-
Day By Day by Chris Muir
-
Canadian Adscam Scandel: Paul Coffin Pleads Guilty in Sponsorship Probe
The first plea in the sponsorship scandel that threatens the Paul Martin – Liberal Party government has occurred. The Globe and Mail has the story about the gulty plea of Paul Coffin to 15 fraud charges here:
Mr. Coffin, the first person charged in the scandal, had originally faced 18 counts, but three counts were withdrawn by the Crown during Tuesday’s hearing.
Each charge carries a maximum sentence of 10 years, but the judge hearing the case indicated he won’t impose a sentence at the top end of the range.
Mr. Coffin, head of Montreal-based Communication Coffin, had been accused of submitting false or inflated invoices as part of his handling of federal sponsorships of car and mountain-bike races, among other events, between 1997 and 2002.
He was originally scheduled to go to trial on the charges early next month. Lawyers will appear in court Aug. 16 to make arguments on sentencing.
“The defence attorney said that Mr. Coffin wished to get his financial house in order and we thought it was a good idea to give him that opportunity,” Crown attorney Francois Drolet told reporters outside of court.
“After all, one month and a half is not such a long delay.”
The delay will also allow Mr. Coffin time to reimburse the government for the $1.5-million covered in Tuesday’s plea.
However, Mr. Drolet also said, even if that takes place, the Crown will likely still ask for a jail sentence in the case.
Will Paul Martin grant him clemency or commute his sentence? And why not? He has been buying off the other politicos to stay in power. This would be an easy ministerial action.
Later Tuesday, the Conservatives will try again to introduce a motion calling on the government to expand the inquiry’s mandate. The Liberals have called the motion unnecessary.
Meanwhile, six charges of fraud have also been laid against former Groupaction Marketing Inc. president Jean Brault. Mr. Brault is scheduled be tried in October along with retired civil servant Chuck Guité, who managed the sponsorship program from 1996 to 1999.
Well one down, a few more to go.
When do the pardons begin?
Read Captain Ed’s take on this story here.
Adman Paul Coffin, the first person charged in the federal sponsorship scandal, leaves a Montreal courthouse Tuesday after pleading guilty to 15 fraud charges. -
FEC: Draft Rules to Regulate Political Blogs
Bloggers may be facing regulation from the Federal Election Commission. The Chicago Tribune has the story regarding draft Federal Election Commission regulations:
Web loggers, who pride themselves on freewheeling political activism, might face new federal rules on candidate endorsements, online fundraising and political ads, though bloggers who don’t take money from political groups would not be affected.
Draft rules from the Federal Election Commission, which enforces campaign finance laws, would require that paid political advertisements on the Internet declare who funded the ad, as television spots do.
Similar disclaimers would be placed on political Web sites, as well as on e-mails sent to people on purchased lists containing more than 500 addresses. The FEC also is considering whether to require Web loggers, called bloggers, to disclose whether they get money from a campaign committee or a candidate and to reveal whether they are being paid to write about certain candidates or solicit contributions on their behalf.
These rules would not affect citizens who don’t take money from political action committees or parties.
The FEC long has been reluctant to craft rules for the Internet, and it has exempted the online world from many regulations that apply to other media such as television and radio. But a court ruling last fall required the agency to include the Internet in its definition of public communications and to begin regulating activities there.
The FEC, which also is striving to clarify regulations about online volunteer campaign activity, is accepting public comments on the proposals until Friday. Hearings will be held June 28 and 29.
The final version of the rules is expected later this year, unless Congress intervenes to exempt the Internet from FEC regulation, as is wanted by lawmakers including Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.)
Flap’s take on this whole question of blog regulation and first amendment rights is here.
Thank Senators John McCain and Russ Feingold for this intrusion on the first amendment.
Update #1
Justene over at Calblog has this about the Bear Flag League’s brief and the Apple vs. Does case and the attacks on bloggers which the draft FEC regulations referenced above is just one:
Anonymous sources and National Security
In the case of Apple v. Does, the trial court made an exception for disclosure of a reporter’s anonymous source because the “online reporters” published trade secrets. Bloggers worried, the Bear Flag League filed an amicus brief, other bloggers filed an amicus brief, and some mainstream news outlets such as the Associated Press filed their amicus brief also.
Some newspapers don’t worry. They publish whatever they want using anonymous sources, even if national security may be involved. The Word Unheard discusses a NYT article which discloses CIA operations transporting terror suspect. After giving incredible detail, the NYT does not disclose the name of their source because he signed a secrecy agreement.
“Online reporters” have to defend themselves because they published product information which had the Confidential warning excised but the New York Times is publishing CIA operations and admitting in the article that he had signed a secrecy agreement.
Update #2
Mike Krempasky over at RedState.org has this piece on Answering or Trying to Answer FEC Questions .
Red over at SacredMonkeys has Should Blogs Trust the FEC?
And the mother of all pieces – thousands of words on the FEC is at the FEC section at RedState.org.
Update #3Friends,
Time is running out at the Federal Election Commission. The period for public comment on the proposed rulemaking regarding the Internet closes June 3, 2005.
As a blogger, or blog reader – you have valuable input from your firsthand experience that the FEC desperately needs. You don’t have to be a lawyer, and you’ve got a duty to weigh in. Please take a moment and read over and endorse the 11 Principles for Online Freedom we’ve written up with the Center for Democracy & Technology and the Institute for Politics, Technology, and The Internet: http://fec.cdt.org/signup.php
If you’d like to file your own comment, here are two places where you can find help and instructions:
RedState.org: http://fec.redstate.org/story
/2005/5/20/122244/721
DailyKos.com: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/5/23/103820/231 Once you do submit a comment, please consider sending us a copy. Knowing what bloggers are telling the FEC will help throughout this process.
Best,
Mike Krempasky
Michael Bassik
Please sign on the dotted line – protect our precious freedom of speech! -
Watergate: Deep Throat
W. Mark Felt appears on CBS’ “Face The Nation” in Washington Sunday Aug.30, 1976. The former FBI official claims he was “Deep Throat,” the long-anonymous source who leaked secrets about President Nixon’s Watergate coverup to The Washington Post, Vanity Fair magazine reported Tuesday, May 31, 2005.Vanity Fair reports that W. Mark Felt, second-in-command at the FBI in the early 1970s, was “Deep Throat,” the long-anonymous source who leaked secrets about President Nixon’s Watergate coverup to The Washington Post.
W. Mark Felt, 91, kept the secret even from his family until 2002, when he confided to a friend that he had been Post reporter Bob Woodward’s source, the magazine said.
“I’m the guy they used to call Deep Throat,” he told lawyer John D. O’Connor, the author of the Vanity Fair article, the magazine said in a news release, the AP reports.
With all the speculation which preceded the announcement it seems anticlimatic now.
But, thank God for a free press and the first amendment which shields reporters who avail themselves of anonymous sources.
Update #1
Washington Post confirms that Felt was “Deep Throat”. Read it here:
The Washington Post today confirmed that W. Mark Felt, a former number-two official at the FBI, was “Deep Throat,” the secretive source who provided information that helped unravel the Watergate scandal in the early 1970s and contributed to the resignation of president Richard M. Nixon.
The confirmation came from Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the two Washington Post reporters who broke the Watergate story, and their former top editor, Benjamin C. Bradlee. The three spoke after Felt’s family and Vanity Fair magazine identified the 91-year-old Felt, now a retiree in California, as the long-anonymous source who provided crucial guidance for some of the newspaper’s groundbreaking Watergate stories.
Joan Felt and her father W. Mark Felt wave to the media gathered in front of their home Tuesday, May 31, 2005, in Santa Rosa, Calif. Felt claims he was “Deep Throat,” the long-anonymous source who leaked secrets about President Nixon’s Watergate coverup to The Washington Post, his family said Tuesday.Woodward, Bernstein and Bradlee had kept the identity of “Deep Throat” secret at the source’s request, saying his name would be revealed upon his death. “We’ve kept that secret because we keep our word,” Woodward said.
But with the Vanity Fair article and the family’s statement, the three decided today to break their silence.
Bradlee, who was the Post’s executive editor during Watergate, said today, “The thing that stuns me is that the goddamn secret has lasted this long.”
Isn’t that the truth!
Update #2
Patterico thinks it really was Lloyd Bridges
Close but no cigar!
Update #3
“Deep Throat” Revealed
Slate magazine columnist Tim Noah was online Tuesday, May 31, at 5 p.m. ET to discuss the Vanity Fair article naming former FBI official W. Mark Felt as “Deep Throat,” the figure who leaked secrets about President Richard Nixon’s Watergate cover-up.
Read the Transcript here including the fact that Felt was once pardoned by President Ronald Reagan.
-
Ron Brownstein: Disclosure or Conflict of Interest?
Hugh Hewitt has this piece on the disclosure of Ron Brownstein, a national political correspondent, columnist for the Los Angeles Times and political analyst for CNN that his wife is now employed as an aide to Senator John McCain. The disclosure came at the end of Brownstein’s May 30th Washington Outlook column:
(Full disclosure: My wife recently took a job as an aide to Sen. John McCain [R-Ariz.], one of the judicial deal’s architects. Marriages that span the divide between the media and politics are common in Washington. They require both parties to draw a firm line between their personal attachments and professional responsibilities. I do not intend to treat McCain any differently as a result of my marriage, and my wife does not expect favored treatment for her boss. I certainly don’t expect any special treatment from McCain or his aides. Readers, of course, will have to make their own judgments, but I am confident that her new job will not affect my judgments, pro and con, about McCain and his initiatives.)
Brownstein is correct many marriages in D.C. “span the divide between media and politics.” And he is certainly entitled to assert that “her new job will not affect my judgments about McCain,” and I am certain that no major media organization would release anyone in such a situation.
But how in the world are we supposed to believe that employment by a significant Washington player and probable presidential candidate of a spouse of a reporter who covers Washington players and probable presidential candidates won’t affect Brownstein’s judgments?
Would a paper allow the wife of an Enron executive to continue reporting on the Enron scandal? Would the son of an NBA owner be allowed to cover his father’s franchise? Would a sister be assigned to review a major motion picture in which her sibling had a supporting role?
Although marriages can span the divide between media and politics, the press is supposed to be free and unbiased. How do you spell CONFLICT OF INTEREST?
Most newspapers would reassign Mr. Brownstein to another beat.
So, must the Los Angeles Times.Disclosure in this case is insufficient.
So, when will John Carroll, the Editor of the Los Angeles Times have Mr. Brownstein reassigned?
Aftrer reading Mr. Carroll’s diatribe against the blogosphere and its lack of accountability and ethics I would hope very soon.
John Carroll, Editor of the Los Angeles Times -
We the People: Bloggers
Instapundit has this piece over at the Wall Street Journal on the new media of the blogosphere:
The news business is in trouble. Readership and viewership are declining, public trust is plummeting, and advertisers are beginning to wonder whether they’re getting their money’s worth. This has led people to think about what blogger and tech journalist Doc Searls calls business models for “news without newspapers,” an approach to reporting and disseminating news that doesn’t depend on layers of editors for publication, and big ads from carmakers for funding. Nobody’s sure just how to do that yet.
That’s likely to change, though. Already we’re seeing a lot of reporting from non-journalists, where the “reporter” is just whoever happens to be on the scene, and online, when news happens. Given the ubiquity of digital cameras, cellphones, and wireless Internet access, that’s likely to become more common, making the kind of distributed newsgathering seen during the Indian Ocean tsunami the norm not the exception.
Indeed, a new medium – a news without newspapers. A new citizen journalism arises as the MSM evolves.
Of course, when you take content from correspondents around the world, organize it in an easy to navigate form, and deliver the eyeballs that it attracts to advertisers, you’ve created something that looks rather a lot like . . . a newspaper. But it’s a very different kind of newspaper, one that takes advantage of the big-media capabilities that, thanks to technological progress, are now in the hands of individuals worldwide. Will traditional newspapers be able to keep up?
Yes, and the newspapers are already evolving.
Check out the comments and trackback features over at Flap’s local newspaper, the Ventura County Star (free registration required).
And, yes, Flap has joined Pajamas Media.
-
Day By Day by Chris Muir
