The Anchorage Daily News is reporting that Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) plans to sell the Kenai River lot she purchased from politically connected developer Bob Penney back to Penney. The purchase was originally reported by TPMmuckraker’s Laura McGann last week.
The Anchorage paper reports:
Murkowski announced the give back a day after a Washington watchdog group filed a 15-page Senate ethics complaint against her, alleging that Penney sold the property well below market value. The transaction amounted to an illegal gift worth between $70,000 and $170,000, depending on how the property was valued, according to the complaint by the National Legal and Policy Center.
Murkowski told reporters in her Capitol office this morning that Penney, a real estate developer who does business in Alaska and Outside, has agreed to buy back the property for the $179,400 purchase price she and husband Verne Martell paid Dec. 22, 2006.
We have the full rundown on the Murkowski deal at TPMtv and a compilation of Laura McGann’s reporting at TPMmuckraker.
Rudy explains what makes him different from the Dem Presidential candidates on Iraq: “I’m for victory.” That and other political news of the day in today’s Election Central Happy Hour Roundup.
It’s been pretty clear for a while that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has repeatedly lied to investigative committees on Capitol Hill. But yesterday he took that fateful step of making a false statement about an event in which there are multiple fact witnesses available to contradict him. Indeed, the falsehood was apparently so great that even fellow members of the administration like FBI Chief Robert Mueller felt bound to contradict him publicly.
Actually, there’s even a little more to add: that is, yesterday was Gonzales’ chance to revise what were actually past false statements. And he did not. He took the plunge again, fibbing — even with a certain perverted consistency and honor — right in the congressional lion’s maw.
In any case, this is all being reported on very closely at TPMmuckraker. But I was curious to see that some major news outlets were at last coming around and pretty much telling this one how it is in their headlines. Some dragged kicking and screaming, I grant you. But at least a few glimmers of recognition.
So I thought I’d show some examples. And when you see others please send them in.
Interestingly, the article itself uses the more full-throated “contradicted” instead of the more anemic “challenged”. But apparently the Times’ editors want to ease folks into it.
The Post, at least on the front page, appears not to be covering the Mueller/Gonzales story, though I’m confident Fred Hiatt is working busily on a “Questions over Mueller’s Credibility Mount” editorial. So we’ll keep an eye out. (ed.note: 9:19 PM, The Post’s up now and it’s pretty good — jmm)
CNN meanwhile appears to be going for a sort of editorial rope-a-dope with “FBI head apparently contradicts Gonzales”.
Wow, okay. Gonzoles is in serious trouble. Sure it’s buried down on the front page but Fox News, party organ of GOP bamboozlement, has “FBI Chief Contradicts Gonzales’ Sworn Testimony.” Frankly that’s the hardest headline I’ve see so far. Alas, on the story page itself it’s the quasi-bamboozling “FBI Chief Muddles Gonzales Sworn Testimony to Congress.” But, hey, it’s Fox. The frontpage headline may have been automated off the AP wire.
USAToday gets a little narrative action going with “Mueller contradicts Gonzales; Dems request special counsel.”
Late Update: WaPo’s got their piece up. And it’s a dive right in the lake: “FBI Director Contradicts Gonzales Testimony”
What a day. It’s been hard to keep up. Between the Dems calling for a special prosecutor to investigate the attorney general this morning to Sen. Lisa Murkowski abandoning her riverfront property on the Kenai River (thanks to a little outfit called TPMmuckraker, which her staff claimed not to have heard of before now) to FBI Director Robert Mueller’s testimony this afternoon, which was devastating to Alberto Gonzales.
But with all that going on, we wanted to dig a little deeper into Gonzales’ statements about the Terrorist Surveillance Program which have plunged him into even deeper hot water with the Senate Judiciary Committee.
So Paul Kiel and Spencer Ackerman have put together a detailed post on the history of the NSA surveillance program and what precisely the Administration has said about it and what Gonzales’ obfuscations may really be about. Call it a grand unified theory of the Gonzales perjury crisis and the warrantless surveillance program.
Go take a look.
It’s looking like there might not be a GOP CNN/Youtube debate. Rudy appears to be opting out and Mitt Romney doesn’t seem far behind. And GOP party functionary Hugh Hewitt is already laying down a line of covering fire for the retreat, arguing that CNN and Youtube are biased against Republicans.
“Liberal Bias”, whatever else it once was, now appears to be the new Republican code word for any venue or events not controlled by Republican commisars like Hugh Hewitt along the lines of President Bush’s notorious Social Security townhalls in which only certified flunkies who swore to a Bush loyalty oath were let into the room.
As I said here on the night of the debate, the CNN/Youtube debate wasn’t perfect. And there were for my tastes a bit too many questions based on a rather cliched sort of viral video silliness. All told though I found it surprisingly successful in getting fresh questions into the mix and edging at least somewhat more candor out of the candidates than the usual fare.
I’m not sure whether the resistance is rooted is the profound feebleness of the current GOP field or the fact that the current Bush Republican party is so beholden to a worldview based on denial and suppression of evidence that exposure to unpredictable questions presents too great a danger. But if they can’t face Youtube how can they defeat the terrorists?
Is this the reason Rudy is trying to deep-six the GOP YouTube debate? From TPM Reader KB …
You realize why Rudy doesn’t like the YouTube debate format, right? He doesn’t want the NY fire fighter’s to get a clean shot at him on national TV. Maybe Newt was right. Maybe pygmies is the perfect word…
Meanwhile TPM Reader MM has a different take. And while I think MM may be guilty of little insular thinking, I think he’s also on to something. There’s something very tooth and claw about where the GOP base is at the moment. And a lot of the signature GOP issues at the moment are ones that appear a lot more presentable in the talking head retelling than they do in the activist vernacular …
One of the thoughts that occurred to me with regards to the Democratic Youtube debate was how weird the questions for the GOP candidates could potentially be. For the Democratic debates, most of the issues that are on the table are pretty mainstream, like healthcare and Iraq and poverty and global warming, and thus its pretty difficult for the standard rank-and-file member of the democratic base to ask them in an amusing viral format like Youtube and still come out as looking too bizarre (unless they happen to be a talking snowman). As far as issues like illegal immigration and “coercive interrogation techniques” go, how does one ask questions like this in a Youtube format in an amusing way? The differences between the GOP base and the political mainstream can seem less extreme when asked by someone like Wolf Blitzer, but if presented from the standard GOP rank-and-file member of the base, it seemed like a great way to show how unhinged the GOP has become on some of these issues. Personally, I’m surprised the GOP ever got close to agreeing to this format, and once the Democratic debate happened and showed the format in action, I didn’t see how it could have been pulled off by the GOP.
A few more clues on the GOP stampede from the Youtube/CNN debate. Apparently, of all the GOP candidates, only McCain and Ron Paul have signed on. Should be quite an evening.
Was Pat Tillman murdered by his fellow soldiers in Afghanistan in 2004? New revelations make it appear an awful possibility.
McCain — like Romney — sides with Clinton in dispute with Obama. That and other political news of the day in today’s Election Central Morning Roundup.
Think FBI Chief Robert Mueller contradicted Alberto Gonzales yesterday on Capitol Hill?
Au Contraire! Says Tony Snow …