Category: News & Comment

Dear Friends,

Newsweek finds itself at the center of a firestorm after publishing, defending, apologizing for, and finally retracting their story about interrogators at Guantanamo Bay disposing of the Koran as an intimidation technique. If the truth be told, the Newsweek scandal is just the latest in a long history of the press simply being exceedingly careless with their facts. What most don’t realize is just how long that history really is.

Because conservatives don’t riot and people don’t die when the establishment press gets our stories wrong, very few know how we’ve been libeled for so long. For the over forty years I’ve been in national politics, I’ve come to know that the completely accurate news story is the rare exception, not the rule. My experience is that over 95% of the stories I’ve been involved in – with personal knowledge of the facts and circumstances – have one or more significant errors.

Even worse is the reliance of lazy and/or opinionated journalists on the infamous “Anonymous Source,” making falsehoods and distortions even more difficult to expose and correct. Most of these anonymous sources are people with an agenda and an axe to grind but without the courage to be upfront. Unfortunately far too many journalists know that they don’t need to check their facts because they just don’t have to.

When they get their facts wrong, they know the truth will almost never see the light of day. While news executives bemoan their shrinking market share and establishment journalists sneer at the freewheeling, unregulated blogs – it all comes down to trust, and the mainstream media is fast losing ground.

Americans are demanding more from their news sources, and they have hundreds more options now than they did 40 years ago when conservatives began building an alternative media in this country (direct mail, talk radio, cable TV, and now the internet).

Best, Richard Viguerie

Richard Viguerie is the co-author of America’s Right Turn: How Conservatives Used New & Alternative Media to Take Power (2004, Bonus Books)

Juan Cole, writing in Salon.com:

When Newsweek’s source admitted that he had misidentified the government document in which he had seen an account of Quran desecration at Guantánamo prison, Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita exploded, “People are dead because of what this son of a bitch said. How could he be credible now?”

Di Rita could have said the same things about his bosses in the Bush administration.

Tens of thousands of people are dead in Iraq, including more than 1,600 U.S. soldiers and Marines, because of false allegations made by President George W. Bush and Di Rita’s more immediate boss, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, about Saddam Hussein’s nonexistent weapons of mass destruction and equally imaginary active nuclear weapons program. Bush, Rumsfeld, Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice repeatedly made unfounded allegations that led to the continuing disaster in Iraq, much of which is now an economic and military no man’s land beset by bombings, assassinations, kidnappings and political gridlock.

And we now know, thanks to a leaked British memo concerning the head of British intelligence, that the Bush administration — contrary to its explicit denials — had already made up its mind to attack Iraq and “fixed” those bogus allegations to support its decision. In short, Bush and his top officials lied about Iraq.

Going to war is the most serious decision a president can make. It should never be approached in a cavalier fashion. American lives, the prestige and influence of the country, international relations, the health of its defenses, and the future of the next generation are at stake. Yet every single piece of evidence we now have confirms that George W. Bush, who was obsessed with unseating Saddam Hussein even before 9/11, recklessly used the opportunity presented by the terror attacks to march the country to war, fixing the intelligence to justify his decision, and lying to the American people about the reasons for the war. In other times, this might have been an impeachable offense.

Think Progress

This morning on the floor of the Senate, Sen. Chuck Schumer asked Majority Leader Bill Frist a simple question:

SEN. SCHUMER: Isn’t it correct that on March 8, 2000, my colleague [Sen. Frist] voted to uphold the filibuster of Judge Richard Paez?

SEN. FRIST: The president, the um, in response, uh, the Paez nomination – we’ll come back and discuss this further. … Actually I’d like to, and it really brings to what I believe – a point – and it really brings to, oddly, a point, what is the issue. The issue is we have leadership-led partisan filibusters that have, um, obstructed, not one nominee, but two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, in a routine way.

So, Frist is arguing that one filibuster is OK. His problem is that several Bush nominees have been filibustered. This position completely undercuts Frist’s argument that judicial filibusters are unconstitutional. (Which is, in turn, the justification for the nuclear option.) If judicial filibusters are unconstitutional there is no freebee. But Frist digs his hole even deeper:

SEN. FRIST: The issue is not cloture votes per se, it’s the partisan, leadership-led use of cloture votes to kill – to defeat – to assassinate these nominees. That’s the difference. Cloture has been used in the past on this floor to postpone, to get more info, to ask further questions.

When Frist voted to filibuster Paez’s nomination it had been pending for four years. It’s hard to believe he couldn’t get all the info he needed or ask all the questions he had during that time. Make no mistake about it: Bill Frist was trying to kill the Paez nomination. A press release issued the following day by former Sen. Bob Smith, who organized the filibuster effort, read “Smith Leads Effort to Block Activist Judges.” All the details about Frist’s hypocrisy here.

If you are looking for definitive proof that the So-Called Liberal Media does not exist, you need look no further than the checkered career of Newsweek’s Michael Isikoff, right.

Today, he’s known as one of the authors of the Newsweek item in which an unnamed Pentagon “media person” confirmed that charges that U.S. interogators defiled the Qu’ran were going to appear in an official report on abuse of Moslem prisoners at the Guantanamo internment camp. It turns out the unnamed source was playing Newsweek for the fools they are. This source in the Bush Administration recanted – and now the Bush Administration is laying blame for the deaths of rioters in Afghanistan at the feet of Newsweek and Isikoff.

(In light of the 100,000-plus deaths caused by Bush Administration lies about Iraq, the fact that they can lay this guilt trip on Newsweek – or anyone – seemingly without irony proves that the Bush high command suffers from a collective pathology.)

For many of us, however, Isikoff – who was nicknamed “Spikey” by either Luciane Goldberg or Linda Tripp (can’t remember and who cares) – played a key role in bringing about the impeachment of President Clinton in the late 1990’s.

MediaMatters, the website published by David Brock, who was then a part of the Vast Rightwing Conspiracy but has since come back from the Dark Side, reminds us of Spikey’s water-bearing for the VRC back then :

If the news organizations that are spending so much time on Newsweek bothered to look at Isikoff’s background, they would find a reporter with a history of relying on unreliable sources — in addition to Paula Jones, there are such discredited Clinton accusers as Kathleen Willey, Linda Tripp, and Lucianne Goldberg…

Isikoff’s leading role in reporting sex stories relied heavily on his relationships with Tripp and Goldberg, who provided leads, testimony, and tapes of secretly recorded conversations. However, Tripp’s and Goldberg’s actions were motivated by their personal interests: specifically, animosity toward Clinton and financial windfall. As [Sydney] Blumenthal noted in The Clinton Wars, Goldberg had arranged to play for Isikoff taped conversations between Tripp and Lewinsky about Lewinsky’s relationship with Clinton, hoping that “playing the tapes would get Isikoff to write something that would provide publicity so that she could sell Tripp’s book.” Isikoff declined to listen to the tapes during the period when Tripp was continuing to record conversations with Lewinsky, but eventually quoted from them after the conversations ceased…

Isikoff also floated the claim, which later proved false, that the Clinton legal team had been involved in suborning perjury in the creation of a “talking points” document that Lewinsky gave Tripp in advance of her filing an affidavit in the Jones case. As journalist Joe Conason and political columnist Gene Lyons noted in their book, The Hunting of the President (Thomas Dunne Books, 2000), Isikoff later expressed regret at his role in advancing that story, claiming to have simply forgotten that the “talking points” closely mirrored a letter Tripp herself had written to Newsweek long before. [p. 356]…

As I used to tell my conservative friends (I say “used to tell” because I don’t know any conservatives at the moment) when we debated the “Librul Media” bugaboo, journalists have “liberal” views because they have chosen a profession in which a central objective is challenging orthodoxy. Propping up orthodoxy is what conservatives do. Poking and prodding the status quo is what liberals do.

But all that high-mindedness falls to the wayside for reporters who have lucked their way into the top tier of the national media – often referred to as “the Gang of 500.” These people would kill their mothers to get a story that would put them in the running for a Pulitzer. Whether the potential Pulitzer story might lead to negative fallout for Democrats or liberal causes is simply not a factor in pursuing it.

Isikoff is the poster child for this mindset.

In the 1990s, Michael Isikoff made a deal with Satan incarnated as a Rightwing cabal intent on bringing down the Clintons. That cozy arrangement has now become his likely downfall. He made a fatal error. He trusted Republicans. If they hang him for it, I, for one, won’t be sad.

Los Angeles Times:

Antonio Villaraigosa romped past incumbent James K. Hahn to make history Tuesday, winning election as the first Latino mayor of Los Angeles since the city’s pioneer days.

Riding a huge wave of voter discontent, the challenger avenged his 2001 loss to Hahn, who possessed an iconic family name but never connected strongly with voters during a rocky four-year term.

Villaraigosa’s landslide represented a crowning symbol of Latinos’ growing clout in California, after decades of population gains that failed to produce a commensurate rise in political power. L.A.’s last Latino mayor, Cristobal Aguilar, left office in 1872, when the now-sprawling metropolis was a frontier outpost of barely 6,000 people.

Hahn: 183,749 (41.34%) — Villaraigosa: 260,721 (58.66%)

(Disclaimer: I am not a paid political consultant and receive no remuneration from Pensito Review for my, ahem, contributions. Indeed, if my boss knew I was doing this at work, he’d probably DOCK MY PAY.)

A Forbes article by Steve McGookin explores the current quandry facing the Federal Elections Commission regarding the assumed power of Web logs to influence the political process. While the Internet consultancy Malchow Schlackman Hoppey and Cooper (which handled John Kerry’s on-line campaign) has submitted a letter calling for blogs to be granted the same exemption from election finance laws that “real” journalists enjoy, there remains the pesky issue of bloggers who are paid political advocates who do seem to influence election outcomes (not to mention journalists paid by the gubmint to promulgate policy, but that’s another matter).

While outlining the quagmire the FEC faces this summer, McGookin elucidates some of the questions the FEC is considering:

While a fundamental starting point, according to the FEC, is not to deter ordinary citizens from becoming involved in political activity, a big difficulty is placing any kind of accurate value on political activity conducted online. The Commission’s responsibility is to regulate only monetary exchanges, as opposed to intellectual, as well as deciding whether or not such activity even rises to a level where the FEC would be concerned in any case.

Most blog activity–political or otherwise–is carried out by individuals on what would charitably be described as a shoestring budget. But what about the increasing numbers of popular blogs that are using or adopting various structured business models?

Then there is the question of whether the FEC is limited to regulating only paid-for political advertising on blogs. Or is everything that supports or endorses a particular candidate appearing on a blog considered to fall under existing campaign contribution ceilings and, as such, subject to regulation?

To what extent are blogs–as distinct from mainstream media’s commercial online entities–protected, being primarily vehicles of individual personal opinion? Does the size of their audience make any difference?

Note that Pensito Review’s business plan consists of maybe someday hopefully getting a click-through deal with Amazon, and the estimated value of our combined “intellectual property” likely exempts us from any consideration of the “contribution” a PR endorsement would lend a hapless candidate. Size of audience? Let’s not go there.

That said, and the FEC’s concerns aside, there is other evidence that blogs just don’t matter that much, or at least no more than “real” media.

A Reuters article on a recent study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project appears to suss out the fact that blogs just aren’t as powerful as the worry-worts at the FEC think they are.

Charting the discussion of issues during the 2004 presidential campaign, the study found political blogs — online opinion and information sites — played a similar, but not greater role, as the mainstream media in “creating buzz” around the candidates’ campaigns.

The study dispels the notion that blogs are replacing traditional media as the public’s primary source of information, said Michael Cornfield, a senior research consultant at Pew.

“Bloggers follow buzz as much as they make it,” said Cornfield. “Our research uncovered a complicated dynamic in which a hot topic of conversation could originate with the blogs or it could originate with the media or it could originate with the campaigns.

“We can say that if people still have that idea that the bloggers are the new fifth estate, that the bloggers are the new kingmakers, that’s not the case.”

Of course, the evidence is clear, if you follow Pew’s line of reasoning:

For example, it showed the Bush campaign paid more attention to an Osama bin Laden tape than did the blogs. At the same time, the Kerry campaign made more mention of missing weapons of mass destruction in Iraq than the blogs. The mainstream media made more mention of Vice President Dick Cheney’s lesbian daughter than either the blogs or the campaigns.

Well, that should answer the questions for the FEC. Except the thought that perhaps the 40 out of 1.6 million blogs Pew examined were investigating more interesting issues than Osama, WMD or Ms. Cheney.

So please, FEC Director Scott Thompson, don’t treat blogs differently than mainstream press. According to Pew, Pensito Review is equally as irrelevant as the “New York Times.” Honest.

I’m not sure what to make of George Galloway, the British Member of Parliament who voluntarily traveled to Washington to face accusations by Sen. Norm Coleman (R-MN), Chairman of the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, that he had pocketed funds generated by the United Nation’s oil-for-food program in Iraq during the period in which sanctions were lodged against Saddam Hussein.

Bloomberg reports that ” Galloway is one of three foreign politicians named last week by the subcommittee as having received options to buy discounted Iraqi oil for their support of the ousted dictator. The options could be sold to oil traders, earning the holder a profit without ever handling a barrel of crude.”

The Senate panel accused Galloway of using a charity for children’s leukemia to launder Iraqi oil money.

“The only thing these people have against me is my name on pieces of paper written by we know not whom, and when we know not,” Galloway told a reporter today.

Bloomberg also notes that “Galloway won a libel suit against the London Daily Telegraph in December after it reported he had received a salary from Hussein’s regime. The newspaper, which has appealed, was ordered to pay Galloway 150,000 pounds ($275,865) in damages and about 1.2 million pounds in legal costs. ”

I do know what I think about Norm Coleman so it was refreshing to see portions of the Senate hearing on television today. The BBC has greatest hits from Galloway’s quotes:

• “Who paid me hundreds of thousands of dollars? The answer to that is nobody and if you had anybody who paid me a penny you would have produced them here today.”
• “I have met Saddam Hussein exactly the same number of times as Donald Rumsfeld met him. The difference is that Donald Rumsfeld met him to sell him guns and to give him maps the better to target those guns.”
• “You traduced my name around the world without ever having asked me a single question, without ever having contacted me, without ever having written to me or telephoned me, without any contact with me whatsoever and you call that justice.”
• “Senator [Coleman], this is the mother of all smoke screens. You are trying to divert attention from the crimes that you supported from the theft of billions of dollars of Iraq’s wealth.”
• “You have nothing on me Senator [Coleman], except my name on lists of names in Iraq, many of which were drawn up after the installation of your puppet government in Iraq.”
• “I have never seen a barrel of oil, owned one, bought one, sold one, and neither has anybody on my behalf.”
• “I know that standards have slipped over the last few years in Washington but for a lawyer you are remarkably cavalier with any idea of justice.”
• “One of the most serious mistakes you have made in this set of documents is such a schoolboy howler it makes a fool of the efforts you have made.”
• “Senator [Coleman], in everything I said about Iraq I turned out to be right and you turned out to be wrong and 100,000 have paid with their lives, 1,600 of them American soldiers sent to their deaths on a pack of lies.”

I’d give anything to hear this Scotsman read George Bush the riot act. I suspect our Georgie’s poor head would explode.

Democratic gains in the West don’t offset loses in the South, according to Brookings Institution visiting fellow William H. Frey. His study of recent Census data, “The Electoral College Moves to the Sun Belt,” says Democrats better get busy in the South, or kiss future elections good-bye. Los Angeles Times:

…anyone who believes Democrats can consistently win the White House without puncturing the Republican dominance across the South is just whistling Dixie. The census projections present Democrats with an ominous equation: the South is growing in electoral clout even as the Republican hold on the region solidifies…

In 2004, Bush won 286 electoral college votes, while Democrat John F. Kerry tallied 252 (with 270 needed for victory). Frey projects that after the 2010 census, four electoral college votes will shift from Kerry states to Bush states…

By 2030, he forecasts, the Democratic strongholds of New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Massachusetts and Michigan would lose a combined 17 electoral college votes. Over that same period, Florida (up nine, to 36) and Texas (up eight, to 42) could gain that many votes alone. Arizona (up five, to 15), which has voted Democratic for president once since 1952, would be the other big winner.

The only Democratic bastion likely to increase in strength is California, which Frey projects would gain one electoral college vote (to 56) after 2010, and another after 2030.

The big lesson for Democrats from these numbers is that there is no substitute for restoring the party’s competitiveness in at least some of the South — particularly Florida and states such as Arkansas, Virginia and Tennessee…

There’s a warning sign for Republicans too. The three big projected electoral college winners — Florida, Texas and Arizona — all have large and growing Latino populations.

Florida’s Democratic party just went through a (surprise!) fairly contentious leadership change, after former head Scott Maddox stepped down to run for governor. State Representative Karen Thurman, the new chair, better come out swinging.