http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1646714,00.html
Tuesday, Jul. 24, 2007
Gonzales Digs a Deeper Hole
By Jay Newton-Small/Washington
Just when it seemed that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' reputation on Capitol Hill couldn't possibly get much worse, he showed up Tuesday for yet another hearing. And as with so many of his recent appearances before Congress, his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee raised a lot more troubling questions than it answered — not just about his own conduct of and honesty about the U.S. Attorney firings, but also about the Administration's domestic intelligence gathering programs.
That new wrinkle stemmed from Gonzales' testy exchange with Senator Arlen Specter, the panel's top Republican. Specter opened up with former Deputy Attorney General James Comey's testimony to the panel in May over Gonzales' actions while serving as White House Counsel. Comey had alleged that Gonzales tried to convince an ailing Attorney General John Ashcroft, who was in the hospital recovering from gallbladder surgery, to sign off on Bush's warrantless wiretapping program. "There are no rules saying he couldn't take back authority," Gonzales said, trying to explain that they had hoped Ashcroft might be able to sign off on an intelligence program due to expire the next day, a program that Comey as acting AG had refused to renew.
But what Specter really wanted to know was how that meeting squared with Gonzales' previous testimony that there had been no serious internal disagreements over the program. Gonzales seemed to believe he had a simple explanation. "The disagreement that occurred was about other intelligence activities, and the reason for the visit to the hospital was about other intelligence activities," the Attorney General said. "It was not about the terrorist surveillance program that the president announced to the American people."
Both Specter and later Senator Chuck Schumer latched onto Gonzales' puzzling comment. Schumer in particular brought up several examples where in sworn testimony Gonzales has named the Terrorist Surveillance Program as the one at issue during the hospital visit to Ashcroft's room. Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy then ordered a complete review of Gonzales' statements to the committee. "This is such a significant and major point," Leahy said. "There's a discrepancy here in sworn testimony and we're going to find out who's telling the truth."
Specter later circled back to Gonzales on the matter, warning him: "My suggestion to you is you review your testimony to find out if your credibility has been breached to the point of being actionable," Specter said. The maximum penalty for being caught lying to Congress is five years in prison and a fine of $250,000 per count. Specter wryly noted to reporters during a break that there is a jail in the Capitol complex.
Senator Jay Rockefeller, the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, who was involved in the briefings at the time of the hospital visit, said the so-called Gang of Eight — the eight top bipartisan members of Congress on intelligence issues — were not briefed about any sunset the program was facing, as Gonzales claimed. He also emphatically refuted Gonzales' statements that there was more than one program under discussion at the time and that the Gang of Eight had agreed the program was so important that if it had been allowed to lapse they were considering emergency legislation.
"Once again he's making up something to protect himself and creating situations that never happened," Rockefeller said, adding that "based on what I know about it, I'd have to say" Gonzales has committed perjury.
Gonzales' woes actually began even before he was sworn in. He took his seat as a protestor held a pink banner reading "Impeach" behind him and to yells of "Impeach him!" from protesters in the room, who were quickly escorted out. Specter threatened the appointment of a special prosecutor to look into the firings of the eight U.S. Attorneys last year and a Senate "trial" to hold in contempt those Administration officials refusing to comply with Senate subpoenas. Then Leahy gaveled in the proceedings, saying "the Attorney General has lost the confidence of the Congress and the American people." ( When asked about Specter's threat of holding a Senate trial on contempt citations, Senator Trent Lott, the No. 2 Senator Republican, said he didn't "believe that's necessary," adding he intended to speak with Specter about the issue.)
In his opening statement, Gonzales underlined all the important work the department is still engaged in, highlighting its hunt for sexual predators and its role in the war on terror. But when asked by Senator Herb Kohl, a Wisconsin Democrat, if his presence is more detrimental than helpful Gonzales said: "Ultimately, I have to decide is it better for me to leave: I've decided to stay and fix the problem and that's what I'm doing," he said over guffaws from hearing attendees. "We're bringing in good experienced people. We've changed policies, we've been made aware with some of the problems with our policies."
Much of Gonzales' time was spent telling the committee he couldn't remember, wasn't up to date or wasn't at liberty to discuss the details on everything from the department's controversial settlement with the makers of Oxycotin, a drug believed responsible for dozens of deaths and his consideration of death penalty cases. to his involvement in drafting U.S. torture guidelines while working at the White House and why he apparently lied to a Senate panel over President George W. Bush's warrantless wiretapping programs.
When Specter asked Gonzales whether the President has the right to prohibit the Department of Justice from pursuing Congressional charges of contempt against former White House Counsel Harriet Miers and White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten — the House Judiciary Committee tomorrow is expected to issue two contempt citations for their refusal, citing executive privilege, to comply with subpoenas to testify — Gonzales had a short lawyerly response. "I am recused of speaking on that matter due to the ongoing investigation," he said.
Later, when Senator Diane Feinstein, a California Democrat, asked how many names were on the list of U.S. Attorneys to be fired that he approved, he said he couldn't recall. "After all this time and all of the investigations into this, I find it hard to believe you can't remember," Feinstein quipped. "I'll have to get back to you on that," Gonzales said.
He couldn't remember answers for even the rare friendly inquisitors. After Senator Orrin Hatch, a Utah Republican, tried to prod him about how long Comey was in Ashcroft's room — hinting that maybe he hadn't really been present for much of the conversation — Gonzales replied, "I don't remember."
Friday, July 27, 2007
John Yoo -- then and now
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/?last_story=/opinion/greenwald/2007/07/24/yoo/
Glenn Greenwald
Tuesday July 24, 2007
John Yoo -- then and now
The Wall St. Journal Editorial Page wanted someone to defend George Bush's serial assertions of "Executive Privilege" to block investigations into his wrongdoing, and it turned, of course, to ex-Bush-DOJ-lawyer John Yoo, who is not only the most authoritarian but also the most partisan and intellectually dishonest lawyer in the country. Yoo is not only willing -- but intensely eager -- to defend literally anything George W. Bush does or would want to do, including -- literally -- torturing people and crushing the testicles of children if the Leader decreed that doing so was necessary to fight Terrorists. Yoo, of course, is a principal author of most of the radical executive power theories which have eroded our constitutional framework over the last six years.
In defending the President, Yoo's Op-Ed yesterday touts the grave importance of Executive Privilege and makes all the claims one would expect. He stresses the "president's right to keep internal executive discussions confidential"; proclaims that "without secrecy, the government can't function"; compares Bush's assertions to George Washington's; and concludes that by asserting Executive Privilege (nowhere mentioned in the Constitution), Bush "has the Constitution on his side."
But this isn't the first Op-Ed Yoo has written on the topic of Executive Privilege for the Wall St. Journal. Back in 1998, when Bill Clinton was asserting the same privilege to resist Congressional demands that his closest aides testify about the President's deliberations in responding to the various Lewinsky investigations, Yoo became one of the leading spokespeople denouncing the assertion of this privilege.
On March 2, 1998, Yoo wrote an Op-Ed (sub. req'd) for the WSJ Editorial Page (which back then also opposed the privilege only now to depict it as the anchor of a Free Government). In denouncing Clinton's executive privilege assertions, Yoo began his op-ed this way:
James Madison wrote that a "popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy, or perhaps both."
That is the same Yoo who, under the Bush presidency, has become a virtually absolute defender of presidential secrecy. Yoo continued:
Reports that President Clinton may invoke executive privilege to block the investigation into the Monica Lewinsky affair have elements of both. . . .
Mindful of the extraordinary step of keeping information secret in a democratic government, presidents since Nixon have been wary of resorting to executive privilege. Presidents Ford, Carter and Bush formally raised the privilege only once each, and President Reagan three times in two full terms. In less than 1 1/2 terms, Mr. Clinton has claimed executive privilege at least six times, four times before Congress and twice in court. Like the boy crying wolf, Mr. Clinton's regular use of the privilege threatens to dilute its effectiveness for future presidents on matters of true national importance . . . .
A decision to invoke executive privilege in this case would be yet another example of the Clinton administration's failure to understand the distinction between the office of the president and the person who happens to be the president. In democracies, we distinguish between a public office and the person who holds that office; people for whom the office and the person are one and the same are called kings.
That is from the individual who, from his perch at the Bush DOJ, has done as much as any other single individual to wage war on our constitutional order and drag this country as close to monarchical rule as it has been at any other point in its history. And while Yoo defends Bush's newly announced position that he has the power to block U.S. attorneys from prosecuting his subordinates, Yoo complained in 1998 that "Clinton is effectively the first President to formally assert a complete freedom from the criminal justice system solely because he is President."
Ironically, in his WSJ Op-Ed yesterday, Yoo -- while attempting to distinguish Clinton's allegedly invalid assertions from Bush's (naturally) valid ones -- accuses those who defended Clinton back then but oppose Bush now of "blowing partisan smoke." Yet Yoo never once mentions his own complete reversal in positions.
This is not the first time that Yoo has spouted fundamentally different "legal" views based on his political agenda. As Anonymous Liberal first noted last year, Yoo -- in 2003, before it was known that Bush was eavesdropping outside of FISA -- wrote an Op-Ed praising FISA as a constitutional and important safeguard which gave the President the eavesdropping tools he needed to fight the Terrorists while at the same time protecting our privacy.
But once it was revealed in 2005 that the President was violating FISA, Yoo suddenly reversed course, claiming that FISA was an unconstitutional infringement on the President's power and that Bush's violations of it were necessary to protect us all from being vaporized at the hands of the Terrorists. That behavior is quite similar to the right-wing fanatics who spent the 1990s vocally objecting to the "secret FISA court," whereby Bill Clinton could eavesdrop on us by getting warrants from a secret court (!), only to then defend George Bush's eavesdropping on us with no warrants or judicial oversight of any kind.
Like every good authoritarian, Yoo's only real principle, his only True Conviction, is that the Leader is Good and Right. Everything else he says is but a tool used to achieve that end, and as is true for all authoritarians -- indeed, it is one of their defining mental attributes -- there is no bar against holding fundamentally opposite views simultaneously as long as each is used to strengthen the cause and defend the Leader. John Yoo is the embodiment of the authoritarian mind.
UPDATE: Several months after he boldly spoke out against Executive Privilege during the Lewinsky investigation, John Yoo returned to the Wall St. Journal Op-Ed page, on July 20, 1998, to argue that impeachment of Bill Clinton for defying a Subpoena issued by Ken Starr -- something which had just been advocated by Orrin Hatch -- "would stand on firm constitutional footing."
Yoo specifically (and solemnly) warned that if Clinton decided to defy Starr's Subpoena, Clinton "would be going beyond even Richard Nixon in abusing the presidency." Yoo then praised Nixon because, unlike Clinton, Nixon "chose not to press claims of presidential power to such extremes." Because if there is one thing which the principled, constitutional "scholar" John Yoo cannot abide, it is pressing claims of presidential power to the extreme.
Glenn Greenwald
Tuesday July 24, 2007
John Yoo -- then and now
The Wall St. Journal Editorial Page wanted someone to defend George Bush's serial assertions of "Executive Privilege" to block investigations into his wrongdoing, and it turned, of course, to ex-Bush-DOJ-lawyer John Yoo, who is not only the most authoritarian but also the most partisan and intellectually dishonest lawyer in the country. Yoo is not only willing -- but intensely eager -- to defend literally anything George W. Bush does or would want to do, including -- literally -- torturing people and crushing the testicles of children if the Leader decreed that doing so was necessary to fight Terrorists. Yoo, of course, is a principal author of most of the radical executive power theories which have eroded our constitutional framework over the last six years.
In defending the President, Yoo's Op-Ed yesterday touts the grave importance of Executive Privilege and makes all the claims one would expect. He stresses the "president's right to keep internal executive discussions confidential"; proclaims that "without secrecy, the government can't function"; compares Bush's assertions to George Washington's; and concludes that by asserting Executive Privilege (nowhere mentioned in the Constitution), Bush "has the Constitution on his side."
But this isn't the first Op-Ed Yoo has written on the topic of Executive Privilege for the Wall St. Journal. Back in 1998, when Bill Clinton was asserting the same privilege to resist Congressional demands that his closest aides testify about the President's deliberations in responding to the various Lewinsky investigations, Yoo became one of the leading spokespeople denouncing the assertion of this privilege.
On March 2, 1998, Yoo wrote an Op-Ed (sub. req'd) for the WSJ Editorial Page (which back then also opposed the privilege only now to depict it as the anchor of a Free Government). In denouncing Clinton's executive privilege assertions, Yoo began his op-ed this way:
James Madison wrote that a "popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy, or perhaps both."
That is the same Yoo who, under the Bush presidency, has become a virtually absolute defender of presidential secrecy. Yoo continued:
Reports that President Clinton may invoke executive privilege to block the investigation into the Monica Lewinsky affair have elements of both. . . .
Mindful of the extraordinary step of keeping information secret in a democratic government, presidents since Nixon have been wary of resorting to executive privilege. Presidents Ford, Carter and Bush formally raised the privilege only once each, and President Reagan three times in two full terms. In less than 1 1/2 terms, Mr. Clinton has claimed executive privilege at least six times, four times before Congress and twice in court. Like the boy crying wolf, Mr. Clinton's regular use of the privilege threatens to dilute its effectiveness for future presidents on matters of true national importance . . . .
A decision to invoke executive privilege in this case would be yet another example of the Clinton administration's failure to understand the distinction between the office of the president and the person who happens to be the president. In democracies, we distinguish between a public office and the person who holds that office; people for whom the office and the person are one and the same are called kings.
That is from the individual who, from his perch at the Bush DOJ, has done as much as any other single individual to wage war on our constitutional order and drag this country as close to monarchical rule as it has been at any other point in its history. And while Yoo defends Bush's newly announced position that he has the power to block U.S. attorneys from prosecuting his subordinates, Yoo complained in 1998 that "Clinton is effectively the first President to formally assert a complete freedom from the criminal justice system solely because he is President."
Ironically, in his WSJ Op-Ed yesterday, Yoo -- while attempting to distinguish Clinton's allegedly invalid assertions from Bush's (naturally) valid ones -- accuses those who defended Clinton back then but oppose Bush now of "blowing partisan smoke." Yet Yoo never once mentions his own complete reversal in positions.
This is not the first time that Yoo has spouted fundamentally different "legal" views based on his political agenda. As Anonymous Liberal first noted last year, Yoo -- in 2003, before it was known that Bush was eavesdropping outside of FISA -- wrote an Op-Ed praising FISA as a constitutional and important safeguard which gave the President the eavesdropping tools he needed to fight the Terrorists while at the same time protecting our privacy.
But once it was revealed in 2005 that the President was violating FISA, Yoo suddenly reversed course, claiming that FISA was an unconstitutional infringement on the President's power and that Bush's violations of it were necessary to protect us all from being vaporized at the hands of the Terrorists. That behavior is quite similar to the right-wing fanatics who spent the 1990s vocally objecting to the "secret FISA court," whereby Bill Clinton could eavesdrop on us by getting warrants from a secret court (!), only to then defend George Bush's eavesdropping on us with no warrants or judicial oversight of any kind.
Like every good authoritarian, Yoo's only real principle, his only True Conviction, is that the Leader is Good and Right. Everything else he says is but a tool used to achieve that end, and as is true for all authoritarians -- indeed, it is one of their defining mental attributes -- there is no bar against holding fundamentally opposite views simultaneously as long as each is used to strengthen the cause and defend the Leader. John Yoo is the embodiment of the authoritarian mind.
UPDATE: Several months after he boldly spoke out against Executive Privilege during the Lewinsky investigation, John Yoo returned to the Wall St. Journal Op-Ed page, on July 20, 1998, to argue that impeachment of Bill Clinton for defying a Subpoena issued by Ken Starr -- something which had just been advocated by Orrin Hatch -- "would stand on firm constitutional footing."
Yoo specifically (and solemnly) warned that if Clinton decided to defy Starr's Subpoena, Clinton "would be going beyond even Richard Nixon in abusing the presidency." Yoo then praised Nixon because, unlike Clinton, Nixon "chose not to press claims of presidential power to such extremes." Because if there is one thing which the principled, constitutional "scholar" John Yoo cannot abide, it is pressing claims of presidential power to the extreme.
Thursday, July 26, 2007
Lohan Hit With Drug and Alcohol Arrest
http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/07/24/ap3945866.html
Associated Press
Lohan Hit With Drug and Alcohol Arrest
By BROOKE DONALD
07.24.07
SANTA MONICA, Calif. - The troubled saga of Lindsay Lohan took another dangerous turn early Tuesday when police charged her with drunken driving and cocaine possession after a frightened woman dialed 911 to report being chased by Lohan's SUV.
Less than two weeks out of rehab, with another drunk driving case pending, Lohan had a blood-alcohol level of between .12 and .13 percent when police found her about 1:30 a.m., Sgt. Shane Talbot said.
Authorities had received a 911 call from the mother of Lohan's former personal assistant, said Officer Alex Padilla. The assistant had just quit hours before, he said.
"The mother was afraid," Padilla said. "She wasn't quite sure what was going on so she called the police saying she wanted to make sure everything was going to be OK."
The woman apparently didn't realize it was Lohan who was behind her, Padilla said.
Police said the woman drove her black Cadillac Escalade into the parking lot of Santa Monica's Civic Auditorium, about a block away from the Santa Monica Police Department, followed by Lohan driving a Denali sport utility vehicle. Authorities arrived and saw Lohan and the woman in "heated debate," Padilla said. Lohan and the woman each had two passengers in their vehicles, Padilla said.
After a field sobriety test, the 21-year-old movie star was booked on two misdemeanor charges of suspicion of driving under the influence and driving on a suspended license and two felony charges of possession of cocaine and transport of a narcotic, Talbot said.
During a pre-booking search, police found cocaine in one of Lohan's pants pockets, Talbot said.
Several hours later, Lohan was released on $25,000 bail.
A call to Lohan's publicist, Leslie Sloan Zelnik, and attorney, Blair Berk, were not immediately returned.
Padilla said he didn't know why Lohan was trying to catch the woman, whom he didn't name.
Last week, Lohan turned herself in to Beverly Hills police to face charges of driving under the influence in connection with a Memorial Day weekend hit-and-run crash.
Lohan lost control of her 2005 Mercedes SL-65 convertible and crashed into a curb and shrubs on Sunset Boulevard, police said. Lohan's blood-alcohol level at the time of that crash was above the legal limit, authorities said, but they wouldn't disclose how high it was. She also faces a misdemeanor charge of hit and run in that case.
A court date was scheduled in that case for Aug. 24.
Lohan left Promises Malibu Alcohol and Drug Rehab Treatment Facility on July 13, after a stay of more than six weeks.
When she left, Zelnik said Lohan would voluntarily wear an alcohol-monitoring bracelet.
"In part she is wearing the bracelet so there are no questions about her sobriety if she chooses to go dancing or dining in a place where alcohol is served," Zelnik said in a statement at the time.
Padilla said he wasn't sure if Lohan was wearing it when she was stopped early Tuesday.
In January, Lohan also had checked into rehab for substance abuse treatment.
Associated Press Writer Jeff Wilson contributed to this report.
Associated Press
Lohan Hit With Drug and Alcohol Arrest
By BROOKE DONALD
07.24.07
SANTA MONICA, Calif. - The troubled saga of Lindsay Lohan took another dangerous turn early Tuesday when police charged her with drunken driving and cocaine possession after a frightened woman dialed 911 to report being chased by Lohan's SUV.
Less than two weeks out of rehab, with another drunk driving case pending, Lohan had a blood-alcohol level of between .12 and .13 percent when police found her about 1:30 a.m., Sgt. Shane Talbot said.
Authorities had received a 911 call from the mother of Lohan's former personal assistant, said Officer Alex Padilla. The assistant had just quit hours before, he said.
"The mother was afraid," Padilla said. "She wasn't quite sure what was going on so she called the police saying she wanted to make sure everything was going to be OK."
The woman apparently didn't realize it was Lohan who was behind her, Padilla said.
Police said the woman drove her black Cadillac Escalade into the parking lot of Santa Monica's Civic Auditorium, about a block away from the Santa Monica Police Department, followed by Lohan driving a Denali sport utility vehicle. Authorities arrived and saw Lohan and the woman in "heated debate," Padilla said. Lohan and the woman each had two passengers in their vehicles, Padilla said.
After a field sobriety test, the 21-year-old movie star was booked on two misdemeanor charges of suspicion of driving under the influence and driving on a suspended license and two felony charges of possession of cocaine and transport of a narcotic, Talbot said.
During a pre-booking search, police found cocaine in one of Lohan's pants pockets, Talbot said.
Several hours later, Lohan was released on $25,000 bail.
A call to Lohan's publicist, Leslie Sloan Zelnik, and attorney, Blair Berk, were not immediately returned.
Padilla said he didn't know why Lohan was trying to catch the woman, whom he didn't name.
Last week, Lohan turned herself in to Beverly Hills police to face charges of driving under the influence in connection with a Memorial Day weekend hit-and-run crash.
Lohan lost control of her 2005 Mercedes SL-65 convertible and crashed into a curb and shrubs on Sunset Boulevard, police said. Lohan's blood-alcohol level at the time of that crash was above the legal limit, authorities said, but they wouldn't disclose how high it was. She also faces a misdemeanor charge of hit and run in that case.
A court date was scheduled in that case for Aug. 24.
Lohan left Promises Malibu Alcohol and Drug Rehab Treatment Facility on July 13, after a stay of more than six weeks.
When she left, Zelnik said Lohan would voluntarily wear an alcohol-monitoring bracelet.
"In part she is wearing the bracelet so there are no questions about her sobriety if she chooses to go dancing or dining in a place where alcohol is served," Zelnik said in a statement at the time.
Padilla said he wasn't sure if Lohan was wearing it when she was stopped early Tuesday.
In January, Lohan also had checked into rehab for substance abuse treatment.
Associated Press Writer Jeff Wilson contributed to this report.
AG stings Gov in frame game
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2007/07/24/2007-07-24_ag_stings_gov_in_frame_game.html
AG stings Gov in frame game
Spitz apologizes after report says aides used police to target Bruno
By JOE MAHONEY
DAILY NEWS ALBANY BUREAU CHIEF
Tuesday, July 24th 2007
ALBANY - A blistering report by Attorney General Andrew Cuomo charged yesterday that top aides to Gov. Spitzer improperly used the state police to plant an embarrassing story on Senate GOP Leader Joe Bruno.
Spitzer suspended without pay his communications director, Darren Dopp - a close, longtime aide - and reassigned homeland security official Bill Howard for their roles in the dirty tricks.
Cuomo's findings were a shocking turn in the raging feud between the governor, who rode into Albany promising to clean up the town, and the lawmaker he has derided as a relic of old-style politics.
A grim-faced Spitzer said he accepted the findings without question and had telephoned Bruno to tell him, "I apologize. ... This is unacceptable."
He also apologized to New Yorkers for his staff's "clear lapses in judgment" in misusing state police, calling the inquiry into Bruno's travels on state aircraft "grossly mismanaged" and unethical.
"They should never have been put in this situation," he said of the troopers, who were asked to gather details about Bruno's travels so they could be fed to the Albany Times Union for a story about the senator using state aircraft for political trips.
Spitzer said he knew nothing of the operation. Investigators did not question him.
"I thought we were responding to appropriate media inquiries, and I stand by that, because that is the absolute truth," he told reporters at the Capitol.
The report does not say if any of Spitzer's aides were quizzed about whether the governor knew about the plot, nor whether Cuomo reached a conclusion - one way or another - about whether Spitzer was in the loop.
Cuomo's office batted away the question.
"We believe the findings of fact in the report speak for themselves," spokesman Jeffrey Lerner said.
Bruno's response to the report amounted to an "I told you so," saying the Cuomo investigation concluded his travels were "completely appropriate."
In fact, the report said his travels to New York City aboard state choppers didn't break any rules because he always mixed at least some legislative business on his trips. The guidelines should be tightened, the report said.
The report did not allege the plotters broke any laws but was harshly critical of their ethical and security lapses.
Republicans were gleeful to see Spitzer on defense and demanded further investigation.
"This disturbing abuse of power by a governor is unprecedented," said state Republican Party boss Joseph Mondello. "The public needs to know when Gov. Spitzer was aware of this blatant setup attempt and what the governor's role was in its execution."
The plot to smear Bruno began in May, when Dopp e-mailed Richard Baum, who as secretary to the governor is Spitzer's highest ranking cabinet member, saying he had come up with "a new and different way to proceed re media," the report said.
On June 3, Dopp e-mailed Baum about a news story detailing a federal probe into Bruno's involvement in horse racing. "Think a travel story would fit nicely in the mix."
The "pretext" for gathering the information was a request under the Freedom of Information Law by the Albany Times Union - but that request wasn't made until June 27.
Acting State Police Superintendent Preston Felton was pressured to produce and recreate documents by Howard, a top homeland security adviser and Spitzer's liaison to the state police.
Felton said he was told there was a FOIL request and is quoted in the report saying he'd be "shocked" and "very, very p----d off" if it turned out there was not.
The report notes that Felton was vulnerable to pressure because he had not yet been named permanent superintendent, but questioned why he gathered the information himself.
"The Superintendent's personal handling of the matter appears to have been unprecedented in State Police history," the report said, noting that past state police heads said they wouldn't have done so.
Besides suspending Dopp, Spitzer reassigned Howard to an unspecified agency.
The governor defended Felton as a "fine individual" who was "put in an untenable position" though he stressed his administration will continue its search for a permanent superintendent.
jmahoney@nydailynews.com
AG stings Gov in frame game
Spitz apologizes after report says aides used police to target Bruno
By JOE MAHONEY
DAILY NEWS ALBANY BUREAU CHIEF
Tuesday, July 24th 2007
ALBANY - A blistering report by Attorney General Andrew Cuomo charged yesterday that top aides to Gov. Spitzer improperly used the state police to plant an embarrassing story on Senate GOP Leader Joe Bruno.
Spitzer suspended without pay his communications director, Darren Dopp - a close, longtime aide - and reassigned homeland security official Bill Howard for their roles in the dirty tricks.
Cuomo's findings were a shocking turn in the raging feud between the governor, who rode into Albany promising to clean up the town, and the lawmaker he has derided as a relic of old-style politics.
A grim-faced Spitzer said he accepted the findings without question and had telephoned Bruno to tell him, "I apologize. ... This is unacceptable."
He also apologized to New Yorkers for his staff's "clear lapses in judgment" in misusing state police, calling the inquiry into Bruno's travels on state aircraft "grossly mismanaged" and unethical.
"They should never have been put in this situation," he said of the troopers, who were asked to gather details about Bruno's travels so they could be fed to the Albany Times Union for a story about the senator using state aircraft for political trips.
Spitzer said he knew nothing of the operation. Investigators did not question him.
"I thought we were responding to appropriate media inquiries, and I stand by that, because that is the absolute truth," he told reporters at the Capitol.
The report does not say if any of Spitzer's aides were quizzed about whether the governor knew about the plot, nor whether Cuomo reached a conclusion - one way or another - about whether Spitzer was in the loop.
Cuomo's office batted away the question.
"We believe the findings of fact in the report speak for themselves," spokesman Jeffrey Lerner said.
Bruno's response to the report amounted to an "I told you so," saying the Cuomo investigation concluded his travels were "completely appropriate."
In fact, the report said his travels to New York City aboard state choppers didn't break any rules because he always mixed at least some legislative business on his trips. The guidelines should be tightened, the report said.
The report did not allege the plotters broke any laws but was harshly critical of their ethical and security lapses.
Republicans were gleeful to see Spitzer on defense and demanded further investigation.
"This disturbing abuse of power by a governor is unprecedented," said state Republican Party boss Joseph Mondello. "The public needs to know when Gov. Spitzer was aware of this blatant setup attempt and what the governor's role was in its execution."
The plot to smear Bruno began in May, when Dopp e-mailed Richard Baum, who as secretary to the governor is Spitzer's highest ranking cabinet member, saying he had come up with "a new and different way to proceed re media," the report said.
On June 3, Dopp e-mailed Baum about a news story detailing a federal probe into Bruno's involvement in horse racing. "Think a travel story would fit nicely in the mix."
The "pretext" for gathering the information was a request under the Freedom of Information Law by the Albany Times Union - but that request wasn't made until June 27.
Acting State Police Superintendent Preston Felton was pressured to produce and recreate documents by Howard, a top homeland security adviser and Spitzer's liaison to the state police.
Felton said he was told there was a FOIL request and is quoted in the report saying he'd be "shocked" and "very, very p----d off" if it turned out there was not.
The report notes that Felton was vulnerable to pressure because he had not yet been named permanent superintendent, but questioned why he gathered the information himself.
"The Superintendent's personal handling of the matter appears to have been unprecedented in State Police history," the report said, noting that past state police heads said they wouldn't have done so.
Besides suspending Dopp, Spitzer reassigned Howard to an unspecified agency.
The governor defended Felton as a "fine individual" who was "put in an untenable position" though he stressed his administration will continue its search for a permanent superintendent.
jmahoney@nydailynews.com
Freed by Libya, Medical Workers Arrive in Bulgaria
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/24/world/europe/24cnd-Bulgaria.html?em&ex=1185422400&en=aeeb609cca810e4a&ei=5087%0A
July 24, 2007
Freed by Libya, Medical Workers Arrive in Bulgaria
By MATTHEW BRUNWASSER
SOFIA, Bulgaria, July 24 — After more than eight years in jail in Libya, five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor stepped off the French presidential plane here in Bulgaria’s capital early this morning where they were greeted by crying relatives and Bulgaria’s top officials.
They were accompanied by the European Union’s foreign affairs commissioner, Benita Ferrero-Waldner, and the wife of France’s president, Cécilia Sarkozy, who had helped secure their release and had flown with the medical workers from Libya.
In a press conference at the airport terminal, standing in front of the nurses, Bulgarian foreign minister, Ivailo Kalfin, said that the Bulgarian president, Georgi Parvanov, had pardoned the medical workers, thus ending all their legal liabilities, to the emotional applause of the waiting crowd.
“I waited so long for this moment,” one of the nurses, Snezhana Dimitrova, said on being reunited with her family, the Associated Press reported.
The release completes a rapprochement with Libya, which not long ago was largely shunned in the world community. A turning point came when it publicly abandoned a program to develop weapons of mass destruction and made payments to the families of the people who died in the 1988 Lockerbie bombing. That led to Washington restoring diplomatic ties.
Libya’s foreign minister said that Libya and the European Union agreed to develop a “full partnership” after the release of the medical workers, with the Europeans promising help for Libyan hospitals and infrastructure.
In Brussels, the European Commission president, José Manuel Barroso, said today the European Union would now move to normalize trade and political ties with Libya.
“We hope to go on further normalizing our relations with Libya, our relations with Libya were in a large extent blocked by the non-settlement of this medics issue,” Mr. Barroso told reporters.
The medical workers’ plight began in 1999 when they were charged with intentionally infecting 400 Libyan children with H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS, at the Benghazi Children’s Hospital where they worked in Benghazi, Libya’s second largest city.
The Libyan leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, said that the nurses had acted on the orders of the Central Intelligence Agency and Israel’s intelligence agency, the Mossad, and that their actions were part of a plot to destabilize the Libyan state.
The release comes at the end of eight years of imprisonment, alleged torture to extract confessions, three trials, and two separate death sentences. Bulgaria consistently said the medical workers were not guilty.
It follows the dramatic intervention by Mrs. Sarkozy, the French president’s wife, whose direct diplomatic initiative to free the medical workers over recent weeks has rattled other European Union officials and even officials in France’s own foreign ministry.
The deal for the medical workers’ release included measures to improve the medical care of children with AIDS in Libya, the French presidential palace said, without giving details.
Following the release today, the French president said he would travel to Libya on Wednesday “to help Libya rejoin the international community.” He said neither France nor the European Union paid any money to Libya for the medical workers’ release. Mr. Sarkozy thanked Qatar for mediating their release but gave no further details about the role that the small Persian Gulf country may have played in resolving the crisis.
Both Mr. Sarkozy and his wife, Cecilia, will visit Bulgaria in September, the office of the Bulgarian president said.
Libya agreed to release the medical workers only after the families of the infected children accepted about $1 million each last week in exchange for dropping their demands for the medical workers to be executed.
Under Libya’s legal code, which follows Islamic law, the families had the right to grant clemency in return for “blood money.” They had demanded $10 million for each child infected, the same amount that Libya agreed to pay each of the families of the 270 people killed in the Lockerbie bombing.
The families received the $1 million payments after Bulgaria agreed to forgive Libya’s cold-war-era foreign debt, freeing the cash that was paid as compensation.
Colonel Qaddafi’s son, Seif al Islam, who heads a foundation which directed negotiations between the families and the Libyan state, said that Libya provided the money, following the agreement to forgive the debt.
He said Slovakia, Croatia and the Czech Republic had also contributed by forgiving Libyan debt, making up the more than $400 million that was transferred to the families, although these countries deny the claim.
After the families of the infected children received the payments, Libya’s highest judicial council last week commuted the medical workers’ death sentences to life in prison.
That opened the way for the medical workers to be sent to Bulgaria, where they could be pardoned under a 1984 prisoner exchange agreement.
Bulgaria has a bilateral agreement with Libya that provides for citizens of one country convicted of crimes in the other to serve their sentences at home.
In June, Bulgaria granted the Palestinian doctor citizenship to make him eligible for transfer under the agreement.
”Welcome home and may there be no more big causes in the future which we need to call on our partners to help us with,” said Mr. Kalfin, the Bulgarian foreign minister, who thanked public opinion in Bulgaria and Europe, the media, and Bulgaria’s European partners for helping win the release. Bulgaria formally joined the European Union in January this year.
Ms. Ferrero-Waldner said the release of the medical workers by Libya would improve that country’s relations with the European Union. “This decision will open the way for a new and enhanced relationship between the E.U. and Libya and reinforce our ties with the Mediterranean region and the whole of Africa,” she said.
The Libyan foreign minister, Abdul-Rahman Shalqam, told reporters in Tripoli that an agreement signed between Libya and the European Union calls for “the preparation of a full partnership” between the two countries.
He said the European Union could start to include Libya in regional trade and aid ties with other Mediterranean countries.
The medical workers and their families spoke of their relief following their release.
“I don’t want to look back, I want to look forward,” Zlatko Georgiev, a Bulgarian doctor who was also caught up in the confrontation, told reporters. He served four years in Libya, then was released but not permitted to leave Libya. He returned today with the nurses and Palestinian doctor.
“I feel wonderful, I’m happy,” said Marian Georgiev, the son of Zdravko Georgiev, one of the detained medical workers, and stepson of Kristyana Vulcheva, the nurse who was named as ringleader of the alleged conspiracy to infect the children.
He said the first thing he and his family did after leaving the airport was to visit Mr. Georgiev’s elderly parents in Sofia.
He spoke to a reporter on the phone from the presidential residence in Sofia, where he said the families were due to stay for several days “for all kinds of medical tests.” He said: “Normal life is never going to return. That which they took away from us will never come back.”
He said: "I know the French helped us a lot, and the European Union as a whole. Libya treated us like hostages. Unfortunately, Bulgaria is a small and weak country."
Gathered outside the airport gate to witness the workers’ homecoming was a small crowd of well-wishers who shouted “welcome” and “victory,” and waved flags and banners as the nurses left in vans after the press conference.
“We still feel that Bulgaria is still partly under the Iron Curtain, so this is a diplomatic victory which will let us have a little more confidence in our future,” said Nartsislav Nikolov, 40, who works in international leasing.
July 24, 2007
Freed by Libya, Medical Workers Arrive in Bulgaria
By MATTHEW BRUNWASSER
SOFIA, Bulgaria, July 24 — After more than eight years in jail in Libya, five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor stepped off the French presidential plane here in Bulgaria’s capital early this morning where they were greeted by crying relatives and Bulgaria’s top officials.
They were accompanied by the European Union’s foreign affairs commissioner, Benita Ferrero-Waldner, and the wife of France’s president, Cécilia Sarkozy, who had helped secure their release and had flown with the medical workers from Libya.
In a press conference at the airport terminal, standing in front of the nurses, Bulgarian foreign minister, Ivailo Kalfin, said that the Bulgarian president, Georgi Parvanov, had pardoned the medical workers, thus ending all their legal liabilities, to the emotional applause of the waiting crowd.
“I waited so long for this moment,” one of the nurses, Snezhana Dimitrova, said on being reunited with her family, the Associated Press reported.
The release completes a rapprochement with Libya, which not long ago was largely shunned in the world community. A turning point came when it publicly abandoned a program to develop weapons of mass destruction and made payments to the families of the people who died in the 1988 Lockerbie bombing. That led to Washington restoring diplomatic ties.
Libya’s foreign minister said that Libya and the European Union agreed to develop a “full partnership” after the release of the medical workers, with the Europeans promising help for Libyan hospitals and infrastructure.
In Brussels, the European Commission president, José Manuel Barroso, said today the European Union would now move to normalize trade and political ties with Libya.
“We hope to go on further normalizing our relations with Libya, our relations with Libya were in a large extent blocked by the non-settlement of this medics issue,” Mr. Barroso told reporters.
The medical workers’ plight began in 1999 when they were charged with intentionally infecting 400 Libyan children with H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS, at the Benghazi Children’s Hospital where they worked in Benghazi, Libya’s second largest city.
The Libyan leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, said that the nurses had acted on the orders of the Central Intelligence Agency and Israel’s intelligence agency, the Mossad, and that their actions were part of a plot to destabilize the Libyan state.
The release comes at the end of eight years of imprisonment, alleged torture to extract confessions, three trials, and two separate death sentences. Bulgaria consistently said the medical workers were not guilty.
It follows the dramatic intervention by Mrs. Sarkozy, the French president’s wife, whose direct diplomatic initiative to free the medical workers over recent weeks has rattled other European Union officials and even officials in France’s own foreign ministry.
The deal for the medical workers’ release included measures to improve the medical care of children with AIDS in Libya, the French presidential palace said, without giving details.
Following the release today, the French president said he would travel to Libya on Wednesday “to help Libya rejoin the international community.” He said neither France nor the European Union paid any money to Libya for the medical workers’ release. Mr. Sarkozy thanked Qatar for mediating their release but gave no further details about the role that the small Persian Gulf country may have played in resolving the crisis.
Both Mr. Sarkozy and his wife, Cecilia, will visit Bulgaria in September, the office of the Bulgarian president said.
Libya agreed to release the medical workers only after the families of the infected children accepted about $1 million each last week in exchange for dropping their demands for the medical workers to be executed.
Under Libya’s legal code, which follows Islamic law, the families had the right to grant clemency in return for “blood money.” They had demanded $10 million for each child infected, the same amount that Libya agreed to pay each of the families of the 270 people killed in the Lockerbie bombing.
The families received the $1 million payments after Bulgaria agreed to forgive Libya’s cold-war-era foreign debt, freeing the cash that was paid as compensation.
Colonel Qaddafi’s son, Seif al Islam, who heads a foundation which directed negotiations between the families and the Libyan state, said that Libya provided the money, following the agreement to forgive the debt.
He said Slovakia, Croatia and the Czech Republic had also contributed by forgiving Libyan debt, making up the more than $400 million that was transferred to the families, although these countries deny the claim.
After the families of the infected children received the payments, Libya’s highest judicial council last week commuted the medical workers’ death sentences to life in prison.
That opened the way for the medical workers to be sent to Bulgaria, where they could be pardoned under a 1984 prisoner exchange agreement.
Bulgaria has a bilateral agreement with Libya that provides for citizens of one country convicted of crimes in the other to serve their sentences at home.
In June, Bulgaria granted the Palestinian doctor citizenship to make him eligible for transfer under the agreement.
”Welcome home and may there be no more big causes in the future which we need to call on our partners to help us with,” said Mr. Kalfin, the Bulgarian foreign minister, who thanked public opinion in Bulgaria and Europe, the media, and Bulgaria’s European partners for helping win the release. Bulgaria formally joined the European Union in January this year.
Ms. Ferrero-Waldner said the release of the medical workers by Libya would improve that country’s relations with the European Union. “This decision will open the way for a new and enhanced relationship between the E.U. and Libya and reinforce our ties with the Mediterranean region and the whole of Africa,” she said.
The Libyan foreign minister, Abdul-Rahman Shalqam, told reporters in Tripoli that an agreement signed between Libya and the European Union calls for “the preparation of a full partnership” between the two countries.
He said the European Union could start to include Libya in regional trade and aid ties with other Mediterranean countries.
The medical workers and their families spoke of their relief following their release.
“I don’t want to look back, I want to look forward,” Zlatko Georgiev, a Bulgarian doctor who was also caught up in the confrontation, told reporters. He served four years in Libya, then was released but not permitted to leave Libya. He returned today with the nurses and Palestinian doctor.
“I feel wonderful, I’m happy,” said Marian Georgiev, the son of Zdravko Georgiev, one of the detained medical workers, and stepson of Kristyana Vulcheva, the nurse who was named as ringleader of the alleged conspiracy to infect the children.
He said the first thing he and his family did after leaving the airport was to visit Mr. Georgiev’s elderly parents in Sofia.
He spoke to a reporter on the phone from the presidential residence in Sofia, where he said the families were due to stay for several days “for all kinds of medical tests.” He said: “Normal life is never going to return. That which they took away from us will never come back.”
He said: "I know the French helped us a lot, and the European Union as a whole. Libya treated us like hostages. Unfortunately, Bulgaria is a small and weak country."
Gathered outside the airport gate to witness the workers’ homecoming was a small crowd of well-wishers who shouted “welcome” and “victory,” and waved flags and banners as the nurses left in vans after the press conference.
“We still feel that Bulgaria is still partly under the Iron Curtain, so this is a diplomatic victory which will let us have a little more confidence in our future,” said Nartsislav Nikolov, 40, who works in international leasing.
Shakur estate moves against songs' sale
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070724/ap_en_mu/people_tupac_shakur
Shakur estate moves against songs' sale
7-24-7
Tupac Shakur's mother is seeking to prevent his former label, Death Row Records Inc., from selling the late rapper's unreleased recordings as part of a bankruptcy settlement.
Afeni Shakur sought an injunction in federal bankruptcy court Friday claiming Death Row was attempting to sell Shakur material that belonged to the rapper's estate.
Unreleased recordings should have been turned over to the estate as part of a 1997 agreement with the record label, said attorney Donald N. David, who represents the estate.
But during Death Row's bankruptcy proceedings, "it was revealed that an album's worth of unreleased Tupac material was being advertised to potential buyers as the jewel in the crown of the Death Row assets," David said.
Afeni Shakur and the company she established, Amur Entertainment, requested an injunction after the label failed to confirm the songs would not be included in the bankruptcy settlement, David said.
The court was expected to consider the request within a month when it decides whether to permit the label to release an album with the unreleased tracks to help pay off its debts, David said.
A call to Ronald L. Leibow, an attorney representing Death Row in bankruptcy proceedings, was not immediately returned Monday.
In the 1990s, Death Row was home to superstar rappers such as Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre, as well as Shakur.
The label's fortunes — and those of its owner, Marion "Suge" Knight — started to slide when Shakur was shot and killed in 1996 while riding in the passenger seat of Knight's car.
The shooting took place after the pair were involved in a fight in a Las Vegas hotel. The attack resulted in Knight being sent to prison for violating his parole.
After Shakur's death, Death Row and the rapper's family settled for an undisclosed sum amid allegations that the label had defrauded Shakur, David said.
Knight sought bankruptcy protection for himself and the company in April 2006. He claimed debts of more than $100 million in each filing.
At the time, Knight estimated personal assets of zero to $50,000. Last month, the rap mogul placed his seven-bedroom, 9 1/2-bath home on the market for $6.2 million as part of his financial overhaul.
Shakur estate moves against songs' sale
7-24-7
Tupac Shakur's mother is seeking to prevent his former label, Death Row Records Inc., from selling the late rapper's unreleased recordings as part of a bankruptcy settlement.
Afeni Shakur sought an injunction in federal bankruptcy court Friday claiming Death Row was attempting to sell Shakur material that belonged to the rapper's estate.
Unreleased recordings should have been turned over to the estate as part of a 1997 agreement with the record label, said attorney Donald N. David, who represents the estate.
But during Death Row's bankruptcy proceedings, "it was revealed that an album's worth of unreleased Tupac material was being advertised to potential buyers as the jewel in the crown of the Death Row assets," David said.
Afeni Shakur and the company she established, Amur Entertainment, requested an injunction after the label failed to confirm the songs would not be included in the bankruptcy settlement, David said.
The court was expected to consider the request within a month when it decides whether to permit the label to release an album with the unreleased tracks to help pay off its debts, David said.
A call to Ronald L. Leibow, an attorney representing Death Row in bankruptcy proceedings, was not immediately returned Monday.
In the 1990s, Death Row was home to superstar rappers such as Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre, as well as Shakur.
The label's fortunes — and those of its owner, Marion "Suge" Knight — started to slide when Shakur was shot and killed in 1996 while riding in the passenger seat of Knight's car.
The shooting took place after the pair were involved in a fight in a Las Vegas hotel. The attack resulted in Knight being sent to prison for violating his parole.
After Shakur's death, Death Row and the rapper's family settled for an undisclosed sum amid allegations that the label had defrauded Shakur, David said.
Knight sought bankruptcy protection for himself and the company in April 2006. He claimed debts of more than $100 million in each filing.
At the time, Knight estimated personal assets of zero to $50,000. Last month, the rap mogul placed his seven-bedroom, 9 1/2-bath home on the market for $6.2 million as part of his financial overhaul.
'Price Is Right' for Drew Carey
http://www.foxnews.com/wires/2007Jul23/0,4670,TVPriceCarey,00.html
'Price Is Right' for Drew Carey
Monday, July 23, 2007
By DAVID BAUDER, AP Television Writer
NEW YORK — Genial comic Drew Carey was tapped Monday to replace silver-haired legend Bob Barker on the CBS daytime game show "The Price is Right." The deal was set Monday afternoon shortly before a taping of CBS' "Late Show" with David Letterman, where he confirmed it.
"I realize what a big responsibility this is," he said. "It's only a game show, but it's the longest-running game show in American television and I plan to keep it that way."
The selection attracted more attention than usual for a daytime show because of the prospect of replacing Barker, 83. Barker retired after 35 years in the job last month following taping of his 6,586th episode.
The opening attracted widespread interest, including from comic Rosie O'Donnell after she left "The View."
Carey, 49, spent a decade on his own ABC sitcom and also was host of the improvisational game show "Whose Line is It Anyway?"
He will also be host of a new CBS prime-time game show, "The Power of 10," that will air first next month. He told The Associated Press on Monday that CBS officials first contacted him about "The Price is Right" immediately after he completed a pilot of the other game show this spring.
"My agent called me and said `I was talking to CBS casting today' and in my head I was thinking, `Oh, `CSI' guest star?' And he said what would you think about replacing Bob Barker on `The Price is Right?'"
Asked if he found the prospect of replacing such a TV legend daunting, Carey recalled talking to a friend who knows the game show business who told him, "as long as Bob Barker is cool with it, the fans will be cool with it."
"I'm cool with it," Barker said after hearing Carey's remarks.
Barker said he's not familiar enough with Carey's past performances to offer an opinion on his selection. But, he said, "I understand he ad-libs very well and that he has a very nice, friendly way of working, and I think both of those would be helpful to him on 'The Price Is Right.'"
His advice for Carey: "Go out there and do that show the way you think it should be done. Don't imitate me and don't imitate anyone else."
CBS entertainment President Nina Tassler said she was "beyond delighted" to land Carey.
"He is one of the most well-liked personalities working in entertainment, and I have no doubt his humor, charm and enthusiasm will endear him to 'Price is Right' viewers," she said.
While Carey said doesn't know Barker personally, the younger comedian said he was comfortable that his predecessor would be accepting when he took on the job.
The negotiation process was nerve-racking. While he was talking with CBS about the job, Carey said he got a call from another lawyer in Hollywood who told him one of his clients was offered "The Price is Right" job.
He figured CBS had lined up back-ups if the first choice did not come through.
"If I was going after a second baseman, I wouldn't just talk to one second baseman," the Cleveland Indians fan said. "If I were the general manager, I would be talking to a few second basemen."
___
Associated Press writer Jacob Adelman in Los Angeles contributed to this report.
'Price Is Right' for Drew Carey
Monday, July 23, 2007
By DAVID BAUDER, AP Television Writer
NEW YORK — Genial comic Drew Carey was tapped Monday to replace silver-haired legend Bob Barker on the CBS daytime game show "The Price is Right." The deal was set Monday afternoon shortly before a taping of CBS' "Late Show" with David Letterman, where he confirmed it.
"I realize what a big responsibility this is," he said. "It's only a game show, but it's the longest-running game show in American television and I plan to keep it that way."
The selection attracted more attention than usual for a daytime show because of the prospect of replacing Barker, 83. Barker retired after 35 years in the job last month following taping of his 6,586th episode.
The opening attracted widespread interest, including from comic Rosie O'Donnell after she left "The View."
Carey, 49, spent a decade on his own ABC sitcom and also was host of the improvisational game show "Whose Line is It Anyway?"
He will also be host of a new CBS prime-time game show, "The Power of 10," that will air first next month. He told The Associated Press on Monday that CBS officials first contacted him about "The Price is Right" immediately after he completed a pilot of the other game show this spring.
"My agent called me and said `I was talking to CBS casting today' and in my head I was thinking, `Oh, `CSI' guest star?' And he said what would you think about replacing Bob Barker on `The Price is Right?'"
Asked if he found the prospect of replacing such a TV legend daunting, Carey recalled talking to a friend who knows the game show business who told him, "as long as Bob Barker is cool with it, the fans will be cool with it."
"I'm cool with it," Barker said after hearing Carey's remarks.
Barker said he's not familiar enough with Carey's past performances to offer an opinion on his selection. But, he said, "I understand he ad-libs very well and that he has a very nice, friendly way of working, and I think both of those would be helpful to him on 'The Price Is Right.'"
His advice for Carey: "Go out there and do that show the way you think it should be done. Don't imitate me and don't imitate anyone else."
CBS entertainment President Nina Tassler said she was "beyond delighted" to land Carey.
"He is one of the most well-liked personalities working in entertainment, and I have no doubt his humor, charm and enthusiasm will endear him to 'Price is Right' viewers," she said.
While Carey said doesn't know Barker personally, the younger comedian said he was comfortable that his predecessor would be accepting when he took on the job.
The negotiation process was nerve-racking. While he was talking with CBS about the job, Carey said he got a call from another lawyer in Hollywood who told him one of his clients was offered "The Price is Right" job.
He figured CBS had lined up back-ups if the first choice did not come through.
"If I was going after a second baseman, I wouldn't just talk to one second baseman," the Cleveland Indians fan said. "If I were the general manager, I would be talking to a few second basemen."
___
Associated Press writer Jacob Adelman in Los Angeles contributed to this report.
California bars Adidas from selling kangaroo shoes
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070723/us_nm/adidas_kangarooshoes_dc
California bars Adidas from selling kangaroo shoes
By Alexandria Sage
Mon Jul 23, 2007
The Supreme Court of California on Monday barred athletic shoe maker Adidas from selling shoes made from kangaroo leather in California, reversing a lower court's decision.
California does not allow products made from kangaroos to be sold or imported into the state, but Adidas had claimed that the state law conflicted with the aims of the U.S. Endangered Species Act, which sought to support Australian efforts to control kangaroos. The expanding population of the jumping marsupials has become a problem for Australia.
"The bottom line is they've decided the California law is constitutional. As of now, it is illegal to sell products made of kangaroos in California," said Orly Degani, a lawyer for Viva! USA, an animal rights group that first filed a lawsuit in 2003 challenging the sale of kangaroo-skin shoes in the state.
A lawyer for the Humane Society of the United States, which filed a "friend of the court" brief on behalf of plaintiffs Viva! USA, called the court's decision "critically important" for species other than just kangaroos -- such as grizzly bears, bald eagles and wolves, which are dependent on state protection.
"When the federal government decides not to protect a species, the state can still do so," said HSUS counsel Jonathan Lovvorn, explaining the ruling. "What Adidas was saying was when the federal government decides not to protect a species, the state can't protect it either. That was squarely rejected by the court."
A spokeswoman for Adidas wrote in an e-mail that the company expects to ultimately prevail in the matter, but did not clarify further. Other legal matters related to the case now will be sent back to the appeals court.
Meanwhile, a bill that would overturn California's ban is working its way through the state legislature.
"Although Adidas makes some shoes using kangaroo leather, a common practice in our industry, Adidas does not make shoes from any endangered or threatened kangaroo species," said the Adidas spokeswoman Andrea Corso.
The Supreme Court's decision reversed a victory for defendants Adidas and retailers Sports Chalet and Offside Soccer last year when they won their appeal of the lawsuit brought by Viva! USA.
California bars Adidas from selling kangaroo shoes
By Alexandria Sage
Mon Jul 23, 2007
The Supreme Court of California on Monday barred athletic shoe maker Adidas from selling shoes made from kangaroo leather in California, reversing a lower court's decision.
California does not allow products made from kangaroos to be sold or imported into the state, but Adidas had claimed that the state law conflicted with the aims of the U.S. Endangered Species Act, which sought to support Australian efforts to control kangaroos. The expanding population of the jumping marsupials has become a problem for Australia.
"The bottom line is they've decided the California law is constitutional. As of now, it is illegal to sell products made of kangaroos in California," said Orly Degani, a lawyer for Viva! USA, an animal rights group that first filed a lawsuit in 2003 challenging the sale of kangaroo-skin shoes in the state.
A lawyer for the Humane Society of the United States, which filed a "friend of the court" brief on behalf of plaintiffs Viva! USA, called the court's decision "critically important" for species other than just kangaroos -- such as grizzly bears, bald eagles and wolves, which are dependent on state protection.
"When the federal government decides not to protect a species, the state can still do so," said HSUS counsel Jonathan Lovvorn, explaining the ruling. "What Adidas was saying was when the federal government decides not to protect a species, the state can't protect it either. That was squarely rejected by the court."
A spokeswoman for Adidas wrote in an e-mail that the company expects to ultimately prevail in the matter, but did not clarify further. Other legal matters related to the case now will be sent back to the appeals court.
Meanwhile, a bill that would overturn California's ban is working its way through the state legislature.
"Although Adidas makes some shoes using kangaroo leather, a common practice in our industry, Adidas does not make shoes from any endangered or threatened kangaroo species," said the Adidas spokeswoman Andrea Corso.
The Supreme Court's decision reversed a victory for defendants Adidas and retailers Sports Chalet and Offside Soccer last year when they won their appeal of the lawsuit brought by Viva! USA.
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Candidates Face Voters Online Questions
http://www.abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=3406731
Candidates Face Voters Online Questions
Voters, in Online Form, Challenge Democrats on Military Draft, War, Minimum Wage
By NEDRA PICKLER
The Associated Press
CHARLESTON, S.C.
Young, Internet-savvy voters challenged Democratic presidential hopefuls on Iraq, the military draft and the candidates' own place in a broken political system, playing starring roles in a provocative, video-driven debate Monday night.
"Wassup?" came the first question, from a voter named Zach, after another, named Chris, opened the CNN-YouTube debate with a barb aimed at the entire eight-candidate field: "Can you as politicians ... actually answer questions rather than beat around the bush?"
The answer was a qualified yes. The candidates faced a slew of blunt questions from earnest to the ridiculous and, in many cases, responded in kind.
To Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois: Are you black enough? "You know, when I'm catching a cab in Manhattan ... in the past, I think I've given my credentials," he replied.
To Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York: Are you feminine enough? "I couldn't run as anything other than a woman," she said.
Her answer drew a challenge from former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, who said he was the best advocate for women among the contenders. "I have the strongest, boldest ideas," he said.
Posing a question that few, if any, of the candidates had fielded before, one voter asked whether young women should register with the Selective Service, as do young men in case the draft is reinstated. Clinton, Obama and Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut said yes.
The debate featured questions submitted to the online video community YouTube and screened by the all-news cable TV network. A talking snowman, two rednecks and a woman speaking from her bathroom were among the odd, Internet-age twists to the oldest forum in politics a debate.
A Clio, Mich., man named Jered asked about gun control while brandishing an automatic weapon.
"He needs help," Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware snapped.
When was the last time a presidential candidate was forced to promise to work at minimum wage? That is effectively what happened when a voter asked whether the candidates would serve four years at $5.85 an hour rather than the president's annual $400,000 salary.
"Sure," replied Clinton.
The gathering was held at the military college of The Citadel in South Carolina, site of one of the earliest primaries Jan. 29. Fittingly, the Democrats skirmished over the Iraq war and other foreign policy issues.
Asked if Democrats are playing politics with the war, Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio said yes. "The Democrats have failed the American people," he said.
Former Alaska Sen. Mike Gravel said U.S. soldiers are dying in vain. No other candidate would go that far.
Obama took the opportunity to take a slap at his rivals who voted to give Bush authority to invade Iraq, including Clinton and Edwards. "The time to ask how we were going to get out of Iraq was before we went in," he said, without naming Clinton or Edwards.
Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico said he's the only candidate pledging to remove troops within six months. Biden said Richardson's goal was unrealistic.
Sensing her position was under attack, Clinton bristled as she argued that U.S. troops must be removed from Iraq "safely and orderly and carefully."
Obama said he would be willing to meet individually with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea during the first year of his presidency. "The notion that somehow not talking to countries is punishment to them, which has been the guiding diplomatic principle of this administration, is ridiculous," Obama said to applause.
Clinton immediately disagreed and said she would send envoys first to find out their intentions. "I don't want to be used for propaganda purposes," she said. Her campaign quickly posted the video on her Web site, trying to draw a distinction with her chief rival and show she has a different understanding of foreign policy.
On another foreign policy topic, Biden said he would send 2,500 U.S. troops to Darfur to try to end the civil war there. It took three tries to get Clinton to answer the same questions. She finally said U.S. ground troops don't belong in the fight because they are overextended in Iraq.
She also refused to call herself a liberal. "I prefer the word progressive, which has a real American meaning ...," she said.
Clinton, Obama and Edwards lead in most polls of the Democratic field.
The opening question challenged Democrats to do better than the failed leadership in Congress and the White House. "How are you going to be any different?" the voter asked.
Obama, a freshmen lawmaker trying to appeal to the public's thirst for change, replied, "One of the things I bring is a perspective ... that says Washington has to change."
Clinton claimed she has a 35-year-record as an agent of change. "The issue is which of us is to lead on Day One."
The Democratic gathering marked a turning point in political communications. CNN, a landmark all-news cable network when founded 27 years ago, is now part of a media establishment coming to terms with upstarts like the 2 1/2-year-old online video community.
The debate aside, YouTube has already left its mark on politics. Republican George Allen lost his Senate seat and a likely spot in the 2008 presidential race after a YouTube video caught him referring to a man of South Asian decent as "macaca" an ethnic slur in some countries.
In the presidential campaign, buzz-worthy video clips have included Bill and Hillary Clinton's spoof of "The Sopranos" finale, Edwards' combing his hair to the tune "I Feel Pretty," and a buxom model professing her crush on Obama.
In the spirit of the era, each candidate was asked to produce his or her own video.
Edwards' video poked fun at the attention paid to his pricey haircuts at the expense of more serious issues. Set to the theme from the 1968 musical "Hair," the video opens with several close-up of hairdos, giving way to less frivolous images including several from Iraq. It ends with a white-on-black slide: "What really matters? You Choose"
Clinton's video-ad ended with the kicker, "Sometimes the best man for a job is a woman."
Candidates Face Voters Online Questions
Voters, in Online Form, Challenge Democrats on Military Draft, War, Minimum Wage
By NEDRA PICKLER
The Associated Press
CHARLESTON, S.C.
Young, Internet-savvy voters challenged Democratic presidential hopefuls on Iraq, the military draft and the candidates' own place in a broken political system, playing starring roles in a provocative, video-driven debate Monday night.
"Wassup?" came the first question, from a voter named Zach, after another, named Chris, opened the CNN-YouTube debate with a barb aimed at the entire eight-candidate field: "Can you as politicians ... actually answer questions rather than beat around the bush?"
The answer was a qualified yes. The candidates faced a slew of blunt questions from earnest to the ridiculous and, in many cases, responded in kind.
To Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois: Are you black enough? "You know, when I'm catching a cab in Manhattan ... in the past, I think I've given my credentials," he replied.
To Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York: Are you feminine enough? "I couldn't run as anything other than a woman," she said.
Her answer drew a challenge from former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, who said he was the best advocate for women among the contenders. "I have the strongest, boldest ideas," he said.
Posing a question that few, if any, of the candidates had fielded before, one voter asked whether young women should register with the Selective Service, as do young men in case the draft is reinstated. Clinton, Obama and Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut said yes.
The debate featured questions submitted to the online video community YouTube and screened by the all-news cable TV network. A talking snowman, two rednecks and a woman speaking from her bathroom were among the odd, Internet-age twists to the oldest forum in politics a debate.
A Clio, Mich., man named Jered asked about gun control while brandishing an automatic weapon.
"He needs help," Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware snapped.
When was the last time a presidential candidate was forced to promise to work at minimum wage? That is effectively what happened when a voter asked whether the candidates would serve four years at $5.85 an hour rather than the president's annual $400,000 salary.
"Sure," replied Clinton.
The gathering was held at the military college of The Citadel in South Carolina, site of one of the earliest primaries Jan. 29. Fittingly, the Democrats skirmished over the Iraq war and other foreign policy issues.
Asked if Democrats are playing politics with the war, Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio said yes. "The Democrats have failed the American people," he said.
Former Alaska Sen. Mike Gravel said U.S. soldiers are dying in vain. No other candidate would go that far.
Obama took the opportunity to take a slap at his rivals who voted to give Bush authority to invade Iraq, including Clinton and Edwards. "The time to ask how we were going to get out of Iraq was before we went in," he said, without naming Clinton or Edwards.
Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico said he's the only candidate pledging to remove troops within six months. Biden said Richardson's goal was unrealistic.
Sensing her position was under attack, Clinton bristled as she argued that U.S. troops must be removed from Iraq "safely and orderly and carefully."
Obama said he would be willing to meet individually with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea during the first year of his presidency. "The notion that somehow not talking to countries is punishment to them, which has been the guiding diplomatic principle of this administration, is ridiculous," Obama said to applause.
Clinton immediately disagreed and said she would send envoys first to find out their intentions. "I don't want to be used for propaganda purposes," she said. Her campaign quickly posted the video on her Web site, trying to draw a distinction with her chief rival and show she has a different understanding of foreign policy.
On another foreign policy topic, Biden said he would send 2,500 U.S. troops to Darfur to try to end the civil war there. It took three tries to get Clinton to answer the same questions. She finally said U.S. ground troops don't belong in the fight because they are overextended in Iraq.
She also refused to call herself a liberal. "I prefer the word progressive, which has a real American meaning ...," she said.
Clinton, Obama and Edwards lead in most polls of the Democratic field.
The opening question challenged Democrats to do better than the failed leadership in Congress and the White House. "How are you going to be any different?" the voter asked.
Obama, a freshmen lawmaker trying to appeal to the public's thirst for change, replied, "One of the things I bring is a perspective ... that says Washington has to change."
Clinton claimed she has a 35-year-record as an agent of change. "The issue is which of us is to lead on Day One."
The Democratic gathering marked a turning point in political communications. CNN, a landmark all-news cable network when founded 27 years ago, is now part of a media establishment coming to terms with upstarts like the 2 1/2-year-old online video community.
The debate aside, YouTube has already left its mark on politics. Republican George Allen lost his Senate seat and a likely spot in the 2008 presidential race after a YouTube video caught him referring to a man of South Asian decent as "macaca" an ethnic slur in some countries.
In the presidential campaign, buzz-worthy video clips have included Bill and Hillary Clinton's spoof of "The Sopranos" finale, Edwards' combing his hair to the tune "I Feel Pretty," and a buxom model professing her crush on Obama.
In the spirit of the era, each candidate was asked to produce his or her own video.
Edwards' video poked fun at the attention paid to his pricey haircuts at the expense of more serious issues. Set to the theme from the 1968 musical "Hair," the video opens with several close-up of hairdos, giving way to less frivolous images including several from Iraq. It ends with a white-on-black slide: "What really matters? You Choose"
Clinton's video-ad ended with the kicker, "Sometimes the best man for a job is a woman."
Obama, Clinton clash in YouTube debate
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/23/AR2007072301649.html
Obama, Clinton clash in YouTube debate
By John Whitesides, Political Correspondent
Reuters
Monday, July 23, 2007
CHARLESTON, South Carolina (Reuters) - Hillary Clinton pounced on rival Barack Obama on Monday for his willingness to meet with some troublesome world leaders during a Democratic U.S. presidential debate starring a parade of questions posed through YouTube videos.
The debate featured video questions submitted from around the world via the Internet, from workers in Darfur refugee camps and an animated snowman worried about global warming to a strumming guitarist who sang his question about whether Democrats would raise taxes.
It was highlighted by a clash between the top 2008 Democratic contenders after Obama said he would be willing to meet with leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea. The Bush administration considers the nations regional troublemakers.
Obama, who leads Democrats in fund raising and is looking to cut Clinton's lead in polls, said it was important to search for areas "where we can potentially move forward" and added, "I think it's a disgrace that we have not spoken to them."
Clinton, the New York senator, disagreed, saying such meetings could be used as propaganda purposes.
"Certainly, we're not going to just have our president meet with Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez and you know, the president of North Korea, Iran and Syria, until we know better what the way forward would be," she said.
The format was designed to force candidates to drop their rehearsed answers and sound bites. It sparked lively exchanges between all eight Democratic candidates on Iraq and diplomacy, and an extended discussion of race and gender involving Obama and Clinton.
Asked if Muslim leaders in the Middle East would be able to negotiate and work with a woman, Clinton said that after meeting various foreign leaders as first lady to President Bill Clinton in the 1990s: "There isn't much doubt in anyone's mind that I can be taken seriously."
IRAQ CHALLENGES
Clinton said she was proud to be running as a woman, and Obama, an Illinois senator who would be the first black president, said Americans were ready to go beyond racial divisions.
"I couldn't run as anything other than a woman," Clinton said. "I'm excited that I may be able finally to break that hardest of all glass ceilings."
The meeting on the campus of the Citadel military college in Charleston, South Carolina, was the fourth for Democrats and comes six months before the first votes in the 2008 nominating campaign.
South Carolina, one of the first states to vote in the 2008 nominating contest, is scheduled to hold its Democratic primary along with Florida on January 29, 2008, shortly after Iowa, Nevada and New Hampshire.
Clinton leads the Democratic field in national polls and in recent polls in South Carolina. Obama, an early opponent of the Iraq war, questioned her Senate vote to authorize the war in 2002.
"The time for us to ask how we were going to get out of Iraq was before we got in," he said.
Told by a voter that Democrats were expected to end the war after they won power in Congress in the 2006 election, anti-war Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich said party members were unwilling to take the politically risky move of cutting off war funding.
"Yes, it is politics. The Democrats have failed the American people," he said.
More than 2,000 video questions were posted on YouTube's site for the debate. CNN editors used more than 30 of them.
The candidates also submitted their own videos. They ranged from Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut's joking reference to his white hair to Edwards' attempt to lay to rest the media hoopla over his $400 haircut.
Edwards's video used the soundtrack from the musical "Hair" over a montage of photos of war in Iraq and Hurricane Katrina. "What Really Matters? You Choose" said the closing card.
Obama, Clinton clash in YouTube debate
By John Whitesides, Political Correspondent
Reuters
Monday, July 23, 2007
CHARLESTON, South Carolina (Reuters) - Hillary Clinton pounced on rival Barack Obama on Monday for his willingness to meet with some troublesome world leaders during a Democratic U.S. presidential debate starring a parade of questions posed through YouTube videos.
The debate featured video questions submitted from around the world via the Internet, from workers in Darfur refugee camps and an animated snowman worried about global warming to a strumming guitarist who sang his question about whether Democrats would raise taxes.
It was highlighted by a clash between the top 2008 Democratic contenders after Obama said he would be willing to meet with leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea. The Bush administration considers the nations regional troublemakers.
Obama, who leads Democrats in fund raising and is looking to cut Clinton's lead in polls, said it was important to search for areas "where we can potentially move forward" and added, "I think it's a disgrace that we have not spoken to them."
Clinton, the New York senator, disagreed, saying such meetings could be used as propaganda purposes.
"Certainly, we're not going to just have our president meet with Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez and you know, the president of North Korea, Iran and Syria, until we know better what the way forward would be," she said.
The format was designed to force candidates to drop their rehearsed answers and sound bites. It sparked lively exchanges between all eight Democratic candidates on Iraq and diplomacy, and an extended discussion of race and gender involving Obama and Clinton.
Asked if Muslim leaders in the Middle East would be able to negotiate and work with a woman, Clinton said that after meeting various foreign leaders as first lady to President Bill Clinton in the 1990s: "There isn't much doubt in anyone's mind that I can be taken seriously."
IRAQ CHALLENGES
Clinton said she was proud to be running as a woman, and Obama, an Illinois senator who would be the first black president, said Americans were ready to go beyond racial divisions.
"I couldn't run as anything other than a woman," Clinton said. "I'm excited that I may be able finally to break that hardest of all glass ceilings."
The meeting on the campus of the Citadel military college in Charleston, South Carolina, was the fourth for Democrats and comes six months before the first votes in the 2008 nominating campaign.
South Carolina, one of the first states to vote in the 2008 nominating contest, is scheduled to hold its Democratic primary along with Florida on January 29, 2008, shortly after Iowa, Nevada and New Hampshire.
Clinton leads the Democratic field in national polls and in recent polls in South Carolina. Obama, an early opponent of the Iraq war, questioned her Senate vote to authorize the war in 2002.
"The time for us to ask how we were going to get out of Iraq was before we got in," he said.
Told by a voter that Democrats were expected to end the war after they won power in Congress in the 2006 election, anti-war Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich said party members were unwilling to take the politically risky move of cutting off war funding.
"Yes, it is politics. The Democrats have failed the American people," he said.
More than 2,000 video questions were posted on YouTube's site for the debate. CNN editors used more than 30 of them.
The candidates also submitted their own videos. They ranged from Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut's joking reference to his white hair to Edwards' attempt to lay to rest the media hoopla over his $400 haircut.
Edwards's video used the soundtrack from the musical "Hair" over a montage of photos of war in Iraq and Hurricane Katrina. "What Really Matters? You Choose" said the closing card.
Novel Debate Format, but Same Old Candidates
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/24/us/politics/24debate.html
July 24, 2007
Novel Debate Format, but Same Old Candidates
By PATRICK HEALY and JEFF ZELENY
The Democratic presidential debate last night was unlike any that had come before: two hours of questions conveyed on homemade videos from Americans who were by turns tough talking and highly emotional, mixing pathos and bathos with the simply offbeat.
One man asked about gun rights while brandishing an assault weapon, calling it his baby. Parents mourned their children, lost to war.
And some of the candidates responded in kind, imbuing their language with an immediacy that matched the tenor of the questions. Representative Dennis J. Kucinich of Ohio castigated his fellow Democrats for not ending the war in Iraq, and Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware opened up about his wife and daughter, who are dead.
Yet while there was a new format for the debate, which was sponsored by CNN and the video-sharing Web site YouTube, the change went only so far: Candidates frequently lapsed into their talking points, and there was little actual debate among them.
Much of the debate was taken up with questions on social and domestic issues, including race, education and gay rights. At one point the candidates were asked if they would agree to be paid only the national minimum wage if elected president and at another whether they had arrived for the debate, in Charleston, S.C., on private jets.
The questions elicited points of difference on a broad range of issues, from whether the United States should build more nuclear power plants to whether it would be good policy — or even feasible — to withdraw American troops from Iraq within six months.
Perhaps the sharpest point of difference came when the candidates were asked if, during their first year as president, they would be willing to meet without preconditions with the presidents and dictators of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea.
“I would,” said Senator Barack Obama of Illinois. “And the reason is this: that the notion that somehow not talking to countries is punishment to them, which has been the guiding diplomatic principle of this administration, is ridiculous.”
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, who has also criticized the Bush administration for “not talking to our enemies,” took a different tack, pledging robust diplomacy but refusing to make that promise of leader-to-leader talks.
“I don’t want to be used for propaganda purposes — I don’t want to make a situation even worse,” Mrs. Clinton said. Former Senator John Edwards of North Carolina, asked if he would meet Kim Jong Il of North Korea, replied: “Yes, and I think actually Senator Clinton’s right, though. Before that meeting takes place, we need to do the work, the diplomacy, to make sure that that meeting’s not going to be used for propaganda purposes.”
At another point, Mrs. Clinton, asked whether she considered herself a liberal, distanced herself from the word. She said she preferred the term “progressive,” and when the CNN moderator, Anderson Cooper, asked if she would not use the word liberal, she indicated wordlessly that she would not.
With Mrs. Clinton holding a lead over the rest of the Democratic field in most national polls, the other candidates looked for opportunities to challenge her.
Mr. Edwards described himself as the candidate who could deliver “bold change” and took an apparent swipe at Mrs. Clinton by mentioning a political strategy that was associated with her husband’s presidency and was unpopular with many left-leaning Democrats.
“Do you believe that compromise, triangulation, will bring about big change?” Mr. Edwards asked. “I don’t.”
Mr. Obama also appeared to take took a gentle jab at Mrs. Clinton over Iraq, saying it was “terrific” that she was pressing the Pentagon for plans on an Iraq troop withdrawal yet adding, “The time for us to ask how we were going to get out of Iraq was before we went in.” Mrs. Clinton voted to authorize the war in 2002.
Matters of race and sex also elicited illuminating responses. Mr. Edwards jumped into a question about whether Mr. Obama was “authentically black enough” or Mrs. Clinton was sufficiently feminine.
“Anybody who’s considering not voting for Senator Obama because he’s black or for Senator Clinton because she’s a woman, I don’t want their vote” said Mr. Edwards.
Some questions put the candidates on the spot in a personal way, as when they had to say whether they sent their children to public or private schools.
A lesbian couple asked if the candidates would “allow us to be married” and then a minister challenged Mr. Edwards for invoking his religion in explaining his opposition to such marriages.
Mr. Edwards said he felt “enormous personal conflict” over gay marriage; Mr. Cooper pressed again, and Mr. Edwards said it would be “wrong” to use his own faith to impose social policy on other people.
The candidates were also asked whether they sympathized enough with the plight of the American worker that they would work in the White House ($400,000 a year) for minimum wage ($5.85 an hour). Senator Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut said no, he would not, given that he had two young daughters to send to school.
Mr. Edwards? “Yes.” Mrs. Clinton? “Sure.” Mr. Obama? Yes, adding: “We can afford to work for the minimum wage because most folks on this stage have a lot of money.”
“I don’t,” Mr. Dodd replied.
“You’re doing all right, Chris,” Mr. Obama said, though he added, “You don’t have Mitt Romney money.”
Mr. Biden jumped in: “I don’t have Barack Obama money either.”
Patrick Healy reported from New York, and Jeff Zeleny from Charleston, S.C.
July 24, 2007
Novel Debate Format, but Same Old Candidates
By PATRICK HEALY and JEFF ZELENY
The Democratic presidential debate last night was unlike any that had come before: two hours of questions conveyed on homemade videos from Americans who were by turns tough talking and highly emotional, mixing pathos and bathos with the simply offbeat.
One man asked about gun rights while brandishing an assault weapon, calling it his baby. Parents mourned their children, lost to war.
And some of the candidates responded in kind, imbuing their language with an immediacy that matched the tenor of the questions. Representative Dennis J. Kucinich of Ohio castigated his fellow Democrats for not ending the war in Iraq, and Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware opened up about his wife and daughter, who are dead.
Yet while there was a new format for the debate, which was sponsored by CNN and the video-sharing Web site YouTube, the change went only so far: Candidates frequently lapsed into their talking points, and there was little actual debate among them.
Much of the debate was taken up with questions on social and domestic issues, including race, education and gay rights. At one point the candidates were asked if they would agree to be paid only the national minimum wage if elected president and at another whether they had arrived for the debate, in Charleston, S.C., on private jets.
The questions elicited points of difference on a broad range of issues, from whether the United States should build more nuclear power plants to whether it would be good policy — or even feasible — to withdraw American troops from Iraq within six months.
Perhaps the sharpest point of difference came when the candidates were asked if, during their first year as president, they would be willing to meet without preconditions with the presidents and dictators of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea.
“I would,” said Senator Barack Obama of Illinois. “And the reason is this: that the notion that somehow not talking to countries is punishment to them, which has been the guiding diplomatic principle of this administration, is ridiculous.”
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, who has also criticized the Bush administration for “not talking to our enemies,” took a different tack, pledging robust diplomacy but refusing to make that promise of leader-to-leader talks.
“I don’t want to be used for propaganda purposes — I don’t want to make a situation even worse,” Mrs. Clinton said. Former Senator John Edwards of North Carolina, asked if he would meet Kim Jong Il of North Korea, replied: “Yes, and I think actually Senator Clinton’s right, though. Before that meeting takes place, we need to do the work, the diplomacy, to make sure that that meeting’s not going to be used for propaganda purposes.”
At another point, Mrs. Clinton, asked whether she considered herself a liberal, distanced herself from the word. She said she preferred the term “progressive,” and when the CNN moderator, Anderson Cooper, asked if she would not use the word liberal, she indicated wordlessly that she would not.
With Mrs. Clinton holding a lead over the rest of the Democratic field in most national polls, the other candidates looked for opportunities to challenge her.
Mr. Edwards described himself as the candidate who could deliver “bold change” and took an apparent swipe at Mrs. Clinton by mentioning a political strategy that was associated with her husband’s presidency and was unpopular with many left-leaning Democrats.
“Do you believe that compromise, triangulation, will bring about big change?” Mr. Edwards asked. “I don’t.”
Mr. Obama also appeared to take took a gentle jab at Mrs. Clinton over Iraq, saying it was “terrific” that she was pressing the Pentagon for plans on an Iraq troop withdrawal yet adding, “The time for us to ask how we were going to get out of Iraq was before we went in.” Mrs. Clinton voted to authorize the war in 2002.
Matters of race and sex also elicited illuminating responses. Mr. Edwards jumped into a question about whether Mr. Obama was “authentically black enough” or Mrs. Clinton was sufficiently feminine.
“Anybody who’s considering not voting for Senator Obama because he’s black or for Senator Clinton because she’s a woman, I don’t want their vote” said Mr. Edwards.
Some questions put the candidates on the spot in a personal way, as when they had to say whether they sent their children to public or private schools.
A lesbian couple asked if the candidates would “allow us to be married” and then a minister challenged Mr. Edwards for invoking his religion in explaining his opposition to such marriages.
Mr. Edwards said he felt “enormous personal conflict” over gay marriage; Mr. Cooper pressed again, and Mr. Edwards said it would be “wrong” to use his own faith to impose social policy on other people.
The candidates were also asked whether they sympathized enough with the plight of the American worker that they would work in the White House ($400,000 a year) for minimum wage ($5.85 an hour). Senator Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut said no, he would not, given that he had two young daughters to send to school.
Mr. Edwards? “Yes.” Mrs. Clinton? “Sure.” Mr. Obama? Yes, adding: “We can afford to work for the minimum wage because most folks on this stage have a lot of money.”
“I don’t,” Mr. Dodd replied.
“You’re doing all right, Chris,” Mr. Obama said, though he added, “You don’t have Mitt Romney money.”
Mr. Biden jumped in: “I don’t have Barack Obama money either.”
Patrick Healy reported from New York, and Jeff Zeleny from Charleston, S.C.
Substance overcomes novelty
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-internet_tuejul24,1,1778014.column
chicagotribune.com
CAMPAIGN 2008: ANALYSIS
Substance overcomes novelty
Steve Johnson
Tribune Internet critic
July 24, 2007
It was a bad night for news anchors and Washington bureau chiefs, the traditional interrogators of would-be holders of American high office.
The format of Monday's Democratic presidential debate, with questions asked via online video, had all the potential to be an empty-headed stunt, politics scrambling for a perch on the YouTube bandwagon.
But instead of being this campaign season's version of a candidate playing saxophone on a talk show, the few dozen amateur questions that co-sponsor CNN selected from among almost 3,000 posted to YouTube led to a relatively lively and informative two hours. The inaugural effort to harness the wide net of the Web to craft questions for would-be presidents offered further demonstration of the Internet's rapid ascension to a place of prominence in American politics.
Yes, there was a question posed by a snowman (about global warming), one asked by Internet comedians posing as rednecks (about whether all the attention paid to Al Gore hurts the announced candidates' feelings) and one posited in the form of a heavy-metal song (about No Child Left Behind, which, come to think of it, could be the name of a heavy-metal band).
But while this new format was at times unconventional, it made for vigorous conversation, which is probably a better hope than genuine debate among a field of eight, more than 15 months prior to Election Day. It never got silly, and it was occasionally surprising in ways some of the previous debates have not been.
A questioner from Michigan, shot in shadow, asked whether the candidates intended to take away his baby, and when he pulled the "baby" into frame, it appeared to be an assault rifle.
"If that's his baby, he needs help," said Delaware Sen. Joseph Biden.
Part of the power of the event, held at The Citadel in South Carolina and telecast on CNN, was, of course, the novelty of it. It's an open question whether the next CNN-YouTube debate, among Republicans on Sept. 17, or any similar one that gets scheduled after that, will pack the same punch. You've seen one folk singer in his back yard complaining in verse about high taxes, you've seen 'em all.
Part of the success was due to the moderator, CNN anchor Anderson Cooper. Despite former Alaska Sen. Mike Gravel's grumblings to the contrary, Cooper was nimble as a traffic cop.
But the larger portion of the debate's success was due to it allowing ordinary Americans to reclaim their own anecdotes, taking them out of the massaging and sometimes transfiguring hands of the candidates. Questioners framed their stories in the way most meaningful to them, whether it was the bald woman hoping to be a breast-cancer survivor or the mother of a son deployed in Iraq wondering what the future holds.
In this regard, CNN deserves credit, too, for choosing questions more in the spirit of YouTube than of conventional campaign coverage. Many bloggers and other observers feared a "wonking down" of the proceedings when they learned that the debate questions would be picked not by the YouTube user community, but by CNN itself.
But while CNN's question choices weren't always the very sharpest -- there were dozens of better-worded questions from atheists than the one the news channel picked -- they didn't allow YouTube users to game the system, either. The network rightly ignored all the questions posed by children acting as adult mouthpieces, and it didn't seem, at first glance, to have selected any that were made by special-interest groups.
To be sure, CNN made mistakes. It plastered its logo so heavily on the debate stage and screen that you might have thought you were in a branding meeting.
Most egregiously, it hid too many of the videos from viewers. CNN never put the YouTube questions full-screen, instead showing only the in-auditorium screen that was playing the videos. The effect was to render much worse the amateur video quality that the network presumably feared. Viewers couldn't see what many of the questioners looked like and, in many cases, had to struggle to make out the text that so many of the videos employed.
Millions of Americans daily go to YouTube not for the cinematography but for the content. These questions had strong content, but CNN, imposing old-media standards, stole some of its power.
But, really, who needs CNN? People wanting to see the questions in full screen, paired up with the candidates' answers, will, of course, be able to go to YouTube for that.
sajohnson@tribune.com
chicagotribune.com
CAMPAIGN 2008: ANALYSIS
Substance overcomes novelty
Steve Johnson
Tribune Internet critic
July 24, 2007
It was a bad night for news anchors and Washington bureau chiefs, the traditional interrogators of would-be holders of American high office.
The format of Monday's Democratic presidential debate, with questions asked via online video, had all the potential to be an empty-headed stunt, politics scrambling for a perch on the YouTube bandwagon.
But instead of being this campaign season's version of a candidate playing saxophone on a talk show, the few dozen amateur questions that co-sponsor CNN selected from among almost 3,000 posted to YouTube led to a relatively lively and informative two hours. The inaugural effort to harness the wide net of the Web to craft questions for would-be presidents offered further demonstration of the Internet's rapid ascension to a place of prominence in American politics.
Yes, there was a question posed by a snowman (about global warming), one asked by Internet comedians posing as rednecks (about whether all the attention paid to Al Gore hurts the announced candidates' feelings) and one posited in the form of a heavy-metal song (about No Child Left Behind, which, come to think of it, could be the name of a heavy-metal band).
But while this new format was at times unconventional, it made for vigorous conversation, which is probably a better hope than genuine debate among a field of eight, more than 15 months prior to Election Day. It never got silly, and it was occasionally surprising in ways some of the previous debates have not been.
A questioner from Michigan, shot in shadow, asked whether the candidates intended to take away his baby, and when he pulled the "baby" into frame, it appeared to be an assault rifle.
"If that's his baby, he needs help," said Delaware Sen. Joseph Biden.
Part of the power of the event, held at The Citadel in South Carolina and telecast on CNN, was, of course, the novelty of it. It's an open question whether the next CNN-YouTube debate, among Republicans on Sept. 17, or any similar one that gets scheduled after that, will pack the same punch. You've seen one folk singer in his back yard complaining in verse about high taxes, you've seen 'em all.
Part of the success was due to the moderator, CNN anchor Anderson Cooper. Despite former Alaska Sen. Mike Gravel's grumblings to the contrary, Cooper was nimble as a traffic cop.
But the larger portion of the debate's success was due to it allowing ordinary Americans to reclaim their own anecdotes, taking them out of the massaging and sometimes transfiguring hands of the candidates. Questioners framed their stories in the way most meaningful to them, whether it was the bald woman hoping to be a breast-cancer survivor or the mother of a son deployed in Iraq wondering what the future holds.
In this regard, CNN deserves credit, too, for choosing questions more in the spirit of YouTube than of conventional campaign coverage. Many bloggers and other observers feared a "wonking down" of the proceedings when they learned that the debate questions would be picked not by the YouTube user community, but by CNN itself.
But while CNN's question choices weren't always the very sharpest -- there were dozens of better-worded questions from atheists than the one the news channel picked -- they didn't allow YouTube users to game the system, either. The network rightly ignored all the questions posed by children acting as adult mouthpieces, and it didn't seem, at first glance, to have selected any that were made by special-interest groups.
To be sure, CNN made mistakes. It plastered its logo so heavily on the debate stage and screen that you might have thought you were in a branding meeting.
Most egregiously, it hid too many of the videos from viewers. CNN never put the YouTube questions full-screen, instead showing only the in-auditorium screen that was playing the videos. The effect was to render much worse the amateur video quality that the network presumably feared. Viewers couldn't see what many of the questioners looked like and, in many cases, had to struggle to make out the text that so many of the videos employed.
Millions of Americans daily go to YouTube not for the cinematography but for the content. These questions had strong content, but CNN, imposing old-media standards, stole some of its power.
But, really, who needs CNN? People wanting to see the questions in full screen, paired up with the candidates' answers, will, of course, be able to go to YouTube for that.
sajohnson@tribune.com
Life without Vick
http://www.sportingnews.com/yourturn/viewtopic.php?t=244201
Life without Vick
July 23, 2007
Matt Crossman
Michael Vick had what appeared to be a breakout season in 2004, the kind that had been expected of him since he came into the NFL as the No. 1 overall draft pick in 2001. He led the Falcons to 11 regular-season wins and the NFC championship game, one step from the Super Bowl.
That same year, the Humane Society began to hear Vick's name connected with dogfighting. As Vick's career on the field reached new -- and what turned out to be fleeting -- levels of success, Humane Society officials considered the reports on Vick credible enough to add his name to a roster of 20,000 dogfighting suspects. But the organization did not aggressively pursue him because it never knew where Vick's alleged dogfighting took place.
Now, after an indictment that rocked the sports world, everyone knows.
Vick's beautiful white house in Surry County, Va., became the center of an investigation into one of the biggest stars in the biggest sport in the country. But as the case against Vick moves forward, that beautiful house, with its picket fence, dog rape stand and dog carcasses buried in the back yard, will return to relative obscurity and other locations will take over. One is a courtroom in Richmond, Va. The other is a practice field in Flowery Branch, Ga.
A poor fit on the field?
The Falcons' new offense is called the power spread attack. It will be implemented starting Thursday, as the team opens training camp workouts in Flowery Branch, 45 miles northeast of Atlanta. But Vick might never learn the new scheme. On Monday, commissioner Roger Goodell ordered Vick to stay away from training camp until the league reviews the charges against him.
Even before Goodell's mandate, the growing expectation had been that Vick, one way or the other, would not step on the field this season. He certainly won't be at camp that first day; he'll be in a Richmond courtroom to be arraigned on dogfighting and related charges.
Even if Vick were not in trouble with the law, he would be closely watched in training camp. With every year that goes by that he does not put up big passing numbers, he moves one step closer to being a relative bust. And with a new coach and new offense this season, time is running out for Vick to prove he's more than just a terrific athlete who plays quarterback.
There is doubt about whether new coach Bobby Petrino, who was hired in the offseason after Jim Mora Jr. was fired, is the right man to help Vick. One insider said Petrino's taking over as head coach with Vick at quarterback was like "going into the job with an anvil around your neck."
Petrino is a quarterback guru who ran a pro-style offense as head coach at the University of Louisville. But his only NFL experience is three years as an assistant with Jacksonville. His challenge, with or without Vick, will be to convince a skeptical locker room that his offensive schemes will translate from college to the NFL.
At Louisville, Petrino was like a chess master, thinking several moves ahead. He was ready for whatever a defense did, before it did it, and his offenses put up big points totals. Petrino meticulously prepared a dazzling assortment of formations and shifts to keep defenses off-balance, but what good is meticulous preparation for a player who thrives when he's making things up at full speed?
"Nobody expected Vick to succeed in Petrino's offense," says a former scout who maintains close contacts in the league. "They do use rollouts, and that would play to his strength. But in that offense, you have to be an accurate thrower and make quick decisions."
Vick, 27, has never done well in either area -- unless tucking in the ball and running counts as a quick decision (and the way Vick does it, it certainly should). "Could he succeed?" the former scout says. "Yes, he can in any offense. But he would have had to put in a lot of work, and he's never done that."
A distraction, to say the least
Vick's reported apology to team owner Arthur Blank and contrition to teammates suggest the situation is wearing on him emotionally. If his case runs on the same schedule as a typical case in the federal court in Richmond, it could affect him physically, too: The trial would begin during the season.
The presiding judge is Henry E. Hudson, and he's known as a stickler who hands down stiff sentences. Hudson requires defendants to be in court for every pretrial hearing as well as the entire trial, says David P. Baugh, a former federal prosecutor who has argued cases in Hudson's court. How many pretrial hearings there would be and how long the trial would last are impossible to know, but Vick would be forced to miss several practices at the very least. Courts are closed on Sundays. The Falcons have two Monday night games -- Oct. 15 and Dec. 10, both in Atlanta -- but a skilled lawyer would be able to massage the court schedule to make certain no hearings fell on those dates and thereby preclude or jeopardize Vick's chances of playing.
Baugh predicts Vick's trial would last no more than three days. Baugh, now a criminal defense attorney in Richmond, says Vick's time commitment to the legal proceedings, outside of pretrial hearings and the trial itself, would be minimal.
Harrington is a dodgy backup plan
In ordering Vick to stay away from camp, Goodell said that though the courts must decide Vick's guilt or innocence, "it is my responsibility as commissioner of the National Football League to determine whether your conduct, even if not criminal, nonetheless violated league policies." Goodell said the league would complete its review as quickly as possible, but there has been a growing belief in Atlanta that Vick would take a paid leave of absence if he weren't suspended.
How long it would last and whether it would be voluntary weren't clear. The team seems destined to prepare for the season with Joey Harrington as quarterback.
The Falcons signed Harrington to a two-year, $6 million contract as insurance after they dealt former backup Matt Schaub to the Texans in March. The trade was questioned at the time, in part because Schaub seemed like an ideal fit in Petrino's offense and also because of Vick's disappointing history. If the deal was dubious then, it seems exceedingly shortsighted now.
"Coaches were coming up to me and saying how much they liked Matt Schaub," says Hall of Fame quarterback Troy Aikman, an analyst on Fox. "Why don't you wait and see what he does in the offense in the early part of training camp? It doesn't make sense to me."
After being taken third overall in the 2002 draft, Harrington flopped as a starter in Detroit and Miami. He's a shadow of Vick, exhibiting many of the same flaws on the field but possessing nowhere near the same amount of overall talent. With the Lions, he never had a strong supporting cast and he did little to suggest he would have succeeded if afforded one.
Harrington's accuracy is poor, especially outside the hash marks, and he appears rattled in the pocket. He bounces around on the field as if afraid his head is about to be taken off -- a possibility, perhaps, considering his lack of protection over the years; still, his play has never inspired confidence from his teammates. Last season, Harrington took over for Daunte Culpepper in Miami and started 11 games. He posted a 5-6 record before being benched for the season finale. Harrington has a 23-43 career record as a starter and a career quarterback rating of 68.1.
The Falcons gave up 47 sacks last season and want to improve their pass protection. If Harrington takes over under center, they'll have to ramp up those efforts. Harrington is a favorite whipping boy around the league -- one source says, "Joey Harrington walks into the huddle and 10 guys want to walk out" -- but he's not without supporters. Aikman likes him, based in part on reports from Jason Garrett, Dallas' offensive coordinator who was Harrington's quarterbacks coach last year in Miami. Says an NFC scout: "I think he's a streaky passer. He's got good size. Good arm strength. He's not a real good decision maker, but if he's comfortable and gets in a rhythm, he can be productive."
Harrington has been preparing to step in for Vick since law enforcement officials raided that beautiful white house and its property on April 25. That preparation will continue while Vick is away from camp. "As a backup quarterback I have to be ready," Harrington said in June. "It would be naive of me to say I'm completely oblivious to what's going on, but it doesn't change the way I would prepare for things. Whether these things were happening off the field or not, I still need to be prepared to play."
In Petrino's offense, Harrington will be asked to make accurate throws in a vertical passing attack, but he hasn't done that with any success in his career. That's not a problem that can be fixed in training camp, and neither can Petrino redesign his scheme. "Vick's uncertain status makes getting ready for the season tough for Atlanta," says an NFL offensive coordinator. "They have built that whole offense around him. They have structured their whole camp around him and his abilities. They have to be scrambling."
Scrambling, indeed. Before any decision was made on Vick, there was speculation that the Falcons would pursue Culpepper, who was released last week by the Dolphins. Because of his superior arm strength and size, he would be a better fit than Harrington in Petrino's offense. When healthy, Culpepper is clearly a better quarterback than Harrington, but his health is always a question mark. Looking at the bigger picture, it probably doesn't matter who takes over under center. Says one former player who remains close to the league and the Falcons:
"This is the worst position a team has been in going into camp that I have ever seen. You make a coaching change, you bring in new players, you think you have done everything possible to position yourself to win, and you're finished before you open camp. They are dead."
Contributing: John Rawlings, Tom Dienhart, the Associated Press and D. Orlando Ledbetter
Life without Vick
July 23, 2007
Matt Crossman
Michael Vick had what appeared to be a breakout season in 2004, the kind that had been expected of him since he came into the NFL as the No. 1 overall draft pick in 2001. He led the Falcons to 11 regular-season wins and the NFC championship game, one step from the Super Bowl.
That same year, the Humane Society began to hear Vick's name connected with dogfighting. As Vick's career on the field reached new -- and what turned out to be fleeting -- levels of success, Humane Society officials considered the reports on Vick credible enough to add his name to a roster of 20,000 dogfighting suspects. But the organization did not aggressively pursue him because it never knew where Vick's alleged dogfighting took place.
Now, after an indictment that rocked the sports world, everyone knows.
Vick's beautiful white house in Surry County, Va., became the center of an investigation into one of the biggest stars in the biggest sport in the country. But as the case against Vick moves forward, that beautiful house, with its picket fence, dog rape stand and dog carcasses buried in the back yard, will return to relative obscurity and other locations will take over. One is a courtroom in Richmond, Va. The other is a practice field in Flowery Branch, Ga.
A poor fit on the field?
The Falcons' new offense is called the power spread attack. It will be implemented starting Thursday, as the team opens training camp workouts in Flowery Branch, 45 miles northeast of Atlanta. But Vick might never learn the new scheme. On Monday, commissioner Roger Goodell ordered Vick to stay away from training camp until the league reviews the charges against him.
Even before Goodell's mandate, the growing expectation had been that Vick, one way or the other, would not step on the field this season. He certainly won't be at camp that first day; he'll be in a Richmond courtroom to be arraigned on dogfighting and related charges.
Even if Vick were not in trouble with the law, he would be closely watched in training camp. With every year that goes by that he does not put up big passing numbers, he moves one step closer to being a relative bust. And with a new coach and new offense this season, time is running out for Vick to prove he's more than just a terrific athlete who plays quarterback.
There is doubt about whether new coach Bobby Petrino, who was hired in the offseason after Jim Mora Jr. was fired, is the right man to help Vick. One insider said Petrino's taking over as head coach with Vick at quarterback was like "going into the job with an anvil around your neck."
Petrino is a quarterback guru who ran a pro-style offense as head coach at the University of Louisville. But his only NFL experience is three years as an assistant with Jacksonville. His challenge, with or without Vick, will be to convince a skeptical locker room that his offensive schemes will translate from college to the NFL.
At Louisville, Petrino was like a chess master, thinking several moves ahead. He was ready for whatever a defense did, before it did it, and his offenses put up big points totals. Petrino meticulously prepared a dazzling assortment of formations and shifts to keep defenses off-balance, but what good is meticulous preparation for a player who thrives when he's making things up at full speed?
"Nobody expected Vick to succeed in Petrino's offense," says a former scout who maintains close contacts in the league. "They do use rollouts, and that would play to his strength. But in that offense, you have to be an accurate thrower and make quick decisions."
Vick, 27, has never done well in either area -- unless tucking in the ball and running counts as a quick decision (and the way Vick does it, it certainly should). "Could he succeed?" the former scout says. "Yes, he can in any offense. But he would have had to put in a lot of work, and he's never done that."
A distraction, to say the least
Vick's reported apology to team owner Arthur Blank and contrition to teammates suggest the situation is wearing on him emotionally. If his case runs on the same schedule as a typical case in the federal court in Richmond, it could affect him physically, too: The trial would begin during the season.
The presiding judge is Henry E. Hudson, and he's known as a stickler who hands down stiff sentences. Hudson requires defendants to be in court for every pretrial hearing as well as the entire trial, says David P. Baugh, a former federal prosecutor who has argued cases in Hudson's court. How many pretrial hearings there would be and how long the trial would last are impossible to know, but Vick would be forced to miss several practices at the very least. Courts are closed on Sundays. The Falcons have two Monday night games -- Oct. 15 and Dec. 10, both in Atlanta -- but a skilled lawyer would be able to massage the court schedule to make certain no hearings fell on those dates and thereby preclude or jeopardize Vick's chances of playing.
Baugh predicts Vick's trial would last no more than three days. Baugh, now a criminal defense attorney in Richmond, says Vick's time commitment to the legal proceedings, outside of pretrial hearings and the trial itself, would be minimal.
Harrington is a dodgy backup plan
In ordering Vick to stay away from camp, Goodell said that though the courts must decide Vick's guilt or innocence, "it is my responsibility as commissioner of the National Football League to determine whether your conduct, even if not criminal, nonetheless violated league policies." Goodell said the league would complete its review as quickly as possible, but there has been a growing belief in Atlanta that Vick would take a paid leave of absence if he weren't suspended.
How long it would last and whether it would be voluntary weren't clear. The team seems destined to prepare for the season with Joey Harrington as quarterback.
The Falcons signed Harrington to a two-year, $6 million contract as insurance after they dealt former backup Matt Schaub to the Texans in March. The trade was questioned at the time, in part because Schaub seemed like an ideal fit in Petrino's offense and also because of Vick's disappointing history. If the deal was dubious then, it seems exceedingly shortsighted now.
"Coaches were coming up to me and saying how much they liked Matt Schaub," says Hall of Fame quarterback Troy Aikman, an analyst on Fox. "Why don't you wait and see what he does in the offense in the early part of training camp? It doesn't make sense to me."
After being taken third overall in the 2002 draft, Harrington flopped as a starter in Detroit and Miami. He's a shadow of Vick, exhibiting many of the same flaws on the field but possessing nowhere near the same amount of overall talent. With the Lions, he never had a strong supporting cast and he did little to suggest he would have succeeded if afforded one.
Harrington's accuracy is poor, especially outside the hash marks, and he appears rattled in the pocket. He bounces around on the field as if afraid his head is about to be taken off -- a possibility, perhaps, considering his lack of protection over the years; still, his play has never inspired confidence from his teammates. Last season, Harrington took over for Daunte Culpepper in Miami and started 11 games. He posted a 5-6 record before being benched for the season finale. Harrington has a 23-43 career record as a starter and a career quarterback rating of 68.1.
The Falcons gave up 47 sacks last season and want to improve their pass protection. If Harrington takes over under center, they'll have to ramp up those efforts. Harrington is a favorite whipping boy around the league -- one source says, "Joey Harrington walks into the huddle and 10 guys want to walk out" -- but he's not without supporters. Aikman likes him, based in part on reports from Jason Garrett, Dallas' offensive coordinator who was Harrington's quarterbacks coach last year in Miami. Says an NFC scout: "I think he's a streaky passer. He's got good size. Good arm strength. He's not a real good decision maker, but if he's comfortable and gets in a rhythm, he can be productive."
Harrington has been preparing to step in for Vick since law enforcement officials raided that beautiful white house and its property on April 25. That preparation will continue while Vick is away from camp. "As a backup quarterback I have to be ready," Harrington said in June. "It would be naive of me to say I'm completely oblivious to what's going on, but it doesn't change the way I would prepare for things. Whether these things were happening off the field or not, I still need to be prepared to play."
In Petrino's offense, Harrington will be asked to make accurate throws in a vertical passing attack, but he hasn't done that with any success in his career. That's not a problem that can be fixed in training camp, and neither can Petrino redesign his scheme. "Vick's uncertain status makes getting ready for the season tough for Atlanta," says an NFL offensive coordinator. "They have built that whole offense around him. They have structured their whole camp around him and his abilities. They have to be scrambling."
Scrambling, indeed. Before any decision was made on Vick, there was speculation that the Falcons would pursue Culpepper, who was released last week by the Dolphins. Because of his superior arm strength and size, he would be a better fit than Harrington in Petrino's offense. When healthy, Culpepper is clearly a better quarterback than Harrington, but his health is always a question mark. Looking at the bigger picture, it probably doesn't matter who takes over under center. Says one former player who remains close to the league and the Falcons:
"This is the worst position a team has been in going into camp that I have ever seen. You make a coaching change, you bring in new players, you think you have done everything possible to position yourself to win, and you're finished before you open camp. They are dead."
Contributing: John Rawlings, Tom Dienhart, the Associated Press and D. Orlando Ledbetter
The Candidacy of Dr. Ron Paul
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/22/magazine/22Paul-t.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
July 22, 2007
The Antiwar, Anti-Abortion, Anti-Drug-Enforcement-Administration, Anti-Medicare Candidacy of Dr. Ron Paul
By CHRISTOPHER CALDWELL
Whipping westward across Manhattan in a limousine sent by Comedy Central’s “Daily Show,” Ron Paul, the 10-term Texas congressman and long-shot Republican presidential candidate, is being briefed. Paul has only the most tenuous familiarity with Comedy Central. He has never heard of “The Daily Show.” His press secretary, Jesse Benton, is trying to explain who its host, Jon Stewart, is. “He’s an affable gentleman,” Benton says, “and he’s very smart. What I’m getting from the pre-interview is, he’s sympathetic.”
Paul nods.
“GQ wants to profile you on Thursday,” Benton continues. “I think it’s worth doing.”
“GTU?” the candidate replies.
“GQ. It’s a men’s magazine.”
“Don’t know much about that,” Paul says.
Thin to the point of gauntness, polite to the point of daintiness, Ron Paul is a 71-year-old great-grandfather, a small-town doctor, a self-educated policy intellectual and a formidable stander on constitutional principle. In normal times, Paul might be — indeed, has been — the kind of person who is summoned onto cable television around April 15 to ventilate about whether the federal income tax violates the Constitution. But Paul has in recent weeks become a sensation in magazines he doesn’t read, on Web sites he has never visited and on television shows he has never watched.
Alone among Republican candidates for the presidency, Paul has always opposed the Iraq war. He blames “a dozen or two neocons who got control of our foreign policy,” chief among them Vice President Dick Cheney and the former Bush advisers Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, for the debacle. On the assumption that a bad situation could get worse if the war spreads into Iran, he has a simple plan. It is: “Just leave.” During a May debate in South Carolina, he suggested the 9/11 attacks could be attributed to United States policy. “Have you ever read about the reasons they attacked us?” he asked, referring to one of Osama bin Laden’s communiqués. “They attack us because we’ve been over there. We’ve been bombing Iraq for 10 years.” Rudolph Giuliani reacted by demanding a retraction, drawing gales of applause from the audience. But the incident helped Paul too. Overnight, he became the country’s most conspicuous antiwar Republican.
Paul’s opposition to the war in Iraq did not come out of nowhere. He was against the first gulf war, the war in Kosovo and the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, which he called a “declaration of virtual war.” Although he voted after Sept. 11 to approve the use of force in Afghanistan and spend $40 billion in emergency appropriations, he has sounded less thrilled with those votes as time has passed. “I voted for the authority and the money,” he now says. “I thought it was misused.”
There is something homespun about Paul, reminiscent of “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.” He communicates with his constituents through birthday cards, August barbecues and the cookbooks his wife puts together every election season, which mix photos of grandchildren, Gospel passages and neighbors’ recipes for Velveeta cheese fudge and Cherry Coke salad. He is listed in the phone book, and his constituents call him at home. But there is also something cosmopolitan and radical about him; his speeches can bring to mind the World Social Forum or the French international-affairs periodical Le Monde Diplomatique. Paul is surely the only congressman who would cite the assertion of the left-leaning Chennai-based daily The Hindu that “the world is being asked today, in reality, to side with the U.S. as it seeks to strengthen its economic hegemony.” The word “empire” crops up a lot in his speeches.
This side of Paul has made him the candidate of many people, on both the right and the left, who hope that something more consequential than a mere change of party will come out of the 2008 elections. He is particularly popular among the young and the wired. Except for Barack Obama, he is the most-viewed candidate on YouTube. He is the most “friended” Republican on MySpace.com. Paul understands that his chances of winning the presidency are infinitesimally slim. He is simultaneously planning his next Congressional race. But in Paul’s idea of politics, spreading a message has always been just as important as seizing office. “Politicians don’t amount to much,” he says, “but ideas do.” Although he is still in the low single digits in polls, he says he has raised $2.4 million in the second quarter, enough to broaden the four-state campaign he originally planned into a national one.
Paul represents a different Republican Party from the one that Iraq, deficits and corruption have soured the country on. In late June, despite a life of antitax agitation and churchgoing, he was excluded from a Republican forum sponsored by Iowa antitax and Christian groups. His school of Republicanism, which had its last serious national airing in the Goldwater campaign of 1964, stands for a certain idea of the Constitution — the idea that much of the power asserted by modern presidents has been usurped from Congress, and that much of the power asserted by Congress has been usurped from the states. Though Paul acknowledges flaws in both the Constitution (it included slavery) and the Bill of Rights (it doesn’t go far enough), he still thinks a comprehensive array of positions can be drawn from them: Against gun control. For the sovereignty of states. And against foreign-policy adventures. Paul was the Libertarian Party’s presidential candidate in 1988. But his is a less exuberant libertarianism than you find, say, in the pages of Reason magazine.
Over the years, this vision has won most favor from those convinced the country is going to hell in a handbasket. The attention Paul has captured tells us a lot about the prevalence of such pessimism today, about the instability of partisan allegiances and about the seldom-avowed common ground between the hard right and the hard left. His message draws on the noblest traditions of American decency and patriotism; it also draws on what the historian Richard Hofstadter called the paranoid style in American politics.
Financial Armageddon
Paul grew up in the western Pennsylvania town of Green Tree. His father, the son of a German immigrant, ran a small dairy company. Sports were big around there — one of the customers on the milk route Paul worked as a teenager was the retired baseball Hall of Famer Honus Wagner — and Paul was a terrific athlete, winning a state track meet in the 220 and excelling at football and baseball. But knee injuries had ended his sports career by the time he went off to Gettysburg College in 1953. After medical school at Duke, Paul joined the Air Force, where he served as a flight surgeon, tending to the ear, nose and throat ailments of pilots, and traveling to Iran, Ethiopia and elsewhere. “I recall doing a lot of physicals on Army warrant officers who wanted to become helicopter pilots and go to Vietnam,” he told me. “They were gung-ho. I’ve often thought about how many of those people never came back.”
Paul is given to mulling things over morally. His family was pious and Lutheran; two of his brothers became ministers. Paul’s five children were baptized in the Episcopal church, but he now attends a Baptist one. He doesn’t travel alone with women and once dressed down an aide for using the expression “red-light district” in front of a female colleague. As a young man, though, he did not protest the Vietnam War, which he now calls “totally unnecessary” and “illegal.” Much later, after the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, he began reading St. Augustine. “I was annoyed by the evangelicals’ being so supportive of pre-emptive war, which seems to contradict everything that I was taught as a Christian,” he recalls. “The religion is based on somebody who’s referred to as the Prince of Peace.”
In 1968, Paul settled in southern Texas, where he had been stationed. He recalls that he was for a while the only obstetrician — “a very delightful part of medicine,” he says — in Brazoria County. He was already immersed in reading the economics books that would change his life. Americans know the “Austrian school,” if at all, from the work of Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises, two economists who fled the Nazis in the 1930s and whose free-market doctrines helped inspire the conservative movement in the 1950s. The laws of economics don’t admit exceptions, say the Austrians. You cannot fake out markets, no matter how surreptitiously you expand the money supply. Spend more than you earn, and you are on the road to inflation and tyranny.
Such views are not always Republican orthodoxy. Paul is a harsh critic of the Federal Reserve, both for its policies and its unaccountability. “We first bonded,” recalls Barney Frank, the Massachusetts Democrat, “because we were both conspicuous nonworshipers at the Temple of the Fed and of the High Priest Greenspan.” In recent weeks, Paul’s airport reading has been a book called “Financial Armageddon.” He is obsessed with sound money, which he considers — along with the related phenomena of credit excess, bubbles and uncollateralized assets of all kinds — a “sleeper issue.” The United States ought to link its currency to gold or silver again, Paul says. He puts his money where his mouth is. According to Federal Election Commission documents, most of his investments are in gold and silver and are worth between $1.5 and $3.5 million. It’s a modest sum by the standards of major presidential candidates but impressive for someone who put five children through college on a doctor’s (and later a congressman’s) earnings.
For Paul, everything comes back to money, including Iraq. “No matter how much you love the empire,” he says, “it’s unaffordable.” Wars are expensive, and there has been a tendency throughout history to pay for them by borrowing. A day of reckoning always comes, says Paul, and one will come for us. Speaking this spring before the libertarian Future of Freedom Foundation in Reston, Va., he warned of a dollar crisis. “That’s usually the way empires end,” he said. “It wasn’t us forcing the Soviets to build missiles that brought them down. It was the fact that socialism doesn’t work. Our system doesn’t work much better.”
Under the banner of “Freedom, Honesty and Sound Money,” Paul ran for Congress in 1974. He lost — but took the seat in a special election in April 1976. He lost again in November of that year, then won in 1978. On two big issues, he stood on principle and was vindicated: He was one of very few Republicans in Congress to back Ronald Reagan against Gerald Ford for the 1976 Republican nomination. He was also one of the representatives who warned against the rewriting of banking rules that laid the groundwork for the savings-and-loan collapse of the 1980s. Paul served three terms before losing to Phil Gramm in the Republican primary for Senate in 1984. Tom DeLay took over his seat.
Paul would not come back to Washington for another dozen years. But in the time he could spare from delivering babies in Brazoria County, he remained a mighty presence in the out-of-the-limelight world of those old-line libertarians who had never made their peace with the steady growth of federal power in the 20th century. Paul got the Libertarian Party nomination for president in 1988, defeating the Indian activist Russell Means in a tough race. He finished third behind Bush and Dukakis, winning nearly half a million votes. He tended his own Foundation for Rational Economics and Education (FREE) and kept up his contacts with other market-oriented organizations. What resulted was a network of true believers who would be his political base in one of the stranger Congressional elections of modern times.
A Lone Wolf
In the first days of 1995, just weeks after the Republican landslide, Paul traveled to Washington and, through DeLay, made contact with the Texas Republican delegation. He told them he could beat the Democratic incumbent Greg Laughlin in the reconfigured Gulf Coast district that now included his home. Republicans had their own ideas. In June 1995, Laughlin announced he would run in the next election as a Republican. Laughlin says he had discussed switching parties with Newt Gingrich, the next speaker, before the Republicans even took power. Paul suspects to this day that the Republicans wooed Laughlin to head off his candidacy. Whatever happened, it didn’t work. Paul challenged Laughlin in the primary.
“At first, we kind of blew him off,” recalls the longtime Texas political consultant Royal Masset. “ ‘Oh, there’s Ron Paul!’ But very quickly, we realized he was getting far more money than anybody.” Much of it came from out of state, from the free-market network Paul built up while far from Congress. His candidacy was a problem not just for Laughlin. It also threatened to halt the stream of prominent Democrats then switching parties — for what sane incumbent would switch if he couldn’t be assured the Republican nomination? The result was a heavily funded effort by the National Republican Congressional Committee to defeat Paul in the primary. The National Rifle Association made an independent expenditure against him. Former President George H.W. Bush, Gov. George W. Bush and both Republican senators endorsed Laughlin. Paul had only two prominent backers: the tax activist Steve Forbes and the pitcher Nolan Ryan, Paul’s constituent and old friend, who cut a number of ads for him. They were enough. Paul edged Laughlin in a runoff and won an equally narrow general election.
Republican opposition may not have made Paul distrust the party, but beating its network with his own homemade one revealed that he didn’t necessarily need the party either. Paul looks back on that race and sees something in common with his quixotic bid for the presidency. “I always think that if I do things like that and get clobbered, I can excuse myself,” he says.
Anyone who is elected to Congress three times as a nonincumbent, as Paul has been, is a politician of prodigious gifts. Especially since Paul has real vulnerabilities in his district. For Eric Dondero, who plans to challenge him in the Republican Congressional primary next fall, foreign policy is Paul’s central failing. Dondero, who is 44, was Paul’s aide and sometime spokesman for more than a decade. According to Dondero, “When 9/11 happened, he just completely changed. One of the first things he said was not how awful the tragedy was . . . it was, ‘Now we’re gonna get big government.’ ”
Dondero claims that Paul’s vote to authorize force in Afghanistan was made only after warnings from a longtime staffer that voting otherwise would cost him Victoria, a pivotal city in his district. (“Completely false,” Paul says.) One day just after the Iraq invasion, when Dondero was driving Paul around the district, the two had words. “He said he did not want to have someone on staff who did not support him 100 percent on foreign policy,” Dondero recalls. Paul says Dondero’s outspoken enthusiasm for the military’s “shock and awe” strategy made him an awkward spokesman for an antiwar congressman. The two parted on bad terms.
A larger vulnerability may be that voters want more pork-barrel spending than Paul is willing to countenance. In a rice-growing, cattle-ranching district, Paul consistently votes against farm subsidies. In the very district where, on the night of Sept. 8, 1900, a storm destroyed the city of Galveston, leaving 6,000 dead, and where repairs from Hurricane Rita and refugees from Hurricane Katrina continue to exact a toll, he votes against FEMA and flood aid. In a district that is home to many employees of the Johnson Space Center, he votes against financing NASA.
The Victoria Advocate, an influential newspaper in the district, has generally opposed Paul for re-election, on the grounds that a “lone wolf” cannot get the highway and homeland-security financing the district needs. So how does he get re-elected? Tim Delaney, the paper’s editorial-page editor, says: “Ron Paul is a very charismatic person. He has charm. He does not alter his position ever. His ideals are high. If a little old man calls up from the farm and says, ‘I need a wheelchair,’ he’ll get the damn wheelchair for him.”
Paul may have refused on principle to accept Medicare when he practiced medicine. He may return a portion of his Congressional office budget every year. But his staff has the reputation of fighting doggedly to collect Social Security checks, passports, military decorations, immigrant-visa extensions and any emolument to which constituents are entitled by law. According to Jackie Gloor, who runs Paul’s Victoria office: “So many times, people say to us, ‘We don’t like his vote.’ But they trust his heart.”
In Congress, Paul is generally admired for his fidelity to principle and lack of ego. “He is one of the easiest people in Congress to work with, because he bases his positions on the merits of issues,” says Barney Frank, who has worked with Paul on efforts to ease the regulation of gambling and medical marijuana. “He is independent but not ornery.” Paul has made a habit of objecting to things that no one else objects to. In October 2001, he was one of three House Republicans to vote against the USA Patriot Act. He was the sole House member of either party to vote against the Financial Antiterrorism Act (final tally: 412-1). In 1999, he was the only naysayer in a 424-1 vote in favor of casting a medal to honor Rosa Parks. Nothing against Rosa Parks: Paul voted against similar medals for Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II. He routinely opposes resolutions that presume to advise foreign governments how to run their affairs: He has refused to condemn Robert Mugabe’s violence against Zimbabwean citizens (421-1), to call on Vietnam to release political prisoners (425-1) or to ask the League of Arab States to help stop the killing in Darfur (425-1).
Every Thursday, Paul is the host of a luncheon for a circle of conservative Republicans that he calls the Liberty Caucus. It has become the epicenter of antiwar Republicanism in Washington. One stalwart member is Walter Jones, the North Carolina Republican who during the debate over Iraq suggested renaming French fries “freedom fries” in the House dining room, but who has passed the years since in vocal opposition to the war. Another is John (Jimmy) Duncan of Tennessee, the only Republican besides Paul who voted against the war and remains in the House. Other regulars include Virgil Goode of Virginia, Roscoe Bartlett of Maryland and Scott Garrett of New Jersey. Zach Wamp of Tennessee and Jeff Flake, the Arizonan scourge of pork-barrel spending, visit occasionally. Not all are antiwar, but many of the speakers Paul invites are: the former C.I.A. analyst Michael Scheuer, the intelligence-world journalist James Bamford and such disillusioned United States Army officers as William Odom, Gregory Newbold and Lawrence Wilkerson (Colin Powell’s former chief of staff), among others.
In today’s Washington, Paul’s combination of radical libertarianism and conservatism is unusual. Sometimes the first impulse predominates. He was the only Texas Republican to vote against last year’s Federal Marriage Amendment, meant to stymie gay marriage. He detests the federal war on drugs; the LSD guru Timothy Leary held a fundraiser for him in 1988. Sometimes he is more conservative. He opposed the recent immigration bill on the grounds that it constituted amnesty. At a breakfast for conservative journalists in the offices of Americans for Tax Reform this May, he spoke resentfully of being required to treat penurious immigrants in emergency rooms — “patients who were more likely to sue you than anybody else,” having children “who became automatic citizens the next day.” (Paul champions a constitutional amendment to end birthright citizenship.) While he backs free trade in theory, he opposes many of the institutions and arrangements — from the World Trade Organization to Nafta — that promote it in practice.
Paul also opposes abortion, which he believes should be addressed at the state level, not the national one. He remembers seeing a late abortion performed during his residency, years before Roe v. Wade, and he maintains it left an impression on him. “It was pretty dramatic for me,” he says, “to see a two-and-a-half-pound baby taken out crying and breathing and put in a bucket.”
The Owl-God Moloch
Paul’s message is not new. You could have heard it in 1964 or 1975 or 1991 at the conclaves of those conservatives who were considered outside the mainstream of the Republican Party. Back then, most Republicans appeared reconciled to a strong federal government, if only to do the expensive job of defending the country against Communism. But when the Berlin Wall fell, the dormant institutions and ideologies of pre-cold-war conservatism began to stir. In his 1992 and 1996 campaigns, Pat Buchanan was the first politician to express and exploit this change, breathing life into the motto “America First” (if not the organization of that name, which opposed entry into World War II).
Like Buchanan, Paul draws on forgotten traditions. His top aides are unimpeachably Republican but stand at a distance from the party as it has evolved over the decades. His chief of staff, Tom Lizardo, worked for Pat Robertson and Bill Miller Jr. (the son of Barry Goldwater’s vice-presidential nominee). His national campaign organizer, Lew Moore, worked for the late congressman Jack Metcalf of Washington State, another Goldwaterite. At the grass roots, Paul’s New Hampshire primary campaign stresses gun rights and relies on anti-abortion and tax activists from the organizations of Buchanan and the state’s former maverick senator, Bob Smith.
Paul admires Robert Taft, the isolationist Ohio senator known during the Truman administration as Mr. Republican, who tried to rally Republicans against United States participation in NATO. Taft lost the Republican nomination in 1952 to Dwight Eisenhower and died the following year. “Now, of course,” Paul says, “I quote Eisenhower when he talks about the military-industrial complex. But I quote Taft when he suits my purposes too.” Particularly on NATO, from which Paul, too, would like to withdraw.
The question is whether the old ideologies being resurrected are neglected wisdom or discredited nonsense. In the 1996 general election, Paul’s Democratic opponent Lefty Morris held a press conference to air several shocking quotes from a newsletter that Paul published during his decade away from Washington. Passages described the black male population of Washington as “semi-criminal or entirely criminal” and stated that “by far the most powerful lobby in Washington of the bad sort is the Israeli government.” Morris noted that a Canadian neo-Nazi Web site had listed Paul’s newsletter as a laudably “racialist” publication.
Paul survived these revelations. He later explained that he had not written the passages himself — quite believably, since the style diverges widely from his own. But his response to the accusations was not transparent. When Morris called on him to release the rest of his newsletters, he would not. He remains touchy about it. “Even the fact that you’re asking this question infers, ‘Oh, you’re an anti-Semite,’ ” he told me in June. Actually, it doesn’t. Paul was in Congress when Israel bombed Iraq’s Osirak nuclear plant in 1981 and — unlike the United Nations and the Reagan administration — defended its right to do so. He says Saudi Arabia has an influence on Washington equal to Israel’s. His votes against support for Israel follow quite naturally from his opposition to all foreign aid. There is no sign that they reflect any special animus against the Jewish state.
What is interesting is Paul’s idea that the identity of the person who did write those lines is “of no importance.” Paul never deals in disavowals or renunciations or distancings, as other politicians do. In his office one afternoon in June, I asked about his connections to the John Birch Society. “Oh, my goodness, the John Birch Society!” he said in mock horror. “Is that bad? I have a lot of friends in the John Birch Society. They’re generally well educated, and they understand the Constitution. I don’t know how many positions they would have that I don’t agree with. Because they’re real strict constitutionalists, they don’t like the war, they’re hard-money people. . . . ”
Paul’s ideological easygoingness is like a black hole that attracts the whole universe of individuals and groups who don’t recognize themselves in the politics they see on TV. To hang around with his impressively large crowd of supporters before and after the CNN debate in Manchester, N.H., in June, was to be showered with privately printed newsletters full of exclamation points and capital letters, scribbled-down U.R.L.’s for Web sites about the Free State Project, which aims to turn New Hampshire into a libertarian enclave, and copies of the cult DVD “America: Freedom to Fascism.”
Victor Carey, a 45-year-old, muscular, mustachioed self-described “patriot” who wears a black baseball cap with a skull and crossbones on it, drove up from Sykesville, Md., to show his support for Paul. He laid out some of his concerns. “The people who own the Federal Reserve own the oil companies, they own the mass media, they own the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, they’re part of the Bilderbergers, and unfortunately their spiritual practices are very wicked and diabolical as well,” Carey said. “They go to a place out in California known as the Bohemian Grove, and there’s been footage obtained by infiltration of what their practices are. And they do mock human sacrifices to an owl-god called Moloch. This is true. Go research it yourself.”
Two grandmothers from North Carolina who painted a Winnebago red, white and blue were traveling around the country, stumping for Ron Paul, defending the Constitution and warning about the new “North American Union.” Asked whether this is something that would arise out of Nafta, Betty Smith of Chapel Hill, N.C., replied: “It’s already arisen. They’re building the highway. Guess what! The Spanish company building the highway — they’re gonna get the tolls. Giuliani’s law firm represents that Spanish company. Giuliani’s been anointed a knight by the Queen. Guess what! Read the Constitution. That’s not allowed!”
Paul is not a conspiracy theorist, but he has a tendency to talk in that idiom. In a floor speech shortly after the toppling of the Taliban in Afghanistan, he mentioned Unocal’s desire to tap the region’s energy and concluded, “We should not be surprised now that many contend that the plan for the U.N. to ‘nation-build’ in Afghanistan is a logical and important consequence of this desire.” But when push comes to shove, Paul is not among the “many” who “contend” this. “I think oil and gas is part of it,” he explains. “But it’s not the issue. If that were the only issue, it wouldn’t have happened. The main reason was to get the Taliban out.”
Last winter at a meet-the-candidate house party in New Hampshire, students representing a group called Student Scholars for 9/11 Truth asked Paul whether he believed the official investigation into the Sept. 11 attacks was credible. “I never automatically trust anything the government does when they do an investigation,” Paul replied, “because too often I think there’s an area that the government covered up, whether it’s the Kennedy assassination or whatever.” The exchange was videotaped and ricocheted around the Internet for a while. But Paul’s patience with the “Truthers,” as they call themselves, does not make him one himself. “Even at the time it happened, I believe the information was fairly clear that Al Qaeda was involved,” he told me.
“Every Wacko Fringe Group In the Country”
One evening in mid-June, 86 members of a newly formed Ron Paul Meetup group gathered in a room in the Pasadena convention center. It was a varied crowd, preoccupied by the war, including many disaffected Democrats. Via video link from Virginia, Paul’s campaign chairman, Kent Snyder, spoke to the group “of a coming-together of the old guard and the new.” Then Connie Ruffley, co-chairwoman of United Republicans of California (UROC), addressed the crowd. UROC was founded during the 1964 presidential campaign to fight off challenges to Goldwater from Rockefeller Republicanism. Since then it has lain dormant but not dead — waiting, like so many other old right-wing groups, for someone or something to kiss it back to life. UROC endorsed Paul at its spring convention.
That night, Ruffley spoke about her past with the John Birch Society and asked how many in the room were members (quite a few, as it turned out). She referred to the California senator Dianne Feinstein as “Fine-Swine,” and got quickly to Israel, raising the Israeli attack on the American Naval signals ship Liberty during the Six-Day War. Some people were pleased. Others walked out. Others sent angry e-mails that night. Several said they would not return. The head of the Pasadena Meetup group, Bill Dumas, sent a desperate letter to Paul headquarters asking for guidance:
“We’re in a difficult position of working on a campaign that draws supporters from laterally opposing points of view, and we have the added bonus of attracting every wacko fringe group in the country. And in a Ron Paul Meetup many people will consider each other ‘wackos’ for their beliefs whether that is simply because they’re liberal, conspiracy theorists, neo-Nazis, evangelical Christian, etc. . . . We absolutely must focus on Ron’s message only and put aside all other agendas, which anyone can save for the next ‘Star Trek’ convention or whatever.”
But what is “Ron’s message”? Whatever the campaign purports to be about, the main thing it has done thus far is to serve as a clearinghouse for voters who feel unrepresented by mainstream Republicans and Democrats. The antigovernment activists of the right and the antiwar activists of the left have many differences, maybe irreconcilable ones. But they have a lot of common beliefs too, and their numbers — and anger — are of a considerable magnitude. Ron Paul will not be the next president of the United States. But his candidacy gives us a good hint about the country the next president is going to have to knit back together.
Christopher Caldwell, a contributing writer, last wrote for the magazine about Turkish immigrants in Germany.
July 22, 2007
The Antiwar, Anti-Abortion, Anti-Drug-Enforcement-Administration, Anti-Medicare Candidacy of Dr. Ron Paul
By CHRISTOPHER CALDWELL
Whipping westward across Manhattan in a limousine sent by Comedy Central’s “Daily Show,” Ron Paul, the 10-term Texas congressman and long-shot Republican presidential candidate, is being briefed. Paul has only the most tenuous familiarity with Comedy Central. He has never heard of “The Daily Show.” His press secretary, Jesse Benton, is trying to explain who its host, Jon Stewart, is. “He’s an affable gentleman,” Benton says, “and he’s very smart. What I’m getting from the pre-interview is, he’s sympathetic.”
Paul nods.
“GQ wants to profile you on Thursday,” Benton continues. “I think it’s worth doing.”
“GTU?” the candidate replies.
“GQ. It’s a men’s magazine.”
“Don’t know much about that,” Paul says.
Thin to the point of gauntness, polite to the point of daintiness, Ron Paul is a 71-year-old great-grandfather, a small-town doctor, a self-educated policy intellectual and a formidable stander on constitutional principle. In normal times, Paul might be — indeed, has been — the kind of person who is summoned onto cable television around April 15 to ventilate about whether the federal income tax violates the Constitution. But Paul has in recent weeks become a sensation in magazines he doesn’t read, on Web sites he has never visited and on television shows he has never watched.
Alone among Republican candidates for the presidency, Paul has always opposed the Iraq war. He blames “a dozen or two neocons who got control of our foreign policy,” chief among them Vice President Dick Cheney and the former Bush advisers Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, for the debacle. On the assumption that a bad situation could get worse if the war spreads into Iran, he has a simple plan. It is: “Just leave.” During a May debate in South Carolina, he suggested the 9/11 attacks could be attributed to United States policy. “Have you ever read about the reasons they attacked us?” he asked, referring to one of Osama bin Laden’s communiqués. “They attack us because we’ve been over there. We’ve been bombing Iraq for 10 years.” Rudolph Giuliani reacted by demanding a retraction, drawing gales of applause from the audience. But the incident helped Paul too. Overnight, he became the country’s most conspicuous antiwar Republican.
Paul’s opposition to the war in Iraq did not come out of nowhere. He was against the first gulf war, the war in Kosovo and the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, which he called a “declaration of virtual war.” Although he voted after Sept. 11 to approve the use of force in Afghanistan and spend $40 billion in emergency appropriations, he has sounded less thrilled with those votes as time has passed. “I voted for the authority and the money,” he now says. “I thought it was misused.”
There is something homespun about Paul, reminiscent of “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.” He communicates with his constituents through birthday cards, August barbecues and the cookbooks his wife puts together every election season, which mix photos of grandchildren, Gospel passages and neighbors’ recipes for Velveeta cheese fudge and Cherry Coke salad. He is listed in the phone book, and his constituents call him at home. But there is also something cosmopolitan and radical about him; his speeches can bring to mind the World Social Forum or the French international-affairs periodical Le Monde Diplomatique. Paul is surely the only congressman who would cite the assertion of the left-leaning Chennai-based daily The Hindu that “the world is being asked today, in reality, to side with the U.S. as it seeks to strengthen its economic hegemony.” The word “empire” crops up a lot in his speeches.
This side of Paul has made him the candidate of many people, on both the right and the left, who hope that something more consequential than a mere change of party will come out of the 2008 elections. He is particularly popular among the young and the wired. Except for Barack Obama, he is the most-viewed candidate on YouTube. He is the most “friended” Republican on MySpace.com. Paul understands that his chances of winning the presidency are infinitesimally slim. He is simultaneously planning his next Congressional race. But in Paul’s idea of politics, spreading a message has always been just as important as seizing office. “Politicians don’t amount to much,” he says, “but ideas do.” Although he is still in the low single digits in polls, he says he has raised $2.4 million in the second quarter, enough to broaden the four-state campaign he originally planned into a national one.
Paul represents a different Republican Party from the one that Iraq, deficits and corruption have soured the country on. In late June, despite a life of antitax agitation and churchgoing, he was excluded from a Republican forum sponsored by Iowa antitax and Christian groups. His school of Republicanism, which had its last serious national airing in the Goldwater campaign of 1964, stands for a certain idea of the Constitution — the idea that much of the power asserted by modern presidents has been usurped from Congress, and that much of the power asserted by Congress has been usurped from the states. Though Paul acknowledges flaws in both the Constitution (it included slavery) and the Bill of Rights (it doesn’t go far enough), he still thinks a comprehensive array of positions can be drawn from them: Against gun control. For the sovereignty of states. And against foreign-policy adventures. Paul was the Libertarian Party’s presidential candidate in 1988. But his is a less exuberant libertarianism than you find, say, in the pages of Reason magazine.
Over the years, this vision has won most favor from those convinced the country is going to hell in a handbasket. The attention Paul has captured tells us a lot about the prevalence of such pessimism today, about the instability of partisan allegiances and about the seldom-avowed common ground between the hard right and the hard left. His message draws on the noblest traditions of American decency and patriotism; it also draws on what the historian Richard Hofstadter called the paranoid style in American politics.
Financial Armageddon
Paul grew up in the western Pennsylvania town of Green Tree. His father, the son of a German immigrant, ran a small dairy company. Sports were big around there — one of the customers on the milk route Paul worked as a teenager was the retired baseball Hall of Famer Honus Wagner — and Paul was a terrific athlete, winning a state track meet in the 220 and excelling at football and baseball. But knee injuries had ended his sports career by the time he went off to Gettysburg College in 1953. After medical school at Duke, Paul joined the Air Force, where he served as a flight surgeon, tending to the ear, nose and throat ailments of pilots, and traveling to Iran, Ethiopia and elsewhere. “I recall doing a lot of physicals on Army warrant officers who wanted to become helicopter pilots and go to Vietnam,” he told me. “They were gung-ho. I’ve often thought about how many of those people never came back.”
Paul is given to mulling things over morally. His family was pious and Lutheran; two of his brothers became ministers. Paul’s five children were baptized in the Episcopal church, but he now attends a Baptist one. He doesn’t travel alone with women and once dressed down an aide for using the expression “red-light district” in front of a female colleague. As a young man, though, he did not protest the Vietnam War, which he now calls “totally unnecessary” and “illegal.” Much later, after the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, he began reading St. Augustine. “I was annoyed by the evangelicals’ being so supportive of pre-emptive war, which seems to contradict everything that I was taught as a Christian,” he recalls. “The religion is based on somebody who’s referred to as the Prince of Peace.”
In 1968, Paul settled in southern Texas, where he had been stationed. He recalls that he was for a while the only obstetrician — “a very delightful part of medicine,” he says — in Brazoria County. He was already immersed in reading the economics books that would change his life. Americans know the “Austrian school,” if at all, from the work of Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises, two economists who fled the Nazis in the 1930s and whose free-market doctrines helped inspire the conservative movement in the 1950s. The laws of economics don’t admit exceptions, say the Austrians. You cannot fake out markets, no matter how surreptitiously you expand the money supply. Spend more than you earn, and you are on the road to inflation and tyranny.
Such views are not always Republican orthodoxy. Paul is a harsh critic of the Federal Reserve, both for its policies and its unaccountability. “We first bonded,” recalls Barney Frank, the Massachusetts Democrat, “because we were both conspicuous nonworshipers at the Temple of the Fed and of the High Priest Greenspan.” In recent weeks, Paul’s airport reading has been a book called “Financial Armageddon.” He is obsessed with sound money, which he considers — along with the related phenomena of credit excess, bubbles and uncollateralized assets of all kinds — a “sleeper issue.” The United States ought to link its currency to gold or silver again, Paul says. He puts his money where his mouth is. According to Federal Election Commission documents, most of his investments are in gold and silver and are worth between $1.5 and $3.5 million. It’s a modest sum by the standards of major presidential candidates but impressive for someone who put five children through college on a doctor’s (and later a congressman’s) earnings.
For Paul, everything comes back to money, including Iraq. “No matter how much you love the empire,” he says, “it’s unaffordable.” Wars are expensive, and there has been a tendency throughout history to pay for them by borrowing. A day of reckoning always comes, says Paul, and one will come for us. Speaking this spring before the libertarian Future of Freedom Foundation in Reston, Va., he warned of a dollar crisis. “That’s usually the way empires end,” he said. “It wasn’t us forcing the Soviets to build missiles that brought them down. It was the fact that socialism doesn’t work. Our system doesn’t work much better.”
Under the banner of “Freedom, Honesty and Sound Money,” Paul ran for Congress in 1974. He lost — but took the seat in a special election in April 1976. He lost again in November of that year, then won in 1978. On two big issues, he stood on principle and was vindicated: He was one of very few Republicans in Congress to back Ronald Reagan against Gerald Ford for the 1976 Republican nomination. He was also one of the representatives who warned against the rewriting of banking rules that laid the groundwork for the savings-and-loan collapse of the 1980s. Paul served three terms before losing to Phil Gramm in the Republican primary for Senate in 1984. Tom DeLay took over his seat.
Paul would not come back to Washington for another dozen years. But in the time he could spare from delivering babies in Brazoria County, he remained a mighty presence in the out-of-the-limelight world of those old-line libertarians who had never made their peace with the steady growth of federal power in the 20th century. Paul got the Libertarian Party nomination for president in 1988, defeating the Indian activist Russell Means in a tough race. He finished third behind Bush and Dukakis, winning nearly half a million votes. He tended his own Foundation for Rational Economics and Education (FREE) and kept up his contacts with other market-oriented organizations. What resulted was a network of true believers who would be his political base in one of the stranger Congressional elections of modern times.
A Lone Wolf
In the first days of 1995, just weeks after the Republican landslide, Paul traveled to Washington and, through DeLay, made contact with the Texas Republican delegation. He told them he could beat the Democratic incumbent Greg Laughlin in the reconfigured Gulf Coast district that now included his home. Republicans had their own ideas. In June 1995, Laughlin announced he would run in the next election as a Republican. Laughlin says he had discussed switching parties with Newt Gingrich, the next speaker, before the Republicans even took power. Paul suspects to this day that the Republicans wooed Laughlin to head off his candidacy. Whatever happened, it didn’t work. Paul challenged Laughlin in the primary.
“At first, we kind of blew him off,” recalls the longtime Texas political consultant Royal Masset. “ ‘Oh, there’s Ron Paul!’ But very quickly, we realized he was getting far more money than anybody.” Much of it came from out of state, from the free-market network Paul built up while far from Congress. His candidacy was a problem not just for Laughlin. It also threatened to halt the stream of prominent Democrats then switching parties — for what sane incumbent would switch if he couldn’t be assured the Republican nomination? The result was a heavily funded effort by the National Republican Congressional Committee to defeat Paul in the primary. The National Rifle Association made an independent expenditure against him. Former President George H.W. Bush, Gov. George W. Bush and both Republican senators endorsed Laughlin. Paul had only two prominent backers: the tax activist Steve Forbes and the pitcher Nolan Ryan, Paul’s constituent and old friend, who cut a number of ads for him. They were enough. Paul edged Laughlin in a runoff and won an equally narrow general election.
Republican opposition may not have made Paul distrust the party, but beating its network with his own homemade one revealed that he didn’t necessarily need the party either. Paul looks back on that race and sees something in common with his quixotic bid for the presidency. “I always think that if I do things like that and get clobbered, I can excuse myself,” he says.
Anyone who is elected to Congress three times as a nonincumbent, as Paul has been, is a politician of prodigious gifts. Especially since Paul has real vulnerabilities in his district. For Eric Dondero, who plans to challenge him in the Republican Congressional primary next fall, foreign policy is Paul’s central failing. Dondero, who is 44, was Paul’s aide and sometime spokesman for more than a decade. According to Dondero, “When 9/11 happened, he just completely changed. One of the first things he said was not how awful the tragedy was . . . it was, ‘Now we’re gonna get big government.’ ”
Dondero claims that Paul’s vote to authorize force in Afghanistan was made only after warnings from a longtime staffer that voting otherwise would cost him Victoria, a pivotal city in his district. (“Completely false,” Paul says.) One day just after the Iraq invasion, when Dondero was driving Paul around the district, the two had words. “He said he did not want to have someone on staff who did not support him 100 percent on foreign policy,” Dondero recalls. Paul says Dondero’s outspoken enthusiasm for the military’s “shock and awe” strategy made him an awkward spokesman for an antiwar congressman. The two parted on bad terms.
A larger vulnerability may be that voters want more pork-barrel spending than Paul is willing to countenance. In a rice-growing, cattle-ranching district, Paul consistently votes against farm subsidies. In the very district where, on the night of Sept. 8, 1900, a storm destroyed the city of Galveston, leaving 6,000 dead, and where repairs from Hurricane Rita and refugees from Hurricane Katrina continue to exact a toll, he votes against FEMA and flood aid. In a district that is home to many employees of the Johnson Space Center, he votes against financing NASA.
The Victoria Advocate, an influential newspaper in the district, has generally opposed Paul for re-election, on the grounds that a “lone wolf” cannot get the highway and homeland-security financing the district needs. So how does he get re-elected? Tim Delaney, the paper’s editorial-page editor, says: “Ron Paul is a very charismatic person. He has charm. He does not alter his position ever. His ideals are high. If a little old man calls up from the farm and says, ‘I need a wheelchair,’ he’ll get the damn wheelchair for him.”
Paul may have refused on principle to accept Medicare when he practiced medicine. He may return a portion of his Congressional office budget every year. But his staff has the reputation of fighting doggedly to collect Social Security checks, passports, military decorations, immigrant-visa extensions and any emolument to which constituents are entitled by law. According to Jackie Gloor, who runs Paul’s Victoria office: “So many times, people say to us, ‘We don’t like his vote.’ But they trust his heart.”
In Congress, Paul is generally admired for his fidelity to principle and lack of ego. “He is one of the easiest people in Congress to work with, because he bases his positions on the merits of issues,” says Barney Frank, who has worked with Paul on efforts to ease the regulation of gambling and medical marijuana. “He is independent but not ornery.” Paul has made a habit of objecting to things that no one else objects to. In October 2001, he was one of three House Republicans to vote against the USA Patriot Act. He was the sole House member of either party to vote against the Financial Antiterrorism Act (final tally: 412-1). In 1999, he was the only naysayer in a 424-1 vote in favor of casting a medal to honor Rosa Parks. Nothing against Rosa Parks: Paul voted against similar medals for Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II. He routinely opposes resolutions that presume to advise foreign governments how to run their affairs: He has refused to condemn Robert Mugabe’s violence against Zimbabwean citizens (421-1), to call on Vietnam to release political prisoners (425-1) or to ask the League of Arab States to help stop the killing in Darfur (425-1).
Every Thursday, Paul is the host of a luncheon for a circle of conservative Republicans that he calls the Liberty Caucus. It has become the epicenter of antiwar Republicanism in Washington. One stalwart member is Walter Jones, the North Carolina Republican who during the debate over Iraq suggested renaming French fries “freedom fries” in the House dining room, but who has passed the years since in vocal opposition to the war. Another is John (Jimmy) Duncan of Tennessee, the only Republican besides Paul who voted against the war and remains in the House. Other regulars include Virgil Goode of Virginia, Roscoe Bartlett of Maryland and Scott Garrett of New Jersey. Zach Wamp of Tennessee and Jeff Flake, the Arizonan scourge of pork-barrel spending, visit occasionally. Not all are antiwar, but many of the speakers Paul invites are: the former C.I.A. analyst Michael Scheuer, the intelligence-world journalist James Bamford and such disillusioned United States Army officers as William Odom, Gregory Newbold and Lawrence Wilkerson (Colin Powell’s former chief of staff), among others.
In today’s Washington, Paul’s combination of radical libertarianism and conservatism is unusual. Sometimes the first impulse predominates. He was the only Texas Republican to vote against last year’s Federal Marriage Amendment, meant to stymie gay marriage. He detests the federal war on drugs; the LSD guru Timothy Leary held a fundraiser for him in 1988. Sometimes he is more conservative. He opposed the recent immigration bill on the grounds that it constituted amnesty. At a breakfast for conservative journalists in the offices of Americans for Tax Reform this May, he spoke resentfully of being required to treat penurious immigrants in emergency rooms — “patients who were more likely to sue you than anybody else,” having children “who became automatic citizens the next day.” (Paul champions a constitutional amendment to end birthright citizenship.) While he backs free trade in theory, he opposes many of the institutions and arrangements — from the World Trade Organization to Nafta — that promote it in practice.
Paul also opposes abortion, which he believes should be addressed at the state level, not the national one. He remembers seeing a late abortion performed during his residency, years before Roe v. Wade, and he maintains it left an impression on him. “It was pretty dramatic for me,” he says, “to see a two-and-a-half-pound baby taken out crying and breathing and put in a bucket.”
The Owl-God Moloch
Paul’s message is not new. You could have heard it in 1964 or 1975 or 1991 at the conclaves of those conservatives who were considered outside the mainstream of the Republican Party. Back then, most Republicans appeared reconciled to a strong federal government, if only to do the expensive job of defending the country against Communism. But when the Berlin Wall fell, the dormant institutions and ideologies of pre-cold-war conservatism began to stir. In his 1992 and 1996 campaigns, Pat Buchanan was the first politician to express and exploit this change, breathing life into the motto “America First” (if not the organization of that name, which opposed entry into World War II).
Like Buchanan, Paul draws on forgotten traditions. His top aides are unimpeachably Republican but stand at a distance from the party as it has evolved over the decades. His chief of staff, Tom Lizardo, worked for Pat Robertson and Bill Miller Jr. (the son of Barry Goldwater’s vice-presidential nominee). His national campaign organizer, Lew Moore, worked for the late congressman Jack Metcalf of Washington State, another Goldwaterite. At the grass roots, Paul’s New Hampshire primary campaign stresses gun rights and relies on anti-abortion and tax activists from the organizations of Buchanan and the state’s former maverick senator, Bob Smith.
Paul admires Robert Taft, the isolationist Ohio senator known during the Truman administration as Mr. Republican, who tried to rally Republicans against United States participation in NATO. Taft lost the Republican nomination in 1952 to Dwight Eisenhower and died the following year. “Now, of course,” Paul says, “I quote Eisenhower when he talks about the military-industrial complex. But I quote Taft when he suits my purposes too.” Particularly on NATO, from which Paul, too, would like to withdraw.
The question is whether the old ideologies being resurrected are neglected wisdom or discredited nonsense. In the 1996 general election, Paul’s Democratic opponent Lefty Morris held a press conference to air several shocking quotes from a newsletter that Paul published during his decade away from Washington. Passages described the black male population of Washington as “semi-criminal or entirely criminal” and stated that “by far the most powerful lobby in Washington of the bad sort is the Israeli government.” Morris noted that a Canadian neo-Nazi Web site had listed Paul’s newsletter as a laudably “racialist” publication.
Paul survived these revelations. He later explained that he had not written the passages himself — quite believably, since the style diverges widely from his own. But his response to the accusations was not transparent. When Morris called on him to release the rest of his newsletters, he would not. He remains touchy about it. “Even the fact that you’re asking this question infers, ‘Oh, you’re an anti-Semite,’ ” he told me in June. Actually, it doesn’t. Paul was in Congress when Israel bombed Iraq’s Osirak nuclear plant in 1981 and — unlike the United Nations and the Reagan administration — defended its right to do so. He says Saudi Arabia has an influence on Washington equal to Israel’s. His votes against support for Israel follow quite naturally from his opposition to all foreign aid. There is no sign that they reflect any special animus against the Jewish state.
What is interesting is Paul’s idea that the identity of the person who did write those lines is “of no importance.” Paul never deals in disavowals or renunciations or distancings, as other politicians do. In his office one afternoon in June, I asked about his connections to the John Birch Society. “Oh, my goodness, the John Birch Society!” he said in mock horror. “Is that bad? I have a lot of friends in the John Birch Society. They’re generally well educated, and they understand the Constitution. I don’t know how many positions they would have that I don’t agree with. Because they’re real strict constitutionalists, they don’t like the war, they’re hard-money people. . . . ”
Paul’s ideological easygoingness is like a black hole that attracts the whole universe of individuals and groups who don’t recognize themselves in the politics they see on TV. To hang around with his impressively large crowd of supporters before and after the CNN debate in Manchester, N.H., in June, was to be showered with privately printed newsletters full of exclamation points and capital letters, scribbled-down U.R.L.’s for Web sites about the Free State Project, which aims to turn New Hampshire into a libertarian enclave, and copies of the cult DVD “America: Freedom to Fascism.”
Victor Carey, a 45-year-old, muscular, mustachioed self-described “patriot” who wears a black baseball cap with a skull and crossbones on it, drove up from Sykesville, Md., to show his support for Paul. He laid out some of his concerns. “The people who own the Federal Reserve own the oil companies, they own the mass media, they own the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, they’re part of the Bilderbergers, and unfortunately their spiritual practices are very wicked and diabolical as well,” Carey said. “They go to a place out in California known as the Bohemian Grove, and there’s been footage obtained by infiltration of what their practices are. And they do mock human sacrifices to an owl-god called Moloch. This is true. Go research it yourself.”
Two grandmothers from North Carolina who painted a Winnebago red, white and blue were traveling around the country, stumping for Ron Paul, defending the Constitution and warning about the new “North American Union.” Asked whether this is something that would arise out of Nafta, Betty Smith of Chapel Hill, N.C., replied: “It’s already arisen. They’re building the highway. Guess what! The Spanish company building the highway — they’re gonna get the tolls. Giuliani’s law firm represents that Spanish company. Giuliani’s been anointed a knight by the Queen. Guess what! Read the Constitution. That’s not allowed!”
Paul is not a conspiracy theorist, but he has a tendency to talk in that idiom. In a floor speech shortly after the toppling of the Taliban in Afghanistan, he mentioned Unocal’s desire to tap the region’s energy and concluded, “We should not be surprised now that many contend that the plan for the U.N. to ‘nation-build’ in Afghanistan is a logical and important consequence of this desire.” But when push comes to shove, Paul is not among the “many” who “contend” this. “I think oil and gas is part of it,” he explains. “But it’s not the issue. If that were the only issue, it wouldn’t have happened. The main reason was to get the Taliban out.”
Last winter at a meet-the-candidate house party in New Hampshire, students representing a group called Student Scholars for 9/11 Truth asked Paul whether he believed the official investigation into the Sept. 11 attacks was credible. “I never automatically trust anything the government does when they do an investigation,” Paul replied, “because too often I think there’s an area that the government covered up, whether it’s the Kennedy assassination or whatever.” The exchange was videotaped and ricocheted around the Internet for a while. But Paul’s patience with the “Truthers,” as they call themselves, does not make him one himself. “Even at the time it happened, I believe the information was fairly clear that Al Qaeda was involved,” he told me.
“Every Wacko Fringe Group In the Country”
One evening in mid-June, 86 members of a newly formed Ron Paul Meetup group gathered in a room in the Pasadena convention center. It was a varied crowd, preoccupied by the war, including many disaffected Democrats. Via video link from Virginia, Paul’s campaign chairman, Kent Snyder, spoke to the group “of a coming-together of the old guard and the new.” Then Connie Ruffley, co-chairwoman of United Republicans of California (UROC), addressed the crowd. UROC was founded during the 1964 presidential campaign to fight off challenges to Goldwater from Rockefeller Republicanism. Since then it has lain dormant but not dead — waiting, like so many other old right-wing groups, for someone or something to kiss it back to life. UROC endorsed Paul at its spring convention.
That night, Ruffley spoke about her past with the John Birch Society and asked how many in the room were members (quite a few, as it turned out). She referred to the California senator Dianne Feinstein as “Fine-Swine,” and got quickly to Israel, raising the Israeli attack on the American Naval signals ship Liberty during the Six-Day War. Some people were pleased. Others walked out. Others sent angry e-mails that night. Several said they would not return. The head of the Pasadena Meetup group, Bill Dumas, sent a desperate letter to Paul headquarters asking for guidance:
“We’re in a difficult position of working on a campaign that draws supporters from laterally opposing points of view, and we have the added bonus of attracting every wacko fringe group in the country. And in a Ron Paul Meetup many people will consider each other ‘wackos’ for their beliefs whether that is simply because they’re liberal, conspiracy theorists, neo-Nazis, evangelical Christian, etc. . . . We absolutely must focus on Ron’s message only and put aside all other agendas, which anyone can save for the next ‘Star Trek’ convention or whatever.”
But what is “Ron’s message”? Whatever the campaign purports to be about, the main thing it has done thus far is to serve as a clearinghouse for voters who feel unrepresented by mainstream Republicans and Democrats. The antigovernment activists of the right and the antiwar activists of the left have many differences, maybe irreconcilable ones. But they have a lot of common beliefs too, and their numbers — and anger — are of a considerable magnitude. Ron Paul will not be the next president of the United States. But his candidacy gives us a good hint about the country the next president is going to have to knit back together.
Christopher Caldwell, a contributing writer, last wrote for the magazine about Turkish immigrants in Germany.
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