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GOP surrenders to Dems on e-mail
Chicago Sun-Times ^ | 1/9/04 | Robert Novak

Posted on 02/09/2004 12:11:38 PM PST by ZGuy

Manuel Miranda, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's staff lawyer who ran his judicial confirmation campaign, last Friday resigned under pressure. His scalp was demanded by Democrats, and Republicans complied. That showed who is ready and willing to play the tough partisan game in the U.S. Senate -- and who is not.

Frist's willingness to throw his own aide overboard concluded a spectacular exhibition of the muscular Democratic minority's triumph of the will, personified by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy. By a stroke of luck, Republicans had found a trail of e-mail messages by Democrats that exposed a coolly crafted plan to reject President Bush's federal judges. But Democrats managed to turn their own corruption of Senate confirmations into bipartisan outrage over a staffer leaking a senator's sacrosanct communications.

Making Miranda a scapegoat confirms Democratic success at hijacking the confirmation process. However, Miranda's ''departure statement'' Friday signaled a fight still could be made. Asserting that some Democratic documents ''recorded collusive, partisan considerations in the confirmation process and much worse,'' he said ''only a small amount of these have been made public. The ones made public are the least indicting of the ones I came to see.'' That material is now in the hands of the sergeant-at-arms, an employee of Frist.

On Feb. 27, 2003, I reported in this column that Kennedy had devised a ''grand design'' to keep Bush from taking over the federal judiciary. I attributed direct quotes about his filibuster scheme to ''internal sources,'' and Senate Judiciary Committee Democratic staffers recognized language from their own e-mails. The Wall Street Journal last November published parts of 15 such messages, which later were posted on a Web site.

The messages expose the symbiotic relationship between senior Democratic senators and left-wing pressure groups, even plots to coordinate confirmation hearings with pending court procedure. Republicans had a smoking gun.

The reaction by Democrats was audacious, borrowing from the Nixon White House's approach to publication of the Pentagon Papers three decades ago. Just as the Republicans then deflected attention from disclosures about the Vietnam War revelation by attacking the leakers and journalists, the assault on the Judiciary Committee e-mail leak obscured the disclosures.

The difference this time was that Republican senators agreed that the real scandal was the leak, not the leaked material. Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch called himself ''mortified that this improper, unethical and simply unacceptable breach of confidential files may have occurred on my watch.''

Hatch then accused an unnamed former Judiciary Committee staffer -- clearly fingering Miranda, who on Feb. 5, 2003, left Hatch's staff and joined Frist's. Hatch in November did not reveal that Miranda had just volunteered to Senate Sergeant-at-Arms William Pickle that the e-mails had become known to Republicans through a computer glitch.

Frist at that time did not want to antagonize Democrats needed to pass the super-expensive Medicare bill against no-votes by nine Republican senators. Even after that measure passed, however, Frist did not address what was revealed in the e-mails. Nor did he come to the defense of his aide Miranda.

''No unauthorized hacking was involved,'' Miranda said in his departure statement. ''I considered and studied the propriety of reading these documents. I knew that in legal ethics there is no absolute prohibition on reading opposition documents inadvertently disclosed.'' On the contrary, he concluded, ''a prohibition on the reading of such documents'' would violate the Code of Ethics of Government Service.

Miranda is a man of principle who was betrayed by his bosses in the interests of maintaining an artificial comity with their Democratic colleagues. Now they must decide what to do with those unread e-mails hidden in the safe of the sergeant-at-arms.


TOPICS: Editorial; Government; Politics/Elections; US: Tennessee; US: Utah
KEYWORDS: billfrist; estradamemo; frist; judicialnominees; judiciarycommittee; manuelmiranda; mediabias; memogate; mirandasrights; novak; orrinhatch; rattricks; scapegoat; whistleblower; wimps
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1 posted on 02/09/2004 12:11:39 PM PST by ZGuy
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To: ZGuy
Frist better not even think about running in 2008
2 posted on 02/09/2004 12:12:54 PM PST by raloxk
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To: ZGuy
The 'pubs are bringing water pistols to a gun fight.
3 posted on 02/09/2004 12:13:26 PM PST by Semper Paratus
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To: ZGuy
However, Miranda's ''departure statement'' Friday signaled a fight still could be made.

LOL!


4 posted on 02/09/2004 12:14:20 PM PST by Huck (Where there's smoke, there's mirrors.)
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To: ZGuy
See tagline.
5 posted on 02/09/2004 12:14:30 PM PST by Sir Gawain (Republicans give spineless cowards a bad name)
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To: raloxk
Oh Limp Frist is running in 2008.

Fortunately so is Bill Owens of Colorado.

Hopefully Bush will make Owens, and not Frist, VP if Cheney steps down in Bush's second term.
6 posted on 02/09/2004 12:14:50 PM PST by Pubbie (I hate both the NeoConservatives and the PaleoConservatives - What does that make me?)
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To: raloxk
agreed. but essentially this also shows that what media we do have on our side (and its limited) has little influence and effect. Fox News and talk radio should be running this night and day, the collusion that the memos show, but you don't hear much about it at all.
7 posted on 02/09/2004 12:16:37 PM PST by oceanview
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To: ZGuy
By a stroke of luck, Republicans had found a trail

By a stroke of luck? So one day Miranda went into his office and there on his desk were the democrat's memos?
8 posted on 02/09/2004 12:17:12 PM PST by lelio
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To: ZGuy
Notice we don't hear anymore after the scalp was delivered. I don't think PUBS are going to let go of Manuel Miranda. He'll have another post within the PUB Party.
9 posted on 02/09/2004 12:17:38 PM PST by lilylangtree (Veni, Vidi, Vici)
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To: ZGuy
I never imagined there would be another Senate Majority Leader as spineless as Trent Lott. I was wrong.
10 posted on 02/09/2004 12:18:21 PM PST by kevao
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To: kevao
Frist is much worse than Lott.

Freepers have to stop being so obsessed with the media. Yes, the media is against conservative. Get over it.
11 posted on 02/09/2004 12:19:53 PM PST by raloxk
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To: raloxk
Actually I think Lott is worse than Frist.
12 posted on 02/09/2004 12:21:05 PM PST by Pubbie (I hate both the NeoConservatives and the PaleoConservatives - What does that make me?)
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To: ZGuy
Trent Frist...puk-puk, puk-KAW.....puk-puk-puk, puk-KAW!!
13 posted on 02/09/2004 12:21:50 PM PST by clintonh8r (Vietnam veteran against John Kerry.)
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To: ZGuy
Anybody get the feeling that we don't have the full story yet?
14 posted on 02/09/2004 12:26:14 PM PST by Consort
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To: raloxk
yeah, but the media is a big part of the problem dragging the country into the abyss.
15 posted on 02/09/2004 12:26:51 PM PST by oceanview
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To: lelio
So one day Miranda went into his office and there on his desk were the democrat's memos?

Very Close. One day he went into his PC and there were the Democrat memos.

16 posted on 02/09/2004 12:28:35 PM PST by theDentist (Boston: So much Liberty, you can buy a Politician already owned by someone else.)
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To: ZGuy
We should be rallying around Miranda's Rights.

The memos he discovered contained possibly illegal activity by the ACLU and other 501c3 charities lobbying Democrats to block judicial nominees so as to influence judicial branch decisions.

We have 3 branches of government and this whole thing stinks to high Heaven.

For those who call this "theft"; the files were on a government computer. What portion of the data stored in open folders accessible by all is "owned" by the DNC?

17 posted on 02/09/2004 12:28:53 PM PST by weegee (Don't feed the trolls.)
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To: clintonh8r
Gee, Daschle, Kennedy and Clinton must think they still run the Senate!

Oh, wait.....

18 posted on 02/09/2004 12:30:31 PM PST by clintonh8r (Vietnam veteran against John Kerry.)
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To: clintonh8r; kevao
Frist is running for President in 2008.
19 posted on 02/09/2004 12:32:34 PM PST by Pubbie (I hate both the NeoConservatives and the PaleoConservatives - What does that make me?)
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To: Sir Gawain
See tagline.

Republican Senators make the French look brave!

20 posted on 02/09/2004 12:33:34 PM PST by CROSSHIGHWAYMAN (I don't believe anything a Democrat says. Bill Clinton set the standard!)
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