Spitzer Springs A Leak

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As you all undoubtedly know by now, the huge breaking news is about New York Governor Elliot Spitzer’s apparent ties to a prostitution ring. The New York Times reports:

Gov. Eliot Spitzer has informed his most senior administration officials that he had been involved in a prostitution ring, an administration official said this morning.

Mr. Spitzer, who was huddled with his top aides inside his Fifth Avenue apartment early this afternoon, had hours earlier abruptly canceled his scheduled public events for the day. He scheduled an announcement for 2:15 after inquiries from the Times.

Mr. Spitzer, a first-term Democrat who pledged to bring ethics reform and end the often seamy ways of Albany, is married with three children.

Just last week, federal prosecutors arrested four people in connection with an expensive prostitution operation. Administration officials would not say that this was the ring with which the governor had become involved.

But a person with knowledge of the governor’s role said that the person believes the governor is one of the men identified as clients in court papers.

Spitzer has now held a brief press conference where he admitted that he had betrayer the trust of his family and the public and is going to take "some time" to work out his path forward.

It appears that this emanates out of the arrest and charging last Thursday, March 6, 2008, of four people said to be involved in an international prostitution ring. The investigation and charges were announced by the office of Michael J. Garcia, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York (SDNY).

Federal authorities arrested four people Thursday on charges of running an online prostitution ring that serviced clients in New York, Paris and other cities and took in more than $1 million in profits over four years.

The ring, known as the Emperor’s Club V.I.P., had 50 prostitutes available for appointments in New York, Washington, Miami, London and Paris, according to a complaint unsealed on Thursday in Federal District Court in Manhattan. The appointments, made by telephone or through an online booking service, cost $1,000 to $5,500 an hour and could be paid for with cash, credit card, wire transfers or money orders, the complaint said.
…
As part of the investigation, federal agents worked with a woman who claimed to have worked for the Emperor’s Club as a prostitute in 2006, according to court papers. An undercover agent posed as a potential client and arranged appointments by phone and online.

After obtaining authorization to tap the club’s phones, federal agents recorded more than 5,000 calls and text messages and had access to 6,000 e-mail messages, court papers said. Many Read more →

Ana Marie Cox: I Let McCain’s Crankiness Go Because I Think His Ribs Are Delicious

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John Amato links to this fascinating exchange on Howie Kurtz’s show (you have to click through the link for Kurtz–the YouTube is McCain’s daughter talking about how KEWL it is to hang out with the–apparently drunk and–famous journalists). In it, Ana Marie Cox explains how she ignores McCain’s crankiness.

KURTZ: But that suggests that the people who have been traveling with him regularly…

COX: Yes.

KURTZ: … become part of the bubble, part of the team?

COX: Become part of the bubble, and also, I mean, I think what happens is that you — if you’ve been covering him for a long time, there’s a sense that, well, he does that all the time, it’s not worth reporting, because he does — he’s a cranky old man. I mean, to be quite frank. You know, like, and also, I’ve gotten much tougher terseness than Bumiller got just there. And…

COX: But the cameras weren’t rolling. And also, we wrote it off to, like, you know, he hadn’t had his fifth cup of Starbucks today. [emphasis Amato’s]

But Amato doesn’t include the most important context to Ana Marie’s comment. Howie notes that some people have been receiving better treatment from McCain than others of late.

KURTZ: And McCain did hold a barbecue for the press at his ranch in Sedona where some people were in attendance.

COX: Yes, uh, delicious dry rubbed barbecue ribs, actually, baby back ribs.

KURTZ: First hand report!

Goodness! Did Howie catch Ana Marie going easy on McCain because she loves slurping on his his ribs?

A press "critic" worth his salt, of course, might point out that journalists who haven’t been wined and dined by McCain might find the fact that he’s a cranky old man newsworthy–particularly for a guy auditioning to put his hands on the nuclear football. A "critic" might point out that that’s precisely the problem with the press’ little rib-sucking fun with McCain, it makes them less likely to actually report the things we might like to know about these guys.

Not surprisingly, the "critic" in question did none of those things. I suspect Howie’s just hoping to be invited next time around.

Yet More Straight Talk to Lobbyists

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In its report on the latest lobbyist to join the McCain team, the Politico focuses on how John Green will help McCain coordinate his messaging with votes in Congress.

With two senators in the race — McCain for the Republicans, and either Hillary Rodham Clinton or Barack Obama for the Democrats — Senate leaders have a unique opportunity to create both opportunities and pitfalls for their parties’ candidates by forcing votes on taxes, national security, health care and energy.

“The future basically revolves around our candidate for president, who will be principal messenger for where Republicans think America ought to go in the next four years,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). “What we do on the proactive side — the offense, if you will — needs to be closely coordinated with our candidate for president, without … turning the Senate floor into a sparring match between the two candidates.”

But, as John Kerry points out, the minority party doesn’t really get to coordinate timing for actions in Congress.

Although Kerry credited Daschle and Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) with trying to coordinate with his presidential campaign, he said then-Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist was “always maneuvering to schedule votes and set a debate that amplified the Bush-Cheney campaign’s attacks.”

“There was a lot of counter-scheduling,” Kerry said. “I remember flying all night back from New Mexico for a vote that Bill Frist canceled as soon as we got back. You bet it matters who runs the Senate when you’re out on the trail.”

So I wonder whether the Politico actually misunderstands what Green’s role (who, after all, is described for his ties with Trent Lott, not any currently-serving GOP leader) will be. Consider the following description.

Presumptive Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain has engaged a leading GOP lobbyist to coordinate his message and travel schedule with congressional Republicans — the most concrete sign yet that the biggest battleground in the 2008 presidential race may not be Pennsylvania or Ohio or Florida’s I-4 corridor but rather the floor of the United States Senate.

And then consider what the GOP meant–in the previous several election cycles–when they discussed coordinating message and travel.

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Help Me Stave Off Dick Cheney’s Michigan Invasion!

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Dick Cheney is coming to my neighborhood on Friday to help scary wingnut Congressman Tim Walberg raise money. Walberg’s district (MI-07) begins about one mile from my doorstep, and I’d really like Tim and his crazy friend Dick to stay away.

Luckily, we’ve got a great candidate this year to replace Walberg–Mark Schauer. Schauer is currently the State Senator representing much of the district, as well as the Democratic leader in MI’s Senate. He is a wonderful person, a very energetic politician, and a true Democrat. And a good friend of the blogosphere.

This week, MI’s blogs, MichiganLiberal and Blogging for Michigan, and Blue America are running a fundraiser for Mark to punish Cheney for coming to Michigan. If you can help out, please do so. Think of it as an effective way to tell Dick to Go Cheney Himself.

Donate Here

Update: Title corrected per ralphbon.

McCain Hearts Renzi

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Not only is Rick Renzi unwilling to step down from the House, but John Straight Talk for Lobbyists McCain is unwilling to kick him out of his campaign.

Asked in Ohio today, however, McCain said “it doesn’t matter” if Renzi stays on his campaign or not. Watch it:

McCain has been staunchly loyal to his fellow Arizonian. After the FBI investigation into Renzi was first reported in October 2006, McCain vouched for Renzi’s “integrity” in a robo-call to Arizona voters:

This is Senator John McCain. I’m calling to urge you to support my friend, Representative Rick Renzi for Congress. Rick has represented the first district of Arizona with tenacity, honesty and integrity beyond reproach.

Perhaps the several AZ folks who hang around these parts will help me out. But isn’t Renzi one of the best known carpet-baggers in Congress? Further, don’t most of the ethical, um, exuberances that were not charged, but should have been, associated with him bringing pork to Daddy’s (RIP) boondoggle in Huachuca–outside of Renzi’s district. That is, Renzi’s been a great second Congressman for AZ’s 8th CD, but a piss poor one for its first district, the one that elected him.

Someone ought to confirm with McCain that he meant to invoke the first district in this statement.

Or even better, folks ought to ask McCain why it is that he’s so loyal to a spooked up Congressman who is so obviously violating the trust of his constituents (regardless of whether he committed a crime or not). I imagine this support for Renzi will grow more embarrassing for Mr. Straight Talk for Lobbyists, as he go forward.

So why is he risking that embarrassment now?

Mitch McConnell, Hans Von Spakovsky, Mitt’s Re-Emergence, and McCain’s FEC Money Woes

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The LAT reports that Mitt’s thinking of un-suspending his campaign.

Josh Romney, one of former Gov. Mitt Romney’s five sons, says it’s "possible" his father may rejoin the race for the White House, either as a vice presidential candidate or seek to become the Republican Party’s standard bearer if the campaign of Sen. John McCain falters.

The 60-year-old Romney, who "suspended" his campaign for the GOP nomination after a disappointing showing on Super Tuesday and a week later endorsed McCain, was taking a break from politics this weekend on a skiing vacation in Utah with his wife Ann, according to his 32-year-old son.

The elder Romney, who was unable to assemble sufficient conservative support to thwart McCain, has made no public comment since the McCain camp was rocked…

by a controversial article in the New York Times last week first revealed in December in a posting on the Drudge Report.

[snip]

Because he suspended rather than terminated his campaign, Romney still retains control of the nearly 300 delegates he’s already won. Another former governor, Mike Huckabee, remains in the race and is nearing Romney’s delegate totals, though few give him a realistic chance of catching McCain with more than 900 delegates.

Now, I doubt Mitt would be considering un-suspending his campaign without talking to the GOP bigwigs first. So this trial balloon suggests that GOP bigwigs may well be worried about McCain’s two pressing problems: the Straight Talk for Lobbyists Express seems to be getting traction in the news, and the FEC says McCain is officially taking matching funds, which means he has reached the limit he can spend between now and the GOP Convention in September.

Personally, I think they’re probably more worried about the FEC problem. They probably just can’t understand that having a presidency run by lobbyists might be a problem for the average voter. And if McCain can’t spend between now and September, he will lose.

But here’s the curious bit. At least according to the FEC, they will consider McCain to be receiving matching funds (and therefore to be forced to stop spending) until such a time as they have a quorum so they can consider his request to withdraw from matching funds.

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The First Stage Is Denial

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And then they go on to anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance that John McCain will never be President.

Christy sent along this article catching McCain’s lobbyist friends denying that their lobbying interests have any importance on the campaign.

McCain’s campaign manager, Rick Davis, co-founded a lobbying firm though Davis on leave from the firm at the moment. Charlie Black, an unpaid senior adviser to McCain, is chairman of the Washington lobbying firm BKSH & Associates. Both of their firms have represented telecommunications companies whose business falls under the jurisdiction of the Senate Commerce Committee on which McCain is the senior Republican member.

[snip]

A McCain campaign aide who asked not to be identified said Davis has not been a registered lobbyist for two years. The aide said Black “is an unpaid volunteer and does not and will not lobby Senator McCain.”

John McCain would have you believe that lobbyists are in the business of donating their time for worthy causes, with no strings attached. And that Black’s promise not to lobby "Senator McCain" will extend to complete disinterest in policy issues that affect his clients if McCain were to be President. And that Davis’ two-year leave from lobbying with a firm he still has financial ties to somehow frees him of all interest in the success of that lobbying firm–or its clients’ interests.

This is why it’s so important to point out how false similar claims were when Bush cronies made them. Telecom lobbyist Ed Gillespie came in–refusing to recuse himself outright from issues pertaining to Quinn Gillespie’s clients. And voila, just weeks later, the Administration was awkwardly and belatedly weighing in against net neutrality. To say nothing of the fact that they’re now willing to let entire surveillance programs lapse in an effort to make sure Gillespie’s clients get immunity for having illegally wiretapped Americans.

The Bush Administration’s lobbyist-in-chief has made sure his clients’ interests take precedence over the privacy and free speech of Americans. And there’s no reason to think it would work differently with McCain’s lobbyists-in-chief.

Why McCain Got a Criminal Defense Lawyer to Manage His NYT Push-Back

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Bmaz sent me this article the other day, about McCain’s ham-handed attempts to pre-empt news about his wife Cindy’s struggles with addiction. I sent back this passage,

But both of Cindy McCain’s staged, teary drug-addiction confessions have been vintage John McCain. His MO is this: Get the story out — even if it’s a negative story. Get it out first, with the spin you want, with the details you want and without the details you don’t want.

McCain did it with the Keating Five, and with the story of the failure of his first marriage (Cindy is his second wife). So what you recall after the humble, honest interview, is not that McCain did favors for savings and loan failure Charlie Keating, or that he cheated on his wife, but instead what an upfront, righteous guy he is.

Candor is the McCain trademark, but what the journalists who slobber over the senator fail to realize is that the candor is premeditated and polished. [my emphasis]

… Noting how differently McCain has dealt with his Iseman problem. McCain didn’t get the story out first, not even in the three months since it became clear NYT was chasing the story. As a result, McCain’s presser yesterday was an obvious–and ineffective–attempt at cover-up, with none of the candor he affected in his previous attempts to bury his own faults. For some reason, McCain failed to head the Iseman story off when it might do some good.

This Isikoff story reveals part of the reason why McCain didn’t follow his normal MO of heading such scandals off at the pass.

Just hours after the Times’s story was posted, the McCain campaign issued a point-by-point response that depicted the letters as routine correspondence handled by his staff—and insisted that McCain had never even spoken with anybody from Paxson or Alcalde & Fay about the matter. "No representative of Paxson or Alcalde & Fay personally asked Senator McCain to send a letter to the FCC," the campaign said in a statement e-mailed to reporters.

But that flat claim seems to be contradicted by an impeccable source: McCain himself. Read more →

McCain Would Be the SECOND Lobbyist President

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Christy has been doing great work exposing the lobbyists running the McCain campaign. She showed how common (in both sense of the word) it is for McCain to get in bed with lobbyists. She did a profile of what a nice guy Rick Davis is. And a post showing that the one thing that will interrupt McCain’s campaign schedule (since we know it’s not votes in the Senate) is a schmooze session in Deer Valley.

It sure raises the specter of a presidency run by lobbyists, doesn’t it?

The thing is, the notion of a presidency run by and for the lobbyists isn’t really a new thing. Consider the following highlights from the Bush Administration:

Ed Gillespie

Remember when the Administration was flailing last summer, as more and more dirt piled up on Karl Rove and Alberto Gonzales? The Bush Administration brought in a person to replace both Dan Bartlett and Karl Rove to retool the Administration and try to salvage Bush’s legacy. Gillespie brought along the considerable baggage of his lobbying client list, without taking reasonable precautions to ensure he was working for the American people–and not his former clients.

Ever since Ed Gillespie became Bush’s replacement for Dan Bartlett (and after that, for Rove), I’ve been trying to track the clients of Quinn Gillespie–the firm that Gillespie co-founded. After all, Gillespie is a guy who, up until days before he took on one of the most powerful advisory roles at the White House, was a big-time lobbyist, with a broad clientele. And Gillespie has declined to recuse himself automatically from matters concerning his former clients.

Despite the potential for conflicts of interest, Gillespie won’t be forced in his new role to recuse himself from all matters related to the companies he has lobbied for, said Ken Gross, a Washington-based attorney and former associate general counsel with the Federal Election Commission.

Instead, Gillespie will have to decide on a case-by-case basis if his activities could violate federal ethics standards.

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Did Vicki Iseman “Steal Honor” in THREE Presidential Elections?

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John McCain denies any honor was stolen–neither his nor Ms. Iseman’s. Or rather, he denies "the story," though it’s not clear whether he’s denying that his relationship with Iseman was inappropriate or that he did favors for her. So I guess I’ll leave it up to you to decide whether she stole McCain’s honor in both the 2000 and 2008 presidential elections.

For the moment, though, I’m more interested in the 2004 election–the one McCain didn’t run in. You see, I find it a mighty curious coincidence that two of the companies for which Iseman was lobbying John McCain in 1999 and 2000–the time of their potentially inappropriate relationship–also happen to be the two television companies that championed the Kerry smear, "Stolen Honor," in 2004.

Stolen Honor

Stolen Honor, you’ll recall, was a 45-long propaganda piece, repeating the allegations the Swift Boaters made against John Kerry. It came out in September 2004 (as Republicans have promised a smear against Hillary or Obama will come out at precisely the same time this cycle). Shortly thereafter, Sinclair Broadcasting ordered its stations to pre-empt normal broadcasting to play the "documentary." Sinclair also fired one employee who complained about the order.

After a blogswarm in response, Sinclair’s advertisers started pulling their advertising, which eventually led Sinclair to cut back its plans for the "documentary," showing clips of it as part of a program on Vietnam POWs on just 40 of its stations.

Friday night brings to a conclusion the fiercest media battle of the presidential campaign, when 40 of the Sinclair Broadcast Group’s 62 stations nationwide air a special program about the media and Vietnam War POWs. The show is likely to include generous portions of an anti-Kerry attack film, "Stolen Honor," that Sinclair executives had originally intended to air in its entirety just days before the election. In the face of lawsuits by stockholders, loss of advertising, questions about its abuse of the public airwaves and a falling stock price, however, Sinclair quickly cobbled together a revised program.

In the same time frame, Paxson Communications aired the entire "documentary" a number of times in the days leading up to the election, supported by NewsMax.

As FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein described, the two companies were two disturbing examples of politicized broadcast policies.

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