HOT: New Miranda STUFF: MEMO-DEMS COVER UP LEAKS ON REPUB EMAIL

a little bird | 3/4 | a little bird

[Libertina]

BTTT Excellent Dio! Amazing what top Democrats are trying to cover up and do. Good sources you have! :)

[ConservativeGadfly]

Don't like wimpy talk radio? Then try RighTalk. Gonna be back on air in April.

[b4its2late]

a little bird

Hehhehehhehe. Gotta love it.

[Sabertooth]

When the Dems leaked the Repub email, you didn't hear any Dem shaking a finger at one of their own. But it sure ain't the other way around, is it?

Well, you have to "look at the big picture," I'm told.

If Republicans don't tremble before the Democrats, the media will say mean things and hurt our feelings.

Get your priorities straight.

[GraniteStateConservative]

The thing about this is that you'd like to think everyone is working for the same company up there, but they act like it's Pepsi vs. Coke. Why are my tax dollars being used to fund this crap (from both sides)?

[OXENinFLA]

You gotta check this out....

[Sabertooth]

I have seen an awful lot of disappointment in this battle, but the one thing that CANNOT be said is that Manuel Miranda has been anything but bold.

He has held the line when others have not and he has done the unthinkable inside the Beltway -- despite the cost to his own career and family, he has pressed forward on an issue because he feels it is the right thing to do.

Agreed on Miranda, he's been nails. With ten like him in the Senate we could achieve something.

My disdain is directed at the professional politicians in the GOP leadership.

[diotima]

Clearly we have two important facts that stand out in the above piece.

First we see that democrats are dispicable hypocrits of the highest order, as the substance and not the method, temporarily, is the issue for them regarding "leaks".

The second, is the utter failure of Hatch ("sometimes you feel like a spine, some times you don't") to defend GOP interests in contrast to the Democrats who manage to defend Democrat interests quite forcefully. Hatch just can't roll over fast enough.

[Sabertooth]

Don't like wimpy talk radio? Then try RighTalk. Gonna be back on air in April.

Not familiar with it, but I'll check it out. Is it internet or broadcast?

Flag me to the announcement when it comes back on.

[diotima]

"First we see that democrats are despicable hypocrites"

Sheesh.

[Sabertooth]

Hatch just can't roll over fast enough.

How do you know this? Were his FBI files leaked?

[Cboldt]

I don't have a solution for that, but if you don't think the Republicans can play hardball, you must have missed the Texas redistricting fight of last summer.

Which has broader ramifications, Texas redistricting, or the Federal judicial nomination process? I understand the incentive to express toughness based on a past success, but toughness is never going to go unchallenged.

[diotima]

Somebody must have something on him, IMHO. Either that or he is evil. If it was a case of bad judgement, sometimes he would err in our favor.

[GulliverSwift]

That's a nice collection of leaks there.

[ConservativeGadfly]

Rightalk is the new and improved Radio Free Republic....

www.radiofreerepublic.com, www.rightalk.com.....

Will ping ya when we're back on.

[ConservativeGadfly]

Impressive ain't it?

Ol' Leaky Leahy.....

[b4its2late]

Leahy got booted from some committee for leaking several years ago....

[petitfour]

Here's an interesting read from The Hill:

GOP split on memos
Factions battle on strategy for Bush’s judicial nominees
By Alexander Bolton

An internal GOP power struggle has emerged over how to handle President Bush’s controversial judicial nominees in the Senate.

The battle pits top aides in the Senate office of Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), who chairs the judiciary panel, against more conservative staffers who work with the committee on nominations.

The struggle has come to light in the wake of an investigation by Bill Pickle, the Senate sergeant at arms, into the leak to the press of embarrassing internal Democratic Judiciary memos. Pickle plans to issue his report on the probe in the next several weeks. He gave an update on his progress to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) and Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) late yesterday afternoon.

Arrayed on one side are conservative staffers who are trusted aides to senators playing a leading role in the nomination fight. They are strongly committed to confirming Bush’s embattled nominees, who are being determinedly filibustered by the Democrats.

Ranged on the other side are several aides to Hatch who appear to have gained influence over the veteran chairman and the workings of the committee.

The outcome of this struggle is likely to influence how strenuously Senate Republicans push for confirmation and attempt to break the filibuster in the face of determined opposition from the liberal interest groups cited in the leaked memos.

Hatch’s acquiescence to the probe seems to have shifted control of the fight over judicial nominees from the leadership, whom conservatives had convinced to take an aggressive approach, to that of his personal office.

The conservatives’ ire has focused on Patricia Knight, the chief of staff in Hatch’s personal office, who conservative staffers say is now calling the shots at the Judiciary Committee.

“I’m pretty sure she’s no conservative,” said an aide who has worked extensively on the nominees.

Several Republican aides have said she has close relationships with key Democratic aides, citing alleged friendships with Mark Childress, a top aide to Daschle, and another unnamed top aide to Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.).

Knight worked closely with Daschle’s and Kennedy’s staffs in her prior assignment as Hatch’s top aide on health-related issues.

“The new chief counsel [of the committee] doesn’t have the stamina to put his foot down with the personal office,” said the aide, referring to Bruce Artim. The aide, who asked not to be identified by name, added: “Kennedy [has] influence on the personal staff, [and] the committee is being run by the personal staff at this point.”

Artim previously reported to Knight while he was handling healthcare issues on the judiciary panel. He took over the committee in July when former Chief Counsel and Staff Director Makan Delrahim, joined the U.S. Justice Department.

“No one has fought harder on Capitol Hill to get President Bush’s excellent judicial nominees confirmed than Chairman Hatch with his Chief Counsel Bruce Artim and the experienced and capable Judiciary Committee team. He will continue to work as hard as he can to accomplish this goal in this session of Congress,” said committee spokeswoman Margarita Tapia.

Several GOP staffers blame Knight for Hatch’s decision to allow Pickle to go forward with his investigation, which has resulted in the interview of more than 100 Senate aides and the seizure of four computer servers from the Judiciary Committee, as well as a computer from the majority leader’s office.

Aides say Knight helped prepare the public statement Hatch gave prior to Thanksgiving when he described himself as “mortified that this improper, unethical and simply unacceptable breach of confidential files may have occurred on my watch.”

However, many conservatives both inside and outside the Congress have decided that this statement improperly condemned Republican aides since, they say, the documents were not stolen but rather disclosed as the result of a computer glitch laid at the feet of a Democratic technician.

Press inquiries about the Pickle probe are directed from the committee to Hatch’s Senate office.

Many GOP aides resent Pickle’s probe. It has halted Republican progress in the battle over nominees that reached its height last year during a 40-hour marathon debate.

Now there is confusion about which nominees, if any, will come to the floor soon.

It has also obscured what GOP aides say is evidence contained in the Democratic memos that the same liberal special-interest groups that were cited in the memos have corrupted the nomination process.

The probe has already resulted in the resignation of a young aide whom Hatch suspended in November after he admitted accessing the memos on the Judiciary Committee server.

Democrats say the leaked files were hacked into, while Republicans say the files were easily accessed through their desktop computers through an unprotected desktop icon called “My Network Places.”

In addition, Frist informed The Boston Globe that Manuel Miranda, an aide who had run the fight on nominees, was on leave pending the results of the investigation.

Miranda, a former Judiciary Committee staffer, said he read the memos but did not leak them to the press.

Miranda’s defenders assert that neither reading those memos nor providing them to the media was a violation of law or Senate rules because there is no property right in a document on a government computer or network.

Senate rules prohibit the disclosure of only “information received in closed session, information obtained in confidential phases of investigations, and classified national security information,” Miranda’s defenders add.

Miranda said Hatch was “ill advised and spoke without knowing all the facts” when he made his pre-Thanksgiving statement, which seemed to give added momentum to Pickle’s investigation.

The investigation has reversed the gradual shift of control over nominations from the judiciary committee to the Senate leadership, which accelerated when Delrahim departed.

With Miranda gone, control over strategy on nominations has fallen almost entirely to the committee.

Meanwhile, conservatives want the focus to switch to the ethics of the memos. They have talked to outside groups about the filing complaints against Democrats with the Senate Ethics Committee.

Aides to Republican senators active in the battle over Bush’s judicial nominations and GOP-allied groups off the Hill have begun discussing the possibility of filing an ethics complaint against Judiciary Democrats.

“I think you’ll see a lot of ethics complaints filed against Democratic senators” because of evidence of impropriety contained in the memos, said a GOP aide familiar with those discussions.

The complaints would be based on the leaked memos and unpublicized memos now in the possession of the Capitol Police.

Key GOP Senate staffers charge that the Pickle investigation has run amok, extending far beyond its original scope of determining that accessed the memos.

A number of aides interviewed by Pickle’s agents say that the investigation has compiled information on the working relationships and processes of the GOP conference, as well as GOP strategy for confirming judges.

This is especially alarming in the eyes of GOP aides because Pickle will eventually give a comprehensive report of the investigation to Sen. Patrick Leahy (Vt.), the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee and the arch foe of the blocked conservative judicial nominees.

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© 2003 The Hill
733 Fifteenth Street, NW Suite 1140
Washington, DC 20005
202-628-8500 tel | 202-628-8503 fax

[petitfour]

That article appears here:

http://www.hillnews.com/news/012804/memos.aspx

[SevenDaysInMay]

BTTT