Free Republic

Whether it’s their response to January 6 or to COVID, activist judges have abandoned the law and are engaging in tyrannical acts. Thirty years of litigation work in the San Francisco Bay Area, which some might consider Ground Zero for activist judges, left me with a deep and abiding disrespect for leftist judges who are more concerned with their prejudices and feelings, than with facts and law. Two recent stories perfectly exemplify this. The first story involves an Obama appointee who is reaming people arrested because they dared to do what leftists always do: Enter government property, including the Capitol,...

Fred Thompson's Big Flopby Matthew Cooper November 2007 Issue In his only attempt to manage a high-profile Senate hearing, the lawyer-turned-actor blew it.In his many film and television roles, Fred Thompson has almost always played a strong executive. On Law & Order, as Arthur Branch, the inexplicably Southern and conservative Manhattan district attorney, heÂ’s invariably telling Sam WaterstonÂ’s deputy-D.A. character to settle the case. In The Hunt for Red October, he commands an aircraft carrier, fighting the Soviets. Closer to the White House, heÂ’s an irritable chief of staff in In the Line of Fire, and in two other films...

WASHINGTON — Some journalists who made careers out of questioning government officials and bearing witness to history may soon find themselves answering questions from prosecutors as key witnesses in the CIA leak case. Ten or more reporters from some of the most prominent news organizations could be called to testify in the perjury and obstruction case of former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. It's rare enough for reporters to become witnesses. But the Libby case is even more unusual because journalists will be dueling witnesses -- some called by the defense team, some by prosecutors. "It will be...

WASHINGTON - A federal judge on Friday ordered Time magazine to turn over documents for a White House aide to use in his defense to perjury and other charges in the CIA leak case. ADVERTISEMENT The order by U.S. District Reggie B. Walton also said the New York Times might have to turn over some information but reduced the scope of documents the newspaper and other news organizations would have to provide to lawyers for the defendant, former top vice presidential aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. Citing a lack of relevancy, Walton said that Judith Miller, a former Times reporter,...

Lawyers for a former aide to Vice President Dick Cheney have issued subpoenas to The New York Times and one of its former reporters to provide information in his obstruction of justice case, the Times reported on Thursday. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Cheney's former chief of staff, has pleaded not guilty to five counts of perjury, making a false statement and obstruction of justice over leaks about the identity of a CIA operative. Former Times reporter Judith Miller testified before the grand jury after serving 85 days in jail to protect a source of the disclosure who was later identified as...

There are eight blank pages in the public version of a decision the federal appeals court in Washington issued in February. The decision ordered two reporters to be jailed unless they agreed to testify before a grand jury investigating the disclosure of the identity of a C.I.A. operative, Valerie Wilson. What is in those pages is one of the enduring mysteries in the investigation. In a filing yesterday, the special prosecutor in the case, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, told the court that he had no objection to the unsealing of parts of those pages, and he gave hints about what they...

Editor's Note: Seven months ago, on March 23, the above-named news organizations, along with more than two dozen other companies and membership organizations collectively representing pretty much everyone in American journalism, filed a formal motion concerning the Valerie Plame leak investigation with the federal appeals court in Washington. Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald was then attempting to compel grand jury testimony in the case by reporters Matthew Cooper and Judith Miller. And pretty much everyone in American journalism--as the media's amici curiae filing, excerpted below, made clear--thought Fitzgerald's subpoenas to Cooper and Miller should be quashed. But does anybody in American...

While the media has obsessed over two high-profile cases in recent months involving improper handling of classified information, communications involving terrorists have been getting translated by people without any security clearances—and there’s been nary a whimper from most of the Washington press corps. There are 119 inmates in the federal prison system with “specific ties” to international Islamic terrorist organizations, and almost all of them are able to communicate with the outside world through phone calls and letters. (Full disclosure: this journalist broke the story on the front page of the Washington Times two weeks ago.) Not only did the...

Recent news reports and commentary have suggested that top White House adviser Karl Rove might be under investigation for perjury in the Plamegate affair. But sources familiar with the probe say the most frequently cited evidence for such speculation — an apparent inconsistency between Rove's and Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper's accounts of a July 11, 2003, telephone conversation — falls far short of being the basis for any prosecution, much less a perjury charge. Two days ago, in a front-page story headlined "Testimony By Rove And Libby Examined; Leak Prosecutor Seeks Discrepancies," the Washington Post reported that Plamegate special...

Before President Bush's Supreme Court nomination of Judge John Roberts completely overshadows the misidentified Karl Rove scandal, I think we better take a second look at the twisted direction this sad story has taken. As far as Karl Rove's conduct in the Plame/Wilson affair, there is no scandal. He didn't come close to committing a crime, nor even an ethical infraction. He didn't set out to expose a CIA operative, much less an undercover one. He was the recipient of a phone call in which he cautioned Time's Matt Cooper not to be taken in by the politically driven Joe...

WASHINGTON (AFP) - US senators wrestle with a plan to shield journalists who protect anonymous sources, as a top reporter languishes in jail, still defying the courts in a politically charged leak probe. Judith Miller of the New York Times will mark two weeks of time served for refusing to divulge her source in a legal showdown which has mushroomed into a bona fide scandal, centering on White House political guru Karl Rove. She went to jail rather than tell a special prosecutor who outed CIA agent Valerie Plame, supposedly as an act of revenge after her husband alleged President...

Karl Rove — whistleblower, patriot and hero. That's an epitaph you won't read with regard to the Valerie Plame kerfuffle. But those are precisely the words that dominated commentary about Watergate leaker Mark Felt little more than a month ago. Felt, of course, did the country a great service by secretly revealing to the media the cancer that was growing on the Nixon presidency. But Felt, it should be remembered, had more than simply altruistic motives for doing so. Richard Nixon slighted Felt by passing over him for the top job at the FBI after J. Edgar Hoover's death. That...

“Top Cheney Aide Among Sources in C.I.A. Story” is the headline the Associated Press chose for its article on now-famous journalist Matthew Cooper’s first-hand account of his testimony before the grand jury investing the leak of Valerie Plame’s identity. But the real story is that Karl Rove has been further vindicated. Though the ultimate arbiter of any legal issues will be special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald and the aforementioned grand jury, the political case against Bush’s right-hand man is quickly crumbling. Cooper’s story—on Time’s new cover—confirms that Rove was not “shopping” for an outlet to “out” Plame, but that he was...

"Karl Rove did no wrong. There was no “malicious attempt to smear Wilson” nor was there any counter campaign against Wilson, other than Rove’s warning to Matt Cooper that Wilson was way off base when he implied that he had been sent to Niger at Dick Cheney’s request." I’m beginning to agree with Michael Savage, that Liberalism is a Mental Disease. Today the MSM is engaged in a concerted effort to destroy Karl Rove and George Bush by deliberately lying about what President Bush said about the Rove Investigation and how the President will act after the investigation concludes. They...

The bombing in London by terrorists and the continuation of the war in Iraq were of secondary importance to official Washington and the mainstream media this week. Even the prospect of the president having to replace two vacancies upon the Supreme Court received short shrift. Instead, the continuing saga of Karl Rove, Joe Wilson, and Valerie Plame and who-outed-who electrified the media in what has to be one the biggest non-stories in politics to date. While the country has been deluged with Rove's supposed dark and "traitorous" vendetta against former CIA agent, sometime Vanity Fair cover girl Valerie Plame, I...

The virtual vigilantes circling Karl Rove have everything lined up for the brand of justice they see fit for “the Architect”: public humiliation, all-out character assassination, firing, near-fatal damage to the White House, and if they get the cherry on top, “frog-marching” the President’s closest advisor from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. to a federal prison. There’s just one hitch: their entire political case rests on the quicksand known as Joe Wilson. As part of the cynical campaign to destroy the man who guided Bush to four straight electoral victories, the Left has hailed Wilson as a hero. At first blush, the...

Matthew Cooper, a reporter for Time magazine, said the White House senior adviser Karl Rove was the first person to tell him that the wife of former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV was a C.I.A. officer, according to a first-person account in this week's issue of the magazine. Matthew Cooper, a reporter for Time, talked about his grand jury testimony Sunday on "Meet the Press." The account also stated that Mr. Rove said Mr. Wilson's wife had played a role in sending Mr. Wilson to Africa to investigate possible uranium sales to Iraq. The article, a description of Mr. Cooper's...

NEW YORK A transcript of Tim Russert's interview with Time magazine's Matthew Cooper on NBC's "Meet the Press," Sunday, July 17, 2005. MR. RUSSERT: This is the cover of your magazine: "Rove on the Spot," subtitled "What I Told the Grand Jury," by Matthew Cooper. And here is an excerpt from your article, which will be available tomorrow in Time magazine: "So did [Karl] Rove leak Plame's name to me, or tell me she was covert? No. Was it through my conversation with Rove that I learned for the first time that [Joe] Wilson's wife worked at the CIA and...

As presidential adviser Karl Rove has been under fire for his role in the alleged outing of a CIA employee, a liberal blog is now suggesting people leave a special care package on Rove's lawn -- the gift of excrement. "If you just happen to be passing through, do the considerate thing and bring a small gift. We suggest a special bouquet for our esteemed latter-day Wormtongue," says A Liberal Dose. It then shows a photo of a suggested donation, followed by the observation, "Now wouldn't it be so nice to see Herr Rove's lawn carpeted with such lovely lawn...

NBC's "Meet the Press" — Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper; Republican National Committee chairman Ken Mehlman; Center for American Progress president John Podesta; Watergate reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.