Remember Sen. Leahy's attack on Judge Bork?

Today at NRO I found Jay Nordlinger's article, The ‘Nastiest’ Democrat," which first appeared in National Review's July 9, 2001 issue.

And no, Nordlinger wasn't writing about Massachusetts’ "liberal lion." His "nastiest" was Vermont’s Sen. Patrick Leahy.

Here's Nordlinger on Leahy's conduct during Judge Bork’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearings :

(Leahy) was a major tormentor of Robert Bork during those awful hearings of 1987. In fact, he was responsible for one of their moments of highest drama. He scolded Bork for doing insufficient charity work while a professor at Yale, and recited the fees he earned as an outside consultant during the years 1979 to 1981.

Responded Bork, "Those are the only years I ever made any money in consulting." He continued, emotional, "There was a reason to get money, and I don't want to get into it here." Leahy acknowledged that the judge had his reasons.

Then Sen. Gordon Humphrey, a Republican, broke in, saying, "Judge Bork, this is a very personal question, and if you prefer not to answer it, by all means do not — but were those years [ones that] coincided with heavy medical bills in your family?"

Bork spoke one syllable: "Yeah."

The bills to which Humphrey had referred were for Bork's first wife, Claire, who died in December 1980. This was not only a moment of high drama, but one that turned the stomachs of many of those watching.

Many of us have forgotten how Leahy disclosed that day just what sort of Senator he is.

Nordlinger has a lot more to say about Leahy, all of it worth reading.

It's too bad MSM news organizations won't remind us of Leahy's shameful conduct at least as often as they remind us Vice-president Dan Quayle once misspelled "potato."