Free Republic

President Bush is just wrong to back an "intelligence czar" to oversee all U.S. intelligence/terrorist-fighting operations but not give that person ultimate budget authority, Sen. Orrin Hatch told a teacher seminar Monday. It's not often that Hatch, R-Utah, a GOP senator for 28 years, disagrees with his party's president. But Hatch told the Huntsman Seminar for Teachers at the University of Utah's Hinckley Institute of Politics that naming an overall intelligence boss without giving him or her the final "power of the purse" -- as Bush has suggested -- would result in the "czar" having as little power as the...

Hang Onto Your iPods: Here Comes Orrin Hatch By Larry Katz 07/03/04 8:08 AM PT The key word here is civil. Unauthorized file sharing is already illegal, but right now the attorney general can only pursue criminal copyright infringement cases, which are much more difficult to prove than civil cases. The proposed PIRATE act would make it far easier to win suits against file sharers. Those convicted could be required to pay thousands of dollars in penalties. The Feds aren't coming to take away your iPod yet. But it could happen, according to critics of a piece of pending legislation...

College shouldn't be difficult for Joaquin, who mastered Advanced Placement classes in a language he learned only four years ago and recently graduated 12th in his high school class. But paying for it will be. The 19-year-old is an undocumented immigrant. He doesn't qualify for federal financial aid, which makes up 90 percent of the average Texas college student's aid package... Congress is considering the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act, which would make some undocumented immigrant students eligible for federal loans, but not grants. The bill would make students who immigrated here five or more years ago...

Arnold un-Reagan-like Posted: June 21, 2004 1:00 a.m. Eastern © 2004 WorldNetDaily.com Now that a decent interval has passed since the moving tributes and funeral of the late Ronald Reagan, maybe it's time to comment on something unseemly that took place before the late president was laid to rest. There was Margaret Thatcher, the former prime minister of Great Britain, standing next to California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Thatcher recited the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of the United States of America – not her own flag. Schwarzenegger, an American running the executive branch of government of the largest state...

Hatch fires back at his conservative critics By Alexander Bolton Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, is firing back at conservative critics on and off the Hill who have lambasted him for not moving more judicial nominees out of his committee. The rift stems from Hatch’s handling of a Senate sergeant at arms investigation into the unauthorized access of close to 5,000 internal Democratic Judiciary Committee documents from committee computers. Hatch approved the investigation, which resulted in the resignation of Manuel Miranda, who organized the GOP strategy on judges when he served as an aide...

Watch What You Think by Chris Field Posted Jun 3, 2004 In one of his "Washington Updates" this week, Family Research President Tony Perkins alerted readers that Hate Crimes legislation may well rear its ugly head once again. Perkins wrote that there has been talk "of attaching an amendment to the Defense appropriation bill that would make so-called hate crimes into a federal offense." Not surprisingly, liberal Sen. Ted Kennedy is behind the move to force what is essentially "thought crime" legislation down the throats of the American people. Unfortunately, one of his partners in this effort, according to Perkins,...

Like a bad penny, the proposed federal "hate crimes" law just keeps coming back. It doesn't matter that there is no evidence that crimes against homosexuals are prosecuted any less vigorously than crimes against other victims. It doesn't matter that actual crimes against homosexuals have declined in recent years. Liberal GOP Sens. Orrin Hatch, Utah, and Gordon Smith, Ore., are planning to bring up a new version of the Kennedy-Smith federal "hate crimes" law, which has been filed as an amendment to the defense authorization bill. Proponents of the Hatch-Smith bill insist that their version seeks to empower state officials...

U.S. Hate Crime Bill Could Criminalize Biblical Truth, Pro-Family Spokesman Fears (AgapePress) - A controversial hate crimes bill has been resurrected on Capitol Hill -- this time under Republican leadership. The Culture and Family Institute (CFI) says the legislation is being pushed by the homosexual lobby, which is emboldened following the court-ordered legalization of same-sex marriage in Massachusetts. Two U.S. Senate Republicans have introduced the new legislation, the language of which is virtually the same as that in an earlier attempt by liberal lawmakers to put a hate crimes law on the books -- an effort that was defeated. However,...

WASHINGTON, May 18 (UPI) -- Efforts at the top level of the Bush administration and the civilian echelon of the Department of Defense to contain the Iraq prison torture scandal and limit the blame to a handful of enlisted soldiers and immediate senior officers have already failed: The scandal continues to metastasize by the day. Over the past weekend and into this week, devastating new allegations have emerged putting Stephen Cambone, the first Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, firmly in the crosshairs and bringing a new wave of allegations cascading down on the head of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, when...

Army, CIA want torture truths exposed By Martin Sieff UPI Senior News Analyst Published 5/18/2004 7:16 AM WASHINGTON, May 18 (UPI) -- Efforts at the top level of the Bush administration and the civilian echelon of the Department of Defense to contain the Iraq prison torture scandal and limit the blame to a handful of enlisted soldiers and immediate senior officers have already failed: The scandal continues to metastasize by the day. Over the past weekend and into this week, devastating new allegations have emerged putting Stephen Cambone, the first Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, firmly in the crosshairs and...

<p>In the debate over traditional marriage, the cultural dominoes are falling in the wrong direction. Activist judges, who specialize in taking issues away from the people and deciding those issues instead, intend to make traditional marriage a thing of the past. Their decisions, like the one that will allow Massachusetts clerks to begin issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples this week, and the aggressive political and legal strategy driving them, make clear that protecting traditional marriage will require amending the Constitution.</p>

The May 13 edition of The Hill reports that there are again Senate rumblings about the so-called nuclear option to end the unprecedented, unconstitutional Democratic filibusters of judicial nominees. But before anyone gets excited, let's remember that the key question is whether the GOP has the 51 votes it needs to close the deal. The danger is that under Senate practice, a failed effort risks locking in the judicial filibusters forever. If the GOP does not have the votes, better it wait until the next Congress and take the crisis to the American people at the polls this November, starting...

Pittsburgh has a unique link to the past in the judicial nominations wars. And every Republican in America knows that Pennsylvania holds the key to the future in the coming Republican primary that may decide who the next Senate Judiciary Committee chairman is -- or is not.

WASHINGTON -- The year was 1976. Ronald Reagan had lost the GOP's presidential nomination to Gerald Ford. The prospects for conservative victories in Congress were not very promising. But I was sure I had found a rising star. He was articulate. He was charismatic. He claimed to be a principled conservative. I thought of him as a potential presidential candidate. As chairman of the Free Congress PAC, I backed him at the state convention. (In his state you have to get a certain percentage of the convention vote to get on the ballot.) We backed him in the primary, which...

Senator Hatch: Provoking A Split Within Conservatism…Again Paul Weyrich Monday, Apr. 05, 2004 The year was 1976. Ronald Reagan had lost the GOP's presidential nomination to Gerald Ford. The prospects for conservative victories in Congress were not very promising. But I was sure I had found a rising star. He was articulate. He was charismatic. He claimed to be a principled conservative. I thought of him as a potential presidential candidate. As chairman of the Free Congress PAC, I backed him at the state convention (In his state you have to get a certain percentage of the convention vote to...

Several hundred people stormed the small yard of President Bush's chief political strategist, Karl Rove, yesterday afternoon, pounding on his windows, shoving signs at others and challenging Rove to talk to them about a bill that deals with educational opportunities for immigrants. Protesters poured out of one school bus after another, piercing an otherwise quiet, peaceful Sunday in Rove's Palisades neighborhood in Northwest, chanting, "Karl, Karl, come on out! See what the DREAM Act is all about!" Rove obliged their first request and opened his door long enough to say, "Get off my property."

WASHINGTON -- Allowing some illegal immigrants to attend college at in-state tuition prices and eventually become lawful U.S. residents would cost federal taxpayers $90 million over the next decade and benefit 46,000 immigrants, congressional budget analyst say.Federal spending would increase from higher participation in Food Stamp and Medicaid programs, according to the congressional Budget Office.Utah Republicans Sen. Orrin Hatch and Rep. Chris Cannon are primary sponsers of Senate and House versions of legislation to repeal a 1996 federal law and give states direction over whether to offer public education benefits to people who enter the country illegally.The bills also would...

His music is actually quite good - He has a website offering free music sample downloads: http://www.hatchmusic.com/songs.html Here's his official Senate website: http://hatch.senate.gov/

Hatch caught in embarrassing online tryst with publisher of stolen Democratic documents Twice in the days before right wing activist Kay Daly published stolen Democratic documents on her website, Senator Orrin Hatch appeared on fringe internet radio shows with her. On Oct. 29, 2003, he appeared on her Free Republic radio "Daly Show" and on Nov. 11, 2003, he appeared on another Free Republic radio show with her. Manuel Miranda appeared on Ms. Daly's radio show just two weeks earlier. Kay Daly was the first person to publish complete versions of the stolen documents. Miranda still denies leaking the stolen...

<p>If the Republicans ever do stand up to Democratic Judiciary Committee shenanigans, perhaps they can also force the Democrats in the Senate to "stand up" and run a 24/7, month-long, full-blown filibuster of Janice Brown and the President's other female nominees they oppose. The result will be voters going to the polls in November to give the Republicans a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, along with a Bush-Cheney landslide.</p>