In 2002, Republicans on a House Judiciary subcommittee trained their sights on an unlikely target: conservative Judge James Rosenbaum, Chief Judge of the US District Court for the Minnesota District. The attack turns out to have been the opening salvo of a coordinated campaign by conservative Republicans, including Attorney General John Ashcroft and House majority leader Tom DeLay, to promote stricter criminal penalties for federal crimes and to consolidate power in the Justice Department's headquarters at the expense of judges and prosecutors in the field.

Rosenbaum appeared before a subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee on May 14, 2002. A Reagan appointee with a reputation as a tough sentencer, he nonetheless spoke in favor of a Sentencing Commission proposal to slightly reduce the guideline sentences for low-level drug defendants. Republicans on the subcommittee were pushing legislation that, had it passed, would have overridden the commission. Rosenbaum told the subcommittee that the proposed bill "confuses office boys and assembly-line workers with chairmen of the board."

A week later he received a letter framed as a discovery request and demanding further information on court cases he had cited. Several months later the subcommittee produced a bound report featuring twenty-two pages of allegations against Judge Rosenbaum. The Judiciary Committee is chaired by Wisconsin Republican F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., perhaps best known for his speech making the House case for the impeachment of President Clinton. The subcommittee's chief counsel and the muscle on the Rosenbaum matter is former Ken Starr deputy Jay Apperson.

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