When it comes to that serious gut-check moment, Lamont shows that he’s just not tough: he’s willing to negotiate with terrorists. View it and weep:
Actually, this is a good commercial, but not a great one: the takeaway line is about negotiations; the issues discussed are mostly things that are state-level not federal. But it does help define the candidate as a good guy.
Some more items with varying relevance to Predatorgate.
Wishful thinking dept? Or just old-fashion lying? You be the judge: Fox News identifies Foley as…a Democrat. (Yes, really.) Update: And then they did it again in a completely different caption! Amazing.
The Trademark Blog says You Can’t Make Up This Kind Of Irony: “Congratulations to the Foley Hoag firm, which won the exclusive right to be known as Foley, today.” (Explanatory link.)
Human Shields: NRCC head Rep. Tom Reynolds — second most likely head to roll after Hastert — did a press conference. Surrounded by kids. Reporters asked if the kids could be cleared out so they could ask the R-rated questions. Reynolds said no — prompting some bloggers to accuse him of using the kids as “human shields” to avoid tough questions.
Foley enters rehab and the rumors start to swirl. People keep emailing me saying he checked into a Scientology rehab center. I have no idea if this is true and don’t care. (In keeping with the national trend, the Scientologists have put their picture of Foley accepting an award that used to be on this page down the memory hole.) More interesting is this AP story (ephemeral link, sorry):
When disgraced former Rep. Mark Foley announced he was entering rehab for treatment of alcoholism and “other behavioral problems,” some of those who have known him for years were shocked and suspicious.
Some friends and acquaintances said they rarely saw him drink.
A former colleague, Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., said on Fox News Channel: “I don’t buy this at all. I think this is a phony defense. The fact is, I think he’s responsible for what he did here and I think it’s a gimmick.”
Meltdown: So here’s the serious item: The GOP leadership can’t keep its various stories straight. If they are not guilty of something, then they certainly are doing the most amazing job of acting like co-conspirators who have been discovered. The Washington Post speculates that Predatorgate may move several house seats.
I’m on EFF’s Advisory Board, but I have nothing to do with this fine project.
EFF Sues for Information on Electronic Surveillance Systems
FBI Withholds Records on Tools to Intercept Personal Communications
Washington, D.C. – The FLAG Project at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed its first lawsuit against the Department of Justice Tuesday after the FBI failed to respond to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for records concerning DCS-3000 and Red Hook — tools the FBI has spent millions of dollars developing for electronic surveillance.
DCS-3000 is an interception system that apparently evolved out of “Carnivore,” a controversial surveillance system the FBI used several years ago to monitor online traffic through Internet service providers. One Department of Justice report said DCS-3000 was developed to “intercept personal communication services delivered via emerging digital technologies” and that it was used “as carriers continue to introduce new features and services.” According to the same report, Red Hook is a system to “collect voice and data calls and then process and display the intercepted information.”
The FLAG Project first filed its FOIA request for information about the surveillance systems on August 11, 2006. The FBI acknowledged receipt of the request, but the agency has not responded within the time limit required by law.
“Recent allegations of domestic spying by the U.S. government already have both lawmakers and the general public up in arms. Americans have a right to know whether the FBI is using new technology to further violate their privacy,” said EFF Staff Attorney Marcia Hofmann. “The Department of Justice needs to abide by the law and publicly release information about these surveillance tools.”
EFF’s FLAG Project, launched last month, uses FOIA requests and litigation to expose the government’s expanding use of technologies that invade privacy.
“Transparency is critical to the functioning of our democracy, especially when the government seeks to hide activities that affect the rights of citizens,” EFF Senior Counsel David Sobel, who directs the FLAG Project. “We have recently seen numerous instances where federal agencies have sought to conceal surveillance activities that raise serious legal issues.”
For the full FOIA suit filed against the Department of Justice:
http://www.eff.org/flag/dcs/dcs_complaint.pdf
For more on the FLAG Project:
I’ve lifted this whole post from Talk Left — something I rarely do — because it describes something that makes me so cross:
Steven Howards and his son were walking by a Dick Cheney event this summer in Beaver Creek, on their way to a piano lesson. Howards told Cheney he didn’t approve of his war policy. When Howards walked back from the lesson, passing the site again, he was arrested. Charges later were dropped.
Colorado First Amendment Lawyer David Lane (think Ward Churchill) sued the secret service agent today, for violating his First and Fourth Amendment rights. The full complaint is here (pdf).
[UPDATE: NYT story on the suit. Don’t miss the last line.]
TalkLeft’s summary of the factual allegations in the lawsuit are below. Newer readers are encouraged to visit this earlier post of mine, America Needs You, Harry Truman–which deals with what your are free to say in America, and really isn’t as funny as it used to be.
Those few of you who read the comments on this blog may have noted a small dust-up in the comments to Predatorgate Scandal Spreads. One of the GOP spin points asserted there by an assiduous commentator is the idea that the Democrats are (at least? more?) to blame for letting a known predator run loose because they knew all about the scandal and did nothing. This isn’t a reference to the Democratic member of the page committee being totally shut out of discussions then (and now!) but rather an unsourced and unsubstantiated allegation that some unnamed Democratic sympathizer must have known all the juicy details and sat on them until the time it might do the most good. Since in fact neither I nor almost anyone else knows the source of the info that finally brought Rep. Foley’s behavior into the open, this sort of calumny is hard to rebut, although to my ear it has an element of blaming the victim — since a victim had to the original source of the damning information.
Amazingly, however, we now have some information on the subject of who leaked what to whom when:
Papers Knew of Foley E-Mail but Did Not Publish Stories: Then, in June, the reports resurfaced on Capitol Hill, where a neighborhood resident struck up a conversation in a bar with someone who had provided the e-mail messages. He said he passed them on to several news outlets. The resident, who said he was not affiliated with either party and was motivated by concern for the teenager, would talk only on condition of anonymity.
No one acted on the information until last week, and even then, it was a Web site that first posted the exchange. It is not clear who maintains the Weblog, stopsexpredators.blogspot.com, which appears to be largely devoted to the Foley scandal.
ABC News had its first account several days later on its Web site.
Mr. Ross said he was surprised by how quickly the congressman’s office confirmed the authenticity of the e-mail messages, first when ABC reported them on Sept. 28, and again a day later when confronted with much more explicit exchanges.
Mr. Ross dismissed suggestions by some Republicans that the news was disseminated as part of a smear campaign against Mr. Foley.
“I hate to give up sources, but to the extent that I know the political parties of any of the people who helped us, it would be the same party,” Mr. Ross said, referring to Republicans.
So to the extent we know who pushed this into the media … it’s Republicans. I have no idea who is behind stopsexpredators.com, but I bet that none of the people accusing them of being Machiavellian Democrats sitting on the info for ages do either. (And since when did Democrats get so good at Machiavellian tactics anyway?)
Recent Bluessky Posts
Jotwell Blenderlaw
