Free Republic

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...

CONFIRMATION POLITICS Although freshman Democratic Sen. Ken Salazar has removed his hold on the nomination, former White House Counsel C. Boyden Gray is still being blocked by Democrats for confirmation as U.S. ambassador to the European Union. The unidentified senator now imposing the hold is believed to be Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin, who did not return this column's call. The objection to Gray is a 2-year-old television ad by Gray's Committee for Justice accusing senators of blocking the confirmation of Judge William Pryor because he is Catholic. A footnote: Director of National Intelligence (DNI) John Negroponte last Tuesday wrote...

Those who despise George Bush see him as the Second Coming of Richard Nixon, and they wish for nothing more fervently than a Second Going: a Watergate-magnitude scandal that will drive him from office. Their last best hope is Patrick Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald, appointed two years ago to investigate the CIA's complaint that Valerie Plame's CIA employ had been leaked to columnist Robert Novak, seemed destined to disappoint them. A month ago, even a week ago, it was possible without delusion to believe that Fitzgerald's investigation would end without indictments. But no longer. Thanks to a stream of leaks that have...

WASHINGTON -- Senate confirmation of President Bush's choice to be U.S. ambassador to the European Union has been delayed for several weeks, and the nominee may not take his post until well into November. Bush's choice as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations is serving under a recess appointment and may never be confirmed. The reason: the individual whims of two Republican senators. Freshman Sen. Mel Martinez of Florida last week temporarily blocked the confirmation of longtime Republican stalwart C. Boyden Gray to the EU for petty political reasons. Much more serious because its effect looks permanent, Sen. George Voinovich...

Senate confirmation of President Bush's choice to be U.S. ambassador to the European Union has been delayed for several weeks, and the nominee may not take his post until well into November. Bush's choice as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations is serving under a recess appointment and may never be confirmed. The reason: the individual whims of two Republican senators. Freshman Sen. Mel Martinez of Florida last week temporarily blocked the confirmation of longtime GOP stalwart C. Boyden Gray to the EU for petty political reasons. Much more serious because its effect looks permanent, Sen. George Voinovich of Ohio...

The Senate moved closer this week to a long-awaited showdown over President Bush’s judicial nominees—10 of whom Democrats blocked starting in 2003 by using the parliamentary device known as the filibuster. As Republican leaders have moved closer to restoring 214 years of Senate tradition of giving judicial nominees an up-or-down vote, Democrats have launched an aggressive defense of their unprecedented use of the filibuster that is based on mythology, not fact. With public discourse focused intently on judicial filibusters, it is vital to distinguish reality from the Democratic spin. The left must not be able to reshape the debate by...

Former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Jack Kemp and former White House Counsel C. Boyden Gray are joining forces to counter MoveOn.Org and other liberal Democrat groups in the November elections.     Mr. Armey, chairman of Citizens for a Sound Economy (CSE), and Mr. Kemp, a co-founder of Empower America, are merging their two organizations into FreedomWorks to foster a "freedom agenda."     Billionaire currency speculator George Soros has pledged $15 million to liberal campaign groups, including those known as 527s for the tax-code section that regulates them, seeking to defeat President Bush in November.     "We...

In April 2003, President Bush announced his intention to nominate Claude Alexander Allen to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, which reaches from Virginia to South Carolina. Sixteen months later, as with so many of the president's other nominees — courtesy of Senate Democrats — Allen is still waiting. The opposition to Allen is directed by left-wing interest groups, from where Senate Democrats increasingly take their marching orders. The National Organization for Women, for instance, has hit upon a most remarkable basis for opposing Allen: "Allen's three children are home-schooled." Never mind the fact that...

<p>The head of a computer firm wants the independent commission named to investigate September 11 intelligence failures to review accusations that his software-tracking program, which he says the Justice Department stole, was diverted to Osama bin Laden.</p> <p>William H. Hamilton, president of Inslaw Inc., said the commission — headed by former New Jersey Gov. David H. Kean — should focus on the validity of published reports saying bin Laden penetrated classified computer files before the attacks to evade detection and monitor the activities of U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies.</p>