Purporting to explain what liberals “really mean” when they speak, Wall Street Journal OpinionJournal.com columnist Manuel Miranda offered this translation for the term “civil rights” when used by liberals: “lucrative trial-lawyer-driven employee grievances, the rights of convicted murderers and the use of divisive racial quotas.” The Journal hired Miranda in July “to report on the confirmation” of John G. Roberts Jr. to the Supreme Court for OpinionJournal.com. In his August 29 column, one of three he posts per week, he followed that purported translation with other claims of what liberals “really mean.”

From Miranda's August 29 OpinionJournal.com column:

The American people should be told, first of all, that when liberals say “civil rights,” they mean mostly lucrative trial-lawyer-driven employee grievances, the rights of convicted murderers, and the continued use of divisive racial quotas. When liberals say “women's rights,” they mean that parents have no right to know when a man impregnates their minor daughter and takes her for an abortion. When liberals assail Judge Roberts about the issue of equal pay for women -- which is the law -- they really mean that government should dictate how much every worker is paid. When liberals speak of environmental and worker rights, they mean unlimited federal government regulatory power over local governments and the private sector.

As Media Matters for America has noted, Miranda, a former staffer to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN), was accused of improperly accessing thousands of Democratic memos on controversial Bush judicial nominees and is the subject of a government probe into the alleged malfeasance. An August 18 Journal editorial lamented the existence of a computer security firewall protecting Democratic memos regarding Roberts's nomination to the Supreme Court; it was the lack of such a firewall that allowed Miranda and others to allegedly access the Democratic memos.