I’m going back to this, cuz it’s fun — My irreverent acronym for presidential candidate Barack Obama (”Mr. BOOHOO-OUCH” — “Barack O-bomba Overseas Hussein “Obambi” Obama - Objectively Unfit Coddler of Haters“) has the H in it is because “He’s the one … who started it.” — as shown here.

Just a reminder that those trying to claim that use of the candidate’s middle name is a “fear bomb,” or whatever, don’t know what the H they’re talking about.

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The Columbus Dispatch’s Mark Niquette wrote the following without even the tiniest hint of its absurdity about Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner’s Profiles in Courage Award:

The award, named for (John F.) Kennedy’s 1957 Pulitzer Prize-winning book highlighting political acts of courage, previously has been bestowed on such noted political figures as former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

Claudia Rossett, someone who should have a Pulitzer but probably never will because she doesn’t cover liberal and PC causes, wrote that in the Oil For Food Scandal Annan “helped Saddam Hussein steal food from babies.” Hussein “by estimates of the U.S. General Accounting Office, fortified his own regime with at least $10.1 billion grafted and smuggled out of Oil-for-Food.”

Other than that, he was an OK guy, eh Mark?

Great company you’re in, Jennifer.

JFK, for all his imperfections, would be spinning in his grave at how the award program he started has descended into the depths of political hackdom.

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The groundswell of petitioners at Plunderbund demanding that Ohio’s scandalized Attorney General Marc “Gunga Dann” resign has reached 38 as of when this post went up.

Since it only displays the last 10 petitioners’ accompanying messages, we’re left to wonder whether Ohio Daily Blog proprietor and former Wide Open co-blogger Jeff “Dann’s the Man” Coryell is among the signatories.

To be fair, Coryell has written that he wants the “visionary” Dann (cough, cough) to resign.

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The Invisible Sherrod Brown has actually been mentioned as a Dem VP candidate worth considering a few times over the past several months (here; here; here, though the author notes in a later post that the idea has little traction; and here; HT Ohio Daily Blog).

A selection of Brown by Obama, or by the presidential candidate I irreverently refer to as HR4C (Hillary Rodham Cackling Crying Complaining Clinton), would have a certain symmetry. According to the Club for Growth’s 2007 Senate scorecard, it would ensure that the top of the Democratic ticket has a couple of complete zeros:

“3AM Phone Call” blowback (HT Ace):

Pundits gave credit for her win in Texas to the “3 AM” ad, but its beneficial effects for Hillary have been short-lived. She only has a nine-point advantage among Democrats on the phone-call-in-the-middle-of-the-night question, but she has put both herself and Barack Obama at a serious disadvantage with regards to John McCain. The question appears to have awakened the electorate to the fact that Presidents do more than talk about hope, change, and handshaking.

It’s as if Hillary decided to start campaigning for John McCain.

Nice reax vid from JS3M3 (John Sidney the Mad Maverick McCain III).

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Bush Derangement Syndrome from the bench that makes me clench:

Shawn Sage long dreamed of joining the military, and watching “Full Metal Jacket” last year really sold him on becoming a Marine.

But last fall, a Los Angeles Superior Court commissioner dashed the foster teen’s hopes of early enlistment for Marine sniper duty, plus a potential $10,000 signing bonus.

In denying the Royal High School student delayed entry into the Marine Corps, Children’s Court Commissioner Marilyn Mackel reportedly told Sage and a recruiter that she didn’t approve of the Iraq war, didn’t trust recruiters and didn’t support the military.

I agree with the California assemblyman who considers this an abuse of power — something Ms. Mackel would surely accuse the current administration of.

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I didn’t know inkjet printers were so versatile.

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Another James “A Million Little Pieces” Frey has been caught making up her life story, this time a bit earlier in the process.

Really bad news for the Economic Left (except on illegal immigration - ugh) — The Wall Street Journal is making all of its editorials available for free at this new address.

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John Fund asks, “How can anyone object to asking for ID” at the voting booth?

It appears that the Supreme Court, which heard a case over Indiana’s ID-requirement law earlier this week, is sympathetic to upholding it, based on the justices’ general lines of questioning.

In a “totally unrelated” development — “Voter cited by opponents of Indiana’s ID law registered in two states.”

The obvious attempts to game the system by those who oppose voter ID and other reasonable verification and control measures explain why I’ve been saying that voting, with only rare exceptions allowed for absentee balloting, has to take place in person, and only on Election Day. Open-ended “early balloting,” especially by mail, is an open invitation to large-scale voter fraud.

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Ann Coulter’s dad recently died. Here is her outstanding tribute to him.

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Fred Thompson, who did really, really, really, really well in last night’s GOP debate, is the fave in a Right Wing News “Temperature Check” of center-right blogs.

Obviously, further education is in order, because, if Fred isn’t in the race, Objectively Unfit Mitt Romney is the center-right fallback.

Start here, guys and gals.

NationalJournal.com has news (HT Instapundit) about the reality of the October 2006 Lancet report on civilian deaths in Iraq — a report that was breathlessly and gullibly cited at the time by Old Media outlets and reporters (including David Brown here at the Washington Post).

Here is background for those unfamiliar with the original story:

Published by The Lancet, a venerable British medical journal, the study [PDF] used previously accepted methods for calculating death rates to estimate the number of “excess” Iraqi deaths after the 2003 invasion at 426,369 to 793,663; the study said the most likely figure was near the middle of that range: 654,965. Almost 92 percent of the dead, the study asserted, were killed by bullets, bombs, or U.S. air strikes. This stunning toll was more than 10 times the number of deaths estimated by the Iraqi or U.S. governments, or by any human-rights group.
(more…)

A nominee for “Quietest Story in the Country” (HT Return of the Conservatives; I changed ROTC’s original link to a longer story):

Eight people were charged with filing bogus voter registration forms in St. Louis and St. Louis County for the 2006 general election, federal authorities announced Friday.

All eight worked for ACORN, the not-for-profit Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. ACORN focuses on voter registration drives targeting low- and middle-income people across the nation.

The federal indictments were unsealed Friday morning. Authorities were still seeking some of the people indicted, so their names were withheld.

….. Questions about some of the voter registration cards surfaced in October 2006, when St. Louis Republican elections director Scott Leiendecker sent letters to 5,000 voters registered by ACORN, asking them to verify their registrations on the phone and with signatures returned by mail.

….. Earlier this year, seven ACORN workers were indicted in Seattle for submitting phony voter registration forms.

Questions:

• How many of those 5,000 forms got no response?
• When is ACORN, which also has been linked to voter-registration and other election-related fraud in 12 states, including Ohio, going to be barred from activities involving voter registration?

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Ya gotta love the sense of humor Tim Gaynor of Reuters inadvertently exhibits (bold is mine):

Illegal immigrants “self deport” as woes mount

In the past year, U.S. immigration police have stepped up workplace sweeps across the country and teamed up with a growing number of local forces to train officers to enforce immigration laws.

Meanwhile, a bill seeking to offer many of the 12 million illegal immigrants a path to legal status was tossed by the U.S. Congress, spurring many state and local authorities to pass their own measures targeting illegal immigrants.

The toughening environment has been coupled with a turndown in the U.S. economy, which has tipped the balance toward self deportation for many illegal immigrants left struggling to find work.

….. Aluisio Carvalho, 66, left a wife and four children behind in Brazil in 2001 when he set off to find work in Boston. Since then, he has managed to pay for the education of his children by working in a restaurant, but is now planning to leave himself in February

“Salaries are really low, and living costs are high. We also face too much exploitation at work here, too many demands,” he said.

Sigh:

• The economy grew at an annualized rate of 3.8% and 4.9%, respectively, in the second and third quarters.
• October’s and November’s activity indicators in Manufacturing and Non-Manufacturing all came in with readings showing expansion.
• Consumer spending in November blew away expectations.
• The Christmas shopping season was at least decent (first item at link), if not better.
• Productivity? Way up. Jobs? Increasing. Unemployment rate? 4.7%, and holding.

I’ll allow for the remote possibility that the good news so far this quarter won’t somehow ultimately lead to a report of positive economic growth. But, for Mr. Gaynor to credibly assert, as if it’s a fact, that there is a “turndown in the US economy,” something besides one or two sectors needs to be, y’know, “turning down.”

If illegals like Mr. Carvalho are leaving, it’s more likely that there are fewer “exploitation” opportunities for illegal work than there were a year or so ago (Mr. Carvalho has learned about claiming victimization, has he not?). Especially given the stats cited, that does not mean that there are fewer legal opportunities.

Let’s not leave the out-of-proportion commission of crimes by illegals out of the picture either. An enforcement response is long overdue, and at least one city has responded. In October, the City of Scottsdale, Arizona, after a police officer in nearby Phoenix was slain by an illegal immigrant Scottsdale police had let go, began “routinely asking for proof of citizenship from every suspect they arrest and turning those who are in this country illegally over to federal immigration officials.” It’s. About. Time.

Once illegals cross the border into Mexico, their ongoing, day-to-day illegality will have ceased. This is a good thing, and it would appear, contrary to the “There Shall Be Open Borders” Wall Street Journal, that the economy might actually be able to handle their absence.

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“Charlie Wilson’s War” (CWW) is a Hollywood fantasy, per IBDeditorials.com:

Hollywood would have us believe that Democrats defeated the evil empire in Afghanistan, and that President Reagan played only a minor role and even helped pave the way to 9/11.

….. “Charlie Wilson’s War,” which opened Friday, manages to reduce the president who won the Cold War to a background footnote.

….. The movie also perpetuates the left-wing myth that the covert operation funded Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida and ultimately led to the 9/11 attacks. Reagan-era officials such as Ikle say Osama never got funding or weapons from the U.S. and that he didn’t launch his terror war until after U.S. involvement and the Soviet withdrawal in 1989.

No, CWW is not a comedy — at least not on purpose.

Another fantasy may be that CWW, with a production budget of $75 million, will break even at the box office.

Nevertheless, like the pitifully inaccurate “Nixon” and “JFK,” it will probably be coming to a school classroom near you, unquestioned.

Is there no limit to how the Clintons will rewrite history (HT The Campaign Spot)?

The claim that Mrs. Clinton was heavily involved in the Irish peace process in the mid-1990s is apparently a month old. Dick Morris and Eileen McGann totally dissected their load of blarney on Monday:

How odd that Hillary forgot to mention her pivotal role in Ireland just four years ago, when she wrote her $8 million memoir, Living History. There, she told a very different story (of ceremonial involvement, at best — Ed.).

….. Bill’s memoirs are also totally devoid of any memories of any role at all by Hillary in the peace process. Other than the Christmas tree lighting and attending receptions and meeting celebrities — Bono, Seamaus Heaney, etc. — there is nothing substantive about Hillary.

As a general statement, I couldn’t agree more with those last six words.

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Unreal news from New York (HT JammieWearingFool via Instapundit):

SPITZER OFFICE TAKES BYTE OUT
Cover-up Eyed as Scandal Probers Find Staff’s Computers ‘Scrubbed’ or Missing

Computers in Gov. Spitzer’s office were intentionally “purged and scrubbed” of potentially crucial records involving the Dirty Tricks Scandal - while others have simply disappeared, investigators have been told.

The blockbuster charges - which could involve the illegal destruction of public records - have been made by at least four current and former state computer experts, including some who worked directly in Spitzer’s office, The Post has been told.

The allegations, recently outlined to investigators from the Senate Investigations Committee, could explain Spitzer’s repeated refusal to allow committee probers, as well as those from the state Public Integrity Commission and the Albany County District Attorney’s Office, to examine computer hard drives, BlackBerrys and other e-mail communications devices used by Spitzer and his staff, investigators say.

The New York Times had a story yesterday with a typically uninformative headline of the type used when bad news relating to Democrats is involved:

Albany G.O.P. Plans Inquiry on Reports of Purged E-Mail by the Administration.

Whose administration, guys? The story mentions “deleting electronic records,” but has nothing about the alleged missing computers.

I also could not find the story in “Today’s Paper” (i.e., the Times’s print edition) for Tuesday.

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The Big Dig is done. The lawsuits aren’t, though one was just settled, nor are the criminal proceedings. There is a $1.4 billion debt hangover. I wish I could find a definitive safety-related update to this.

I do hope for Boston’s sake that the indisputable improvements in getting around the city lead to a better and growing economy. On further thought, it had better happen. After all, the country paid for almost half ($7 billion) of its $14.8 billion cost.

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“Fraud Seen as a Driver In Wave of Foreclosures” — I’d like to see the percentage of all foreclosures that can be traced to fraud. That shouldn’t be too hard for someone in Old Media to look into. Since we probably won’t ever see an answer from anyone in Old Media, anyone who has the info or can lay out a roadmap is welcome to e-mail me. If it’s as high as 30% - 50%, it makes some of the remedies coming out of Washington seem rather useless. The banks that got taken need to suffer, as it’s their job to check things out. Those who engaged in fraud need to do serious hard time.

Caucus Cooler’s revelations (with at least one supporting document; HT Mark at Weapons of Mass Discussion) about Mike Huckabee’s financial dealings are stunning, and represent a Ben & Jerry’s-sized scoop that should embarrass Old Media:

The Cooler has obtained documents that show Mike Huckabee received $378,000 in consulting fees during 2006, while he was still governor of Arkansas.

Most noteworthy, $35,000 came from Novo Nordisk, one of the world’s largest embryonic stem cell researchers. It seems that when money is at stake Huckabee may be able to look past his supposedly fervent opposition to this procedure.

He also received speaking fees and honoraria from churches while Governor.

Absent a refutation that doesn’t seem possible, the fees represent a blatant BizzyBlog Dealbreaker. This means that his issue positions don’t matter; he doesn’t deserve anyone’s vote.

And to think I was tempted to give the guy a pass over the “wedding” registries used to collect gifts from “friends” last year when his time as governor had ended. You see, Poor Huck and his wife Janet were moving into a 7,000-foot house, and had to furnish it “somehow.” Gag me.

Besides being part of the Dealbreaker, the Nordisk fees, given what the company does (”Our primary research activities on embryonic stem cells from mice were recently expanded to include cells of human origin.”), either make a mockery of Huck’s supposedly ardent prolife views, or show that he will take money from anyone with no questions asked. Sort of reminds you of another former Arkansas governor, doesn’t it?

I’m insulted that Huckabee — take your pick — thought he could get all of this past the nation indefinitely, or that we wouldn’t care if it became known.

Also, a memo to the folks at the Arkansas Democrat Gazette — aren’t you using any of the money from your $59.40 a year online subscriptions for, like, reporting?

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I have a feeling Congressman and House Minority Leader John Boehner is quite pleased to be named Grinch of the Year by Progress Ohio. That he is so despised indicates just how good his year was, and how Nancy Pelosi’s performance was, in “three words that best describe her, and I quote: ‘Stink. Stank. Stunk.’”

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Excuse the local detour, but two local sports stories (”Crable Out at Moeller” and “Moeller Hires New Football Coach“) have me bent. But they do involve someone football fans nationally might recall. That person would be Bob Crable, who played at Notre Dame, and then in the NFL for the New York Jets.

After a few years as an entrepreneur, Crable became the head football coach at Cincinnati Moeller High School, his alma mater, in 2001.

A year ago, I commented at this Chuckoblog post:

I simply don’t get the idea that a Bob Crable would be worrying even one bit about his job if he continues to have 6-7-8-9 win seasons, esp as he seems to be a good person who approaches the good-person level of (Gerry) Faust, who’s a living saint.

As far as I’m concerned, Crable can keep cranking out good seasons, and eventually he’ll get his state championship.

The Big Moe booster types who based on what you’ve written have Crable under some pressure ….. have a total lack of perspective that’s appalling and embarrassing.

Moeller was 7-4 this year, and made the state football playoffs. But the out-of-control booster types had him sacked anyway.

To make it worse, Moeller had no qualms about hiring a job-hopping coach who left his previous school in the lurch after one season, and who had, according to some accounts, told his team about his future plans with them after he had committed to the Moeller job.

I’m not a big Bible-verse guy, but this sad sequence of events made me wish that a lot of these people would remember this. Crable, to his credit, is, at least for now, staying at the school and teaching religion; so you know on which side of that verse he resides.

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Bill Kristol’s skewering of Time (HT Jules Crittenden) on its “Putin of the Year” selection and simultaneous tribute to General Petraeus’s success with the Surge is a must-read. Key grafs:

Our liberal elites are so invested in a narrative of defeat and disaster in Iraq that to acknowledge the prospect of victory would be too head-wrenching and heart-rending. It would mean giving credit to George W. Bush, for one. And it would mean acknowledging American success in a war Time, and the Democratic party, and the liberal elites, had proclaimed lost.

The editors couldn’t acknowledge their mugging by reality. That’s fine. Nonetheless, reality exists. And the reality is that in Iraq, after mistakes and failures, thanks to the leadership of Bush, Petraeus, and General Ray Odierno–the day-to-day commander whose contributions shouldn’t be overlooked–we are winning.

The reality is also this: The counterinsurgency campaign that Petraeus and Odierno conceived and executed in 2007 was as comprehensive a counterinsurgency strategy as has ever been executed.

Time has selected some real clunkers in the past 20 years, but overlooking Petraeus may prove to be the most embarrassing oversight of them all.

It has once again been too long since my last comprehensive cruise through what I believe is the largest single-state blog alliance in the nation. So let’s get started on what will only be a surface scratch at a rich treasure trove of content.

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Trakas v. Kucinich in OH-10. Trakas will announce on Saturday, noted at Big World Blog.

Related: Mark Naymik of the Cleveland Plain Dealer says, oh-so-objectively, “The Cuyahoga County Republican Party has found its sacrificial lamb in the 10th Congressional District.” Really? If Trakas plays the prolife betrayal card on Kucinich in what I believe is still a heavily Catholic district, I wouldn’t be too sure, Mark.

And somebody in Northeast Ohio has to start answering for how lousy its economy has been. It can’t be Bob Taft’s fault; Metro Columbus is getting along very well, and Metro Cincy is doing OK, if not great.

Kucinich may not be directly responsible, but what if anything has he done to stop the bleeding? It’s more likely that he’s voted against legislation — lots of it — that would have helped, and for legislation that has been or would have been harmful.

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Bearing Drift jumped on yesterday’s Sharpton-FBI-IRS story.

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Read Wizblog’s “An Accident and a Murder,” about the disparate news treatment two French crime death stories received. Don’t miss his related follow-up items.

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Maggie Thurber, on Ohio’s lack of competitiveness:

Ohio ranked 47th out of 50 states in terms of our overall ranking (1 was the best) and 49th in the Economic Performance Ranking, which was based on the state’s performance (equal-weighted average) in the three important performance variables highly influenced by state policy: personal income per capita (47th), absolute domestic migration (45th), and non-farm payroll employment (48th).

The American Legislative Exchange Council’s index to all 50 state reports (all PDFs) is here.

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Smoke If You Got ‘Em weighed in on Taxman Blog’s critique of yours truly and Nix over payday lending. Taxman responded.

My take is that there is something wrong with a business whose only reason for existing is to prey on the ignorant. At a minimum, payday lenders should be forced to treat their “fees” as interest, and be subject to Truth in Lending disclosures. The fact that they aren’t only aids and abets their predations.

Capping rates and fees, even if there is adequate disclosure, is probably necessary too. Sorry — I don’t think we can stand by and watch ignorant people get taken. And I definitely don’t want to be represented by someone who has made his career in a business whose only reason for existing, again, is to prey on the ignorant.

Taxman’s point about state lotteries is a good one, and I think that on balance we’d be better off without them. But on the mistaken public policy scale of 1-10, I think payday-lending laissez faire (which is essentially the situation in Ohio) is a 10, while the lotteries are a 3.

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Justin at Right on the Right covers yet another Hillary time warp.

A related blast from past from Snopes: “Claim (by Mrs. Clinton): I was named after Sir Edmund Hillary. False.”

A more comprehensive look at Mrs. Clinton’s history of estrangement from the truth is at Liberally Conservative.

Porkopolis wonders when Mrs. Clinton’s apology for calling General Petraeus a liar (”willing suspension of disbelief) is going to arrive.

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King’s Right Site has a story about Montel Williams that got less attention than it deserved. Mr. Williams would appear to need a halo adjustment.

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Nix is the only Guy I’m aware of noting that John and Elizabeth Edwards homeschool their two children. Given Edwards’s party’s beholdenness to the NEA, that may not be a minor matter.

Related, sort of: Return of the Conservatives notes that Heisman winner Tim Tebow, positively covered here yesterday, was homeschooled.

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Nasty, Brutish and Short has choice words on the “green shopping” movement.

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One Oar is paddling furiously against against the government education syndicate. As should we all.

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Pro Ecclesia caught Pennsylvania’s supposedly prolife, profamily senator Casey getting praise from the state’s Planned Parenthood chapter for his voting record — And thereby betraying his brave father’s legacy.

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As usual, the top three items at Central Ohioans Against Terrorism are strong doses of reality that should rattle the complacent.

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“Video: abortionist tells med students he lies to patients” — at Brain Shavings. Read it. View it.

Update: A link is also at Life News, and here’s some visual reinforcement:

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Boring Made Dull shows that Ohio Governor Strickland knows when not to cross the line (even when he’d personally like to). Barbara Sykes has no such political sense.

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And finally, Conservative UAW Guy just did something I wish I had gotten around to — chronicling the “almost too much information” debunking globaloney and those who promote it. He barely scratched the surface of what I have.

Rudy the Terrible (HT The New Editor) – at least according to Ellen Wulfhorst at Reuters:

“He is a scary guy,” said Jerome Hauer, who ran the city’s Office of Emergency Management for Giuliani. “He was probably one of the more divisive mayors the city has ever seen.

Tom Elia at The New Editor notes, as Ms. Wulfhorst “somehow” didn’t, that Hauer has given $9,000 to Democratic candidates since 2000.

As to the “substance” of the story, here is how Gotham felt after enduring four years of “scary, divisive” Rudy:

….. a late October 1997 Quinnipiac University poll showing him as having a 68% approval rating; 70% of New Yorkers were satisfied with life in the city and 64% said things were better in the city compared to four years previously.

Throughout the campaign he was well ahead in the polls and had a strong fund-raising advantage over (Democratic opponent Ruth) Messinger. ….. All four daily New York newspapers—The New York Times, New York Daily News, New York Post, and Newsday—endorsed Giuliani over Messinger.

In the end, Giuliani won 59% of the vote to Messinger’s 41%, and became the first Republican to win a second term as mayor since Fiorello H. LaGuardia in 1941. ….. The margin of victory included gains in his share of the African American vote (20% compared to 5% in 1993) and the Hispanic vote (43% from 37%) while maintaining his base of white and Jewish voters from 1993.

He’s “scary” because he’s a strong candidate, baggage and all.

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Read this (near the end at link; HT Taranto at Best of the Web), and you’ll see why Giuliani is a “scary” candidate — to those who might end up having to opose him:

So every generation of American is called upon to lead. I get very, very frustrated when I hear Americans talk about or hear certain Americans talk about how difficult the problems we face are, how overwhelming they are, what a dangerous era we live in. I think we’ve lost perspective. We’ve always had difficult problems, we’ve always had great challenges, and we’ve always lived in danger. Do we think our parents and our grandparents and our great grandparents didn’t live in danger and didn’t have difficult problems? Do we think the Second World War was less difficult that our struggle with Islamic terrorism? Do we think that the Great Depression was a less difficult economic struggle for people to face than the struggles we’re facing now? Have we entirely lost perspective of the great challenges America has faced in the past and has been able to overcome and overcome brilliantly? I think sometimes we have lost that perspective. Do you know what leadership is all about? Leadership is all about restoring that perspective that this country is truly an exceptional country that has great things that it is going to accomplish in the future that will be as great and maybe even greater than the ones we’ve accomplished in the past. If we can’t do that, shame on us.

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Michelle Malkin follows up on the Your Black Muslim Bakery in Oakland, where a lot of the “baking” appears to have been cooking of the books, involving massive welfare fraud.

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I’m afraid we’re going to have to endure years of this deception (bold is mine):

Terri Schiavo’s family is upset with the media for again erroneously depicting the disabled woman as “brain dead” when she was able to interact with them before her former husband took her life. This time, the Schindler family says ABC News and the New York Times wrongly reported on her condition.

Yesterday on ABC’s “This Week” program, George Stephanopoulos, in an interview with Senator Fred Thompson, commented that Terri Schiavo’s autopsy proved she was “brain dead.”

….. “We are requesting that the media take a few minutes to research the facts regarding Terri’s case and, more importantly, her condition,” he added. In doing so they would learn that not one doctor ever diagnosed Terri as being ‘brain-dead.’”

Schindler said that included those physicians who wrote her autopsy report.

He told LifeNews.com that media reports on Terri’s painful 13-day starvation and dehydration euthanasia death rarely mention the more than 40 doctors’ affidavits submitted to the court.

Those legal papers either contradicted that Terri was in a so-called persistent vegetative state and they indicated she could have been helped with proper rehabilitation.

Schindler said the media also fails to report the medical records confirming that Terri at one time was beginning to speak, or the videos of Terri interacting with her family and her surroundings. Those prove she was alive and responsive, he said.

Oh, how determined the anti-life crowd and their Old Media sympathizers are to rewrite history.

This is the first half of a long-overdue catch-up post, to say the least. The other half will appear tomorrow. Hopefully I can get back into a once-a-week (or more) groove with this.

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Ohio Representative Danny Bubp, who is heading to Iraq, is a popular guy in the Alliance, as he should be. Andy’s Angle has an audio interview; Mark at Weapons of Mass Discussion has a tribute. Stay safe, Mr. Bubp.

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Bearing Drift doesn’t like the Sirius-XM merger, though I think he wants shareholders, and not the FCC or the Justice Department, to stop it.

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Boring Made Dull is not impressed with the deal BizzyBlog Internet Wall of Shame member Yahoo! made with relatives and other associated with imprisoned journalists in China. He shouldn’t be. The journalists are where they are because of the company’s cooperation with the Chinese Communist police state, weren’t freed as a result of the talks, and should be freed immediately.

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Brain Shavings got to something I’ve been meaning to (which is why I need to do these posts more) — The UN is whining about US “control” of the Internet again. Claudia Rossett at Pajamas Media thinks this is something to be really worried about, but I don’t think the assembly of complainers has any real clout — yet. Nevertheless, they’re not to be ignored.

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Eye Hacker Blog has a story you know Old Media won’t touch unless their faces are rubbed in it — “Anglicans Ask to Join Catholic Church.” Lots of ‘em. And I’m sure you know why.

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TaxMan Blog (HT Conservative Culture) — “….. our military loses almost 1000 soldiers a year even in ‘non war’ eras.” I also like his newly-designed Michigan quarter.

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Patrick at Central Ohioans Against Terrorism has a must-see video (link to CBN article is here) with transcript, about terror sympathizers and terrorists — in Hillard, Ohio, and Metro Columbus. I don’t suppose anyone at the Columbus Dispatch has bothered to see it.

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Interested-Participant updates us on “virginity restoration.” Really.

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FYI News is 3. Congrats. It is a truly special place. Where else can you get news about coffee-preparing monkeys, cows fleeing McDonald’s, and the pants-lawsuit judge losing his job?

Will This Now Be One of The ABA’s “Problems” with the Death Penalty?

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Yet another death-penalty case appears to be lost, thanks to successful defendant brinksmanship (bolds are mine):

In 1992, Cincinnati homicide detectives David Feldhaus and Harry Frisby faced William Garner, a man who broke into an English Woods apartment, stole electronic equipment, then set the home on fire to cover his tracks.

Five children died in the fire.

Only a 13-year-old escaped, dropping from a second-story window as a wall of fire flared across his bedroom doorway.

….. Garner confessed, was convicted on five charges of aggravated murder and sentenced to death.

Now, 15 years later, the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals has granted Garner’s Garner’s request for further judicial consideration of his conviction.

The court determined Garner didn’t understand his Miranda rights and reversed the conviction. The 2-1 decision released last month found Garner was poorly educated and borderline mentally retarded.

The court ordered Garner be retried or released.

At issue is not only if police read defendants the Miranda warning, but whether they make sure the suspects understand them.

Police and prosecutors are puzzled how they are supposed to do that.

….. (Assistant Hamilton County Prosecutor Gerald) Krumpelbeck called Garner a “street-smart kid” who was no stranger to the criminal justice system and the Miranda process. He also noted Garner was deemed competent to go to trial and that there were no insanity issues.

“Garner understood his rights,” Krumpelbeck said.

Don’t miss the video of the reactions of the victims’ surviving family members at the link (warning: hanky alert).

Coolidge notes that Garner was Mirandized by the book.

The idea that William Garner was at all mentally handicapped is breathtakingly (pun intended) absurd. The bolded items show intelligence and flexibility skillfully applied towards an unspeakably evil purpose, along with nerves of steel and shocking ruthlessness:

Hours before the fire, Garner slipped into University Hospital, looking for an easy mark. There, he found (apartment unit residents Marshandra) Jackson and Addie Mack, who had fallen and hurt her wrist.

Garner snatched up Mack’s purse when she wasn’t looking, stealing money and her apartment keys.

He took a taxi to the English Woods apartment, telling the driver to wait while he retrieved his belongings. He carted out electronic equipment, at one point waking up one of the children.

Garner spun a tale about her mother sending him to check everyone and sent her back to bed with a glass of water.

Before leaving, Garner set three fires in the apartment.

Then, he grabbed the phone and smoke detectors and left, Krumpelbeck said.

In late September, an American Bar Association-sponsored Ohio Death Penalty Assessment Team claimed to have found serious problems in how the death penalty is administered in the state:

Ohio’s death penalty system is so flawed it should be immediately suspended while the state conducts a thorough review of its fairness and accuracy, a team of lawyers concluded in a study released Monday.

The system is full of racial and geographic imbalances, too many defendants don’t get adequate legal help and too many protections of offenders’ rights are absent from the capital punishment process, according to a 30-month review of Ohio’s death penalty system by the American Bar Association.

The review said Ohio met only four of 93 ABA recommendations to ensure a fair death penalty system. The ABA team asked Gov. Ted Strickland to halt executions to allow a review of the system.

At the time, the ABA report was also blogged on by fellow Wide Open blogger Jeff, who supports what he claims would be a “temporary suspension.”

If the Garner case now becomes an example of one the ABA team would consider somehow “tainted,” that study should be burned on the figurative embers of that English Woods apartment. It inappropriately places perfect legal procedure above the facts and circumstances of the crime. Did the ABA team even attempt to determine if there was any kind of real doubt about the defendants’ guilt in any of the cases they reviewed? Did they not care?

In capital cases, I care about the legal nuances only after I get the answer to this question: Did he or she really do it? If yes, and without a doubt, as with Garner, all the legal maneuvering and posturing in the world doesn’t change the fact that there is nothing wrong with the verdict — or with carrying out the consequences of that verdict. It may be (but not in this case) that those who didn’t “follow procedure” may deserve discipline — but that has no impact on whether or not the capital crime was committed.

The Enquirer story has a troubling, but unfortunately not surprising, sidebar:

How Judges Karen Nelson Moore, Boyce L. Martin and John M. Rogers split isn’t surprising.

An Enquirer analysis done earlier this year of six years of death penalty decisions by 6th Circuit judges showed the 14 justices consistently voted along partisan lines.

Judges appointed by Republican presidents voted to deny inmate appeals 85 percent of the time, and judges appointed by Democrats voted to grant at least some portion of those appeals 75 percent of the time.

Moore and Martin were appointed by Democratic presidents and Rogers by a Republican.

It seems pretty clear which party criminals like William Garner who want to game the system to its fullest extent should favor. All-knowing, all-seeing Judges Moore and Martin need to tell the victims’ survivors how they can be so sure that Garner suffered such an incredible brain drain in the short time between the crime and his apprehension.

Cross-posted at Wide Open.

Hopefully moving a topic yours truly mentioned some time ago (final item at link) to the front burner, a blog called Center for College Affordability and Productivity addresses elite college endowment practices, particularly hoarding of funds (HT Instapundit) while financially strapped students and their parents pay through the nose.

If this isn’t an eye-popper, I don’t know what is (bold is mine):

I looked at three schools –Harvard, Yale, and the University of Virginia. At all three schools, less than four percent the average daily endowment base in the 2006-7 school year was spent. If Harvard and Yale had spent 5 percent and dedicated the increased spending to tuition reduction, they could have eliminated undergraduate tuition charges altogether — easily. If Virginia, which is a less well endowed public school, spent 5 percent and dedicated the added spending to tuition reduction for all students from families with less than $100,000 annual income, I would guesstimate that tuition could have been reduced well over $5,000 on average per student –an amount equal to about 60 percent of the in state tuition charges.

Seems like those who control these institutions, which generally lean quite a bit to the left, act like the worst of Scrooges when they control the purse strings — and routinely pass on tuition increases that are at least twice the rate of inflation year after year after year — while lecturing capitalist countries and others about their “greed.”

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“Elizabeth Edwards questions Limbaugh’s draft deferment” — There have been too many of these spousal attacks for all of them to have been spontaneous outbursts by Mrs. Edwards. So what is it about John Edwards that he uses his wife to the dirty jobs for him?
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Hugh Hewitt on The Left’s Great Snarl” over Rush:

Ten years ago the MSM might have been able to facilitate such an attack on Rush, but it is simply impossible today. Pushing a smear in the new media environment is a profoundly self-destructive bit of bad political theater that insults the audience’s intelligence while revealing the attackers’ character.

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More “Made in China” problems.

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Outrage of the morning I — Although I have known about each of these scams independently of each other, I first heard about the two being done in combination in a class I taught yesterday. The combination: “Mystery Shopper” and counterfeit checks.

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Outrage of the morning II — I had no idea that some gambling casinos are doing this, and I’m astonished that they’re allowed to:

Gambling has been recently labeled as the fastest growing addiction inside the United States. It has been a long known fact that some gamblers wager their car titles or even house mortgages.

Maggie Thurbers nails it on SCHIP’s anti-logic.

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Smoke If You Got ‘Em found a WaPo piece about subsidized housing for the poor not so poor pretty well off.

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Pro Eccelsia writes on the annual Red Mass Ruth Bader Ginsburg won’t go to. It must be the only thing red that she doesn’t like.

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Porkopolis, and Dave at Wide Open, are all over a possible Jean Schmidt pork payoff in OH-02. Go to either place for more.

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Interested-Participant notes that the last white landowners in Zimbabwe will not be landowners in Zimbabwe very much longer (scroll down to Oct. 1; can’t get his link to go below the top of the page).

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TaxManBlog wants to go after the state lottery for ripping off the poor. Fair enough, but that comes AFTER the payday lending industry.

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The Flight 93 Memorial project has gone outrageously out of whack. Right on the Right has more. If the current one stays as is, I hope someone builds a real one privately. If that happens, the Crescent will gather dust.

It’s here. All $2,555,110 of it.

Suitably Flip has much more (HT Ace).

Flip’s bottom line:

Where does all this leave us? There are still a lot of details yet to emerge that will undoubtedly shed additional light on these linakges, but it seems quite clear that Norman Hsu and Fred Hochberg are and have for some time been closely associated. It’s abundantly clear that the Clintons and Hochberg are quite intimately associated. This seems to draw Hsu and Clinton uncomfortably close to one another.

And while the complexity and duplicity that saturates this whole affair may offer Hillary a bit of confusion cover that she can use to equivocate when pressed, it’s now becoming increasingly far-fetched that Hillary took Norman Hsu for no more than a kindly, deep-pocketed fan.

Let’s just say it requires a willing suspension of disbelief.

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Previous Posts:
- July 1 — Complaints about GOP Pollster’s Presence at Dem Debate Ignore CNN Pollster’s Clinton Connections
- May 26 — NY Times Accidentally Does Opposition Research on the Clintons, Attempts Containment

From the Wall Street Journal’s Political Diary (link not available):

All of this is very reminiscent of the 1996 Clinton fundraising scandal. A total of 120 witnesses either fled the country, pleaded the Fifth Amendment or otherwise were unavailable for questioning. In the end, a total of 14 people were found guilty on various charges relating to the scandal. No wonder the Hillary Clinton campaign wants to change the subject away from Mr. Hsu.

So will Hsu, who surrendered to authorities yesterday, talk about where his money came from, why he from all appearances laundered political contributions through others, and what favors he or his ultimate funders, if any, are looking for? Based on the track record of the previous scandal — Doubtful.

UPDATE, 11 PM — “Quixtar court case in Judge’s hands.” This would be the A/Q case in Michigan against the “Kingpins” (see the text of this post for a full description). A ruling is coming down on Friday morning. Video is at the link (but I couldn’t get it to work).

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Wow — I am truly amazed at how quiet this story has been; as of 1:45 PM today, a Google News search on “Quixtar” had only 20-plus results, mostly in Michigan, and none of them in national Old Media outlets.

Amway/Quixtar’s highest-level distributors — excuse me, “independent business owners” (IBOs) aka “Kingpins” — are going after A/Q with all the legal and other weapons at their disposal, including absolutely no shyness about “almost” completely and thoroughly discrediting the entire enterprise.

I got updated in an e-mail from pyramidschemealert.org, which has a web page on the litigation:

Amway, the oldest, largest and most politically connected MLM – the company that effectively created “multi-level marketing” – appears to be shaking and possibly on the verge of collapse. After millions of victims have lost billions in dollars, after millions of poor people in Third World countries were misled and ruined by Amway’s dream machine, and millions in ill-gotten Amway money were poured into the campaign coffers of politicians to prevent federal investigations, the full truth about the Amway/Quixtar scheme is being revealed.

….. A group of Amway/Quixtar’s largest and most senior distributors have charged in a class action lawsuit that Amway is a fraud, a pyramid scheme, a worldwide scam. The charges – which are effectively confessions – come from Amway’s ultimate insiders, its “top guns”, wealthy distributors with downlines that span the world and have worked with Amway’s founders for decades. The distributors have filed a class action lawsuit.

A big PDF (all scans) of the lawsuit is here. If you want to see the initial dueling press releases, here’s the plaintiffs’ (”Amway Sister Company, Quixtar Inc., Sued by Distributor Group”), and here’s A/Q’s response (”Quixtar Takes Swift Action to Protect Its Business”).

I said “almost” in quotes in an earlier paragraph, because I am reluctant to assign any kind of noble thoughts to the “Kingpins,” especially after reading this from their press release:

“We are not seeking damages against Quixtar, or to shut Quixtar down,” stated Billy Florence of Athens, Georgia, a distributor since 1974, who noted recent regulatory inquiries into Amway in India and the U.K. “Rather, we merely seek a judicial declaration that the non-competition and non-solicitation provisions are unenforceable, so distributors who choose to do so can extricate themselves from continued forced participation in Quixtar’s illegal pyramid scheme and pursue legitimate business opportunities instead.”

I’m speculating a bit, but I would not be surprised that the following is what is really happening:

• The “Kingpin” IBOs have had a great racket for years — not from A/Q’s product business, but from the “tools.” The “tools” are Kingpin-generated selling and motivational tapes, CDs, books, and other items that lower-level distributors are expected (i.e., highly pressured) to buy, as well as Kingpin-run, profit-generating “pep rally” seminars and workshops low-levelers are “expected” to attend. These enterprises, which are essentially shakedowns that are mostly, if not totally, separate from A/Q, are more profitable, and probably far more profitable, for the Kingpins than the A/Q product business.
• Amway (then without the Quixtar) was on record many years ago as having a big problem with the “tools” businesses the Kingpins were developing, but then mysteriously backed off.
• A/Q’s discomfort over the “tools” business has returned, with the help of a class-action lawsuit filed by smaller IBOs, but the Kingpin monster A/Q allowed to grow has become unmanageable, and is on the verge of eating its parent.
• The Kingpins appear to feel than they can get by on their own without A/Q and build their own replacement businesses. Not going after damages makes them appear more noble, but the people involved are multimillionaires (just ask them) who don’t need the money as much as they need to wash their hands of A/Q. So instead of just one A/Q stealing peoples’ dreams, what the Kingpins apparently hope for is that, absent government interest in doing something to stop this madness, the USA ends up having a dozen or more A/Q equivalents. Grrrreat.

Regardless of whether my theory is accurate:

• The fact is that the Kingpins have officially called A/Q an illegal pyramid scheme.
• The little guys further down the food chain have sued A/Q over many things, including the Kingpins’ “tools” businesses. In the process, the little guys have called the A/Q setup, in combination with the “tools” business, an illegal pyramid scheme.
• The only people left in the whole enterprise who haven’t called it an illegal pyramid scheme are the owners of A/Q.
• The Federal Trade Commission badly needs to get off its butt immediately.
• The Republican Party needs to purge itself of any and all officeholders (no matter who they are) and campaign operatives associated with A/Q and/or the Kingpins, and, to the extent possible, refuse to accept any future political contributions from any of them.

Oh, and one more thing….

A lot of people gave me grief when I objected to being represented in Congress by a man who has profited from the Kingpins’ “tools” business as a “pep rally” speaker, internal infomercial host (fifth reason at link), and CD/tape seller; who kept his A/Q involvement, as well as his many years of lobbying, out of his campaign bio; and who (along with all too many others) has helped give the sleazy A/Q and Kingpin operations veneers of respectability they never deserved.

Regardless of how the legal wrangling turns out, those people owe me a big, fat “I was wrong. I am sorry.”

In addition to the 57 reasons to vote against the Ohio Learn & Earn last year (the list was the brainchild of Jill at Write Like She Talks; Jill’s first “Reason” posting is here; the original BizzyBlog entry relating to Jill’s effort is here; links to all 57 reasons are at the end of this post), it turns out there was a Reason 58 — employees mistreated on a large scale. Best para at BlogginRyan (HT WLST via NixGuy; bold is mine):

People, working for a campaign that was supposed to espouse “progressive” values, managed to not get paid. I went down to Columbus for one weekend to sift through all of the files from the office and compare them against records at headquarters. Slowly people managed to get paid, but some sores still laid open. After three weeks of one petitioner - who had quit - not being paid, after every angry phone call received and pleading phone call made to correct the error, after every “the check is in the mail” response I got on this woman’s behalf, I took $300 of my own money and paid her for the hours she had worked in the pay cycle. An employee, who I will only ID as Steve, had similar issues. Entire days were missing out of his payroll when there was documented proof of his working. On my last day Steve told me not to worry about them and that he was hiring a lawyer. On multiple occasions, AC was forced to call the police and have them resolve issues with angry employees. These people were angry.

Surely these incidents weren’t secrets. Why wasn’t this making news when it happened?

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NixGuy noted on Monday that Ohio’s handling of the DataGate theft has made the state a laughingstock in the tech community. They’d be doubling over if they were aware of how poorly the post-theft communications to those affected were handled.

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Newt Gingrich calls Detroit a “disaster.” Uh, like it’s not?

It’s been downhill since the riots 40 years ago (yes, I know that things were far from perfect before then). But the real disaster began in the aftermath of the riots, when the city allowed itself to be co-opted as a “symbol” of the black-power movement (a link to the excerpt is here; warning — N-word usage abounds), and its practitioners to intimidate the non-rock-throwers:

I’ve just seen the battlefield; you did a thorough job.

There was a town called Motown; now it ain’t no town. They used to call it Detroit, now they call it Destroyed. I hear ain’t nothing left, but Motown sound. And if they don’t come around, you gon’ burn them down.

You didn’t have to be a genius, black or white, to see long-term trouble ahead. People fled. Detroit’s current population of 871,000 is down almost 50% from its 1.67 million in 1960.

The Motor City is Exhibit A showing that people can, do, and will vote with their feet to get away from high crime, terrible schools, and high taxes.

Maybe if black leaders in the city would have had the nerve to hang the “disaster” tag on Detroit sooner, city leaders and others would have done more, and would be doing more now, to fix those three real problems.

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Meanwhile, in the mostly prosperous rest of the country, here’s a ho-hum hiring headline (requires subscription):

The number of employees working in the securities industry has surpassed its previous peak, reached at the height of the dot-com era.

U.S. securities firms added 10,000 staff in June, pushing the number of jobs in the industry to 848,300, higher than the previous record of 840,900 in March 2001.

Imagine how much better it might be if Sarbanes Oxley hadn’t shifted much of the initial public offering business overseas.

In an excellent investigative report last Sunday (may require free registration) that is part of a series on how “how businesses and investors seek to profit from the soaring number of older Americans, in ways helpful and harmful,” the New York Times’ Charles Duhigg exposed the despicable tactics of elder-scam artists and the “information services” companies that supply them the “sucker lists” they need.

He may not have known that he was simultaneously exposing information that could, and arguably should, damage the presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton.

Duhigg led with the truly sad story of 92 year-old Richard Guthrie:

….. He ended up on scam artists’ lists because his name, like millions of others, was sold by large companies to telemarketing criminals, who then turned to major banks to steal his life’s savings.

Mr. Guthrie, who lives in Iowa, had entered a few sweepstakes that caused his name to appear in a database advertised by infoUSA, one of the largest compilers of consumer information. InfoUSA sold his name, and data on scores of other elderly Americans, to known lawbreakers, regulators say.

InfoUSA advertised lists of “Elderly Opportunity Seekers,” 3.3 million older people “looking for ways to make money,” and “Suffering Seniors,” 4.7 million people with cancer or Alzheimer’s disease. “Oldies but Goodies” contained 500,000 gamblers over 55 years old, for 8.5 cents apiece. One list said: “These people are gullible. They want to believe that their luck can change.”

As Mr. Guthrie sat home alone — surrounded by his Purple Heart medal, photos of eight children and mementos of a wife who was buried nine years earlier — the telephone rang day and night. After criminals tricked him into revealing his banking information, they went to Wachovia, the nation’s fourth-largest bank, and raided his account, according to banking records.

Telemarketing fraud, once limited to small-time thieves, has become a global criminal enterprise preying upon millions of elderly and other Americans every year, authorities say. Vast databases of names and personal information, sold to thieves by large publicly traded companies, have put almost anyone within reach of fraudulent telemarketers. And major banks have made it possible for criminals to dip into victims’ accounts without their authorization, according to court records.

“Most people have no idea how widespread and sophisticated telemarketing fraud has become,” said James Davis, a Federal Trade Commission lawyer. “It shocks even us.”

Many of the victims are people like Mr. Guthrie, whose name was among the millions that infoUSA sold to companies under investigation for fraud, according to regulators. Scam artists stole more than $100,000 from Mr. Guthrie, his family says.

Senior executives at infoUSA were contacted by telephone and e-mail messages at least 30 times. They did not respond.

In Thursday’s New York Post, Dick Morris and Eileen McGann pegged off of the Duhigg’s story:

EVERY year since he left the White House, former President Bill Clinton has been paid by InfoUSA - an Omaha, Neb., company now identified as a key provider of databases that enable criminals to defraud the unsuspecting elderly.

Senate rules don’t require Hillary Clinton to reveal exactly how much - or for what - the company has paid her husband over the past five years. But former presidents - especially Bill Clinton - don’t come cheap. And, just months after he left the presidency, InfoUSA paid Bill Clinton $200,000 to give a speech in Omaha. Since then, it has paid him an undisclosed amount each year - listed only as “more than $1,000″ for “non-employee compensation” on Sen. Clinton’s financial-disclosure forms. (Her latest Senate disclosure isn’t yet public, so we don’t yet know if the firm paid him anything last year.)

As best we can determine, this is one of only two companies with whom the ex-president has an ongoing, formal relationship.

….. The relationship between Bill Clinton and Vinod “Vin” Gupta, InfoUSA’s CEO and chairman, is longstanding and deep.

A frequent donor to Bill’s campaigns, Gupta stayed in the Lincoln Bedroom in the Clinton years. He admits donating $1 million to the Clinton Library and in 1999 gave $2 million for Hillary Clinton’s Millennium New Year’s Eve bash. He has raised over $200,000 for Hillary’s Senate campaigns and given thousands to other Democratic funds.

Morris and McGann then provided an exhaustive list of Clinton-InfoUSA-Gupta connections.

Apparently the heat from the Morris-McGann Post column was too much for the Times political reporters to ignore, even as it pretended not to know of its existence. Instead, today’s Times story by Mike McIntire (”Suit Sheds Light on Clintons’ Ties to a Benefactor”) wraps itself around a shareholder lawsuit filed against InfoUSA late last year. It’s also worth noting that someone at InfoUSA figured out how to respond to a political story in progress to defend the Clintons after ignoring so many attempts to contact them about one slamming the company in the Times’ business pages (links within excerpt added by me):

The Clintons’ role in the shareholder suit has been largely overlooked even as the presidential race has heated up. The Deal, a business publication, said in a February article (link is to a search result; viewing article requires paid subscription. — Ed.) about infoUSA that the lawsuit’s references to an unnamed “former high-ranking government official and his wife” appeared to describe Mr. and Mrs. Clinton.

Neither aides to the Clintons nor infoUSA disputed that the complaint referred to the Clintons.

….. The lawsuit says Mr. Clinton signed a consulting agreement in April 2002 to “provide confidential advice and counsel to the chairman and C.E.O. of the company for the purpose of strategic growth and business development.” InfoUSA made $2.1 million in quarterly payments to Mr. Clinton from July 2003 to April 2005, and in October 2005 entered into a new three-year agreement to pay him $1.2 million. It also gave him an option to buy 100,000 shares of infoUSA stock, with no expiration date (InfoUSA shares closed Friday at $10.50. — Ed.).

The complaint asserts that the contracts with Mr. Clinton are “extremely vague” to the point of being wasteful.

….. (infoUSA CFO and 2002 Nebraska gubernatorial candidate Stormy) Dean said Mr. Clinton had no role in infoUSA’s data collection and distribution business, which was criticized by the authorities in Iowa who uncovered the questionable sales of call lists during an investigation of unscrupulous telemarketers in 2005.

The Times, as is its habit with Democrats in potentially damaging stories, did not name Mr. Dean’s party affiliation.

It is odd indeed that Mr. Dean claimed no Bill Clinton connection to infoUSA’s so-called “data collection and distribution business,” and that the Times tried to limit its perceived size by focusing on activities in one state.

In fact, until late last year, all of infoUSA’s business was “data collection and distribution.” The company describes itself as follows:

(at page 1 of its most recent 10-K annual report) “info USA Inc. ….. is a leading provider of sales leads, mailing lists, direct marketing, database marketing, e-mail marketing and market research solutions to help our clients grow their sales and increase their profits.”

(from Page 72 of the 10-K) “The info USA Group licenses its sales leads, mailing lists, databases, and other database marketing services to small and medium size businesses, entrepreneurs, professionals, and sales executives. This segment also includes the sale of subscription based products primarily from the Internet.”

The Donnelley Group provides licensing of the info USA database, direct marketing services, database marketing services, e-mail marketing services, list brokerage and list management services, and online interactive marketing services to large businesses, i.e. businesses with 1,000 or more employees.

The Research Group was added in 2006 as a result of the acquisition of Opinion Research Corporation, on December 4, 2006. Opinion Research Corporation is a diversified market research company with two principal divisions. These divisions consist of Opinion Research and Macro International.”

If former president Clinton really had no role in infoUSA’s “data collection and distribution business,” then it would appear that, until late last year, he should have had no role in InfoUSA at all.

A separate question that warrants a thorough vetting is why InfoUSA, led by “Friend of Bill” Gupta, went out and bought Opinion Research Corporation (ORC), a leading polling firm with a large government and business consulting subsidiary.

On January 12, 2007, a little more than a month after infoUSA acquired ORC, it established a very interesting relationship (link is to a PDF):

Opinion Research Corporation will become CNN’s new polling partner as the network moves toward the 2008 elections. Beginning in 2007, polls released by the network will be identified as CNN/Opinion Research Corporation surveys.

It’s curious indeed that the Times could spend over 1,600 words covering the Clintons and InfoUSA without ever getting around to the possibility that Clinton-friendly CNN and its new partner appear to have the opportunity, and motivation, for manipulating its polling topics and results.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

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UPDATE: A DFU vid on the Clinton-CNN relationship is here at YouTube.

UPDATE 2: My comeback to a commenter at NewsBusters who pointed to InfoUSA’s response –

The release has at least two examples of Clintonian parsing I found without even breaking a sweat:

– a Clintonian tense change — “infoUSA has never characterized individuals on lists as ‘gullible.’ Nor does infoUSA compile lists entitled ‘Elderly Opportunity Seekers,’ ‘Suffering Seniors,’ or ‘Oldies But Goodies.’” Remember that an army of lawyers reviewed this before it went out. So why the change to present tense? A careful reader takes this as an admission that they HAVE compiled lists with the aforementioned names in the past.

- Clintonian misdirection — “infoUSA’s database contains several entries for a Des Moines resident named Richard Guthrie (possibly the gentleman featured in the article) but none of those entries contain age information.” They don’t have to contain age info if there are indications that he’s a WWII vet and that he is single (i.e., more vulnerable).

Nice try. No sale.

UPDATE 3, May 30: Horizonr at MyDD definitely gets to the fundamental question –

What does Hillary Clinton’s silence in all this say about her respect for democracy and her worthiness for the White House?