Source: http://arkansastruth.blogspot.com/2006/01/
Timestamp: 2019-04-26 05:46:51+00:00

Document:
"Katie, not one dime of Jack Abramoff money ever went to any Democrat. Not one dime."
Confronted by such intransigence, Katie politely observed that "we'll have to look into that and clarify that for our viewers."
That's apparently just what the Today researchers did overnight, and Matt Lauer, with Tim Russert in tow, informed viewers this morning of their findings.
Said Lauer: "We went to the Center for Responsive Politics and technically Howard Dean may be correct but while 66% of the money in this situation went to Republicans, 34% of the money not from Abramoff but from associates and clients went to Democrats."
Lauer asked Russert whether Dems can turn this into strictly a Republican scandal and "wash their hands of this?"
Russert's response was unequivocal, and not good news for the DNC: "No. The issue is broad and wide."
Did anyone hear Ann Coulter last night?
The Bill Halter campaign is raising questions about campaign tactics by opponent Mike Beebe's organization.
It began with a man who appeared at gubernatorial candidate Halter's speech to Young Democrats at UALR last week. The man -- who said he was a veteran and who said he didn't know much about Halter -- proceeded to ask a list of very specific personal questions that indicated the man knew quite a bit about Halter. Halter took the questions – about his time out of state, where he paid taxes in Ark., etc. Later, through a Halter volunteer, the campaign learned that the same man had apparently sent along an e-mail message to the Beebe campaign about some future political activities by the group that invited Halter to speak. A Beebe plant perhaps? Sure sounds like it.
Then there were the people with video cameras who taped both the UALR event and Halter's announcement Saturday at the Capitol. And members of Beebe's staff in the attorney general's office attended the Halter announcement Saturday. Oppo research is one thing; but planted questions and videotapes? As told by the Halter people, it sounds almost Nixonian.
Bud Jackson, Halter's spokesman, calls it "dirty politics." And he uses it as a handy segue to other questions about the conduct of the Beebe campaign. There were earlier reports about work by Beebe state employees and use of state equipment on state time. Then there's the "double-dipping," as Jackson put it, by Beebe's chief of staff Ruth Whitney. Since January, she's been paid for 30 hours of work at the attorney general's office and paid also from campaign money. This is not illegal, according to the state Ethics Commission, but the general custom has been for state employees to wholly detach from their public offices when helping a boss's political campaign.
Jackson said the Halter campaign "won't videotape Beebe events" and won't send moles to cover Beebe. The Halter campaign is all about a change from the old ways of doing things, he said.
State Democratic Party chairman, Jason Willett, who for months had on his vehicle a printed promotion of the gubernatorial candidacy of Democratic Party hopeful Mike Beebe, won't be adding anything promoting the new Democratic hopeful, Bill Halter.
Instead, said party spokesman Bart Haynie, Willett has removed the Beebe promotion.
Haynie said the chairman's statement months ago that he'd add a Halter sticker to the vehicle if Halter got in the race was a bit of humor between Willett and Stephens Media Co. columnist John Brummett. "He wasn't really being serious," Haynie said.
Last Friday, Willett said on a radio program that he thought Halter might not run. That night Halter's candidacy was posted on Halter's Web site.
Annual Banquet on Saturday, Jan. 28, at 6 p.m.
The banquet will be held at John Brown University in the main dining room of the Mabee Center (2000 W. University).
Hutchinson will address jobs growth in Arkansas, which he hasidentified as the top priority for his campaign and his top agendaitem if elected Governor. On Jan. 18, Hutchinson launched his GROWARKANSAS statewide jobs tour, during which he will visit communitiesaround the state to talk about his plans for jobs growth and economicdevelopment in Arkansas.
Hutchinson, a native of Gravette, is a former U.S. Attorney for theWestern District of Arkansas, Member of Congress representing thestate's Third District, head of the U.S. Drug EnforcementAdministration and the first-ever Undersecretary of Homeland Security.Hutchinson currently serves as CEO of the Hutchinson Group, a LittleRock consulting firm, and oversees the homeland security division ofVenable Law Firm.
Al Sharpton Running In '08?
MANCHESTER, N.H. (AP) _ He's spent time in New Hampshire, but former Democratic presidential candidate Al Sharpton won't say if he'll run again in 2008.
The minister and civil rights activist avoided party politics during a high school assembly to honor the Reverend Martin Luther King Junior. He encouraged students to further King's legacy of nonviolent activism.
But later in Hanover, speaking to Dartmouth College Democrats, Sharpton's remarks turned political. Sharpton criticized the administration for its response to Hurricane Katrina and domestic spying.
Fourteen months after John Kerry narrowly carried Wisconsin in the 2004 presidential election amidst allegations of voter fraud, five campaign workers for the Kerry-Edwards campaign team are set for trial Tuesday in Milwaukee on felony charges of damage to property.
The "Milwaukee Five” is charged with slashing 40 tires on 25 separate Republican vehicles on the morning of the 2004 presidential election. The vehicles were rented by the Wisconsin Republican Party to transport less-mobile voters to the polls on Election Day. In total, the vandals disabled 25 percent of the Republican Party’s "Get Out the Vote” fleet.
The defendants include Sowande Ajumoke Omokunde, the son of Rep. Gwen Moore (D-Wisc.) who also goes by the name Supreme Solar Allah; Michael Pratt, the son of former Milwaukee Mayor Marvin Pratt and leader of Kerry’s campaign team in Milwaukee; Lewis Caldwell; Lavelle Mohammed, and Justin Howell.
According to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, four of the defendants were paid operatives of the Wisconsin Democratic Party, including Omokunde and Pratt.
Court TV will cover the trial, which is expected to last two weeks. Potential witnesses include Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.), national AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, and 77 others – including FBI agents, Milwaukee police officers, and party activists from both parties.
The five defendants, who will be tried together, are charged with criminal damage to property, a felony with maximum sentences of 3 1/2 years in prison or $10,000 in fines.
Simmons told Milwaukee County Assistant District Attorney David Feiss that he saw the defendants dressed in "Mission Impossible type gear” at Democratic Party headquarters sometime around 3 a.m. on the morning of the election.
The tire-slashing incident is just one of a number of election-day irregularities in Wisconsin, a state where Kerry prevailed by only 11,384 votes.
Questions have been raised about the inordinately large volume of Election Day registrations in Milwaukee, where 84,000 people in a city of 600,000 registered at the polls on the day of the election. The total represented 30 percent of all voters in the city.
Milwaukee city officials admitted in January 2005 that around 10,000 same-day registrations could not be verified, leaving open the possibility of fraud.
IndependentCourt.org, a project of the Coalition for a Fair and Independent Judiciary, released an ad suggesting that Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito would endanger privacy rights. It says "an independent analysis found that Alito often goes out of his way to narrow the scope of individual rights." The ad fails to note that the same study also says Alito has a reputation as "a restrained judge who follows the law, not his personal beliefs," and that he is a "near absolutist" on the rights of freedom of speech and freedom of religion.
The ad states that Alito once favored "making it illegal for government officials to get away with illegal wiretapping," and as a judge voted to uphold the strip-search of a 10-year-old girl. We furnish details of those cases.
The liberal coalition IndependentCourt.org released a second 30-second ad on Jan. 6th as part of a six-figure media buy opposing the confirmation of Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court. We reviewed their first ad here .
Announcer: He supported making it easier for government officials to get away with illegal wire tapping. Alito even voted to uphold the strip search of a ten year old girl.
This ad expresses concerns about Alito's record on government eavesdropping and privacy of medical decisions, showing images of a telephone and a hospital bed as an announcer says, "If you don't want more government interference, you don't want Samuel Alito on the Supreme Court."
Henderson and Mintz: Liberal and conservative supporters alike describe the quiet, scholarly Alito as a restrained judge who follows the law, not his personal beliefs . Those who have worked closely with him, including former law clerks and fellow judges, say they can't think of a case in which he took a partisan political stance.
. . . A review of Alito's work on dozens of cases that raised important social issues found that he rarely supports individual-rights claims.
Alito: I do not question that the attorney general should have this immunity . . . But for tactical reasons, I would not raise the issue here . . . In my judgment, this is not the case to choose . . . The government's interests do not demand that this issue be advanced now. There are also strong reasons to believe that our chances of success will be greater in future cases.
Despite Alito's advice, the Reagan administration asked the Supreme Court to rule that the attorney general cannot be sued for authorizing a national security wiretap without a warrant, and lost.The high court ruled in Mitchell v. Forsyth that former Attorney General John Mitchell didn't have automatic immunity from lawsuits stemming from his ordering of a warrantless wiretap in 1970. Mitchell had ordered eavesdropping on a group that the FBI believed was hatching a plot to kidnap national security adviser Henry Kissinger and to blow up heating tunnels in Washington DC.
The ad also says Alito "even voted to uphold the strip search of a ten year old girl." We dealt with this in our Nov. 21 article reviewing an earlier ad by this group. Alito did file the sole dissent in Doe v. Groody, opposing a Pennsylvania couple's right to sue local police officers who searched their home, themselves and their 10-year-old daughter for methamphetamines on the basis of a warrant that only specified a search of the premises. Police argued that they had applied for a warrant to search "all occupants" of the house, based on a tip from an informant claiming to have bought drugs at the house, and that they believed that the warrant permitted a search of the girl even if "occupants" weren't specifically mentioned.
The Third Circuit Court of Appeals cleared the lawsuit to go forward – with Alito filing a dissenting opinion. He said that even though he had a "visceral dislike" of such intrusive searches, a "commonsense and realistic" reading of the warrant and the application gave the officers the impression that "all occupants" of the home were to be searched, and that they were acting within their professional duties in searching the wife and girl.
The Truth has obtained a letter of support for Judge Alito from numerous current/former law school deans.
As deans or former deans of law schools, we have special interest in the legal system and experience in both the academic and the practical worlds. Deans of law schools oversee the curriculum, help shape the instructional program, and are instrumental in the appointment of faculty who will educate young lawyers. We are deeply invested in the law, in assuring that lawyers enter the profession with full respect for the integrity of the law and for the rule of law.
Our experience gives us a distinctive vantage on the process of selecting and confirming judges. It is from that vantage that we write in support of Judge Samuel Alito.
Over many years of public service as a prosecutor, public official, and judge, Sam Alito has promoted the rule of law and has performed each of these roles skillfully, honorably, and in keeping with the best traditions of the law. He has demonstrated the sort of thoughtfulness, care, and reasoned judgment that we hope for in our faculty and our graduates.
Although we are hopeful about this process, we are distressed by recent attacks on Judge Alito that distort his record and its meaning. Such attacks depart from the sort of civil, deliberative process that Judge Alito and the American people deserve.
Judge Alito’s decisions as a Circuit Judge have been consistently reasonable and in accord with law. Critics have misstated his opinions in cases such as Planned Parenthood v. Casey, Doe v. Groody, and United States v. Rybar, to name just a few. In Casey, Judge Alito voted to uphold regulations of abortion adopted by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, including a requirement that a woman notify her husband. The notice requirement had broad exceptions, including if a woman asserted that she was afraid of her husband’s reaction. This decision was a reasonable construction of the law as it stood at the time. In Groody, Judge Alito concluded that police should not be subject to suit for money damages for acting under the terms of a search warrant and accompanying affidavit. While the warrant was more restrictive, the affidavit specifically said it was necessary to search “all persons” on the premises of a suspected drug dealer. The issue before the court was not whether the search was proper or good policy but whether police should be faced with possible money penalties for acting reasonably on the basis of the warrant and affidavit. Far from upholding the “strip search” of a 10-year-old girl, this opinion reasonably questions the use of damage litigation against police. And in Rybar, Judge Alito followed the path marked by the Supreme Court’s Lopez decision in declaring that while states can and do regulate sales of guns that are not in interstate commerce, Congress can only do so if it makes findings that support the connection of the guns to its authority over interstate commerce. All of these decisions by Judge Alito, whether one agrees or disagrees with the outcome, demonstrate thoughtful and reasoned decision-making and a commitment to legal authority.
Opponents of Judge Alito also have made much of statements Judge Alito made 20 years ago. First, he criticized the use of quotas to enforce equal protection obligations – taking a position that has been accepted by the Supreme Court and the American people. Second, he also criticized the basic holding of Roe v. Wade. Criticism of particular legal decisions is perfectly consistent with respect for the law. And no one, including Judge Alito, can know how he would respond if asked to reconsider a precedent he has criticized. Such questions come before judges in a particular case arising in a particular context and on a particular legal claim. Chief Justice Rehnquist criticized the decision in Miranda v. Arizona, but voted to reaffirm it when the issue came before the Court, concluding that it had become so ingrained in the fabric of the law as to merit continued adherence even if he would have decided the matter differently in the first instance. Judge Alito’s record shows that he decides such matters carefully and thoughtfully within the framework of the law.
We urge the Senate to hold hearings that are respectful and dignified. Based on all we know now, we believe that the Senate should vote to confirm Judge Alito to the Supreme Court.
As deans, we express our own views, not those of the other faculty or institutions with which we are or have been affiliated.
Katie Couric's just-completed interview with NY Times Reporter James Risen, who broke the NSA surveillance story and is now publishing his book on the matter, 'State of War,' offered a treasure-trove of insights into the matter.
"Did [the leakers] have any sympathy or understanding about this new climate this country finds itself in and the criticism the Bush administration took prior to 9/11 for not putting the pieces together and figuring out that a terrorist attack was imminent? In other words, did they acknowledge that tough times may call for tough measures?"
Along similar lines, Risen alleged that "the checks and balances that normally keep American foreign policy and national security policy toward the center kind of broke down. You had more of a radicalization, in which the career professionals were not really given a chance to forge a consensus within the administration. The principals: Rumsfeld, Cheney Tenet and Rice were meeting constantly, setting policy and never allowing the experts, the people who understand the region to have a say."
Cooed Katie: "You suggest there was a lot of power-grabbing going on."
"Yes," responded Risen, only too happy to concur.
"Power-grabbing?" How is the exercise of power by the people the president explicitly put in charge of foreign and national security policy a "grab"? Only in the minds of the liberal establishment, who believe that power rightly resides with the career 'wets' in State and the intelligence agencies.
As with Wilkerson, it sounds as if at the origin of this leak were career employees, disgruntled at being shut out of the center of the action by appointed officials.
Further to her credit, Couric did ask a question along such lines, stating 'many critics alleged your sources had serious axes to grind."
Time and again, Risen defended his sources as having the "purest" and "best" motives, springing entirely from their concern for the rule of law.
As to whether he was concerned that in light of the Justice Department investigation into the leaks he might be forced to reveal his sources, Risen was quick to claim that this was "the complete opposite of the Plame case."

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