Free Republic

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...