Rudy Giuliani
November 1st
posted: November 1, 2007 3:53 EST
Oh yeah? How Mukasey and Kerik are haunting Rudy's run.
By Wayne Barrett, Village Voice
The Democrats who questioned attorney general nominee Michael Mukasey at his recent Senate confirmation hearing outdid one another in a frustrating effort to get the former judge to assert his independence from the Bush White House. With his predecessor, Bush pal Alberto Gonzales, finally forced from office, the senators were hoping for a nominee with fewer complicating relationships.
Fat chance. The question for Mukasey is not what he'll do at Justice for the soon-to-be- departing Republican president, but what he'll do for the putative next one, his lifelong friend Rudy Giuliani. Mukasey and Giuliani were young federal prosecutors together in the early 1970s and then practiced at the same Manhattan law firm, Patterson Belknap, where Mukasey returned in 2006 when he retired after 18 years on the federal bench in New York. Giuliani chose Mukasey to swear him in at his inaugurals in 1994 and 1998.
The question of Mukasey's strong ties to Giuliani got the light touch from Senator Pat Leahy, the Judiciary Committee chairman who opened the two-day proceeding by saying that he assumed Mukasey would "totally recuse" himself from "any involvement with Mr. Giuliani or any other candidate for president." Mukasey laughed at the question, as if the answer was obvious, and quickly agreed. But that chuckle rings a little hollow when you look at who had come with him to the hearing: his wife Susan, who volunteered almost daily in the Giuliani mayoral campaigns; his stepson Marc, who was a staff assistant in one campaign and currently is a partner at the Texas-based law firm that Giuliani recently joined, Bracewell & Giuliani; and Louis Freeh, the former FBI director who recently endorsed Giuliani and worked closely with him as a federal prosecutor. Marc Mukasey is currently representing Giuliani Partners in the federal probe of Bernard Kerik, a onetime member of the consulting firm. Freeh's appearance, sitting beside the family, was a stark indication of just how unconsciously political Mukasey's key relationships are. (For Democrats on the committee, the sight of Freeh, who led multiple probes of both Clintons, might have been an indication of Mukasey's partisanship. In Freeh's recent autobiography, he concluded that "the presidency hit an all-time low" under Bill Clinton—who named him to head the FBI, only to wind up as the target of multiple Freeh probes—adding that if he were Clinton, "I might never show my face in public again.")
Mukasey has so far indicated that he will recuse himself in the ongoing probe of Kerik, the ex–police commissioner and onetime Giuliani-backed nominee for homeland security secretary, who has already pleaded guilty in a state case and is facing a mountain of federal charges. But Mukasey's recusal shouldn't really be a problem. The Justice Department agreed months ago to extend the statute of limitations on the case against Kerik to November 17, when his expected indictment may suddenly emerge as a national story haunting the Giuliani campaign. The case is so layered in conflict that Alberto Gonzales is a likely witness. It was Gonzales who vetted Kerik for the homeland-security post in 2004 and was swamped by false claims about him emanating from the fax machines and computers at Giuliani Partners' Times Square headquarters. The Washington Post reported in April that Kerik was "likely" to be indicted for "bald-faced lies" during the White House clearance process, including possible misstatements on forms filled out with the assistance of Giuliani's firm.
read on . . .
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October 29th
posted: October 29, 2007 1:46 EST
Merrill's Stan O'Neal wasn't ready for subprime time, but he was a record-setting fundraiser for Bush
By Ward Harkavy, Village Voice
Merrill Lynch's ouster of CEO E. Stanley O'Neal is good timing for the financial behemoth, but it comes a few years too late for America and for thousands of Merrill employees.
He's being driven out for his reckless bundling of subprime mortgages into shaky securities that Merrill aggressively peddled and that are now shaking Wall Street's foundations. Yes, these big financial institutions play funny money with your monthly payments, making millions while you don't see a dime from their monopoly tactics.
Not that this is anything new. The explosion in subprime mortgages is caused in large part by predatory lending practices, which are particularly aimed at black people (O'Neal used to be one of those) and other minorities.
More on O'Neal in a minute, but as I wrote in April 2001 about this financiopathic scheme — "From the Subprime to the Ridiculous" — when the War of Terror was still being waged almost entirely on the domestic front by banks and companies like Merrill:
A guerrilla war that has dealt serious defeats to predatory lenders has spread from states like North Carolina and Massachusetts to big cities like Chicago and Philadelphia, which recently passed ordinances aimed at ending unfair banking practices. So why hasn't the fight against what some have called "financial apartheid" spread to the biggest city of all?
State regulators in Albany adopted new restrictions on finance companies late last year, but activists say the victims of those profiteers still lack meaningful protection—help that could come from city officials. In New York, Mayor Giuliani has taken no action against predatory lending, say community organizers, and the City Council has done practically nothing.
But the big banks are worried about Giuliani's potential successors. Citigroup has already laid big cash on the campaign coffers of prominent Democrats. …
Public Advocate Mark Green can say he probably was the first of the four Democratic mayoral candidates to make a big splash about the serious problem of blacks, Latinos, and the elderly being targeted by abusive lending practices. But neither he nor the other three Democrats have taken strong action to protect the poor from signing their lives away in unfairly structured loans.
Green saw it coming back in 1993, when his Consumer Affairs Office released a report pointing out a growing number of predatory loans in the city. Since then, Wall Street has financed a huge surge in the so-called subprime market, and more people than ever are being seduced into high-cost refinancing plans and shady home-improvement loans that are sending them toward bankruptcy. … Green isn't eager to enact new regulations.
In those days, Stan O'Neal, while firing thousands of Merrill employees, was recklessly expanding Merrill's subprime bidness.
In 2003, as I previously noted, O'Neal, the highest-ranking black man on Wall Street, was a reckless bundler in another way: He set a fundraising record for George W. Bush's campaign by sending out a letter that generated $279,750 from other rich people in less than three weeks' time, the most in such a such a short period.
O'Neal, one of the nine Bush "Rangers" on Wall Street, was a prime bundler before the term hit its current vogue.
As this moneychanger is being driven from the temple, he'll be dragging along a big bag of cash. Details of that aren't immediately known, but, like most CEOs, he had one helluva deal. For instance, as the New York Times's Eric Dash noted this past April, O'Neal had a particularly sweet clause in his Merrill deal just in case the big company wobbled so much that it fell under the control of another big company:
E. Stanley O’Neal could walk away with $251.4 million if a merger sets off a change-in-control payout.
Hell, that was incentive for him to be reckless enough take Merrill into the toilet. If he had stayed around long enough to really ruin the company to the extent that some other behemoth would take control, he would have gotten a quarter of a billion.
Now O'Neal joins the ranks of former Merrill employees. He probably won't be asked to join them for commiseration drinks. He fired more than 25,000 of them during his tenure.
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October 4th
posted: October 4, 2007 1:26 EST
City documents show that Steinbrenner's team billed taxpayers for souvenirs, bar tabs.
By Neil deMause, Village Voice
Billing the city for the lobbyists he hired to push his new stadium (now taking shape across the street from the soon-to-be-demolished House That Ruth Built) was, it turns out, the least of George Steinbrenner's chutzpah. According to documents obtained from the parks department's archives via the Freedom of Information Law, the New York Yankees submitted to the city for reimbursement such "stadium planning" costs as a dozen crystal baseballs presented as a gift by the team, and bar tabs for Yankees execs—plus a whopping $9 million in expenses incurred the year after the team's sweetheart-lease clause expired. And it's become increasingly clear that city officials diligently looked the other way while this was taking place.
The subsidies date back to a provision inserted into the Yankees' and Mets' leases by Mayor Rudy Giuliani on his last day in office, allowing the two teams to deduct from their city rent "planning costs" for their hoped-for new stadiums. This was specifically defined to include both the salaries of team employees working on stadium planning and unspecified "consulting" services—a clause that, as first reported by the Voice last year, allowed the Yankees to bill taxpayers for such items as the political operatives who lobbied the state and city for their new stadium deal; the salaries of team execs Randy Levine, Lonn Trost, and Hal and Hank Steinbrenner; and even the lawyers who drew up the new lease in the first place.
Mayor Mike Bloomberg has long insisted that his hands were tied by the Giuliani lease. But the latest documents show that Bloomberg's largesse to the Steinbrenner clan has gone far beyond even what was allowed by his predecessor.
read on . . .
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September 24th
posted: September 24, 2007 8:04 EST
Too late to ask Bill Kunstler about that.
By Ward Harkavy, Village Voice
The most thorough news story so far about putative Attorney General Michael Mukasey comes, not from the mainstream press, but from the Jewish Week. And James D. Besser's extremely well-balanced account cuts right through to the topics of church-state separation, the Patriot Act, and civil liberties.
Faith is an issue when it comes to Mukasey, and that has nothing to do with the Jew-hating websites that are foaming at the mouth about him.
It figures that the Bush administration would replace a dumb but avid opponent of civil liberties — Alberto Gonzales — with a smart but avid opponent of civil liberties, as I pointed out in "War of Terror's New Front: Mukasey." But with the Arab world blowing up all around us, do we have to have an attorney general who's not only an ardent supporter of the Patriot Act but also an avid Zionist?
We already know, as I pointed out earlier, that Mukasey regards the Bill of Rights as less important than the rest of the Constitution because it was tacked-on and that he wants the citizenry to have faith in their government.
The New York Times managed to write an entire story this morning about Mukasey's handling of "war on terror" suspects without mentioning his handling of terror suspects in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing case. Philip Shenon's story even says this:
Although Mr. Mukasey is otherwise widely admired by prosecutors and defense lawyers alike in New York, his handling of the cases of … material witnesses taken into custody in terrorism investigations after Sept. 11 produced some rare, sharp criticism of his performance on the bench and raised concern among civil liberties groups.
"Widely admired"? That's not backed up in the story. "Material witnesses"? That's the Times's euphemism for the thousands of Muslims unjustifiably scooped off our streets by the hysterical AG John Ashcroft (see my August 2004 review of the film Persons of Interest).
The Wall Street Journal is the only mainstream outlet that even mentioned that William Kunstler tried to have Mukasey removed from the 1993 bombing case because of the judge's Orthodox Judaism. But the September 18 Journal piece was misleading, saying that Kunstler wanted him removed because he's Jewish. No, it's because Mukasey is both Orthodox and Zionist. There's a difference between that and simply being Jewish.
The Jewish Week story by Besser you haven't read? Check it out, particularly a telling analysis of Mukasey and civil liberties from, of all people, Marc Stern of the ardently pro-Israel American Jewish Congress:
Mukasey presided over the trial of Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, who was convicted in a case involving the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, and ruled in the controversial case involving Jose Padilla, charged in a "dirty bomb" plot.
Mukasey, while differing with the Bush administration on some details, earned a reputation as a forceful defender of the controversial legal procedures used by the Bush administration in the war on terrorism.
"He has not been a rubber stamp for the administration's policies on terrorism but he is a very deep skeptic about the law's ability to cope with terrorism," said Stern. "He doesn't take the reflective response of civil libertarians that the only way to fight terrorism is through the ordinary legal system. The only question is whether he goes too far the other way."
Now that is interesting: a judge who is a "very deep skeptic" about the legal process concerning terror suspects. Stern accurately notes that the only question is whether Mukasey goes too far. And Besser accurately portrayed the Kunstler v. Mukasey episode:
During the World Trade Center trials, defense attorneys demanded Mukasey be removed from the case because of his Jewish affiliations. Attorney William Kunstler argued in a district court motion that Mukasey's Orthodox Jewish and Zionist views rendered him unfit to try the case.
But Besser stopped there. In fact, Mukasey cleverly had Kunstler removed as the sheik's lawyer. Without context, Shenon's story this morning mentioned a very similar move by Mukasey in an October 2001 case of Osama Awadallah, a college student with no criminal record who was one of thousands of Muslims rounded up on U.S. streets after 9/11:
Judge Mukasey sided with prosecutors and refused to allow a prominent Arab-American criminal defense lawyer, Abdeen M. Jabara, to help defend Mr. Awadallah.
Prosecutors argued that Mr. Jabara had a conflict of interest because he defended Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind Egyptian cleric convicted in 1995 in a terrorist plot to blow up New York City landmarks. Judge Mukasey was the judge in that trial.
Talking about bending the law for political purposes. I thought Bush didn't like "activist judges."
Anyway, Besser did a good job in his story by talking to Muslim groups, among others:
[M]ajor Muslim groups are being cautious in responding to the appointment.
"We won't be taking any formal position on the nomination. Instead, we are hoping that whoever becomes attorney general will maintain the civil liberties of all Americans, an issue that has been the top concern of the American Muslim community," said Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR).
But he said his group will have "concerns about any nominee who favors aspects of the Patriot Act that we believe violate civil liberties."
Mukasey's status as an Orthodox Jew is "irrelevant," Hooper said. "We would hope he would not allow his political and religious beliefs to cloud his judgment as attorney general, but that goes for any attorney general of any faith."
Besser's story points out that Mukasey's views on the separation of church and state are not really known. But his story itself helps provide the troubling answer.
First off, Ibrahim Hooper was simply being shrewdly politic about Mukasey. The future AG's status as an Orthodox Jew is highly relevant.
Just as right-wing Christians use their faith as a political bludgeon, so do Mukasey's fellow Orthodox Jews. He's a graduate of the Ramaz School, an Upper East Side school affiliated with Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun (which calls itself "KJ"), and his wife was a teacher there.
Here's the congregation's mission statement. See if it differs much from the kind of politicized religion practiced by the likes of the late, unlamented Jerry Falwell and the alive, unlamented Pat Robertson, among many others:
Our identification with the State of Israel and our fellow Jews extends well beyond the more conventional UJA/Federation, Israel Bonds and tree-planting campaigns (although KJ is an active promoter and participant in all of the foregoing important programs). KJ participates in and sponsors political action groups supporting Israel and oppressed Jews around the world, and runs several well-attended missions each year to Israel for the primary purpose of demonstrating solidarity and support to our brethren, especially in these incredibly difficult times for the State and its citizens.
Church-state separation? No. Political action by a religious organization? Yes. I'm not saying this is remarkable or even right-wing. This is the way most American Jewish congregations look at Israel.
But why do you think that American Muslims protest when their own ties to overseas Muslims are unfairly questioned and even prosecuted?
More to the point of church-state separation: When it comes to most sects of Orthodox Judaism, there ain't no separation. So that's bound to raise some worries about Mukasey from those who defend such a separation.
I guess that, with the hawks like Cheney beating the drums for some kind of war with the mullahs of Iran, we might as well have a Zionist as attorney general.
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posted: September 24, 2007 6:17 EST
This oily business of dealing with evil foreign leaders.
By Ward Harkavy, Village Voice
Cold War, warm feelings: Reagan chats with the Taliban in the White House in 1983.
New York's tabloids and assorted pols came unglued yesterday about the very idea of Iran's crackpot hardliner Mahmoud Ahmedinejad wanting to visit Ground Zero.
Where were they when Uzbek dictator Islam Karimov, whose regime boils people to death, was courted by George W. Bush and Mayor Mike Bloomberg?
Don't let your own blood boil at the thought of a bad guy visiting our sacralized 9/11 site. Condemn it, if you want, but Ahmedinejad was just trying to score political points, as our own pols do all the time at Ground Zero. He got what he wanted: The angry U.S. reaction will play well back home in Tehran, especially with the radical mullahs who really run Iran and like to stir up hatred for the "Great Satan."
Do we even have to say that in international politics, enemies today are pals tomorrow, and vice versa, and that the reasons almost always have to do with greed for money and natural resources?
On the other hand, it would be nice if our press at least reported these events. The Uzbek despot Karimov laid a wreath at Ground Zero in 2002, and there was literally not one word in the U.S. press about it at the time — I'm not talking about criticism or praise but any words at all. Nothing.
So Karimov is not a bad enough guy to get you worked up? Saddam Hussein was brown-nosed by Don Rumsfeld in December 1983. There's no reason to condemn Rumsfeld for that; it was just oil politics — just like the oil politics that Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney played when they seized upon the 9/11 attacks to justify invading Iraq.
After all, when Texas oil execs questioned Cheney in 1998, when he was still at Halliburton, about the physical dangers of pursuing oil in turbulent parts of Asia, the future vice president and de facto commander in chief told them:
"You've got to go where the oil is. I don't worry about it a lot."
Saddam is gone, but we still don't really have Iraq's oil. We do, however, have such evil people as the Taliban to deal with, right? Well, the Taliban were hailed as Afghan freedom fighters by Ronald Reagan during their triumphant visit to the White House on March 21, 1983. Reagan said at the time:
"To watch the courageous Afghan freedom fighters battle modern arsenals with simple hand-held weapons is an inspiration to those who love freedom. Their courage teaches us a great lesson - that there are things in this world worth defending.
"To the Afghan people, I say on behalf of all Americans that we admire your heroism, your devotion to freedom, and your relentless struggle against your oppressors."
That's ancient history, huh? In fact, they were still our pals 14 years later. In late 1997, the Taliban were wined and dined at the homes of Bush's pals, the Houston oil execs, during Dubya's reign as the hangingest governor in U.S. history.
The oil schnooks were buttering up the Taliban for pipelines and other bidness, of course. See Wayne Madsen's "Afghanistan, the Taliban, and the Bush Oil Team" for details.
At least that courting of the Taliban less than 10 years ago was reported at the time. Of the many words in the mainstream press, my favorites are from a December 14, 1997, story by Caroline Lees in the Telegraph (U.K.), in which she describes the Taliban officials' visit to Unocal vice president Martin Miller's palatial Houston home:
After a meal of specially prepared halal meat, rice and Coca-Cola, the hardline fundamentalists — who have banned women from working and girls from going to school — asked Mr Miller about his Christmas tree.
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posted: September 24, 2007 1:57 EST
Crime-fighter Giuliani somehow skipped the mobsters infesting your kids' school buses.
By Tom Robbins, Village Voice
One sure sign that Rudy Giuliani is feeling pretty comfy as a presidential frontrunner is that he's still doing his Marlon Brando Godfather shtick.
This is the one where he hunches his shoulders, juts out his jaw, and does Don Corleone's strangled mumble. "Thank youse all for invitin' me here tuh-day to this meeting of the families," he growled at a California audience recently. This is played for big laughs, and the ex-mayor has been doing it for years. In 2001, he did a song-and-dance number for the annual Inner Circle roast dressed as a Rockette in Godfather getup. Photos from the event show him roaring at his own gag.
Not everyone chuckles. "It's not funny," says Rosario Iaconis of the Italic Institute of America. "It's like a mantra with him. Whenever Italian-Americans voice complaints, he says, 'Don't go looking for an insult.' "
What is supposed to make this tasteless little routine acceptable are Giuliani's allegedly impeccable mob-busting credentials. As a federal prosecutor, he famously sent major Mafiosi to prison. As mayor, he targeted mobsters who preyed on the city, creating a new public-integrity commission to screen out wiseguys from the old Fulton fish market, the private carting business, and the city's public markets. Those with past scrapes with the law and too many visits to known wiseguy locations were out of luck.
But Giuliani's watchdogs can't explain how he skipped over one of the most notorious nests of Mafia corruption, and one that's a bit nearer and dearer to the public heart than putrescible waste: the city's huge school-bus industry. Like waste carters and fishmongers, the bus operators include many honest, hard-working entrepreneurs. But there have been an awful lot of wrong numbers as well.
There was a major operator in Queens who enjoyed the company of John Gotti's heroin-dealing brother. There was the big school-bus firm in the Bronx that had a captain in the Colombo crime family handling its employee grievances. There was the Brooklyn bus outfit whose proprietors were a father-and-son team with dual membership in the Bonanno crime family.
Then there was an ex–transit cop who owned a couple of school-bus companies and began singing to the government after his conviction on a murder rap. His song's refrain was about kickbacks to a crooked union official named Julius "Spike" Bernstein. The financial secretary of Local 1181 of the Amalgamated Transit Union, Bernstein made sure some shops never got organized. For others, he made sure the contract wasn't enforced.
Bernstein, whose rap sheet included an offer to put a debtor's head through a cigarette machine, was usually seen with Matthew "Matty the Horse" Ianniello, a lumbering Genovese captain who ruled an empire of bars and porn palaces. His sideline was school buses.
None of this was exactly a secret. A lengthy exposé on the bus industry's cozy mob ties appeared as early as 1978 in New York magazine. In 1995, during Giuliani's first term as mayor, Newsday and The New York Times ran their own detailed reports. These were the kind of publicly available records that Giuliani's integrity commission would hold up in front of an applicant for a carting license who insisted he never knew his partner Frankie No-Nose was in the Mafia. "Don't you read the papers?" the commission's people would ask. Then they'd stamp "rejected" on the application.
But while this test was applied to those who sold fish, picked up trash, and ran market stalls, those in charge of delivering the city's children to school every day—and who received millions in city payments—continued with business as usual.
Veterans of the Giuliani administration are at a loss to explain why the mob detectors were never loosed on the school-bus crowd. "I don't remember that it ever came up," said one. "That would have been someone else's department," said another. A call to Randy Mastro, the former deputy mayor who served as Giuliani's top gun on his mob cleanups, was returned by a sprightly spokeswoman for Giuliani's campaign. "Alrighty, I'll get back to you," she said. The wait continues.
read on . . .
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September 17th
posted: September 17, 2007 1:45 EST
Picking Mukasey as AG should help the GOP and Rudy and should scare civil libertarians.
By Ward Harkavy, Village Voice
The selection of terror-case judge Michael Mukasey, a pal of Rudy Giuliani's, as the next AG broadly hints at the GOP's strategy for next year's elections: Terror 24-7.
Mukasey's close ties to Rudy make him a simply fabulous choice as attorney general. He's practically a running mate for Giuliani during the next year of campaigning.
What about Mukasey and the rest of us? For the next year as lame-duck AG, Mukasey, who presided over the trial of the World Trade Center's 1993 bombers, will be a constant and sympathetic/heroic reminder of the "war on terror." Maybe that will stoke enough fear in us that we'll forget the war of terror we've created in Iraq.
This is a smart move by the GOP. It smacks of Karl Rove, but he supposedly left the building.
Here's the bad news: Mukasey is potentially far more hazardous to our civil liberties than Alberto Gonzales ever was. Gonzales was a dumb-ass, and Mukasey is very sharp. Mukasey thinks so highly of the Patriot Act that he felt compelled to defend it in a 2004 Wall Street Journal op-ed, writing:
I think that that awkward name may very well be the worst thing about the statute.
Dispensing with the name, Mukasey proceeds to write a scary analysis, particularly his sneering at librarians' concerns and his strong implication that the Bill of Rights, because it was tacked onto the Constitution, has less heft.
His argument is that we ought to give the government the benefit of the doubt in its dealings with we the people. That's the same kind of reasoning that Chief Justice John Roberts uses to give corporations the benefit of the doubt over people, as I wrote in July 2005..
Here are Mukasey's concluding paragraphs from the WSJ op-ed:
As we participate in this debate on what is the right course to pursue [regarding the Patriot Act and civil liberties], I think it is important to remember an interesting structural feature of the Constitution we all revere. When we speak of constitutional rights, we generally speak of rights that appear not in the original Constitution itself, but rather in amendments to the Constitution — principally the first 10. Those amendments are a noble work, but it is the rest of the Constitution — the boring part — the part that sets up a bicameral legislature and separation of powers, and so on, the part you will never see mentioned in any flyer or hear at any rally, that guarantees that the rights referred to in those 10 amendments are worth something more than the paper they are written on.
A bill of rights was omitted from the original Constitution over the objections of Patrick Henry and others. It may well be that those who drafted the original Constitution understood that if you give equal prominence to the provisions creating the government and the provisions guaranteeing rights against the government — God-given rights, no less, according to the Declaration of Independence — then citizens will feel that much less inclined to sacrifice in behalf of their government, and that much more inclined simply to go where their rights and their interests seem to take them.
So, as the historian Walter Berns has argued, the built-in message — the hidden message in the structure of the Constitution — is that the government it establishes is entitled, at least in the first instance, to receive from its citizens the benefit of the doubt. If we keep that in mind, then the spirit of liberty will be the spirit which, if it is not too sure that it is right, is at least sure enough to keep itself — and us — alive.
Of course, it's the government that determines what measures are required to "keep us alive." This is one scary lawyer, or as Ben Franklin said:
They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security.
But concerning the really important stuff — the '08 presidential campaign — Giuliani now has a security blanket. Mukasey is, in effect, his running mate. He'll get bipartisan support from the Senate — Chuck Schumer and other Democrats love him, and Mukasey's role as a judge intimately involved with World Trade Center and other terrorism cases while he was a federal judge in New York City will guarantee him a free pass during confirmation hearings.
You'll hear the word "terror" about a million times during those brief hearings, and the horror of the attacks will be brought up again and again.
As to Mukasey's connections with Giuliani? Forget this morning's papers if you want all the details. As Ron Mills pointed out yesterday in his cleverly named blog, Ron Mills — News And Commentary, Mukasey is a really close pal of Rudy's — he administered the oath of office to newly elected Mayor Giuliani twice in 1994 — once in Mukasey's apartment.
Mukasey was already a member of the Giuliani campaign's "Justice Advisory Committee", and Mukasey's son Marc is a partner in Rudy's law firm.
The apartment oath and the fact that Marc Mukasey is a law partner of Rudy's somehow didn't make it into this morning's New York Times story.
But if Rudy wins the '08 election, you can be sure of one detail: Mukasey will stay on as AG.
If you have some time on your hands, go to John Young's insane and great cryptome.org for the complete transcript of the trial stemming from the '93 bombing.
And what a trial that was. The prosecutor won the case, and you'd think that the GOP would love to give him a top job in the Bush administration — except for the fact that the prosecutor was Patrick Fitzgerald.
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September 13th
posted: September 13, 2007 3:40 EST
Denver's 2008 Democratic National Convention will help GOP, Colorado official claims.
By Michael Roberts, Westword (Denver)
Although the Democratic National Convention doesn't open in Denver until August 25, 2008, press coverage in these parts makes it seem as if the balloons are just about to drop. There's hardly an edition of a local daily newspaper or a nightly newscast that doesn't include some tidbit of DNC news, leaving Republican politicos to fight over the scraps. And as the convention nears, the coverage disparity is likely to expand.
Such a scenario should fill Colorado Republican Party head Dick Wadhams with despair — but if that's the case, he's doing a fine job of hiding his pain. He acknowledges that getting reporters to concentrate on Republican concerns in this environment will be problematic. "With Denver hosting a national convention, it'll be easy for the media to gravitate to anything Democratic," he says. But, he goes on, "I see it as an opportunity for the Colorado Republican Party as well. I think the Colorado media, in particular, will be sensitive to this and will actually seek out a Republican response as we get closer to the convention. And I think it will help Republican candidates."
How? Wadhams's response plays on already familiar GOP themes. While he views Hillary Clinton as a weaker candidate than her two highest-profile rivals, Barack Obama and John Edwards, he predicts that the Democrats will nominate her for president anyway. Moreover, he believes any of the Republican presidential frontrunners — Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney or Fred Thompson — can beat her, at least in Colorado. And he expects that the party platform approved at the convention will be "so liberal" it will hurt Colorado candidates such as senatorial hopeful Mark Udall, who he says is "trying to cultivate a moderate image."
read on . . .
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August 30th
posted: August 30, 2007 5:29 EST
The NYC mayor does what Giuliani always wanted to: charge for shelter stays.
By Graham Rayman, Village Voice
Dusting off an idea dating back to the Giuliani era, the Bloomberg administration has quietly started charging rent to homeless people who stay in emergency city shelters, the Voice has learned.
With no fanfare, Bloomberg officials in June began charging residents of at least four Brooklyn shelters up to 30 percent of their income, records obtained by the Voice show. People who don't pay could be kicked out of the shelter, the documents show.
read on . . .
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August 23rd
posted: August 23, 2007 5:23 EST
Candidate whisperer: The ex-bartender who's got Giuliani's ear.
By Tom Robbins, Village Voice
The most enduring lesson that Karl Rove taught the American people during his term as George W. Bush's top adviser was to always find out who the candidate's brain is before you elect him or her. For instance, if voters had fully understood that the swaggering, brush-cutting cowboy they elected was under the total sway of a dumpy balding guy with glasses who dropped out of college and believed William McKinley was America's greatest president, they might have thought twice.
Had voters been more attentive, they'd have noticed that this pudgy little man was always at Bush's side, whispering in his ear the same way Nancy Reagan used to do for husband Ronald ("We're doing everything we can!").
Rightfully, this kind of political cheating should be barred under Federal Election Commission rules. OK, that may be too severe. Outlawing such advisers might unrealistically narrow the field, leaving us with the zany likes of Colorado congressman Tom Tancredo, who clearly gets no advice from anyone. But what's needed is some pre-election disclosure of influence peddlers.
Right now, with the race for the White House well underway and a score of candidates vying for nomination, we have an opportunity to take a careful look at those who are positioned beside the candidates' ears. The tutorial begins with a look at Republican frontrunner Rudy Giuliani's chief whisperer, a man named Anthony V. Carbonetti.
You ask: "Who?" And that is exactly the point. The essence of a good candidate whisperer is to stay in the background, at least until after an election. Carbonetti, 38, is the guy with the beefy build, dark hair, usually wearing a gray suit, standing slightly to the right of America's mayor.
Giuliani observers will argue that he needs no one else's brain because his own is so well-developed. But even Rudy's admirers will admit that Carbonetti, whose greatest passions are aroused at a casino blackjack table, is a major influence on the man who may someday soon be deciding whether to take out Tehran with a tactical strike. We thus ignore him at our peril.
read on . . .
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