Trashing Patrick Leahy

The Republican National Committee claims the Vermont Democrat "disrespects" the heroes of Sept. 11, but the charge shows the GOP disrespects the truth.

By Brendan Nyhan

A Republican National Committee e-mail to party activists this week compares the war on terrorism to the GOP’s political fight with Democratic senators, and falsely accuses Senator Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., of “attacking the courage and memory” of the firefighters and policemen who died on Sept. 11.

The e-mail was sent Thursday night to registered members of the RNC’s Team Leader program by Blaise Hazelwood, the political director of the Republican National Committee.

In a letter to the activists contained in the e-mail, Hazelwood draws an outrageous parallel between America’s war on terror and the Republican fight against Democratic opposition in domestic politics:

“Fellow Americans, we are fighting two wars right now. Abroad we fight terrorism and at home we fight the disgraceful and obstructionist Democrat senators.”

After attacking Daschle for blocking a vote on making President Bush’s tax cut permanent, Hazelwood lays into Leahy for “attacking the courage and memory of our fallen heroes from the attack on 9/11.” In another section of the e-mail, an “Action Alert” titled “Senator Leahy Disrespects NY’s Heroes,” Hazelwood tells team leaders to “[e]xpress [their] outrage over Senator Patrick Leahy’s (D-VT) refusal to bring a bill to a vote that would have awarded the Presidential Medal of Valor to firefighters and policemen who responded to the 9/11 attack last year.”

Nowhere in the e-mail is it mentioned that Leahy pushed the resolution in question through the Senate Judiciary Committee, which he chairs, on Thursday, or that Thursday night Democrats passed it unanimously on the Senate floor, along with two similar bills.

Here’s what happened: On Oct. 30, the House passed a resolution calling on President Bush to award the Public Safety Officer Medal of Valor to the police, fire and rescue workers who died on Sept. 11. It was referred to Leahy’s committee and was still awaiting action (along with the two other bills, which originated in the Senate) last Friday, April 12, when the New York Post broadsided Leahy with a scathing article claiming he “single-handedly killed” the House legislation.

Leahy’s spokesman called the report inaccurate, and the senator announced later that day that all three bills would be brought before the committee on Thursday, April 18.

The explanation for the delay, according to Leahy and his staff, is that the senator wanted to wait for the medal review board of public safety officers to be formed, as originally intended under the legislation. The reported goal was for the officers themselves to make recommendations for recipients, rather than having politicians make the choice. Also, the committee had to reconcile the three bills in question. After the controversy arose, Leahy decided instead to support moving all three bills forward.

It’s certainly fair to criticize Leahy for letting procedural issues hold up the bill and then reversing himself under pressure, although Leahy’s explanation seems reasonable. But the GOP e-mail completely fails to acknowledge Leahy’s actions since the Post story came out. And clearly, Leahy never attacked “the courage and memory” of the officers who died on Sept. 11, as Hazelwood falsely claims. Republican spokesman Jim Dyke told me Friday afternoon that when the e-mail went out Thursday afternoon or evening, they “were not aware” that the bill had passed out of committee. When we spoke, he also did not know that the bills had been approved by the Senate as well. It’s not clear what’s worse, the GOP’s vicious rhetoric, or the sloppiness with which it’s bandied about.

: Brendan Nyhan is a political scientist currently serving as a RWJ Scholar in Health Policy Research at the University of Michigan. More Brendan Nyhan

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Sotomayor clarifies “wise Latina” comment

Committee Chairman Pat Leahy gives the judge a chance to defend herself before Republican attacks can begin

By Alex Koppelman

Sotomayor clarifies "wise Latina" comment

Topics:Sonia Sotomayor, War Room, Patrick J. Leahy, D-Vt.

Those Democrats and Republicans who serve on the Senate Judiciary Committee each have their assigned roles during this week’s hearings, and they all know how to play them.

The Republicans will ask Judge Sonia Sotomayor some harsh questions, and try to trip her up. The Democrats, meanwhile, will largely ask leading questions that give her a chance to look good. A few may use the opportunity to press her on issues that are important to them, but more often, they’ll act like committee Chairman Sen. Pat Leahy, D-Vt., did Tuesday morning. What Leahy did was give Sotomayor an early shot at clarifiying her most controversial remarks and decisions before the Republicans go after her.

In the video below, you can see Sotomayor’s response to a question from Leahy about the judge’s infamous “wise Latina” remark. In it, she says, “I do not believe that any ethnic, racial or gendered group has an advantage in sound judgment.”

: Alex Koppelman is a staff writer for Salon. More Alex Koppelman

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What the White House knew about Souter

Justice David Souter's upcoming departure wasn't entirely a secret in Washington. The administration had already started planning for a Supreme Court vacancy before the news broke.

By Mike Madden

Topics:Supreme Court, Barack Obama, Arlen Specter, D-Pa., Harry Reid, Patrick J. Leahy, D-Vt.

The White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, was going through one of those silly charades on Friday afternoon that the capital sometimes seems to specialize in. The world had learned hours before that Justice David Souter would be stepping down from the Supreme Court, but apparently Souter hadn’t gotten around to formally notifying President Barack Obama — or his aides — of his intentions.

So even as the administration began to put together a system to choose Souter’s replacement and get that person confirmed by the Senate, Gibbs spent the first half of his midafternoon news briefing pretending there was nothing to talk about and refusing to give anything but the very broadest answers to questions about a Supreme Court nomination. “Is it weird that you haven’t heard from Justice Souter?” a reporter asked Gibbs. “No,” he answered, “it’s weird that I’m talking about this not having heard from him.”

Just a few minutes later, the games came to an end. “Hey,” Obama said, strolling into the briefing room to the surprise of just about everyone in it, reporters and aides alike. “I’m sorry, but Gibbs is screwing this thing up,” Obama said, teasing his press secretary. “There’s a job to do, you got to do it yourself.” Souter had just sent the White House a letter announcing his plans to step down and spoken to Obama on the phone; the president decided to break the news in person, interrupting Gibbs in the process.

“The process of selecting someone to replace Justice Souter is among my most serious responsibilities as president,” Obama said. “So I will seek somebody with a sharp and independent mind and a record of excellence and integrity. I will seek someone who understands that justice isn’t about some abstract legal theory or footnote in a casebook; it is also about how our laws affect the daily realities of people’s lives.” Pointedly, he said he wanted Souter’s replacement to be sworn in “in time for him or her” to join the court when it starts its new session on the first Monday in October.

That was about all the White House would say officially about the news. But behind the scenes, aides had long ago started planning how to fill a vacant spot on the Supreme Court — which, considering that Souter, at 69, is younger than five of his nine colleagues, was probably smart. Soon after the election, an administration official said, Obama’s transition team set up a working group on judicial nominations, which picked out potential candidates for U.S. Court of Appeals and Supreme Court spots. Obama met with them several times in December, suggesting the names of people he might want to consider. (Officials wouldn’t say whose names were brought up.) Senior White House aides met Thursday — before the Souter news broke — to talk about setting up a strategy for selecting and winning confirmation for a Supreme Court nominee.

The administration official, who requested anonymity to speak more freely about the judicial nomination process, said the timing of that meeting was a coincidence (if that’s true, whoever planned it might want to buy a lottery ticket soon). But Souter had already given a few key players around Washington an idea that he might not stay on the court for long. A Senate source told Salon that about a month ago, Souter met with Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., who chairs the Judiciary Committee, telling Leahy he might retire. (ABC’s George Stephanopoulos reported that Souter gave Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid a tip as well.) Leahy spoke to Obama Friday morning, before the White House had officially acknowledged that there would be a vacancy, and the two of them had also discussed judicial nominations during last year’s campaign and after the election.

Obama has already nominated three judges for different circuit courts, acting more quickly, the administration official said, than the Clinton or the Bush administration did in sending judicial picks to the Senate. None of the three have been confirmed yet, though. Ironically, Arlen Specter’s switch from Republican to Democrat — which should make it easier for Obama’s picks to make it through the Senate, by putting Democrats close to 60 votes — may slow things down even more.

That’s because Specter had been the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee, which will have the first crack at questioning, and voting on, whomever Obama chooses. But picking his replacement won’t be so easy for the GOP. The next in line, Orrin Hatch of Utah, is barred by internal rules from becoming the ranking member because he chaired the committee recently. After him comes Chuck Grassley of Iowa, who can’t take over the top GOP spot on Judiciary because he’s already the highest-ranking Republican on the Finance Committee. Jon Kyl of Arizona can’t take the job either, because he’s the Senate’s deputy GOP leader. Which means Alabama’s Jeff Sessions, a conservative who sometimes looks and sounds like an angry Southern leprechaun, might take over the job. Hatch could step up if the GOP caucus gives him a waiver. A leadership aide said Republicans would probably vote on the committee spot early next week.

Obama promised Friday that he would reach out to whoever takes over, to get advice before seeking the Senate’s consent to a nomination. Vice President Joe Biden, who ran confirmation hearings for several Supreme Court justices when he chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee, may play a major role in helping Obama and his aides figure out how to get the nominee through the panel (though a senior administration official told Salon that reports that Biden would run the process were overblown).

First, though, the administration has to come up with a nominee. It’s only May 1, but time sometimes flies in Washington. That first Monday in October could be here before Obama and his aides know it.

: Mike Madden is Salon's Washington correspondent. A complete listing of his articles is here. Follow him on Twitter here. More Mike Madden

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Leahy suggests truth commission for Bush administration

The chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee says he wants a "middle ground" approach to investigating alleged Bush-era lawbreaking.

By Gabriel Winant

Topics:Torture, Patrick J. Leahy, D-Vt.

If there’s going to be any effort to account for the Bush administration’s alleged lawbreaking and abuses of power, it may have to come from the Senate Judiciary Committee.

On Monday, Committee Chair Sen. Pat Leahy (D-Vt.), a longtime critic of the Bush White House’s national security policies, gave a speech at Georgetown University in which he suggested one possible way to hold the previous administration accountable. Leahy spoke of what he called a “middle ground” proposal, a truth and reconciliation commission that would investigate lawbreaking without necessarily prosecuting violators.

The key section of Leahy’s speech is below.

We have succeeded over the last two years in revitalizing our Committee’s oversight capabilities. The periodic oversight hearings with the Attorney General, the FBI Director, the Secretary of Homeland Security, and others will continue. The past can be prologue unless we set things right. As to the best course of action for bringing a reckoning for the actions of the past eight years, there has been heated disagreement. There are some who resist any effort to investigate the misdeeds of the recent past. Indeed, some Republican Senators tried to extract a devil’s bargain from the Attorney General nominee in exchange for their votes, a commitment that he would not prosecute for anything that happened on President Bush’s watch. That is a pledge no prosecutor should give, and Eric Holder did not, but because he did not, it accounts for many of the partisan votes against him.

There are others who say that, even if it takes all of the next eight years, divides this country, and distracts from the necessary priority of fixing the economy, we must prosecute Bush administration officials to lay down a marker. Of course, the courts are already considering congressional subpoenas that have been issued and claims of privilege and legal immunities – and they will be for some time. There is another option that we might also consider, a middle ground. A middle ground to find the truth. We need to get to the bottom of what happened — and why — so we make sure it never happens again.

One path to that goal would be a reconciliation process and truth commission. We could develop and authorize a person or group of people universally recognized as fair minded, and without axes to grind. Their straightforward mission would be to find the truth.People would be invited to come forward and share their knowledge and experiences, not for purposes of constructing criminal indictments, but to assemble the facts. If needed, such a process could involve subpoena powers, and even the authority to obtain immunity from prosecutions in order to get to the whole truth. Congress has already granted immunity, over my objection, to those who facilitated warrantless wiretaps and those who conducted cruel interrogations. It would be far better to use that authority to learn the truth.

During the past several years, this country has been divided as deeply as it has been at any time in our history since the Civil War. It has made our government less productive and our society less civil. President Obama is right that we cannot afford extreme partisanship and debilitating divisions. In this week when we begin commemorating the Lincoln bicentennial, there is need, again, “to bind up the nation’s wounds.” President Lincoln urged that course in his second inaugural address some seven score and four years ago.

Rather than vengeance, we need a fair-minded pursuit of what actually happened. Sometimes the best way to move forward is getting to the truth, finding out what happened, so we can make sure it does not happen again. When I came to the Senate, the Church Committee was working to expose the excesses of an earlier era. Its work helped ensure that in years to come, we did not repeat the mistakes of the past. We need to think about whether we have arrived at such a time, again. We need to come to a shared understanding of the failures of the recent past.

It is something to be considered. It is something Professor Bernstein, for whom this lecture series is named, might have found worth studying. We need to see whether there is interest in Congress and the new administration. We would need to work through concerns about classified information and claims of executive privilege. Most of all, we need to see whether the American people are ready to take this path.

Edmund Burke said that law and arbitrary power are eternal enemies. Arbitrary power is a powerful, corrosive force in a democracy. Two years ago I described the scandals at the Bush-Cheney-Gonzales Justice Department as the worst since Watergate. They were. We are still digging out from the debris they left behind. Now we face the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression while still contending with national security threats around the world. This extraordinary time cries out for the American people to come together, as we did after 9/11, and as we have done before when we faced difficult challenges.

: Gabriel Winant is a graduate student in American history at Yale. More Gabriel Winant

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Leahy: Clinton should quit

"She would have a tremendous career in the Senate."

By Farhad Manjoo

Topics:2008 Elections, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama, War Room, Patrick J. Leahy, D-Vt.

Sen. Patrick Leahy, who supports Barack Obama, is calling on Sen. Hillary Clinton to quit the presidential race.

As ABC News notes, Leahy told Vermont Public Radio:

There is no way that Senator Clinton is going to win enough delegates to get the nomination. She ought to withdraw and she ought to be backing Senator Obama. Now, obviously that’s a decision that only she can make. Frankly I feel that she would have a tremendous career in the Senate.
Leahy added that he’s worried that the prolonged Democratic race is playing to John McCain’s advantage. “John McCain, who has been making one gaffe after another, is getting a free ride on it because Senator Obama and Senator Clinton have to fight with each other,” Leahy said. “I think that her criticism is hurting him more than anything John McCain has said. I think that’s unfortunate.”

: Farhad Manjoo is a Salon staff writer and the author of True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society. More Farhad Manjoo

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Judiciary Committee approves Mukasey

Leahy pokes a hole in Schumer's defense.

By Tim Grieve

Topics:Department of Justice, War Room, Patrick J. Leahy, D-Vt., Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.

The Senate Judiciary Committee has just voted to send Michael Mukasey’s nomination as attorney general to the full Senate. As expected, Democrats Chuck Schumer and Dianne Feinstein joined the committee’s Republicans in voting to move Mukasey’s nomination forward.

Defending his vote in a New York Times Op-Ed this morning, Schumer said that Mukasey’s refusal to declare waterboarding illegal was “unsatisfactory.” But Schumer said that he hopes Congress will adopt a legal ban on waterboarding, and he said that he’s confident that Mukasey “would enforce that law.”

Maybe he would, but Judiciary Committee chairman Patrick Leahy pointed today to the rather obvious hole in Schumer’s logic: George W. Bush would almost certainly veto any ban on waterboarding, meaning it would take effect only if two-thirds majorities in both the House and the Senate were willing to stand up to the president and override such a veto.