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WASHINGTON - A group of Senate Democrats called Wednesday for a special counsel to investigate whether Attorney General Alberto Gonzales perjured himself regarding the firings of U.S. attorneys and administration dissent over President Bush's domestic surveillance program. "We ask that you immediately appoint an independent special counsel from outside the Department of Justice to determine whether Attorney General Gonzales may have misled Congress or perjured himself in testimony before Congress," four Democratic senators wrote in a letter Wednesday, according to a draft obtained by The Associated Press. "It has become apparent that the Attorney General has provided at a minimum...

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) Thursday issued a subpoena for top White House adviser Karl Rove to compel him to testify about the firing of several U.S. attorneys. “The evidence shows that senior White House political operatives were focused on the political impact of federal prosecutions and whether federal prosecutors were doing enough to bring partisan voter fraud and corruption cases,” Leahy said. “It is obvious that the reasons given for the firings of these prosecutors were contrived as part of a cover-up and that the stonewalling by the White House is part and parcel of that same...

WASHINGTON -- Six months into the first session of the Democratic Congress and the last two years of the Bush administration, the news isn't good. The Democrats have staggered and stumbled through an ill-conceived, haphazard agenda that seems to be going nowhere, and they've got the failing mid-semester scores to prove it. Their approval polls have sunk into the 20s, and in some surveys the teens, as Americans overwhelmingly disapprove of the job they're doing. The latest Gallup Poll shows that voters are most concerned about the war in Iraq, the economy and jobs, and the costs of health care,...

The Democratic senator leading the inquiry into the dismissal of federal prosecutors insisted Sunday that Karl Rove and other top aides to President Bush must testify publicly and under oath, setting up a confrontation between Congress and the White House, which has said it is unlikely to agree to such a demand. Some Republicans have suggested that Mr. Rove testify privately, if only to tamp down the political uproar over the inquiry, which centers on whether the White House allowed politics to interfere with law enforcement. But Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont and chairman of the Senate Judiciary...

Dick Cheney has forged a reputation as the most powerful but also least visible vice-president in recent history. In the next few weeks, however, he will be forced to fight some of his battles in the open – in the courtroom and on Capitol Hill. The first test will come in the criminal trial of his former chief of staff, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, charged with lying to a grand jury during an investigation into how a CIA agent’s name was leaked. The trial, due to begin in two weeks, is likely to set an ignominious precedent when Mr Cheney becomes...

While Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) isn’t scheduled to takeover as Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee until January 2007, he already sounds as if he’s the man in charge of oversight of our nation’s law enforcement and courts. And considering his history of being kicked off the Senate Intelligence Committee due to his propensity for revealing classified information, Americans should be afraid — very afraid. On Wednesday, Sen. Leahy — or, as he’s known inside the Beltway, “Leaky Leahy” — rapped FBI Director Robert Mueller for refusing to show how the has curbed terrorist activity in the United States. Mueller...

Intelligence: Senate Democrats are focusing their new powers on one thing above all else: wrenching as many national security secrets as possible from this White House and using them for political assassination. Giving Leahy and his staff secrets would, quite simply, be a security risk. Since the 1980s, Leahy's nickname inside the Beltway has been "Leaky Leahy" because of his willingness to provide the press with juicy secrets to be used against Republican presidents. "The American people," Leahy wrote in a letter to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, "deserve to have detailed and accurate information about the role of the Bush...

BURLINGTON — U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., joined the world's leading researcher on global warming Saturday to charge that the Bush administration's use of censorship to foil terrorism is hurting the fight against climate change and other environmental threats. "If you have information that points out a problem, the only way you're going to make a correction is if you find out about it," Leahy said. "I have never seen an administration, either Republican or Democratic, as secretive as this one. It has become absolutely farcical, except that the country has been damaged by it." Leahy, speaking in Burlington, punctuated...

In 1994 Sen. Pat "Leaky" Leahy co-wrote a law that forced telecommunications carriers to build convenient wiretap features into their networks enabling the kind of telephone records collection now at the heart of the controversy over the National Security Agency's terrorist surveillance operation. In recent days Leahy has called the NSA's actions troubling and potentially illegal - saying they show that the Bush administration is treating Americans like terrorists. "'The secret collection of phone call records of tens of millions of Americans?" he exclaimed after USA Today blew the lid off the program last week. "Are you telling me that...

A Republican senator says it's time to "find out exactly what is going on." A Democrat senator is asking, "Where does it stop?" The furor on Capitol Hill is over a U-S-A Today report that three big phone companies have turned over the records of tens of (m) millions of calls to the National Security Agency, as part of a government effort to compile a complete database of phone calls. Chairman Arlen Specter says he wants A-T-and-T, Verizon and BellSouth to appear before his Senate Judiciary panel to explain. The ranking Democrat on the committee, Patrick Leahy, says he's angry...

The Justice Department has backed away from a court battle over its authority to classify and restrict the discussion of information it has already released, handing a local advocacy group a victory by granting it explicit permission to publish letters written by two senators that contain the contested information. The case was considered a potential test of limits to the government's power to restrict access to information in the public domain on national security grounds. Former attorney general John D. Ashcroft had strongly defended the practice in this case by likening it to putting "spilt milk" back in a jar...

What a difference a few weeks make in the world of politics. One day, the Democrat Party and the mainstream news media are celebrating the indictment of a key White House staff member, then suddenly facts start to emerge that just might put a damper on the prosecutors case. Recall how Patrick Fitzgerald announced the indictment of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby for perjury and obstruction of justice charges. During his jovial press conference, Mr. Fitzgerald lectured Americans about how serious it is to leak classified information. He avoided using the term "covert" when describing Valerie Plame, because in order for...

October 28, 2005 The Honorable George W. Bush The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20500 Dear Mr. President: Today the Senate received your withdrawal of the nomination of Harriet Miers to be an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. We agree with Senator John Danforth, until recently a high-ranking official in your Administration, who has called the circumstances of Ms. Miers’s withdrawal “a power play” by “the right wing of American politics.” We regret that Ms. Miers was not even afforded the opportunity to answer her right wing critics at a Judiciary Committee hearing. The...

The investigation is not complete Mr. Wiseman wrote that Karl Rove is a traitor. But the investigation has not been completed. Memory fails me, but several years ago someone leaked the names of undercover agents in other countries which put their lives in jeopardy. But the leakers or leaker were not put on trial. There was no outcry from the movers and shakers at the time. It was more like tough luck. Joe Wilson’s wife was not in a foreign country on a mission. She was here in the United States. Her life was not put in danger. It is...

Advocacy Group Says Minority Leader Guilty of Gross Violation: Leahy and Levin Also Named ALEXANDRIA, VA - The American Conservative Union, the nations oldest and largest conservative grassroots organization, yesterday filed an ethics complaint against Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV). The complaint comes in response to Sen. Reid's May 12th reference to judicial nominee Henry Saad's confidential FBI file on the floor of the United States Senate. "Henry Saad would have been filibustered anyway…," said Reid on the floor of the Senate. "All you need to do is have a member go upstairs and look at his confidential report...

Left-wing Republican Senator Arlen Specter presided at the confirmation hearing of Judge Alberto Gonzales today. He urged Judge Gonzales to share sensitive, confidential information with him and the ranking Democrat Senator Pat Leahy (Leaky Leahy), even if too sensitive to let the other members see it. Specter indicated that both of them could be trusted with the most sensitive information. This is the same Senator Leahy who was forced to resign from the Intelligence Committee for leaking secret information endangering the lives of American agents. This is a sad situation--you'd never know the Republicans won the 2004 elections as you...

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy, visiting the United Nations, cautioned his Congressional colleagues to "take a deep breath" before making a political football out of the world body by withholding dues. Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, said he disapproved of moves by several Republicans to withhold U.S. payments unless the world body fully cooperates with Congressional probes into the oil-for-food scandal in Iraq. "I think we ought to take a deep breath. This is not a time to make a political football out of the U.N.," Leahy told reporters after seeing U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan. "We need them...

Debate wire..senoir Edwards source says John Edwards will be in standard uniform tonight, Red Tie, White Shirt and Blue Suit.Bush Cheney 04 campaign manager Mark Wallace spotted taking a 'Halliburton hospitality bag' outside the Media Center..

Prez Wannabe Graham Eyeing Evidence That Bush Blew 9/11 Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Bob Graham is reportedly sitting on damaging evidence that the Bush administration could have prevented the Sept. 11 attacks - but he hasn't released the information yet because it's classified. "I think Bob Graham has a smoking pistol on the Bush administration," Congressional Quarterly's Craig Crawford told WABC Radio's John Batchelor and Paul Alexander late Tuesday. Crawford explained that Graham's mystery evidence has to do with "their failures, particularly intelligence failures, before 9/11." In recent weeks Sen. Graham, the senior Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, has...

<p>WASHINGTON -- The Democrat-controlled Senate Judiciary Committee delayed an expected vote today on the controversial nomination by President Bush of Dennis Shedd to the Richmond-based 4th Circuit Court of Appeals. The delay could have the effect of burying the Shedd nomination, as the Senate is approaching the end of its term and today may have marked the committee's final meeting. Shedd is strongly opposed by civil rights' and women's groups. Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy said there wasn't time to debate Shedd's nomination today because of a shortened committee session due to floor debate on the resolution to authorize force against Saddam Hussein. Sen. Orrin G. Hatch, senior Republican, said the action was "dishonorable," "pathetic," and a breach of a commitment, as well as a "terrible slight" to Sen. Strom Thurmond, 99, who is retiring. Shedd, of South Carolina, is a former Thurmond aide.</p>