Liberal Repercussion

www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A17502-2003Nov27

The press release goes on to identify Manuel Miranda, a senior aide to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), as circulating the memos .

"Manuel Miranda, counsel in Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's office, recently sent around an e-mail composed of strategy memos that had been obtained from the 2001-2002 period when Democrats ran the Judiciary Committee," the Women's Forum release said. "The 'real bosses' of Democratic legislators, Miranda concluded, are the liberal interest groups that more or less tell the senators when to sit, speak and roll over -- and which Bush judges to confirm or not."

Miranda, who worked for the Judiciary panel's Republican staff until joining Frist in February, said in an interview Wednesday that he had sent the Women's Forum and other groups an e-mail copy of the Wall Street Journal article but nothing more. Asked about the Democratic strategy memos, he said they "have never touched my office. . . . I have never distributed any memos to anyone."

Rieva Holycross, the Women's Forum official who said she was responsible for the Nov. 17 press release, described it as "a terrible mistake." The group never received the memos, she said, and only had the Wall Street Journal article that Miranda had sent. Holycross said the quote attributed to Miranda in the press release was a rewrite of a sentence in the Journal article, something that Miranda had also suggested.

posted by Rei Toei @ 8:01 p.m.