Meet the GOP front-runner in the race to replace retiring Rep. John Peterson (R-PA):
Fifth Congressional District front-runner Derek Walker was charged Thursday with two felonies and four misdemeanors in connection with an incident last August at his former girl friend’s house in Clearfield.
Walker said this morning before the charges were filed that Clearfield County District Attorney William Shaw Jr. had been pressured to file the charges less than a week before the primary election by Walker’s chief rival for the Republcan nomination, State College businessman Matt Shaner.
Asked why the charges against Walker were filed today, Shaw said: “We finished our investigation yesterday — we got the last two statements yesterday.”
The criminal complaint, filed in District Judge Richard Ireland’s Clearfield office, charges Walker with burglary and criminal trespass, both felonies, and the misdemeanors criminal attempt, invasion of privacy, disorderly conduct and stalking.
The complaint, filed by Clearfield police Chief Jeffrey Rhone and signed by Shaw, accuses Walker of using his cell phone to videotape a former girlfriend in an intimate moment with another man on Aug. 25, 2007. The complaint also alleges that he had contact with her on two other occasions, despite being told by a police officer on Aug. 25 that he should avoid further contact and that charges were pending.
[Thanks to TPM Reader MM for the tip.]
The Washington Post has obtained a Pentagon inspector general report that finds the award of a $50 million Air Force contract was “tainted with improper influence, irregular procurement practices, and preferential treatment.”
In many respects, it’s just the usual sort of bid-rigging, contract favoring, and inside-dealing that the Pentagon is notorious for. But one thing in particular jumps out.
Among the high-ranking Air Force officials pushing for awarding the contract to a well-connected company called SMS, formed for the purpose of securing this particular contract, according to the Post, was Air Force Maj. Gen. Stephen M. Goldfein:
Goldfein, who is now the vice director of the Pentagon’s Joint Staff, was found to have gone to great lengths to see the contract awarded to SMS, while senior Air Force leaders socialized with the company’s partners. According to the report, Goldfein even arranged for President Bush to videotape a testimonial in the White House Map Room that was included in the SMS contract proposal as a demonstration of the company’s credibility and access.
The President videotaping testimonials for government contractors? Is this commonplace in the Bush White House? Can we find out more about that? Inquiring minds want to know.
A final note — for now — on the investigation into the Coconut Road earmark.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi, defending her chamber from unwanted Senate oversight, says the House Ethics Committee should be the one to investigate Rep. Don Young’s mucky earmark.
The problem? The House Ethics Committee has been sitting on a complaint about Coconut Road from a government watchdog group since last year.
If you were spared watching it in real time, relive the awfulness of last night’s ABC debate in today’s episode of TPMtv …
Theda Skocpol offers her recollection of that Camp David powwow in the mid-90s where Hillary reportedly said “screw ’em” about Southern whites who were voting Republican.
Ed Kilgore discusses whether making the debate about ‘electability’ washes as an explanation or excuse for what happened in Philly last night.
Remember that woman from the debate last night who the moderators showed videotape of asking whether Barack Obama “believes in the flag”? Her name is Nash McCabe.
I remember thinking it was sort of odd to have a couple one-off uses of ordinary voter questions when it didn’t really seem like it was part of the format. But I was too distracted by the general inanity of the debate to focus on this issue too closely.
Well, it turns out TPM Reader JL did give it some thought. And he came up with something very interesting (see JL’s post at the DrexelDems blog). He did a little googling and found out Nash is pretty popular with the traveling press now in Pennsylvania. It turns out McCabe was featured in an April 4th story in the Times which begins like this …
Ask whom she might vote for in the coming presidential primary election and Nash McCabe, 52, seems almost relieved to be able to unpack the dossier she has been collecting in her head.
It is not about whom she likes, but more a bill of particulars about why she cannot vote for Senator Barack Obama of Illinois.
“How can I vote for a president who won’t wear a flag pin?” Mrs. McCabe, a recently unemployed clerk typist, said in a booth at the Valley Dairy luncheonette in this quiet, small city in western Pennsylvania.
Mr. Obama has said patriotism is about ideas, not flag pins.
“I watch him on TV,” Mrs. McCabe said. “I keep looking for that lapel pin.”
Now, it does seem like McCabe is not a fan of Sen. Obama’s. And I think we can assume that it’s not a coincidence that McCabe managed to show up featured in the Times and also as the sole outside questioner in the ABC debate. Presumably, a researcher for ABC or Gibson saw the piece in the Times, figured, hey, this lady hates Obama and is seriously ginned up about the lapel issue. Let’s send a camera crew and film her slamming Obama to his face. It’ll be great in the debate.
Now, as JL noted in his email to TPM, I’m not sure precisely what’s any less ethical about finding Nash at random to come on and slam Obama about whether he believes in the flag versus seeing her in the Times and saying, ‘Wow, this woman clearly has it in for Obama. Wouldn’t that make for great TV giving her a chance to crap on Obama’s head in front of a nationwide audience?
I think there’s something wrong with it. And part of it is that you usually assume that these citizen questions come from people who are at least partly conflicted about their support if not undecided. But it does reinforce my sense that the disgraceful nature of the debate wasn’t just something that came together wrong, some iffy ideas taken to far, but was basically engineered to be crap from the ground up.
(ed.note: Remember, there was also Tom Rooney from Pittsburgh who said he’d been a Clinton supporter up until the Bosnia flap and asked what she could say to get back his vote. In that case, this was at least someone who’d been a Clinton supporter at one point and suggested he could be again. But it’s still basically, “Hillary, can you apologize to me for being a liar?” Not exactly a question. Anyone have more details on Rooney?)
Late Update: Turns out McClatchy is on this case and has plenty of details about how ABC tracked McCabe down.
From TPM Reader JA …
The post on Nash McCabe reminded me of a couple earlier debates, the MoveOn Town Hall events, where citizen questions were alternated with questions from Eli Pariser, all on one topic that had been selected by member vote. The second was the YKos debate, which also featured citizen questions.
In both cases, citizens asked questions that weren’t obvious or oriented toward sound bytes. They were the kinds of questions that would not, for whatever reason, be asked by these tv moderators. Moreover, these were their questions. In this case, the producers put the producers’ question into the mouth of a voter, because it made the question seem more authentic, as if people care in large numbers about the flag pin question. That is, the woman was used to legitimize the traditional media’s focus on these frankly trivial and, yes, distracting issues.
So it’s not just bad that they sought out someone to ask the question, but that they did it in order to avoid asking the question themselves because, you know, it’s sort of embarrassing. It’s not about content; it’s about TV content and TV optics. There’s no way for Gibson to ask that without looking petty and stupid. So they used this woman.
I think McCabe’s question stands out more than the citizen question for Hillary on Bosnia because the moderators spent so much time going at him with other gotcha question. But I think the above applies equally to Hillary’s question. The point of using a voter was that Gibson would have been embarrassed, and rightly so, to have asked that question himself.
The Iraq War is a debacle whose outcome is in doubt, according to a report from the Pentagon’s National Defense University.
The EPA floats a new “public confusion” exception to complying with congressional subpoenas.