Manuel Miranda

In a move that nobody could have ever predicted, 150+ right-wing activists have signed on to a letter to the Senate opposing the confirmation of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court:

156 conservative and constitutional cause leaders and citizens have signed a letter to members of the U.S. Senate expressing opposition to the confirmation of President Obama's nominee to be an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, Judge Sonia Sotomayor.

One of the letter's signers, Richard A. Viguerie, said, "The media and Republicans aren't defining President Obama as an extremist politically and constitutionally; therefore, it is up to us conservatives. It is also important that a message be sent that, while Republicans may not be unified in opposing Obama's dangerous and unconstitutional agenda, conservatives and other constitutionalists are united."

"President Obama has nominated a radical judicial activist who apparently feels the need to mask her outrageous statements, rulings and writings over the years with the soothing words of a constitutionalist," said Kay Daly, president of the Coalition for a Fair Judiciary. "Perhaps the Left has discovered that the American people most certainly do not want the Constitution to be radically altered on the whims of empathy. Sotomayor's extremist actions throughout the years speak far more loudly than the pretty words she spoke at her confirmation hearing. A 'no' vote for Sotomayor is a 'yes' vote for the Constitution," Daly said.

...

Among the 156 who signed the letter are: Curt Levey of the Committee for Justice and Manny Miranda of Third Branch; plus: Gary Aldrich, Bob Barr, Morton Blackwell, Brent Bozell, Floyd Brown, KellyAnne Conway, Janice Shaw Crouse, Marjorie Dannenfelser, Elaine Donnelly, Joseph Farah, Alan Gottlieb, Colin Hanna, Andrea Lafferty, Jeffrey Mazzella, Chuck Muth, Tony Perkins, Larry Pratt, William Redpath, Al Regnery, David Ridenour, Ron Robinson, Ilya Shapiro, Rev. Lou Sheldon, Matt Staver, Herb Titus and Wendy Wright.

The letter itself can be found here [PDF]:

We urge the Senate to reject Judge Sotomayor. Judge Sotomayor should remain a judge on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals where her decisions would be subject to the check of the Supreme Court.

President Obama should nominate another candidate whose views of judicial power are demonstrably consistent with Article III of the Constitution. That means the next nominee’s views of the judiciary should be demonstrably inconsistent with the President’s, whose views are not consistent with Article III, even before that nominee’s confirmation hearings.

Given that Manuel Miranda is involved and that this letter is very much in keeping with how he operates, one is inclined to assume that this is another Third Branch Conference effort, though it may not be as neither the letter nor the press release list Miranda or the Conference as organizers, as is normally the case.

Perhaps it is some joint effort among various groups, which seems likely given that Richard Viguerie, Curt Levey of the Committee for Justice, and Kay Daly of the Coalition for a Fair Judicary are all featured and listed as contacts on the press release.

Noticeably, once again nobody from the Judicial Confirmation Network has signed on to the letter, which suggests that JCN either refused to join these activists or continues to be being shunned by them (Miranda recently dismissed them as "an arm of [the] Republican leadership.")

So despite the fact that, out of every right-wing group trying to rally opposition to Sotomayor, the JCN was by far the most tenacious and high-profile, nobody in this coalition seems to view them as a legitimate force.  Instead they align themselves with the likes of Kay Daly and her phony Coalition for a Fair Judiciary, which has been utterly AWOL and did, quite literally, nothing during the entire Sotomayor nomination.

Interesting strategy.

Just yesterday I wrote a post about the fact that Manuel Miranda seems to think that the time-line for a vote on Sonia Sotomayor's nomination to the Supreme Court should be determined primarily by ... well, Manuel Miranda.

Today, CQ reports that Miranda and his Third Branch Conference will be sending a letter to Senators tomorrow demanding that any debate and vote on the nomination be held off until after the August recess:

The Third Branch Conference will send a letter to senators Friday asking that debate on Sotomayor's nomination be postponed until September, said the group's leader, Manuel Miranda.

"It would be a failure of leadership to allow a confirmation vote before the August recess," Miranda said Thursday.

Asked about the idea Thursday, Jeff Sessions, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee said, "I haven't given that any thought. Obviously they're trying to rush this through."

But Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin, D-Ill., who serves on the Judiciary Committee told reporters the confirmation schedule will not slip into September.

Miranda said the focus should be on trying to push back the floor vote rather than Sotomayor's confirmation hearing scheduled to begin in the Senate Judiciary Committee on July 13.

"I'm afraid the postponed hearing will be the basis for a barter," Miranda said, in which Republicans would agree to a floor vote prior to the August recess.

Despite Miranda's claim that they would never engage in an "obstructive filibuster" of Sotomayor's nomination, you can already see them plotting to do just that by incessantly issuing demands that, are they not met, they can use to justify to filibuster or otherwise obstruct the confirmation process.

The Hill has more on this "not-a-filibuster" effort to filibuster Sotomayor's nomination:

A coalition of more than 100 conservative activists have called on Senate Republicans to delay a final vote on Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor until the fall.

A group of conservatives have called on Senate Republicans to use every tactic at their disposal to hold up Sotomayor’s confirmation until September.

“The confirmation debate and the final vote should occur is September and Republicans should ensure that happens, to allow the American people to engage in this debate,” said Manuel Miranda, chairman of the Third Branch Conference, which includes groups such as the American Conservative Union, Americans for Tax Reform, Focus on the Family and Concerned Women for America.

The Third Branch Conference polled its members in recent days and found unanimous desire among more than 100 conservative activists and leaders to press Senate Republicans for a delay.

“This issue is bigger than partisan politics; some of the statements Sotomayor has made should be of concern to everybody,” said Mario Diaz, policy director of legal issues for Concerned Women for America.

Members of the coalition will begin contacting and writing letters to Senate Republicans on Friday.

...

Miranda argued that Republicans could delay the nomination by refusing to participate in a vote to move Sotomayor to the Senate floor.

Rule IV of the Judiciary Committee states that at least one member of the minority party must vote to cut off debate in committee.

It seems that, after years of operating behind the scenes and under the radar, Manuel Miranda has returned to once again take a lead role in the judicial confirmation wars.

Just in the last few days, Miranda has burst back onto the scene, drafting a letter calling on Senate Republicans to filibuster Sonia Sotomayor's nomination, suggesting that Senator Mitch McConnell should resign if he can't wage a better fight to stop her and, just for good measure, saying that, unlike Blacks, Hispanics "think like everybody else," whatever that is supposed to mean.

As such, Miranda is now getting a lot of attention, especially regarding the history of how he was ousted from his position as a one-time aide to Sens. Orrin Hatch and Bill Frist only to re-emerge as a one-man judicial confirmation army. 

So now seems like a good time to dust off a report I wrote several years ago shortly after the results of the investigation by the Sergeant at Arms of the U.S. Senate was released, which chronicled Miranda's role in accessing internal Democratic memos regarding the issue of judicial nominations while he was working for Senators Hatch and Frist.

It was this behavior that caused Miranda to lose his job, though he has steadfastly denied any wrong-doing, consistently insisting that he was, in fact, a beacon of morality and ethics as he worked to expose Democratic "collusion" with outside interest groups.

Though the Senate report, known as the "Pickle Report" after Sergeant at Arms William Pickle, suggested that Miranda could have faced various charges for his behavior, he was never charged with any crime. 

As I suspect that most people barely even remember the "Memogate" controversy from 2003-2004 and aren't going to wade through the Pickle Report's 40 pages to figure out what went on, I've decided to post the report [PDF] I wrote at the time and excerpt this section covering the Pickle Report's findings on Miranda's activities:

The Pickle Report

While right-wing pundits and activists were busy defending Miranda and disparaging the investigation before knowing all the facts, Sergeant-at-Arms Pickle plowed ahead. Over the course of three months, Pickle and his staff interviewed over 160 individuals and conducted detailed “forensics analysis of the Judiciary Committee servers, available backup tapes, and the desktops of relevant staff members.” In March, Pickle finally completed his investigation and presented his report to members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Thanks to this report, we now know how the documents were obtained and who was responsible. We also know that nearly everything right-wing pundits said about the theft of the documents and the subsequent investigation was totally wrong.

As the report explains, in the fall of 2001 a Judiciary Committee Nomination Unit clerk, Jason Lundell, had learned how to access documents contained on Democratic computers by watching the System Administrator do some work on his computer and then duplicating the Administrator’s key strokes once he was alone. By doing so, he was able to gain access to the entire network and read, modify or delete Democratic documents because the newly hired and inexperienced system administrator had failed to restrict access to appropriate users.

Initially, Lundell downloaded between 100-200 pages of Democratic documents having to do with the nomination of Judge Charles Pickering and turned them over to two of his supervisors. Almost immediately both supervisors concluded that possessing such documents was improper and destroyed them and ordered Lundell to do the same and delete any files on his computer.

A short time later, Miranda joined the Committee staff as a counsel for the Nominations Unit. Not long after Miranda came on board, Lundell showed Miranda how to access the Democratic files but explained that he had been ordered not to use them. According to the Pickle Report, Miranda told Lundell not to listen to his supervisors and that there was nothing wrong or illegal about accessing Democratic files. Thus Miranda not only became the recipient of the Democratic documents, but a key figure in obtaining them, guiding Lundell about what information to look for and where to look.

From the fall of 2001 until January 2003, when Miranda left the Judiciary Committee to work for Senator Frist, he and Lundell downloaded several thousand internal Democratic documents and possibly shared them with other Republican staffers and the media. Miranda repeatedly requested files from Lundell even after he began working for Frist and thus no longer had access to the Judiciary Committee’s server. At one point Miranda even asked Lundell to “undertake a discreet mission” to gather documents and provide them to Sean Rushton, Executive Director of the Committee for Justice, so that he could build up a relationship with the press. Lundell replied that he would be “happy to assist in this covert action” and subsequently e-mailed Rushton 169 documents. Lundell and others speculated that Miranda himself also turned over documents to Rushton and others but Miranda denies this and it is impossible to know the truth as the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Times, the Committee for Justice and the Coalition for a Fair Judiciary all refused to cooperate with Mr. Pickle’s investigation. Despite this lack of cooperation, the Pickle Report does note that when the files showed up on the Coalition for a Fair Judiciary’s website, one of the documents contained a directory path that forensic review determined came from “an e-mail from a web page that was viewed and printed by Mr. Miranda with Internet Explorer.”

As for Miranda’s allegations that Democratic staffers on the committee were made aware that their documents were vulnerable, this too is contradicted by the report. Common sense dictates, and the report notes, that “[t]he Democratic staff working on judicial nominations clearly did not know there was a vulnerability. If they had, presumably they would have protected their files.” But beyond this, the allegation that the Democrats had been made aware of the problem seems to have come solely from Miranda himself. Miranda claims to have heard from Lundell that another staffer named Ryan Davis had informed the system administrator of the vulnerability. But Lundell denied ever telling Miranda this and Davis claimed that he did not recall ever having such a conversation with the administrator.

Furthermore, during the investigation, Miranda claimed to have kept printed versions of the documents that he considered the most valuable in a folder, which he asserted he had lost during his move to Frist’s office. It was not until his final interview with investigators that Miranda got around to informing them that a friend had made a “backup disk” for him of relevant Democratic documents. But Miranda refused to provide the friend’s name to investigators out of a stated desire not to prolong the investigation. As the Pickle Report concluded, the existence of the backup disk coupled with the claim that he “lost” his file containing Democratic documents “leaves open the possibility” that Miranda still “has Democratic documents in his possession.”

The Pickle Report concluded by outlining the “criteria for possible referrals for disciplinary action and for criminal prosecution to the Department of Justice,” noting that Miranda and others could potentially face prosecution for ethical violations, professional misconduct, violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, lying to investigators and violating various criminal statutes.

Of course, Miranda disputed many of the report's findings at the time and will no doubt continue to do so even today. 

Nonetheless, the report, written in 2004, covers not only Miranda's dealings while working on the Hill, but his ties to the various right-wing media outlets and judicial groups who sought to use the ill-gotten internal Democratic memos for partisan purposes, and explains just how Miranda went from being an obscure Senate aide to the right-wing folk hero and leading crusader in the judicial confirmation wars we know today.

It looks like Manuel Miranda is back and up to his old tricks.  As I wrote back in 2006:

Ever since losing his job with Sen. Frist a few years ago, Manuel Miranda has refashioned himself as a one-man, right-wing force to be reckoned with on judicial nominations. Even before stepping down, Miranda was working behind the scenes, orchestrating the GOP’s 2003 “reverse filibuster” protest.

After a short-lived disgrace caused by his run-in with basic ethics, Miranda returned to the scene with the launching of the National Coalition to End Judicial Filibusters, since renamed the Third Branch Conference. Since then, Miranda has been behind just about every right-wing grassroots effort to force confirmation of President Bush’s judicial nominees.

As the original name of his organization suggests, Miranda, along with dozens of other right-wing leaders, pushed Senate Republicans hard to eliminate the use of the filibuster via the “nuclear option.”

Back in 2005, Miranda was routinely drafting letters [pdf], which were signed by dozens of other right-wing leaders, calling on Republican Senators to do away with the filibuster of judicial nominees once and for all:

As the representatives of millions of American voices, we write to ask you to end the judicial filibusters at the earliest possible moment and well before a Supreme Court vacancy should occur.

We believe that short of a compromise that guarantees an up or down vote at the end of debate, the Constitutional Options available to you will serve to honor the Constitution, restore Senate tradition, and protect judicial independence.

We believe that generations of Americans are called at moments to lay foundations for the future, and that this is one such moment.

Well guess what?  Miranda is back with the same coalition but a new letter [PDF] with new demands - namely, that Senate Republicans carry out a filibuster against Sonia Sotomayor.  But not one of those disgusting "partisan" filibusters that the Democrats used, but rather one of those glorioius and noble" traditional" filibusters that protects the Constitution:

A Democratic Filibuster

There has been much distraction in discussing whether the Republican Minority would or could muster a “Democratic filibuster,” i.e., a filibuster used to obstruct a Senate confirmation vote. We recognize that Senate precedent has been altered by the systematic use of the “Democratic filibuster.”

...

We remind you that the Republican Party Platform, which almost all Republican Senators voted to adopt, establishes that you will not support a “stealth nominee” or a nominee who does not display fidelity to the Constitution.

Even so, no credible person, if any, has called on Senate Republicans to brandish a “Democratic filibuster.” We call on you instead to display leadership, if the nominee merits it, in preparing for the use of the traditional filibuster, not intended to obstruct, together with moderate Democrats, so that the debate on the Senate floor is appropriately long and, therefore, suitably catalyzed to the American people.

As Miranda explains it:

But in an interview, Mr. Miranda said their stance was not a contradiction because they want Republicans to use the procedural tactic for a different purpose than what he called a “Democratic filibuster.”

The Democrats, he said, sought to obstruct the Senate’s work by blocking confirmation votes on certain nominees forever. By contrast, he said, his coalition is seeking what he called a “traditional filibuster,” which would block the confirmation vote for some period of time but not forever.

“A Democratic filibuster is for the purpose of preventing a vote, as they brandished it,” Mr. Miranda said. “But a traditional filibuster to prolong debate is just fine.”

Do I need to point out the irony in the fact that the group once known as the National Coalition to End Judicial Filibusters is now explicitly calling for the use of a judicial filibuster?

I didn't think so.