Not a good day for Mark Penn.
Original Clintonite Paul Begala ripped on him at a breakfast appearance this morning:
“I have nothing but contempt for Mr. Penn. And for those of us who wanted to see him out from the beginning, it became almost a Rumsfeldian thing. And he is not even fired. He has been demoted. How could this be?”
Meanwhile, the Obama camp continues to flog Penn. Obama himself said in an Indiana press conference that he would have gotten rid of Penn if he’d been his aide, and the Obama-backing union coalition Change to Win has launched an effort to get Hillary to “sever all ties” with Penn.
We’d be interested in hearing from readers with prosecutorial backgrounds on this one.
As you may have been following at TPMmuckraker, there was a hung jury this week in the trial of former Pittsburgh-area coroner Cyril Wecht. Because of a number of peculiarities, the case has been one of those DOJ prosecutions suspected of being politically motivated.
The government immediately declared it would retry the case, but in the meantime the FBI has been contacting jurors asking about their deliberations.
Now it’s not unusual for prosecutors to try to meet with jurors after the fact. Indeed, sometimes those meetings help determine whether a retrial is viable. But dispatching the FBI to arrange these meetings?
I’ve never heard of such a thing, and former U.S. Attorney General Dick Thornburgh, who is representing Wecht, tells TPMmuckraker that it’s “unprecedented” in his experience.
So what about it? Is this standard operating procedure in U.S. Attorney offices?
Late Update: Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) issued the following statement this afternoon:
I am deeply troubled by reports of FBI agents contacting former jurors who failed to convict Dr. Wecht. Whether reckless or intended, it is simply common sense that such contacts can have a chilling effect on future juries in this and other cases. When added to the troubling conduct of this prosecution, there is the appearance of a win at all costs mentality. The committee continues to investigate this matter.
From what we can tell Colorado senate candidate Bob Schaffer (R) has gone completely to ground since word spread that he wants to replace the US immigration system with the Mariana Islands set-up which features forced abortions, child sex trafficking and various forms of enslavement. Taking a junket to hang with the sweatshop owners courtesy of Jack Abramoff hasn’t helped either, of course.
In any case, we’re really curious to hear about when Schaffer comes up for air, whether he gets asked about his Marianas immigration policy proposal and what his answers are. So if you’re in Colorado, keep an eye out on the news and in the local papers to see what if anything he says. And then shoot us an email to let us know what you see and hear. We need you to be our eyes and ears on the ground. Dick Wadhams has him under wraps at the moment. But he’s got to come up for air eventually. He is running for senate after all.
Late Update: On related lines, TPM Reader COD has a thought: “Re: the Schaffer-Mariannas interview. I hope you’ll also keep the religious angle in mind, could be worth persuing. Schaffer is staunchly Catholic in a state with a very conservative Archbishop of Denver, Chaput, who probably wouldn’t be amused by forced abortions. Human trafficking and the sex trade are also very hot topics with RCs these days, and any defense of a system that is tainted with that won’t fly either.”
Boalt Hall dean defends the continued employment of John Yoo as a law professor there.
Turns out that right-wing pariah, George Soros, also contributed money to the legal defense of McCain-Feingold.
As I said below, it makes that anti-Soros fund-raising letter from the McCain camp a bit of a trainwreck.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers has invited former Attorney General John Ashcroft, former CIA Director George Tenet, former Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith, Chief of Staff to the Vice President David Addington, and former Assistant Attorney General Daniel Levin to testify to his committee about those Principals meetings on torture.
Not seeing that happening without subpoenas, executive privilege claims and a few trips to court. But stay tuned.
As we noted earlier, sweatshop-loving senate candidate Bob Schaffer held a fundraiser today in Grand Junction with Vice President Dick Cheney. So far Schaffer has refused to answer any questions about the Mariana Islands or why he wants to bring their scandal-ridden immigration system to the states. But today …
Asked during a press conference following Cheney’s visit about Denver Post reports that link him to an effort by jailed lobbyist Jack Abramoff to quash labor reform in the Mariana Islands in 1999, Schaffer was visibly angry.
“I am really disgusted with the tone and tenor and direction of The Denver Post stories. I have had no contact with the individuals in the story, particularly Jack Abramoff,” Schaffer said. “It’s a matter of fiction. That’s all I’m going to say about it.”
In other words, he’s still apparently unwilling to answer any questions. But he’s disgusted and very angry.
Not Even Late Update: You’ll notice that Schaffer says he has “had no contact with the individuals in the story.” Now, in the nature of things that’s a pretty bold statement and one of fairly dubious accuracy. One of the key figures in the story is Benigno Fitial, now Governor of the Marianas and through Jack Abramoff’s go-to guy (and vice versa) in the islands. And as TPM Reader EL points out, look at this passage from a 2001 article in the Saipan Tribune (emphasis added) …
The Covenant Partyâs gubernatorial aspirant Benigno R. Fitial disclosed the “good news” yesterday to Northern Marianas College students, faculty and staff during a forum organized by the Associated Students.
Fitial said he learned from his friends in the US Congress that the CNMI will be receiving a substantial amount of financial assistance from certain departments in the federal government.
“I talked to my friend Cong. Bob Schaffer over the phone and he told me that this assistance will be coming very, very soon,” said Fitial.
And a year earlier, Schaffer was one of five members of Congress that Fitial’s delegation met with when they visited Washington.
Late Update: And there’s more. Apparently there’s no video of that exchange. Or we haven’t found it yet. But another reporter from local station KREX Channel 5 got this brush off …
It just keeps getting better. It appears that Colorado senate candidate Bob Schaffer (R) is pursuing a two track strategy for defusing the controversy over his efforts to bring the Mariana Islands immigration program to mainland America. As we noted before, on the one hand, he is angrily lashing out at the news organizations reporting on the story. At the same, he is craftily rebranding himself as a hard-charging anti-sweatshop crusader.
Schaffer apparently talked to Lynn Bartels of the Rocky Mountain News and …
Former congressman Bob Schaffer says the night he landed in Saipan to review working conditions in the U.S. territory, he demanded an immediate tour of a garment factory he heard had an unsavory reputation.
A welcoming committee wanted to take Schaffer to his hotel, he said, but he prevailed. He said he found women working in a “sweatshop,” and demanded leaders of the Northern Mariana Islands investigate.
“I was told that shortly after I left (the Marianas) that the factory was shut down,” he said Friday, stressing he never verified the information.
Now, this is a little different from what Schaffer said at the time …
“There were some examples of problems that we found, and we raised those with the equivalent of the attorney general,” Schaffer said of his visit. But in many others, “the workers were smiling; they were happy.”
Seems to have changed a bit in the retelling. And it’s worth reading the rest of the RMN piece to get a flavor of Schaffer Marianas 2.0. But it still doesn’t quite make sense of why Schaffer kept carrying the water of the sweatshop owners in Congress and beating up on the folks who were trying to rein in the abuses (something we’ll have more for you about next week.)
An interesting article in the Times about airline safety and all those grounded flights, and making sense of a string of years in which the FAA’s safety inspections have arguably gotten more permissive and chummy while nonetheless showing a steep reduction in crashes and fatalities.
Especially interesting for a slowly recovering aerophobic.