Lucid Links (112409, Morning)
I’d have to brush up on the intervening history a bit to be sure of this, but it seems that if this holds, it could turn out to be the most important single Senatorial “No” since Kansas Senator Edmund Ross voted not to convict impeached President Andrew Johnson in 1868:
I disagree with Senator Lieberman about 80% of the time, if not more; other than on national security, he usually gets it wrong. On ObamaCare, he still doesn’t get that the problem goes well beyond the fiscal disaster he cites. But I’ll take it, with the hope that other senators who see that statist health care would become a fiscal train wreck that would arrive at the station much more quickly than Social Security’s has will get a grip, slay this monstrosity, and send it to its grave.
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Republican South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford should never have let it get to this point (”SC gov faces 37 charges he broke state ethics laws”). He should have resigned. Everybody but janitor told him so, and the janitor probably left him a note.
We could argue all day about how Democrats have done worse and gotten away with it, and they have. But that’s not the point, and Sanford should know that. There’s still time to resign.
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Speaking of Democratic politicians who have done worse:
Sexual abuse accusations by St. HOPE Academy students against Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson were apparently covered up, possibly with “hush money,” according to a 61-page report issued by congressional investigators.
Failure of school officials to report sexual abuse of minors violates California state law, investigative staff of Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) noted in their report on the June firing of AmeriCorps Inspector General Gerald Walpin.
(Grassley said that) “It seems a lot of people might have been interested in protecting the AmeriCorps program and the Mayor of Sacramento from an IG who was discovering some unpleasant facts.”
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Sacramento Bee via Miami Herald, where Occam’s Razor says that “possibly” means “almost definitely” –
Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson offered to pay $1,000 a month to one of three girls who had accused him of inappropriately touching her while she was involved in his St. HOPE Hood Corps program, the girl told federal agents during their investigation of Johnson’s nonprofit St. HOPE organization last year.
The girl — unnamed in a newly released report by two ranking Congressional Republicans — was interviewed by agents Jeffrey Morales and Wendy Wingers with the Corporation for National and Community Service’s Office of Inspector General during an investigation of St. HOPE’s misuse of $800,000 in federal AmeriCorps grants. Investigators say the girl alleged Johnson had offered to pay her $1,000 a month while she remained in the St. HOPE program, but she refused.
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Washington Examiner’s Byron York (”White House scrambled to justify AmeriCorps firing after the fact”) –
(Last week) the Obama White House gave the lawmakers a trove of new, previously-withheld documents on the affair. It was a twist on the now-familiar White House late-Friday release of bad news; this time, the new evidence was put out not only at the start of a weekend but also hours too late for inclusion in the report.
The new documents support the Republican investigators’ conclusion that the White House’s explanation for (AmeriCorps Inspector General Gerald) Walpin’s dismissal — that it came after the board of the Corporation for National and Community Service, which oversees AmeriCorps, unanimously decided that Walpin must go — was in fact a public story cobbled together after Walpin was fired, not before.
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The acting inspector general of AmeriCorps said he shredded White House documents at the request of an agency press spokeswoman that pertained to the controversial firing of the previous inspector general, who was ousted after investigating a political ally of President Obama.
The e-mail message from agency spokeswoman Ranit Schmelzer seemed urgent, as she wrote: “WH documents were sent in error. Can you please destroy them? And can you confirm you receive this e-mail?” Acting IG Kenneth Bach responded 13 minutes later writing, “Confirmed, documents were shredded.”
The email exchanges between Bach and Schmelzer, as well as other documents pertaining to the firing of the AmeriCorps inspector general, were obtained by CNSNews.com through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.
Saturday’s New York Times report on all of this:
- Headlines it as a “GOP report.”
- Does not mention the White House document dump cited by York.
- Waits until the eighth paragraph to get to the hush money allegations.
- Breathlessly informed readers that “the acting United States attorney sent a complaint last April to a federal panel saying Mr. Walpin had withheld ‘potentially significant information at the expense of determining the truth.’” The Times “somehow forgot” that Walpin was cleared of those charges in October, and didn’t issue a correction until today (the current web text incorporates the correction, but it wasn’t in what was originally published).
The Associated Press’s one item on the situation has a “Don’t read this, it’s boring” headline (”GOP report: Deal with Sacramento mayor was rushed”), doesn’t refer to Johnson’s sexual harassment until the 11th paragraph, calls it “inappropriate touching,” and avoids using the term “hush money.”
Instapundit’s succinct, dead-on assessment: “When the press can ignore a sex scandal, you know it’s covering for politicians, not covering them.”
