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." 

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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."

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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.

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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."

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2008/03/28/leahy_3/feed/ 76 http://www.salon.com/2007/11/06/mukasey_15/ http://www.salon.com/2007/11/06/mukasey_15/#comments Tue, 06 Nov 2007 15:44:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/politics//war_room/2007/11/06/mukasey 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.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2007/11/06/mukasey_15/feed/ 33 http://www.salon.com/2007/10/19/mukasey_7/ http://www.salon.com/2007/10/19/mukasey_7/#comments Fri, 19 Oct 2007 13:00:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/politics//war_room/2007/10/19/mukasey Attorney general nominee Michael Mukasey wasn't quite as forthcoming on Day 2 of his confirmation hearing as he was on Day 1, dodging a question on whether "waterboarding" amounts to torture and suggesting -- contrary to his earlier testimony -- that there may be times when the president, as commander in chief, can issue orders that trump federal law.

The change isn't sitting well with Democrats. Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Patrick Leahy said the "bright line" Mukasey laid down Wednesday seemed to be fading away Thursday, and he wondered whether Mukasey had received some kind of course correction from the White House between the two sessions. Mukasey said he hadn't.

So what does it all mean? You know the answer already: As the Washington Post explains, Democrats on the committee "said Mukasey's new answers were disappointing," but "they did not indicate that they will oppose his confirmation."

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2007/10/19/mukasey_7/feed/ 19 http://www.salon.com/2007/08/21/spying_2/ http://www.salon.com/2007/08/21/spying_2/#comments Tue, 21 Aug 2007 12:08:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/politics//war_room/2007/08/21/spying As expected, the White House blew off Monday's deadline for giving the Senate Judiciary Committee documents about its warrantless wiretap program. In a letter to Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Patrick Leahy, White House counsel Fred Fielding said last week that the White House wouldn't meet the deadline -- already extended once -- and that it probably wouldn't be producing many, if any, documents whenever it finally gets around to responding to the committee's subpoena.

Leahy responded with the appropriate but predictable outrage, saying he'll take up the matter with the full committee when the Senate returns from its August recess.

The only surprising development in the proceedings: Dick Cheney's office acknowledged Monday that it is in possession of warrantless wiretap documents that would be responsive to the committee's subpoenas. It won't be turning those over, either.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2007/08/21/spying_2/feed/ 11 http://www.salon.com/2007/08/13/leahy_2/ http://www.salon.com/2007/08/13/leahy_2/#comments Mon, 13 Aug 2007 16:21:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/politics//war_room/2007/08/13/leahy Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Patrick Leahy has a message for Karl Rove: You may be leaving, but we're not finished with you yet.

In a statement following word of Rove's resignation, Leahy noted that Rove -- at the president's insistence -- has failed to comply with a subpoena requiring him to testify about the firing of a slew of U.S. attorneys last year. He said it's all of a piece.

"Despite evidence that he played a central role in these firings, just as he did in the Libby case involving the outing of an undercover CIA agent and improper political briefings at over 20 government agencies, Mr. Rove acted as if he was above the law," Leahy said.

Leahy said he wants to know what Rove and the White House are "so desperate to hide" and vowed that the Judiciary Committee would continue its investigation into Rove's role in the prosecutor purge. He said that there's a "cloud over this White House," and that it will follow Rove even as he walks out the door.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2007/08/13/leahy_2/feed/ 25 http://www.salon.com/2007/08/02/leahy/ http://www.salon.com/2007/08/02/leahy/#comments Thu, 02 Aug 2007 15:18:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/politics//war_room/2007/08/02/leahy It turns out that Alberto Gonzales isn't entirely alone in the "explanations that don't quite add up" department. In an interview with the Politico's Roger Simon, Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Patrick Leahy says he voted to confirm Chief Justice John Roberts only because he knew he was going to be confirmed anyway and thought a pure party-line confirmation vote would leave Roberts thinking he was "an appointment of the Republican Party."

Leahy admits that it has pretty much worked out that way anyway: Under Roberts, he says, the Supreme Court has become "an arm of the Republican Party."

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2007/08/02/leahy/feed/ 12 http://www.salon.com/2007/07/09/privilege_response/ http://www.salon.com/2007/07/09/privilege_response/#comments Mon, 09 Jul 2007 17:19:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/politics//war_room/2007/07/09/privilege_response Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt. has responded to the Presidentb

Leahy, whose committee has issued subpoenas for documents and testimony in the U.S. attorneys firing scandal, says in his statement that "there is clear evidence that Ms. Taylor was one of several White House officials who played a key role in these firings and the Administrationb

Asking what the administration has to hide, Leahy states, "The White House continues to try to have it both ways -- to block Congress from talking with witnesses and accessing documents and other evidence while saying nothing improper occurred."

Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, also issued a statement responding to the White House: "Contrary to what the White House may believe," Conyers wrote, "it is the Congress and the Courts that will decide whether an invocation of Executive Privilege is valid, not the White House unilaterally."

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2007/07/09/privilege_response/feed/ 17 http://www.salon.com/2007/06/29/contempt_5/ http://www.salon.com/2007/06/29/contempt_5/#comments Fri, 29 Jun 2007 16:57:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/politics//war_room/2007/06/29/contempt In a letter sent today to White House counsel Fred Fielding, Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Patrick Leahy and House Judiciary Committee chairman John Conyers say their committees will consider next month whether "the White House is in contempt of Congress."

The issue -- or at least the immediate one -- is the Bush administration's refusal to turn over internal White House documents or make Harriet Miers or Sara Taylor available for testimony in Congress' probes of the firing of U.S. attorneys last year. In their letter, Leahy and Conyers complain that the White House has refused to comply with congressional subpoenas based on a "blanket" invocation of "executive privilege" that isn't even signed by the president himself.

"A serious assertion of privilege would include an effort to demonstrate to the committees which documents, and which parts of those documents, are covered by any privilege that may apply," the chairmen say. They want Fielding to provide them with a privilege log that lists each document that's being withheld and provides a description of the nature of the document, the source, the subject matter, the date of the document, the identity of anyone who received a copy of the document, and the specific legal basis for claiming that the document is protected by executive privilege.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2007/06/29/contempt_5/feed/ 33 http://www.salon.com/2007/06/27/subpoenas_5/ http://www.salon.com/2007/06/27/subpoenas_5/#comments Wed, 27 Jun 2007 18:02:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/politics//war_room/2007/06/27/subpoenas Frustrated by the White House's repeated refusal to turn over documents voluntarily, Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Patrick Leahy today issued subpoenas for documents related to the president's warrantless domestic surveillance program. The targets of the subpoenas: the White House, the Office of the Vice President, the Department of Justice and the National Security Council.

The subpoenas demand that the administration turn over documents on both the supposed legal justification for the warrantless surveillance program and the internal administration process that led to the authorization of it. The latter category of documents, of course, would include any references to the visit Alberto Gonzales and Andy Card once paid to John Ashcroft's hospital room to get the ailing attorney general to sign off on the warrantless surveillance program.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2007/06/27/subpoenas_5/feed/ 16 http://www.salon.com/2007/04/25/letter_16/ http://www.salon.com/2007/04/25/letter_16/#comments Wed, 25 Apr 2007 18:33:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/politics//war_room/2007/04/25/letter In a letter to Alberto Gonzales, Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Patrick Leahy and ranking Republican member Arlen Specter tell the attorney general he should get busy "searching and refreshing" his memory in order to answer questions he didn't answer when he appeared before their committee last week.

"You spent weeks preparing for the April 19th hearing," Leahy and Specter tell Gonzales in the letter. "Yet during your testimony, in response to questions from senators on both sides of the aisle, you often responded that you could not recall. By some counts, you failed to answer more than 100 questions, by other counts more than 70, but the most conservative count had you failing to provide answers well over 60 times. As a result, the committee's efforts to learn the truth of why and how these dismissals [of U.S. attorneys] took place, and the role you and other Department and White House officials played in them, has been hampered."

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2007/04/25/letter_16/feed/ 19 http://www.salon.com/2007/04/12/e_mails/ http://www.salon.com/2007/04/12/e_mails/#comments Thu, 12 Apr 2007 13:19:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/politics//war_room/2007/04/12/e_mails From the Jon Lovitz News Desk -- "Yeah, that's the ticket!" -- comes a report that the White House is claiming to have lost an unspecified number of e-mail messages about official government business sent by staffers using Republican National Committee accounts.

According to the White House version of the story, messages in the off-the-book e-mail accounts -- reportedly used by Karl Rove and more than 50 other White House officials -- were automatically deleted after 30 days until 2004. At that point, the White House says, the RNC changed its system so that e-mails from White House staffers wouldn't be deleted automatically. But some e-mails were lost anyway when staffers deleted them on their own, the White House says.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2007/04/12/e_mails/feed/ 28 http://www.salon.com/2007/04/02/justice_11/ http://www.salon.com/2007/04/02/justice_11/#comments Mon, 02 Apr 2007 14:02:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/politics//war_room/2007/04/02/justice From the "Just When You Thought It Couldn't Get Any Worse" Department, Sen. Patrick Leahy says "the rumor on the Hill" last week was that Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch was "actively running" for the job as Alberto Gonzales' replacement.

Of course, Hatch couldn't replace Gonzales unless Gonzales leaves first, and Hatch doesn't seem too interested in making that happen. Here's how he tried to explain away Gonzales' role in the U.S. attorney purge on "Meet the Press" Sunday:

"You know, I don't think you can have these high positions without having somebody nitpicking at you all the time and without finding fault. And, yes, this has been badly handled. But it was badly handled by people who, by, I would say, not by Justice -- by Judge Gonzales, but by others in, in the Justice Department ... All I can say is this, Alberto Gonzales, you know, he's the first Hispanic-American ever put in this high position. He is an honest man. My experience with him has been extensive. I have never seen him prevaricate, I have never seen him do anything that was wrong. In this particular case, he misstated, there's no question about it. He was inaccurate ... I think he'll be the first to tell you that. But you can interpret things various ways, and I would wait until he testifies. He'll have to answer some of these questions. And let's give the man a fair -- at least some fairness, a fair chance to be able to explain why this happened under his watch and he was not totally prepared to, to handle all the problems that came up."

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2007/04/02/justice_11/feed/ 10 http://www.salon.com/2007/01/09/judges_14/ http://www.salon.com/2007/01/09/judges_14/#comments Tue, 09 Jan 2007 22:15:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/politics//war_room/2007/01/09/judges It's probably less of an olive branch than a recognition of reality, but George W. Bush has now abandoned efforts to get four of his most controversial judicial nominees through the Democratic-controlled Senate.

As the Associated Press reports, William Haynes, William G. Myers III and Terrence Boyle have asked that their names be withdrawn from confirmation consideration. A fourth Bush nominee, Michael Wallace, checked out of the process last month.

In a statement, Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Patrick Leahy called Bush's decision not to renominate the judges the "right decision" and a "welcome beginning." Leahy's right about the first part of that: If these nominees couldn't make it through the Senate when the Republicans were in control, there was no chance they'd make it with the Democrats in charge. As for the second part -- the "welcome beginning" bit -- we're all going to have to wait and see.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2007/01/09/judges_14/feed/ 13 http://www.salon.com/2006/09/28/habeas_bill/ http://www.salon.com/2006/09/28/habeas_bill/#comments Thu, 28 Sep 2006 13:15:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/09/28/habeas_bill The Republican Congress Wednesday moved to the cusp of passing landmark legislation to broaden the definition of "enemy combatants" in America's global "war on terror" and to eliminate the right of all detainees to have judicial review of their incarceration. With George W. Bush eager for a star-spangled signing ceremony as Congress adjourns this week for the election season, the House approved the administration bill by a 253-168 margin, while the Senate was expected Thursday to reject the last four amendments standing in the way of passage.

The legislation, which was prompted by a June Supreme Court decision applying the Geneva Conventions to prisoners held by U.S. forces, had originally provoked a well-publicized struggle over placing legal limits on interrogation techniques. While a White House effort to redefine the anti-torture provisions of the Geneva Conventions was largely rebuffed by a recent bipartisan Senate rebellion, the compromise that three Republican senators negotiated with Bush officials included provisions eliminating the right of habeas corpus for all detainees.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2006/09/28/habeas_bill/feed/ 45 http://www.salon.com/2006/09/13/spying_28/ http://www.salon.com/2006/09/13/spying_28/#comments Wed, 13 Sep 2006 19:23:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/politics//war_room/2006/09/13/spying Maybe you remember that a federal judge in Detroit declared George W. Bush's warrantless wiretapping program unconstitutional last month. Maybe you remember how Republican Sen. Arlen Specter said that the program was "inappropriate," how Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel agreed that the president had "overstepped his bounds" in approving it or how Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham called some of the arguments offered in support of it "dangerous." Maybe you remember how Bush himself said the other day that Americans "must put aside our differences and work together" on the question of terrorism.

Never mind.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2006/09/13/spying_28/feed/ 17 http://www.salon.com/2006/07/14/spying_25/ http://www.salon.com/2006/07/14/spying_25/#comments Fri, 14 Jul 2006 14:03:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/politics//war_room/2006/07/14/spying When the White House announced earlier this week that it would afford at least some of the protections of the Geneva Conventions to detainees at Guanánamo Bay, the story made headlines in newspapers all across America. It's a sign of how far we've come in the past five and a half years: What once would have been automatic -- an announcement that the executive branch will comply with a final ruling from the judicial branch -- is so remarkable now that it counts as front-page news.

Which brings us to today's news.

The White House has apparently reached a deal with Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Arlen Specter over the president's warrantless-spying program. Under the deal, the president will be required to submit the program to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for legal review. At least that's how Specter sees it. "If the bill is not changed, the president will submit the Terrorist Surveillance Program to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court," the Associated Press quotes Specter as saying. "That is the president's commitment." The White House sees it differently. Again, from the AP: "An administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity said the bill's language gives the president the option of submitting the program to the intelligence court, rather than making the review a requirement."

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2006/07/14/spying_25/feed/ 11 http://www.salon.com/2006/03/24/patriot_17/ http://www.salon.com/2006/03/24/patriot_17/#comments Fri, 24 Mar 2006 14:37:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/politics//war_room/2006/03/24/patriot If you've been following the way in which George W. Bush uses signing statements as a sort of uncheckable mini-veto of bills he doesn't like, this news shouldn't come as much of a surprise: When the president signed legislation renewing the Patriot Act earlier this month, he included a signing statement in which he said that he doesn't feel obliged to comply with the bill's requirement that he keep Congress informed about how his administration is using some of the powers it provides.

The Boston Globe has the story, and it's all depressingly familiar. Bush signs the bill with all the usual fanfare -- check out the desk decorated with the "Protecting the Homeland" banner -- and then quietly issues a signing statement in which he says he doesn't think that the legislation he has signed really means what it says. In the earlier case of John McCain's torture ban, Bush added language saying that he was free to "construe" the ban however he liked, "consistent with the constitutional authority of the president ... as commander in chief." The president put similar language in his Patriot Act signing statement, this time making it clear that he didn't consider himself bound by the congressional oversight provisions in the act.

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