranged prime seats at the inauguration and dispatched his political guru, Karl Rove, to meet with him. It was all part of a high-profile campaign to persuade Hoeven to run against Sen. Kent Conrad, a Democrat up for reelection in 2006 in a strongly pro-Bush, conservative state. But at a time when Bush and Rove have been buffeted on a number of fronts, Hoeven added to their woes by declining to run.