Free Republic

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...

Did Republican staffers commit a crime by clicking on the "My Network Places" icon to access Democratic memos, asks SecurityFocus columnist Mark Rasch. Politics is dirty business, and rarely so much as in the area of patronage: appointments to sought-after federal jobs in general, and to the federal bench in particular. So it should be little surprise that, with so much at stake, one political party would want to use the insecurity inherent in computerized databases to its political advantage. What is surprising, however, is that, caught with their hand in the cookie jar, Senate Republicans employed the tactic of...