This MEMO was released to the PUBLIC last FRIDAY. Have you heard a PEEP from the MAJOR news outlets?? No, of course not, and you are NOT likely to. After all, the MEMO's authors are Democrats and they have much different standards then does the GOP.
I'd like to see prez use the bully pulpit (that WILL get press) to call down the dems on these subversive memos. Will he? If he won't, who would get adequate press? Cheney? Rice? Who?
The Wall Street Journal isn't a major news outlet?!?
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB106912006081866800,00.html
Sheriff Durbin
Our scoop last Friday revealing Senate Democratic strategy memos on how to defeat President Bush's judicial nominees has created quite a stir.
Two of the memos came from the office of Senator Dick Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, who was not amused that we gave our readers a taste of the political cynicism behind his opposition. Yesterday he got the Capitol Hill police to raid the Judiciary Committee in search of evidence of who leaked the documents. Sheriff Durbin's office told us late yesterday afternoon that the posse had entered the Committee's computer room and "removed backup tapes from the server."
We admit it. We have sources who provided those documents to us, a practice not unknown even, dare we guess, to Mr. Durbin. His outrage at this disclosure contrasts with the notable lack of concern that his fellow Democrats showed some years back over the leak of the Anita Hill charges against then Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas.
But since the subject's come up, let us take the opportunity to mention one more document we didn't have time to quote from in Friday's editorial. This comes from staff talking points written for Senator Ted Kennedy to deliver to his fellow Senate Democrats urging them to oppose Miguel Estrada, the highly qualified former nominee for the D.C. Circuit who happens to be Hispanic. "We can't repeat the mistake we made with Clarence Thomas," it said.
In other words: Please don't let a "Latino" nominee (as a Durbin memo put it) who happens to be conservative get on an appellate court. His next step might be the Supreme Court. Liberal Democrats have been hiding their filibuster motives beyond high-sounding principle. What really has Mr. Durbin upset is that the public finally got a glimpse of how he really thinks.
Updated November 18, 2003