Free Republic

"Sixteen years ago, a colleague of mine on the staff of Senator Hatch discovered that Democrat staff of the Senate Judiciary Committee had negligently placed their documents on our shared server without protections. I admit that we exploited this to learn simple things about their plans to attack Bush judicial nominees at the behest of the left wing interest groups. I also did pursuant to my duty under the Code of Ethics for Government Service. The documents also revealed unlawful and unethical conduct by Senators. I reported this unethical conduct to the Senate Ethics Committee but never heard back. Among...

<p>The source of the memos is unclear. The sheer volume of the memos, however, suggests that the memos weren't simply misplaced by someone – they appear to have been intentionally leaked by a Democrat. Also, the memos, which begin in late 2001, cut off suddenly in April 2003. This suggests that they came from a former staffer, rather than someone who recently accessed Democrats' computers. Finally, the only information blacked out in the memos is staffers' names. Whoever leaked these memos did not care about the Senators, but apparently knew the staffers and cared enough to spare them embarrassment.</p>

KOIN 6 Reports: A lawsuit filed by a Democratic senator from Oregon aiming to compel the Trump administration to release 100,000 pages of documents on Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh is inching forward in federal court, with an Obama nominee assigned to hear it.Sen. Jeff Merkley’s lawsuit, filed Wednesday in federal court in the nation’s capital, has been overshadowed by sexual harassment accusations against the nominee, but the case remains alive, with summonses prepared for U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions and others, court documents show.Now Merkley is asking the federal court to order the Trump administration, which has claimed executive...

Experts say that in addition to protections for free speech, there are difficulties with proving leaked documents are classified, under a US government executive order which sets limits on documents that can be properly termed as classified documents. However, if charges are made against Julian Assange under the law in the US, then he would face extradition under the controversial UK-US extradition treaty, which provides special measures for extraditions between the two countries.

A Republican Party activist and former top GOP congressional aide who worked at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad is harshly criticizing the U.S. diplomatic effort in Iraq, accusing American diplomats of gross and potentially criminal negligence and incompetence.

As conservative opposition to his Supreme Court nominee stiffens, Bush faces the prospect of a humiliating defeat. At a Rose Garden news conference last week, President George W. Bush displayed little understanding of the political storm facing his second Supreme Court nominee, White House counsel Harriet Miers. "The decision as to whether or not there will be a fight is up to the Democrats," Bush told reporters. "They get to decide whether or not the special interests will decide the tone of the debate." The president had it exactly backward. With only 44 seats in the Senate, Democrats have the...

The reactionary liberal effort in recent years to slow the march of progress by filibustering George W. Bush's judicial nominees was a political disaster for Senate Democrats in many ways, but it was successful in a few. Although most were ultimately confirmed, liberals stopped the president from placing young Grade A jurists on the federal appellate courts who, had they been confirmed a few years earlier, would now be perfectly suitable for Supreme Court elevation. This is exactly what liberals intended. Proof of that came in staff memos from Dick Durbin of Illinois, quoted by the Wall Street Journal in...

Lessons from a Supreme Court nominee's defeat. For liberals and conservatives alike, the touchstone for beleaguered Supreme Court nominations is the rejection of Judge Robert Bork in 1987. Supreme Court nominees had been rejected before, 27 times, but never with so much orchestrated fury. Usually the nominees were lesser jurists, if not lesser intellects, if not lesser men, than was (or is) Judge Bork. The Senate rejected George Washington's nominee for chief justice, John Rutledge, in 1795 because of his position on a treaty. Andrew Jackson's nomination of Roger Taney was blocked in 1835, though Jackson later nominated Taney successfully...

<p>The Senate has no business keeping secrets from the American people.</p> <p>"These Supreme Court hearings will be the first in the Internet era and it is important that the Committee be ready for this event." So begins an internal memorandum recently sent by the Senate archivist to all Judiciary Committee staff instructing them that federal law requires the preservation of all documents and e-mails generated in relation to the confirmation of Judge John Roberts, including e-mail correspondence from outside organizations such as "Alliance for Justice, People for the American Way, Judicial Working Group, etc.," as well as "replies." Oh my.</p>

Just one week before the 2002 midterms, the president invited leaders in the fight for his judicial nominees to the White House to a lunch reception. A Clinton administration adviser who'd gotten wind of the event and thought it a waste of time had been overheard saying, "What does that rate as an issue with American voters--somewhere below campaign-finance reform?" The answer, in fact, is that the issue of the judicial nominees mattered--and matters--a lot; you might even say it explains the current Republican margin in the Senate. Allow me to explain why. Back in 2002, the conventional Beltway wisdom...

I don't want to tick off the president of the United States, but I think nominating Alberto Gonzales to be the first Hispanic on the Supreme Court would be like throwing a party to which few people will come. And, loving this president as I do, I feel it is a duty to tell him so. It is not that the attorney general would not be confirmed, he would. But then so will any nominee the president sends no matter how many millions are spent. Once, two swords of Damocles hung over a high court nominee's head — the filibuster...

It's been a long time coming, even if it's only been three weeks in the works, but the speaker lineup for the March for Justice II has finally been set.We are honored to be joined by Rep. Steve King (Iowa), Alabama Supreme Court Justice Tom Parker, Roy Innis and his son Niger from the Congress of Racial Equality and many other friends for the rally and march tomorrow in Washington, D.C.The rally will be held at Upper Senate Park from 11 a.m. until 2 p.m. After the rally, attendees will form into state delegations and march on the Senate office...

With Dan Rather's departure from the CBS Evening News last week, there has been a lot of debate about whether or not there is a liberal bias in the mainstream media -- as if that were a debatable point. Some pundits and journalists argue that even if a liberal bias existed in the past, that those days ended with the rise of talk radio, Fox News and the blogs. While I am ready to concede that these new media outlets are helping to bring balance to the presentation of news, I hold that the mainstream media still has an unmistakable...

Staffer in spying case says political threats hurt prospects at firm WASHINGTON--A former top Republican Senate staff member who resigned under pressure last year for spying on his Democratic staff colleagues is now accusing them of threatening partners at a law firm that was considering hiring him--including the firm's chairman, a prominent Boston attorney--in order to scuttle his job offer. In an affidavit he submitted to federal prosecutors this week, Manuel Miranda, a former aide to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, said that Democratic staffers on the Senate Judiciary Committee telephoned partners at the firm of McDermott Will & Emory...

Manuel Miranda, the Republican Senate Judiciary Committee staffer who was forced to resign last year over spying on Democratic staff members on the committee, said yesterday that Democratic staffers are still hounding him. According to a complaint filed with the U.S. Attorney's Office's Fraud and Public Corruption Section, Mr. Miranda accuses Democratic staffers whose internal memos he purloined from the computer of stalking him in his job hunt and scuttling a recent job offer he got from a major Washington law firm. "It appears that Democrat staff and aides on the Senate Judiciary Committee were not satisfied with my client's...

Regular readers of these pages will recall our scoop a little over a year ago on what came to be known on Capitol Hill as Memogate. Our publication of Democratic strategy memos on how to defeat President Bush's judicial nominees created a stir in Washington, not least because they showed how Senators Ted Kennedy, Dick Durbin and others were taking orders from liberal interest groups, even to the point of delaying a vote on a candidate for the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals until it had heard the University of Michigan affirmative action case. More than a year later, it's...

Senate Republicans are preparing to implement a sophisticated, multipronged plan to confirm President Bush’s expected nomination to replace ailing Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist. Well-funded liberal groups are also ramping up their efforts to block any conservative nominee. Activists working with White House and Senate staffers say the 80-year old Rehnquist’s battle with thyroid cancer has sharply focused attention. The controversy over comments that Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), incoming Judiciary Committee chairman, made downplaying the chances of anti-abortion-rights nominees being confirmed also accelerated planning. “The groups on the center-right are prepared to mobilize at a moment’s notice,” said Jay...

The Washington Times www.washingtontimes.com Bush needs to make it clearBy Manuel A. MirandaPublished August 6, 2004 Just before closing shop until September, Senate Democrats began filibusters on four more circuit court nominees. The names and the faceless number (now 10) are ever less important with each new obstruction. What matters increasingly is the abuse of the Constitution in the unprecedented use of the filibuster to block the Senate from having an honest vote, up or down.     That is an issue that President Bush and senatorial candidates will take to the American people this election. But what is the debate...

U.S. Attorney David Kelley of New York City, who has concentrated on prosecuting rich white-collar criminals, has been assigned to investigate the young Republican aide accused of reading confidential Democratic communications. Manuel Miranda, who formerly advised Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist on judicial confirmations, was fired after he uncovered Democratic plans to scuttle President Bush's nominations. Sen. Orrin Hatch, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Frist refused to support Miranda. Miranda, a young father and husband, is currently unemployed. While many conservatives consider him a hero for uncovering the plans revolving around Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, Miranda now could...

Hatch fires back at his conservative critics By Alexander Bolton Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, is firing back at conservative critics on and off the Hill who have lambasted him for not moving more judicial nominees out of his committee. The rift stems from Hatch’s handling of a Senate sergeant at arms investigation into the unauthorized access of close to 5,000 internal Democratic Judiciary Committee documents from committee computers. Hatch approved the investigation, which resulted in the resignation of Manuel Miranda, who organized the GOP strategy on judges when he served as an aide...