Mitch McConnell

Rep. Duncan Hunter Jr. (R-CA) joined Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council and Tim Wildmon of the American Family Association to discuss his legislation to block the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell (DADT). The Congressman believes that even though Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen supported the repeal, his new bill will require the more skeptical military officials to sign on to the repeal as well. Hunter criticized the repeal during the congressional debate, saying that the military is “not the YMCA,” and said that if the House does not pass his bill he will try to pass it as an amendment on military appropriations. Later in the interview, Hunter agreed with Perkins that Don’t Ask Don’t Tell’s repeal is simply part of the left’s agenda “to use the military to advance a social policy.”

Other Republican leaders including Tim Pawlenty and Mitch McConnell have also supported efforts to obstruct the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.

Watch:

While the Conservative Political Action Conference may be over, the controversy over the gathering’s handling continues. RedState Editor-in-Chief and CNN commentator Erick Erickson first criticized GOProud, the gay conservative group whose involvement in CPAC sparked a Religious Right boycott, for attacking prominent right-wing leaders. Now, Erickson is going after Grover Norquist, the head of Americans for Tax Reform and a GOProud adviser who knocked CPAC boycotters as “loser organizations.”

Norquist has long been a target of far-right groups for his outreach to Muslim Americans and gays and lesbians, and Erickson believes that his fellow conservatives should abandon and replace the Norquist-led ATR and Wednesday Meetings over his role in the CPAC controversy:

Are you a loser? If you are the Heritage Foundation, Media Research Center, Family Research Council, Concerned Women for America, the American Principles Project, Jim DeMint, Jim Jordan, Rush Limbaugh (given his comments yesterday on CPAC), and others — you are losers.

Grover Norquist says so. Norquist, last week, called those who chose not to participate in CPAC and those who share those views “losers.”

…

The source of Grover Norquist’s power comes from two things: (1) Americans for Tax Reform’s Tax Pledge, which could easily be duplicated by an organization not headed by someone who picked up checks written by a man serving 23 years in jail for financing jihad activities; and (2) the Wednesday morning meeting in which tons of conservative groups participate.

(By the way, did Grover ever give that money back or send it to a charitable cause?)

For those who don’t know what I’m talking about, Grover Norquist has an off the record meeting every Wednesday at 10:00 a.m. in which candidates come to pitch themselves, conservative organizations come to promote their wares, and even Al Gore and George Soros have come to.

It’s become a “see and be seen” sort of meeting and information exchange. Mitch McConnell typically sends someone. The House Republicans send someone. Etc., Etc., Etc.

Grover Norquist’s latest remarks, both regarding principaled [sic] social conservatives and Congressman West, are deeply troubling. If you aren’t troubled yet, google Jack Abramoff Grover Norquist.

I suggest a new Wednesday morning meeting of conservatives — one that combines the fiscal conservative organizations that constantly see their legs cut out from under them when Grover sides with UPS and the unions against FedEx, the national security organizations that continue to be concerned about Grover Norquist’s ties to possible jihadists, and the social conservative organizations Grover Norquist would like to purge from the movement.

Make it the place to plan and strategize within the conservative movement — something that does not really happen any more at Grover’s place. Make it the first step to taking back the conservative movement and moving away from the pay to play concerns that have so plagued the few, but taint so many.

It is time. Losers Unite!

• Phyllis Schlafly wants to cut government spending to prevent violence against women in the name of deficit reduction.

• Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn signs civil unions into law, and Focus on the Family is not happy.

• Chik-Fil-A returns to Indiana University-South Bend after “heat from various Christian organizations.”

• Michele Bachmann warns that new airport body scanners could result in ‘naked pictures’ on the Internet.

• Rand Paul and Mitch McConnell will not be boycotting CPAC, so the Family Foundation of Kentucky wants them to address the marriage debate.

• Glenn Beck pleads for food storage, likens Muslim Brotherhood to ACORN.

There only thing that angers the Religious Right more than being told that their social issues agenda does not matter is seeing the GOP downplay their social issues agenda in order to appease other parts of the conservative coalition.

So I can only imagine that this letter from the gay conservative group GOProud and several Tea Party leaders calling on the GOP to ignore social issues is probably not going to go over too well with the Religious Right:

A gay conservative group and some Tea Party leaders are campaigning to keep social issues off the Republican agenda.

In a letter to be released Monday, the group GOProud and leaders from groups like the Tea Party Patriots and the New American Patriots, will urge Republicans in the House and Senate to keep their focus on shrinking the government.

"On behalf of limited-government conservatives everywhere, we write to urge you and your colleagues in Washington to put forward a legislative agenda in the next Congress that reflects the principles of the Tea Party movement," they write to presumptive House Speaker John Boehner and Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell in an advance copy provided to POLITICO. "This election was not a mandate for the Republican Party, nor was it a mandate to act on any social issue."

...

"For almost two years now, the tea party has been laser-focused on the size of government," said Barron, who said his group and the tea partiers are part of the "leave-me-alone coalition."

"No one has been talking about social issues - not even the socially conservative candidates who won tea party support," [GOProud's Chairman Christopher] Barron said ... "We're not talking about pushing social conservatives out of the tea party movement. Those people aren't only welcome but they're a critical part of this movement." said Barron.

You really have to marvel at the gall of a gay conservative like Barron talking down to the social conservatives in the movement and basically telling them that they are a "critical part" of the coalition so long as they accept that their agenda is going to be completely ignored.

Considering that a large part of the Religious Right's agenda is rooted in militantly opposing "the gay agenda," I am guessing that they are not going to take too kindly to efforts by a gay conservative group to relegate them to the sidelines.

With the Tea Party on the march, RightWingWatch will now feature weekly updates every Wednesday detailing the activities and controversies of the right-wing candidates running for US Senate this year.

Sharron Angle

Polls: Mason Dixon shows Reid leading 46-45%, and Ipsos has Reid up 46-44% (Politics Daily, 9/12; Reuters, 9/14).

Ad: Reid calls out Angle for controversial vote on domestic violence (CNN, 9/13).

Debate: Asserts that she withdrew from debate because she wants “an informed electorate” (Las Vegas Sun, 9/14).

Lawsuit: Las Vegas Review-Journal sues Angle for printing stories without the newspaper’s permission (AP, 9/14).

Palin: Hopes that Sarah Palin will rally the NV GOP base (Las Vegas Sun, 9/14)

Latinos: Angle’s problems finding Latino supporters (AP, 9/10).

GOP: Republican gubernatorial candidate Brian Sandoval distances himself from Angle in interview (Las Vegas Sun, 9/10).

Ken Buck

Website: After primary, Buck’s website changes language on issue-pages regarding abortion, stem-cell research and immigration (Denver Post, 9/8).

Debate: Holds aggressive debate with Bennet in Grand Junction (ABC, 9/12), a second debate is scheduled for Friday.

Carly Fiorina

Economy: Refuses to support Small Business Lending bill, but says it has “many good aspects (AP, 9/14).

Poll: Trails Boxer by 2 percentage points, 46-44%, in latest Fox News poll (San Francisco Chronicle, 9/14).

Joe Miller

GOP: Mitch McConnell sends Miller a $5000 contribution, asks Sen. Murkowski to “move on,” NRSC pledges to spend $170,000 (Anchorage Daily News, 9/14; Fairbanks Daily News-Miner; 9/10).

Government: Miller criticized for views on federal government’s land ownership (The Mudflats, 9/13).

Christine O’Donnell

Victory: Upsets Congressman Mike Castle, 53-47% (Politico, 9/15).

Abstinence: Video from MTV shows O’Donnell, then head of Savior's Alliance for Lifting the Truth, speaking against masturbation (TPM, 9/14).

Rove: Trades barbs with Karl Rove (Washington Post, 9/15).

GOP: Castle unlike to endorse, campaign suggests that NRSC stays out of race (The Hill, 9/14).

Rand Paul

GOP: Calls out Republicans in Congress for failing to cut spending (AP, 9/12).

Ad: Claims that Health Care Reform “puts Washington bureaucrats in charge” in new ad, NRSC also on the air criticizing HCR (CBS News, 9/8; HuffPo, 9/14).

Palin: Fundraiser with Sarah Palin set for 9/16 (Courier-Journal, 9/13).

Dino Rossi

Poll: Murray leads Rossi 50-41% in new Elway poll (Seattle Times, 9/13)

Trial: Building Industry Association of Washington, a big Rossi backer, on trial for skimming finances for campaign purposes (Bellingham Herald, 9/14).

Economy: Says that Obama’s $50 billion infrastructure plan “makes no sense whatsoever” (King 5, 9/6).

Marco Rubio

Religious Right: David Barton of WallBuilders to headline event with Rubio (Orlando Politics Press, 9/14).

Poll: Rubio leads by double-digits in new Fox News poll (Political Wire, 9/14).

GOP: State Party’s internal audit clears Rubio on abusing Party-issued credit card, Crist campaign cries foul (St. Petersburg Times, 9/13).

Social Security: Says he opposes privatization but supports Bush-proposed “personal retirement accounts” (ReidReport, 9/14).

Economy: Supports extending all of the Bush tax-cuts (Orlando Sentinel, 9/14).

Last week David Barton of Wallbuilders declared that Sunday sessions of Congress were unconstitutional and that any member of Congress supports or defends the practice has "affirmed their disregard for the Constitution and for their own congressional oath" before calling on activists to "make sure and replace them in the next election, November 2, 2010!"

Well, if Barton is serious, it looks like he had better get to work voting out every Republican Senator:

Republicans want to work this weekend on health care. Yes, you read that right.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said he wants to spend the weekend in Washington so the Senate can refocus its attention to voting on health care amendments. The Senate is currently considering an omnibus spending bill.

“I think I can speak for all 40 Republican senators, we’re not interested in taking off this weekend we’re interested in staying here, debating the measures before the Senate and getting back to health care as rapidly as possible with a series of amendments that give the American people the opportunity to understand what is being proposed here and how bad it would be for the country,” McConnell said. “So this is a debate we welcome, we’re anxious to get back to it and whatever time we finish this conference report, it is my hope and expectation, although we don’t have an assurance yet, we will not only go back to the health care bill, we will have votes on amendments to health care bill.”

With Sonia Sotomayor's nomination having been voted out of the Senate Judiciary Committee on a vote of 13-6, she is scheduled to get a floor vote next week where it is expected that she will be easily confirmed.

Resigned to the inevitable, right-wing are doing all they can to spin this as a victory that will pay huge dividends in future elections:

"Republicans can reap significant political benefits by voting against her confirmation and making her an issue in key races next year," conservative activist Ralph Reed told his supporters in a memo.

Voters will remember that "it is a gun vote, and this was not a judge vote. It was a racial quota vote. She is for quotas," added Grover Norquist, a leading conservative activist, in an interview.

...

Norquist said conservatives can paint Sotomayor as a dangerous liberal just like President Barack Obama.

"She tarnishes him a little bit," said Norquist, who is president of Americans for Tax Reform and a member of the NRA board of directors.

In the Washington Independent, David Weigel provides more insight into this effort:

“The Republican senators did much better than I expected,” said Manny Miranda, the chairman of the Third Branch Conference, a judicial conservative umbrella group that opposed Sotomayor’s nomination largely behind the scenes.

In early June, Miranda had been bearish on the Republican conference, doubtful that it would put up a fight. He called Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell “limp-wristed” and organized 145 conservative activists to campaign for a filibuster of Sotomayor, which they’re not going to get. Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), in announcing his opposition to the nominee, admitted that her confirmation was probably inevitable. Yet they feel like the debate over Sotomayor was as much as a conservative success as it could have possibly been, and they see a chance to give the nominee the lowest level of support from the opposition party since the bruising 1991 fight over Clarence Thomas.

“When we started, I didn’t expect more than 16 ‘no’ votes,” said Miranda. “Now I think we may go as high as 29 votes. We’ve achieved quite a lot.”

...

“The NRA’s decision to score the vote is a huge statement,” said Curt Levey, director of the Committee for Justice. “They were hesitant to get involved. Even if Sotomayor is eventually confirmed, the fact that the NRA came to realize the importance of Supreme Court nominations in protecting gun rights is a very big deal. The grassroots have been activated.”

Sotomayor is widely expected to be confirmed next week and you'll notice that all of Miranda's strident demands that Republicans lead a filibuster against her seem to have disappeared, as have his repeated assertions that any vote on her nomination before the August recess would be glaring failure of Republican leadership:

The mark of failed Republican leadership -- already strong-armed by Democrats on hearing scheduling -- will certainly be allowing a confirmation vote before the August recess that denies time to senators and to the American people. Republican leaders will fail too if their only goal is to mirror the 22-22 Democrat vote for Judge Roberts and simply deliver 20 Republicans for and 20 against.

Miranda and company had one demand of Senate Republicans: Under no circumstances allow a vote on Sotomayor's nomination before the August recess. Yet that is exactly what is going to happen and, instead of blasting them for their failure, Miranda is praising them for a job well done because their token opposition will be slightly bigger than he initially imagined.

Why is the Right suddenly so forgiving?  Maybe because they knew all along that their efforts weren't going to stop Sotomayor and they were just trying to pick a fight and look important, which is essentially what Curt Levey admitted to Weigel:

“The goal isn’t to defeat Sotomayor,” explained Levey. “It’s to send enough of a warning shot that future nominees won’t be as hostile to the Constitution.”

The Committee for Justice, for example, developed five ads formatted for television and newspapers, one of which compared Sotomayor’s work for the Puerto Rican Defense Fund to President Obama’s friendship with reformed Weather Underground member Bill Ayers. It got plenty of attention; people clicked through to the committee’s site, and some donated. But TV viewers won’t see that particular attack on their screens. “I don’t think the ad was effective,” Levey admitted. “We’ll run some ads in the final week, but I don’t think we’ll run that ad.”

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.

• The Huffington Post reports that Sen. Lindsey Graham tried to make the case for a more diverse and open GOP to the South Carolina Republican Party convention - it did not go well.
• Steve Benen remembers back when Sen. Mitch McConnell believed filibustering a president's judicial nominee was just about the worst thing a senator could do - but those days are over.
• Howie Klein notes that not only did Arkansas state Senate's GOP Kim Hendren call Sen. Charles Schumer "that Jew," but Doyle Webb, the state Republican chairman, called a Democratic legislator "that lesbian."
• FireDogLake reports that parents, with the assistance of Brad Dacus of the Pacific Justice Institute, are fighting to keep "And Tango Makes Three" out of school curriculum.
• AU weighs in on the news that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s daily top-secret briefings to former President George W. Bush during the early part of the Iraq War in 2003 featured covers festooned with photos of soldiers praying or in action in Iraq accompanied by Bible verses.
• Finally, Jeffrey Toobin profiles Chief Justice John Roberts:

After four years on the Court, however, Roberts’s record is not that of a humble moderate but, rather, that of a doctrinaire conservative. The kind of humility that Roberts favors reflects a view that the Court should almost always defer to the existing power relationships in society. In every major case since he became the nation’s seventeenth Chief Justice, Roberts has sided with the prosecution over the defendant, the state over the condemned, the executive branch over the legislative, and the corporate defendant over the individual plaintiff. Even more than Scalia, who has embodied judicial conservatism during a generation of service on the Supreme Court, Roberts has served the interests, and reflected the values, of the contemporary Republican Party.