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Today's Quotefall Puzzle features a quote by Edwin Meese. Click puzzle (or click here) for full size rendition, then use your browser's print command to print puzzle. Edwin Meese was Attorney General under President Ronald Reagan. With whiz kid Mark Levin serving as his chief-of-staff, Meese restored the integrity of the Justice Department, which had been badly damaged since the Watergate scandal and throughout inept GOP and Democrat administrations in the 70's. All hints, along with the answer, are provided in the first reply comment below, using filtered font to prevent accidental spoilers. Please refrain from disclosing the full answer in comments...

Sessions set four goals for his tenure: to reduce the rates of murder, violent crime generally, opioid prescription fraud and drug overdose deaths. He achieved all four... just as impressive has been the refocusing of the department’s efforts under Sessions’s leadership to protect the liberties of Americans.

CHICAGO - Supreme Court nominee John Roberts skipped the American Bar Association's yearly meeting, but big-name conservatives like Kenneth Starr and Theodore Olson were there to promote his credentials. Roberts' nomination to replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor is a watershed for lawyers. And with Senate confirmation hearings just a month away, he was the inescapable subject at the meeting of the country's largest lawyers group. Top conservatives, from Starr and Olson to Reagan administration Attorney General Edwin Meese and Federalist Society leader Leonard Leo, were attending the meeting and serving as unofficial ambassadors on Roberts' behalf. "For those people...

Even some who support same-sex marriage worry that, in striking down California's voter-approved proposition defining marriage as between one man and one woman, U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker went too far. They are right -- and not the only ones who should be concerned. Walker's ruling is indefensible as a matter of law wholly apart from its result. By refusing to acknowledge binding Supreme Court precedent, substantial evidence produced at trial that was contrary to the holding and plain common sense, the ruling exhibits none of the requirements of a traditional decision. This opinion is arbitrary and capricious, and its...

It is an impressive testament to the abiding affection and political influence of former President Ronald Reagan that the fate of a controversial treaty now before the U.S. Senate may ultimately turn on a single question: What would Reagan do? As we had the privilege of working closely with President Reagan in connection with the foreign policy, national security and domestic implications of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (better known as the Law of the Sea Treaty or LOST), there is no question about how our 40th president felt about this accord. He so strongly...

This is the fifth in an occasional series of exclusive articles in which leading conservatives who served in the Reagan Administration explain how they believe the principles of Reagan conservatism ought to be applied today and in the coming years. This week, Edwin Meese, who was Reagan’s first presidential counselor and then attorney general, addresses immigration. What would Ronald Reagan do? I can’t tell you how many times I have been asked that question, on virtually every issue imaginable. As much as we all want clarity and certainty, I usually refrain from specific answers. That’s because it is very difficult...

IN the debate over immigration, "amnesty" has become something of a dirty word. Some opponents of the immigration bill being debated in the Senate assert that it would grant amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants. Supporters claim it would do no such thing. Instead, they say, it lays out a road map by which illegal aliens can earn citizenship.

IN the debate over immigration, "amnesty" has become something of a dirty word. Some opponents of the immigration bill being debated in the Senate assert that it would grant amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants. Supporters claim it would do no such thing. Instead, they say, it lays out a road map by which illegal aliens can earn citizenship. Perhaps I can shed some light. Two decades ago, while serving as attorney general under President Ronald Reagan, I was in the thick of things as Congress debated the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986. The situation today bears uncanny...

An Open Letter to the Press in Western Carolina From: John Armor, Candidate for Congress, 11th District Date: 16 March 2006 re: certain comments by Deborah Potter on behalf of Congressman Charles Taylor Ladies and Gentlemen, Below is an exact and complete copy of an e-mail that Charles Taylor's Press Secretary, Deborah Potter, sent to Don Yelton, a friend of mine. (For those who don't know me, I'm a lawyer and author who lives in Macon County, and I'm running against Taylor in the Republican primary.) The Potter e-mail refers to me as "Armor and his bunch of left-wing radicals...

Former U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese III last night condemned what he termed the vicious attacks by left-leaning groups and legislators against judicial nominees who favor judicial restraint. "Since 2001, the attacks on judges who are faithful to the Constitution have been systematic, prolonged and particularly vicious," he charged. Meese made his remarks during an appearance at the University of Richmond, presented by the Federalist Society of the T.C. Williams School of Law. He told an attentive crowd of about 100 that the recent hearings for John G. Roberts Jr. and Samuel A. Alito Jr. to be justices of the...

Conservatives See Court Shift as Culmination By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK In February of last year, as rumors swirled about the failing health of Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, a team of conservative grass-roots organizers, public relations specialists and legal strategists met to prepare a battle plan for whomever the next Supreme Court nominee might be. The leaders were Leonard A. Leo, executive vice president of the Federalist Society and informal adviser to the White House; Edwin Meese III, attorney general in the Reagan administration; and C. Boyden Gray, the White House counsel under the first President Bush and a veteran...

After 22 hours of testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Americans have seen a lot of chief justice nominee John Roberts. He was asked more than 500 questions -- some seemed more like speeches -- by 18 different senators about topics ranging from privacy law to court administration to his private life. By the end of the hearing, one thing was clear: John Roberts is a true conservative and a brilliant attorney whose service on the high court will be a lasting monument to President Bush. Consequently, the committee voted 13-5 yesterday to send his nomination as chief justice to...

Despite current hype from Senate Democrats, the landmark cases of the next five years probably won't concern civil rights, abortion or other issues that have liberals so worked up. Current court vote-counts leave little room for major shifts, no matter what the judicial philosophy of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's replacement. Instead, I believe some of the biggest cases will deal with property rights. Justice John Roberts may well find waiting on his desk one property-rights case potentially as momentous as the unfortunately decided Kelo v. New London. In Kelo the court gave government the right to take property from one...

WASHINGTON, Aug. 16 - It was July 1985 and the newly confirmed attorney general, Edwin Meese III, was preparing to address the American Bar Association. Trouble was, he was conflicted about what to say. A 17-day hostage crisis involving a hijacked American airliner had just ended, and Mr. Meese felt obliged to discuss terrorism. But the Supreme Court had just delivered a series of decisions that infuriated conservatives and reinforced President Ronald Reagan's resolve to steer the judiciary rightward. In the end, Mr. Meese gave what many say was the speech of his career. Helping lay the foundation for the...

Today's battles over judges have too often broken down along party lines. Democrats sought to filibuster judicial nominees. Republicans worked to guarantee nominees an up-or-down vote. Even the uneasy "truce" achieved last month was the result of politics, not principle. The partisan division is unfortunate, because the judiciary is no place to be playing politics. "Judges shouldn't be liberal or conservative, since the Constitution isn't liberal or conservative," as President Ronald Reagan once observed. Taking the politics out of the judiciary is a key tenet behind the concept of constitutional originalism. That's the idea that judges should issue rulings based...

John Bolton: The Right Man for the Job By James A. Baker III and Edwin Meese III New York Times | May 12, 2005 The image that critics are painting of John Bolton, President Bush's nominee to be our representative at the United Nations, does not bear the slightest resemblance to the man we have known and worked with for a quarter-century. While we cannot speak to the truthfulness of the specific allegations by his former colleagues, we can speak to what we know. And during our time with Mr. Bolton at the Justice and State Departments, we never knew...

THE image that critics are painting of John Bolton, President Bush's nominee to be our representative at the United Nations, does not bear the slightest resemblance to the man we have known and worked with for a quarter-century. While we cannot speak to the truthfulness of the specific allegations by his former colleagues, we can speak to what we know. And during our time with Mr. Bolton at the Justice and State Departments, we never knew of any instance in which he abused or berated anyone he worked with. Nor was his loyalty to us or to the presidents we...

In our system of law, the powers of government are divided between the federal and state governments. The framers rightly left marriage policy, as so many other things, with the states. Yet the fundamental definition of marriage is no mere policy issue. We’re talking about the very integrity and meaning of one of the primary elements of civil society. Nor is this a matter for state-by-state experimentation. Society isn’t harmed when high-tax states live side by side with low-tax states. The market adjusts to the inconsistency. Not so with marriage. A highly integrated society such as ours—with questions of property...

Patriot Act's bum rapBy Edwin Meese III    How ironic that the primary law intended to protect Americans from terrorism has been subjected to countless attacks.     Indeed, you would never know the U.S.A. Patriot Act passed with overwhelming support in Congress right after the September 11, 2001 attacks (commonly known as "9/11"). Many have backpedaled on their support. And if two amendments to an appropriations bill, pending vote this week, manage to succeed, lawmakers will seriously weaken the Act and increase the dangers to the citizens they represent.     Critics argue the various provisions of the Patriot Act greatly infringe upon American...

"Hasty marriage seldom proveth well," Shakespeare warns. For thousands of years, every society, and every major religious faith, has held that marriage is a unique relationship by which one man and one woman are joined together for the primary purpose of forming and maintaining a family. Then along came the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts -- following in the footsteps of a trial court judge in Hawaii, a superior court judge in Alaska, and the Vermont Supreme Court -- proclaiming in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health that marriage is "an evolving paradigm." Traditional marriage is out of step with...