Senator Patrick Leahy is apparently attempting to portray Republican questioning of nominee Sotomayor as racist in some fashion. In order to support this version of the facts, he lied today in public.
When Senator Lindsey Graham used the example of Republican support for President Bush’s D.C. Circuit nominee Miguel Estrada to make the elementary point that Republican concerns about Judge Sotomayor are based on her judicial philosophy, not on her Hispanic ethnicity, Judiciary Committee chairman Pat Leahy saw fit to respond in this way:
I’d just note, just so we make sure we’re all dealing with the same facts, Mr. Estrada was nominated when the Republicans were in charge of the Senate, was not given a hearing by the Republicans. He was given a hearing when the Democrats took back the majority in the Senate ….
Well, let’s “make sure we’re all dealing with the same facts,” Senator Leahy:
1. President Bush announced his nomination of Estrada to the D.C. Circuit on May 9, 2001. Fifteen days later, Senator Jeffords left the Republican Party and flipped control of the Senate from the Republicans to the Democrats. Leahy surely remembers that well, both because Jeffords was his fellow Vermonter and because the flip made him chairman of the Judiciary Committee.
Leahy was once dismissed from the Senate Intelligence Committee, in days when the Senate took national security seriously regardless of party, for disclosing secret material.
He is not to be trusted.