Jeffrey Shockey is the deputy staff director of the House Appropriations Committee. That's 
the committee that decides how the money gets spent. Literally. It's hugely powerful. And the Committee Chairman is Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA) who's at the center of the ever-expanding Cunningham investigation.
Now, Shockey went to work for Lewis in 1994. Then in 1999 he left to work for the lobbying firm of Copeland Lowery. TPM and TPMmuckraker.com regulars will remember that Lowery's an ex-congressman-turned-lobbyist who's the link between Duke Cunningham, Brent Wilkes, Jerry Lewis, et al. And at Copeland Lowery, Shockey, as you'd probably expect, was mainly in charge of lobbying clients who needed access to Lewis.
That was between 1999 and 2004 while Lewis was a member of the Appropriations committee and then Chairman of the Appropriations Defense Subcommittee.
But in January 2005, Lewis ascended to the Chairmanship of the full Committee. And it was then that Shockey was overcome with a yearning to return to public service and signed on as deputy staff director for Lewis at the Appropriations Committee.
Now, already it was known that when Shockey left Copeland Lowery he got a lump-sum payment of $600,000.
But it came out yesterday that that was just the first payment out of a total of $1.96 million Copeland Lowery paid Shockey over the course of 2005 when he was helping to run the committee that is earmark central.
This was going to come out next week when the House disclosure filings go public. But Shockey's own lawyers spilled the beans in a conference call with reporters yesterday. Better to get the news out late on Friday than mid-week.
Now, when we heard about this yesterday, Paul Kiel asked just what sort of severance package pays out 2 million dollars when the severee quits rather than gets downsized or canned. The Copeland Lowery folks say it was actually a buy-out of the practice Shockey had built up as a lobbyist. The firm agreed to pay him a big chunk of the money his clients would have brought in if he'd stayed with the firm.
Now, you don't have to be too stringent to see that there's a problem here. Shockey's working at Copeland Lowery as an earmark-finder. Then he goes to work as the deputy staff director of the earmark committee, basically an earmark-giver. And he's still being paid by Copeland Lowery, which is of course in the earmark business.
But it's actually worse than that. You have to go to the article in the Times to find out that "under an agreement with Mr. Shockey, the firm waited to see how much money the clients he signed paid the firm in 2005 to determine the full payment."
In other words, Shockey didn't just have a continuing financial interest in Copeland Lowery to the extent he needed them to make enough money to honor their buy-out agreement. His income was still directly tied to how much his 'former' clients paid the firm in 2005 -- while he was working as a congressional staffer.
Sorta makes you wonder who took over his client list at the firm, doesn't it?
Well, it gets better.
Who took over Shockey's client list when he returned to government service? Well, when Shockey left Copeland Lowery, Copeland Lowery turned around and hired Shockey's wife Alexandra, who also used to work for Lewis. And in an email to Copley News Service's Jerry Kammer back in December, Alexandra "acknowledged that her client roster includes some of her husband's old clients."
The ever-expanding Cunningham investigation appears to be focusing now on Rep. Lewis. And Jeff Shockey seems to be a particular focus of attention, along with fellow former Lewis staffer and Copeland Lowery lobbyist, Letitia White.
--Josh Marshall
True whackjob: Rep. Curt Weldon says "the jury is still out on" whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
--Josh Marshall
TPM Reader DC brings us word that Republican Sens. DeMint (SC) and Brownback (KS) both oppose Net Neutrality. And Sen. Ensign (R-NV) apparently opposes Net Neutrality.
--Josh Marshall
In case you haven't heard, John Murtha says that if the Dems take the majority in the House, he wants to be Majority Leader. That means a leadership fight with Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD). The backdrop issue here is Iraq. But Murtha will also get some opposition simply for launching a leadership fight during the build up to the November election.
--Josh Marshall
Virtual Tour of Letitia White's Lil' House of Scandal up on Capitol Hill.
--Josh Marshall
Okay, a few data points on Net Neutrality.
In Idaho, Sen. Craig (R) is down with Sen. Stevens anti-Net Neutrality bill. But Sen. Crapo (R) seems to be on the fence. According to the Boise Weekly, his press secretary said "that it was premature to make a statement before any net neutrality-related bills were up for a vote in the Senate." (Thanks to TPM Reader DD for that update.)
TPM Reader EL in Washington state has been calling Sens. Murray (D) and Cantwell (D) and both are giving 'it's a very complicated issue' type responses and hedging their bets.
In California, TPM Reader DC sends us an oped from Sen. Boxer that seems to show clearly that she supports Net Neutrality.
Sen. Feinstein (D-CA), meanwhile, is sending out a letter which suggests she supports Net Neutrality but actually keeps her options open ...
Thank you for writing to me about open access to the Internet and the policy of network neutrality. I appreciate hearing from you.It is vital to Americans and to our economy that we provide access to an open Internet with a balanced playing field for network, service and information providers. Giving consumers more access to and choices over information and services available over the Internet should not compromise other providers. Should legislation regarding network neutrality come before the Senate I will be sure to keep your views in mind.
Again, thank you for writing. If you should have any comments or questions, I hope you will feel free to contact my Washington, DC staff at (202) 224-3841.
I think she's saying that Net Neutrality is important. And that she'll keep in mind that her pro-Net Neutrality constituents are for it when she decides whether to vote against it or not.
So she's keeping her options open.
TPM Reader J says he can't get either of his senators (both Dems) in Maryland to take a position on Net Neutrality. But we're still looking for more confirmation on that.
We'll bring you more information as we hear it.
--Josh Marshall
The Times devotes an editorial to that house on the Hill former Lewis staffer Letitia White bought with that defense contractor.
--Josh Marshall
So, as you can see below, Net Neutrality lost in the House. So now the real fight is going to be in the Senate.
Now, I was just doing a bit of research tonight. And I found an article in Communications Daily which says this about the Snowe-Dorgan bill, which is the Net Neutrality legislation in the Senate ...
An early order of business is getting at least one more GOP co-sponsor on the Snowe-Dorgan bill (S-2917). Commerce Committee Ranking Member Inouye (D-Hawaii), Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Leahy (D-Vt.) and Sens. Boxer (D- Cal.), Clinton (D-N.Y.), Obama (D-Ill.) and Wyden (D-Ore.) have signed on to the bill. Net neutrality backers pledged to get more lawmakers from both sides of the aisle aligned with them. The House vote should be a "wake-up call to anyone who cares about the future of the Internet," said Google Washington Policy Counsel Alan Davidson. American Library Assn. Dir.-Govt. Relations Lynne Bradley said she hoped House members will see "the error of their ways."
Okay, so Dorgan, Inouye, Leahy, Boxer, Clinton, Obama and Wyden are down for Net Neutrality. Just because someone's not a cosponsor, you can't infer from that that they're not for it. But it does give a list to start with of who's on the right side.
Now, here's what I'd like to do. Many of you out there are working this debate and you know which senators are leaning which way. But everybody can get on the Net and start googling. So I want your help in putting together a list of where the different Democrats stand on this issue. Let us know what you find out.
--Josh Marshall
You can find out which Democrats voted to give the Internet to the telephone companies in this roll call list. The names in italics in the second group (voting no) are Dems who voted against Net Neutrality. It's also worth noting that the Ayes are overwhelmingly but not uniformly Democratic. You've got some Republicans there too -- and not all swing-state moderates.
--Josh Marshall
Good commentary from Craig Newmark of Craigslist on what's important about Net Neutrality.
Here's one good passage ...
William L. Smith, the chief technology officer for Atlanta-based BellSouth Corp., recently told the Washington Post that BellSouth should, for example, be able to charge Yahoo Inc. for the opportunity to have its search site load faster than that of Google Inc. or vice versa. "If I go to the airport, I can buy a coach standby ticket or a first-class ticket," Smith said. "In the shipping business, I can get two-day air or six-day ground."In my view, executives like Smith forget that they get the use of public resources, like the airwaves and public rights of way, on which they have built their businesses and made a lot of money. As such, they shouldn't be able to squeeze out some Web sites in favor of others. This would be a betrayal of the public trust.
What shipping speed do you think TPM will get? Kos? Redstate? Figure 6 day ground. And how about CNN and Fox? One way or another they'll get guaranteed overnight. Or maybe Bellsouth partners with Fox, so the Fox site downloads faster in Georgia and CNN goes faster out west.
It changes what the Internet is and makes it into something more like Cable TV where the local cable company decides which channels are on the box.
--Josh Marshall
The Leader (from CNN) ...
The former emergency management chief who quit amid widespread criticism over his handling of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina said he received an e-mail before his resignation stating President Bush was glad to see the Oval Office had dodged most of the criticism.Michael Brown, former director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said Friday that he received the e-mail five days before his resignation from a high-level White House official whom he declined to identify.
...
The September 2005 e-mail reads: "I did hear of one reference to you, at the Cabinet meeting yesterday. I wasn't there, but I heard someone commented that the press was sure beating up on Mike Brown, to which the president replied, 'I'd rather they beat up on him than me or Chertoff.' "
The sender adds, "Congratulations on doing a great job of diverting hostile fire away from the leader."
A bit cute of him to release the email and not identify the sender.
--Josh Marshall
Two big developments in the Jerry Lewis mess: First, Lewis-aide-turned-lobbyist Letitia "Earmark Queen" White is said to have taken commissions on earmarks she landed for a defense contractor. Second, aide-turned-lobbyist-turned-aide Jeffrey Shockey reports taking $2 million from his old lobbying firm - while he was working on the Hill for Jerry Lewis. Shockey worked at Copeland Lowery, White still does. White, Shockey, Lewis and the firm are all reportedly under investigation.
--Paul Kiel
Net Neutrality goes down to defeat in the House -- Art Brodsky tells us what it means.
--Josh Marshall
TPM Reader RS on Ned Lamont and Joe Lieberman ...
Josh, I went to see Ned Lamont at a Democratic Town Committee sponsored meeting in Glastonbury, CT several weeks ago largely to answer some of the questions you have about his stands on the issues and to get a feel for the man in person. About 150 people attended, which is about 100 more than had attended a similar event for Joe Lieberman (which Joe did not attend).For perspective, I am 59 years old and a life-long Democrat who wants someone to represent me and my views. To be frank, I have grown tired of folks who represent this race as about the unseating an establishment politician by the netroots and who wears the pants in the Democratic Party. This a real political choice for me not some inside the beltway or blog-land brouhaha.
Lamont was bright, energetic and articulate. I thought his stands on the issues were very mainstream/progressive and his reception was very enthusiastic. His central theme is the Iraq war and how it is affecting our country in so many ways at home and abroad. He avoided going for the cheap applause line on impeachment saying that given what we know now, it was not appropriate and then, chuckling, he said Cheney is a scary thought. He would vote for censure.
Beyond the specific stands on the issues, I thought he was a stand up guy. He took all the questions, some not so friendly and did not parse words or sound like a poll-driven candidate. Authentic.
After the meeting broke up, I asked Lamont if he would back Lieberman if Joe won the primary and he quickly said yes. When I asked him what he had to say about Joe's refusal to date to make the same promise if the tables were turned, he said that he wanted this race to be about the issues and to stay away from that kind of thing. I told him that it was a valid issue for party members to consider and he should find a positive way to use it in his primary campaign because for many Democrats, Joe seems to think he is has become bigger than the party. He stood his ground.
Should be an interesting summer here in Connecticut for us Democrats.
I think RS is a good example of why Lieberman's in some trouble.
--Josh Marshall
Even though he's leaving Congress, Texas Democrats want one last chance to vote against Tom DeLay. That and other news of the day in today's Daily Muck.
--Justin Rood
This Ned Lamont thing is no joke.
This new Quinnipiac poll shows that Joe Lieberman is beating Lamont by a 57% to 32% margin. That's a huge lead. But a month ago it was 65% to 19%. And perhaps most revealing, among likely voters Lieberman's margin drops down to 55% to 40%. Turn out can be a funny thing in a senate primary in August. So if the trend continues this thing could turn into a real race -- as in, not just a test of disenchantment with Lieberman among Democrats but an actual threat to Lieberman's reelection.
Mind you, I'll be extremely surprised if Joe Lieberman isn't in the senate next year. But when your opponent is pulling 40% of likely voters in the primary, that's for real.
I've wanted for some time to comment on the Lamont/Lieberman race -- basically on whether I think it's a good idea, what it says about the direction of the Democratic party and so forth.
I have to confess that I find myself ambivalent. But it's an ambivalence I'm not particularly impressed with. At some basic level, I have a hard time not liking Lieberman. I have friends who either used to work for him or remain in his orbit. And that probably has some effect on me. And it's quite true that his actual voting record is far more solidly Democratic than the atmospherics surrounding him and his reputation.
But I'm not sure how much all that amounts to.
Last year, when I devoted most of this blog for several months to the Social Security story, Lieberman was one of most frustrating and inexplicable hold outs. I'm much more willing than others to let Democrats in marginal states and districts take positions suited to their constituencies rather than those embraced by Democrats nationally. To me that just makes sense on every level. The premise of my thinking on Social Security, however, was that there was just no political downside to supporting Social Security no matter how red a state you were from. Abortion rights or gay rights may stand principle against expediency or even political survival. But Social Security was just a gimme, a no-brainer.
Still, when we were going after some of these folks I could see that some of the resistance out of the Fainthearted Faction was based on ingrained habits of political survival and real disinclination to defy a Republican president who still seemed very popular and politically powerful.
But what was Lieberman's excuse?
We went back and forth with him. I'd talk to his staffers and folks around him and work and work and work to get a straight answer, but just had the hardest time. It was always this statement or that that seemed to support Social Security but really left the door open to some compromise on phase out when you looked at it closely. On and on and on.
And what was the point of that? Certainly it wasn't political, at least not in the narrow sense. Lieberman didn't have anything to worry about in Connecticut. If it was ideological, what's that about? It's a core Democratic issue. Not a shibboleth or a sacred cow. But a core reason why most Democrats are Democrats.
In the end it just seemed like a desire to be in the mix for some illusory compromise or grand bargain, an ingrained disinclination to take a stand, even in a case when it really mattered. There's some whiff of indifference to the great challenges of the age, even amidst the atmospherics of concern.
This of course doesn't even get into everything on Iraq or the pussy-footing over running the Pentagon for President Bush.
I think the most generous read on Lieberman is that he's just out of step with the parliamentary turn of recent American politics which I myself, Mark Schmitt and many others have discussed. But I think that's too generous. The whining in Washington that it's somehow an affront that Lieberman's hold on his senate is being threatened is entirely misplaced, a good example of what's wrong with DC's permanent class.
I have to confess that I haven't spent enough time yet finding out Lamont's positions on various issues; and I'll try to rectify that. And just between us, I'm happy every time I see him go higher in the polls.
--Josh Marshall
Iraq's new Prime Minister explains his strategy for moving forward in a Post OpEd.
--Josh Marshall
Bears watching: Temporary restraining order issued in response to effort to force the Texas Republican Party to keep Tom DeLay on the ballot.
--Josh Marshall
Hmmm. Looks like yet another lobbyist with a finger in the Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA) defense contracting pie: Letitia White's husband, apparently when Letitia was still working for Lewis. Paul Kiel's on the story.
--Josh Marshall
Ha! More Associated Press fun.
The AP has now picked up the Rep. Lewis/Stepdaughter lobbying story first reported by TPMmuckraker.com.
They credit the LA Times and the Washington Post for first reporting the story today. The LA Times as regular readers know ran with the story from TPMmuckraker's coverage earlier this week without crediting it. The Post meanwhile was gracious enough to note that some of the details in their story were first reported in TPMmuckraker.com.
We'd be miffed. But maybe this puts us in the running for the AP's weekly $500 prize?
--Josh Marshall
Senate kills estate tax repeal.
I'm told Sens. Cantwell, Pryor and Salazar all voted the right way.
--Josh Marshall
You may have heard about Sen. Arlen Specter's (R-PA) livid letter to Vice President Cheney over Cheney's meddling in Specter's investigation of the NSA's phone call database. Over at TPMmuckraker, we've posted the actual letter.
--Paul Kiel
Zarqawi dead. Juliette Kayyem explains what it means. Ivo Daalder explains that one thing it doesn't mean is an end to the violence in Iraq.
For the deeper background, just out from The Atlantic: Mary Anne Weaver's The Short, Violent Life of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
--Josh Marshall
Okay, big estate tax repeal vote this morning in the senate. I hear Sens. Cantwell and Pryor are the key Dems in play. If you want to make your voice heard, now's the time.
Cantwell in particular is probably the one your calls can help pull back from the dark side.
--Josh Marshall
Another bipartisan milestone: Democrat and GOP lawmakers join together to ask a federal judge to declare the FBI's raid on Rep. William Jefferson's office unconstitutional. That and other news of the day in today's Daily Muck.
--Justin Rood
Also of note, TPMmuckraker.com's Justin Rood has been doing some great reporting over the last couple days on the Rep. Jerry Lewis front, particularly on Lewis's former staffer Letitia White.
Yesterday afternoon, 
Justin was the first to report that not long after leaving Lewis's staff to become a lobbyist, White bought a house on Capitol Hill with one of the contractors who got earmarks from Lewis.
Then yesterday evening he was first to report that White and the defense contractor were using the house as the headquarters of a PAC, Small Biz Tech Political Action Committee, that took in a good amount of money but didn't seem to give much of it back out in contributions.
And then late this morning, Justin was first to report that said iffy PAC is operated by Julia Willis-Leon, who just happens to be Rep. Lewis's stepdaughter.
And then late this evening, the LA Times ran the developing story of Lewis-White-Willis-Leon lobbying operation as their own without mentioning that each of the key points was first reported by Rood.
When a reporter who writes for a 'blog' breaks stories with his own enterprise reporting, you should credit his work just as you would a reporter who works for a print publication.
Add the LATimes to the list of mainstream media publications poaching original reporting from TPMmuckraker.com.
Late Update: Regrettably, the San Diego Union-Tribune also has the story in tomorrow's paper with no mention of the story first being broken at TPMmuckraker.com. That said, the byline is Jerry Kammer and Marcus Stern. Kammer's done the best reporting on the Lewis/ Lowery syndicate, bar none And Stern broke the Cunningham story last June. So they're both esteemed elders in the Duke-Wilkes-Lowery-Lewis corruption chronicling crowd as far as we're concerned. We'll even toss in a Mike-Myersesque 'We're not worthy.'
--Josh Marshall
Okay, I think the preliminaries are over. Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA), Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, is in a heap of trouble. NBC's Lisa Myers got government contractor, Tom Casey, who has a cameo role in the Duke Cunningham/Brent Wilkes scandal, to admit that Lewis shook him down for money and stock options for his lobbyist pal William Lowery.
We'll be bringing you more details about this shortly. But Lowery is the lobbyist who brings together Wilkes, Cunningham, Lewis and many others all into one nexus of bad acts.
The kettle might be coming to a boil on this one.
--Josh Marshall
After Abramoff...
In 2002, the Justice Department produced a report that the lax immigration laws of the Northern Mariana Islands - a U.S. territory and client of Jack Abramoff - posed a national security risk. It was suppressed. Now it's finally out.
--Paul Kiel
I sent Justin Rood down to check out the Capitol Hill townhouse at the center of former Lewis staffer Letitia White's earmark factory. But there was no one home to even kick him off the property like usually happens in these cases. He did get some good pictures though.
--Josh Marshall
Yet another subpoena in the investigation of Appropriations Chairman Lewis (R-CA)?
--Josh Marshall
This may interest the FBI in the course of their investigation of Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA)....
Over at TPMmuckraker, Justin's uncovered a significant tie between Lewis and Letitia White, his former "gatekeeper" turned lobbyist: Lewis' stepdaughter runs a political committee that's based out of a house White co-owns with a defense contractor.
--Paul Kiel
Gene Sperling gives us a primer on estate tax repeal and why even the compromise versions pushed by a handful of senate Dems are terrible ideas.
--Josh Marshall
Rep. Katherine Harris, down 30 points in her race for a Florida Senate seat, tells the world she loves animals! That and other news of the day in today's Daily Muck.
--Justin Rood
As of 1:52 AM on the East Coast, about a quarter of the votes are in in the run-off race to replace Duke Cunningham. 50% to the Republican Brian Bilbray and 44% to Democrat Francine Busby.
--Josh Marshall
From those of you at the AP, or in touch with those who are, keep the tips coming. Confidentiality, of course, protected in all cases.
--Josh Marshall
Room on the docket (from WaPo) ...
A registered lobbyist opened a retirement account in the late 1990s for the wife of then-House Whip Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) and contributed thousands of dollars to it while also paying her a salary to work for him from her home in Texas, according to sources, documents and DeLay's attorney, Richard Cullen.The account represents a small portion of the income that DeLay's family received from entities at least partly controlled by lobbyist Edwin A. Buckham. But the disclosure of its origin adds to what was previously known about the benefits DeLay's family received from its association with Buckham, and it brings the total over the past seven years to about half a million dollars.
I guess this is part of how DeLay never profited from any of this personally.
Late Update: Paul Kiel has more.
--Josh Marshall
UPI's Pamela Hess ...
When the Senate took $1.9 billion out of the war supplemental to fund border security last month, $1.6 billion came out of funds to replace equipment destroyed or worn out from four years of combat in Iraq and Afghanistan.The money was diverted at the behest of the White House in a last-minute bid to address growing political unrest about illegal immigration. The Office of Management and Budget championed the change without input from the Army or the Marine Corps whose budgets were sliced, a Pentagon budget official told United Press International last week.
Full story here (reg.req.).
--Josh Marshall
It's just gets better and better from the AP. We've now gotten our hands on a copy of the internal email which includes the list of runners-up for the award granted to Solomon's bamboozling Reid coverage.
A couple examples of the runner-ups ...
Seth Hettena in San Diego, for being first to report that murder charges were imminent against seven Pendleton Marines and a Navy corpsman for the April killing of an Iraqi man in Hamandiya.
Hettena's also done a lot of good Duke coverage. Sure glad he didn't win.
Also coming up short was ...
Margie Mason, Asia Medical Writer, for outgunning the competition on the latest outbreak of bird flu, on Sumatra. When a family on the Indonesian island was decimated by the disease, she tracked down the family's lone survivor _ a man who was hospitalized and recovering in a nearby city. Mason interviewed him and his mother, who was taking care of him. Their comments revealed an alarming mindset that denied bird flu existed and blamed the Tamiflu drugs for the deaths.
Bird flu? Who cares about bird flu? Surprised this was even a runner-up.
See the whole email here.
--Josh Marshall
House Ways and Means Social Security Subcommittee Chairman Jim McCrery says that next year's the year to finally phase out Social Security, says Congress should "start all over" on privatization next year.
Late Update: Rep. McCrery was actually quite a waffler and a warbler on Social Security phase-out during all the hijinks last year. Here's the reporting TPM did on McCrery last year.
Later Update: The Stakeholder has yet more.
--Josh Marshall
Greg Sargent has some follow-up on what he calls the Associated Press's "deeply perverse" decision to reward John Solomon for his flawed and tendentious reporting on Sen. Harry Reid. As Greg notes, the AP apparently saw it as a positive that Solomon's reporting had ignited such a storm in the blogosphere.
The nature of the firestorm apparently didn't matter.
But I would say that it is more than that the reaction was critical. There were actually quite detailed critiques that pointed to numerous errors in Solomon's reporting and repeated instances of tendentious misconstrual or ommission of key facts. In short, it was bad and in several instances mendacious reporting.
The AP ignored most of those criticisms and responded with at least two demonstrably false claims about TPMmuckraker.com's reporting on Solomon's series. Not judgment calls, straight-out false claims, which they've made no effort to retract or clarify. (There was a much lengthier exchange with TPMmuckraker and Media Matters. But I point out these falsehoods as an example of the caliber of the response.)
These criticisms aren't restricted to the blogosphere. They were shared by a number of mainstream media reporters I discussed this with. It was simply that these criticisms only found voice on the blogs because of reporters' deep reluctance to criticize colleagues.
There was nothing about this sorry episode that deserved praise or reward, even in an informal newsroom way. It's hard to see the AP in the same light again. But it does renew my sense of why we do what we do and reminds me of the essential corruption of much of the national political press. Washington's a funny place.
--Josh Marshall
Remember last week we reported extensively on AP reporter John Solomon's reporting on Sen. Harry Reid. Well, apparently, that's exactly the sort of excellence the editors at the AP are shooting for.
Here's the text of an internal email sent out to AP staff announcing the award Solomon got for the pieces in question ...
Dear Staffers:It was the most talked-about, blogged-about political story of the week _ twice.
First, John Solomon in Washington broke the news that Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid had accepted free ringside seats to three pro boxing matches from the Nevada agency that was trying to influence his legislation to bring federal oversight to the sport.
Then Solomon followed up by describing how Reid returned home to Nevada and misstated the ethics rules in an effort to defend himself. Ultimately, the Senate leader reversed course, admitted he misstated the rules and promised never again to accept free tickets from special interests.
The exclusive resulted from several tips that came in after Solomon and Sharon Theimer wrote a series of stories about gifts lawmakers got from fallen lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Before his report moved, Solomon had a one-hour interview with Reid in his Capitol office where Reid uttered his widely quoted declaration that, "I'm not Goodie Two-Shoes."
AP secured the rights to HBO video footage showing Reid in his free ringside seats at one of the fights, and that footage became the centerpiece of an OVN package and also was used by the TV networks and in frame grabs in newspapers. Solomon also did an audio Q&A; for radio and Web customers. The story and video won widespread play on the Web fronts and newspaper fronts, and stirred an enormous debate in the blogosphere, generating more than 10,000 postings and more than a dozen newspapers wrote editorials chastising Reid, including USA Today.
For his work giving AP ownership of this high-profile story, Solomon wins this week's prize of $500.
AP Director of Media Relations confirmed to TPMmuckraker's Paul Kiel that the email "was sent to all AP staff as part of AP's weekly recognition of staff reporters."
Speaks for itself.
--Josh Marshall
Just in time?
From CBSNews: "U.S. officials believe Canadian arrests over the weekend and three recent domestic incidents in the United States are evidence the U.S. will soon be hit again by a terrorist attack. Privately, they say, they'd be surprised if it didn't come by the end of the year, reports CBS News correspondent Jim Stewart in a CBS News exclusive."
--Josh Marshall
Texans in Congress throw departing former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) a going-away dinner -- at a French restaurant. That and other news of the day in today's Daily Muck.
--Justin Rood
Heckuva job Soli? AP's Solomon lauded for great Reid reporting by Associated Press brass.
--Josh Marshall
NYT: "The European Union's foreign policy director, Javier Solana, arrived in Tehran on Monday night with incentives intended to resolve the nuclear crisis with Iran, including a proposal to allow Iran to upgrade its aging civilian air fleet through the purchase of aircraft parts from an American company, Boeing. The package, to be presented Tuesday to Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki and to Iran's chief nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, is to include waiving trade sanctions against Iran to allow the purchase of American agricultural technology, said European diplomats and a senior Bush administration official."
--Josh Marshall
I'm not sure what to make of this. Armed Forces Radio hired Lund Media Research to conduct surveys and focus groups of listeners (i.e., people in the US military) and make recommendations for future programming. The recommendations? Dump or dramatically ramp back Rush, Hannity and NPR. The same with country music and play-by-play sports coverage. And replace it with more hip-hop, rap and pop.
You can see more of the details in this article in Stars and Stripes. But that's the gist of it.
Dropping sports is the easiest to explain. Lund found that most people in the military want to watch sports programming, not listen to it on the radio. So no big cultural shift there. At least not in the broad sense.
With country music, the issue seemed to be that not all that many people liked it. And those who didn't affirmatively like it, hated it. Said Warren Lee, operations and plans officer for American Forces Radio and Television Services, "They said when we play country, we pull in the country fans but lose everyone else."
The most interesting finding, to my lights, came in the relative unpopularity of talk radio. It wasn't that folks in the military are turning off right wing talk radio. The skew was still heavily toward right wing talk, as opposed to left wing talk -- which probably is true for the country as a whole. The key was that while older troops are still big into talk radio, that's not the case with younger troops. The survey defined 'younger' as 18-34. And given the demographic structure of the the military that's got to be the overwhelming majority of those who serve.
--Josh Marshall
Some day I think historians may find email scam letters to be fascinating cultural-historical documents. As I was scanning through my email this evening, deleting spam, I came across this ...
sir/ma'amMy name is, Major. Jeffrey Burton and i represent a faction of American soldiers,serving in the military of the 1st Armored Division in Iraq, we came across your e-mail address(s) in the process of research and enquiry into an immense millitary global data base. I believe you are familiar with the war situation in Iraq ? Besides the killings, a lot of activities do occur; antique sales, stocked foreign cash discovered and lots more. We are lucratively involved in these activities. Consequently, we require a worthy,upright and business minded individual for safe keeping outside the Iraqi state. You might have an insight through [link]; and details will be sent upon signal of interest. Our contact email ; johnseco@virgilio.it
thanks for your co-operation
AP110.
signed,
Major. J.burton
Of course, why a US army officer would write in the same stilted English as the other Nigerians and sundry African executors who also want me to handle their money is not entirely clear.
--Josh Marshall
When did Fred Barnes totally go off the deep end into North Korea style political reportage?
Headline of Fred's new piece on Jeb Bush: "Jeb Bush's remarkable eight years of achievement in Florida."
Front page headline: "The Best Governor in America."
I wanted to find a few illustrative excerpts. But I couldn't find where to stop quoting. I'll settle for the first few sentences ...
IF ONLY HIS LAST NAME WERE SMITH. He'd not only attract national attention as the popular and successful governor of a difficult-to-govern state. He'd be viewed sympathetically as a leader who had dealt with family issues--his wife's aversion to politics, his daughter's bouts with drug addiction--without losing his grip on the governorship. And he'd be the prohibitive frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008.But his last name is Bush. So Jeb Bush, nearing the end of his eight years as governor of Florida, has to settle for being the best governor in America. Not proclaimed the best governor by the media and the political community. But recognized as the best by a smaller group: governors who served with him and experts and think-tank and conservative policy wonks who regard state government as something other than a machine for taxing and spending.
Why is Jeb Bush the best? It's very simple. His record is the best. No other governor, Republican or Democrat, comes close.
Why is Jeb the best? Because he is the best! No one rocks as hard as Jeb, bitch!
--Josh Marshall
Justin's been keeping us posted through the day on David Safavian's 'I barely knew what was happening' testimony. And a knowledgeable DC-based TPM Reader writes in to share his thoughts on how well it will go over ...
The one thing CEOs and political operatives like Safavian have in common is their belief in their inate ability to talk their way out of anything.They're both wrong.
Ken Lay convicted himself by taking the stand in his own defense. Now he'll spend the rest of his life in prison.
Safavian has just convicted himself by his inane " I just fell off the turnip truck" testimony.
Don't leave the courthouse when the jury goes to deliberate - they won't be gone long. I bet we get a guilty verdict within a few hours, a day at most.
On the upside: once Safavian is convicted and he and his wife are bankrupted by the legal fees, any other staffer who can't raise money through a legal defense fund will quickly fold. Yes, I mean you DeLay/Ney staffers.
--Josh Marshall
TPM Reader BP on the redistricting article ...
I think you only need to read a few pages of the Friedman-Holden study to conclude it's bogus. The phrase "regression discontinuity approach" translates to a finding that in the first election after redistricting, more incumbents lose, not less. I think anyone who follows politics would respond to that finding with, "Well, DUH!" Incumbents lose more often after redistricting because the redistricting is being done by the opposite political party of some of the incumbents - they are drawn out of their districts, or forced to compete with other incumbents of the same party (see Pennsylvannia, or the second Texas redistricting). The Abromowitz et al. study is better - it looks at the partisan balance of districts before and after redistricting and concludes the redistricting is not what is skewing the partisan balance toward extremes - that has happened mainly in between redistricting years, as red districts get more red and blue ones more blue. (This Austin American-Statesman analysis documents the same trend by county.)The results of both studies highlight the imprecision of the term "gerrymandering". Some gerrymandering is to protect incumbents (e.g. California, allegedly). Some is to get rid of incumbents (e.g. Texas, or Connie Morella's old district in Montomery County Maryland). And some is for general long-term partisan advantage, as described by reader DB * but I'd also note that this goal does not necessarily imply greater reelection rates for incumbents, as it often involves taking reliable voters away from safe incumbents; Delay did this to himself in the Texas redistricting (which combined getting rid of incumbents with striving for long-term partisan advantage). I don't think there's any reason to think the balance between those different goals would imply that better technology for gerrymandering would increase incumbent reelection rates, so the outcome of the studies is not surprising.
--Josh Marshall
I don't think you have to agree with everything Jackson Diehl says in this Post oped about Iran to see the logic of his central observation. That, as I understand it, is that Iran has little real incentive to cooperate with the US or Europe on the nuclear question as long any conversation or diplomatic dialog we have with them is on the basis of their remaining a pariah regime in the eyes of US foreign policy.
That observation doesn't necessarily point to an obvious policy conclusion. But it may isolate the real stumbling block in the way of any good resolution of the current slow-motion stand-off.
I think what Diehl is saying comes very close to what Michael Levi wrote back in April at TPMCafe, though on the surface they were discussing entirely different aspects of the question.
The Iranians want nukes because nukes are the ultimate in regime security, at least from external military threat. Why after all do countries want nukes? In most cases, I think, because being a nuclear weapons state is something like the equivalent of becoming a made-man in the mafia.
Levi's point back in April was that there was an essential problem with all the clever plans about how to resolve the Iran-nuclear stand-off. And that was how do you provide the Iranians with what, presumably, they really want: guarantee against attack. (That and recognition as the regional power in the Gulf.) We can speculate that having nuclear weapons is their way of guaranteeing it unilaterally for themselves. As long as they remain on the regime change list, what real basis is their for lasting agreement?
--Josh Marshall
TPM Reader DB responds on gerrymandering ...
Well, I haven't read the TNR piece and don't want to, but here are some thoughts on the subject:The result of Baker v. Carr and its progeny (the "one man, one vote" revolution) was, indeed, a huge step forward for fairness and was bigger than any bad developments later. But that doesn't mean there haven't been bad developments recently.
I worked in the Texas Legislature in the 1960s and was part of a counsel team that argued White v. Regester II, a Texas voting rights case, to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1975.
Pre-Baker v. Carr was way more unfair than anything happening now. It's hard to imagine, but it was OK to have one House district with a million people and another with 100,000, or any some such. In Texas, that was done--Houston, for instance, just got one House member for its whole county--just arbitrarily. At the time, Texas had about 23 house seats, and Houston had well more than one tenth of the population. Now, when that was legal, you could get away with anything. It was like Nineteenth Century England's practice of "rotten boroughs" in parliament.
But that's 40 years ago.
In post Baker v. Carr, the House districts must be very close to equal in population, based on the last census. So, what unfairness can be done under this system?
Well, the trick is--and DeLay did it very effectively in his now contested redrawing of the Texas lines--to draw a bunch of reliable say, 54-46% districts for your party. Absent extraordinary circumstances, your party wins all those. But you're constrained by the need for the population splits of the districts to be equal and by the fact that the opposing party does, in fact, have a lot of voters in your state. Say, the two parties are even in voters. Well, the other party is going to have to win some districts as a matter of mathematical necessity. So, what you do is you have some districts where the opposing party wins, for instance, 80-20%. Now, every voter who votes for the winner and who was not needed to get a plurality of one vote is a "wasted" vote. In the case of the 80-20 district, your opposing party is wasting 3 of every 8 of its votes. But in the 54-46 district, the winning party is "wasting" less than ten per cent of its votes. So, you can force the other party to waste a lot more of their votes and thereby get a disproportionate amount of representation for your party.
Now, I cannot imagine that accomplishing this has not been aided by computer technology. No poly/sci analysis would convince me otherwise. I know lawyers who were advising the Republican members of the Texas Lege during the latest redistricting, and they certainly thought so.
I cannot imagine that technology has made it easier to force the other party to waste its votes; but I also cannot imagine that it has not made it easier to detect a purposeful and systematic effort to do that, as well.
What needs to be done--first--is outlawing the tinkering with districts for admittedly partisan purposes. (In the DeLay case, they have flat out admitted that their tinkering was for partisan purposes). And that will probably not be going far enough. The courts need to reject obvious attempts to force the other party into systematically wasting its votes. But it is hard to say where to draw the line. I suppose there could be a subjective "reasonable fairness" type standard as a means of throwing out the obviously offending schemes. Courts hate to have to get their fingers dirty about such things. But I think it is inevitable.
But it is true that it is fairer today than it was in, say, 1955. And my response to that is: So?
--Josh Marshall
A number of readers have written say, in so many words, 'Hey, don't tell me gerrymandering isn't effective. These guys wouldn't be spending all that time and money on it if it didn't work.'
First, I think you'd be surprised how much money people blow on worthless things. But this isn't what the authors of the study are saying. They are disputing the contention that gerrymadering has become more effective in recent decades. And if that's true, then gerrymandering isn't the culprit for the declining competitiveness of House races.
Late Update: Of course, the best real world test of the role of redistricting is the discrepancy between the results of House and Senate races. Senate races, of course, don't get redistricted. It's always the same geographical jurisdiction. One might speculate that the effect of population mobility and people choosing where they live by the culture of a given region is nullified at the state level because states usually have several different cultural affinity regions. So New York state has New York City, Long Island, Westchester. And that's just in the greater New York metropolitan area. Most of the Republicans are upstate.
--Josh Marshall
Another poli-sci study that says the redistricting theory of declining House race competitiveness (tantamount to gospel truth among politicos) doesn't stand up to scrutiny.
--Josh Marshall
Last night I happened upon this article at the TNR website that advances the unorthodox claim that partisan gerrymandering has nothing to do with the late-20th century decline in the number of contested races in the House of Representatives.
Here's the article in TNR; and here's a much lengthier and (to some of us) impossible to understand academic paper that sets forth the results of regression analyses and other fancy math that, we're told, prove the point.
As you know, though gerrymandering is literally as old as the USA, the conventional argument is that the practice has become increasingly effective in recent decades because computer programs and modeling have allowed the folks who design congressional districts to make a qualitative leap forward in the specificity or perhaps granularity of their knowledge. And that, along with computer programs that can spit out endless permutations of possible district maps, allow the line-drawers to come up with maps perfectly designed to ensure one or the other party's control of the district. So, same agenda behind the gerrymanders but just a qualitatively leap forward in the technology used to implement it.
But the authors of this piece say this isn't so.
They don't say these highly precise districts don't stack the deck. What they argue is that the legal strictures of the voting rights revolution ('one man, one vote', the civil rights act, etc.) have cancelled out the greater precision. In fact, they say it's slightly more than cancelled it out, making partisan gerrymanders slightly less effective than in the old days.
They suggest that the more likely culprits for decreasing competitiveness are media penetration (probably an overlooked suspect), money in politics and political polarization itself.
(ed.note: Totally obscure reference. I'm curious whether some analogy could be drawn between the effects of media penetration and the role of religious confessionalization on the hardening of confessional lines in the 17th century. Perhaps a strained comparison; but maybe not as strained as we'd like.)
Now, whenever I see a poli-sci study with regression analyses and number-crunching I immediately know the best thing for me to do is not even read it. Because I just don't have any serious grasp of the methodology that would allow me to independently evaluate the quality of the argument and evidence. Either that or I'm too lazy. But I'd be curious to hear what others make of this. And I have to say that I find myself inclined to believe the dumbed-down overview of the argument presented in the TNR article. The way they interpret the evidence of the last couple decades -- particularly, what happened after the 1990 and 2000 census/redistricting -- seems questionable to me. But that may simply be a matter of the sample set we're dealing with being too small.
In any case, I'm curious to hear what others think of this.
--Josh Marshall
Justin's got an update from the courthouse on the government's cross-examination of David Safavian.
Preview snippet ...
"Did you think you were qualified for the job?" [prosecutor] Zeidenberg asked."Probably not, actually," Safavian said.
"Are you intelligent enough to do the job?" Zeidenberg followed up.
Safavian gave an extensive pause. "I suppose so."
--Josh Marshall
Sebastian Mallaby has a column in today's paper properly lambasting Congress for abolishing the estate tax, which it appears set to do. It's a good column. And it runs through many of the almost innumerable good reasons for opposing abolition.
But I'm writing with a specific request. I'm interested in some play-by-play on how this shakes out in the Senate this week. And I'm curious whether anyone out there might be interested in blogging about this over at TPMCafe. You don't need any fancy initials after your name. Just a solid understanding of the policy issues at stake and a grasp of who's who in Congress -- enough to give us a clear sense of what's happening, who's wavering, etc.
If you're interested, drop me a note to the comments email.
--Josh Marshall
We have what promises to be a enlightening and probably combustible TPMCafe Book Club this week with Peter Beinart's The Good Fight: Why Liberals---and Only Liberals---Can Win the War on Terror and Make America Great Again. Joining Peter for the discussion will be Armando from Daily Kos, Ivo Daalder, Todd Gitlin, Danny Goldberg, Michael Hirsh, Karen Kornbluh, Max Sawicky, and Mark Schmitt. I'll probably chime in at some point too. Peter just got the ball rolling with his first post.
--Josh Marshall
Interesting. Justin Rood says DHS may not deserve a lot of the clobbering they're taking over the distribution of Homeland Security grants.
--Josh Marshall
As long as we're on the subject of the AP's reportage on Harry Reid, I thought it made sense to point out that the AP put out a statement last week about TPMmuckraker's reporting on the John Solomon/Harry Reid imbroglio. And the author of that statement made two demonstrably false claims about our reporting. Not charges we disagree with -- but purported statements of fact that were in fact demonstrably false.
The best we can tell, they have not corrected the record and have no intention of doing so.
--Josh Marshall
After we devoted a decent amount of column space last week to dissecting AP reporter John Solomon's series of pieces on Sen. Harry Reid, a number of readers wrote in to ask what I thought was up. There were all sorts of theories -- some reasonable, others more outlandish. So I thought I'd weigh in on my sense of this.
First off, I don't think the issue is bias per se. I strongly suspect the issue is oppo research. And let me explain what I mean by that.
There's nothing wrong with a reporter picking up a story from an opposition research shop, at least not in itself. (To think otherwise is to have a wholly unrealistic sense of what motivates tipsters. Almost all of them have some agenda or axe to grind. It's just not always a clear partisan one.)
Republicans dig up stuff about Democrats and vice versa. Not infrequently they find out stuff that really should get published. The key is that you don't just take something some oppo researcher hands you and run it under your byline. How it should work is that you take what they've found and you report it out yourself. If it really is a story and it all checks out, then the underlying facts aren't tainted just because they were unearthed by an interested party.
Unfortunately though, and as you might suspect, that's often not how it works. And without naming names, there are some high-profile reporters out there -- whose bylines appear with the imprimatur of very distinguished news organizations -- who've developed a reputation in the business (and particularly among oppo researchers) for being easy marks for oppo research drive-by hits.
Actually, 'easy marks' probably isn't the best word for it. Since it's not that they're naive or easily taken in. It's more like the Mikey kid in the old Life cereal commercials: They'll eat anything. More to the point, they'll launder the oppo research into print with the spin, deceptive ordering or suppression of key facts intact.
Now, I have no specific knowledge of how the Reid reporting came into existence. But based on some relatively detailed background knowledge of the players involved I strongly suspect this is how it all came into being.
If you want to know more about this, I strongly recommend reading this 2004 piece by Josh Green in the Atlantic Monthly with a specific attention to the bylines of the hit articles Green discusses. It's very revealing.
--Josh Marshall
The investigation into House Appropriations Chairman Jerry Lewis (R-CA) heats up. That and other news of the day in today's Daily Muck.
--Justin Rood
