Free Republic

Last night John rendered his "Verdict: The New York Times blew the story." The "story" was the testimony of five federal judges -- Magistrate Judge Allan Kornblum and four former FISA court judges -- on Senator Specter's proposed revision of the FISA statute. According to yesterday's New York Times story by Eric Lichtblau: In a rare glimpse into the inner workings of the secretive court, known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, several former judges who served on the panel...voiced skepticism at a Senate hearing about the president's constitutional authority to order wiretapping on Americans without a court order. They...

IN THE SPRING of 2008, the NFL was in crisis. A hard-charging United States senator from Pennsylvania named Arlen Specter had launched an investigation into the Spygate scandal. He tried to determine how many games the New England Patriots' illegal videotaping operation of opposing coaches' signals had helped the team win and learn why the NFL, under the orders of commissioner Roger Goodell, had destroyed all evidence of the cheating. By May, Specter -- a former Philadelphia district attorney and a lifelong Eagles fan -- was so angry at the "stonewalling" of his inquiry by the league and the Patriots...

WASHINGTON - David Margolis, a lawyer at the Justice Department for 40 years, was named Friday to oversee a special prosecutor's investigation of who in the Bush administration disclosed the name of an undercover CIA officer. Margolis, whose title is associate deputy attorney general, is taking the place of Deputy Attorney General James Comey, whose last day of work was Friday. Comey will be Lockheed Martin's new general counsel. Comey made the designation of Margolis. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has stepped aside from the probe because he was White House counsel when Valerie Plame's name was leaked in 2003 and...

Former federal judge and conservative legal scholar Robert Bork died early Wednesday at his Virginia home, his family confirmed to CNN. He was 85. Perhaps best known for his nomination to the Supreme Court by President Ronald Reagan in 1987, Bork was rejected for the post after a contentious confirmation battle led by left-leaning groups that opposed his conservative judicial philosophies. Bork had recently served as a senior legal adviser to Republican Mitt Romney's presidential campaign. He was a solicitor general during the Nixon administration and first gained notoriety for carrying out the president's order to fire the special prosecutor...

Khobar Towers The Clinton administration left many stones unturnd. BY LOUIS J. FREEH Sunday, June 25, 2006 12:01 a.m. Ten years ago today, acting under direct orders from senior Iranian government leaders, the Saudi Hezbollah detonated a 25,000-pound TNT bomb that killed 19 U.S. airmen in their dormitory at Khobar Towers in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. The blast wave destroyed Building 131 and grievously wounded hundreds of additional Air Force personnel. It also killed an unknown number of Saudi civilians in a nearby park. The 19 Americans murdered were members of the 4,404th Wing, who were risking their lives to enforce...

Judge Robert H. Bork, one of the the greatest jurists this country has ever produced, died early this morning from heart complications in a Virginia hospital near his home. He was 84. Bork was a national celebrity. Several years ago, my wife and I visited the Borks in Maine where they had taken a summer house off Somes Sound. I cannot count the times that total strangers would approach us at a lobster shack or park asking to shake the Judge’s hand and to assure him of their admiration and support. Bork’s celebrity was only partly conferred upon him by...

It has been claimed that CIA agents on the ground during the deadly attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi twice asked for permission to help Ambassador Chris Stevens and twice were told to stand down. Furthermore sources present during the deadly six-hour assault have said that a desperate last request for military assistance once the CIA themselves came under attack was denied, even though elite counter-terrorism units were only two hours away.

Arriving on Capitol Hill in 1981, he became a dominant force during the Judiciary Committee’s rancorous Supreme Court nomination battles. More than anyone else, he helped defeat conservative nominee Robert Bork in 1987, and his aggressive questioning of law professor Anita Hill four years later — he accused her of “flat-out perjury” — helped secure Clarence Thomas’s confirmation.... “He was a Rockefeller Republican, a liberal Republican, and was willing to take on Presidents Reagan and Bush, and became a true leader in the bipartisan efforts that strengthened all the civil rights laws and defeated Bork,” said Ralph G. Neas, a...

The Hill is reporting on some tibdits from Arlen Specter's forthcoming new memoir, Life Among the Cannibals. Specter feels that Democratrs used him to pass health care reform and then didn't follow through on their promises to help him win his primary. "I realized that the president and his advisers were gun-shy about supporting my candidacy after being stung by Obama's failed rescue attempts for New Jersey governor Jon Corzine and Massachusetts attorney general Martha Coakley. They were reluctant to become victims of a trifecta," he writes.The snub was made all the more painful by Obama flying over Philadelphia en...

Former Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.) writes in a new book that President Obama ditched him in the 2010 election after he helped Obama win the biggest legislative victory of his term by passing healthcare reform. Specter also claims that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) did not uphold his promise to grant him seniority accrued over 28 years of service in the Senate as a Republican. Specter, who rocked Washington’s political establishment and made headlines around the country when he left the Republican Party to join Democrats in April of 2009, has kept quiet about these slights until now. He...

Former Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.) writes in a new book that President Obama ditched him in the 2010 election after he helped Obama win the biggest legislative victory of his term by passing healthcare reform. Specter also claims that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) did not uphold his promise to grant him seniority accrued over 28 years of service in the Senate as a Republican. Specter, who rocked Washington’s political establishment and made headlines around the country when he left the Republican Party to join Democrats in April of 2009, has kept quiet about these slights until now ...

Former Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.) writes in a new book that President Obama ditched him in the 2010 election after he helped Obama win the biggest legislative victory of his term by passing healthcare reform. Specter also claims that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) did not uphold his promise to grant him seniority accrued over 28 years of service in the Senate as a Republican. Specter, who rocked Washington’s political establishment and made headlines around the country when he left the Republican Party to join Democrats in April of 2009, has kept quiet about these slights until now. He...

Former Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.) writes in a new book that President Obama ditched him in the 2010 election after he helped Obama win the biggest legislative victory of his term by passing healthcare reform. Specter also claims that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) did not uphold his promise to grant him seniority accrued over 28 years of service in the Senate as a Republican. Specter, who rocked Washington’s political establishment and made headlines around the country when he left the Republican Party to join Democrats in April of 2009, has kept quiet about these slights until now. He...

In Mississippi, Santorum Makes Case For Two-Man Race By NBC's Andrew Rafferty JACKSON, Miss. -- Rick Santorum called on Mississippi voters to deliver the knockout blow that would end Newt Gingrich's candidacy and make it a two-man race between Mitt Romney and the former Pennsylvania senator for the Republican nomination. "You have an opportunity here in Mississippi to narrow this race, narrow this race to a conservative versus the insider moderate. I ask you here tonight to stand with me," Santorum told a crowd of 300 at the Mississippi Agriculture and Forestry Museum on Wednesday. "If we win Mississippi, this...

Houston - Gasoline for $5 a gallon? The possibility is hardly far-fetched. With no clear end to tensions with Iran and Syria and rising demand from countries like China, gas prices are already at record highs for the winter months — averaging $4.32 in California and $3.73 a gallon nationally on Wednesday, according to AAA’s Daily Fuel Gauge Report. As summer approaches, demand for gasoline rises, typically pushing prices up around 20 cents a gallon. And gas prices could rise another 50 cents a gallon or more, analysts say, if the diplomatic and economic standoff over Iran’s nuclear ambitions escalates

I would just say in response to that: Roberts and Alito. You look at Arlen Specter and what he did to fight and claw, particularly for Alito—and everything that was brought up—he knocked it down, he carried the water—and I might add—brilliantly. [SNIP] Arlen Specter says—you know—I'm too far to the Right. Mitt Romney, who appointed 36—I think 36 democrats, including horrible liberal activist judges in the state of Massachusetts, and he's criticizing me for not being conservative enough, as we got Justices Roberts and Alito on the Supreme Court because of the work we did. I'm happy that Arlen...

And as for the pro-abortion-rights presidential candidate Santorum endorsed, when Specter launched a long-shot bid for president in 1995, Santorum — his fellow Pennsylvanian — was one of his few high-profile endorsements. For Specter, who later became a Democrat, his pro-abortion-rights position was a centerpiece of his campaign. Specter believed that anti-abortion activists were a “fringe” group hijacking the Republican party. “There are clearly more Republicans who are pro-choice,” Specter told Newsday’s Susan Page. “Up until now, I am the only person willing to take on the fringe.” After Specter dropped out of the race, he led an ill-fated movement...

In an amazing moment in last night's debate, Rick Santorum suddenly found himself under attack by Mitt Romney -- for seeing to it that the Supreme Court had two conservative justices. As usual, the moment was turned upside down by the media. In 2004, Santorum, then Pennsylvania's junior Republican Senator, famously supported Arlen Specter for re-nomination over the conservative Pat Toomey. To anyone paying attention in the day, it was crystal clear that Specter, if re-elected, would be the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, a longtime goal of the one-time Philadelphia District Attorney. Toomey, a businessman, would not only...

Rick Santorum backed Arlen Specter over Pat Toomey in 2004. It was a tough race with Toomey mounting a credible, well-financed challenge. Toomey’s candidacy, by his own estimation, was one of the precursors to the Tea Party movement: The “battle for the heart and soul of the Republican Party” between big spending moderates and committed conservatives that was evident in 2004 may have inspired subsequent Tea Party efforts, Toomey suggested. Despite losing out on key endorsements from leading Republican figures in 2004, Toomey believes his primary campaign created a strong foundation for conservative activism that translated into victory in 2010....

What would President Reagan do if he had had a good conservative challenging Sen. Arlen Specter in a primary in Pennsylvania? Former Sen. Rick Santorum is taking a lot of heat in his presidential campaign for backing the RINO Specter over true-blue conservative Pat Toomey in 2004. We need more conservatives like Ronald Reagan. I agree. But let's remember what Reagan actually did. In 1982, Sen. Lowell Weicker (R-Conn.) faced a possible challenge from Prescott Bush, Jr., elder brother of Reagan's vice president. "God himself could not keep me from challenging Lowell Weicker," the Bush brother said. But when the...