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Why the Sestak Job Offer Is a Big Deal
Tweet Share on Facebook May 27, 2010 Comment (18)By Scott Galupo, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
In Washington, you can safely assume the air is beginning to stink when administration apologists play the “Politics isn’t a crime” card, as the Washington Monthly’s Steve Benen has here in reference to the brewing Joe Sestak job-offer scandal. [See who supports Sestak.]
Funny, I don’t remember Democrats being in such a forgiving mood when the Bush White House was accused of politicizing the Justice Department by firing a batch of U.S. Attorneys. Or when Rep. Tom DeLay launched his notorious K Street Project and helped to favorably redraw Texas’ congressional district boundaries. These efforts went beyond the pale of “exert[ing] influence in developments related to [the president’s] political party.” (Which indeed they did.) -
Gulf Oil Spill is Tarring Obama's Approval Ratings
Tweet Share on Facebook May 26, 2010 Comment (28)By Bonnie Erbe, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
I agree with my esteemed colleague Mary Kate Cary that the Deepwater Horizon spill is becoming President Obama’s version of Hurricane Katrina, which started to turn American public opinion against former President George W. Bush.
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Sestak Bribe Allegations Could Sink His Candidacy
Tweet Share on Facebook May 26, 2010 Comment (22)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Joe Sestak, the former U.S. Navy admiral and member of Congress who bested party-switching Arlen Specter in last week’s Pennsylvania Democratic Senate primary, may have torpedoed his candidacy with his own big mouth.
Some months ago, as he was beginning his Senate campaign, Sestak let it slip that someone in the White House might have offered him a job in exchange for dropping out of the primary against Specter, whose bid for a sixth term had the backing of President Barack Obama. And then tried to avoid talking about it ever again. The problem, as Sestak no doubt now realizes, is that to offer a specific position or reward in exchange for a specific act is, as many people read the law, illegal.
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Journalism 101: Nationals Pitcher Stephen Strasburg in the Post
Tweet Share on Facebook May 26, 2010 Comment (1)By John Aloysius Farrell, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
I have always been a big fan of the Texas sportswriter, Dan Jenkins. And while living in the nation's capital has no torrent of advantages, one of them is the chance to read Dan's daughter Sally, writing in the morning paper. Let me show you what I mean. The other night she was in Syracuse, to catch the Washington Nationals' brilliant almost-a-rookie pitcher, Stephen Strasburg, pitch in the bush leagues.
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Gulf Oil Spill is Obama's Hurricane Katrina
Tweet Share on Facebook May 26, 2010 Comment (27)By Mary Kate Cary, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
If you haven’t had your morning coffee yet, the video posted below the jump will get your blood moving. It’s Phillippe Cousteau Jr. and an ABC News reporter donning hazmat suits and diving down below the surface to see the “toxic soup” that is now the Gulf of Mexico. CBS News spent nearly half its show last night on the spill; NBC devoted much of its show, too, including Brian Williams reporting that if left unfettered, the well could give off oil for the “rest of our lives on Earth,” which the former CEO of Shell confirmed. (If that’s true, that’s truly shocking.) As I write this, two of the “hot searches” on Google Trends are “top kill” and the live feed of the BP oil leak and Twitter has “oil spill” and “gulf” as trending topics. At the gym, in the grocery store, on the sidelines at the kids’ games, everybody’s talking about it.
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Sestak Job Offer Questions Underscore Obama's Lack of Transparency
Tweet Share on Facebook May 26, 2010 Comment (10)By Ron Bonjean, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Just like the BP camera has allowed us to watch millions of gallons of oil spill into the Gulf of Mexico after the collapse of the “Deep Horizon” oil rig, President Obama should install an Oval Office camera or “Oval Cam” in the White House after the botched handling of Rep. Joe Sestak’s job offer. [See who contributes to Sestak.]
The American people are starving for transparency. Time and again, they have been lied to or misled by government and private institutions. Politicians who offer it willingly are praised while those that reject it or begrudgingly accept it are scorned. Transparency demonstrates that leaders and companies are on the level. It means as President Ronald Reagan said, “Trust, but verify.” BP quickly learned that once the camera broadcast the oil leak to millions of people in real time, the company can’t turn it off without sparking conspiratorial outrage.
President Obama is now suffering the consequences of breaking his transparency promises. In a memorandum to heads of executive agencies on WhiteHouse.gov, he said, “We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government.”
But his administration’s actions speak louder than his memos or campaign promises. It refused to allow cameras into daily negotiations on the healthcare bill. Instead, White House officials used a televised staged summit as a mea culpa to the public. The recently held nuclear summit closed to the press corps also comes to mind.
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What the Media Can Learn From Karl Rove About Covering Politics
Tweet Share on Facebook May 25, 2010 Comment (6)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
To be frank, the journalists who cover U.S. elections are, by and large, not really up to the job. There are a select few, like former U.S. News columnist Michael Barone, the much-missed Tim Russert, and others who, as former practitioners of some aspect of the “dark arts” themselves, understand the subtexts and subtleties of campaigns and their strategies and can explain them in ways that are neither mind-numbing nor unbalanced.
They are too few in number. Many of the rest--but by no means all--of the stamped out, blow dried network types who report on poll numbers like they were sports’ scores and who are obsessed, to borrow a word from Sarah Palin, with playing “Gotcha” so obviously radiate contempt for the candidates they are assigned to cover or are so clearly in love with them that they fail to even approach objectivity.
For them, especially, it would useful, even instructive, to read Karl Rove’s memoir of his life in politics. Most books of this type are little more than an “I was there as history unfolded” collections of great moments and significant accomplishments. Rove’s Courage and Consequence is decidedly not that kind of book. Instead it is something more on the order of, well, a training manual for anyone who is interested in running campaigns or, of equal importance, covering them.
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Time to Boycott BP Over Gulf Oil Spill Disaster
Tweet Share on Facebook May 25, 2010 Comment (53)By Mary Kate Cary, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Over the weekend, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar threatened BP with a government take-over of cleanup operations in the gulf: “If we find they’re not doing what they’re supposed to be doing, we’ll push them out of the way appropriately.” That’s not what the commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard, Admiral Thad W. Allen, said. Admiral Allen stepped back from government threats to take over: “To push BP out of the way, it would raise a question: Replace them with what?” Admiral Allen, speaking at the White House yesterday, said he wouldn’t recommend that the government take control, and the Wall Street Journal today reported that Allen said the government doesn’t have any more technology or expertise than the oil company does to deal with the leaking well.
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Israel In Danger of Losing America's Jewish Youth
Tweet Share on Facebook May 25, 2010 Comment (12)By John Aloysius Farrell, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Recently, in this space, I worried as a friend of Israel about the growing irrelevancy of the Zionist cause in the United States. Our kids don't see the dream of a Jewish homeland the way we and our parents do or did. The new generation's impressions of Israel are those of an imperialistic bully, grabbing Arab lands and building illegal settlements--not those of a plucky underdog.
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D.C. School Reform? Public Schools' Absurd New Condom Policy
Tweet Share on Facebook May 24, 2010 Comment (11)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Officials in the District of Columbia, which has some of the worst-performing public schools in the nation, are concerned that their program for the distribution of free condoms in those schools is failing. According to the Washington Post, “High school students and college-age adults have been complaining to District officials that the free condoms the city has been offering are not of good enough quality and are too small.”
If that alone was not bad enough, students are also complaining that it is embarrassing to have to ask school nurses and other health professionals for them.
