Washington Whispers
False Advertising: DeWine Take 2
Sen. Mike DeWine was a bit out of sorts last week after his re-election campaign experienced an embarrassing hiccup. The Ohio Republican was forced to pull a TV commercial featuring video of the World Trade Center under attack after a U.S. News investigation revealed that the images were doctored.
The revelation launched a new round of bad press for the senator, who is battling Rep. Sherrod Brown in a particularly tight race. The ad was meant to accuse Brown of being weak on national security, but then came the news that the images of the smoke-belching twin towers were actually a computer-enhanced still photograph taken before the attack, and the discussion turned to DeWine's honesty. "Mike DeWine has always run campaigns with ... distortions," Brown told U.S. News. "And this is another example." DeWine, for his part, blames his ad agency, Stevens, Reed, Curcio & Potholm, saying he didn't know about the computer effects until alerted by U.S. News. He immediately ordered the doctored images replaced with an untouched photo of the towers before 9/11. And he said he would continue to employ the ad agency. But why would someone alter an image when you can just use the real article? "I can't tell you why graphics people do things," DeWine says. "I had some very choice words for them that you can't print in a family magazine when I found out." DeWine said the amended ad will remain on the air in major Ohio markets.
Reviewing Those Signing Statements
Up to your nose in "unitary executive" theory? Stop whining and get to the courts! That's the suggestion an American Bar Association task force will make to Congress this week. At issue is Bush's use of "signing statements," the controversial missives he sometimes attaches to bills after signing them. In one, Bush seemed to take back everything antitorture he had ever agreed about with Sen. John McCain. Another suggested he wouldn't allow oversight reports Congress demanded as a requirement of its renewal of the Patriot Act. The ABA plan: Urge Congress to pass a law allowing for judicial review of the statements. For some task force members, that means giving Congress the right to sue. Other task force members won't characterize what sort of judicial review might emerge.
Social Ties and Big Contracts
In a blistering report, the Interior Department's top investigator says that senior officials responsible for managing $3.2 billion in Indian trust funds pressured underlings to award lucrative contract work to company executives with whom they had close social ties. Inspector General Earl Devaney criticized, among others, Donna Erwin, the No. 2 official in the Office of the Special Trustee for American Indians. His report examined the ties between OST officials and an accounting firm, Chavarria, Dunne & Lamey LLC, which was handed millions of dollars in sole-source work. In a summary, Devaney says OST officials "created an appearance of preferential treatment" by socializing and exchanging gifts with the firm's executives over an eight-year period. He says "contract personnel felt pressured by these senior OST officials" to award work to the firm. Erwin denies the firm was given preferential treatment.
Buying Rooms and Losing Goodwill
The United States may have been slow in getting its citizens out of war-torn Beirut, but diplomats in Cyprus are trying to make up for that. There is word of a bidding war for the limited hotel rooms in Nicosia, the capital of Cyprus, which was inundated last week with evacuees from Lebanon. Some European officials complained that American diplomats were walking around with wads of cash, buying up hotel rooms that had been promised to others. One American diplomat responded with an unapologetic, "Hell yeah, we take care of our people!"
How Not to Label the Holy City
It's no secret that Fox likes its news a certain way. John Moody, the network's senior VP for news, sends out daily missives micromanaging coverage. Last week, as rockets rained on Nazareth in Israel, Moody instructed: "The attacks on Nazareth become the lead until further notice. Nazareth is a historic and holy city. We can refer to it as the holy city, the biblical city, etc. Let's NOT call it the 'hometown of Jesus' though many would argue the city's favorite son turned out pretty well." Apparently, not everyone got the memo, as Fox ran graphics about rocket strikes on "the birthplace of Jesus" later that day.
Surgeon General: What's Ahead?
We know that the White House is busy these days, but you'd think someone would have put out a reminder that Surgeon General Richard Carmona's four-year term expires in August. Instead, there's been nary a peep on his future. Many public-health types have labeled Carmona a do-nothing who squandered his bully pulpit on fluff like "Mother's Day Tips From the Surgeon General: Caring for Your Mental Health." Or could it be that Carmona's one home run--the report declaring that there is no safe amount of secondhand smoke--distressed GOP corporate contributors who are still battling attempts to pass local smoke-free legislation? Fortunately, Carmona kept his house back in Tucson.
Iraq Ministries: Sobering Forecast
Most U.S. officials have been measuring U.S. progress in Iraq by the number of Iraqi security forces being trained. But the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction is expected to warn in a report that the effort to build up Iraq's civilian capacity is one of the biggest gaps in the U.S. effort. The SIGIR will question whether, despite the new unity government, Iraq's ministries will be able to provide services anytime soon without massive U.S. assistance. "I'm very concerned about the capability of the Iraqi ministries to sustain the more complex infrastructure we have provided them," says Stuart Bowen Jr., who runs the independent federal office of the SIGIR. Particular areas of concern are the electricity and water sectors.
With Bret Schulte, Elizabeth Weiss Green, Edward T. Pound, Alex Kingsbury, Nancy Shute and Kevin Whitelaw
This story appears in the July 31, 2006 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.