This remarkable piece from the subscription-only
The Hill paints a bleak picture for Bush's judicial nominees -- with their whole effort harmed by the investigation into the theft of Democratic documents on committee servers.
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's (R-Tenn.) top aide on judicial nominees is expected to announce his resignation at the end of this week - a sacrifice offered by the GOP leadership in hope of persuading the Democrats to wind down the fight over leaked Judiciary Committee memos.
The aide, Manuel Miranda, had spearheaded the Republican effort to push President Bush's judicial nominees through the Senate in the face of fierce Democratic opposition.
Miranda declined a request for comment. But The Hill has learned that he agreed to resign under pressure from Judiciary Committee Chairman Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah). The Democrats have not agreed to scale back their demands for wide-ranging punishments following a full-blown leak inquiry.
Since switching from the Judiciary Committee to Frist's office in February last year, Miranda had overseen a multi-pronged strategy to confirm judges whom Democrats had blocked with filibusters and other procedural tactics [...]
The aide's departure signals that Senate Republican leaders will likely pull back from confrontation over Bush's judges. Last year's high-intensity battles included a GOP-staged 40-hour marathon debate on blocked nominees [...]
If they can tamp down the furor over the leaked memos, Republicans could focus on the content of the documents, which illustrate the influence outside groups such as the NAACP and People for the American Way have had on Democratic decisions to block nominees.
"It's capitulation to the old Democratic trick that if you catch us with our hands dirty, we'll blame Republicans for dirty tricks," said a GOP aide.
Miranda admitted to the sergeant at arms that he had read Democratic memos that a Republican staffer on the Judiciary Committee accessed through a glitch on the panel server. But it is unclear what rules if any Miranda broke. His defenders say that the files were openly available to Republicans through their desktop computers and that there is no such thing as a property right to a federal document.
Sergeant at Arms Bill Pickle's investigation of how internal Democratic memos were leaked to the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Times has halted the momentum Republicans built last year on judicial nominees. It has also generated bad publicity for Republicans [...]
Democrats had threatened Hatch Monday to hold up the proceedings of the Judiciary Committee unless he agreed to schedule a briefing by Pickle for Republicans and Democrats on the the investigation's progress [...]
Some GOP senators resent the way the controversy turned from Democratic to Republican impropriety.
"Right now I think that was pretty unfair," Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) said of the probe's focus on Miranda. "I don't have the impression he did anything wrong and we just completely quit looking at was done and what was found [in the memos]. I don't know the details, but I would not be a friend in firing a highly qualified staffer."
It's nice to see that Senate Dems are still pushing for criminal charges. That is paramount. And it's funny to see whining GOoPers crying about the injustices of being caught stealing the opposition's work product.