Free Republic

Orrin G. Hatch, the longest-serving Senate Republican, will announce that he will retire at the end of the year, clearing a path for Mitt Romney to run....

Although I am a committed conservative, I have voted for the Supreme Court nominees of both parties—even those I might not have chosen myself—as long as I have been assured of their fitness for office. I helped shepherd through President Clinton’s nominees, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer. Both had shown themselves to be honorable, capable jurists with reputations for careful, non-ideological work on federal appeals courts.

PHOENIX - Gov. Janet Napolitano refused Friday to let state lawmakers expand Proposition 200. The governor vetoed legislation that would require proof of legal presence in the United States to enroll in adult education classes and get state-subsidized child care. HB 2030 also would have required those not here legally to pay the higher tuition at state universities and community colleges normally charged only to people who are not Arizona residents. Napolitano said it was that last provision that prompted the veto. "While I agree that public programs should not be available to those who consciously decide to come here...

Washington's conservative activists have found a traitor in their midst, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch. The occasion is Memogate, the internal Senate investigation into whether Republican aides unethically (and perhaps illegally) tapped into Democratic computer files containing private judicial-nomination strategy memos and leaked them to the press. The more the story balloons in the media, embarrassing Republicans and distracting them from trying to confirm more judges, the more right-wing activists savage Hatch, the man they hold responsible for it.To them, the Utah Republican has done something "acutely damaging to the struggle to get conservative judges onto the federal bench,"...

Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, fired back Wednesday afternoon at soon-to-be ex-Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, after the top Democrat tried to blame conservative talk radio, and Rush Limbaugh in particular, for provoking a dramatic increase in "threats to those of us in public life." "Isn't it amazing how radio was attacked today by our distinguished majority leader," Hatch complained to nationally syndicated radio host Sean Hannity just hours after Daschle's outburst. Hatch pulled no punches in voicing his admiration for both Limbaugh and the medium in general. "If it wasn't for radio," the Utah conservative explained, "the people of this...