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The Weblog at The View from the Core - Wednesday, December 03, 2003
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Keeping You Ahead of The Corner
Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Wed. 12/03/03 07:41:46 PM |
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Political Dirty Tricks by Democrats in New Jersey? Okay, maybe this wouldn't really be news anyway. From the Star-Ledger, Nov. 30: A former lieutenant in the New Jersey State Police says that for three years he was involved in a covert operation that used confidential State Police records to discredit the Whitman administration and boost the candidacy of Gov. James E. McGreevey. Vincent Bellaran, the former lieutenant, said that he was recruited by Lt. Col. Cajetan "Tommy" DeFeo but said the operation was orchestrated for much of the time by McGreevey's mentor, former state Sen. John Lynch. Bellaran said he and DeFeo dug up dirt on the State Police between 1999 and early 2002. Internal State Police information was passed to Lynch for use in legislative hearings on racial profiling; internal documents also became the basis of a newspaper story about the son of a former aide to Gov. Christie Whitman and were used to embarrass a State Police lieutenant colonel who was a Whitman favorite..... In case you don't know: Christie Whitman, Republican; James McGreevey, Democrat. From a follow-up, today: .... The allegations led former Gov. Christie Whitman to call Monday for independent probes of DeFeo's activities. In a statement yesterday, she said DeFeo's retirement does not put an end to the issue. "The resignation of the deputy superintendent in no way negates the need for investigations," Whitman said, repeating her call for federal prosecutors, as well as the State Commission of Investigation, to review the matter. She said investigators need to determine whether DeFeo's role in the operation was part of "a quid pro quo for rapid advancement." The allegations against DeFeo came from the trooper who had been his best friend and best man at his wedding. In interviews with The Star-Ledger, and in sworn statements in pending lawsuits, Bellaran has described a three-year operation that funneled confidential information from State Police files to Lynch for use in discrediting the Whitman administration and boosting McGreevey's candidacy.... No matter. As we all learned in the 2002 election, New Jersey's Supreme Court thinks it's A-O-K to ignore any laws Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Wed. 12/03/03 07:22:35 PM |
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What's Dean Got to Hide? Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode XXV Howard Dean seals his gubernatorial records for a decade and falsely accuses George W. Bush of having done much the same thing. + + + + + Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Lieberman criticized rival Howard Dean for sealing dozens of boxes of records from his years as Vermont governor — a practice common for those who held the state job. Dean, in an interview Monday on ABC's "Good Morning America" program, said sealing the gubernatorial records is routine, but Lieberman said that stance does not fit with Dean's efforts to present himself as a straight talker. "That's not the way to build public trust — especially after three years of secret-keeping and information-blocking by George W. Bush," Lieberman said in a statement. Later, during a campaign appearance in New Hampshire, Lieberman continued to press Dean on the issue, saying, "I think Howard's got an obligation now to do it or explain why not." Another Dean rival John Kerry issued a statement, saying, "The highest office in the land requires the highest level of openness for the American people.... As president, openness will be the hallmark of my administration, not some talking point." Rival campaigns and the media have been combing through records of Dean's 11-year stint as governor that ended earlier this year. But they were unable to see about a third of his official papers kept in crates at a state warehouse in Middlesex, Vt. State officials agreed with Dean to keep those records, believed to include many letters and memos to individuals, private for 10 years after the governor left office. Two of Dean's predecessors made similar arrangements, although the records were cracked open after just six years. Dean told the ABC program: "You don't actually get to seal the majority of records, just those sensitive parts that apply to other people. President Bush sort of takes the cake for his sealing. He actually had his sent, as I understand it, to his father's presidential library, where there's a 50-year seal." Dean said: "I'll unseal mine if he'll unseal his." Bush's gubernatorial documents are in the custody of the Texas State Library and Archives Commission and are open under Texas public record laws. After Bush's term as governor ended, the documents were sent to his father's presidential library at Texas A&M University. The documents were moved back to archive them. --- Democratic presidential candidate Wesley Clark criticized the Bush administration on Monday for refusing to spend more money on AIDS treatment and pledged to increase funding for research, prevention and health care to $30 billion by 2008. Speaking on World AIDS Day at the opening of an HIV intervention center in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Clark described his plan to ensure that all children are provided health care and that all people with HIV and AIDS are protected under Medicaid. Clark also called for AIDS education in schools and for investments in new research for a cure. "More than 30 years ago we decided we were going to eradicate smallpox and we did. We decided we were going to put a man on the moon, and we did," Clark said. "Today, we've got to challenge ourselves again. We have to decide once and for all that we're going to stop the spread of AIDS." Bush has previously won praise for his AIDS policies. In July, former South African president Nelson Mandela called Bush's $15 billion pledge to AIDS programs in poor countries over the next five years a "quantum leap" in fighting the disease. More than 40 million people are infected with HIV worldwide. The World Health Organization says more than 5 million HIV patients need anti-retroviral drugs, which improve patients' health and prevent the development of full-blown AIDS, but fewer than 400,000 have access to them. --- Organizers of the 2004 Democratic National Convention are considering easing certain rules for media coverage of next summer's nomination party in an effort to increase sagging television ratings, according to the event's executive director. In the past, the party was quick to reject most requests to broadcast from the convention floor, said executive director Rod O'Connor. In 2000, he said, organizers turned down a request from Jon Stewart of Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" to host a show from the arena in Los Angeles. "Rather than resisting that, we should look at it as a way to tap into an existing audience," O'Connor said. "If Jon Stewart wants to come here, we should try to make that work. We want to open up options for coverage." Persuading the media - especially network television - to increase its coverage of next summer's four-day event is a key goal of organizers, who have promised to take innovative steps to make the convention more compelling to the viewing audience. A format that once offered political drama has become essentially a coronation in both parties, leading to fewer hours of prime-time coverage. In 2000, ABC, CBS and NBC provided 11 hours of live prime-time coverage, down from 14 in 1996 and 18.5 in 1992, DNC officials said. --- Associated Press Writers Jill Barton in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Stephen Frothingham in Manchester, N.H., and Jennifer Peter in Boston contributed to this report. © 2003 AP Wire and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved. + + + + + The Blog from the Core asserts Fair Use for non-commercial, non-profit educational purposes. ISTM that for an AP article on politics, this article is unusually well balanced. Maybe it got out before the senior editorial staff arrived for the day. Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Wed. 12/03/03 07:50:40 AM |
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Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode XXIV Dorothy Rabinowitz makes some observations at OpinionJournal, yesterday, on media coverage of the president's Thanksgiving Day trip to Baghdad: .... But the reality of the audience and the condition of their minds is a matter wholly foreign to the concerns of most of the correspondents — a truth most Americans have long understood and accepted. Somewhere along the way, they realized that occasions like this (short on dark aspects and close to a purely moving event) pose a problem in that universe inhabited by a good part of the press — a place where journalists toil and compete, disconnected from the realities governing the rest of the world. There were, generally speaking, two kinds of reporting on this event, so imbued with emotion. One type offered the occasion as it had unfolded and let the facts and pictures — the footage capturing the roars of joy from the weary troops when they spied their commander in chief, there with them so unexpectedly — tell the story. For an exemplar of the other sort we had the commentary of CNN's Walter Rodgers, a sturdy on-the-scene journalist for the most part, though on this occasion he was not among the reporters at that mess hall. Minutes after the news broke, his report focused on one central point: He didn't want to be a spoiler, he let it be known, but it was clear that, whether deliberately "or unconsciously," the president's trip had been timed as a way of upstaging Sen. Hillary Clinton's visit to the region the next day. Mr. Rodgers delivered this point several times more, his tone suggesting bountiful gratitude for the powers that had led him to unearth this insight — Thanksgiving comes but once a year. To someone imbibing the ethers of the aforementioned hothouse journalistic world, it must have seemed perfectly reasonable to conclude — however bizarre the proposition sounded to anyone out there in the real world — that all the months of secret planning that had gone into this venture had been undertaken for the sole purpose of deflecting attention from Mrs. Clinton's trip. Not only reasonable but important enough to repeat several times. And it offered plenty of inoculation against any charge that this veteran reporter had failed to cut through the joyful nature of this story to discern its dark underside. Departing from the subject of the president's unconscious, Mr. Rodgers turned to historical parallels to announce that Lyndon Johnson had gone to Vietnam — and that that trip hadn't changed the outcome of the war. The next day, we were to hear from Tom Rosenstiel, the head of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, an institution that could only in times like ours be regarded as a light unto the press. Well known for emissions of the highest purity as regards press standards, Mr. Rosenstiel told the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz that the secrecy of the trip was "just not kosher," that reporters are in the business of telling the truth and that they couldn't decide it was OK to lie sometimes because it serves a "higher truth or good." .... Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Wed. 12/03/03 07:43:13 AM |
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