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July 05, 2005, Sinister Strategies The Left's plan to block judicial nominees. All weekend we heard from the likes of Ralph Neas (People for the American Way), Nan Aron (Alliance for Justice), and other leaders of a left-wing coalition insisting that President Bush nominate a "mainstream conservative" to the Supreme Court, or that he unite the nation with a "pragmatist" or "moderate" in the character of Sandra Day O'Connor. This is real chutzpah. These are the same people and groups that have conspired to undermine President Bush's judicial appointments for over four years, and now seek to derail any nominee...

The "nuclear" showdown that is expected to begin unfolding in the Senate today has its origins in closed-door discussions more than three years ago between key Senate Democrats and outside interest groups as they huddled to plot strategies for blocking President Bush's judicial nominees. In a Nov. 7, 2001, internal memo to Sen. Richard J. Durbin, who is now the minority whip, an aide described a meeting that the Illinois Democrat had missed between groups opposed to Mr. Bush's nominees and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, Massachusetts Democrat and member of the Judiciary Committee. "Based on input from the groups, I...

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...

To adequately follow along, I suggest several sheets of paper (for the flow charts) and a heavy dose of Tylenol (so your head won’t explode). Go back with me in time – just to last summer – those idyllic days when the stench of political tomfoolery had not yet overwhelmed our senses and triggered our gag reflexes. Then the so-called “intelligence memos” appeared on the radio talk show scene. A memorandum written by a Democrat Senate Intelligence Committee staffer detailed a strategy to painstakingly undermine the President’s policies in Iraq and the War on Terror. National security be damned, so...

(CNSNews.com) - A Republican member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, concerned that the Senate's judicial "Memogate" controversy hasn't received a proper investigation, wants the commission to conduct its own inquiry into the contents of the Democrat strategy memos. Commissioner Peter N. Kirsanow told CNSNews.com he plans to raise the matter at Friday's meeting, the commission's first gathering since April. "Based on what's out there in the public domain, there's more than enough there to suggest someone should be taking a very good look at it," Kirsanow said. "And if no one else is taking a look at it,...

Washington (CNSNews.com) - Elaine R. Jones, one of the key players in the Senate Judiciary Committee's "Memogate" controversy, reiterated her opposition to President Bush's judicial nominees Wednesday, saying there is nothing more important to liberals than keeping conservative judges off the federal bench. Jones, the former president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, was honored Wednesday night at the liberal Take Back America conference for her leadership in the civil rights arena. Although she didn't mention judicial nominees in her speech, afterward she told CNSNews.com about the issue's importance. In reference to three potential Supreme Court...

Washington (CNSNews.com) - Mary Frances Berry, chairwoman of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, thwarted a planned discussion of the Senate's "Memogate" affair on Monday when she adjourned the panel's monthly meeting after four Republican members didn't arrive on time. Berry, a political independent who sides with the commission's Democrats, announced she would wait 5 minutes past the meeting's scheduled start time of 9:30 a.m. When none of the Republican members arrived, and the commission lacked a quorum, she adjourned the meeting. The commission's Republican members, who want an investigation into the contents of Democrat strategy memos on President...

WASHINGTON -- Today, on the 50th anniversary of the May 17, 1954, school desegregation decision, the U.S. Civil Rights Commission -- frozen by ideological deadlock -- will debate something important. Shall it investigate whether the Senate's judicial confirmation process was perverted two years ago to influence a landmark civil rights case? Documentary evidence is overwhelming. The NAACP Legal Defense Fund secretly requested that confirmation of a federal appeals judge nominated by President Bush be delayed until the court ruled in favor of affirmative action. The Senate, then under Democratic control, granted the delay. But the document is a powerful senator's...

(CNSNews.com) - Over the course of the last two weeks, the controversial Senate Judiciary Committee memos have gradually made their way back into the news. But you won't read about any of the latest developments in either The New York Times or The Washington Post. Both newspapers have shunned new information revealing the process by which the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund's president, Elaine R. Jones, recommended delaying an uncontroversial judicial nominee's confirmation until after a high-profile affirmative action case was decided. When Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) was asked about the connection of two former aides to the "Memogate"...

Fifty years after the Supreme Court's landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling, the integrity of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund is being challenged because of an alleged plot by its president to delay the confirmation of one of President Bush's judicial nominees. A controversial memo reveals that Elaine R. Jones, president of the Legal Defense and Education Fund (LDF), used her relationship with an aide to Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) to seek a delay in the confirmation of Julia Smith Gibbons to the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals two years ago. At the time, the appeals...

<p>If we had to pick a "most outrageous" from among the Democratic staff memos that were leaked to us last year from the Senate Judiciary Committee, our choice would probably be the one about the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.</p>

The campaign manager for Democrat presidential candidate John Kerry is being linked to the Senate Judiciary Committee's "Memogate" controversy, which involves alleged Democrat efforts to delay the confirmation of President Bush's judicial nominees. Mary Beth Cahill, a former chief of staff to Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., left her Senate job last November to become Kerry's campaign manager. But in April 2002 when Cahill worked for Kennedy, her name was attached to a controversial memo spelling out a plan to delay the confirmation of Julia Smith Gibbons to the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the Washington Times reported Thursday.Cahill was...

<p>WASHINGTON — New details about a memo that was at the center of a debate over President Bush's judicial nominees and theft of Democratic papers from the Senate Judiciary Committee shows the source was a staffer with a vested interest in the outcome.</p>

(CNSNews.com) - A government watchdog group says it knows who wrote an incriminating memo to Sen. Ted Kennedy, recommending that he delay the confirmation of one of President Bush's judicial nominees -- apparently to influence the outcome of an important pending case. According to The Center for Individual Freedom, two of Sen. Kennedy's former aides -- in a memo dated April 17, 2002 -- recommended that he delay the confirmation of Judge Julia Smith Gibbons to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit. The reason? To influence the outcome of the University of Michigan affirmative action cases, then...

Hatch and Frist Fire Whistle-blower Posted March 30, 2004 By John M. Powers GOP scapegoat Miranda has become a hero to conservative groups. Republican leaders have broken a promise they made to expose the shocking contents of memos exchanged among Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats, says Manuel Miranda, the former GOP aide who is the whistle-blower at the center of the so-called Memogate scandal. Miranda tells Insight in an exclusive interview that both Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) broke clearly stated promises to expose collusion between top Democrats and special-interest groups seeking...

Urge Senator Kennedy To Clear His Name On November 14, 2003, the Wall Street Journal published an internal U.S. Senate memorandum dated April 17, 2002, written to Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA) by one of his staff members. The memo details a request by Elaine R. Jones, President and Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, to delay Senate action on all judicial nominees to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit until the then-pending University of Michigan affirmative action cases were decided by that court. This request was anything but innocuous, as Ms. Jones was participating...

<p>As the dust settles in the Judiciary Committee fuss over Republican snooping into Democrats' memos, several legal scholars said yesterday they were shocked by a memo showing staffers in Sen. Edward M. Kennedy's office plotting to manipulate one of the most significant court cases in recent years.</p>

For several months, Senate action on President Bush’s judicial nominees has ground to a halt as the Judiciary Committee and its members have been consumed with what has become popularly known as "Memogate." The term refers to reportedly more than 4,000 memoranda to and from Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee that outline troubling collusion between liberal special interest groups and Committee Democrats to obstruct the confirmation of many of the President’s judicial nominees. Investigations have been launched that, thus far, have focused solely on how the memos were obtained by Republican staffers on the Committee and how they...

<p>March 13, 2004 -- The Wall Street Journal last fall reported the details of Democratic strategy memos on how to derail Bush administration judicial nominations. An investigation disclosed that GOP staffers had obtained the documents from computers shared with Democrats on the Judiciary Committee. But a 65-page report released by the Senate's sergeant-at-arms confirmed what the Republicans had said all along: They didn't hack into any computers or steal any documents.</p>

Washington never ceases to amuse. Sen. Patrick Leahy (D., Vt.), himself no stranger to leaking, is furious that Democrat staff memos on politicizing judicial confirmations were read and disclosed. The fact that Republicans (including myself) read Democrats' documents on an open server to which they had an affirmative grant of access does not stop his histrionics. Just as amusing, the Washington Post ran two recent editorials indignant that Republicans had read and leaked the Democratic memos. But where was the media sanctimony when, during the Clarence Thomas nomination battle, the Post took illegal possession of the Anita Hill documents, or...

<p>Sen. Chuck Schumer has called for a criminal investigation of Republican Senate staffers who obtained incendiary Democrat computer memos from a shared Judiciary Committee file server and leaked them to the media. "A few of us believe that the only way to get to the bottom of this is for a special counsel to be appointed," the New York Democrat said.</p>

<p>This page's scoop last November--revealing Senate Democratic strategy memos on how to defeat President Bush's judicial nominees--created quite a kerfuffle. The excerpts appeared in an editorial on a Friday. On Monday, the Capitol Police swooped down on the offices of the Senate Judiciary Committee in search of evidence of who leaked the documents. Now, nearly four months later, the Senate Sergeant-at-Arms has delivered a report confirming that 4,700 files were downloaded and that security was extremely lax on the Judiciary computers.</p>

A hot topic of recent political news is the so-called "Memogate." If you have followed such things then you know that some memos from the files of Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee made their way into the hands of the media. Thereafter, committee chairman Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) expressed outrage that such a thing would happen on his watch. And somewhat later, Manny Miranda, who worked for Hatch and more recently has handled judicial nominations for Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), resigned. But not before he wrote a tough letter to the Senate Ethics Committee suggesting that the...

<p>Manuel Miranda, a central figure in what has come to be known among Capitol Hill insiders as "Memogate" or "Mannygate," is not the sort of guy with whom you want to get into a dispute.</p> <p>One month after being forced to resign over his role in viewing internal Democratic memos written by Senate Judiciary Committee staffers, Mr. Miranda is leading a spirited battle against Democrats he views as duplicitous and Republicans he sees as wimpy and unprincipled.</p>

From the AP: _________________________________________________________ Report on Judiciary memo snooping likely topic of Thursday meeting JESSE J. HOLLAND, Associated Press March 3, 2004 Senate investigators wrapped up their probe Wednesday into how Democratic computer memos on judicial nominees got into GOP hands as senators prepared for a public debate on who's to blame. Senate Judiciary Chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and ranking Democrat Patrick Leahy of Vermont got a private briefing by Sergeant-at-Arms William Pickle and his investigators. The committee is expected to hash out the report at a Thursday hearing. But it was not yet clear when or if the report,...

Republican Senators with "egg on their faces" March 2, 2004 In the middle of the contentious fight over judicial nominations, we accused Republicans of surrendering to Democrats over what has been termed "Memogate" by some journalists. We said it was wrong for GOP senators to fire and scapegoat one of their most effective staffers, Manuel Miranda. It appears we were right. New information has surfaced showing that not only did Republicans act hastily, but the real blame does lie with the Democrats. Click here for Manuel Miranda's full statement, only released a few hours ago.

Judiciary Report Unveiled Today By Paul Kane Roll Call March 1, 2004 As Senate investigators put the final touches on a report on the handling of leaked memos, Judiciary Democrats took their grievances to the White House, demanding to know if Bush administration officials had access to the controversial documents. In a letter to White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales, four senior Democrats on the Judiciary Committee formally asked the White House whether administration officials had any knowledge of or access to the thousands of memos that were taken from Democrats over a roughly 18-month period from 2001 to early 2003....

<p>The Senate sergeant-at-arms is expected to deliver a final report to Senate leaders today on his investigation into how internal Democratic Judiciary Committee memos were seen by Republican staffers and wound up in print in The Washington Times and elsewhere.</p>

(CNSNews.com) - The former Republican counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee is "disappointed" that Republican senators have not defended him more forcefully for uncovering Democrat memos laying out plans to derail President Bush's judicial nominees. Manuel Miranda said he has done nothing wrong and believes he deserves an apology from his accusers. "My first reaction was disappointment in men who I had raised up as heroes," Miranda told CNSNews.com , referring to the Republican leaders he formerly served. He seemed especially hurt by the reaction of his former supervisor, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah). "I certainly do...

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1015893/posts Politicized Memo Creates RowWashington Post ^ | November 6, 2003 | Dana PriestThe FACT that certain unknown Democrats are focusing more on taking down the president than intelligence, while we are at war and 2 years after suffering the worst attack on this country's soil, is unacceptable and as Zell Miller said, borders on treason.   http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1015951/posts A Tale of Two Scandals Frontpage ^ | 11/6/03 | Ryan O’Donnell   http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1015092/posts Democrats use national security intelligence for political purpose http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1015862/posts YOO-HOO Ds! (espec. Howard and Susan): How to use MEMOGATE to take your party back. . .    ...

<p>Why do Democrats want to keep this man quiet? Manuel Miranda (search) recently uncovered documents that expose the dirty political tactics used by the Democratic Party to block judicial appointees. He'll tell us what he found.</p>

Washington's conservative activists have found a traitor in their midst, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch. The occasion is Memogate, the internal Senate investigation into whether Republican aides unethically (and perhaps illegally) tapped into Democratic computer files containing private judicial-nomination strategy memos and leaked them to the press. The more the story balloons in the media, embarrassing Republicans and distracting them from trying to confirm more judges, the more right-wing activists savage Hatch, the man they hold responsible for it.To them, the Utah Republican has done something "acutely damaging to the struggle to get conservative judges onto the federal bench,"...

Sen. Rick Santorum (R.-Pa.) says he wants an investigation of the content of controversial memos produced by the Democratic staff of the Senate Judiciary Committee to determine whether the Democrats committed any wrongdoing in their efforts to block President Bush's judicial nominees. Meanwhile, Majority Leader Bill Frist (R.-Tenn.) and Senate Judiciary Chairman Orrin Hatch (R.-Utah) appear content to let Senate Sergeant-at-Arms William Pickle investigate only how the memos came into the hands of Republican staffers--a probe that was inspired by the Democrats, serves the interests of the Democrats, and turns attention away from the far more serious question of whether...

A group of some 20 conservative activists gave two Republican senators an earful last Thursday evening, demanding that the Senate spend less time criticizing now-departed staffers and more time blasting Senate Democrats for the sleazy content of the Democratic memoranda that the departed staffers perused. But the activists came away unsatisfied. And one activist who did not attend, Paul Weyrich of the Free Congress Foundation, is firing some verbal bazookas at Senate Republicans. According to several sources, conservative Sens. John Kyl of Arizona and Jeff Sessions of Alabama spent an hour and a half with conservative activists representing groups such...

The issue of leaked memos from the Senate Judiciary Committee is alive and well on Capitol Hill. However, the scant print and television coverage being generated on the controversy is focusing almost exclusively on how the memos were released to certain members of the media and little on the actual contents of the memos. This is testament to the prowess of the Democrats in spin control and the unwillingness of the Republicans to call them on it. A key figure at the center of the scandal, Manuel Miranda, resigned from his post last week as counsel to Senate Majority Leader...

<p>Democrats, aided by an incredibly gutless Republican leadership, have done a wonderful job of escaping scrutiny in a scandal that should bring the party to its knees and threaten some of its most prominent members with prison.</p> <p>Lack of a fire wall in a computer system set up by Senate Democrats enabled Republican staffers -- with a click of a mouse on a shared-server network -- to gain access to more than 4,000 internal Democrat memos. Some suggest the usual political collusion with left-wing groups, such as People for the American Way, to derail President Bush's judicial nominees.</p>

<p>WASHINGTON — A top Senate attorney who resigned under pressure this month following a controversial leak inquiry says he will continue to bring attention to the Democratic memos at the heart of the investigation despite focus on the questionable acquisition of the documents.</p>

<p>Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee fiercely denounced staffers in their own party yesterday for secretly accessing computer files of their Democratic colleagues.</p> <p>Sen. Lindsey Graham, South Carolina Republican and member of the Judiciary Committee, said that acquiring the Democratic memos was "an unethical or illegal wrong."</p>

WASHINGTON (AP) - Republican snooping through Democrats' tactical memos on President Bush's judicial nominees has grown into a full-blown Capitol Hill uproar - with comparisons to Watergate, accusations of court tampering and conservatives attacking senior GOP senators. Already, two staffers implicated in giving newspapers and conservative groups the memos stored on a shared Judiciary Committee computer server have been forced to leave. Secret Service agents are prowling the Capitol interviewing legislative aides, and some senators are calling for an outside investigation - perhaps by the FBI - and severe punishment if warranted. "We know that dirty tricks have long been...

WASHINGTON – Senate Democrats or some of their staff people could find themselves on the wrong end of a criminal charge. A coalition representing millions of grassroots citizens from all across America has gone to the Public Integrity Section of the Justice Department “humbly suggest[ing] that agents of the United States Department of Justice should endeavor” to seize the infamous internal memos between Senate Democrat staffers and pressure groups on strategy for blocking President Bush’s judicial nominates. Kay Daley, president of Coalition for a Fair Judiciary, says it’s important that the Justice Department take possession of thousands of memos now...

WASHINGTON -- Open access to the opposing party's private computer files was common knowledge among staff of Republican Judiciary Committee Chairman Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, claims a former Hatch employee implicated in leaking Democratic memos. Manuel Miranda, a former Hatch Judiciary Committee staff member, resigned Friday as an aide to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee after acknowledging accessing confidential Democratic memos about blocking President Bush's judicial nominees. In a "departure statement" released Monday, Miranda said the "glitch" that allowed Hatch staffers to snoop in Democrats' computer files was no secret, that Democrats' own negligence is to blame...

<p>There is "no doubt" that Republican staffers acted improperly in accessing Democratic strategy memos on judicial nominees, the Senate's sergeant-at-arms said Wednesday, as he defended his investigation into the incident.</p> <p>"There is no doubt that what was done by certain people was certainly improper. There is no way of getting around it," Sergeant-at-Arms William Pickle said in an interview with The Associated Press.</p>

Mr. Noel Hillman Chief, Public Integrity Section Criminal Division U.S. Department of Justice 950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20531-0001 10 February 2004 Dear Mr. Hillman: In a recent complaint addressed to the U.S. Senate Ethics Committee, Mr. Manuel Miranda, former Majority Counsel to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee and General Counsel to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, apprised Committee Chief Counsel Robert Walker of the following revelation: “I have read documents evidencing public corruption by elected officials and staff of the United States Senate. . . . This includes evidence of the direct influencing of the Senate's advice and...

Did Republican staffers commit a crime by clicking on the "My Network Places" icon to access Democratic memos, asks SecurityFocus columnist Mark Rasch. Politics is dirty business, and rarely so much as in the area of patronage: appointments to sought-after federal jobs in general, and to the federal bench in particular. So it should be little surprise that, with so much at stake, one political party would want to use the insecurity inherent in computerized databases to its political advantage. What is surprising, however, is that, caught with their hand in the cookie jar, Senate Republicans employed the tactic of...

Finding the truth "The investigation into just how memos written for Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee ended up in the hands of Senate Republicans and the media is not likely to be resolved once the official investigation into how they were leaked is completed," Peter Roff writes. "The matter has helped further inflame the already heated passions on both sides of the aisle. Those allied with the Democrats want blood, implying that the memos were stolen or obtained through computer hacking. Many of those normally allied with the Republicans argue that how they were obtained is less important than...

Manuel Miranda, the Senate staffer who until today was Majority Leader Bill Frist's top adviser on judicial nominations, has left his post with a massive parting blast that should put to shame Judiciary Chairman Orrin Hatch. The substance of his contentions — that Democratic senators engaged in violations of the public trust that may be legally actionable — makes Hatch's utter capitulation to Democrat demands look craven by comparison. Miranda's letter to the Senate ethics committee, drafted earlier this week and delivered this morning, alleges that a series of Democratic memoranda that were not (and have not been) leaked will...

Leak staffer ousted Frist aide forced out in an effort to assuage Dems By Alexander Bolton Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist’s (R-Tenn.) top aide on judicial nominees is expected to announce his resignation at the end of this week — a sacrifice offered by the GOP leadership in hope of persuading the Democrats to wind down the fight over leaked Judiciary Committee memos. The aide, Manuel Miranda, had spearheaded the Republican effort to push President Bush’s judicial nominees through the Senate in the face of fierce Democratic opposition. Miranda declined a request for comment. But The Hill has learned that...

Take care of your foot soldiers! Posted: February 3, 20041:00 a.m. Eastern © 2004 WorldNetDaily.com The Republican leadership is attacking one of its loyal foot soldiers – senior staff aide to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., Manuel Miranda – in a vain attempt to appease their Democrat counterparts. And it's safe to do because Miranda is an infantryman without air support to cover for him. In an April 17, 2002, memo, Senate Judiciary Committee member Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., was apprised that Elaine Jones, the president and director-counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund had marching orders. The memo indicated that Jones...

For months now, Senate Democrats have wanted a scalp in the Judiciary Committee memos investigation. If Republicans can be pressured into firing one of their own for leaking the documents, Democrats — the aggressors in the fight over the president's judicial nominees — will be able to portray themselves as victims. You remember the memos. They were from Democratic staffers to Senators Richard Durbin and Edward Kennedy, and they discussed Democratic strategies for blocking the president's judicial nominees. When they were leaked to the Wall Street Journal editorial page last November, the memos revealed just how closely Senate Democrats worked...

WASHINGTON (Talon News) -- An investigation by the Senate sergeant-at-arms into strategy memos from the Judiciary Committee that Democrats claim were illegally accessed and released to the press continues to expand. Miguel Miranda, an aide to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, has been placed on leave pending the outcome of an investigation into whether Democrat committee members' computers were illegally accessed. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-UT) also placed an aide on leave last year for his involvement in the matter. The unnamed aide has reportedly left government work. Hatch has been apologetic about the leak of the memos,...