Slashdot Mirror
Washington Post Shuts Down Blog
Billosaur writes "C|Net has an article by Katharine Q. Seelye of The New York Times, which indicates that the Washington Post is having to close one of its blogs, due to 'too many personal attacks, profanity and hate mail directed at the paper's ombudsman.' It seems that Deborah Howell, the newspaper's ombudsman, wrote an article on the Jack Abramoff scandal which elicited a storm of protest and led to readers using profanity and making unprintable comments, which the paper had to take extra care in removing. This was apparently more based on the issue at hand, as the Post's other blogs have not experienced similar problems." What kind of precedent does this set for other mainstream news sites? What we'd consider a normal day around here has to look fairly intimidating to the average newspaper editor. Will this dissuade news sites from blogging in the future?
One of Pogue's observations, which is by no means original, was that this sort of thing is partially driven by anonymity. You can say the meanest, most unreasonable, stupid crap in an e-mail or blog comment, and there are no consequences. If you want, you don't even have to deal with the consequence of a reasoned reply or rebuttal.
The Post could employ some automatic filters to weed out some of the worst offenders, and thus it seems hard to believe their claim that it was requiring two full-time moderators to keep out the blog comments that violated their standards. Either those were some pretty heavy standards that made context such an issue that automated filtering was ineffective, or their web guys are pretty inept.
- Greg
Start a happiness pandemic
They might have to do what I've done with some of my blogs where this has become a problem; turn off comments. Granted, this makes it less of a blog and more of a newspaper...
Or, if they have the manpower review every comment before they go live. Commentors will live w/ a delay of their comment being posted.
FoundNews.com - get paid to blog.,
I've always been a little skeptical of "traditional" media blogging anyway. The whole thing smacks of embrace-and-extend co-opting of the otherwise independent spirit of the phenomenon.
Trouble making decisions? Just flip for it.
When you make your opinions public on messages boards, what do you expect? And coming from people who report on politics, which is a rough, dirty business. I guess this is just another example of the old guard not being able to cope with the future. Let them shut down and we can all move on. They won't be missed.
The "highly inflammatory personal attacks" included virtually NO foul language, and the responses were based on the fact that Ms. Howell perpetuated a Republican talking point (i.e. lie) that Democrats were just as guilty of taking tainted Abramoff money as Republicans. Most of the folks responding were suggesting what can only be the best course of action: Howell should resign, or the Washington Post should can her.
They wouldn't last 2 minutes posting and editing at Slashot! GNAA, Goatse... They'd flip! :-)
[FromTheMorning]
Looks to me like the comments, archived at the URL below, while biting and harsh, were not "hate speech" and had almost zero profanity:/ wapo/
http://www.democraticunderground.com/archive/2006
First - ever think that the primary job of the ombudsman is to find somebody a Bud when things get bad?
Second - it seems that most of the anger was from a comment that tied Abramoff to both democrats and republicans. Republicans, of course, want to say it's a problem for both sides - the old "Well, don't get mad at us - we were both bad!"
Democrats get mad at that because Abramoff evidently never *directly* gave money to any Democrats. Note the use of the word "directly", since Abramoff's firm *did* give money to some Dems, but nobody's found a Dem that got money right from Abramoff unlike some Repubs.
So now you get one side pissed off because of a percieved inaccuracy (and literally, they are right), and the other side feeling like they have to defend themselves (which they should), and then it's a flame war and OMG! LIKE THE END of the WORLD or something! Oh noes! Teh internets are on FIRE!
Either way, it seems like the Post just didn't handle their filter system. Slashdot and Digg and Kero5hin and a few others have the "self modifying system" - things like "anonymous users get lower views than registered users", "users can label people flamers/spammers/etc". The Post should have put that in first, or just put comments in a separate area so regular readers wouldn't be plagued by Dem and Repub fankids on either side mucking up the issue. Now, they have to throw away the baby with the bathwater (which is too bad, because babies don't like getting thrown into the dumpster. Or so I've heard.)
Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
there was a bunch of hate speech that made them shut down the comments, but rather, Howell claimed Democracts took money from Abramoff directly (they didn't, though, some of Abramoff's clients ALSO donated directly to democracts -- the clients being the same people Abramoff is accused of DEFRAUDING).
When confronted with the above, Howell defended her position and said "Democrats took money!" and refused to provide backup data or proof, which then turned into, "Oh, so you're a worthless piece of shit 'journalist', we get it." from the community.
The maths involved are surprisingly straightforward.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
We can only hope.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Really, this issue has come up before and handled in a myrid of ways. From having the content scanned for profanity before posting (easy to get around I know, but still), or a simple moderator setup. Post is added, email goes to moderator who reviews it and publishes it or not. Then close comments for a story a few days/week later so the moderator can focus on a new story.
Why is it that professioal corps can't deal with things like this, but geeks running their own websites have been handling things like this for years?
fak3r.com
She was a real bright and witty lady, although she did have a really nasty habit of picking her nose and eating the booger at meetings. This really grossed people out. Still a very nice woman.
I think that's the real problem.
Being very "liberal" with the truth isn't a good thing in a case like this.
http://mediamatters.org/items/200601180006
http://mediamatters.org/items/200601100008
http://mediamatters.org/items/200601100004
The thoroughly nonpartisan *cough!* democratic underground has a cache of all the original comments before the board was shut down. Frankly, it looks to me like the Washington Post's omsbusdman (woman) got her panties in a knit not over harsh comments, but over her unwillingness to respond to substantiative errors in her post.
I like coffee
I like tea
I like it when the girls pee on me!
There must have been one on the same subject to compare to.
Obviously, yes, there are different standards as last I checked the Washington Post does not print a "Boobies" or "Weiners" section, not that there's anything wrong with that...
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/annapolis/2006/01/d uncans_dough_1.html
Maybe they got hacked by the same guys from 2 articles ago :-)
Most of these journalists probably used to recieve a handful of actual letters detailing how stupid their article was back in the pre-web days. Really the only difference here is the volume and the anonymity (boy that doesn't look spelled right). Even if they were particularly nasty before, I doubt the editors or the powers that be ever decided to yank the articles. Don't see why it should be any different now. That being said, I know when someone posts mean things about me on a message board I curl into a little ball under my desk and cry.
There are arguments that can be made about keeping their customer base happy by baleeting bad language and there are arguments that can be made about them maintaining a professional atmosphere (i.e. deleting things they don't like) but my personal experience is that people who vet for "offensive content" usually don't. They vet for just plain-old content.
I've written many articles (mostly game review sites) that were deleted simply on the basis of them being negative. No swearwords or ASCII depictions of body parts, just well-reasoned thoughts that the moderator didn't think were valid points.
I'm tempted to submit a game review that gives a big-name game 10 out of 10 but has a detailed ASCII wang in the middle of it, just to see what happens...
But I digress.
I don't think it's ethical to provide a forum for public feedback and discussion and then censor it, flame-fests or not. If they don't want the flak that free speech brings them, they shouldn't have it in the first place.
All Hail the Maggott Show
Brady wrote that he had expected criticism of The Post on the site but that the public had violated rules against personal attacks and profanity.
Profanity? Wow, that's fucking serious.
What did he expect? Rather than shutting down why not set up a rating system like slashdot's so that trolls can be modded out of sight?
What TFA says and the summary misses is that closing the blog is in all likelihood a temporary closing. Jim Brady (the Post's website executive editor) is cited as saying that the barrage of tirades started eating up the time of two people just to keep deleting offensive posts, and that the blog will likely be reopened in the future.
So, what looks like it might be a case of self-censorship due to e-hooliganism is more of a sensible decision to cut the idiots off from their hate outlet and wait until they forget about the Post and focus on someone else instead.
I think it was hijacked by Dan Rather, using a PC borrowed from his friend the "Bush is Awol" whistleblower. You know, a typical Pentium three-mhz machine running the 1971 version of Microsoft Office with an Applesoft compiled version of "Internet Explorer".
By Doug Henwood
Don't get too far from the establishment.
--Walter Lippmann to Katharine Graham
File Lippmann's remark under the category of superfluous advice. Graham and the company of which she is "chairman"--she lists herself in the D.C. phone book as "Graham, Philip L. Mrs."--have never entertained a thought of straying from the establishment..
In 1933, when Graham's father, Eugene Meyer took control of the bankrupt Washington Post, it enjoyed only physical closeness to power. The paper badly needed the wealth and connections that Meyer had in spades: Over the years, he'd been a Wall Street banker, director of President Wilson's War Finance Corporation, a governor of the Federal Reserve, and director of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation. And Meyer wanted a soapbox. "People like to be told what to think," he once said, happy to oblige.
After World War II, when Harry Truman named this lifelong Republican as first president of the World Bank, Meyer made his son-in-law, Philip L. Graham, publisher of the paper. Meyer stayed at the Bank for only six months and returned to the Post as its chairman. But with Phil Graham in charge, there was little for Meyer to do. He transferred ownership to Philip and Katharine Graham, and retired.
Phil Graham maintained Meyer's intimacy with power. Like many members of his class and generation, his postwar view was shaped by his work in wartime intelligence; a classic Cold War liberal, he was uncomfortable with McCarthy, but quite friendly with the personnel and policies of the CIA. He saw the role of the press as mobilizing public assent for policies made by his Washington neighbors; the public deserved to know only what the inner circle deemed proper. According to Howard Bray's Pillars of the Post, Graham and other top Posters knew details of several covert operations--including advance knowledge of the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion--which they chose not to share with their readers.
When the manic-depressive Graham shot himself in 1963, the paper passed to his widow, Katharine. Though out of her depth at first, her instincts were safely establishmentarian. According to Deborah Davis' biography, Katharine the Great, Mrs. Graham was scandalized by the cultural and political revolutions of the 1960s, and wept when LBJ fused to run for reelection in 1968. (After Graham asserted that the book as "fantasy," Harcourt Brace Jovanovich pulled 20,000 copies of Katharine the Great in 1979. The book as re-issued by National Press in 87.)
The Post was one of the last major papers to turn against the Vietnam War. Even today, it hews to a hard foreign policy line--usually to the right of The New York Times, a paper not known or having transcended the Cold War.
There was Watergate, of course, that model of aggressive reporting ed by the Post. But even here, Graham's Post was doing the establishment's work. As Graham herself said, the investigation couldn't have succeeded without the cooperation of people inside the government willing to talk to Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.
These talkers may well have included the CIA; it's widely suspected that Deep Throat was an Agency man (or men). Davis argues that Post editor Ben Bradlee knew Deep Throat, and may even have set him up with Woodward. She produces evidence that in the early 1950s, Bradlee crafted propaganda for the CIA on the Rosenberg case for European consumption. Bradlee denies working "for" the CIA, though he admits having worked for the U.S. Information Agency--perhaps distinction without a difference.
In any case, it's clear that a major portion of the establishment wanted Nixon out. Having accomplished this, there was little taste for further crusading. Nixon had denounced the Post as "Communist" during the 1950s. Graham offered her suppo
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
But there were also two fundamental problems: (1) The Washington Post has printed demontrable factually incorrect statements concerning Abramoff, a lifelong Republican and key friend/confident of Grover Norquist, giving money to Democrats - which he did not (2) both the WaPo and WaPo.com (note: two different entities) utterly refusing to engage this question any any level. The closest they have come is to admit that their articles were "inartful" - when they were in fact wrong.
It is like the old problem with taking quality surveys: if you take a survey, and then don't do anything, your customers are left angrier than they were before. WaPo.com solicited feedback, received it, and then cold-shouldered its readers. Guess what the reaction was.
sPh
DCist had a good suggestion: Maybe the WaPo could consider a process to monitor comments and removing them one by one... using this magic resource called INTERNS.
Intelligent Design: because MATH is HARD.
Some people are posting "oh the comments weren't so bad" with a link to whatever used to be posted.
u ssion/2006/01/20/DI2006012000566.html
:)
That's because the comments you see being posted on other sites isn't really what they were concerned about. Of course, most people posting this apparently read DemocraticUnderground, so it's not really worth responding to them, but just in case anyone else falls for it.
Here's a link to discussion with the executive editor of the Post website:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/disc
See in particular:
Pensacola, Fla.: After reading the over 400 of the comments in question, which by the way, were saved by someone before they were removed, I saw no hate speech, one four letter word, and I can't imagine what you found so offensive as to remove them. Could you please explain exactly what problem you had with them?
Jim Brady: You were reading the ones that were posted live. There were a few hundred others that were removed the site altogether, and those would not be on the page you're looking at.
and:
Jim Brady: As I said earlier, that screen shot is only what was live, not what we blocked. There's no way for you to see what we blocked, and you should be happy about that, believe me. I learned some new words this week.
Of course, this is obviously spoken like someone who has never read Slashdot at -1.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
It's quite amusing to follow the so called "sandbox games".
Per Aspera Ad Astra.
It seems that the services shut down were user-comment driven. Presumably there's no problem with setting up a blog in the I-post-things-and-you-read-them sense. This was more of a wiki/message board. This is yet another argument for slashdot-style moderation. Why hasn't it caught on elsewhere?
A while back I was calling for the creation of a service that would create a slashdot-style thread corresponding to any website, which would be viewable in a browser frame at the bottom as you browsed. The site itself would in no way support or give permission for this -- it would be entirely independent. You'd just click the button on the bottom of your browser and view the thread for the page. This would be an incredibly useful service, and I almost guarentee that it will exist before too long. Imagine being able to read slashdot-type threads on any news story, immediately see feedback on any website deal, online store, or interesting site you run into on. Wanna know if it's a scam? Check what people are saying about it.
Basically, this is a wikipedia with an entry for every website, with the information in the form of moderated posts (which is much better if you want to avoid having information deleted; people can only respond and moderate, not edit.)
There is absolutely no technical barrier to it, someone just has to make it. I've taken a few cracks at it but I'm not a programmer and don't really know how to do this. If one of you builds it, they will come.
With moderation, the problems described in the Washington Post story could fade to the background, and suddenly every website and major news story would have blog comment threads attached. It would be valuable in the same way that Slashdot, Wikipedia, del.icio.us, and blogs on the whole are -- that is, it would show you what other people have to say about a topic, and it would fit perfectly around the structure of the web.
Someone build this, then in time add paid services, and get rich. I just want to use it.
xkcd.com - a webcomic of mathematics, love, and language.
Guess they did not have the old -1 Flaimbait.
Religion and politics, without the flame. godgab.org
Those of us on the "whacky left" are far more interested in facts and reasonable discussion than most of the right wing, which relies on a steady diet of whacky stuff from Limbaugh, Savage and others of their ilk.
What amuses some of us is when right wingers call us liberals when we aren't liberals are are quite critical of liberals.
But hey, when the right wing thinks that anybody to the left of Bill O'Reilly is a liberal, it's pretty pointless to discuss facts with them. You can't even talk to them. Just avoid them and keep them on the other side of the fence.
The article quotes the executive editor of the paper's website:
I'm sorry, you must be new here. Reasoned debate?!?!
She shouldn't make up stories about democrats because republicans are in the toilet.
Yeah, seriously. I'll never know what so enrages them when we teach our children the fact that God created the universe 6,000 years ago. Or the fact that homosexuals are child molesters by nature. Or the fact that we were greeted as liberators.
It was done by Freepers, www.freerepublic.com? Sounds like the sort of thing they would (and have) done.
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
The funniest, if not stupidest, part in the whole episode is that it has lead the Washington Post's ombudsman -- the ombudsman! -- to say the following: "From now on, I don't reply."
So the Post's supposed reader liason has just said she is no longer interested in doing her job. Great.
That, as has been repeatedly pointed out, DU posted the post-filtering comment log as evidence that no offensive comments had been posted just makes the whole thing sweeter, of course.
I'm a liberal, but that is an outrageous sweeping generalization about people that disagree with you, with which you put yourself in the group not interested in facts an reasonable discussions. Unless you have solid undisputable facts and reason to back up the claim that _most_ of the right wing are far less interested in facts and reasonable discussion than the "wacky left". You certainly presented nothing else than an inflammatory fact less claim, not unlike what you criticize others for.
I guess it is finally coming to the open, the long held big secret, that politics in the USA is eicredibly corrupt. I guess any republicans critical of the Abramoff affair have a point -of sorts; democrats are just as corrupt, they just haven't been caught yet.
The US really needs a reset of the political system, and lucky us, the Bush administration is going to provide us with one. By making the USA into some kind of banana republic dictatorship, politics won't matter anymore!
Any one want to bet who the next president is going to be? I'm putting my money on G. W. Bush.
Some say he is made with ascii, others that he is eyeballed daily by millions. All we know is, he is known as the Sig
... all anonymous posters that upset the Washington Post are now sitting in jail.
The full thread that was so "offensive" can be found here:
/ wapo/
http://www.democraticunderground.com/archive/2006
fak3r.com
This may help some people understand the nature of the dissent, albeit from a less than neutral stance: http://mediamatters.org/. If it's off the main page, look under Abrahamoff. I do not, however, advocate Media Matters, other than for a 'point of view'.
This wasn't just plain terrible, this was fancy terrible. This was terrible with raisins in it. - Dorothy Parker
Personally, I find it even more interesting that it comes a few days after the passing of the e-annoynance act (section 113 of the Violence Against Women and Department of Justice Reauthorization Act.) that says anonymous annoying e mail is a crime. (I wonder if that applies to campaign literature?)
I wonder what the odds are that the closing of that blog is going to show up as amicus curia briefs when challenges to the legality of section 113 are heard in court?
I was brought up in a era when journalists were some of the most respected people around. I really miss those times.
When I realize that the most respected journalist today by far is Jon Stewart, I wonder how we can sue the journalism schools for polluting the media. Not that I don't think Jon isn't a great comedian, and, actually, a pretty good journalist, but he and Amoss (whose a publisher, not a journalist) seem to be the only two ones who still believe in journalism.
Journalism has occupied an important place in our society since prehistoric times, it is sad to see it dying so ignomious a death. I would have expected there would be at least a few reporters who still respected thier profession enough to at least go down fighting.
Look at the facts:
t =R
http://www.capitaleye.org/abramoff_recips.asp?sor
Count the Democrats. I lost count at 80. Notice also the fun facts such as Corazine, an ultra-rich Democrat, receiving a bribe, and Charlie Rangel (D) receiving MORE of an abramoff bribe than "ethics problem poster child" Tom Delay (R).
You have large numbers of BOTH Democrats and Republicans receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes from Abramoff.
If you add it up, you will see that the Republicans received more. However, the large amounts of cash received by both negate any point of saying "yeah, but they are worse!" and it proves that the biggest lie is to deny that this is a completely bipartisan scandal.
Harry Reid (D) has been caught up in his own lie, and it makes him look very bad when he has declared that he will pocket his $30,500 Abramoff bribe (one of the highest on the list) because it is a "Republican scandal".
It's pretty bad to be caught with your hand in the cookie jar (like all these Republicans and Democrats on the list). It is even worse to be so craven as to actually leave your hand in the cookie jar when caught, as Reid is doing.
comment moderation? Newspapers don't publish every single letter that gets sent to them so I'm not sure why ever comment posted needs to even be published. Oh yeah I know someone is going to say that's abridging someone's speech but fuck it...It's a blog, not a democracy.
Will this dissuade news sites from blogging in the future?
Christ, I hope so!
Bummer. Too bad it is physically impossible to publish a blog without a commenting feature. If only there was a way!
Gee I guess it would be too hard to add like a 20 min. delay before a comment is posted and to hire 4 interns to read and remove offensive or slanderous material.
I never read the growing blog sections of newspapers because it is so poor. There is no editorial filter on accuracy or quality of writing.
The few blogs I read are almost always professional writers who comment on web pages as a sideline.
How much business did Jack Abramoff do on behalf of WPO?
Finding God in a Dog
I understand that Abramoff gave money to Republicans, and some of his clients gave money to Democrats. Now what I don't understand is what the big deal is. Why are his contributions any different than any other lobbyist? I thought this stuff went on all the time with all kinds of lobbyists...?
Not that I'm saying that something wrong wasn't done...but I just don't understand what was wrong, or why this particular case is such a big deal. Could someone explain?
Don't take life so seriously. No one makes it out alive.
Just in case anyone was wondering, it's the job of the ombudsman to deal with complaints. At a newspaper they are also meant to review the paper's reporting. So this lady makes an glaring inaccurate statement (which it is her job to guard against) and when met with the initial round of complaints she defends the statement, which causes further (more outraged) complaints. What does the lady do (remember it's her job to deal with reader complaints)? She freaks out and shuts down the comments. I can kind of understand a normal reporter not wanting to deal with complaints, but it's her job! In this case being thin-skinned == being under-qualified for the position.
As far as I'm concerned, the NYT and Washington Post are obsolete.
In our society, extremism is an equal opportunity disease that infects both sides of the bird.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
What kind of precedent does this set for other mainstream news sites? What we'd consider a normal day around here has to look fairly intimidating to the average newspaper editor
/. is pretty tame - yea sometimes we act up, but nothing that major. It is their blog, and if they want to take it down because various bad apples are spreading their poison then so be it. Freedom of speech is paramount - it is tantamount - and in our society it is an absolute right - many even saying it is a divine/natural right....however, given our planet and that some countries do not have this right - we should honor it and respect it. And just because we are allowed to open our mouths and let them flap, does not remove our responsibility from making what we say/write be respectful towards others.
It is about respect. You can voice your opinions without resorting to disrespectful attitudes (i.e. racism, slander, profanity, etc.). Compared to the rest of the net,
They did what they had to do.
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
Ooh. Scarcasm. You, sir, have a rapist wit! I bet the irony of my prior sentence even escapes you...
I do, however, agree with 2 out of 3 of your facts. You're so clever. You deduce which 2.
I find it odd that people post hateful comments or other more moderated comments denying facts that have appeared in many other newspapers, including some overseas (that this Abramoff guy is known as an all-out lobbyist who gets and throws money at anything that can make him richer or bribe someone to that affect, like it's just eyecandies) and that a blog has to be turned off for saying what everyone knows since a while.
Apparently, it's also easy for lobbyists and their friends to bark on a blog and have it shut down.
I should try with every blog saying GW is a nice buddy
I call bullshit: you're conflating contribution sources.
You say "an abramoff bribe", yet from your linked chart:
Here is a detailed look at Abramoff's lobbying, and political contributions from Abramoff, the tribes that hired him, and SunCruz Casinos, since 1999.
I clicked through on the top 20 dems by dollar amount, and NOT ONE got money from Abramhoff, Scanlon, or SunCruz Casinos. I'm sorry, but just because a group hires a lobbyist does not mean that every political contribution from that group is controlled by that lobbyist. I mean, fer chrissakes, there were tribes with gaming operations who were contributing to congressman Harry Reid (D-NV) for obvious reasons (Nevada, hello?). There were also tribes contributing to the congressman representing their district.
Clicking on the top 20 Republicans (or Repub committees) showed lots taking money directly from Abramhoff, Scanlon (his business partner), and SunCruz casinos.
It's hard to believe that those idiots didn't have moderated comments, anyways. I'm surprised more people haven't flamed them with unreasonable garbage since there is no review before posting.
Reviewing before posting is so darn simple to use - why wouldn't they use it? I couldn't imagine their blogs are that wildly popular.
Amazing how the NY Times is able to "deal with it" but the Post just crumbles and removes the blog. Idiots.
Maybe this Abramoff deal will light a fire under people finally.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
A reporter uncovers some corruption, with ties to the government, and all people can do is whine that one party got more attention than the other. As long as the information in her reporting was factual and pertinent, people should be thankful that the press is doing its job. The people who are complaining come across like a bunch of five-year-olds.
If you happen to be a Republican whose ass is all chapped because more attention wasn't paid to democrats, consider hiring your own damn reporter.
I don't know what all the fuss is about, but I'm pretty sure "ombudsman" isn't a word. It sounds like Swedish hors d'oeuvres.
Some may argue blogs give the average citizen a voice that can be read around the world. What it really does for the most part is give people with retarded opinions a voice to be read around the world.
Blogs are stupid and since we all know they are not going away, the Post is stupid for censoring the comments of their readers.
By Deborah Howell
Sunday, January 15, 2006; B06
The Post's two-year investigation into lobbyist Jack Abramoff's dealings is one of the best and most explosive pieces of investigative journalism this town has seen in a long time.
The story has moved inexorably from Abramoff being a top dog lobbyist to his pleading guilty to scamming Indian tribes and fraudulently buying a Florida-based fleet of gambling ships. With Abramoff's pleas, some members of Congress look as if they are moving swiftly to enact lobbying reform just ahead of the sheriff.
Susan Schmidt, a Post veteran of 23 years, has been the lead reporter since the story began to unfold in the fall of 2003; she was later joined by R. Jeffrey Smith and James V. Grimaldi. Their work has been supervised by editors on the national and investigative desks.
Schmidt is known at The Post for a remarkable ability to dig and develop broad and deep sources from all sides of a story.
A number of Post reporters -- but not Schmidt -- used Abramoff as a source before the scandal. He was often quoted in stories about Republican politics, fundraising, Jewish causes, the Capital Athletic Foundation he founded and his two restaurants. News reports described him as a "confidant" of then-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) and "influential" among conservative lawmakers.
In the fall of 2003, a lobbyist called to tip Schmidt that Abramoff was raking in millions of dollars from Indian tribes to lobby on gambling casinos. Schmidt started checking Federal Election Commission records for Abramoff's campaign contributions. Lobbyists also file forms with Congress that give information on clients and fees.
Schmidt quickly found that Abramoff was getting 10 to 20 times as much from Indian tribes as they had paid other lobbyists. And he had made substantial campaign contributions to both major parties.
"It was enough to get me interested," Schmidt said. She also came across Michael Scanlon, a former aide to DeLay who operated a public relations firm doing business with tribes.
Schmidt called tribal leaders around the country, looking for Indians who had access to information and were suspicious of Abramoff. Her first big story, on Feb. 22, 2004, revealed that Abramoff and Scanlon had taken an eye-popping $45 million-plus in fees from the tribes.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) began a congressional investigation, and the Justice Department started its own probe. Schmidt kept tabs on those, as she had done for six years as the lead reporter on investigations into the Clinton administration, including the Monica Lewinsky case.
One piece of information led to another; Schmidt was often ahead of the investigators. "It was incredibly complicated, an unbelievable, ingenious, enormous web of fragments" around Abramoff's deals, she said. Schmidt had only one interview -- in February 2004 -- with Abramoff. She said he lied about having no financial ties to Scanlon; federal investigators later showed they split fees.
Schmidt asked about the purchase of SunCruz Casinos, a story well known in Florida but not in Washington. "His reaction was so startled, so convulsive, that I knew I was onto something," she said. Schmidt and Grimaldi started looking at Abramoff and his stake in the SunCruz ships that took passengers into international waters to gamble.
Grimaldi and Schmidt spent days in Florida federal courts looking at SunCruz bankruptcy records. Grimaldi came across a bank loan application on which Abramoff listed as references Tony Rudy, then DeLay's deputy chief of staff, and Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.).
"The eureka find was that there were congressional links to this fraudulent casino deal. He had been telling local reporters that he had little to do with SunCruz. Yet the evidence was hiding in plain sight in court records," Grimaldi said.
One of the troves that kept the story expanding was Abramoff's e-mails. He was an inveterate e-mailer, and those e-mails found their way to Schmidt.
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
I find it dissapointing that CNet goes for the sensational headline and in the process reports factually incorrect news. The Post did not shut down the Blog - with all it's old media vs. new connotations. They turned off comments on their blog - quite a different story. I read lots of blogs that don't allow comments - I don't find that to be a big deal. While it is always nice to comment on a story directly, the web, with it's blogosphere linking, now avails anyone of the chance to post a comment to their own blog or to a blog linking to the story in question.
But the more frequent sensationalistic nature of how web news sites - whether owned by tradiational media or new - attempt to twist the story into something reactionary - that's a story I find no one writing about and one worth discussing.
If you look at (what I presume to be) the original article on the NY Times website, you see that they use a quite different headline "Paper Closes Reader Comments on Blog, Citing Vitriol" vs. what CNet puts on their version of the exact same story with the same author "Paper decides to close blog, citing vitriol".
Way to insert yourself into the news, CNet.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I'm sure liberals love the facts that communism has failed, war has solved problems like nazism, fascism, and slavery, and AIDS is still primarily in the gay/drug user populations.
Saying Bush is a Nazi, claiming Christians are as warlike as Islamic terrorist groups, and claiming that hurricane Katrina was racist or that U.S. gov't blew up the levies does not help either.
accusing the Washington Post (of all papers!) of having a pro-Republican bias
The key statement that seems to have started all this, that Democrats received money from Abramoff, or his firm, clearly is biased, in that:
Also, look up some of the statistics on their coverage of the topic of impeachment. They spent a lot more ink on lying about a blow job than they have about lying to start a war. That would seem to substantiate the claim of pro-Republican bias, or at least make it less absurd than you make it sound.
--MarkusQ
If there is an oversupply of loud bullshit it will drive the truth off the front pages.
At that point all you will see and hear is puff pieces and press releases. Its much easier
to sell the public bullshit they want to hear and if you have politicians selling the bullshit
the public wants , the media will eat it up.
Kind of a different point of view on it, though. It does sound like she has been parroting the RNC talking points, though. Y'all seen it?
i speak for myself and those who like what i say.
Abramoff's client's donations are the primary issue
So let me get this straight. If some guy gives money to the red cross and the boy scouts, and it later turns out that the red cross was bribing penguins, (by your logic) the boy scouts are somehow guilty of bribing penguins too, because they got money from the same donor?
The problem is not that Indian tribes donated money to politicians or to lobbyists. The problem is that some of the lobbyists paid elected officials to vote they way they wanted, and the politicians went along with it.
The rest is just FUD and smoke from the crooks and their cohorts.
-- MarkusQ
The internet is FOR slandering people anonymously! And screw you all too!
Than all her facts are allowed to be Mapes-believe.
Understand that the Post blogs are set to post "live" without moderator approval. When you hit submit it goes live on the site. This is unlike their live chats, in which all comments/questions must be approved by a moderator to appear on the site.
As a result, once it becomes clear a blog is being targetted with nasty language, comments, etc, someone at Washington Post has to sit there reloading the page in admin mode, looking for comments to hide. When every refresh brings up 10 new nasty comments, it becomes very difficult to keep up without devoting a bunch of people to it.
The final numbers according the Post chat today was around 1000 comments total, hundreds nasty. But the important statistic in terms of their ability to deal with it is time--how many people they had to have checking the blog for how long. A newspaper Web site is not exactly a "fat" operation and I doubt they could afford to have 2-3 staff members sitting around refreshing and hiding all day, instead of their normal tasks.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
"But hey, when the right wing thinks that anybody to the left of Bill O'Reilly is a liberal"
Actually, everyone to the right of him is a conservative, and everyone to the left of him IS a liberal. This is not a conservative viewpoint. Instead, it is a centrist one: a point of view of measuring from the political center instead of one's own extreme wing. O'Reilly, with his largely moderate views, and mix of conservative and liberal viewpoints, is a centrist. A lot of people have a problem dealing with and recognizing a centrist, especially an angry and opinioniated one like O'Reilly.
If someone thinks that the political center is somewhere in the middle of the left wing, then of course O'Reilly is conservative. Just like anyone who thinks that the political center is in the middle of the actual right wing thinks O'Reilly is a liberal. It is a matter of persective, and the ones that measure from only the extremes are incorrect perspectives.
Although I am happy that they shined the light on this, it seems the story is no longer about the Abramoff bribes, but about if Republicans or Democrats took more. The press, IMHO has shown that it has abandoned its watchdog duties since before the Rather scandal. The best thing to do would be to push for some kind of either reform (which won't work because there's too much benefit to the ones making the reform) or some kind of independent prosecutor to take a look at where money is coming from.
It would help if the legislature was split differently. The Senate was originally supposed to represent the states, and be appointed by the governor of each state, but now it's not much different than the House. Maybe the senate could be turned into a kind of anti-legislature whose only ability is to remove law from the books that are more than a decade old. This way, the Presidential veto keeps its power, law becomes less complex, and there is a real difference between the two legislating bodies. Because their duties are completely opposed to each other, one could be a watchdog to the other. This won't stop cross legislature deals, but it would make things more tricky.
Oh, that and a line-item veto amendment to eliminate ridiculous riders and we would be all set.
"Scientists don't change their minds, they just die." -- Max Planck
Sounds like a lot of people are mad as hell and aren't gonna take this anymore.
We have put up with so much deception from this adminisration and its cronies in the media and some people are starting to snap. I don't blame them. Despite the Republican propaganda machine's obvious lack of honesty, its words continue to be spread and believed as truth.
People want to believe that journalists are inherently honest, and when that belief is shattered, it hurts. Even a normally rational person, when hurt enough, can flame out.
It isn't necessarily the journalist's fault. Some of them are probably under pressure from the publisher to spin things and they just want to keep their job.
Nonetheless, I occasionally fantasize about beating the crap out of Bill O'Reilly...
SPIN THIS MOTHERFUCKER! (as I break his nose with my kneecap)
This is a snapshot cache of the board before it was shut down. Since the Post was hiding nasty comments as fast as it could prior to shutting down, this is not "a cache of all the original comments." This is simply a picture of all the comments that were not hidden at this point in time.
The only way to have obtained a cache of all the comments submitted would have been to somehow sniff them as they were submitted.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Look at how you try to weasel out of this with the excuse that they did not get money from Abramoff, but instead got money through him that really belonged to his clients.
Organizations like this like to launder money so it doesn't look like it comes from a bad place. From your message, I can see that this trick does fool some people, and that some do think that bribes are OK if properly laundered.
If this is the logic you are going to use to get the Democrats off the hook on this huge scandal (in which, financially, they are really 80% as dirty with bribes as the Republicans), you've got nothing to go on.
Gabriel's primary concern.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
Although I am happy that they shined the light on this, it seems the story is no longer about the Abramoff bribes, but about if Republicans or Democrats took more. There's one reason and one reason only that the focus has shifted away from the actual problem here ... the Republicans. By attempting to deflect the scandal by falsely accusing it at Democrats they have actually shifted the discourse. And it doesn't help that there are various pundits repeating the lie over and over (Rush Limbaugh, Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, etc.). The simple fact is that Abramoff did not have any fradulent dealings with Democrats. Why? Because he was exclusively dealt with Republicans as a general rule. It's that simple. The Abramoff scandal is an exclusively Republican scandal and by painting it as anything else the media is deceiving us.
Cyde Weys Musings - Scrutinizing the inscrutable
I wish I still had my mod points. I'd give you a +1 funny right now.
Klein bottle for rent - inquire within.
They hid them. They did not delete them.
From the chat today (emphasis mine):
"The reason was that shutting them all off together was just that it was the quickest way to remove the problematic ones that were starting to overwhelm our ability to get rid of them. But, you're right, there were lots of good posts, and over the next few days, we'll go back through them and restore the ones that did not violate our rules, though we're still going to leave comments off on that blog for the time being."
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Wasn't the central question of the blurb about how this will affect news sites and blogging. From my perspective, I doubt seriously that it will have a negative impact in terms of how many "news" sites will do it. Obviously there is technology available (as is evidenced by this site) that will eliminate much of the problem encountered in this situation (trolling, profanity, &tc.) the Repbulican/Democratic sibling rivalry is irrelevant.
The english language is in beta. It's evolving but has not yet reached a level of usability.
I think an issue here is do we want an open internet where people are allowed to fully express their beliefs, or a closed and moderaterd internet where the truth never comes out fully.I for one was glad when the internet first came out because it was an truthful alternative to mainstream news.
Obviously alot of people were angry at the article. So, do we want to pretend that anger does not exist? Does the blog owner only want positive comments or comments watered down from the truth?.
Now,I'm not approving of that type of posting, but it would seem to me that the news industry would want to hear the truth no matter how wide of a range it comes in.
The blog was open to the public. And the public responded. If they are going to remove the truth from readers, then the blog was usless. For that matter, even a newspaper would be usless if the truth was blotted out.
-=-=-=-=-
This has been another valuable and informative opinion from:
Catahoula!
The issue is whether lumping together donations directly from Abramoff, and anyone you can call a 'client' is fair. 'Client' includes Indian tribes that have been making donations since before he was even around. I don't think it is fair, especially to the Indian tribes. It is, however, politically useful.
-G
www.pixelstatic.com
The newspaper has no business blogging.
Let the author do it on his/ger own and take the glory and the heat for it- it's not what a newspaper is about.
Shame on them for pretending to blog and shame on them for cowarding out.
They should blog using slashcode and moderation.
The Post, for those who haven't bothered to read what it had to say about this, only closed comments. It did not shut down the blog.
The reason it did this was the excessive amount of time it was taking Post staff to police the comments and remove the one that weren't playing by the house rules.
Commenters here at Slashdot may get pretty excited sometimes, but I've seen nothing here to compare with the vitriolic character attacks, slander, and profanity that's common on a lot of political blogs.
This isn't the first time comments have closed on a blog because the commenters were offensive. It won't be the last. The Post cwas well within its rights, and the commenters need to remember that they have no right to post comments on any blogs. That's a privilege extended by the people running the blog.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Look at their premier broadcaster. No, not Fox news, Rush Limbeaugh. Screens his callers, no dissent, never accepts blame for anything, even when guilty of it.. Look at their premier "grass roots" online presence, "free republic". I mean, c'mon. Some of the most racist, hate filled no-nothings out there. I am NO fan of DU, I saw similar during the clinton regime, they would gloss over a lot of the weirdness that went down, but since the stupid party got into total power, freeps has been a non stop orgy of goose stepping and group denial. I saw so many references to advocating actual *genocide* that it made me want to puke. Their own leader is barely room temp IQ, and they can't look at any issue and accept any blame, or even admit even the tiniest built of guilt for supporting such corrupt buffoons. I used to post there until I noticed conservative after conservative got kick banned if they said anything against fearless leader, "the party", or exhibited anything but slavish devotion to the neocon liars of the mideast, the scandal plagued Likud party. Enough. I had to stop even calling myself a conservative because I want no part of any guilt by association. They've destroyed the economy, pissed off one billion muslims for no reason at all that makes any sense for the security of the US, set back foreign policy and alienated any goodwill we had with another half a billion in europe by at least a generation, increased debt to the point it affects the entire world's economy...and that's just the good points. The bad points are much worse. Let's start with hijacking elections, more or less what in any other country would be called an active coup. Then prior knowledge of 9-11 and letting it go down for political gain and more power grabbing. How about destroying the border and allowing in millions of illegals. Kowtowing to a distinct tiny minority and destroying science. Letting the billionaires rape all the manufacturing out of the nation, now they are going to do it with agriculture, so a few deep pockets agribizs can become a cartel for FOOD. How about ignoring the oil crisis? Ignoring katrina until it was too late to do anything but watch people drownd? Forcing the academy of science to publically distance themselves from the regime in power so they wouldn't be *embarassed* on the world academic stage. Now on to wars based on lies and getting another generation of young naieve high schoolers all het up to be "patriotic" and go get creamed for Haliburton profits?
On and on. Fascist pigs, no other words for it. Brown shirts, with black shirts hiding in there, just drooling at the prospect of getting to go to town inside the US, lead by a cult of the personality megalomaniac, an insane dry drunk who can't put two sentences together without sounding ridiculous.
The R party has become the party of violent drunk high school jocks, no matter what age they are, you know, the idiots who when they couldn't get a real job joined the army or became a cop, because that's all they know, a violent solution to every problem and a hearty FU to anyone who doesn't agree with them and lick their boots. I wash my hands of that party, never again a single R vote from me, no matter the election, position or purpose. If they claim to be an R, they are fascists as far as I am concerned. I'll take my conservative traditional constitutional business elsewhere.
"a big biased blog and a few editors who pick stories at random without checking them."
That's a pretty accurate description of most traditional media as well.
The stories follow a somewhat more stylized form (like Kabuki in theater), and there's less use of the first person, but beyond that it really is a lot of "people I know said this, and then I went somewhere, and some other people said that they saw someone do something."
The stories get chosen to keep the advertisers happy and corporate profits up, which means keeping the consumers interested but generally docile, with nothing that rocks the collective boat too much (otherwise the consumers stop consuming).
Traditional media is all blog - the blogs of corporate entities.
(I'm amused by how the Wall Street Journal is just a corporate version of LiveJournal or GroupHug - "I heard X really, really, really likes/wants to acquire Y" and "OMG, B is breaking up with C for D - B says the sex/forward looking 12 month earnings are soooo good!!!")
Try searching for "DSM-IV" and "301.7" - explains just about everything, doesn't it?
Well, then the media fell for the Republican spin, took their eye off the watchdog purpose, and let partisan bickering become the (boring) story. It's almost impossible to find out exactly what Abramoff did, or what the consequences are to him and the congressmen accepting money from him. Also, before reporting accusations, maybe the press could get off their butts and research to see if the accusations hold any water. It's as true now as with the Bush TANG letters. In fact, I think the press shouldn't report any accusation period. All that said, it's tempting to let the Republicans go on with their accusations, especially if accepting the money is enough of a reason to get kicked out of office, because then each party would be watching the other like hawks and we could benefit from a slightly more scrupulous congress.
"Scientists don't change their minds, they just die." -- Max Planck
who gives a fuck?
What we'd consider a normal day around here has to look fairly intimidating to the average newspaper editor.
What we'd consider a normal day around here would be considered ultra-conservative to many liberal blogs. I can't say this is wholely the result of the Slashdot moderation system, as it's still quite tame if you browse to -1.
The average comment to a liberal blog is vindictive, venting, foul, hating and cruel. These types of comments sometimes occur on conservative blogs, but only on the left side of the blogosphere considers it a cultural norm. Don't believe me, go read the blogs yourselves.
This is truly sad, because the mainstream liberal viewpoint is being drowned out in the filth and mire of the moonbats.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Some Indians want to operate casinos. Some Indians already operate casinos, and don't want other Indians to.
Abramoff works the latter.He manages to get one casino attempt blocked, by getting the glorious shining sack of shit Ralph Reed to pull in the sheople who think gambling is a sin. (Reed, of course, claims he was shocked, shocked, that the money from that casino was from gambling. Or something. The bastard is running for Lt. Governor in my state.)
So then that tribe hires him, (Surely without knowing that he got it shut down) to get it back on track, which he does. While he continues to work for the other tribe. This is illegal, and rather unethical.
Meanwhile, these tribes also give money to Republicans and Democrats alike who sit on the committee that is in charge of all this. Like they always have, except, probably at Abramoff's urging, that money flows more towards Republicans than Democrats than it used to.
Over in a completely different universe, Abramoff is bribing Republicans to vote in certain ways. I mean, flat-out, money-under-the-bathroom-stall bribery. These ways are unrelated to gambling, as far as we know, because Abramoff was merely playing both sides off each other and raking in the dough, and didn't actually care who won.
Someone will have to explain to me how Abramoff's bribery can 'backtrack' though his victims, who were giving him money. Because that seems to be the Republican talking point. In reality, the only reason the Indian tribes are involved at all is that he committed a completely seperate crime towards them!
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
The sad thing is this: I believe many (not all, but many) of the Republicans who made up Newt Gingrinch's "revolution" in 1994, who put together the "Contract With America -- I believe many of them started out as idealistic, honest men who genuinely wanted to reform Washington DC.
Voters believed that, definately. However, having been involved in the Republican party structure for some time prior to 1994, I am not convinced that Republican advisors believed in any of this. By advisors I mean folks like Norquist, Abramhoff, etc.
Newt Gingrich's "Contract" was something of a farce. After the election when not much of it got implemented he had a cute response "We only promised to talk about it... not pass it." When you look back now, Gingrich's ethics complaints against Democrats look like a murderer complaining about shoplifting. They created the appearance of ethics problems, so as to win the elections. Quite clever, really.
I think what happened was Republicans having been out of power for so long, decided the best way to get back into power was to deceive the system. That is on the surface they offered an agenda of reform, but it was instead a way to make the Government work for them, like it used to in the "good old days"(being defined as pre-Depression).
Now to understand this you really have to get rid of your preconceptions. Look at things as they are, rather than as they are described. These folks are better at propaganda than Pravda ever was.
For instance around this time was a big push by the Republicans to "privatize Government". Well what's that mean? Ostensibly it's supposed to be a way of saving money. Obviously, why should government do something like garbage collection when there are other companies that do it, right? It's a reasonable argument which I do agree with, similar to outsourcing of tasks in a corporation.
But the smart people in the advisor roles took it further. They realized if they changed the attitude and the rules... Well hey, there's an opportunity to be had here. It's legal Political Patronage. That is if Mr. Jones gives you lot's of campaign donations, well you just kind of steer that road building contract over his way.
I'm a skeptic, and I believe that these smart people advocated for the rule changes not because of the money savings, but because of the potential for patronage. You can make far more from a road contract than you can from a job as ambassador to Bolivia.
Now don't get me wrong. The Democrats had some of these same people, and probably still do. As long as their are parties there will be cronies.
But for some reason, the Republicans placed them in charge and loyally followed their lead.
I include in this Grover Norquist, Abramhoff obviously. But I think Pat Robertson and Ralph Reed and a slew of evangelical "religious" leaders are part of the brigade as well. Reed here was directly connected to Abramhoff and Norquist from their college days, and appears to have built up his religious creds solely so he could profit. Robertson is well known for his shady dealings with diamond mines and so forth.
Abramhoff is just the tip of the iceberg... the biggest scam ever perpetuated on the American People. The Politics was never about tax breaks, small government, cuts to welfare, any of that crap. It was all about siphoning money out of the treasury into certain people's pockets.
And the Freepers prove my point, way to go. For a buncha rightwing nutjobs, you're sure eager to defend yourselves when called out.
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
And the Rocky Publisher even included some of the hate words in his blog entry about it
Hulk SMASH Celiac Disease
Will this dissuade news sites from blogging in the future?
I can't imagine it will dissuade them from blogging in the past . . .
She, the ombudsman of the Washington Post, is responsible for fact checking and correcting the reporting of the Washington Post. That's her only job. That, and communicating with the readers about her job.
She repeated a lie, a continuing falsehood thats running through the New Balanced Press via Carl Rove and his talking points. She repeated, and remember, she's the fact checker extrordinaire, that the Democrats took Abramov's money. It is absolutely false, and well reported now, that no Democrat was given a farthing by the bribe king.
The entire purpose of the "K Street Project" was to place Republican staffers into all the lobbying groups on K street, and divert all useful monies into the Republican coffers one way or another. The obvious corollary effect was to starve the Democrats. Surely you've all noticed how flush they've been since Gingrich and the Revolution of 1994.
They are out there alone, and they want to take a few Demos down with them, falsely, to taint their enemies and at least get a pass from the voters for being at least equally as vile as the Democrats.
The Democrats, and it is all public record, got not a penny from Abramov. They got money from clients of Abramov, but they weren't getting it for access -- they have NO access -- they have no power in Congress, the courts, the lobbying companies, or the White House. K Street saw to that.
This is the Big Lie technique. And WaPo's ombudsman could have checked the fact out on Nexis-Lexis or Google in three minutes, tops. But, like so many other "Balanced Journalists", she's getting her info from her fellow reporters and right-wing propaganda outlets.. There's no other way to explain it.
And now, instead of simply regretting the error, she's setting a fire and using the smoke as a screen for her now nakedly partisan and/or lazy position.
Case closed: a large number of people now have heard the Big Lie, and it is now "Fact".
...and his clients, a fact amply documented here. To wit:
"National Democrat Party Affiliated Committees Received Over $1.2 Million from Lobbying Associates Of Jack Abramoff. (Campaign Finance Analysis Project Website, Accessed December 7, 2005;
Political Money Line Website, , Accessed December 7, 2005; Internal Revenue Service Website, www.irs.gov, Accessed April 21, 2005)
The Democrat Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) Received Over -$430,000
The Democrat Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) Received Over -$629,000
The Democrat National Committee (DNC) Received Over - $177,000
Incumbent Senate Democrat-Affiliated Campaign And Leadership Committees Received Over $729,000 From Indian Tribe Clients And Lobbying Associates Of Jack Abramoff*. (Campaign Finance Analysis Project Website, , Accessed December 7, 2005; Political Money Line Website, ,
Accessed December 7, 2005; Internal Revenue Service Website, , Accessed April 21, 2005)
40 Of The 45 Members Of The Senate Democrat Caucus:
Senator Max Baucus (D-MT) Received At Least - $22,500
Senator Evan Bayh (D-IN) Received At Least - $6,500
Senator Joseph Biden (D-DE) Received At Least - $1,250
Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) Received At Least - $2,000
Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) Received At Least - $20,250
Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA) Received At Least - $21,765
Senator Tom Carper (D-DE) Received At Least - $7,500
Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) Received At Least - $12,950
Senator Kent Conrad (D-ND) Received At Least - $8,000
Senator Jon Corzine (D-NJ) Received At Least - $7,500
Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT) Received At Least - $14,792
Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND) Received At Least - $79,300
Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) Received At Least - $14,000
Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) Received At Least - $2,000
Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) Received At Least - $1,250
Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) Received At Least - $45,750
Senator Daniel Inouye (D-HI) Received At Least - $9,000
Senator Jim Jeffords (I-VT) Received At Least - $2,000
Senator Tim Johnson (D-SD) Received At Least - $14,250
Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA) Received At Least - $3,300
Senator John Kerry (D-MA) Received At Least - $98,550
Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA) Received At Least - $28,000
Senator Pat Leahy (D-VT) Received At Least - $4,000
Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) Received At Least - $6,000
Senator Joe Lieberman (D-CT) Received At Least - $29,830
Senator Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) Received At Least - $14,891
Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) Received At Least - $10,550
Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) Received At Least - $78,991
Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL) Received At Least - $20,168
Senator Ben Nelson (D-NE) Received At Least - $5,200
Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) Received At Least - $7,500
Senator Mark Pryor (D-AR) Received At Least - $2,300
Senator Jack Reed (D-RI) Received At Least - $3,500
Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) Received At Least - $68,941
Senator John Rockefeller (D-WV) Received At Least - $4,000
Senator Ken Salazar (D-CO) Received At Least - $4,500
Senator Paul Sarbanes (D-MD) Received At Least - $4,300
Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) Received At Least - $29,550
Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) Received At Least - $6,250
Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) Received At Least - $6,250"
Since liberals have pinned all their hopes of regaining Congress in this year's election, the bipartisan nature of the Abramoff scandal is a truth which must be surpressed at all costs.
The system that allows the federal government to pick winners and losers with your tax dollars is the real problem. You won't get the money out of politics until you get the politics out of money.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
That's a more likely story, anyway.
After all, why give "campaign contributions" to a party that's almost completely shut out of power at the federal level when you want to influence federal actions?
Do you really think one crooked thug could cause that big a change in the spending patterns of lobbyists in Washington?
each time they can force a blog that speaks the truth to shut down.
Pretty soon there will be no opposition to their voice anywhere.
So this is what it was like to be in Germany in the winter of 1933.
Indeed, that may be the motivation behind the tribes lowering their contributions (Abramoff's own emails notwithstanding). But the motivation to STOP giving money to a politician is hardly evidence of corruption, and corruption is what the poster claimed to be showing.
Whether the Democrats were uninvolved in this particular corruption scandal because of their lack of power or their moral virtue is a moot point -- they aren't involved, no matter how the Republicans try to spin it as "we're all corrupt" (which is a heck of a defense no matter how you look at it!).
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
LOL. Tribes have always given campaign contributions to democrats. It's the traditional thing to do.
So along comes Abramhoff, and he convinces some tribes to give some money to republicans. In addition, he's a corrupt scumbag, and is more than happy to feed off of equally corrupt republicans.
Now, to try and sling as much mud as possible and drag other people into this mess, the republicans are whining that the democrats got money from tribes too, as if the fully legal donations that have been going on openly for decades has anything to do with what the republicans have done.
I think an issue here is do we want an open internet where people are allowed to fully express their beliefs, or a closed and moderaterd internet where the truth never comes out fully.
Point noted. Read response below.
The blog was open to the public. And the public responded. If they are going to remove the truth from readers, then the blog was usless.
As I understand it, the newspaper owns the website, and can arbitrarily decide at any time put up or remove any text on any page. What makes it an open Internet is that such actions have no direct effect on what's on any other website.
You can go to godaddy and for just an amazingly few dollars get your very own domain name and hosting, and put up your rants^wFree Speech Writings to be made readable by people all over the world, and there's nothing the Big Bad Newspaper's Website can do about it.
Other websites (including yours) may have commentaries on the newspaper site's contents, or even mirrors of the deleted content (perhaps on a server in a contry not recognizing or only weakly enforcing copyright).
You appear to be arguing that if a newspaper's website solicits comments, that it is somehow a public service and should keep all submitted comments available. Websites aren't public or community property, they are the property of the website owners.
For that matter, even a newspaper would be usless if the truth was blotted out.
A newspaper prints what the editor (and/or owner) allow and decide to be printed. Freedom of the press literally belongs to those who own the presses.
OTOH, Radio and Broadcast Television ARE considered "public property" and are highly regulated by the FCC.
Tag lost or not installed.
This makes no sense: if a blog gets mean comments, disable comments! Yet story says that bad comments force Washington Post to shut down entire blog? Either this story is very misleading, or Post folks aren't all that smart.
Penny - plain text accounting
The venerable Obscurestore got comments when Romenesko moved to typepad.
And very shortly afterwards comments were suspended due to unruly users (as we say, the comments were RomeneskOWNED!!!@#1!)
To see this happen to the WaPo is completely predictable. Michelle Singletary had a lot of hateful posts to her moderated online chat after she criticized Bill Cosby. Since it was moderated, the offensive posts weren't shown, but she was obviously ticked off by the whole deal.
And after a while you hit a global truth about the Tragedy of the Commons; If there is no barrier for entry, then any immature, overzealous crackpot can spoil the resources for everyone.
Which leads to either having moderators (who will have to be compensated) or a paid admission.
Money; seperating me from the riff raff.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
The Post.Blog wasn't closed down - comments were disabled. The New York Times corrected the article.
"Correction: Jan. 20, 2006: An earlier version of this story reported incorrectly that The Washington Post had closed a blog. The blog has not been shut; it has stopped accepting comments from readers."
disclaimer: i'm an intern at washingtonpost.com; my words are solely mine and not the Company's
this is dumb. don't report the wapo's case as fact. they were no obscene comments, and while there was a lot of opposition to the ombudsman's original article, it was mostly factual opposition. For instance, many pointed out the Post's lack of attention to detail by noting that Abramoff did NOT give any money directly to democrats. The Post is making the assumption that Abramoff clients were giving money to democrats because Jack asked them to. They say they have proof, but they have yet to publish it. What are they waiting for? The ombudsman's job is essentially to have a dialogue with the readers of the washington post. She has not only failed, but neglected to even try. This post gives a slanted view of the issue, and should be updated/corrected.
But they didn't take my submission. Possibly because I also mentioned that shutting down the blog as they did might drive the assholes to poison all the other blogs as well. Which are already fairly nasty.
The revolution will NOT be televised.
Probably. The Washington Post, like the old Grey Bitch in NY, is accustomed to being everywhere accepted as the beacon of truth and the source of political consensus. It's bullshit, now more than ever. But the big papers are going to have to rethink their model, because they can't keep up the act and yet allow readers to respond to what appears in their paper.
It doesn't take much effort to design a comment posting feature that filters profanity. Framing this as some sort of big blow to the concept of weblogs is just silly.
For those still following this thread, an archived version of the page with the later-deleted comments has been put on Democratic Underground. Discussion about this at Daily Kos, including a list of which comments were specifically deleted.
http://blogs.washingtonpost.com/washpostblog/
post.blog
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washingtonpost.blog etc. Right where it's been. Nothing to see here folks.
The blog 'WaPo Lies' has some of the comments that were deleted. Strangely, the creator of 'WaPo Lies' seems to think that posting this stuff will actually help the left-leaning cause.
;-)
I only find a few of the saved-and-reposted comments really offensive... for example, the 'Thurston Howell' one below. But almost all are useless and insulting spam. The sad thing is that these people don't realize that the Washington Post is actually doing them a huge favor by hiding those childish rantings from a wider audience. These kind of comments really do not help to win people to your cause.
I reproduce a few comments in their entirety below:
---
Deborah Howell is a GOP hack. I cannot countenance the Washington Post getting any support from me while she continues to be employed.
Posted by: elliottg | Jan 15, 2006 5:32:56 PM
Would you please do us all a favor and fire this broad Howell? We don't need anyone else glibly spouting GOP lies. You dig, Clyde?
Posted by: Frank Sinatra | Jan 15, 2006 5:37:34 PM
Would you please fire DEBrah?
Posted by: Ã"ÂÃ" | Jan 15, 2006 8:59:04 PM
Ho, Ha,
Fun is fun but I must disclaim any marital relationship to this Debora Howell person. As I hear it she is the remarried famous first wife of the late comedian, Sam Kennison who referred to her by the pet name of, "LYING LITTLE BITCH! AAARRRRGGG!"
Itâ(TM)s ever so obvious when you think about it. Is it not?
Yours Truly,
Thruston Howell III
Posted by: Thurston Howell III | Jan 15, 2006 9:01:27 PM
how much is Deb Howell being paid to whore for the rpublicans??? get the facts, not the spin....
Posted by: unbelivable | Jan 15, 2006 9:04:29 PM
Comment removed based on user account deletion
making jokes couched in ignorance. How very... normal. Hey AC - your president is a shitbag and a draft-dodger.
"Our interests are to see if we can't scale it up to something more exciting," he said.
Salon, the only place for news:
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/01/21/ombud sman/
Whipping the Post
The Washington Post put a lid on angry readers by removing a letters blog from its Web site. Now the paper's ombudsman defends her assertion that crooked lobbyist Jack Abramoff "directed" money to Democrats.
By Farhad Manjoo
Jan. 22, 2006 | "I was imprecise," Deborah Howell, the Washington Post's ombudsman, says in an interview Friday afternoon. "It was a mistake. I don't consider it a huge mistake, but it was a mistake, and I'll correct it."
Howell is referring to a comment she made in her column on Jan. 15 that the lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who has pleaded guilty to corruption charges, gave money to Democrats as well as Republicans. The column spawned a storm of hate mail to Howell. Readers insisted her assertion supports the Republican spin of the scandal -- that Democrats were as deeply in bed with the disgraced lobbyist as Republicans.
On Thursday morning, under an avalance of angry letters, Howell responded on the paper's Web site that what she should have said was Abramoff "directed" money to both parties. Which only incited a new wave of anger. One reader fired back: "As others have stated, there is NO EVIDENCE that Abramoff 'directed' tribes to donate to Democrats. None." Another one said: "Please stop with these weak justifications of your reprinting of GOP spin points."
By Thursday afternoon, the tide of reader hate had grown so strong -- and, according to the Post, so vile -- that Jim Brady, who edits the paper's Web site, decided to shut down the commenting feature on post.blog, a Web page that the Post created as an open forum for readers to express their opinions about the newspaper.
Speaking to Salon from her office at the Post late on Friday, Howell says she intends to set the record straight in a column appearing in Sunday's paper. Her story is that while the Abramoff scandal isn't totally bipartisan, the paper has uncovered documents that show that Abramoff told his Indian tribe clients to donate to Republican as well as Democratic lawmakers.
Howell says she stands by the Washington Post's reporting, which shows that Abramoff sent his clients lists of lawmakers whom they ought to give money to; these lists included the names of Democrats. As she noted on post.blog on Thursday, one such list can be seen on the Post Web site here. It shows a document that Abramoff sent to the Louisiana Coushatta tribe, telling them to write checks to organizations and lawmakers on both sides of the political spectrum.
What Howell doesn't address, though, and what many readers have pointed out, is that while it may be true that Abramoff told his clients to give money to some Democrats, and it may be true that some of these clients did in fact donate to Democrats, this chain of events doesn't show that Abramoff exerted any influence over these Democrats. In fact, other news outlets have reported that after Abramoff signed on to lobby for specific tribes, their contributions to Democrats fell. At the very least, this indicates that while Abramoff's tribes may have given money to Democrats, it was Republican lawmakers he was pressing them to cultivate.
To begin with, it's not clear the Indian tribes donated to Democrats just because Abramoff told them to -- the tribes may have been meaning to donate to key Democrats anyway. For instance, Rep. Patrick Kennedy, a Democrat from Rhode Island, who collected $128,000 from Abramoff's tribal clients, maintains that the tribes gave him their money because he's been good to tribes. In 1997, Kennedy co-founded the Congressional Native American Caucus, and he has a personal friendship with Phillip Martin, chief of the Mississippi Choctaw tribe, as his spokesman told the Post in June. In addition, even if Abramoff did "direct" this money to Democrats, as Howell wrote, nobody can say that the Democrats who got money from
Never quote facts to the crazy right, it drives them around the bend the other way ;)
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Just like Slate, WashingtonPost.com is an independent subsidiary of the Washington Post Company. WashingtonPost.com licenses Post newspaper content in addition to developing its own content, and supports itself through advertising, partnerships, and online services (like WashingtonJobs.com). It's as "fat" as any other content-based, ad-supported Web company, i.e. not fat at all.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.