WASHINGTON (AP) – As conservatives planned pray-ins outside the U.S. Capitol and the Supreme Court, small groups of senators in both parties willing to cross their respective leaders scurried in and out of closed meetings Wednesday searching for an elusive compromise to a showdown over judicial filibusters.

Offers to scuttle one, two or more of President Bush’s blocked appeals court nominations in defiance of demands by Bush and Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., to seat them all were floated by maverick Republicans.

They exchanged different lists with a half-dozen or more Democrats who until now have been united behind their leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, in blocking all those nominees for lifetime judgeships. Some now seemed ready to confirm some of them.

Democratic Sen. Ken Salazar of Colorado had attended at least 13 private meetings over the previous 24 hours with senators trying to craft a deal, a spokesman said.

“If we can just get past this week and this moment of confrontation, I do believe that the Senate can come together and work on a higher level,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a participant in many of the discussions. “And who wins? The troops in the field win because they get a Senate that can function, and the public at large wins.”

On the Senate floor, tears welled up in GOP Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison’s eyes as she talked about how her home-state nominee and friend, Texas Supreme Court Justice Priscilla Owen, has been savaged since President Bush first nominated her for a lifetime appellate judgeship after winning the presidency.

“She has sat quietly as people who could not, do not, have the faintest idea of what she is really like have vilified her, distorted her opinions and questioned her motives,” Hutchison said, voice breaking as she talked about how Owen’s father died of polio weeks after coming home from the Korean War.

Owen, the nominee debated Wednesday, is praised as an ideal candidate by conservatives but criticized by liberals as being biased toward business interests and against abortion.

The clock on a potentially debilitating showdown began ticking Wednesday morning when Frist, with no objection from Democrats, formally brought before the Senate Owen’s nomination to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans.

“Make no mistake, we are on the precipice of a constitutional crisis and are about to fall into the abyss,” said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. “Judges are under siege, our Constitution is under attack and our precious system of checks and balances is under assault.”

As lawmakers clashed on the Senate floor over the Democrats’ blockade of Owen, negotiators from both parties played cat-and-mouse with reporters as they tried to work behind the scenes to craft a deal that would avert a confrontation.

Meeting in different offices around the Capitol complex – in Sen. John Warner’s at one point, Republican Mike DeWine’s at another – lawmakers sought to craft a compromise that would keep them from having to decide whether the Senate should allow judicial filibusters to even be a theoretical possibility in the future.

Hoping to convince senators of their cause’s righteousness and help Bush put a strict conservative on the courts if a position comes open, conservative groups planned pray-ins outside the Capitol and the Supreme Court as the debate wears on.

“We are enlisting hundreds of thousands of church leaders and members to pray that pro-abortion, anti-values forces will not be able to hold the federal courts and especially the Supreme Court hostage to their extremist views through pressing senators to continue the misuse of the filibuster rule,” said Rev. Rob Schenk, president of the National Clergy Council.

Frist, frustrated by the Democrats’ success in blocking Bush nominees, has threatened to call a vote on banning judicial filibusters. If such a move were to succeed, it would give the GOP full control over which nominees could be confirmed for lifetime judgeships since the party controls the White House and has a 55-44-1 majority in the Senate.

The filibuster, a parliamentary stalling device used by legislative minorities, can be overcome only by a majority of 60 votes or more in the 100-member Senate.

Frist needs to get a majority of senators to agree to ban judicial filibusters – 51 if all 100 senators vote. If the Senate deadlocks, Vice President Dick Cheney would vote and break the tie in favor of Frist.

But neither side appears certain it has enough votes to prevail if that issue is put to a test.

Democrats already have prevented final votes on 10 of Bush’s first-term appeals court nominees, and have threatened to do the same this year to seven the president has renominated, including Owen and California judge Janice Rogers Brown. The Senate has approved 208 Bush judicial nominees, including 35 appeals court judges.

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