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The prosecutor, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the United States attorney in Chicago, is investigating a leak and has said he intends to seek the reporters' records from their phone companies. Mr. Fitzgerald contends that one or more government officials alerted the reporters, Judith Miller and Philip Shenon, to an imminent search of the offices of an Islamic charity. That disclosure, he has written to lawyers for The Times, was probably criminal... In a letter in August to Mr. Comey, two lawyers for The Times, Floyd Abrams and Kenneth W. Starr, wrote that the records the government seeks, for some 20 days...

It's official. Bill Clinton sees himself as a heroic victim of virtually Christ-like proportions. In his just-aired interview with Katie Couric, he rarely strayed from his visceral fixation on and hatred for Ken Starr. His paranoia and grandiosity reached their delusional peak when he claimed the following: "Starr believed it violated the natural order of things for me to be elected. They (the far right) thought there would never be another Democract in the White House. Starr doesn't think he is a bad man. He thought he was a good God-fearing Christian man trying to drive an infidel from the...

I've been reading Sidney Blumenthal's book, The Clinton Wars. I was struck by the similarities between the Starr Inquisition and the way the Bushies "investigated" weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Starr and his office clung to the belief that the Clintons were devious criminal conspirators. “I think it was consistent throughout the office,” Sam Dash said. “Ken ultimately believed it himself. They said, [the Clintons are] powerful, they can cover up, they’re pressuring people to lie. We’re going to stay on it until we get it. It was a hypothesis.” But Starr had no evidence that the Clintons were...

Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson, taking the campaign a bit meta on a conference call today, attacked Obama for attacking Clinton, and compared him to a notorious Clinton foe. "When Senator Obama was confronted with questions over whether he was ready to be Commander-in-Chief and steward of the economy, he chose not to address those questions, but to attack Senator Clinton," Wolfson said. "I for one do not believe that imitating Ken Starr is the way to win a Democratic primary election for president."

Kenneth Starr says he never should have led the investigation that resulted in the impeachment of former President Bill Clinton. The former independent counsel, now dean of the Pepperdine University law school, says "the most fundamental thing that could have been done differently" was for somebody else to have investigated Clinton's statements under oath denying he had an affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

On Sen. Barack Obama's new pledge to run a more aggressive campaign against Sen. Hillary Clinton -- asking what her national security credentials are, pushing her to release her tax returns -- Clinton communications director Howard Wolfson just said on a conference call with reporters: "I for one do not find that imitating Ken Starr is a way to win a Democratic primary election for president." - jpt UPDATE: I asked both campaigns for comment on Wolfson's remarks. Wolfson said that by making attacks on Sen. Clinton's openness (or lack thereof), her failure to release her tax returns even after...

LITTLE ROCK — In his new presidential library that opens today, Bill Clinton defiantly mocks the impeachment proceedings against him, charging that the independent counsel who investigated him had "a bias against the president" and blaming Republicans for engaging in the "politics of personal destruction." The former president, in exhibits he approved, repeatedly castigates Newt Gingrich, accusing him of instructing Republicans to label Democrats as "sick," and asserts that the former House speaker led a cabal of radical right-wing "revolutionaries" bent on destroying Mr. Clinton for one reason: "Because we can." "The impeachment battle was not about the Constitution...

During ABC's hour-long Primetime Special Edition promotion of the opening of the Clinton Library, titled, "Bill Clinton: A Place in History," Peter Jennings trumpeted his record as "full of accomplishment" and touted how he's "hugely popular in other parts of the world." But Clinton lectured Jennings on ABC's bias against him. Jennings had told the former President how a survey of historians had ranked him highly in some areas, but that "they gave you a 41st on moral authority." That prompted Clinton to launch into a rant against Ken Starr and the historians, but he maintained that "I don't really...

December 19, 2008 Dear Friends, Today ProtectMarriage.com – Yes on 8, filed written briefs with the California Supreme Court defending Prop. 8 against legal challenges. As you will recall, three anti-Prop 8 lawsuits were initiated by opponents the day after the measure passed in the November General Election. We are excited to share with you that joining the legal defense of Proposition 8 is Kenneth W. Starr. Starr formerly served as a Judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals, D.C. Circuit, and as U.S. Solicitor General, he argued twenty-five cases before the Supreme Court. He remains active in the professional...

In advance of this week's release of his 957-page memoir, former President Bill Clinton is already rewriting history. Most notably he has excoriated Ken Starr; a remarkable delusion on Clinton's part given that the former Whitewater special prosecutor arguably saved him from committing perjury before a federal grand jury. The spin began last week, with the former president telling USA Today that Starr was guilty of an "abuse of power" that "crushed innocents." Perhaps mixing journalism with advocacy, CBS anchor Dan Rather noted in the same USA Today piece that Clinton's most "interesting and riveting" comments from Sunday night's 60...

Kenneth Starr, the independent counsel whose investigation of the Monica Lewinsky scandal led to President Clinton's impeachment, is carrying the mantle of the right again, defending California's gay marriage ban. The former solicitor general under President George H.W. Bush has been dean of Pepperdine University's law school since 2004. In December, Proposition 8 supporters announced that Starr would be lead counsel in fighting the legal challenges brought by gay-rights groups. "The addition of Dean Starr to this legal conversation will provide useful guidance for the Court in resolving these important issues," Andrew Pugno, general counsel for ProtectMarriage.com and the Proposition...

CHICAGO - Supreme Court nominee John Roberts skipped the American Bar Association's yearly meeting, but big-name conservatives like Kenneth Starr and Theodore Olson were there to promote his credentials. Roberts' nomination to replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor is a watershed for lawyers. And with Senate confirmation hearings just a month away, he was the inescapable subject at the meeting of the country's largest lawyers group. Top conservatives, from Starr and Olson to Reagan administration Attorney General Edwin Meese and Federalist Society leader Leonard Leo, were attending the meeting and serving as unofficial ambassadors on Roberts' behalf. "For those people...

Clinton Rips Media, Ken Starr After Opening of Presidential Library By James Jefferson Associated Press Writer LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) - In a prime-time television outburst, Bill Clinton ripped old nemesis Kenneth Starr and what the former president portrayed as a gullible media eager to report every "sleazy thing" leaked from a prosecutor bent on bringing him down. The exchange came in an interview with ABC news anchor Peter Jennings that aired Thursday night, hours after Clinton opened his $165 million presidential library. Clinton blasted Starr and spoke disdainfully of a national media that he suggested was complicit in a...

Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary looms large on the political horizon. In the midst of lively public debates over taxes, jobs, the national debt and similarly important questions related to the future vitality of our nation, a different kind of question continues to privately occupy the minds of some prospective voters: Can I vote for a Mormon? ... If an unbeliever such as Jefferson or non-churchman like Lincoln can serve brilliantly as president, then America should stand — in an intolerant world characterized all too frequently by religious persecution — as a stirring example of welcoming hospitality for highly qualified men...

And win the Baylor Bears most assuredly did by a score of 67-56 in the Valero Alamo Bowl from San Antonio.

By now, this won't be a surprise to anyone: Baylor's Robert Griffin III is going to win the Heisman Trophy. By our reckoning, he's going to get approximately 2000 points - 71% of a perfect unanimous #1 vote. (This year, 2781 points is perfect.) That total would rank Griffin among the top 15 all-time biggest winners of the Heisman Trophy - roughly on par with Tim Tebow (70.5%) and Doug Flutie (71.1%).

NEW ORLEANS - Baylor University President Ken Starr was among two former U.S. Solicitors General who assisted the Liberty Institute today in presenting oral arguments in one of the nation's most important cases involving free speech. Known nationwide as the "candy cane" case, the outcome of Morgan v. Plano Independent School District will likely determine whether elementary schoolchildren have First Amendment rights under the U.S. Constitution. The case was heard by all 17 judges on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, sitting en banc, a rare occurrence reserved for cases of national impact. According to the Liberty Institute, the case...

An embattled former Obama administration appointee -- who was part of a group of attorneys accused of being terrorist sympathizers for defending "enemy combatants" -- has been hired for a post at the US Attorney's Office in Brooklyn, officials confirmed today. Tali Farhadian was one of several private attorneys who created a rift between Republicans last spring when the Obama Administration assigned them to posts within the Justice Department. Although Farhadian was handling unrelated matters in Attorney General Eric Holder's office, a political watchdog group accused Obama of overloading the agency with officials sympathetic to enemy combatants. Their appointments even...

Meet Ken Starr, fun guy. No, really. Most of the world knows him as the Whitewater prosecutor, the man whose zealous investigation of Bill Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky led to the president's 1998 impeachment.