FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog

Previously at Flap’s Blog: Ron Brownstein: Disclosure or Conflict of Interest? - REDUX

John Carroll, Editor of the Los Angeles Times yesterday issued nine pages of ethical guidelines, Los Angeles Times Ethics Guidelines.

The goal of the Los Angeles Times is to publish a newspaper of the highest quality. This requires The Times to be, above all else, a principled newspaper. Making it so is the responsibility of every staff member. In deed and in appearance, journalists at The Times must keep themselves – and the newspaper – above reproach.

Sounds good…a worthy goal.

The Ethics Guidelines continue:

Editorial employees may not use their positions at the paper to promote personal agendas or causes. Nor should they allow their outside activities to undermine the impartiality of Times coverage, in fact or appearance.

Staff members may not engage in political advocacy – as members of a campaign or an organization specifically concerned with political change. Nor may they contribute money to a partisan campaign or candidate. No staff member may run for or acceptappointment to any public office.

Staff members should avoid public expressions or demonstrations of their political views – bumper stickers, lawn signs and the like.

While The Times does not seek to restrict staff members’ participation in civic life orjournalistic organizations, they should be aware that outside affiliations and membershipsmay create real or apparent ethical conflicts. When those affiliations have even theslightest potential to damage the newspaper’s credibility, staff members should proceed with caution and take care to advise supervisors.

Now, this is almost laughable given the way the Los Angeles Times covers stories.

A laudable goal but the LA Times has a long way to go.

On personal relationships:

Activities of family members may create conflicts of interest. The Times recognizes that it has no authority to restrict the activities of spouses, companions or close relativesof Times staff members who do not themselves work for the newspaper. However, the paper may restrict a staff member’s assignment based on the activities of a family member or loved one. Staff members are responsible for informing a supervisor
whenever a companion’s or close relative’s activities, investments or affiliations couldcreate a conflict.

As Flap previously opined:

Flap doesn’t care how well Brownstein writes. He has a conflict of interest and should step down from his current beat - or the Los Angeles Times should reassign him.

Will John Carroll have the integrity to initiate the reassignment or will he defer to Kinsley?

Technorati Tags: Los Angeles Times, Ron Brownstein, conflict of interest, Los Angeles Times Ethical Guidelines

What did California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger know and when did he know it? There is a new FLAP about the California Governor and the Sacramento Bee has, Flawed measure ignites new flap: Problem was known for a week before disclosure of redistricting ballot glitch.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s administration knew about legal problems with the proposed redistricting ballot initiative at least a week before the secretary of state’s office was contacted and the matter was publicly disclosed.

That and other disclosures Thursday by officials of the Governor’s Office and by leaders of the initiative campaign were seized upon by opponents as evidence that Schwarzenegger was playing behind-the-scenes, partisan politics with a cornerstone of his government reform package.

Why, of course, he was and the Assembly Speaker and Senate Pro Tem are NOT? Please!

Lance Olson, attorney for Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez and Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata, said the governor had a moral responsibility to disclose the legal defect before Secretary of State Bruce McPherson certified the measure June 10 and the governor called a special election three days later.

“I don’t know if they had a legal obligation, but they had an ethical obligation,” Olson said.

Peter Siggins, the governor’s legal affairs secretary, countered that the administration acted ethically and that his first impulse, upon learning of the legal problem, was to learn what he could do about the issue rather than react in haste.

Siggins said he would not have done anything differently.

“I’m not impetuous that way,” he said. “I’m more careful. I felt it very important to understand the legal ramifications of what happened and be able to more thoroughly discuss it.”

Siggins said that nobody intentionally waited until after McPherson certified the redistricting measure for the Nov. 8 special election ballot.

“It kind of caught us by surprise,” Siggins said of McPherson’s June 10 announcement that the proposal to overhaul how California draws boundaries for legislative, congressional and Board of Equalization seats had qualified for the ballot.

McPherson’s office learned of the problem on June 13, but did not seek advice from Attorney General Bill Lockyer until July 1.

And what importance does the time-frame make in any case? The California Attorney General’s lawsuit is frivolous at best and even the Los Angeles Times has urged its rejection.

Lockyer, through a spokesman, blasted the Governor’s Office and leaders of the initiative drive for untimely disclosure.

“If true, these new revelations are very disturbing,” said Tom Dresslar, Lockyer’s spokesman. “It’s particularly disturbing that the proponents and other parties knew about this problem and let the secretary of state certify this measure for the ballot. That’s outrageous.”

But, the Governor’s legal opinion was that the defects in the measure were MINOR.

Officials in Governor’s Office were personally involved in the ultimate disclosure.

Siggins and Daniel Kolkey, an attorney for the proponents, said they together met with Undersecretary William Wood on June 13 to notify the secretary of state’s office about the two differing initiative documents.

The two also agree on the following chain of events leading up to that day:

* Both Siggins and Kolkey learned about the legal problem at the same time through a joint telephone conversation with officials of Citizens to Save California, a business-oriented group formed to support Schwarzenegger’s agenda.

* Kolkey spent the next week, perhaps two, crafting a 10-page memorandum addressing legal issues related to the case and concluding that differences between the two documents were minor and that McPherson should place the initiative on the ballot.

* Kolkey and Siggins discussed issues involving the memo before it was finished, but neither remembers how often that occurred.

* When Kolkey finished the memo, the evening of June 10, he e-mailed it to Siggins and to a representative of Citizens to Save California. He said the purpose was to notify them, not to seek approval or to solicit changes.

Another tempest in a teapot - for nothing!

Watch for next week’s hearing Thursday, July 21.

Flap handicaps a 3:1 likelyhood the measure stays on the ballot.

Then, watch for the deal making negotiations between Nunez, Perata and Schwarzenegger intensify.

Technorati tags: Schwarzenegger, California Special Election, Proposition 77, The Bear Flag League Special Election Page

Cross-posted to the Bear Flag League Special Election Page

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has just told the ASSociated Press that he will end his consulting deal with two fitness magazines that rely heavily on ads of dietary, fitness supplements.

More later as the story develops.

Update #1

The governor, who came under fire when critics said the deal represented a conflict of interest, said he will relinquish his title as executive editor of Muscle & Fitness and Flex magazines and forego any compensation.

“I don’t want to be paid,” Schwarzenegger said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press.

The governor was forced to defend his contract with the magazines after a securities disclosure filed this week showed he would be paid at least $1 million a year for five years to act as a consultant.

“The decision is to discontinue the relationship we have now,” he said. “I will continue promoting body building and fighting obesity.”

There was only a slight appearance of a conflict. Is the Governor getting SQUISHY?

On Friday, Schwarzenegger said he wanted to leave no doubt that “the people have my full devotion.”

Schwarzenegger’s deal with a subsidiary of American Media Inc., Weider Publications, was disclosed in March 2004. But the amount he was being paid was not made public until the company filed documents Wednesday with the
Securities and Exchange Commission.

At the time of the 2004 announcement, Schwarzenegger said he would take a salary that was “petty compared to the movies.” The magazines also agreed to donate $250,000 a year to the California Governor’s Council on Physical Fitness.

The Governor looks weak and culpable.

Flap worries that Schwarzenegger is morphing into a FORMER Minnesota Governor.

Is McClintock or Chris Cox warming up?

Mayor Sam feels likewise in Schwarzenegger Wimps Out.

Technorati Tags Schwarzenegger, California

As the heat on Karl Rove escalates, and Republicans in the White House await news from the federal grand jury, a former CIA covert agent who supervised Valerie Plame early in her career refutes the fact that she was an “undercover agent.”

A former CIA covert agent who supervised Mrs. Plame early in her career yesterday took issue with her identification as an “undercover agent,” saying that she worked for more than five years at the agency’s headquarters in Langley and that most of her neighbors and friends knew that she was a CIA employee.
“She made no bones about the fact that she was an agency employee and her husband was a diplomat,” Fred Rustmann, a covert agent from 1966 to 1990, told The Washington Times.

“Her neighbors knew this, her friends knew this, his friends knew this. A lot of blame could be put on to central cover staff and the agency because they weren’t minding the store here. … The agency never changed her cover status.”
Mr. Rustmann, who spent 20 of his 24 years in the agency under “nonofficial cover” — also known as a NOC, the same status as the wife of Mr. Wilson — also said that she worked under extremely light cover.
In addition, Mrs. Plame hadn’t been out as an NOC since 1997, when she returned from her last assignment, married Mr. Wilson and had twins, USA Today reported yesterday.

And so why is Joe Wilson blathering all over Washington - calling for Rove to lose his security clearnace or for Bush to fire him?

Patrtisan politics? Oh No….. no one could accuse the former Clinton ambassador of that.

The distinction matters because a law that forbids disclosing the name of undercover CIA operatives applies to agents that had been on overseas assignment “within the last five years.” “She was home for such a long time, she went to work every day at Langley, she was in an analytical type job, she was married to a high-profile diplomat with two kids,” Mr. Rustmann said. “Most people who knew Valerie and her husband, I think, would have thought that she was an overt CIA employee.”
Asked whether his wife had been compromised before the press leak, Mr. Wilson said, “I have no idea,” though he said that her work has had to change since the leaks.

More tempest in a teapot…….as the story slowly burns itself out…..thankfully.

In the meantime, President Bush yesterday gave his longtime confidant an unusual show of support, walking out side by side with Mr. Rove on the White House South Lawn as he headed to his helicopter to leave for a trip to Indiana.

The president almost always walks out alone, with his aides following behind.

Later in the day, about 100 protesters — chanting, “Hey, hey, ho, ho, Karl Rove has got to go” — picketed outside the White House while Mr. Bush was in Indiana.The protesters were organized by the liberal group MoveOn.org, which provided signs that read: “Stop the Cover-up: Fire Karl Rove.”

Oh Please!

Michelle Malkin has a good round-up of Blogger Reactions, MORE ROVE-MANIA..AND THE MEDIA MYSTERY DEEPENS (UPDATED)

Update, 9:20 am: John Podhoretz calls Plamegate one of the “hey, big whoop” stories of all time:

So we learn, at last, from the New York Times, that Robert Novak called Karl Rove and said he heard Joseph Wilson’s wife, who was NOT a clandestine agent at the time, worked for the CIA. To which Rove replied — of the women who was NOT a clandestine agent at the time and who he almost surely had no reason to know had at some point in the previous years BEEN a clandestine agent — “I heard that too.”

This surely qualifies as one of the “hey, big whoop” stories of all time. And I am not saying this because I am some partisan gunslinger. Simple fairness says that an official called by a journalist who volunteers a piece of gossip and then responds, “I heard that too,” is not retailing a piece of incendiary information intended to destroy lives and place CIA assets in harm’s way.

And I’m going to be blunt here. Anybody who says different has an agenda that has nothing whatever to do with Joseph Wilson, Valerie Plame, the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982, or much of anything else besides doing damage to the Bush administration and character-assassinating Karl Rove.

Betsy Newmark: “I think we’re about at stage eight of the twelve-stage process of media scandals…”

Update II: I think Wilson’s remarks about his wife’s status were misinterpreted. Looks like what he was saying was that she was no longer a clandestine operative once her cover was blown. I think.

Tom Maguire breaks down the Times’ story.

Jon Henke on The Oops Theory and more.

Technorati Tags: Valerie Plame, Karl Rove, CIA, Moveon.org, politics