Cheap shot at Sotomayor's opposition

Leading conservatives have signed a letter (text in PDF format) asking Republican Senators to filibuster Obama's nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. Greg Sargent today takes a shot at this coalition:

The organizer of the pressure campaign — which has angered Senate GOP leaders — is identified as one Manuel Miranda, whom the paper only describes as a “former adviser on judicial issues to former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist.”
There’s a bit more to Manuel Miranda than that, however. Miranda, as longtime Congressional insiders will recall, was the GOP Senate staffer who was nailed in 2004 for hacking into the computers of Senate Dems and downloading thousands of documents relating to the strategies of Dem Senators on judicial nominations. . . .

Read the rest, but this is an idiotic and irrelevant attack. What happened was that there was a glitch in the congressional computer software, allowing Republican staffers to access an area of the system that Democratic staffers thought was private.

Nobody "hacked" anything. Miranda was merely the staffer who discovered the files showing that Democrats were blocking the judicial nomination of Miguel Estrada because he was Latino, highly qualified, and Dems feared the impact if Estrada eventually were nominated to the Supreme Court.

If Manuel Miranda were a Democrat, he'd be celebrated as a "whistleblower," instead of being smeared as a "hacker." As it is, Miranda's involvement in the anti-Sotomayor effort is being used in a ridiculous guilt-by-association smear. Look at a partial list of the other signatories on this letter to Senate Republicans:

Richard Viguerie, ConservativeHQ.com
David Keene, American Conservative Union
Gary Bauer, American Values
Grover Norquist, Americans for Tax Reform
Larry Pratt, Gun Owners of America
Dr. Virginia Armstrong, Eagle Forum's Court Watch
Colin Hanna, Let Freedom Ring
Mark R. Levin. President, Landmark Legal Foundation
Tom Minnery, Focus on the Family
Wendy Wright, Concerned Women for America
Rev. Miguel Rivera, National Coalition of Latino Clergy & Christian Leaders
Dr. Carl Herbster, AdvanceUSA
Donald E. Wildmon, American Family Association
Niger Innis, Congress of Racial Equality
Willes K. Lee, Hawaii Republican Party. Immediate Past Chairman
Ron Robinson, Young America’s Foundation
Michael P. Farris, Esq., Home School Legal Defense Association
Peter Flaherty, National Legal and Policy Center
Kelly Shackelford. Liberty Legal Institute
Dana Cody, Life Legal Defense Foundation.
Susan Carleson, American Civil Rights Union
Phillip Jauregui, Judicial Action Group,
Ilya Shapiro, Esq., Cato Institute
Dean John C. Eastman, Dean, Chapman University School of Law
Dean Mathew D. Staver, Liberty Univ. School of Law (Founder, Liberty Counsel)
Prof. Teresa S. Collett. University of St. Thomas School of Law, Minnesota
Prof. Ronald D. Rotunda, Chapman University School of Law
Michelle Gress, J.D., The Westchester Institute for Ethics
L. Brent Bozell III, Media Research Center
Thomas A. Glessner, JD, National Institute of Family and Life Advocates
Denise Singleton, American Federation of Senior Citizens
Jim Martin, 60 Plus Association
Rev. Rick Scarborough, Vision America
Rev. Louis Sheldon, Traditional Values Coalition
Andrea Lafferty, Traditional Values Coalition
Keith Wiebe, American Association of Christian Schools
Debbie Joslin, Alaska Eagle Forum, Republican National Committeewoman, Alaska
Bruce Ash, Republican National Committeeman, Arizona
Steve Scheffler, Iowa Christian Alliance, Republican National Committeeman, Iowa
W. Ross Little, Jr., Republican National Committeeman, Louisiana
Curly Haugland, Republican National Committeeman, North Dakota
Cathie Adams, Texas Eagle Forum, Republican National Committeewoman, Texas
Kathy Terry, Republican National Committeewoman, Virginia
David Ridenour, The National Center for Public Policy Research
Amy Ridenour, Americans for the Preservation of Liberty
Jeffrey Mazzella, Center for Individual Freedom
William H. Shaker. Rule of Law Committee
William J. Murray, Religious Freedom Coalition
J. C. Willke, MD, International Right to Life Federation
Bradley Mattes, Life Issues Institute
Fr. Thomas J. Euteneuer, Human Life International
Dr. Patricia McEwen, Life Coalition International
Austin Ruse, Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute
Jennifer Kimball, Culture of Life Foundation
Eric Scheidler, Pro-Life Action League
John Jansen, Generations for Life
Mark L. Melcher - The Political Forum
Deal W. Hudson. Catholic Advocate
Brian Burch, Fidelis and CatholicVote.org
John-Henry Westen, LifeSiteNews.com
Tom Shields, Coalition for Marriage and Family
Chuck Muth, Citizen Outreach
William Greene, Ph.D., RightMarch.com
Jimmy LaSalvia, GOProud
Mychal Massie, Project 21
Linda Harvey, Mission America
David Crowe, Restore America
Sandy Rios, Culture Campaign
Robert Peters, Morality in Media
Dave Bydalek, Family First
Richard Ford, Heritage Alliance
Peter LaBarbera, Americans for Truth
Tim Echols, Teenpact Leadership
Joseph Ureneck, The Fatherhood Coalition, Massachusetts
Daniel J. Cassidy, Editor, Sunlit Uplands, South Carolina
Steve Milloy, JunkScience.com
Don Feder, Feder Associates, Massachussetts
Janet M. LaRue, Esq., Jan LaRue Consulting, Texas
Martha Zoller, "The Martha Zoller Show", Georgia News Network
Janet Parshall, Nationally Syndicated Talk show Host

If you know anything about the infrastructure of the Right, you see that this represents a very broad coalition, from libertarians like Cato's Ilya Shapiro to a veritable Who's Who of Christian conservative activists. No doubt, there are many others who would have signed -- and I could name some that come to mind -- if they weren't worried about getting their educational non-profits entangled in this controversy.

So the fact that Manuel Miranda was the guy the organizer -- helping draft the letter and soliciting signatories -- is pretty doggone irrelevant, given this array of heavy hitters who signed up.