Newspaper reporters sue their readers.
Alternative newspaper to become blog. It apparently has already long been a blog– or rather a chat room anyway.
And on top of everything else, just what we need: even less oversight.
National Review Online: Are We Living Through A Liberal Realignment?
Opening statements from the Ted Stevens bribery trial:
WASHINGTON — The corruption trial of Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens began Thursday with sharply divergent portraits of the long-serving Republican.
In opening statements in the highly anticipated case, prosecutors accused Stevens of using his experience in the ways of Washington to “fly under the radar screen” and flout Senate rules requiring the disclosure of gifts and favors.
“This is a simple case about a public official who took hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of free financial benefits, and then took away the public right to know that information,” Brenda Morris, the lead Justice Department attorney on the case, told jurors.
But a lawyer for Stevens described a lawmaker who was so focused on his duties that he paid scant attention to financial matters and often deferred to his wife and others. The so-called gifts he got were often unwanted and gratuitous, and if they were never disclosed, it was only because he considered them a nuisance or worthless, the lawyer, Brendan V. Sullivan Jr., argued.
“Why all of a sudden, in his 75th year, did he decide to go out and become a criminal?” Sullivan asked. “The evidence will show that he did not file false statements.”…
Stevens, who was seated among a battery of lawyers at the counsel table in court, is accused of knowingly and repeatedly filing financial reports with the Senate between 2000 and 2006 that understated or omitted gifts or other benefits that he got from an oil executive and others.
Among the unreported benefits: an overhaul on his residence in Girdwood, Alaska; freebies including a sled dog and a $2,700 massage chair; and a sweetheart deal on a $44,000 Land Rover.
The government contends that Stevens never paid for more than $200,000 in labor and materials for the remodel supplied by a now-defunct oil field services firm, VECO Corp. VECO’s former chief executive, Bill J. Allen, allegedly showered Stevens with other perks.
“VECO acted as his own personal handyman service,” Morris said. “If the defendant needed an electrician, he would contact VECO. If he needed a plumber, he would contact VECO.”
“We reach for the Yellow Pages,” Morris told the jury. “He reached for VECO.”
Sullivan, Stevens’ lawyer, countered that the lawmaker and his wife paid every invoice they received for work on the house, and that the total amount they paid was in line with the current assessed value of the property.
While acknowledging that some bills may have gone unpaid, he offered two explanations that seemed intended to distance Stevens from the transaction, and raised the possibility that Stevens’ wife, Catherine, may have known more than her husband about the situation.
“The most important thing to know is that Catherine ran the financial part of the renovation,” Sullivan said. “She was the person who opened the account. She was the person who viewed the bills. She was the person who wrote the check.”
Sullivan also said that Allen, who oversaw the work and billed the Stevenses, withheld bills, not necessarily out of an attempt to enrich Stevens, but possibly because the bills were excessive or for work that was not done properly.
“You cannot report what you don’t know,” Sullivan said. “You can’t fill out a form and say what’s been kept from you by the deviousness of someone like Bill Allen.”
Stevens paid $160,000 for the renovation, “which is exactly or close to what it should have been,” Sullivan said.
Sullivan also attempted to explain away other items his client received, including a Viking gas grill, $20,000 in decorative lighting outside the Girdwood chalet, and the Land Rover, which Stevens got for his daughter in exchange for his 34-year-old Mustang and $5,000.
Sullivan said the gas grill arrived at the house for a charity function, was rarely used afterward, and was kept under padlock because it struck Stevens’ wife as dangerous. “Catherine was frightened to death of it,” Sullivan said. “She thought it would blow up the house, blow up the grandchildren.”
When the senator asked Allen to put up his Christmas lights, Sullivan said, Stevens came home to find an elaborate and gaudy new lighting system set up.
“Catherine hated the lights. It made the house look like Joe’s Bar & Grill,” Sullivan said.
“I suppose Ted Stevens, the senator, should go home and get some climbing shoes on, go up and take them down, and send them back to Bill Allen?” Sullivan asked.
Sullivan also said the Mustang-Land Rover swap “was absolutely fair.”
“You don’t have to report a trade that you believe is fair,” and Stevens “certainly had no intent to violate the law,” Sullivan said.
The trial before U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan is expected to last a month. Stevens asked for a speedy trial in the hope that the proceedings would be completed by the time Alaskans vote Nov. 4 on whether to return him to the Senate for the seventh time.
Extraordinary gambit by Stevens in demanding a speedy trial by jury– so that the verdict would be in before he ran for re-election. Brandan Sullivan largely got Iran-contra figure Oliver North off; he is about as good a defense counsel one could retain if charged with federal bribery. Would it be totally out of the question for Stevens to beat the rap– and even win reelction. The corruption reeks– but whether the Senator will be convicted of the charges is yet to be seen.
The gambit aside, however, and Sullivan’s skills also set aside, the Justice Department appears to have a strong case.
As to Stevens’ blame his wife defense, one wonders not only how well that one will go over with the jury but also at home.
I’m going to try and get over to the Stevens’ trial next week for myself– just a few subway stops away from home.
Paul Krugman on what to do next:
Many people on both the right and the left are outraged at the idea of using taxpayer money to bail out America’s financial system. They’re right to be outraged, but doing nothing isn’t a serious option. Right now, players throughout the system are refusing to lend and hoarding cash — and this collapse of credit reminds many economists of the run on the banks that brought on the Great Depression.
It’s true that we don’t know for sure that the parallel is a fair one. Maybe we can let Wall Street implode and Main Street would escape largely unscathed. But that’s not a chance we want to take.
So the grown-up thing is to do something to rescue the financial system. The big question is, are there any grown-ups around — and will they be able to take charge?
Earlier this week, Henry Paulson, the Treasury secretary, tried to convince Congress that he was the grown-up in the room, come to protect us from danger. And he demanded total authority over the rescue: $700 billion to be used at his discretion, with immunity for future review.
Congress balked. No government official should be entrusted with that kind of monarchical privilege, least of all an official belonging to the administration that misled America into war. Furthermore, Mr. Paulson’s track record is anything but reassuring: he was way behind the curve in appreciating the depth of the nation’s financial woes, and it’s partly his fault that we’ve reached the current moment of meltdown.
Read the entire column here.
And as the government goes broke and the rest of us go broke, ear marks are doing just fine.
Meanwhile, Paul Kiel does the best work on Sarah Palin and the Bridge to Nowhere.
Dahlia Lithwack at Slate has this hilarious comparison of Sarah Palin’s Troopergate and Bll Clinton’s Toopergate.
For me the so-called latest Troopergate scandal, saga, or whatever one might consider it, just brings back post-traumatic stress memories of covering the first one. What is to be learned from this? Maybe if we are going to continue to have candidates from small states that begin with an “A” we were forewarned.
The awful thing about covering the first Troopergate story is that everyone dissembled. The Arkansas state troopers often exaggerated and sometimes lied, and when one thought they had figured out what happened, one found out that President Clinton wasn’t exactly telling the entire truth either. And then there is the small matter of one of the troopers, Danny Ferguson, talking about shaking down a sitting President of the United States. Of course, I know this is a minority opinion– but why was any of this a story in the first place?
Uh oh. My post-traumatic Troopergate memories are really flooding back:
Sidney Blumenthal somehow getting through on the line (I knew I should have gotten caller ID): “The troopers! David Brock!…. Michael Kelly. We all know the troopers’ connection to the Federalist Society!. You know? Connect… the…dots.”
A personal note: So as not to display any bias, I am fond of both former President Clinton and trooper Roger Perry. I like them both.
I actually had the pleasure of sitting in the Capitol Hotel in Little Rock in Aug. 1996 with Roger and his wife as we watched then-President Clinton’s acceptance speech to the Democratic convention. Seemed like a more interesting setting to watch the speech then to be at the convention itself.
And a final note: I’m defending the Clintons or their troopers here, but at least in the Clinton Troopergate scandal, no one got tasered, least of which any children.
The Bush administration is refusing to declassify a damaging National Intelligence Estimate on Afghanistan. Compare that to the White House’s efforts to declassify the erroneous NIE saying that Iraq had WMD during the run-up to the war with Iraq. Brian Ross, of ABC has the story. [Disclosure note: Brian is my sometime boss, in that I have worked on three broadcast stories with him and have written stories with ABC.com with him from time to time. My only involvement with this particular story is that I was slightly jealous of Brian after I read it. ] Anyways, here is the lede to the story:
US intelligence analysts are putting the final touches on a secret National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Afghanistan that reportedly describes the situation as “grim”, but there are “no plans to declassify” any of it before the election, according to one US official familiar with the process.
Officials say a draft of the classified NIE, representing the key judgments of the US intelligence community’s 17 agencies and departments, is being circulated in Washington and a final “coordination meeting” of the agencies involved, under the direction of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, is scheduled in the next few weeks.
According to people who have been briefed, the NIE will paint a “grim” picture of the situation in Afghanistan, seven years after the US invaded in an effort to dismantle the al Qaeda network and its Taliban protectors.
A spokesperson for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Vanee Vines, said “it is not the ODNI’s policy to publicly comment on national intelligence products that may or may not be in production.”
The finished secret NIE would be sent to the White House and other policy makers.
Mike McConnell, the director of National Intelligence, has made it his policy that such key judgments “should not be declassified”, although several have recently, including a report on Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
“That does not portend that this is going to become a standard practice,” McConnell said it a guidance memo last year.
Seth Jones, an expert on Afghanistan at the Rand Corporation think tank, called the situation in Afghanistan “dire.”
“We are now at a tipping point, with about half of the country now penetrated by a range of Sunni militant groups including the Taliban and al Queida,” Jones said. Jones said there is growing concern that Dutch and Canadian forces in Afghanistan would “call it quits.”
“The US military would then need six, eight, maybe ten brigades but we just don’t have that money,” Jones said.
Last week, Admiral Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Congress “we’re running out of time” in Afghanistan. “I’m not convinced we’re winning it in Afghanistan,” Adm. Mullen testified.
Perhaps foreshadowing the NIE assessment on Afghanistan, Adm. Mullen told Congress, “absent a broader international and interagency approach to the problems there, it is my professional opinion that no amount of troops in no amount of time can ever achieve all the objectives we seek in Afghanistan.”
To read more click here. I doubt we are going to be knowing much about what else in the NIE until after the election. And compare the administration’s refusal to declassify the NIE on Afghanistan to when they want to get other information out.
Update: Meanwhile, the U.S. commanders on the ground are making the same dire predictions that the classified NIE does, according to this story in the WSJ.
Second Update: Sarah Palin is on the case. Actively engaged. Perhaps less to fear after all!
Third Update: Maureen Dowd claims that Sarah is not so much actively engaged on the Afghan issue as speed dating through it:
Sarah speed-dated diplomacy on Tuesday. She had her very first national security briefing from the director of national intelligence and then went to a meeting with the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai. He thanked her for the help of the Alaskan National Guard in Afghanistan and told her about his young son, Mirwais, which means “the Light of the House.” Then she met with President Álvaro Uribe of Colombia.
So is that a good thing or bad thing?
I have a new story on Huffington Post this morning about the Bush administration’s assertion of executive privilege to prevent Karl Rove and others from testifying about the firing of U.S. attorneys. An excerpt below:
The Justice Department filed papers in court late Monday asking a federal judge to temporarily set aside his own order directing White House officials to testify before Congress about the firings of nine U.S. attorneys.
The filing was in response to a July 31 opinion by U.S. District Court Judge John D. Bates that the Bush administration’s claims of executive privilege in refusing to allow White House officials to testify about the firings was “unprecedented” and “entirely unsupported by existing case law.”
The Bush administration action indicates that despite recent correspondence to Congress suggesting otherwise, it is still strongly resisting subpoenas of White House officials to testify about the politically sensitive issue of the firings of the U.S. attorneys.
In his decision, Bates said he doubted that if the White House or administration appealed his decision, they would have an even remote possibility of prevailing:
“The aspect of this lawsuit that is unprecedented is the notion that [former White House Counsel Harriett] Miers [one of those subpoenaed] is absolutely immune from compelled testimony.”
In the past, the Supreme Court had reserved claims by presidents of absolute immunity only for “very narrow circumstances” such as for issues of national security or foreign affairs, Bates wrote in his opinion. Testimony about the firings of U.S. attorneys was not in that class and therefore there was little likelihood that a higher court would reverse his decision, he noted…
Congress, however, has overwhelmingly voted to compel such testimony.
In February, the House of Representatives voted 223-32 to hold Miers and White House chief of staff Joshua Bolten in contempt of Congress for refusing to testify and provide documents about the U.S. attorneys to the House Judiciary Committee. Both the House and Senate Judiciary Committees have similarly approved contempt citations for former White House chief political aide Karl Rove.
After Judge Bates’ decision, White House counsel Fred Fielding said in a letter to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) that the White House wished to await an appeal of Bates’s decision before even “entertaining any requesting for Mr. Bolten’s compliance with the Senate Judiciary Committee subpoena.”
Such an appeal would mean that the aides would almost certainly not testify before the current Congress and not until a new president is in office next year.
But Fielding seemingly reversed course last week, informing the House Judiciary Committee that the White House now wished to negotiate with Congress about possible testimony…
The request for a stay also comes not long after a report in the Huffington Post that former Bush administration officials in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division have refused to voluntarily talk to investigators with the Department’s Inspector General about the politicization of the Civil Rights Division. Because of their refusal to voluntarily talk to investigators, the Department has taken the extraordinary step of subpoenaing senior attorneys from its own rank to testify before a federal grand jury as a means to compel their cooperation.
If Bates’ previous opinion is any guide, it appears unlikely that he would agree to the Justice Department’s requests. In his 93-page opinion, Bates, a conservative jurist appointed by President Bush in 2001, wrote:
“Presidential autonomy, such as it is, cannot mean that the executive’s actions are totally insulated from scrutiny by Congress. That would eviscerate Congress’ historical opinion.”
To read the entire post, click here.
Hillary Rodham Clinton is not going to be the vice presidential nominee. (The only glimmer of possibility that that could ever be the case is because this blog just said it wasn’t.) So why is the NYT devoting so many column inches– or pixels– to that possibility?
It’s not going to be Hagel or Lieberman, either, so at first glance it was difficult to understand the point of this story as well. Still, an interesting read for the history lesson.
Politico reports that McCain will announce his running mate on Aug. 29, the day after Obama accepts the nomination of his party.
Josh Marshall on Biden Buzz.
At the end of the day, my analysis needs to be no longer than a few sentences: If Obama selects Biden, he is thinking about governing. If he selects Bayh, he is acting politically. And if it Kaine, he is thinking politics, acting from his heart, or both.
He placed a late night call to Sideny Blumenthal, but alas, in the end, no one could save him.
Marty Lederman and Emptwheel on Judge Bates’ executive privilege decision.
Serious muckraking from Half Moon Bay:
HALF MOON BAY — A developer who hopes to build 129 upscale homes in Half Moon Bay has been contributing $20,000 a month to the same lobbying firm the city employs to ensure passage of the bill that would help him get the homes built.
Palo Alto developer Charles “Chop” Keenan has written monthly checks to California Strategies, a Sacramento-based consulting and lobbying firm the city also hired in April in an effort to pass AB1991, it was noted at Tuesday’s City Council meeting in Half Moon Bay.
AB1991 would exempt Keenan’s development from environmental protections that would normally prevent the construction of a subdivision on sensitive wetlands, which occur on a property known as Beachwood. The bill emerged from a $41 million lawsuit Keenan won against the city. Under the terms of the settlement, reached in April, the city will owe Keenan more than $18 million if AB1991 does not pass the state Senate by the end of this month.
Both the city and Keenan began making separate payments of $20,000 a month to California Strategies in April, a fact that led both state Senator Leland Yee (D-San Francisco) and Councilman Jim Grady to allege an ethical conflict of interest.
Yee called the new information a “bombshell.”
“I am certainly shocked and disturbed by the revelation that the firm was retained by both the developer and the city council. What happens is that when you have a lobbyist try to negotiate that bill, you wonder
whether they’re lobbying in the best interests of the city or in the best interests of the developer,” said Yee, who withdrew his support for AB1991 back in April when the settlement’s specifics were announced.
Two Half Moon Bay City Council members met with Yee on Wednesday to ask him to sponsor the bill for a vote in the Senate, where it is stalled in committee. He said he could not support any version of the bill, even if it were rewritten, if it sought to “suspend any environmental parameters whatsoever.”
To read the rest of the story click here. I wish I could dateline a story from Half Moon Bay– has to be one of the coolest datelines ever. Of course this blog goes and writes and datelines from everywhere! So who knows someday? NYT: “Obama’s Southern Strategy Omits Arkansas, So Far” I know quite a bit about Arkansas politics, and Obama could probably be a lot more competitive than he believes. I’m going to post about this at some point. Meanwhile, I fondly remember some dog days of summer from Arkansas. From my archives: serious reporting I did on corruption in Little Rock, Arkansas’ traffic court can be found here and here. I also did some writing about Mike Huckabee when he was governor back in the day. Off course Huckabee is now a game show host on Fox, and I am totally in the tank for him anyway ever since he appointed me as an Arkansas Traveler– which is like being an honorary citizen of Arkansas. I should note that my cousin Joanne is also an Arkansas Traveler; she was appointed by then-governor Bill Clinton. And my jealousy of that led to my own drive to someday be an Arkansas Traveler in my own right– a pursuit of which has perhaps compromised the integrity of my journalism in that I went totally into the tank for Mike Huckabee after he appointed me as one. And one last comment about this all– it is through my cousin that I know someone in Half Moon Bay, which is why I posted the above article from there.
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