Free Republic

It’s one thing for the host of a new MSNBC show, trolling for ratings in Olbermann-land, to make outrageous accusations against a former Vice-President. It’s altogether a different matter for a sitting United States Senator to second the slander. Yet that’s just what happened on this evening’s Ed Show. Host Schultz accused Dick Cheney of wanting America to be “hit again” by terrorists. A few minutes later, Sen. Pat Leahy of Vermont agreed with him. ED SCHULTZ: I think that Dick Cheney wants this country to get hit again for political gain. I believe that he thinks in his mind...

SNIPPET: "Two of Congress's most radical members believe George W. Bush's America was the equal of apartheid South Africa. Last week, Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy proposed that Congress establish a “truth commission” to investigate alleged Bush misdeeds. In the House, Judiciary committee chairman John Conyers seconded Leahy's request." SNIPPET: "If the investigation exposes the ongoing, covert measures Bush has taken to keep America safe, Leahy will only smile as they are revealed. He has a long history of exposing the most vital secrets of our nation. At least one operative was murdered after Leahy publicly leaked a 1985 intercept that...

Washington: Sen. Pat Leahy has proposed a "truth commission" that would probe the activities of the Bush administration. Does the senator really want to take the U.S. down the road of radical Third World politics?Don't forget this is "Leaky Leahy," a nickname the Vermont Democrat earned for his habit of revealing sensitive government information. A series of negligent — some might say deliberate — disclosures led to his 1987 resignation from the vice chairmanship of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Such a person has no moral authority to sit in judgment of anyone. Lawmakers should shun Leahy's witch hunt....

Senator seeks Bush-era "truth commission" Mon Feb 9, 2009 2:05pm EST By Randall Mikkelsen WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. "truth commission" should probe Bush administration policies including the promotion of war in Iraq, detainee treatment and wiretapping without a warrant, an influential senator proposed on Monday. Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, called for the commission as way to heal what he called sharp political divides and to prevent future abuses. He compared it to other truth commissions, such as one in South Africa that investigated the apartheid era. "We need to come to a shared understanding...

"I believe there are others involved, either as accessories before or accessories after the fact," Mr. Leahy said. "I believe there are others who can be charged with murder." Mr. Leahy's skepticism was echoed by GOP Sens. Arlen Specter (Pa.) and Charles E. Grassley (Iowa)...

WASHINGTON - Sens. Charles Schumer and Dianne Feinstein say they will vote for Attorney General-nominee Michael Mukasey, which likely gives him enough support to pass the Senate Judiciary Committee. ADVERTISEMENT Their decision came shortly after the chairman of the committee, Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., announced he would vote against Mukasey, a former federal judge. "This is an extremely difficult decision," Schumer said in a statement, adding that Mukasey "is not my ideal choice." In announcing her support for Mukasey, Feinstein, D-Calif., said "first and foremost, Michael Mukasey is not Alberto Gonzales," referring to the former attorney general who resigned in September...

October 18, 2007 Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) on Thursday condemned Intelligence Committee Democrats for brokering a deal with the White House that would provide retroactive immunity for telephone companies that assisted the Bush administration’s controversial warrantless wiretapping program. At the second day of confirmation hearings for President Bush’s Attorney General-nominee Michael Mukasey, Leahy warned that “the Intelligence Committee is about to cave on this,” citing pressure from the White House and press reports suggesting the administration had gotten its way. “[Administration officials] know that it was illegal conduct and that there is no saving grace for the...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy has told Attorney General-designate Michael Mukasey his confirmation could hinge on demonstrating he'll keep White House influence out of Justice Department decisions. A key test, Leahy said in a letter to President Bush's nominee, would be Mukasey's willingness to answer questions the White House won't about a litany of issues, ranging from warrantless eavesdropping to what Mukasey would do to prevent federal prosecutors from being used to influence elections. White House Counsel Fred Fielding has declared those details off-limits under executive privilege. "Regrettably, the White House has chosen not to clear...

<p>".....my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists, for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve. They give ammunition to America's enemies and pause to America's friends."</p> <p>WASHINGTON - Attorney General John Ashcroft vigorously defended the administration's anti-terrorism policies Thursday and suggested that critics of the Justice Department's actions were aiding the terrorists.</p>

Aug. 13, 2007 issue - The controversy over President Bush's warrantless surveillance program took another surprise turn last week when a team of FBI agents, armed with a classified search warrant, raided the suburban Washington home of a former Justice Department lawyer. The lawyer, Thomas M. Tamm, previously worked in Justice's Office of Intelligence Policy and Review (OIPR)—the supersecret unit that oversees surveillance of terrorist and espionage targets. The agents seized Tamm's desktop computer, two of his children's laptops and a cache of personal files. Tamm and his lawyer, Paul Kemp, declined any comment. So did the FBI. But two...

Leahy attacks Bush, Roberts By: Roger Simon Aug 1, 2007 06:50 PM EST U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) Leahy said he thinks the current president does not measure up to the rest. Stating that "history will not be kind to the arrogance and indifference to law shown by this White House," U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) sharply rebuked President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and Chief Justice John Roberts in an interview Wednesday. In an interview with The Politico conducted in his Senate office, Leahy said: -- Chief Justice Roberts has made the court an "arm...

WASHINGTON - A group of Senate Democrats called Wednesday for a special counsel to investigate whether Attorney General Alberto Gonzales perjured himself regarding the firings of U.S. attorneys and administration dissent over President Bush's domestic surveillance program. "We ask that you immediately appoint an independent special counsel from outside the Department of Justice to determine whether Attorney General Gonzales may have misled Congress or perjured himself in testimony before Congress," four Democratic senators wrote in a letter Wednesday, according to a draft obtained by The Associated Press. "It has become apparent that the Attorney General has provided at a minimum...

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) Thursday issued a subpoena for top White House adviser Karl Rove to compel him to testify about the firing of several U.S. attorneys. “The evidence shows that senior White House political operatives were focused on the political impact of federal prosecutions and whether federal prosecutors were doing enough to bring partisan voter fraud and corruption cases,” Leahy said. “It is obvious that the reasons given for the firings of these prosecutors were contrived as part of a cover-up and that the stonewalling by the White House is part and parcel of that same...

WASHINGTON -- Six months into the first session of the Democratic Congress and the last two years of the Bush administration, the news isn't good. The Democrats have staggered and stumbled through an ill-conceived, haphazard agenda that seems to be going nowhere, and they've got the failing mid-semester scores to prove it. Their approval polls have sunk into the 20s, and in some surveys the teens, as Americans overwhelmingly disapprove of the job they're doing. The latest Gallup Poll shows that voters are most concerned about the war in Iraq, the economy and jobs, and the costs of health care,...

The Democratic senator leading the inquiry into the dismissal of federal prosecutors insisted Sunday that Karl Rove and other top aides to President Bush must testify publicly and under oath, setting up a confrontation between Congress and the White House, which has said it is unlikely to agree to such a demand. Some Republicans have suggested that Mr. Rove testify privately, if only to tamp down the political uproar over the inquiry, which centers on whether the White House allowed politics to interfere with law enforcement. But Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont and chairman of the Senate Judiciary...

Dick Cheney has forged a reputation as the most powerful but also least visible vice-president in recent history. In the next few weeks, however, he will be forced to fight some of his battles in the open – in the courtroom and on Capitol Hill. The first test will come in the criminal trial of his former chief of staff, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, charged with lying to a grand jury during an investigation into how a CIA agent’s name was leaked. The trial, due to begin in two weeks, is likely to set an ignominious precedent when Mr Cheney becomes...

While Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) isn’t scheduled to takeover as Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee until January 2007, he already sounds as if he’s the man in charge of oversight of our nation’s law enforcement and courts. And considering his history of being kicked off the Senate Intelligence Committee due to his propensity for revealing classified information, Americans should be afraid — very afraid. On Wednesday, Sen. Leahy — or, as he’s known inside the Beltway, “Leaky Leahy” — rapped FBI Director Robert Mueller for refusing to show how the has curbed terrorist activity in the United States. Mueller...

Intelligence: Senate Democrats are focusing their new powers on one thing above all else: wrenching as many national security secrets as possible from this White House and using them for political assassination. Giving Leahy and his staff secrets would, quite simply, be a security risk. Since the 1980s, Leahy's nickname inside the Beltway has been "Leaky Leahy" because of his willingness to provide the press with juicy secrets to be used against Republican presidents. "The American people," Leahy wrote in a letter to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, "deserve to have detailed and accurate information about the role of the Bush...

BURLINGTON — U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., joined the world's leading researcher on global warming Saturday to charge that the Bush administration's use of censorship to foil terrorism is hurting the fight against climate change and other environmental threats. "If you have information that points out a problem, the only way you're going to make a correction is if you find out about it," Leahy said. "I have never seen an administration, either Republican or Democratic, as secretive as this one. It has become absolutely farcical, except that the country has been damaged by it." Leahy, speaking in Burlington, punctuated...

In 1994 Sen. Pat "Leaky" Leahy co-wrote a law that forced telecommunications carriers to build convenient wiretap features into their networks enabling the kind of telephone records collection now at the heart of the controversy over the National Security Agency's terrorist surveillance operation. In recent days Leahy has called the NSA's actions troubling and potentially illegal - saying they show that the Bush administration is treating Americans like terrorists. "'The secret collection of phone call records of tens of millions of Americans?" he exclaimed after USA Today blew the lid off the program last week. "Are you telling me that...