While hand-wringing Senate Republicans balk at conducting an ethics investigation of the content of Democratic Judiciary Committee memos that appear to show Democratic corruption of the judicial confirmation process, Senate Democrats are going for the jugular of a former Republican aide.
Sen. Patrick Leahy (D.-Vt.), the former Judiciary chairman, has asked the Justice Department to investigate Republican staffers, including Manuel Miranda, who downloaded Democratic memos which were stored on an open computer server accessible to all Judiciary Committee staff. "In my view, the referral to the Justice Department was mainly a Democratic attempt to target Manuel Miranda and shift focus off the memos," said Sean Rushton, executive director of the watchdog group Committee for Justice, which presses for floor votes on Bush's judicial nominees. "Republicans acquiesced to get the matter out of the Judiciary Committee so they could return to nominations," he said.
