Several new 'Hookergate' details out in a new story in the Times.
The House Committee on Homeland Security plans to investigate the questionable $25 million worth of contracts the Department of Homeland Security.
DHS spokesman Larry Orluskie maintains that the contract is "just perfect."
Federal investigators have apparently interviewed prostitutes involved in the Wilkes-Wade parties.
--Josh Marshall
AP: "Prosecutors have e-mails showing Rep. Tom DeLay's office knew lobbyist Jack Abramoff had arranged the financing for the GOP leader's controversial European golfing trip in 2000 and was concerned 'if someone starts asking questions.'"
--Josh Marshall
Last week, you'll remember, TPMmuckraker was reporting on Shirlington Limousine, the limo company at the center of the 'hookergate' scandal, and why a company with so many red flags managed to get a mega-contract from the Department of Homeland Security. (Shirlington has secured some $25 million in DHS contracts for shuttle service and executive limo driving, despite the company owner's history of felonies and bankruptcies and the company's record of poor service, repossessions, revoked transport licenses and other problems.)
On Friday, DHS officials insisted, in response to our questions, that the awards were on the "up-and-up."
Now, last week a reader pointed out to me that in the federal contracting world, even if a company has some serious strikes against it, it can be difficult not to award them a given contract if they are the lowest bidder.
Point taken.
But today we get some more details from the Washington Post.
So did Shirlington provide the lowest bid? Turns out they didn't, reports the Post. They got the award for "best value."
(The award was challenged by a losing bidder on the grounds that Shirlington had falsely claimed to be located in a poor neighborhood, which would have increased its chances of winning the award.)
What'd DHS make of Shirlington's getting canned for providing bad service to Howard University?
Hadn't heard about it. Shirlington owner Christopher Baker didn't mention it.
I guess they haven't equipped DHS with that intel device Google.
His history of bankruptcies and vehicle repossessions? (According to records we've consulted, Baker was actually in bankruptcy for at least part of the time during which the contracts were awarded.)
Didn't hear about that either apparently.
His numerous misdemeanor and two felony convictions? DHS doesn't run background checks on contractors, they told the Post. They don't run them against the terrorist watch list either.
Anybody wonder why this company got these contracts and whether it might have had something to do with his connections to Wilkes, Wade, Cunningham, et al.? Just wondering.
--Josh Marshall
NY Daily News: "Kyle (Dusty) Foggo, the No. 3 official at the CIA, could soon be indicted in a widening FBI investigation of the parties thrown by defense contractor Brent Wilkes, named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the bribery conviction of former Rep. Randall (Duke) Cunningham, law enforcement sources said."
Also from the NYDN: ""It's all about the Duke Cunningham scandal," a senior law enforcement official told the Daily News in reference to Goss' resignation. Duke, a California Republican, was sentenced to more than eight years in prison after pleading guilty in November to taking $2.4 million in homes, yachts and other bribes in exchange for steering government contracts."
--Josh Marshall
We'd seen signs of it. But the WSJ got the goods. Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, #3 man at CIA, hand-picked by Porter Goss, is under federal criminal investigation in the Wilkes-Cunningham bribery and contracts scandal.
--Josh Marshall
LAT on politicization under Goss ...
Four former deputy directors of operations once tried to offer Goss advice about changing the clandestine service without setting off a rebellion, but Goss declined to speak to any of them, said former CIA officials who are aware of the communications. The perception that Goss was conducting a partisan witch hunt grew, too, as staffers asked about the party affiliation of officers who sent in cables or analyses on Iraq that contradicted the Defense Department's more optimistic scenarios.
--Josh Marshall
Time: General Michael V. Hayden, "who has a close rapport with Vice President Cheney", likely to get CIA top job.
--Josh Marshall
Larry Johnson gives us the run-down on what his sources are telling him about why Porter Goss resigned.
--Josh Marshall
As I said a short time ago, we don't know definitively yet that Porter Goss resigned over the Wilkes-Cunningham Hookergate story. But on the assumption that that is the case, let me give you a bit of background on what we've been following in recent weeks.
The hookers in Hookergate are, of course, the sizzle. But there's a bigger story. It stems directly from the Randy "Duke" Cunningham bribery scandal, which many had figured was over. But it's not. You may have noticed that while Duke Cunningham is already in jail and Mitchell Wade has already pled guilty to multiple charges, Brent Wilkes has never been touched. Wilkes is the ur-briber at the heart of the Cunningham scandal, you can see pretty clearly by reading the other indictments and plea agreements. Wade was Wilkes' protege.
Now, on the surface one might surmise that the prosecutors are just taking their time, putting together their best case.
I hear different.
Wilkes has deep ties into the CIA. The focal point of those ties is to Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, the man Porter Goss appointed to the #3 position at CIA when he took over the Agency last year. Remember, Wilkes' scam was getting corrupt contracts deep in the 'black' world of intelligence and defense appropriations, where there's little or no oversight. Foggo was in the contracting and procurement field at the CIA. So you can see how he and Wilkes, who have been friends since high school, had plenty to talk about.
The CIA wasn't the only place Wilkes and his protege Wade plied their corrupt trade. There were also in the mix contracting on the Bush Pentagon's extra-constitutional spying operations. And I am told that senior appointees at the DOD knew about their corruption but overlooked it.
Now, since the Cunningham scandal got under, and particularly of late, there's been a big tug of war between federal law enforcement and the CIA over whether to really go after Wilkes. Probably a little more specificity is in order there, folks at CIA in the orbit of Foggo and presumably Goss.
Now, how does Goss know Foggo?
That's how we get into the other part of this story -- those 'hospitality suites', that moveable feast of food, poker and love, Brent Wilkes ran in Washington for maybe fifteen years. We hear that's how Goss got to be friends with Foggo, whom he later promoted to executive director of the CIA, the number 3 post at the Agency.
Now, last week, Goss denied he had attended any of Wilkes' parties, in answer to a question from TPMmuckraker. Foggo admitted attending the parties but claimed he'd never seen the hookers.
Now, corrupt contractors saucing up Agency officials and members of Congress to get contracts and free money. Hospitality suites where the saucing takes place. Hookers in the mix. It's going on for more than a decade, various members of the key committees in the mix. Goss, former member of one of those committees, appoints one of the key players in all this mess as the number three guy at CIA? The feds leaning hard on the limo company owner who probably knows all the details and already has a long rap sheet and can't afford another conviction?
There's a lot going on here, a lot we don't know, what's connected and what's coincidence. But this is the backstory. And why this story is likely to turn out to be a very big deal.
--Josh Marshall
Oh my ... Goss out at CIA.
What about Kyle "Dusty" Foggo?
Late Update: Here at TPM HQ we were listening to the president's announcement. And the talking heads on CNN were speculating whether Goss's departure might be part of Josh Bolten's 'new blood' shake up in the Bush administration. I don't suppose it has anything to do with the fact that Goss is neck deep in the Wilkes-Corruption-and-Hookers story that's been burbling in the background all week. We don't know definitely why Goss pulled the plug yet. But the CIA Director doesn't march over to the White House and resign, effective immediately, unless something very big is up.
(Point of pride ed. note: TPMmuckraker has been on top of this story all week.)
--Josh Marshall
MSNBC: President Bush to make 'personnel related announcement' at 1:45 p.m. ET
Anyone wanna take a guess? I'm putting my money on a new appointee at extra-constitutional affairs.
--Josh Marshall
More on 
Kennedy.
Here's a Times article from March 8th of this year that documents how people taking Ambien have been known to sleep-walk, sleep-drive and sleep-a-lot-of-other-things.
Presumably, Kennedy can document that he had the stuff in his system. And that makes his claim at least plausible.
--Josh Marshall
As I expected, we've gotten a number of emails from readers asking why we're giving as much attention as we are to the Patrick Kennedy story over at TPMmuckraker, given that it'll inevitably pull attention away from the various GOP corruption stories.
The answer is simple: when it comes to muck, we're on the case regardless of the person's party affiliation. We wouldn't be true to our mission if we didn't.
The simple fact is that when you have an alleged driving under the influence or sleep-driving story and it involves a Kennedy, the press is going to be all over that. What's new.
But here's what does get my attention. There's another pretty tawdry story that's out there -- one about members of Congress getting sauced up at rollicking parties and set up with hookers by crooked defense contractors in exchange for help bagging pricey defense contracts.
That's pretty salacious too. You'd expect the press to be all over it. As Justin reported yesterday, the legendary Watergate Hotel has already received mulitple subpoenas from federal investigators investigating the hotel's role in 'Hookergate'. So this thing's for real.
Yet, I'm not seeing any morning show's running with it.
And, while the Kennedy story is 'newsy' it doesn't really have any greater policy implications. And the public trust implications are minor. The Wilkes-Watergate-Hooker story, on the other hand, is both. It's salacious, which the press loves. And it's also directly tied to crooks ripping off taxpayers, probably allowing our service members abroad to have shoddy equipment or defense dollars going to worthless projects.
So, we're on the Kennedy case. But why the silence on the much bigger scandal bubbling up out of the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee?
Cricket, cricket ...
Late Update: A number of readers have told me that NBC Nightly News has a piece on the story last night. Good for them.
--Josh Marshall
Back on Patrick Kennedy, it's worth pointing out that Ambien can have some very weird side effects. And sleep-walking -- and presumably even sleep-driving, or, heck, possibly even sleep-voting -- is one of them. Still, I don't think that closes the book on this odd case. We're looking into it over at TPMmuckraker.
--Josh Marshall
Bush at 33%. AP: "Six months out, the intensity of opposition to Bush and Congress has risen sharply, along with the percentage of Americans who believe the nation is on the wrong track."
--Josh Marshall
This is interesting.
Yesterday we told you about Sen. Dole's GOP senate fundraising letter which begged for campaign money and suggested that allowing Democrats to launch investigations of President Bush would be even worse than letting them lose the War on Terror.
The AP wrote about Dole's fundraising appeal and the dire picture she painted of a Democratic senate. The piece quotes extensively from the pitch letter. But somehow the AP fails to mention this one most jarring, embarrassing and revealing passage.
Let me just post it again so we're clear what Dole said ...
If Democrats take control of the Senate in '06, they will cancel the Bush tax cuts, allow liberal activist judges to run our courts and undermine all Republican efforts to win the War on Terror.Even worse, they will call for endless congressional investigations and possibly call for the impeachment of President Bush!
Please help the NRSC protect our President, our conservative agenda and our critical GOP Senate Majority by making an urgent online donation today.
I know Dole's campaign committee, the NRSC, was spinning reporters furiously on Thursday trying to keep folks from writing about this. I'd hate to think AP gave way to the hard sell.
Late Update: TPM Reader RM thinks it's even worse than I thought ...
The AP Did More Than "Give Way"Josh, longtime reader here. Go ahead and re-read the first paragraph of the article you linked to:
WASHINGTON -- The head of the Senate Republican committee paints a dire picture of Democratic congressional control, warning that the opposition party would "put the war on terrorism on the back-burner" and maybe even impeach President Bush.The AP actually echoes Dole by implying that Democrats might "put the war on terrorism on the back-burner" but, worse then that, they could "maybe even impeach President Bush." Apparently the AP not only covered for Dole but also agrees with her.
Yep, Sounds about right.
--Josh Marshall
Let me say a few words about the Moussaoui verdict.
I don't believe in the death penalty, though I can certainly understand, and even feel, the desire for it in some cases.
But this whole case struck me as a crock, a sham, a tacit conspiracy between a Justice Department desperate to prosecute someone for 9/11 and a homicidal madman eager to be martyred for his role in an atrocity he actually didn't have that much to do with.
Juliette Kayyem reads the tea leaves here and concludes, fairly convincingly I think, that at least three of the jurors decided that even though Moussaoui is a very bad guy, and probably would have loved to have been in on the plot, the government's case was just bogus.
Life imprisonment sounds like the right punishment.
As for his "America, you lost. I won" that some people are so upset about, who cares what he says? I think we win because we're showing we respect our laws.
--Josh Marshall
Ahhh, the fun truly never ends: Watergate Hotel subpoenaed in Wilkes/Cunningham Hookergate investigation.
--Josh Marshall
Wow. Here are some great poll numbers for Sen. Conrad Burns (R-MT). Fully 29% of Montana voters believe he deserves to be reelected. Says GOP pollster Whit Ayres, who is working for Burns Republican primary opponent, Bob Keenan, and conducted the poll: "That is among the lowest 'deserves re-election' percentages we have recorded for an incumbent in a quarter-century of polling."
--Josh Marshall
It is with a special anguish that I now read George Packer's New Yorker dispatches on Iraq. But I thought George captured the moral dimension of our current national predicament in one sentence in his piece in this week's Talk of the Town, where he describes the president's strategy as "muddling through the rest of the Bush Presidency, without being forced to admit defeat, until January of 2009, when the war will become a new President's problem."
This really is the issue. Brazen it out, burn off men and money, not admit there's any real problem and then pass it off on the next guy who will take the blame.
The president lacks the courage to change course. The whole country is paralyzed by his cowardice.
--Josh Marshall
Valerie Plame wants to leak straight to the reader. That and other news of the day in today's Daily Muck.
--Paul Kiel
Okay, this one will go a little deep in the weeds. But bear with me because I think it'll shed a bit of light on the amount of due diligence the Department of Homeland Security did on Shirlington Limo -- the company now implicated in the Wilkes-Cunningham hooker scandal -- before awarding them a $21 million contract for limo and shuttle services for DHS employees.
Today, over at his new blog at Harper's, Ken Silverstein got a hold of and posted Shirlington's contract with DHS. Now, remember, Shirlington was hired to provide two classes of service -- limos for senior DHS executives and shuttle service around DC for DHS employees, mainly to and from public transportation hubs around town.
On page 11 of the 42 contract, there is a description of the limo part of the services Shirlington was supposed to provide.
Here's the relevant passage ...
Using the Government provided executive sedans, authorized staff shall be transported between various locations in the Washington, DC metropolitan area including service to and from Baltimore Washington, Washington Dulles and Washington Ronald Reagan National airports for authorized users departing on, or returning from, official travel.
Okay, sounds pretty straightforward.
The problem is that during the time Shirlington was bidding for this contract and even when it was signed, the Department of Transportation had revoked Shirlington's right to transport people outside of metropolitan DC. So they weren't even allowed to take people to Baltimore Washington Intl. airport. They were allowed to drive people to Dulles, but only barely, because the Department of Transportation defines Loudon County, Virginia as part of the DC metro area.
--Josh Marshall
We're still checking with the judges. But it seems that Elizabeth Dole, head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee has won the Simon Marshall Award for Unintentional Candor in Presentation of the Republican Message.
It all started earlier this evening when TPM Reader HH was on the receiving end of one of Dole's blast emails begging contributions for the Republican senate committee.
Says Dole, in her pitch: "If Democrats take control of the Senate in '06, they will cancel the Bush tax cuts, allow liberal activist judges to run our courts and undermine all Republican efforts to win the War on Terror. Even worse ..." Now, here you know it's got to be bad. Even I got a little worried and considered sending in some money since losing the War on Terror for America would already be a pretty bad thing for the Democrats to do. But ... well, let's rejoin Dole in mid-moonbat. "Even worse, they will call for endless congressional investigations and possibly call for the impeachment of President Bush!"
And there you have it. Democrats won't stop at surrendering to the terrorists. They'll go as far as investigating President Bush!
That is the election, at least from the vantage point of the White House and the party they control. The president can't afford to lose either house of Congress. Because they've just got too many bad acts and secrets to conceal.
It's even more important than the War on Terror.
--Josh Marshall
Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH) on what he and his party have to offer voters: "I have a healthy campaign account, in contrast to the Democrat Party, which is deeply divided and has a candidate with almost no campaign cash."
--Josh Marshall
David Sirota and Ed Kilgore in the same room talking. No really. I kid you not. Or at least in the same TPMCafe Bookclub. Ed and David, and Frank Joyce, Andrei Cherny, Ruy Teixeira, Elizabeth Warren and Jessica Clark are digging into David's new book Hostile Takeover over at TPMCafe Bookclub. Take a look.
--Josh Marshall
Ahhh, nothing I like better than a little semi-gonzoish on the scene observational reporting. I sent Justin Rood down to Shirlington Limo headquarters this morning to see what he could find out. Seems the Shirlington folks cleared out about a week ago. But Justin got some fun details and some interesting color before Adam Cope of 'Signature Aviation' booted Justin out of the building.
--Josh Marshall
Michael Scanlon, renowned fraudster, Abramoff's "evil elf," and now... expert on Congressional ethics. That and other news of the day in today's Daily Muck.
--Paul Kiel
It's really such a small world over at Shirlington Limousine. That's the always-in-trouble DC limo outfit which, reportedly, specialized in carting congressmen and their Agency pals over to Brent Wilkes' good-time parties where they played poker, got ripped and got down with the hookers Wilkes and Shirlington head honcho Chris Baker, allegedly, also made available.
In case you've forgotten your 
scorecard at home, Brent Wilkes is the arch-briber in the Randy "Duke" Cunningham scandal. As the Wall Street Journal first reported back on April 27th, federal investigators are looking into evidence that, in addition to cash prizes, Wilkes may have also set Duke up with hookers at the parties he threw in DC. The Feds also looking into what other members of Congress and intelligence officials spent quality time at Wilkes' hoedowns. (Wilkes' was apparently throwing these parties for something like 15 years.)
This Justin Rood post from TPMmuckraker has quotes from Reps. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) and Jerry Lewis (R-CA) denying that they partied with Wilkes. And here's the follow-up piece from the Journal in which the CIA concedes that Agency #3 man Dusty Foggo did party with Wilkes but didn't stick around for the hookers to show up.
Anyway, Chris Baker was clearly Wilkes' go-to guy for the 'hospitality suites' notwithstanding the fact that Baker's lawyer told the San Diego Union-Tribune that Baker was "never in attendance in any party where any women were being used for prostitution purposes." And, as we discussed late Tuesday, there's something pretty fishy about the mega-contracts Baker's company managed to land from the Department of Homeland Security.
But just how is that Wilkes got hooked up with Chris Baker? And how'd Baker get so wired?
Well, this evening we got a hold of Shirlington's annual reports filed with the Commonwealth of Virginia State Corporation Commission. And, surprisingly enough, for the first several years Baker's company was in operation -- specifically from 1995 through 1999 -- one of the company's directors was a guy with a San Diego address.
He was Jerome Foster.
What was also weird is that, like Wilkes, Foster was a defense contractor. Foster's Pentech had some sort of energy management technology and they had contracts with the navy, various governmental jurisdictions and even private sector companies.
Now, here's where it gets sort of odd. If you've followed the Wilkes story, you know that the guy who taught Wilkes how Washington works 
and has been in the mix with him every since is former Rep. Bill Lowery (R-CA). Wilkes first spent quality time with Lowery back in the 1980s when one of Wilkes' jobs was to take Lowery on trips down to Central America to hang with Kyle "Dusty" Foggo and the Contras.
Good fun like that can't last forever, of course. And in 1992 Lowery lost his seat to freshman Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham after the two San Diego reps were pushed into the same district and had to run against each other.
Out of work, Lowery decided to become a lobbyist. Here's a piece from the Union-Tribune about Wilkes and Lowery and here's another about Lowery's sweet arrangement with nearby Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA). As Donald Trump might say, they've made a lot of money together.
Not surprisingly, after Lowery set up his lobbying firm Copeland Lowery & Jacquez, Wilkes hired him to lobby for his company ACDS. Between 1998 and 2002, Wilkes paid Lowery's outfit some $200,000.
Anyway, strange as it may seem, another one of Lowery's clients was none other than Jerome Foster's Pentech.
All told, I'd say that means that Chris Baker's limousine company was really popular with businessmen from San Diego looking to haul down federal defense contracts. Baker was Brent Wilkes', shall we say, procurement officer, when it came to saucing up and getting women for members of Congress Wilkes wanted earmarks from. Another San Diego contractor, Foster, was a director of Baker's limo company. And both contractors, in turn, were clients of Bill Lowery.
Enough coincidences like that and you start to think it's not all a coincidence.
--Josh Marshall
Not a good day for Abramoff investigation whipping boy, Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH). He's winning his primary handily tonight. But as Justin Rood reported this afternoon at TPMmuckraker, his challenger apparently raised less than $5,000, isn't known in the district and hasn't even campaigned.
Justin talked to Greg Giroux of CQ who said he'd "be surprised if [Ney's penny-ante opponent] got more than 20 or 25 percent."
With 61% of the precincts now reporting, Ney's opponent, James Broadbelt Harris, has 33% of the vote.
--Josh Marshall
Here at TPM and TPMmuckraker we're trying to keep close tabs on the still bubbling congressional bribery and prostitution scandal involving Duke Cunningham, his briber Brent Wilkes and assorted others. But while we're looking at that, as Justin Rood notes today, Shirlington Limousine company, the outfit that allegedly ferried sundry hookers for liaisons with various political bigwigs, looks to be a bigger and bigger part of the story.
Let's review some of what we know.
Shirlington limo is owned by Chris Baker who has a lengthy criminal record -- a 62 page rap sheet, which we're going to try to post tomorrow. The company has also had something of a spotty record.
According to an October 3rd, 2002 article in the Washington Post, the Bowie State Bulldogs were unfortunate enough to have their team buses provided by Shirlington. And for their trouble, while the team was eating dinner in Atlanta on a trip to play Morehouse, the team's buses were repossessed by ABC Financial Services as they sat in the parking lot.
As the Post put it, ABC called Bowie State Coach Henry Frazier III "on his cell phone while the team was eating to tell him the buses had been repossessed. Frazier said he thought it was a crank call, possibly by one of his players. But, when everyone went outside, the buses were nowhere to be found."
That must have been a fun moment. Would have been fun to hang with Coach Frazier that evening.
Anyway, ABC and Morehouse officials helped the stranded footballers find alternative transportation home.
But apparently Howard University didn't have a great experience either.
They hired Shirlington to provide shuttle services back in 1999. But they canned Shirlington a few months before the incident with the Bowie players down in Atlanta. The problems cited by Howard included "failure to provide copies of maintenance records, failure to provide evidence of workman's compensation insurance, cited on numerous occasions for poor bus cleanliness, poor implementation of two-way communication system, and subcontracted to Thomas Tours without written authorization from the University."
Suffice it to say that Shirlington was doing was our president would call a heckuva job.
And if things weren't looking up for the Shirlington limousine family, they only got worse.
As the Washington Post reported a couple days ago, in 2003 and 2004 Shirlington got eviction notices for an office it mantained in a fancy DC apartment building. Then, as the Post reports, "in September 2004, the company was sued in D.C. Superior Court for $1.8 million, for failing to make payments on buses it bought for the Howard contract. The case was settled last month, with Shirlington Limousine agreeing to pay $300,000."
You might have thought that at this point Shirlington limo was about to give up the ghost. But no. Someone at the Department of Homeland Security could see potential in Shirlington that the folks at Howard and the company's creditors apparently didn't. Because in April 2004, Shirlington bagged a $3.8 million contract with DHS.
Not that everything was perfect yet, mind you. In June 2005, according to Department of Transportation records consulted today by TPM, Shirlington had its Motor Passenger Common Carrier authority 'involuntarily revoked.' They didn't get it reinstated until October 31st of 2005. And just in time. Because according to the Post it was in October 2005 when DHS awarded Shirlington another contract worth $21.2 million for "shuttle services and executive transportation support."
So let's put this all together. Shirlington limo's owner Chris Baker has a long criminal record. He's tight with Cunningham briber Brent Wilkes and reportedly provided the transportation services for the parties Wilkes used to sauce up members of Congress and various intel folks as well as get them set up with hookers. Only, aside from squiring Duke Cunningham around with his daily prostitutes, Shirlington seemed like a really screwed up company. They're getting their buses repossessed, their DOT authority to take people across state lines yanked, and pretty much sued right and left. If Shirlington had taxis and you flagged one down to drive you a few blocks, you might tell them you weren't willing to take the risk. But the Department of Homeland Security, which has various law enforcement and intelligence responsibilities (and if you remember some general thing with protecting the homeland) decides Shirlington is the company it wants providing transportation for its senior-most appointees, the folks who run the place.
Anything sound fishy to you?
--Josh Marshall
Ken Mehlman spoke at the American Jewish Committee's 100th anniversary event this morning. And I hear that when he told the crowd that Iraq is less of a threat or a challenge today than it was under Saddam he got roundly booed.
More here on Mehlman's reception.
--Josh Marshall
More on Net Neutrality. It's important.
On the other hand, if the Telcos win, maybe send us some money so we can pay AT&T the protection money so we don't get shoved off the net.
--Josh Marshall
Our man Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH) has his primary today. Here's our backgrounder on what to expect.
--Josh Marshall
From a TPM Reader who covers the White House ...
You've puzzled out some of the reasons for which reporters feel besieged: Instant and often nasty feedback, the upsurge in criticism from the Left (and in "lynch them all" rhetoric on the Left, which is quite different from, say, the "On Bended Knee" or Daily Howler criticism). I've never felt intimidated (though I have been threatened with violence, spat on, and had a battery thrown at me). More like tired, or frustrated, or angry.But you've missed the biggest reason: The instant "feedback" doesn't just go to our editors and publishers. Because our email addresses are out there and because of search engines that make it easy to get our home addresses and telephone numbers, the "feedback" is more and more hitting us personally.
I don't pretend to understand McCurry's rant, but when a colleague is the target of a blog-inspired swarm ("here is his email. Go tell him what you think!"), they can count on about 10-1000 emails, many of them including threats of violence. Or when a prominent talk show host pretends to puzzle over the Jewish last name of another colleague, repeatedly asking "hmmm, what kind of name is that" the result is the sudden arrival of copies of the New Testament at her home address.
Josh, that's at least a bit intimidating. "I know where you live" is just not the same as "Howell really screwed up the Abramoff thing."
I have had people (three men) show up at my front door at 9 am on a Saturday morning to complain about my coverage of their cause and demand to be invited in. I had another two guys stalk me, waiting until I left my office at 10 pm to accost me and take issue with my coverage of their pet issue.
That's f---ing creepy enough when you're a single guy. It must be downright horrifying if you're a single woman. And, yes, intimidating.
I'll have more to say on this.
--Josh Marshall
In this morning's press gaggle, Scott McClellan sowed confusion over what those White House visitor logs will tell us about Jack Abramoff's visits.
--Paul Kiel
Ah, the price of freedom. So far for Tom DeLay, it's $1.3 million - and climbing. That and other news of the day in today's Daily Muck.
And CIA Executive Director and Brent Wilkes pal Kyle "Dusty" Foggo has admitted attending Wilkes' parties - but says he didn't see any prostitutes while playing cards with Wilkes and others.
--Paul Kiel
More on Mike.
Below (via Atrios) I flagged this Huffington Post Mike McCurry post about the Net Neutrality debate. But I wanted to focus in on this one paragraph where Mike is discussing not so much the NN debate as the culture of the blogosphere and the relationship between blogs and the mainstream media ...
Oh yeah, how many of you lifted a finger to protect the First Amendment when the Washington Post and other "MSM" cited it to ferret out the truth about WMD and the wars inside the U.S. intelligence community over the pre-Iraq war (and now pre-Iran war)? (And don't lecture me about how they failed to do their job -- I have had Pultizer Prize winning reporters tell me that they feel intimindated and they lack public support. Of course they -- and their editors-- feel that way. Most of the blogosphere spends hours making them feel that way).
Does anyone understand what this means? I'm not saying this for effect. I really have no idea what he's talking about. At first I thought McCurry was arguing that Democrats were hypocritical in pressing for an aggressive investigation of the Plame case because it compromised journalists' ability to protect their sources. That's certainly a debatable point -- and one I'm ambivalent about myself. But I don't think that's what he's talking about.
McCurry seems to be arguing, first, that no one stood up for working reporters trying to get to the bottom of the WMD question in the lead up to the Iraq War. This claim seems so baseless that I'm uncertain how to analyze it. I'm not sure what online media or bloggers or anyone else outside of the big papers and networks could have done in 2002 and 2003 to "protect the First Amendment" and make more aggressive coverage possible, but there was no shortage of online commentary encouraging them on. You could probably make a decent case that the explosion of the center-left blogosphere in 2002 and 2003 was based on pressing journalists to do so.
In any case, I have no idea what that's supposed to mean. But I do want to delve a bit deeper into the second claim -- not McCurry's alone -- that mainstream journalists are beleaguered, intimidated and friendless and that the main culprits are a few high traffic bloggers.
It's really astonishing the amount of self-pity and silliness one hears along these lines today. Not long ago, for instance, I sat down for an interview with a particularly disagreeable interviewer who seemed to want to catch me out and pin me down on every conceivably problematic point about blogs. At one point he suggested that the blogs were pulling away or threatening to pull away the ad revenue streams necessary to support the reportings staffs required for a quality news outlet.
Agreed -- I didn't know quite what to make of that one either. I'm happy with my life. And my company is able to pay three salaries and benefits in addition to mine. But to say that we're more than a financial fleck in the eye of even the smallest mainstream news organization is a really a grand understatement.
When I have these conversations on a more serious level, I freely concede that it's no fun being constantly criticized. And let's be honest. There's a lot on the web that it is crude, cruel, coarse, even hateful. And that's without even taking Hugh Hewitt into account.
It's certainly not for the faint of heart.
But when I hear this argument from journalists (or more often folks speaking on behalf of journalists) it's freely conceded that little has changed in terms of criticism from the right. There was talk radio before the Internet, the various right-wing media watchdog outfits, Fox News, etc. What's changed is that journalists now often feel besieged from the left as well. They're getting from both sides. There's nowhere to turn. (Believe me, I've had this conversation many times.)
Now, I think there's a decent argument to be made that a lot of press criticism on the left is criticism of journalists for not doing their jobs whereas a lot of criticism on the right is against the concept of journalism itself. But that's a complicated argument. So let's set that point aside for another post and another day.
I know it's not fun. And I've spent enough of my career in conventional journalism to have some sense of what that's like. But even if it's no fun, I think it should be obvious that a journalistic eco-system in which reporters and editors are only systematically peppered and criticized from one side (the right, in this case) is one that cannot ever be properly balanced. So having sustained scrutiny from both sides -- even if it sometimes makes journalists' work less pleasant -- must inevitably produce better journalism than being mau-maued by one side only.
But back to this point of feeling intimidated and lacking in public support.
Who is intimidated exactly and why? I'm really not sure if this is, at heart, more than standing up for the human but not commendable principle of not wanting to be criticized. I generally don't take much to the various streams of blog triumphalism and new media's empty vanity. But one thing to recognize is that for many years and certainly in an era of media consolidation, most media outlets are simply not used to getting any sustained feedback or criticism from their consumers. The crushing meaninglessness of old style letters to the editor? Please. It's a spigot that can be turned off by non-acknowledgement. Reporters should do their jobs. If the work has quality and integrity, the carping and complaining should just be ignored. And editors should back their reporters in doing so. We're living in a rapidly changing news eco-system, with plenty of bruising and unlovliness mixed in with the dynamism. But a lot of what I hear along these lines just sounds like whining.
--Josh Marshall
Wow. I haven't been following the ins and outs of the Net Neutrality debate on the web that closely. But Mike McCurry must have been seriously traumatized by the back and forth to have come up with this post.
--Josh Marshall
Last week, CIA Director Porter Goss denied partying with crooked defense/intelligence contractor Brent Wilkes, who prosecutors believe procured prostitutes to entertain his business associates. Now, three more congressmen with close ties to Wilkes have denied attending Wilkes' parties.
--Paul Kiel
How many times did Jack Abramoff visit the White House? The White House did their best to prevent anyone from knowing. But now we'll find out.
--Paul Kiel
TPM Reader RS checks in: "It's been interesting to observe the virtual news blackout of Stephen Colbert's remarks at the Correspondent's dinner. Particularly since I seem to recall that when Don Imus went after Bill Clinton in a similar setting at the height of the Lewinsky scandal, it was major news."
Update: You can read a transcript of Colbert's routine here.
--Josh Marshall
Yes, three years ago today, President 
Bush declared Mission Accomplished in Iraq.
I think this will go down as the symbol of the Bush administration -- like Carter's malaise speech, Bush's father with the carton of milk, LBJ falling on his metaphorical sword in a nationally televised address. It captures everything. The arrogance. The dingbat personality cult. The fleeting triumph of Potemkin stagecraft over tangible accomplishment. The happy willingness to let others take care of the president's messes.
Today the president hailed yet another "turning point" in Iraq but warned of "more tough days ahead."
--Josh Marshall
Rep. John Sweeney (R-NY) fights back against those vicious rumor-mongers at Union College's Alpha Delta Phi - he wasn't drunk at all, he says, when he showed up at their party. That and other news of the day in today's Daily Muck.
--Paul Kiel
Clear the decks and watch for flying objects. We're discussing David Sirota's new book Hostile Takeover this week at TPMCafe Bookclub. Here's David's first post.
--Josh Marshall
Some of the most exciting projects we (and I mean, TPM and a large group of regular readers) have done over the years would never have been possible without the Internet's distributed communication tools and the various fee-based (Nexis) and public databases (google, fec.gov) we'd never have ready access to with the Net. Add all that social networking and information together and you get a big leap forward in what you can find out and what you can do about it.
It's easy to forget the remarkable amount
of information on campaign money available at your fingertips through sites like fec.gov or opensecrets.org. But hard money contributions only scratch the surface of what you need to know. You could do so much more if more infromation were so easily accessible and even more if there were better ways to get the different collections of data to, shall we say, talk to each other. Some's in VHS, other in Betamax, still others in DVD, and of course a lot is just on paper. Not literally, but you get the idea -- too many ways of packaging and slicing and dicing the info and no one place or standard for accessing all of it together.
Just for example, some very interesting patterns would pop out if you could cross-tabulate campaign contributions with government contracts. Toss in travel records and lobbying expenditures and it would be even better. (It is a rarefied temptation, I grant you. But presumably more than a few of this site's readers have the addiction.)
In one example I always come back to, all Marcus Stern did to break open the Duke Cunningham story was look at the records of his home sale and then match the buyer up with Duke's earmarking largesse. It was sitting there in plain sight. Someone just had to know where to look.
Anyway, getting all this information out there and more, shall we say, google-able, is a task that takes a lot of resources and organizational heft. On the social networking level this is some of what we've been trying to do with TPM and TPMCafe's Auction House which evolved into TPMmuckraker.com. But a whole lot more resources and organizational work and tech know-how would be necessary to really make it happen -- to get the data online and query-able in an organized way.. And that's what Ellen Miller is now doing at the Sunlight Foundation, which just launched last week.
Ellen has a post over at her Sunlight blog about what they're trying to do. So if this sort of reformist sleuthing interests you go take a look at what Ellen and the Sunlight crew are planning, and get involved.
--Josh Marshall
Mark Schmitt is pointing our attention exactly where it should be: Be warned. The White House is now telling us that engineering a confrontation with Iran is a key part of their plan to resuscitate the president's dismal approval ratings in time to survive election day.
And this is probably as good a time as any to address the question we hear more and more from Democrats: how do we prepare for whatever it is Karl Rove has cooked up this election season? How do Democrats or this or that Democratic candidate 'inoculate' themselves from this year's version of the Swift Boat scam?
With respect, this is loser talk. The 'how will we defend ourselves' conversation is an example of the malady itself masquerading as the cure to the disease.
On a battlefield there is a name for armies that spend all their time and energy planning and conditioning themselves to defend against their opponents' attacks. They're called defeated armies. You defend yourself when and where you must. But you do everything you can to maintain the initiative. And that pretty much always means bringing the attack to the other side.
This isn't just a good way to win political fights. It's also a window into the meta-message that often makes Republican attack politics so damaging for Democrats. If you think back to the Swift Boat debacle of 2004, the surface issue was John Kerry's honesty and bravery as a sailor in Vietnam. Far more powerful, however, was the meta-message: George Bush slaps John Kerry around and Kerry either can't or won't hit back. For voters concerned with security and the toughness of their leaders, that's a devastating message -- and one that has little or nothing to do with the truth of the surface charges. Someone who can't fight for himself certainly can't fight for you. At the time I called it the "Republicans' bitch-slap theory of electoral politics."
With respect to what's coming on Iran, what is in order is a little honesty, just as was the case with the Social Security debate a year ago. The only crisis with Iran is the crisis with the president's public approval ratings. Period. End of story. The Iranians are years, probably as long as a decade away, and possibly even longer from creating even a limited yield nuclear weapon. Ergo, the only reason to ramp up a confrontation now is to help the president's poll numbers.
This is a powerful message because it is an accurate message. We have many challenges overseas today. Chief among them, as one of the Democrats' senate candidates puts it, is "refocusing America's foreign and defense policies in a way that truly protects our national interests and seeks harmony where they are not threatened." The period of peril the country is entering into isn't tied to an Iranian bomb. It turns on how far a desperate president will go to avoid losing control of Congress.
Go to his heart. Go to his weaknesses. Though the realization of the fact is something of a lagging indicator, the man is a laughing stock, whose lies and failures are all catching up with him.
To the president the Democrats should be saying, Double or Nothing is Not a Foreign Policy.
The great bulk of the public doesn't believe this president any more when he tries to gin up a phony crisis. They don't believe he'd have much of an idea of how to deal with a real one. Enough of the lies. Enough of the incompetence and failure.
No buying into another of the president's phony crises.
--Josh Marshall
