Day: August 7, 2005

Michael Schiavo Awarded; Monk Pissed

Trish
“We see a lot of situations where family steps away. He stuck by. He didn’t walk away.”
–President of the Florida State Guardianship Association

Michael Schiavo was recently noted for doing the right thing and honoring his wife’s wishes. The Southwest Florida Herald Tribune:

Michael Schiavo, 42, was given the Guardian of the Year Award by the Florida State Guardianship Association on Friday, just months after Terri Schiavo died…

“As you know,” Michael Schiavo said as he accepted the award, “I’m not much of a speechmaker. I don’t talk much. But on behalf of my wife Theresa, I thank you.”

Brother Paul O’Donnell, a Franciscan friar who serves as the Schindler family spokesman, criticized the award, calling it “offensive.”

Most group members are appointed by judges to represent people who have been officially deemed incapacitated. They said Michael Schiavo was a controversial choice, but they decided to honor him because of his commitment to honoring what he says was his wife’s wish to not be kept alive artificially.

“We see a lot of situations where family steps away,” said association President-elect Michelle Kenney. “He stuck by. He didn’t walk away.”

The Right Questions

Trish

The St. Petersburg Times did an excellent job of asking the right questions about the Miami Herald’s firing of a reporter linked to the suicide, in the Herald’s lobby, of a Miami politician.

The year was 1987, the politician was Gary Hart, and the reporter was Tom Fiedler. After the Colorado senator denied rumors of womanizing and invited reporters to watch him, Fielder got a tip, staked out Hart’s Washington townhouse and found him there with another woman.

The story derailed Hart’s presidential hopes and ignited a national debate over how far journalists should go in covering politicians’ private lives.

Fiedler, now the executive editor of the Herald, finds himself at the center of a new ethical firestorm after firing Jim DeFede, the paper’s hard-hitting local columnist. DeFede lost his job for taping a phone conversation with a Miami politician, Arthur Teele, shortly before Teele killed himself in the newspaper’s lobby on July 27.

More than 500 reporters and editors around the country, including nearly 200 current or former Herald employees, have signed a petition protesting the firing.

Fiedler and the Herald’s publisher jointly fired DeFede late on a chaotic night, a few hours after Teele’s suicide. DeFede lost his job even though he disclosed the taping and admitted his mistake.

“To me, it has the smell of corporate panic about it,” said Carl Hiaasen, a Herald columnist and novelist. “I think there’s a lot of very serious resentment at the newspaper, and I think the scars are going to take a long time to heal.”

Read the rest yourself, but I do recommend such a reading. Great editorial, especially in light of some of journalism’s deserved criticism lately.

Government Fears Attack from Homegrown Rightwing Terrorists

Jon Ponder
The Southern Poverty Law Center’s estimates that 762 extremist right-wing hate groups were active in the United States last year, up slightly from the 751 groups tallied the year before.

USNews.com:

When FBI agents raided the home and storage facilities of William Krar in Noonday, a small town in East Texas, two years ago, they stumbled upon a small arsenal. There were about 2 pounds of deadly sodium cyanide, 65 pipe bombs and several remote-control briefcase bombs. They also recovered more than 500,000 rounds of ammunition and a collection of white supremacist books. If mixed with some of the other chemicals Krar had, the cyanide compound could have created enough poison gas to kill everyone inside a large office building.

In the decade since the 1995 bombing of Oklahoma City’s Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, local police and federal agents have foiled roughly 60 right-wing extremist terrorist plots, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project. While homeland security and intelligence officials understandably focus today on terrorism threats from abroad, hate-group experts say the danger from homegrown extremists like Krar, now in federal prison, shouldn’t be ignored. “The fact that the only chemical weapon incident in the United States involved a domestic extremist suggests that domestic terrorism is still a serious threat,” says Mark Pitcavage, director of fact finding at the Anti-Defamation League. The Southern Poverty Law Center’s estimates that 762 extremist right-wing hate groups were active in the United States last year, up slightly from the 751 groups tallied the year before.

Scooter Libby Said He Met with Judith Miller about Plame

Jon Ponder
The new disclosure that Miller and Libby met on July 8, 2003, raises questions regarding claims by President Bush that he and everyone in his administration have done everything possible to assist Fitzgerald’s grand-jury probe.

American Prospect has a new leak in the Bush CIA Leak investigation – this time not from Karl Rove’s attorney but from “legal sources familiar with” the testimony of I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney.

[Libby] has told federal investigators that he met with New York Times reporter Judith Miller on July 8, 2003, and discussed CIA operative Valerie Plame, according to legal sources familiar with Libby’s account.

The meeting between Libby and Miller has been a central focus of the investigation by special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald as to whether any Bush administration official broke the law by unmasking Plame’s identity or relied on classified information to discredit former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, according to sources close to the case as well as documents filed in federal court by Fitzgerald.

[…]

THE TICKER – Bush killed inquiry :: WH withholds 9/11 files :: Financiers pledge liberal dollars

Jon Ponder

  • Bush killed inquiry: A U.S. grand jury in Guam opened an investigation of controversial lobbyist Jack Abramoff more than two years ago, but President Bush removed the supervising federal prosecutor and the inquiry ended soon after. The previously undisclosed Guam inquiry is separate from a federal grand jury in Washington that is investigating allegations that Abramoff bilked Indian tribes out of millions of dollars.
  • WH withholds 9/11 files: Members of the now-disbanded 9/11 commission are going public with complaints that the Bush Administration is stonewalling on the release of files that show whether the government is taking action on the commission’s recommendations for preventing new attacks on the United States. The GOP chair of the commission, Tom Kean, says he disappointed and surprised. Well, that’s one of us, Tom.
  • Financiers pledge liberal dollars: At least 80 wealthy liberals have pledged to contribute $1 million or more apiece to fund a network of think tanks and advocacy groups to compete with the potent conservative infrastructure built up over the past three decades.The money will be channeled through a new partnership called the Democracy Alliance, which was founded last spring — the latest in a series of liberal initiatives as the Democratic Party and its allies continue to struggle with the loss of the House and the Senate in 1994 and the presidency in 2000.