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"Sixteen years ago, a colleague of mine on the staff of Senator Hatch discovered that Democrat staff of the Senate Judiciary Committee had negligently placed their documents on our shared server without protections. I admit that we exploited this to learn simple things about their plans to attack Bush judicial nominees at the behest of the left wing interest groups. I also did pursuant to my duty under the Code of Ethics for Government Service. The documents also revealed unlawful and unethical conduct by Senators. I reported this unethical conduct to the Senate Ethics Committee but never heard back. Among...

Regular readers of these pages will recall our scoop a little over a year ago on what came to be known on Capitol Hill as Memogate. Our publication of Democratic strategy memos on how to defeat President Bush's judicial nominees created a stir in Washington, not least because they showed how Senators Ted Kennedy, Dick Durbin and others were taking orders from liberal interest groups, even to the point of delaying a vote on a candidate for the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals until it had heard the University of Michigan affirmative action case. More than a year later, it's...

The "nuclear" showdown that is expected to begin unfolding in the Senate today has its origins in closed-door discussions more than three years ago between key Senate Democrats and outside interest groups as they huddled to plot strategies for blocking President Bush's judicial nominees. In a Nov. 7, 2001, internal memo to Sen. Richard J. Durbin, who is now the minority whip, an aide described a meeting that the Illinois Democrat had missed between groups opposed to Mr. Bush's nominees and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, Massachusetts Democrat and member of the Judiciary Committee. "Based on input from the groups, I...

<p>The source of the memos is unclear. The sheer volume of the memos, however, suggests that the memos weren't simply misplaced by someone – they appear to have been intentionally leaked by a Democrat. Also, the memos, which begin in late 2001, cut off suddenly in April 2003. This suggests that they came from a former staffer, rather than someone who recently accessed Democrats' computers. Finally, the only information blacked out in the memos is staffers' names. Whoever leaked these memos did not care about the Senators, but apparently knew the staffers and cared enough to spare them embarrassment.</p>

Manuel Miranda, the Republican Senate Judiciary Committee staffer who was forced to resign last year over spying on Democratic staff members on the committee, said yesterday that Democratic staffers are still hounding him. According to a complaint filed with the U.S. Attorney's Office's Fraud and Public Corruption Section, Mr. Miranda accuses Democratic staffers whose internal memos he purloined from the computer of stalking him in his job hunt and scuttling a recent job offer he got from a major Washington law firm. "It appears that Democrat staff and aides on the Senate Judiciary Committee were not satisfied with my client's...

Washington (CNSNews.com) - Elaine R. Jones, one of the key players in the Senate Judiciary Committee's "Memogate" controversy, reiterated her opposition to President Bush's judicial nominees Wednesday, saying there is nothing more important to liberals than keeping conservative judges off the federal bench. Jones, the former president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, was honored Wednesday night at the liberal Take Back America conference for her leadership in the civil rights arena. Although she didn't mention judicial nominees in her speech, afterward she told CNSNews.com about the issue's importance. In reference to three potential Supreme Court...

The Justice Department tapped an acting U.S. attorney from New York on Monday to investigate whether laws were violated when two Senate Republican aides accessed Democratic computer files revealing party strategy for blocking President Bush's judicial nominations. Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, D-Vt., pontificates that, "This matter can now be more thoroughly investigated, so that those who engaged in criminal conduct may be brought to justice." Criminal conduct? The Republican staffer who originally found the Democratic memos immediately told investigators he did it. And why not? "Since the memos were on the committee's computers, available to anyone who clicked on them,...

Of all the issues ripe for further investigation in the scandal over the leak of Democratic strategy memos from the Senate Judiciary Committee last year, the least relevant is whether GOP staffers "stole" the documents. That's the charge Democrats have so far successfully made to deflect attention from the memos' actual content. On this point alone, the Justice Department's decision this week to open a criminal investigation into the matter could turn out to be useful. David Kelley, the U.S. Attorney in Manhattan, and a Democrat, has been tapped to lead the probe. We doubt Mr. Kelley is going to...

Of all the issues ripe for further investigation in the scandal over the leak of Democratic strategy memos from the Senate Judiciary Committee last year, the least relevant is whether GOP staffers "stole" the documents. That's the charge Democrats have so far successfully made to deflect attention from the memos' actual content. On this point alone, the Justice Department's decision this week to open a criminal investigation into the matter could turn out to be useful. David Kelley, the U.S. Attorney in Manhattan, and a Democrat, has been tapped to lead the probe. We doubt Mr. Kelley is going to...

A complaint filed Wednesday with the Senate Select Committee on Ethics accuses Sen. Ted Kennedy and two of his former aides of improper conduct for their alleged role in delaying the confirmation of one of President Bush's judicial nominees. The Center for Individual Freedom's complaint follows a similar move by Judicial Watch in December. The new complaint names the two Kennedy aides who wrote an April 17, 2002, memo seeking to delay Julia Smith Gibbons' confirmation to the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. "Certainly, Kennedy's office violated ethics rules of the Senate," said Jeffrey Mazzella, executive director of the...

POLITICS Hearing on Controversial Dem Memos Could Be Soon By David Brody Congressional Correspondent April 27, 2004 The content of the memos detail how Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee seem to be taking marching orders from liberal special-interest groups, when it comes to derailing President Bush's judicial nominees. CBN.com – CAPITOL HILL - Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee may find themselves on the hot seat soon, especially Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA). CBN News has learned that there is a good chance the Senate will hold hearings on Democratic memos that reveal possible collusion and obstruction of justice between...

(CNSNews.com) - The U.S. Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation into 'Memogate,' but the probe may not go far enough to satisfy outraged conservatives. According to various newspaper reports, the Justice Department on Monday asked David N. Kelley, a U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, to investigate how confidential memos of Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee ended up in Republican staffers' hands. Democrat and Republican staffers shared a computer, and some of the Democrats' memos were downloaded and leaked to the press. Judiciary Committee Democrats had asked for an outside investigation into the memo "stealing,"...

<p>The Department of Justice has assigned a U.S. attorney to investigate whether any federal crimes were committed when Republican staffers downloaded thousands of Democratic Judiciary Committee staff memos.</p> <p>In a letter sent yesterday to a bipartisan group of senators who requested the investigation, Assistant Attorney General William E. Moschella said the case will be handled with the "utmost professionalism" by David Kelley, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York.</p>

(CNSNews.com) - Manuel Miranda, the former Senate Republican lawyer at the center of the "Memogate" controversy, said Democrats have a lot to lose - both in the Senate and at the ballot box - by continuing to obstruct President Bush's judicial nominees. Miranda, speaking Tuesday to the Georgetown University College Republicans, said he doesn't regret reading Democrat strategy memos on the nominees. Under growing pressure, Miranda resigned in February as counsel to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee. "The bottom line is that there's a much bigger story here," Miranda said. "I think the Democrat memos are going to...

(CNSNews.com) - Over the course of the last two weeks, the controversial Senate Judiciary Committee memos have gradually made their way back into the news. But you won't read about any of the latest developments in either The New York Times or The Washington Post. Both newspapers have shunned new information revealing the process by which the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund's president, Elaine R. Jones, recommended delaying an uncontroversial judicial nominee's confirmation until after a high-profile affirmative action case was decided. When Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) was asked about the connection of two former aides to the "Memogate"...

Following up on the "Memogate" story reported in the last issue of Insight [see "Hatch and Frist Fire Whistle-blower"], the Center for Individual Freedom (CFIF) has learned that the author of a memo encouraging Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) to stop the confirmation of a federal judge at the request of a National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) lawyer was, in fact, a former assistant counsel at the NAACP. The memo was addressed to Kennedy and told of a telephone call to the Kennedy office from Elaine Jones of the NAACP requesting help with a case she...

The American Conservative Union (ACU) is spearheading a campaign that has sent hundreds of e-mails to Republican and Democratic lawmakers on the Judiciary Committee urging them to rehire Manuel Miranda, a former panel staffer and former top aide to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.). The ACU sent an alert to members this month urging them to demand that Miranda be rehired. Miranda was forced to resign in February after he admitted having access to internal Democratic Judiciary documents. He served as a GOP counsel on the Judiciary Committee from December 2001 to January 2003 and then handled strategy on...

<p>If we had to pick a "most outrageous" from among the Democratic staff memos that were leaked to us last year from the Senate Judiciary Committee, our choice would probably be the one about the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.</p>

The campaign manager for Democrat presidential candidate John Kerry is being linked to the Senate Judiciary Committee's "Memogate" controversy, which involves alleged Democrat efforts to delay the confirmation of President Bush's judicial nominees. Mary Beth Cahill, a former chief of staff to Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., left her Senate job last November to become Kerry's campaign manager. But in April 2002 when Cahill worked for Kennedy, her name was attached to a controversial memo spelling out a plan to delay the confirmation of Julia Smith Gibbons to the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the Washington Times reported Thursday.Cahill was...

<p>WASHINGTON — New details about a memo that was at the center of a debate over President Bush's judicial nominees and theft of Democratic papers from the Senate Judiciary Committee shows the source was a staffer with a vested interest in the outcome.</p>