Only One Thing Can Keep The Colorado Senate Seat From Flipping Blue-- Frackenlooper's Sordid History Of Taking Bribes

Polling has told us a generic Democrat would beat Colorado's doomed Republican Trump enabler, Cory Gardner. Polling also tells us that Frackenlooper would beat Gardner-- or at least that he would have before he got busted and fined for taking bribes. What about the progressive in the race, Andrew Romanoff? No one knows because Chuck Schumer has leaned on all the polling firms to leave Romanoff out of the polls-- or at least not to report their findings. That's Schumer; it's how he hopes to fill the Senate with as many Kyrsten Sinemas as he can.

Watch how Inside-the-Beltway Washington Post reporter conflates the Democratic Party with Schumer and his corrupt machine: Former governor John Hickenlooper’s ethics woes have unsettled a Colorado Senate race that Democrats consider one of their best chances of flipping a Republican-held seat, with the quirky brewery owner’s reputation taking a hit with voters within days of the state’s primary. The two-term governor and former Denver mayor is on the defensive after the Independent Ethics Commission found he violated a state gift ban in 2018 when he accepted a ride in a Maserati limousine at a conference in Turin, Italy, and traveled on a private jet owned by a home builder to Connecticut for the commissioning of the USS Colorado submarine... After his short-lived run for president last year, Hickenlooper was considered an ideal Senate recruit for the Democratic Party-- a well-- known candidate who had won statewide twice and a former small-business owner who opened the first brewpub in Colorado. In his recent ads, Hickenlooper emphasizes how as governor he took the state from 40th in job creation to first."

He's not well-liked. Well, he is well-liked in DC, but not in Denver. And the ethics scandal is just making it worse.

Facing ethics complaints, Hickenlooper, 68, refused to testify at the video conference and only appeared last week after the commission, some of whom he appointed while governor, held him in contempt of a subpoena.

His taxpayer-funded attorney, Mark Grueskin, argued in a legal filing in May that the video conferencing format denied the candidate's due process rights to consult in person with counsel and asked for a delay.

On Friday, Grueskin asked the commission to purge the contempt charge. The panel refused.

With mail ballots arriving this week, the backlash from what one commissioner termed the former governor's "disrespect for the rule of law" is causing some voters to reconsider their preferred candidate.

"I thought he was a good governor, and he did good things for the state," said Anne Holton, 72, a retired assistant attorney general and registered Democrat who planned to vote for Hickenlooper.

"But if there were more to come out from the ethics commission, and if there were something I just thought 'I can't live with that,' I would vote for Romanoff," added the former state employee. "I always drop my ballot off at the last minute."





Hickenlooper's ethics issues burst onto the national stage on June 5 when President Donald Trump tweeted about the commission holding the former governor in contempt saying he, "Got caught big time with his hand in the cookie jar. Should be the end of his Colorado Senate bid. Makes no difference, we already have a GREAT SENATOR."

Gardner's unabashed embrace of Trump's policies on immigration and the environment is widely considered a liability in a state where Democrats swept the 2018 midterms, winning the governorship and both houses of the General Assembly. Polls over the past eight months consistently showed Hickenlooper beating the 45-year-old Yuma Republican by double digits in a state Hillary Clinton carried by five percentage points in 2016.

"Republicans are going to be tied to the president whether they like it or not," said Jessica Taylor, Senate and governors editor for the Cook Political Report, which rated the race a toss-up.

"I think Cory Gardner can run ahead of Trump, but can he run ahead of him enough to win?" she asked, saying Hickenlooper's ethics issues "have given Gardner an opening."

Another good reason to vote for Romanoff, the better candidate-- by far, in any case. "Like Sanders," wrote Oldham, "Romanoff supports Medicare-for-all and the Green New Deal, making him a favorite among Colorado's growing number of millennials. Hickenlooper favors strengthening the Affordable Care Act and supports a plan to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. Young people are phone banking for Romanoff, calling thousands of voters each week, seeking to boost the momentum provided by the ethics controversy... Romanoff called on Hickenlooper to drop out of the race, saying that his questionable conduct endangered Democrat's chances of beating Gardner. 'He represents a threat we cannot afford,' said Romanoff, who lost two statewide races in 2010 and 2014 after he served eight years in the state House from 2000 to 2008. Even though he won the state caucuses and emerged from the state assembly with top billing on the primary ballot, Romanoff trails Hickenlooper in fundraising." You can contribute to Romanoff's campaign by clicking on the Blue America 2020 Senate thermometer on the right.

And this is not the first time Frackenlooper has been caught taking bribes. He's a total Schumer kind of candidate-- as corrupt as the day is long. Over the weekend, John Frank and Shaun Boyd reported in the Colorado Sun that "Hickenlooper accepted millions of dollars from corporations and nonprofits to fund initiatives and positions in his office-- an arrangement that came with limited oversight and public disclosure despite the potential conflicts of interest. The most significant corporate donations came from the oil and gas industry, where Anadarko Petroleum and Noble Energy gave at least $325,000 to Hickenlooper’s office in his second term alone, according to a months-long analysis of state records conducted by the Colorado Sun and CBS4 Denver. At least one donation from Anadarko came in May 2017, weeks after the deadly Firestone explosion that investigators traced back to a well owned by the company... His ties to corporate interests are facing renewed scrutiny as he seeks the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate in the June 30 primary. His campaign rival, Andrew Romanoff, the former state House speaker, is highlighting Hickenlooper’s close relationship with the oil and gas industry and past campaign contributions from energy executives. Most of the entities that made the gifts, grants or donations worked on issues in front of state regulators or legislators, but the governor’s office did not have a written policy to prevent conflicts of interest. The analysis found no evidence that the donations were connected to official action taken by Hickenlooper’s administration."

From NJ to Maine, Big Rat Bastard Gummers of a feather flock together: Part 2, Our old pal, the Big Rat Bastard Gummer of NJ

Yes, it's not one but two Big Rat Bastard Gummers, last week in Becky's Diner in Portland, Maine, where the Pine State's gummer endorsed the gummer of the Garden State for president.

by Ken

In yesterday's Part 1, we focused on the twice-elected "Idiot Thug Running Maine," a figure who to an almost unique degree combines rolling-in-the-aisles buffoonery with the ability to strike terror in the hearts of citizen students of American government and American society. A man who might be the fraternal twin of the original Big Rat Bastard Gummer of NJ.

The original Big Rat Bastard Gummer is now devoting time -- precious time he could be spending corrupting, influence-peddling, and browbeating terrorizing people who disrespect him (e.g., by speaking the truth) -- to waiting for an apology from "the liberal media." On Monday Erik Wemple chronicled this startling development on washingtonpost.com's Erik Wemple Blog, in a post called "Chris Christie asks media to apologize for bridge coverage. Journalists say no way":

In a Fox News interview yesterday, Republican New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a recently declared presidential candidate, called on the media to apologize for its coverage of the lane closures on the George Washington Bridge. Speaking to Fox News Sunday substitute host Shannon Bream, Christie said, “And you know what happens when the media, Shannon, gets crazy over a story, like they got crazy over Bridgegate and were convicting me the day afterwards of heinous acts. Now, when they realize that there’s no truth to what they said, now they say, ‘Oh, he didn’t do anything, but he created an atmosphere,'” said Christie. “Well, you know, that’s what the liberal media does when rather than saying ‘I’m sorry,’ which is what they should say.”

"Journalists," Erik wrote, "are not saying anything of the sort," and he's got the quotes to prove it:

• "Steve Kornacki, the MSNBC host who has provided extensive coverage of the scandal says: 'From my standpoint, I have nothing to apologize for.' "

• "Martin Gottlieb, editor of The Record of North Jersey (formerly known as the Bergen Record), says: 'We've never reported anything without reporting it fairly and exhaustively. I'm very, very proud of the way we've done this.' "

• "Dean Baquet, executive editor of the New York Times, writes in an e-mail: 'I think our coverage of the governor has been fair. So can't imagine a reason for an apology, but happy to hear if he has a complaint.' "


THERE'S A REASON WHY NONE OF THESE
GENTLEMEN IS IN A RUSH TO APOLOGIZE

They and their organziations haven't done anything that calls for an apology. On the contrary, they've been doing their job.

As usual -- as in most every time the Big Rat Bastard Gummer opens hs big rat bastard mouth -- the Krispyman is lying his stinking guts out in that little Fox Noise vignette with Shannon Bream. No one with a working brain has suggested anything that could be remotely construed to mean that "he didn't do anything." There just isn't yet direct evidence of a link between the boss and all the appointees of his who have been implicated by those amazing e-mails in the scheme to shut down the Fort Lee approach to the George Washington Bridge, to punish Fort Lee Mayor Mark Sokolich for declining to endorse the Big Rat Bastard Gummer's reelection campaign.

As MSNBC's Steve Kornacki pointed out to Erik Wemple:

In the weeks leading up to the explosive e-mail revelations, notes Kornacki, Christie was dismissive of reporters who pried into the alleged wrongdoing. He even joked about his role in the matter. “Unbeknownst to everybody, I was actually the guy out there — I was in overalls and a hat — but I actually was the guy working the cones out there,” he riffed. Media organizations, however, stayed on the trail. “There was something to this story and Chris Christie had insisted there wasn’t,” says Kornacki, who calls Christie’s fixation with his own non-involvement a “straw man.”

The fact is, the degree of Krispy administration involvement in Bridgegate which can already be demonstrated via the e-mails is simply staggering. These are all people who were appointed by him, were close to him, and were presumably doing the jobs he put them in their positions to do -- far-right governance via intimidation and brazen disregard for ethics or law.

The Bi Rat Bastard Gummer conveniently forgot to mention on TV that he had already thrown a turdload of KrispyKrats under the bus, and that already two of them have been indicted and another has pled guilty in Bridgegate-related charges. (Maybe the reason he's so confident that none of them can successfully throw him under a bus is that the bus hasn't been built that he can be thrown under, not to mention the number of people who would have to be involved in such a throw-under.)


FAR FROM BEING COMPLETED, THE SCOPE
OF KRISPY INVESTIGATIONS IS GROWING

Covering not just Bridgegate but such Krispy horrors as his administration's threat to withhold Sandy relief funding for Hoboken (from the federal government, not even state money) if Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer didn't go along with one of his multimillion-dollar influence-peddling schemes, his systematic transformation of the already far from pure Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, a traditional politcal patronage dumping ground, into both a funder and an enforcer of his agenda to promote white-collar crime (well, the right kind of white-collar crime, the kind that benefits KrispyKronies and rich people he'd like to make KrispyKronies). That's just to name some of the high points.

The Record's Martin Gottlieb touched on this in his conversation with Erik Wemple.

When asked about the thrust of the Christie reporting, Gottlieb noted that his paper has tracked the allegations into all kinds of fertile tributaries, including this piece from last weekend about how the Port Authority is under siege from investigators: “More than 15 officials — including three in-house attorneys — have lawyered up amid an escalating investigation into the Port Authority’s decision to redirect $1.8 billion in toll money from its Hudson River crossings to fix roads in New Jersey.”

“The story keeps moving,” adds Gottlieb. “What he’s doing now doesn’t seem very exceptional in terms of blaming the press,” he continues, “but I think the facts are what they are.”

And this worthless pile of putridity, the Big Rat Bastard Gummer of NJ, has the effrontery to claim that he's owed an apology? In what demented and degraded universe is he living?

And the Rat Bastard has the pure gall to go on Fox Noise to accuse "the liberal media" of slandering honest folk and then refusing to apologize? I'm sorry, he's just not that stupid. He must know perfectly well that "liberal media" apologize all the time when they get stories wrong. It's his pals in the far-right-wing media, notably the Fox Noisemakers, who make it their goal to destroy political enemies by whatever means necessary, not giving a damn when they cross into blatant fictionalizing (aka "lying").

Instead of demanding an apology, not to mention mounting a campaign for the presidency, this grotesque buffoon should be going on TV to announce his resignation owing to his intolerable corruption and unremitting assault on decent New Jerseyans. That's what he needs to say, but an apology wouldn't be unwelcome.


NEWS FROM THE KRISPY KAMPAIGN

Washingtonpost.com's Alexandra Petri shared these "Rejected Chris Christie slogans," explaining: "Through some acts of imagination and a variety of derring-do, I got a look at what might have become his slogans. I think he picked the strongest one." This is how you can tell it's satire: why, the very idea of the Big Rat Bastard Gummer going with the truth -- ha ha ha!

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Which Freshmen Will Wind Up With Ethics Violations? You Can Already Tell By Their Attitudes

New Jersey corruption: Norcross (D), Christie (R)

New Jersey politicians have a reputation. There's a transpartisan/transactional culture of corruption that permeates Garden State politics, exemplified by the cozy relationship between the country's most corrupt Governor, Republican Chris Christie, and the most venal and slimy batch of Democratic Machine bosses anywhere in America, particularly Brian Stack, Joseph DiVincenzo and George Norcross. Norcross just installed his younger brother, Donald, in an open congressional seat. And the sclerotic, out of touch Democratic party leadership in Congress gave Norcross-the-Younger a plumb seat on their caucus' Steering Committee. Aside from being installed as the next Congressman from Camden, Cherry Hill and the Jersey suburbs east of Philly, Donald Norcross is filling in the last days of the unexpired term of Rob Andrews-- who retired as part of a deal to avoid a criminal investigation into campaign finance fraud charges. Though he sits in a D+13 district Obama won with 66% in 2012, Norcross' first vote was to join the Republicans to vote for the Keystone XL Pipeline. IT's going to be a long, ugly tenure.

The Norcross name defines grotesque corruption in South Jersey. Like all the other freshmen, he was required to take an ethics training course as part of his freshmen orientation last week. Fear not; he's immune. And so are most of the Republican freshmen, many of whom went on the record claiming there's no reason to force them into ethics training. Like Norcross, right-wing fanatic Tom Emmer (R-MN) is replacing a scandal-plagued crook, Michele Bachmann, who escaped a serious investigation by prematurely retiring.

“Pay for everything yourself, don’t take any gifts, and-- if you have a question about either of those two rules-- here’s the people you call,” Emmer quipped Tuesday morning, resting up in the basement of the Capitol Hill Club after a chilly photo shoot on the East Front Capitol steps with his fellow freshmen. “It’s that basic.”

Emmer and three other incoming members preparing to replace House lawmakers leaving Washington with open ethics reviews, all seemed to feel confident they were well-equipped to navigate Congress within the bounds of the 675 pages of rules governing the House, after a three-hour ethics briefing on the first day of the second week of orientation.

The session, featuring staff from the House Ethics Committee, the Office of Compliance and the Office of House Employment Counsel was helpful, according to Emmer, but nothing new. With nearly a decade of city council service, six years in the Minnesota House and a career as a lobbyist and lawyer under his belt, the 53-year-old said he is familiar with “conflicts of interest” and ethics policies.

Republican Glenn Grothman told CQ Roll Call, “Wisconsin ethics laws are even stricter than these,” as he exited the briefing. After more than two decades in state-level lawmaking, Grothman will replace retiring Rep. Tom Petri, who asked the House Ethics Committee to review his actions, amid questions about his relationship with defense contractors headquartered in his district that may have benefitted Petri’s financial interests.

The lesson delivered in the Capitol Visitor Center basement could be the only training incoming members receive on what might land them at the center of an ethics probe.

Although all new staffers must receive ethics training within 60 days of their start date, and get refreshed on ethics each year, there is no mandate for House lawmakers to undergo annual ethics training.

Rhode Island Democrat David Cicilline and Virginia Republican Scott Rigell, both elected to the House in 2010, are teaming up to request a rule change that would require all lawmakers to undergo an annual class on ethics in the 114th Congress. In an interview, Cicilline described a letter the bipartisan duo will send to leadership to make their case. Cicilline said undergoing annual training is “not only beneficial to members,” but also to the reputation of the institution.

In 2007, the Senate mandated training for all senators and staff. Senior staff must complete an additional hour of ethics training once per Congress. Employees who work on Capitol Hill must attend a live briefing, while district staff based in other cities can fulfill ethics training online.

“My takeaway would be there’s a very complex problem of trying to maintain ethics in Congress,” said Republican Brian Babin, a Texas dentist who replaces GOP firebrand Steve Stockman in January. The congressman and three members of his staff were recently subpoenaed by a federal court in the District of Columbia for what appears to be a grand jury investigation into Stockman’s alleged flouting of campaign finance law.

Babin said that after the general overview, he was sure he would have discussions and questions, probably related to gifts and travel. “If there’s any area where it doesn’t look like it’s cut and dry,” he said he will seek advice. He will also hire a team of veteran Capitol Hill staffers who know how to abide by all the rules.

...Those who want to mandate ethics training claim the rules are not only complicated, but evolve over time. For example, Ciccilline pointed out that the House has “very specific limitations on how your name can be used” in coordination with nonprofit events. There are also complex, perhaps murky rules when it comes to social media. Incoming members might not realize their Facebook pages, or the foreign trips they are planning, could be subject to ethics review.

“New members are obviously developing a whole set of procedures for their offices, building staff, receiving a lot of information,” Cicilline said. He clarified that he’s not “pre-judging” what his new colleagues might do, but believes all members would benefit. A bill he introduced with the same intent has support from 52 Democrats and six Republicans.

None of the freshmen of the 114th Congress expressed explicit support for mandatory House ethics training, though Zeldin indicated he might be open to learning more about the proposal. Emmer is opposed.

“The idea that you would make it mandatory, I mean … if you can read, if you are capable of being here, doing the work to become a representative, I think you’re capable of doing the homework and understanding the rules,” he said.

And what, exactly, does that say about his predecessor? And, by the way, not every politician from New Jersey is part of the Christie/Norcross system of corruption. Former state Assembly Majority Leader Bonnie Watson Coleman is a freshman now too. She's an enthusiastic proponent of reform and honesty in government. "I support," she told me this morning, "mandatory ethics training for incoming members, or members who have never received it. And then, I support mandatory training on changes and updates, annually, if there are any."

"In policy terms, the kind thing to do is usually the right thing to do" (Ian Welsh)

"Torture does not get useful information out of people compared to regular interrogation," says Ian. "It is extremely unreliable, this is understood by most professionals in the business. You torture to send a message, and that message is 'we torture'."


"The first thing you should do, in any policy situation, is ask 'what would the golden rule have me do?' Most of the time, this will be the correct policy, which will produce the best results. . . .

"Be kind, and remember, what you insist on your government doing to others changes your government, and will affect its treatment of you."

-- Ian Welsh, in a new blogpost, "Default to Kindness"

by Ken

Count yourself lucky on this one. If I had immediate access to my normal music sources, this post would have led off with a performance of "Love and Kindness," the gentle and charming song from Frank Loesser's Most Happy Fella. (I did find the lyrics and a ringtone for it.)

Instead, let me note that Ian adds to his suggestion that "in policy terms, the kind thing to do is usually the right thing to do": "I'd go so far as to say, almost always."

The position Ian stakes out in this lovely post isn't new for him, but I don't think he's ever expanded it as fully as he does in this new post, "Default to Kindness." Here is the basic proposition.

The first thing you should do, in any policy situation, is ask “what would the golden rule have me do?” Most of the time, this will be the correct policy, which will produce the best results. People who are treated with kindness, in general, reciprocate and are productive.  Yes, there are exceptions, but they are just that, exceptions.

And here is a series of "for example"s Ian offers:

Treating prisoners with kindness nets Finland half the recidivism rate the US, with its punitive prisons gets.  That is, only half as many prisoners, once released, commit a crime in Finland.

Single payer or comprehensive universal healthcare has costs about a third less than the US system, and produces better results.

Not committing war crimes makes people much less interested in killing you.  Not torturing enemies means they are far less likely to torture your people.

Helping other nations improve their standard of living makes them less likely to kill us, and better trade partners.

Happy employees are more productive and produce more profit, yet we deliberately treat employees horribly in the assumption that we get more out of them that way, despite reams of evidence to the contrary.

High minimum wages do not decrease employment, there is even some evidence that they may increase employment.

Torture does not get useful information out of people compared to regular interrogation.  It is extremely unreliable, this is understood by most professionals in the business.  You torture to send a message, and that message is “we torture”.

Nor is Ian much impressed with the idea of meting out kindness in accordance with some presumed index of kindness-worthiness. "Kindness," he argues, "is the default position even with the worst people.  If you allow rapists to be raped, you become a rapist.  If you torture torturers, you are now a torturer."

You do not, in the old phrase, sink to their level.  That doesn’t mean being a pushover, it doesn’t mean no justice, it does mean that the State has no business seeking revenge and that the rules, which should default to kindness, apply equally the worst people and the best.  This is not just the right thing to do, it is the only thing to do, because the State often decides the best people are the worst people, as even a cursory examination of history will attest, and it very often makes mistakes, as the many errors in capital cases have brought to light.  But, again, even if someone is the worst of the worst beyond even the shadow of a doubt, they must be treated with kindness even as they are incarcerated, not just because it is the right thing to do, but because doing anything else degrades those who do it.  Torturers are always corrupted by torturing, occupying armies always become weak, corrupt and brutal.  You cannot do evil and not be, yourself, scarred by it.

Which leads Ian to the conclusion I've put atop this post: "Be kind, and remember, what you insist on your government doing to others changes your government, and will affect its treatment of you."

Worth thinking about, I think.

#

Billy Graham may not have been a religious crackpot, but he paved the way for a lot of them, including his son Franklin

Is hate-mongering maniac Franklin Graham (right) abusing the name of his 94-year-old father Billy Graham (left) to promote his own crusade against morality and decency?

"I do not believe that Billy Graham would have instigated the ad essentially endorsing Romney. I wouldn’t be surprised if Billy Graham didn’t even know about it. I think that he is being exploited by his son to further Franklin’s political objectives."

-- Sally Quinn, in a WaPo "On Faith" column,
"Sins of the son: Sad treatment for Billy Graham"

by Ken

Hey, I'm surprised to be quoting Sally Quinn too. But the subject of this column caught my eye. I'm less persuaded than she is that "Billy Graham was and is a great man," though in fairness she does deal with some of the dark side of his legacy, notably the horribly embarrassing anti-Semitic ranting he was caught in with the release of the Nixon tapes. But Graham has been an important figure in American life, and his legacy includes a fair amount of spiritual uplift to the large numbers of people who have fallen under his sway. And as Quinn notes, his horizons notably broadened over the years, and that can't have been entirely lost on his followers.

I'm also not as sure as Quinn that Billy Graham has been as resolutely nonpolitical as she believes. There is a long history of up-close and personal hobnobbing with right-wing political figures which again I don't think was lost on his followers. But I think there was in his mind a line that he tried hard not to cross, a line that his son Franklin not only doesn't believe in but seems to wish to obliterate.

Near the end of her piece Quinn writes:

Today, at 94, Billy Graham is feeble, has hearing, vision and other health problems, and uses walkers and wheelchairs. He spends most of his day watching television. [There's a link here to a May 2011 Newsweek-Daily Beast piece, "The Fight Over Billy Graham's Legacy."] He has never been as active in the [Billy Graham Evangelistic] Association as has Franklin [who heads the association]. He is a revered figure around the world, particularly because he has stayed above the fray, never using his religion for political purposes or personal gain.

I've jumped ahead here. Let's back up.

On Sunday, two days before the election, a full page advocacy ad in The Washington Post featured a huge picture of the Rev. Billy Graham, along with a signed statement by the world-famous evangelist advising readers to "VOTE BIBLICAL VALUES TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 6."

Of all the sad things that have happened during this year's seemingly endless, divisive and vitriolic campaign, this ad was the saddest.

It read: "The legacy we leave behind for our children, grandchildren, and this great nation is crucial. As I approach my 94th birthday, [which was Nov. 7] I realize this election could be my last. I believe it is vitally important that we cast our ballots for candidates who base their decisions on biblical principles and support the nation of Israel. I urge you to vote for those who protect the sanctity of life and support the biblical definition of marriage between a man and a woman. Vote for biblical values this Nov. 6 and pray with me that America will remain one nation under God."

"How did it happen," Quinn wonders, that Graham, who "has prided himself on never endorsing any one politician," who "is a man of God and ministers to everyone" and has become "more and more accepting and pluralistic as he has has aged" -- "how did it happen that he virtually endorsed Mitt Romney the weekend before the election?"

Quinn points out that the elder Reverend Graham was seen photo-opping with the GOP candidate, in a manner that suggested a virtual endorsement by the Billy Graham Evangelical Association, run by the Rev. Franklin G.

What was so surprising was that the Billy Graham Evangelical Association Web site at that time considered Mormonism  a "cult." Graham had once described cult members as those who "reject what Christians have believed for 2,000 years, and substitute instead their own beliefs for the clear teachings of the Bible."  Shortly after the meeting, that listing disappeared.  According to Ken Barun, the Association's chief of staff, "we removed the (cult) information from the website because we do not wish to participate in a theological debate about something that has become politicized during this campaign."

So calling Mormonism a cult is a "theological debate that has become politicized" while the debate over abortion and same sex marriage is not?

Quinn points out too that Franklin G's Billy Graham Association bought 14 full-page ads in North Carolina newspapers supporting thel amendment inscribing "one man plus one woman" into the state constitution as its definition of marriage.

Franklin Graham has made his position on that issue very clear. "It grieves me, " he said, "that our president would now affirm same sex marriage, though I believe it grieves God even more."

Franklin  also said in Decision Magazine, "there is no place for comprmise or straight forward moral issues such as abortion and same sex marriage.  God has given us clear biblical direction that we must follow and obey."

As I noted, Quinn is relatively forthright about some of the darker corners of the Reverend Billy's life -- too tactfully so, I would argue. With the Reverend Franklin she is blunter but still too tactful.

But Franklin Graham is no Billy Graham. Where Billy Graham has always been a voice for inclusion, even of religions other than his own, Franklin has not. In fact, in April 2010 the Pentagon rescinded an invitation for Franklin to attend their National Day of Prayer service because, after Sept. 11 he had referred to Islam as a "very evil and wicked religion" and said that Muslims are "enslaved" by their own religion.

Franklin has always leaned toward being more political than his father. He owns a house in Alaska and befriended Sarah Palin. He invited Palin to come visit his father in North Carolina. Shortly afterward, his father issued a statement saying that "Sarah and her family will always be welcome in the Graham family home."

I don't have to even pretend to be tactful. The glaring reality is that Franklin is a mental disease. I don't mean that he has a mental disease (although I'm certainly not saying he doesn't) but that he is one.

He is a debased maniac whose existence is based on ignorance (everything he knows about Islam could be inscribed on the head of a pin) and loathsomeness (he appears incapable of drawing inspiration from anything except the wealth of sociopathic demons raging in his brain). He is at the head of the present-day cadre of Crap Christians who have by now fully divorced their faith from even the most tangential connection to morality or ethics to focus entirely on the 24/7 crusade to desecrate Jesus and make a mockery of everything he lived and died for.

"I do not believe that Billy Graham would have instigated the ad essentially endorsing Romney," writes Quinn.

I wouldn't be surprised if Billy Graham didn't even know about it.  I think that he is being exploited by his son to further Franklin's political objectives. I also believe that it is a travesty because it is not the legacy he would have left behind, had it not been for Franklin using his father's name and taking advantage of his father's popularity.

Billy Graham was and is a great man.

Franklin should stop this exploitation now.

CONFIDENTIAL TO SALLY Q: The chances that Franklin will "stop this exploitation now" can be rated as slim to none. It's who he is and what he does.

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Is playing with poisonous snakes a demonstration of "faith" or just craziness? How about believing nonsensical religious dogma?

Reports Gallup Politics: "Gallup has asked Americans to choose among these three explanations for the origin and development of human beings 11 times since 1982. Although the percentages choosing each view have varied from survey to survey, the 46% who today choose the creationist explanation is virtually the same as the 45% average over that period -- and very similar to the 44% who chose that explanation in 1982. The 32% who choose the "theistic evolution" view that humans evolved under God's guidance is slightly below the 30-year average of 37%, while the 15% choosing the secular evolution view is slightly higher (12%)."


"Camera in hand, I watched as the man I'd photographed and gotten to know over the past year writhed, turned pale and slipped away, a victim of his unwavering faith, but also a testament to it. A family member called paramedics when Mack finally allowed it, but it was too late. Mack Wolford drew his final, labored breaths late Sunday night. He was 44."

-- Washington Post photographer Lauren Pond, in "Why I watched a snake-handling pastor die for his faith"

by Ken

So, according to the Gallup folks, "In U.S., 46% Hold Creationist View of Human Origins."

OK, it's kind of a creepy, crappy poll, with respondents being offered only three options. As paraphrased by the Gallupies: humans evolved, with God guiding (32%); humans evolved, but God had no part in process (15%); God created humans in present form (46%).

I suspect that many people hearing these possible responses don't even understand how they're related, or how each choice may or may not reflect their beliefs. Still, the 46% winner does indeed state: "God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so."

So that's what the 46% are giving their nod to, and it's small comfort that the report notes that the "ooh that God, he's such a creator" camp has averaged 45% over the two decades that Gallup has been running this loopy poll.

I know we Americans pride ourselves on not "judging" other people's religions, though of course we do it all the time. (Anyone for Islam?) Still, I don't have much hesitation in saying that the respondents who chose "God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so" are all dunces -- either imbeciles or loons.

Of course it's very likely that many respondents picked that option because it's closer to what they believe than either of the others. They may not, for instance, really and truly believe in the "last 10,000 years or so" hokum. Still, they didn't tell the pollster that they couldn't pick any of his/her cockamamie choices, so I say bring on the dunce caps! This way people who aren't imbeciles or loons will know better than to pay attention to anything said by any of these clowns.

It's no knock on the ancients who wrote the Bible (and again, I'm sorry, but if people want to say that the writing of the Bible was inspired by God, fine, but if they want to pretend that any of it was written by God, then again, they're either imbeciles or loons) to point out that they had a limited understanding of the world around them. Heck, we still do. But we understand a lot more than they did, because we have all those shoulders to stand on.

Nevertheless, the Bible was written with the extremely limited understanding of that time, and therefore is filled with all manner of guesses, a few of which turned out to be in the ballpark, but most of which were just plain wrong. Like the notions that: (a) humans came into existence all at once in their present form, and (b) this happened 10,000 or so years ago. It would be just about impossible to claim anything wronger than either of these claims -- the wrongness quotient is 100%. And people who not only don't know that but use their wrongness as a weapon to bully people who are not either imbeciles or loons are thugs and monsters.

Talk of religion-based crackpottery brings me to the strangely fascinating piece by Washington Post photographer Lauren Pond, agonizing over the ethics of her standing by watching a snake-handling pastor whom she had befriended die without doing anything except taking pictures.

I admit, the headline rubbed me the wrong way: "Why I watched a snake-handling pastor die for his faith." Of course I recognized the story of the nutjob pastor down in Crackerland whose "faith" called on him to play with poisonous snakes, one of which did what its species is designed to do: bit the stupid sumbitch. And since the nutjob's "faith" forbids seeking medical care, which presumably would demonstrate a lack of perfect "faith," he suffered for a number of hours and then died. As, incidentally, his father had done before him.

I'm sorry, boys and girls, but this isn't a story about "faith." This is a story about imbeciles and loons.

Lauren Pond explains her connection to the deceased:

He wasn't just a source and a subject in my year-long documentary project about Pentecostal serpent-handling; he was also a friend: We shared a meal at the cafe where members of his family work; he screened videos about himself for me at his house; I once stayed the night on his couch.

And she explains how fate happened to place her on the scene for the faithful pastor's demise.

I decided to attend the worship service Mack was holding at Panther Wildlife Management Area, in the southwestern part of the state, on a whim, thinking that it would be good to see him again, and that I'd make the seven-hour drive back to Washington the following morning. But I haven't returned. I have been staying at a friend's house close to Bluefield, speaking with Mack’s family members, and gradually allowing myself to feel some of the raw emotion that has been percolating for days.

Oh, it's not as if Lauren doesn't get that this business of clergymen playing with deadly snakes rubs a lot of people the wrong way. She describes it, rather picturesquely, as "an enigma to many":

The practices of the Signs Following faith remain an enigma to many. How can people be foolish enough to interpret Mark 16: 17-18 so literally: to ingest poison, such as strychnine, which Mack also allegedly did at Sunday's ceremony; to handle venomous snakes; and, most incomprehensible of all, not to seek medical treatment if bitten? Because of this reaction, many members of this religious community are hesitant to speak to the media, let alone be photographed.

So they're maybe not total imbeciles or loons. They understand that the world considers them a tad, shall we say, enigmatic. Ah, "but Mack was different," Lauren says.

But Mack was different. He allowed me to see what life was like for a serpent-handler outside church, which helped me better understand the controversial religious practice, and, I think, helped me add nuance to my photographs. His passing, my first vivid encounter with death, was both a personal and professional loss for me.

Oh jeez, gimme a break. Hey, nobody dislikes snakes more than I do, but what "serpent-handlers" do is animal abuse.

There's much talk of the stoic suffering of the crackpot pastor's family: mother, daughter, wife, and niece. Like this from Mom, who remember has been through this before:

I couldn’t give up when his dad died, and now that [Mack]’s given his life, I just can’t give up. It’s still the Word, and I want to go on doing what the Word says.

We learn that "after her son was pronounced dead at Bluefield Regional Medical Center, she added, 'I kissed him and I promised him that I would see him again.' Her voice broke."

The only people who show even the tiniest lick of sense are some of the pastor's shaken followers.

Some of the people who attended last Sunday’s service have struggled with Mack's death, as I have. "Sometimes, I feel like we're all guilty of negligent homicide," one man wrote to me in a Facebook message following Mack's death. "I went down there a 'believer.' That faith has seriously been called into question. I was face-to-face with him and watched him die a gruesome death. . . . Is this really what God wants?"

That's a good question.

Well, no, actually it's an idiotic question -- unless it's truly never occurred to the person, in which case congratulations on taking the first step toward the light.

And I have to say that Lauren's great ethical quandaries don't seem to me much better questions.

Her first question is whether she can justify, even to herself, standing by and doing nothing, when in fact -- as she demonstrates -- there wasn't anything she could do. The pastor was adamant about not permitting any call for medical help, and considering that he knew exactly what lay in store for him, if nothing else from his father's experience (and I'm imagining that when you go through the experience of losing your father that way at the age of 15, it tends to stay with you), I don't see how an outsider like a photographer has any options.

(The family members -- that's a different story. But since none of them appears to have a lick of sense or sanity, it's a pretty simple, and stupid, story. I understand that if the good pastor had survived via medical intervention, he might well have blamed the family member who betrayed his faith. He might even have hated that person. Fine. Would you rather live with that or live with standing by and letting the imbecile die?)

Bizarrely, Lauren thinks that other photojournalists' experiences that involve genuine ethical quandaries involve "situations similar to mine."

Pulitzer Prize winner Kevin Carter photographed an emaciated Sudanese child struggling to reach a food center during a famine -- as a vulture waited nearby. He was roundly criticized for not helping the child, which, along with the disturbing memories of the events he had covered and other factors, may have contributed to his suicide. As photojournalists, we have a unique responsibility to record history and share stories in as unbiased and unobtrusive a way as possible. But when someone is hurt and suffering, we have to balance our instincts as professionals with basic human decency and care.

Now that's a toughie. Boy, could we argue the ethics of Kevin Carter's quandary, and probably come to no good conclusion. Now that's an honest-to-goodness ethical quandary.

In my mind, Mack's situation was different from that of a starving child or a civilian wounded in war. He was a competent adult who decided to stand by what he understood to be the word of God, no matter the consequences. And so I've started to come to peace with the fact that everyone in the crowded trailer, including myself, let Mack die as a man true to his faith.

That's all fine, if a little obvious -- up to the "true to his faith" malarkey. True to his imbecility or lunacy would be more like it.

Lauren's second quandary is in some ways even more bizarre: "The more challenging issue for me has been what to do with my images of Mack’s death."

I'm going to say that this question is even easier than the first one. No, actually, I'm going to answer this question with a question: What the f*@k were you doing taking pictures? I understand that it was an enormously stressful time, and someone in that position may not have had the clarity of mind to answer the first question -- shouldn't I do something for this poor man who doesn't have to die? -- so easily in the moment. And I understand that she is, after all, a photographer, and what do photographers do but take photographs?

Except in a situation like this. No, you can't actually help the poor soul -- except maybe by trying to talk sense to the family members who could have. But what the f*@k were you doing taking pictures?

Once the media learned that I was a witness to this tragedy, I was inundated with phone calls and e-mails asking for details of that day, and some seeking permission to use my images. I faced an internal tug of war. What was most important: revealing what had happened, or protecting the privacy of the family and the integrity of my photographic project?

Ultimately, in the face of the criticism and degrading commentary that has followed Mack's death, I've decided that I owe it to his loved ones to communicate what they knew about him and his faith -- as well as what I've learned and observed -- and to publish select images with this essay.

Though I was asked to use discretion in Mack's final hours, not once did anyone force me away or prevent me from photographing the events that unfolded before me on May 27. Perhaps Mack wanted me to be at that oppressively hot and humid park site to document the bite and its lethal aftermath. Perhaps he wanted me to witness his incredible display of conviction, so that I could share with the world a side of his faith that few have gotten to see.

Oh, puh-leeze! (For the morbidly curious, the Post indeed has a whole online gallery of those quandarific photos. I'll be damned if I'm going to filch any of them for DWT readers.)

I suppose I could go on to suggest that some -- perhaps a great deal -- of what is passed off by religious authorities as "faith" is just as loony as playing with deadly snakes, albeit less flashily so. But I'm not going to suggest that. Do I really need to?

#

Infecting Unsuspecting Poor People With Syphilis-- The Aftermath

Which GOP clown keeps strutting around beating his chest and bellowing that he'll never apologize for the U.S.A.? Mittens, I think, although it could be Newt or Perry or any of the seven dwarves. Last year President Obama was big enough to apologize on behalf of the United States. He apologized for secret "medical" experiments carried out on over two thousand Guatemalans in the 1940s. This even predates the U.S. backing for a fascist dictator in the 1950s who, as we saw last week, brutalized the people interested in emancipation. The experiment involved ethicless medical American researchers working for the U.S. infecting hapless Guatemalan prisoners, soldiers, mental patients, orphans and others with syphilis, something like what the government did earlier-- and later-- to black Americans in Tuskegee. Many died.

"The sexually transmitted disease inoculation study conducted from 1946-1948 in Guatemala was clearly unethical," Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in a statement.

"Although these events occurred more than 64 years ago, we are outraged that such reprehensible research could have occurred under the guise of public health. We deeply regret that it happened, and we apologize to all the individuals who were affected by such abhorrent research practices," the statement said.

Guatemala condemned the experiments and said it would study whether there were grounds to take the case to an international court.

"President Alvaro Colom considers these experiments crimes against humanity and Guatemala reserves the right to denounce them in an international court," said a government statement, which also announced the creation of a commission to investigate the matter.

Guatemalan human rights activists called for the victims' families to be compensated, but a U.S. official said it was not clear whether there would be any compensation.

President Obama called Colom to offer his personal apology for what had happened, a White House spokesman said.

Apologies are one thing; paying compensation to the victims, something else entirely. A new report issued Thursday by a presidential bioethics commission looked into the current protections for human subjects in a review triggered by evidence of unethical behavior in the Guatemalan experiments.

The commission earlier this year concluded that U.S. government researchers must have known they were violating ethical standards at the time of the experiment, shortly after World War II. They have also called for a better system to compensate medical research subjects.

Nothing like the horrors of the Guatemala study could take place under U.S. government watch now, the panel said in a report released Thursday.

But the lags in how federal agencies collect and store data about their research involving human subjects offers no assurance that all unnecessary injuries or unethical activity are prevented.

U.S. government agencies last year supported more than 55,000 projects, mostly health-related, involving human subjects. The presidential commission asked 18 agencies that do most of such research to provide basic data about it, such as location of study sites, lead investigators, number of subjects involved and amount of funding designated.

PRI and the BBC reported on the new findings Thursday and I listened on my car radio as I was thinking about my upcoming trip to the region where the experiments were conducted. I'll be on the Mexican side of the border that encompasses the Mayan heartland that has been so brutally treated by our country. The report starts off with a mistake: that 1,300 people were infected with venereal diseases; it was over two thousand.

In the late 1940s, a team of American researchers conducted a disturbing experiment in Central America. They deliberately infected 1,300 Guatemalan people-- prisoners, sex workers, and soldiers-- with sexually transmitted diseases. Only 700 of them received treatment.

The subjects in the study did not give informed consent. In fact, they didn’t even know they were being infected.

When the Guatemalan study came to light last year, President Obama apologized on behalf of the United States. He also asked a Presidential Commission to investigate if safeguards are in place to make sure such unethical experiments could not be repeated.

On Thursday the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues released its findings.

“It was bad science, and it was bad ethics,” says Amy Gutmann, president of the University of Pennsylvania and chair of the commission. “The commission is confident that what happened in Guatemala in the 1940s could not happen today.”

Gutmann says that today there are measures in place to protect human subjects from unethical treatment. For example, volunteers must give informed consent, and institutional review boards oversee the ethics of research projects.

But the commission couldn’t tell how well these rules were followed in every study. Gutmann says when it comes to federally funded research, there needs to be more transparency and accountability.

When the bioethics commission asked the government to submit information on studies it had funded last year, some departments struggled.

“The Pentagon for example required more than seven months to prepare information on specific studies supported by the Department of Defense,” says Gutmann. “They did not have a central database to which they could refer, and they told us that it was very difficult for them to gather all the information that we requested.”

In its new report, the presidential commission recommends the government set up a website with information about the human subject studies it funds.

Another issue raised in the report is what to do when volunteers are injured or otherwise harmed in the course of research.

Larry Gostin is a bioethicist at Georgetown University who was not on the commission. He says compensation is a real issue.

“You have to remember that human subject research is just that-- it’s a medical experiment,” he says.

The commission recommends that the federal government develop a clear policy to compensate participants who are harmed.

Gostin supports that recommendation. He points out that most developed countries have such policies.
“The United States is behind the curve on compensation,” he says.

The Guatemalan citizens who were experimented on without their knowledge never received compensation. Five of those Guatemalans who are still alive are suing the U.S. government.

Their lawyer, Terry Collingsworth, says that before filing the lawsuit in March he reached out to the government and asked for a compensation for his clients. He says he has yet to receive a response.

The presidential commission did not address the issue of whether the Guatemalans who were experimented on in the 1940s should be compensated.

The report didn't address the question of what would Mitt do. Or Newt. The news report below is pretty horrifying:

Tom Tomorrow asks how Fox Noise can be chided for breaching news ethics when it isn't in the news business

Scandal? What scandal?

[Don't forget to click to enlarge.]

"No one at this network would ever hack into someone's voicemail in pursuit of a news story . . . because we're not a news organization! I mean, seriously -- have you ever watched this channel?"

by Ken

It remains to be seen whether the News Corp people will seize on this obvious strategy to defend their, er, honor. Oh, it won't insulate them from any incidental law-breaking that's become part of the fabric of their "news"-gathering, but it will put an end to all the yammering about their shoddy journalistic ethics and culture of corruption and suchlike.

Of course it's true, though. In much the same way that Republicans -- and for that matter more and more Democrats -- facing aspersions regarding their ethical standards ought to be presenting the obvious defense: what ethical standards? How can you be guilty of ethical lapses if you have no ethics? And each house of Congress, after all, has its very own committee to vouch for the ethics of its outstandingly upstanding members.

If the government decides to raise some cash by going into the naming-opportunity game, high on the list should be a Tom DeLay Memorial Ethics Lobby.

#

Is the Supreme Court ready to legalize the theory and practice of corruption in government?

Do not fret, worried sir. Think of it as "free speech,"
not "potential conflict of interest," and it's all OK.

"The U.S. Supreme Court hears arguments Wednesday in a case that could put a constitutional cloud of doubt over hundreds -- if not thousands -- of state and local ethics laws across the country.

"For the first time, the justices will consider whether a legislative vote is protected by the First Amendment guarantee of free speech -- specifically, whether states may forbid officeholders from voting on matters that appear to involve a personal conflict."

-- from the Web version of Nina Totenberg's
NPR Morning Edition report today

by Ken

From the sober way Nina Totenberg frames the legal issue in her lead, you might not guess how preposterous this case is. And given the level of ignorance and corruption currently infesting the Supreme Court -- thinking of the thugs who not only refuse to reconsider the idiotic ruling that "money" equals "speech" (as in "free speech") but have expanded the doctrine to include corporations' right of "free speech" -- you worry that the Gang of Five might actually be prepared to rule for the guy who whines, "I used my best judgment, and they punished me for it."

Well, Sparks (Nevada) City Councilman Michael Carrigan may indeed have used his "best judgment," but that judgment was only good enough to tell him that he needed to seek legal advice before casting a particular vote. That judgment is apparently not good enough to suggest to him that he may have gotten -- perhaps even engineered -- bad legal advice

Because what he is asking the Supreme Court to ratify is a doctrine that the right to free speech guarantees the right to corruption. Well, hey, why not? What the Nevada Commission on Ethics ruled was a conflict of interest is, at root, a matter of money changing hands, and we know that that's a mere matter of the exercise of free speech, and that can't be abridged.

Some facts please, Nina.

The case comes from Sparks, Nev., sister city to Reno. In 2006, during its election season, the city council was voting on a high profile and controversial proposed new casino project called the "Lazy 8." Council member Michael Carrigan's longtime friend and three-time campaign manager, Carlos Vasquez, was on retainer to the Lazy 8 developer for $10,000 a month.

The Nevada ethics code requires public officials to recuse themselves from voting on any matter involving a close relative, an employer, a business associate or anyone who has a relationship that is "substantially similar." With that in mind, Carrigan asked the city attorney whether his relationship with Vasquez required him to abstain from voting on the casino project.
According to Carrigan, the city attorney told him he should disclose his relationship. "[He said] I could vote if I felt that my friend was not getting any other benefit out of it that a normal citizen wouldn't get," he says.

Following that advice, Carrigan did disclose and then voted to approve the Lazy 8 project. Opponents of the project filed a complaint against him with the state ethics commission.

The state ethics commission had a different view from that attributed by Carrigan to the city attorney: Uh-uh, you can't do that.

But Caren Jenkins, the commission's executive director, notes there was no punishment. "Because the violation was not willful, no sanction was imposed," she says.

Jenkins went on to explain the commission's reasoning.

Jenkins says Carrigan's violation was based on the fact that he had an ongoing business relationship with his campaign manager, who provided business services at a cost to the campaign, and that the two had a longtime close, personal friendship.

"Mr. Vasquez was a friend, an adviser [and] a confidant," to Carrigan, explains Jenkins, noting that Carrigan testified Vasquez was "like a brother" to him.

However, Carrigan, "a retired U.S. Navy aviator," was so "outraged" by the ruling that he went to court, and "the Nevada Supreme Court ruled in his favor, declaring that 'voting by public officers on public issues is protected speech under the First Amendment.'"

We're not told what drugs the Nevada Supreme Court justices were on when they arrived at this conclusion, according to which our pols should feel free to buy and sell their votes on the open market, since those votes are "protected speech." After all, buying and selling protected speech is now the way the nation's governing is done.

SOMETIMES YOU WONDER, DO RIGHT-WINGERS
& THEIR MOUTHPIECES LISTEN TO THEMSELVES?

In his pleading today, Nina tells us, Carrigan's lawyer, E. Joshua Rosenkranz, was expected to " tell the justices that the commission's action struck at the heart of the democratic process."

Rosenkranz argues that "the manner in which Nevada has decided to regulate politics puts an untenable burden on the sorts of relationships and political loyalties that make democracy work."

Indeed, he contends that relationships like the one between councilman Carrigan and his campaign manager are the "very fabric of our democracy."

"It's a relationship that arose because Vasquez believed in Carrigan, believed in what he values and wanted to help him get elected to office," Ronsenkranz says. "And if a state declares that the political activities of a campaign volunteer will get the elected official disqualified from an important vote, volunteers will stop volunteering, and candidates will be reluctant to associate with volunteers, campaigns will be weaker, and so will our democracy."

The "very fabric of our democracy," eh? There's no way of knowing whether counselor Rosenkranz is really this stupid, or just this corrupt.

What he's talking about -- the unfettered ability of money to exercise its free-speech rights (we have established that money has free-speech rights, haven't we? send a memo to Chief Justice Roberts) by buying as much government as it can afford -- may well be "the fabric" of something, but I refuse to accept that that something is "our democracy." And to return to Nina's portentous lead, if the Supreme Court thugs get this one wrong, the clock may be ticking on every ethics law in the country.

Which will be just peachy for the fabric of our democracy.

#

The abuse of journalistic anonymity depends on the practice not being taken seriously from on high

"[T]oo often it seems The Post grants anonymity at the drop of a hat."

-- Washington Post ombudsman Andrew Alexander, in a report

today, "For The Post, anonymous sources remain a problem"

by Ken

It was only Friday that I quoted Glenn Greenwald's excellent point about the "senior White House official" who fed Politico's Ben Smith that famous bitch crack about labor flushing $10 million down the toilet in support of Blanche Lincoln primary challenger Bill Halter: Why on earth was the White House whiner granted anonymity?

That there is no remote journalistic justification for granting anonymity for these kinds of catty comments is self-evident, but that's not worth discussing, since the Drudgeified Politico has long ago established that they operate without any ethical constraints of any kind when it comes to such matters. The only anonymity standard Politico has is this: we grant it automatically the minute someone in power wants it (though on some level, in a warped sort of way, that's almost more admirable than what the NYT and Post do: pretend that they have strict anonymity standards while basically handing it out as promiscuously as Politico does).

Today Washington Post ombudsman Andrew Alexander revisited that promiscuous granting of anonymity.

Alexander leads off with a source who was granted anonymity, in a story about conflicts between parents and childless adults, for "an anecdote about an unleashed puppy pestering a toddler in a District park."

After the child's father complained, the dog's owner told The Post that parents of children can be "tyrants" and she urged them to keep their kids inside the park's fenced-in play area. "I think children are fine," she was quoted as saying, but "I don't think they own everything."

For this, The Post identified the woman only as Linda, a veteran journalist, "because she didn't want to be seen as hostile to children."

Even the reporter, it turns out, now agrees with a Post commenter who wrote that if the woman "didn't want to share her name, she shouldn't have been permitted to share her point of view." "It wasn't exactly about state secrets," [reporter Annys] Shin acknowledged. 'In the end, I should have insisted, or we should have just not used that anecdote.'"
Alexander recalls that the Post has a fairly strict official policy on the subject.

The Post's internal policies set a high threshold for granting anonymity. It "should not be done casually or automatically." Further, "merely asking should not be sufficient to become anonymous in our stories." If sources refuse to go on the record, "the reporter should consider seeking the information elsewhere."

But too often it seems The Post grants anonymity at the drop of a hat.

And he goes on to cite sources granted anonymity:

* to be able to be "candid"

* "because he is reluctant to have his name in the paper"

* "in order not to offend"

* to be able to "speak more freely"

This last was a lobbyist who --

told The Post that the provision in the [financial overhaul] bill would have a 'chilling effect' because "Markets crave certainty. All this does is introduce a comic amount of uncertainty."

Reader Jonathan Wood of London objected. "The utterly banal remark that 'Markets crave certainty' certainly did not require granting anonymity to 'speak more freely,' " he e-mailed. "This article essentially gives a platform to someone actively lobbying to weaken or kill the bill to make an unattributed criticism."

It's getting worse, reports Alexander.

The phrase "spoke on condition of anonymity" has appeared in an average of 71 stories a month through May -- slightly higher than in the same period a year ago. This year, it has appeared more than 450 times (stories often include multiple anonymous sources). And that doesn't include all of the anonymous sources described in other ways. For example, those ubiquitous unnamed "senior administration officials" have been quoted more than 130 times this year. Post rules urge that when sources are granted anonymity, readers be told why. But in more than 85 stories this year where sources "spoke on condition of anonymity," there was no explanation. In many others, where a weak rationale was offered, readers protested.

"[B]y casually agreeing to conceal the identities of those who provide non-critical information," says Alexander, "The Post erodes its credibility and perpetuates Washington's insidious culture of anonymity." And the problem, which he concludes is "endemic" at the paper, goes way up. "Reporters should be blamed. But the solution must come in the form of unrelenting enforcement by editors, starting with those at the top."

I assure you that if the paper's higher-level editors demonstrated that they care about abuse of anonymity, the abuse would stop almost instantly. But granting anonymity is a lazy paper's way to get juicier, sexier copy into its pages. Reporters pay close attention to behavior that is sanctioned or even encouraged from on high, and that which is frowned on or actively policed. There's no doubt a lot of bureaucratic inertia in a news operation like the Post's or the New York Times's. But as with so many other aspects of the operation, when the people at the top make clear that certain journalistic standards will be enforced, chances increase greatly that they'll be honored.

And vice versa, of course.

#

OK, OK, No One Likes My Idea Of Shooting The Banksters-- So What DO We Do With Them?

The dirty, rotten banksters

I was happy to hear that Barney Frank plans to haul a pack of banksters before Congress for some ritual humiliation before giving them another $350 billion in taxpayer money. Frank has been a big proponent of giving the money to the crooked banksters but he also is adamant about slapping their wrists every time another billion winds up in someone's pockets. Naughty, naughty, you bad, bad boys.

A committee aide said that the hearing, tentatively scheduled for Wednesday, Feb. 11, is still being planned and that a full witness list has yet to be compiled. Frank has long promised to bring bank heads before his committee to call on them to explain how the funds have been used.

For Frank and other backers of the bailout, known as TARP, or the Troubled Asset Relief Program, the problem is that its purpose is to prevent a total collapse of the global financial system. Because of the way politics works, it's difficult to get credit for preventing harm rather than doing good.

The problem is that the thieving banksters haven't been lending the money, giving it to themselves as bonuses instead. Oh, and wouldn't you know... it looks like they've been doing something else with some of the money too: sharing it with members of Congress!

Financial firms and other companies receiving billions of dollars in federal bailout money spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to pay for meetings and charitable gifts on behalf of lawmakers.

In the last six months of 2008, as a financial crisis enveloped the country and lawmakers voted on a $700 billion financial rescue package, eight companies that would benefit from that package spent roughly $366,000 on events and charities connected to members of Congress, according to a review of congressional lobbying records.

It's been a pretty bipartisan (post-partisan? pre-partisan?) Cultural of Corruption kind of deal too, with benefits accruing to such congressional luminaries as Barney Frank (D-MA), GOP House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH), Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), Dick Durbin (D-IL), Edward Kennedy (D-MA), Arlen Specter (R-PA), Saxby Chambliss (R-GA), James Clyburn (D-SC), Geoff Davis (R-KY), John Tanner (D-TN), and both the Congressional Black Caucus and the Republican Congressional Hispanic Leadership Institute (CHLI).

The banksters have also used the money to hire lobbyists to get them more taxpayer dollars. Robert Reich:

We now know that many of the financial giants that have been bailed out by taxpayers continue to finance a platoon of Washington lobbyists, who are at this moment trying to influence TARP II and the next attempt to regulate Wall Street. In effect, your money and mine, and that of all other taxpayers, is paying these lobbyists to push Congress in a direction we have every reason to believe is not in our interests but in the continued interests of Wall Street. Citigroup, the recipient of $45 billion of taxpayer money so far, is still fielding “an army” of Washington lobbyists, according to the New York Times. Its lobbyists are working on a host of issues, including the bailout. In the fourth quarter of 2008, when it got its first infusion of bailout money, Citi spent $1.77 million on lobbying fees. During the last three months of 2008, at least seven other firms receiving bailout funds (American Express, Capital One, Goldman Sachs, KeyCorp, Morgan Stanley, PNC and Bank of New York Mellon) lobbied the government about the bailout.

I like the legislation, S.133, that Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Olympia Snowe (R-ME) have proposed to keep TARP funds could be used for lobbying. Here's the description on Feinstein's website:

The Feinstein-Snowe legislation would:

• Prohibit firms receiving economic assistance from Treasury or emergency loans from the Federal Reserve from using such funds for lobbying expenditures or political contributions;

• Require that firms receiving assistance provide detailed, publicly available quarterly reports to Treasury outlining how federal funds have been used;

• Establish corporate governance standards to ensure that firms receiving federal assistance do not waste money on unnecessary expenditures; and,

• Create penalties of at least $100,000 per violation for firms that fail to meet the corporate governance standards established in the bill.

Other than Arlen Specter, Snowe hasn't been able to dig up any Republicans to co-sponsor the bill-- big surprise-- but other co-sponsors include Barbara Boxer (D-CA), Ben Cardin (D-MD), Russ Feingold (D-WI), John Kerry (D-MA), Joe Lieberman (I-CT), Patty Murray (D-WA), and Bill Nelson (D-FL).

Geithner has already made it verboten for any firms receiving TARP money to lobby anyone from the Treasury Department. I hope there are no exceptions on this one, like there seem to be on many of the Obama Administration ethics rules so far.

SENATE ETHICS COMMITTEE TO DOMENICI: "NAUGHTY, NAUGHTY"-- SO CAN HE RUN FOR PRESIDENT NOW?

Pete "Sneaky Pete" Domenici (R-NM) is well liked in the Senate-- on both sides of the aisle. That he outrageously breached Senate ethics by threatening-- and then following through on his threat-- U.S. Attorney David Iglesias' job in an attempt to get him to bring some politically-motivated indictments against Democrats, hasn't gotten many senators riled up enough to do anything to discipline him in any meaningful way. The Ethics Committee admonished him today, totally meaningless, especially for someone who is retiring.

Even if he weren't retiring it wouldn't mean much. When McCain was caught taking massive bribes for special favors from corrupt banker-- and close family friend-- Charles Keating, all the Senate did was "admonish" him. Now many Republicans are backing this corrupt turd in his lifelong goal to capture the presidency. Like in McCain's case, the pathetic and irrelevant Ethics committee did its best to soften the blow on the doddering Domenici, claiming it found "no 'substantial evidence' that Mr. Domenici 'attempted to improperly influence an ongoing investigation.'” Did it look? And wasn't he actually trying to do something else anyway-- get his execrable political protege, Heather Wilson, re-elected?

Wilson is running for Domenici's Senate seat now, though she isn't expected to win. The House Ethics Committee, every bit as much of a joke as the Senate Ethics Committee, hasn't hauled Wilson's ass in to answer questions about her role in the firing of Iglesias.


UPDATE: CREW ISN'T SATISFIED WITH SENATE'S DERELICTION OF DUTY

After reminding us that when Domenici was first asked about why he made the call, he denied everything, CREW issued a statement by Executive Director Melanie Sloan:

"The ethics committee may have been unable to wholeheartedly condemn Senator Domenici's conduct, but we have no such compunction. The committee's effort to minimize its reprimand of Senator Domenici itself reflects poorly on the Senate. Little is more destructive to our democracy than an attempt to use political power to influence a criminal investigation and it should be distressing to all Americans that the Senate Ethics Committee does not appear to share that view."

Congress again proves that it is fundamentally incapable of making or enforcing rules to regulate its own behavior. 

SENATE ETHICS... KINDA-- AND IRAQI SEAT BELT LAWS

Barbara Boxer chairs the Senate Select Committee on Ethics, which is a pathetic joke. David "Diapers" Vitter? Nothing, although he publicly admitted breaking the law. Ted Stevens? Nothing, although the FBI and several other agencies have been searching his home in conjunction to a widespread corruption conspiracy that has tainted most of the Alaska GOP (including his son  Ben). Pete Domenici? Nothing, even though he used his position as a senator to threaten a U.S. Attorney and attempted to force him to take on a punitive political role and, failing that, conspired with Heather Wilson, Alberto Gonzales, Karl Rove and others to fire the upright Justice Department official. Larry Craig? Next to nothing, although he actually pleaded guilty to a crime. The Senate certainly takes care of its own; and really well. Remember all those senators who were taking bribes from Jack Abramoff? Well Abramoff is in prison. Not one senator has even been admonished.

That isn't to say Boxer doesn't do anything regarding ethics. In fact, right now she's trying to figure out how to go after Alaska's arch-criminal Don Young on ethics charges. No, I don't mean arch-criminal, Senator Ted Stevens; I mean Congressman Don Young. She's promises to figure out a way of making this constitutional-- she'll fail-- since the House takes care of its own ethical lapses (or doesn't) and the Senate... well the Senate is supposed to watch it's own 100 miscreants.

Now, this isn't about Boxer's Select Committee on Ethics. You see, that Committee has nothing whatsoever to do so they gave her another job as well, chairing the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. She's the one taking care of Global Warming for us. Except right now she's working on putting together some kind of amendment to a highway corrections bill that is meant to spur an investigation into one of Congress' most notorious crooks, Young who stealthily modified an earmark in the 2005 highway bill when he was chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, a time that caused Rolling Stone to dub him America's third worst member of Congress and the King of Pork.

Boxer claims she working on his with the Committe's unlikely vice chairman, Global Warming denied and general all around loon, James Inhofe. If ever there was an odd couple... but I guess Inhofe is just happy to see her busy with something that doesn't move forward any kind of climate change agenda.
And along the same lines, Iraq's police force is cracking down on seat belt scofflaws; about time. I wonder if McCain, Lieberman and Miss Lindsey will claim credit for this.

“The citizens are learning the laws step by step,” said General Mraweh, sitting in his office in the Karada neighborhood. “We have applied all the laws concerning traffic, so it’s time for the seat belt law to be practiced.”

Some might say that there are more pressing issues, like the car bombs that can turn a morning commute into a nightmare of blood and body parts, the daily killings and kidnappings, the political and sectarian infighting.

Or that enforcing the seat belt law might not do enough in a city where traffic rarely moves above a crawl, checkpoints are ubiquitous, roads are often blocked and it is not uncommon to see a vehicle charging down a street in the wrong direction or swerving across lanes.

UPDATE: BOXER WANTS DON YOUNG ARRESTED AND THROWN IN PRISON-- GOOD FIRST STEP, BUT WHAT ABOUT AT LEAST CENSURE OR EVEN ADMONISHMENT FOR VITTER?

This morning's CongressDaily reports that Barbara Boxer sparred With Oklahoma reactionary loon Tom Coburn on the Senate floor over the infamous secret Coconut Road earmark. Yesterday she demanded "jail time for those responsible for the 'very devious' changing of the disputed Coconut Road earmark." You go, girl! She and the OK nutcase "sparred on the Senate floor for about a half-hour over whether Congress or the Justice Department should investigate how an earmark in the 2005 surface transportation reauthorization bill was modified after the House and Senate voted final passage and before President Bush signed it."

In competing amendments to a bill making corrections to the 2005 reauthorization measure, Boxer is seeking a Justice Department probe and Coburn wants to set up a bicameral congressional committee to investigate before potentially handing over findings to law enforcement agencies.

Boxer said a Justice probe would ensure tougher action and avoid the partisan spectacle that could come with a high-profile probe.

[Referring to Don Young, she said that] "At the end of the day, we want to put people in jail; that's what we're talking about," she said of the "evil doers" who modified the earmark. "I don't want political theater; I want justice done. ... When justice is done and somebody goes to jail ... that sends the best possible message."

The earmark in question was changed from providing $10 million to improving Interstate 75 in Ft. Myers, Fla., to specifically going to build an interchange at Coconut Road. Public watchdog groups charge that Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, then chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, changed the earmark at the behest of a campaign contributor who was tied to the project.

A vote in the Senate is expected today. And even as crooked and partisan a GOP hack as Roy Blunt agrees-- now that it's all out in the open-- that Young has to be investigated, knowing full well that an investigation of Young will lead directly to prison.