Don’t get caught flat-footed in front of the press! Below is a quick rundown of today’s “must reads.” If you see an article that interests you, scroll down to read it in full. – John T. Doolittle, House Republican Conference Secretary

THE MORNING MURMUR – Friday, June 17, 2005

1. The master plan for party suicide – Washington Times
Editor in Chief Wesley Pruden points out that neither The Washington Post nor the New York Times found room yesterday to report on Sen. Durbin’s controversial remarks but Al Jazeera quickly broadcasted the Senator’s remarks to the Arab world in fulsome detail.

2. A Nonstory Unraveled– Washington Times
Counters a previous Washington Post article that portrayed Speaker Hastert as an excessive spender. Compares the Speaker to Minority Leader Pelosi who has out-spended him 10-fold.

3. Policies already transparent – USA Today Editorial
Rumsfeld effectively defends Gitmo.

4. Congress's Tobacco Addicts – Wall Street Journal
The real reason Democrats are deriding the new tobacco settlement numbers sought by federal prosecutors is that it means less revenue for their programs.

5. PFA Vows $18M Spree on Judges – Roll Call
Progress for America plans to spend a minimum of $18 million on a TV and grassroots campaign in anticipation of a Supreme Court vacancy later this summer.

FULL ARTICLES BELOW:


1. The master plan for party suicide – Washington Times

By Wesley Pruden
June 17, 2005

The Democrats must have a master plan, based on polling that has penetrated deep into those secret places of the heart that George Gallup and John Zogby have yet to plumb.
Otherwise, the constant focus on sins, mistakes and misadventures at the military prison at Guantanamo, which has surely reached its illogical conclusion in the hysteria of Richard Durbin, the Democratic chief of sordid Senate hyperbole, is a suicide pact.

Responsible inquiries into the behavior of guards and their supervisors at Guantanamo are not only reasonable, but necessary. Close observation is only right and proper. Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely, and there's no absolute power quite like the corrupting power of wardens, guards and interrogators. They must be watched lest they absorb the brutality of the guarded.

But the Democrats, in their desperate search for an alchemist who can turn Iraq into Vietnam, stumble into one soft cowpie after another. Harry Reid called the president "a loser," and that didn't work. Howard Dean mocked Christians for both race and faith, and fell over backwards. Dick Durbin thought he had the formula, telling how an FBI agent told him interrogators at Guantanamo chained an al Qaeda terrorist to the floor, turned up the air-conditioning, turned on a hip-hop recording and dialed up the decibels. Making someone, even a terrorist, listen to hip-hop may well be beyond the ordinary limits of civilized behavior, but what can Mr. Durbin and his colleagues expect ordinary Americans to make of this: "If I read this [e-mail] to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime -- Pol Pot or others -- that had no concern for human beings. Sadly, that is not the case. This was the action of Americans in the treatment of their prisoners."

His Democratic colleagues, despairing of buttoning the lip on the fattest mouth in the United States Senate, tried yesterday to avoid the senator and his firestorm, much like embarrassed parents whose four-year-old used the f-word in describing to dinner guests what daddy said to mommy. Harry Reid first hid between a bookcase and the Xerox machine and sent a female aide out to take the heat. She could tell reporters only that Mr. Durbin had "spotlighted" a problem and everyone ought to take "the FBI's concerns" seriously, although the FBI had said nothing at all about "the problem."

Hillary Clinton, having wrapped up the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination and eager not to offend allies before actual campaigning starts, insisted that she hadn't read "the senator's speech." When a reporter read the offending passage to her she could only say, primly, that she had nothing to say.

If true, the senator's revelations that American war crimes at Guantanamo, consisting mostly of irreverent attitudes toward the Koran, had caught up with the atrocities of the Holocaust (9 million dead, including 6 million Jews), Stalin's gulags (2.7 million dead) and Pol Pot's Cambodian attempt at genocide (1.7 million dead) were surely the story of the new century, but the party's friendly press organs tried to look the other way. Neither The Washington Post nor the New York Times found room in yesterday's editions to report the controversy. But there was no press lollygagging in the Islamic world. Al Jazeera, the Arab-language network that regularly broadcasts dispatches from Osama bin Laden's cave, quickly put up the Durbin remarks in fulsome detail.

The firestorm appears to be tempering whatever steel may be in the spines of Republicans who only 36 hours ago were ready to abandon Gitmo and maybe even the GIs in Iraq. Last night, the senator himself hit the fan on the floor of the Senate. John Warner, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, demanded an apology.

Mr. Durbin blamed "the right-wing media" for reporting his remarks. Mitch McConnell read his remarks back to him and asked if he had actually said something so outrageous. Harry Reid reminded everyone that Dick Durbin had once been a Boy Scout, and besides, he does, too, love American soldiers. Robert Byrd got the floor and changed the subject to Father's Day. Then Jon Kyl of Arizona resumed the drubbing of Mr. Durbin.
As Dave Barry might say, I am not making this up. Don't the Democrats wish.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/pruden.htm


2. A Nonstory Unraveled – Washington Times

By Robert B. Charles
Published June 17, 2005

On Page One of The Washington Post, Memorial Day Weekend, appeared this story: The Republican speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Illinois' J. Dennis Hastert, is attacked for having "earmarked $24 million" to recognized "nonprofit groups since becoming speaker in 1999."

These groups -- surprise -- are in his congressional district. They include a university grant for teacher training, a hospital grant for medical equipment, including "lab information systems" and "fetal monitoring," support to "health programs for women and children," assistance for "low-income families" and aid to a nonprofit teaching skills to the disabled. And the story? There is none.

Why the inflammatory headline, "Hastert directs millions to birthplace"? Aren't members of Congress expected to seek resources for their districts? Yes, until we banish taxes, our Constitution directs that 535 members of Congress figure out how to spend federal revenues. Today, this means allocating literally trillions of dollars to 281 million Americans.
Why the attack on Mr. Hastert's $24 million?

(1) He is a fiscal conservative, which makes him a prime target for a federal spending story. The implication is his constituents deserve nothing, since he advocates lower federal spending.

(2) He is a friend and colleague of Majority Leader Tom Delay, recently battling House Democrats and prime-time television to regain a sullied reputation. Mr. Delay has yet to get a fair hearing, but swipes at Republican leadership are now, apparently, in vogue.

(3) Mr. Hastert is just too straight-shooting, honest and unprickly for reporters who love intrigue. He was an unsung high school teacher for 16 years, has a brother and wife who have taught at least that long, worked tirelessly for decades on health-care legislation, and cares instinctively about the common folk in his birth-district.
But that won't cut it. There must be more to a top conservative's support for the good people of his district.

Well, in fact, there is a bit more. His district is one-third Hispanic, with a rightful claim to targeted educational support. Beyond hospitals, it has the dubious distinction of having one of the highest lead poisoning levels in the country -- with a record-setting 1,660 cases last year on Aurora's East side alone, creating a legitimate claim on medical support.
More to the point, Mr. Hastert's district has a lower median income than half the country -- lower, for example, than the median income of the San Francisco district represented by top Democrat and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.

On closer examination, the real story is that House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert received far less federal money over the last three years than did his opposite number, the leading Democrat and House Minority Leader... Nancy Pelosi.

How much more did Mrs. Pelosi receive than Mr. Hastert? About 10 times more. A close examination of the last three years, invited by The Washington Post's story, is revealing.
Between 2003 and 2005, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, by her own admission, racked up more than $300 million in federal dollars for her district, much of it for little-known nonprofits. By way of example, Mrs. Pelosi boasts pulling down:
• $1.4 million to "retrofit" a "Conservatory of Flowers."
• $32 million for local Homeland Security.
• $55 million for "Bay Area ... Wetlands Restoration," including a multimillion-dollar "study of erosion" at "Ocean Beach," "drift removal" and "a strategy... to dispose of dredged material in an environmentally sound manner."
• $2.5 million to revitalize a post office "parade ground."
• $20 million for HIV/AIDS initiatives.
• $5 million for research on "protecting American troops from chemical and biological threats" (despite her view that there were none in Iraq).
• $5 million for the University of California's alcoholism center.
• $3 million for muscular atrophy research.
• $2 million to research "the effect of lifestyle and diet" on cancer.
• $120 million for local transportation projects, including San Francisco's subways, "bikeways," bridges and $2 million for "85 vehicles" that are part of "City Carshare, a nonprofit" in San Francisco.
• $2.4 million to test "a zero emission... ferry."
• $25.5 million to "preserve landmarks," including $4.2 million for a "lumbering schooner," more for an "immigration museum," "Filipino Cultural Center," "dome" on Market street, and other "historic treasures."
• $2 million for the University of San Francisco's "Center for Science and the Environment."
• $400,000 for a "Charity Cultural Center" on Asian Immigrants.
• $200,000 for the Hastings College "Gender and Refugee Studies" program.
• $350,000 for "minority nurse training."
• $150,000 for a "health and environmental resource center."
• $1 million for "park access and trails."
•$591,000 for "the International Museum of Women."

And the list goes on. All this produces -- a real story. Taking a shot at one honest congressman who happens to be the speaker gets you nowhere. Mr. Hastert is a model congressman, serving both his district and America with fidelity, balance, proportion and decency.

If you want to see old-fashioned pork barrel spending at its unbridled best, look no further than the "leadership bounty" claimed by one top member of the other party.
There, my friends, is your $300-million Page One story.

Robert B. Charles is the former assistant secretary of state for international narcotics and law enforcement, 2003-2005, and a former member of the staff of Rep. J. Dennis Hastert.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/commentary/20050616-105501-9696r.htm


3. Policies already transparent – USA Today Editorial

By Donald Rumsfeld

Arguably, no detention facility in the history of warfare has been more transparent and received more scrutiny than Guantanamo. There have been numerous visits from members of the news media, congressional representatives and the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Last year, the Department of Defense declassified highly sensitive memorandums on interrogation techniques. Unfortunately, they were documents that are useful to terrorist operatives, but we posted them on the Internet specifically to set the record straight about U.S. policies and practices.

The latest calls for Guantanamo's closure were prompted by a series of news accounts about alleged mistreatment of the Koran. America has gone to unprecedented lengths to respect our enemies' religious sensibilities — including detailed regulations governing the handling of the Koran and broadcasting the five daily calls to prayer required by the Muslim faith over loudspeakers.

investigated and the perpetrators punished. It also must be remembered that we know with certainty that al-Qaeda members are trained — and a training manual has been obtained — to allege abuse and mistreatment while in custody.

Our goal as a country is to detain as few people as is possible and is safe. We prefer to return them to their countries of origin if the country is capable and willing to manage them in an appropriate and humane way.

As the president has said, we are always looking for ways to improve our procedures. And of course we have been looking for better suggestions as to how to manage detainees who pose a lethal threat to the civilized world, and we have already implemented dozens of reforms.

The real problem is not Guantanamo Bay. The problem is that, to a large extent, we are in unexplored territory with this unconventional and complex struggle against extremism. Traditional doctrines covering criminals and military prisoners do not apply well enough.

It is important to remember that the purpose of detaining these enemy combatants is not to punish them for committing a crime, but to gain intelligence about terrorist operations and to prevent them from attacking again. We have gained intelligence at Guantanamo that have stopped terror attacks and saved American lives.

Donald Rumsfeld is the secretary of Defense.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2005-06-16-oppose_x.htm


4. Congress's Tobacco Addicts – Wall Street Journal
June 17, 2005; Page A14

The Justice Department's decision last week to reduce the amount of money it's seeking to settle a lawsuit against Big Tobacco has addicts worried. No, not the smoking addicts. We're referring to the spending junkies in Congress ogling an even larger share of tobacco industry revenues.

Congressional Democrats claim to be outraged, shocked, horrified that government prosecutors now plan to seek only $10 billion in damages in the six-year-old suit, instead of the $130 billion previously sought. Career prosecutors who've wasted a half decade of their lives on this case are leaking internal memos in order to show that -- hold onto your hats -- politics might have something to do with the decision. All we can say is, we certainly hope so. It's about time the Bush Administration figured out that this entire exercise has been a monumental waste of the government's time and resources.

The tobacco case has been a stinker since the Clinton Administration first filed it in its waning days. The Clintonites stretched the RICO statute to claim that the tobacco industry was a "racketeering" enterprise that had spent 50 years gulling smokers about the health risks of their habit. These are the same smokers who have read warning labels on cigarettes for the last 40 of those 50 years. Justice originally sought $280 billion -- the amount of allegedly ill-gotten industry profits, plus interest.

Then in February, an appeals court barred Justice from seeking that amount on the grounds that the law requires "forward-looking" remedies. This was a huge blow to the case, and ample reason for Justice lawyers to consider settling the entire thing without risking a loss in court. Instead, the lawyers slogged on like a zombie army, trying to fashion a remedy around restricting tobacco companies' future conduct.

The only problem here is that this is largely redundant in light of the 1998 Medicaid tobacco settlement with states, which already fundamentally changed the way cigarettes are marketed in the U.S. There's a reason you haven't seen Joe Camel lately. In a country where federal, state and local governments so closely monitor the way Philip Morris, R.J. Reynolds and others do business, it's hard to argue that there's a reasonable likelihood of future violations.

If all of this only just occurred to the government, after seven months of testimony and some $135 million worth of preparation, we can be grateful for small favors. Whether the tobacco companies will agree to the government's terms, and whether U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler will sign off on it, is still uncertain. But taxpayers might appreciate the Justice Department's willingness to recognize the weakness of its case and bring this matter to an expedited conclusion.

It's also worth noting that, in the event of a government loss, the only avenue of appeal left would be the Supreme Court, which prefers to accept cases where there's a clear and definitive split among the Circuits. The government's use of civil RICO in the tobacco litigation is both novel and, we would also argue, an abuse of a statute designed to go after the mob. As a legal matter, it's not clear that four Justices would want to get involved before other lower courts have had a chance to weigh in.

While the Bush Justice Department didn't initiate this suit, it can be blamed for allowing it to drag out this long. If the White House had truly been interested in "politicizing" the litigation, former Attorney General John Ashcroft would have moved to quash the lawsuit a long time ago. After all, Candidate Bush campaigned against regulation through litigation, and Mr. Ashcroft could have taken the political heat while he was going out the door.

But the biggest deception of recent days has been the claim that any of this is about health issues or marketing to children. The lawsuit is all about making government a de facto shareholder in tobacco companies by giving it a bigger chunk of future profits. The states got their tens of billions of dollars in 1998, and now Henry Waxman and other Members of Congress want theirs. They'd spend it precisely the way the states have spent their windfall -- not on anti-smoking campaigns but on their own political causes.

http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB111897099797262227,00.html?mod=opinion&ojcontent=otep


5. PFA Vows $18M Spree on Judges – Roll Call

June 16, 2005
By Paul Kane

A pair of conservative organizations with strong ties to the White House and Congressional GOP leaders on Wednesday announced a $21 million TV and grass-roots campaign in the anticipated battle over a Supreme Court vacancy later this summer.

Progress for America plans to take the lead role in defending the expected nomination — or nominations — to the Supreme Court. The group, a so-called 527 run by GOP media advisers with connections to both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, is devoting a minimum of $18 million to its campaign, with roughly 70 percent of that going to a national and localized TV campaign.

While stating that the organization had no inside knowledge about whether Chief Justice William Rehnquist or other justices would announce their retirements later this month, the group’s president said he had already raised most of the $18 million for the campaign.

“Progress for America will spend a minimum of $18 million promoting any potential nominee or nominees to the Supreme Court,” Brian McCabe said after a media briefing on the campaign.

The $18 million figure is based on the anticipation of just one retirement, even if there is an elevation from within to chief justice and a nomination from outside to fill that vacancy. If more than one justice retires, McCabe said his group will spend much, much more on the campaign to defend President Bush’s nominees.

“Progress for America will allocate additional resources to it,” he said.

In another sign of how high the level of anticipation is about a vacancy on the high court, Jessica Boulanger, a top press aide to House Majority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), is taking a leave of absence from the Hill and going to work for the group. Boulanger will focus almost exclusively on the Supreme Court fight, providing added heft to the group’s burgeoning media operation.

The group is on such elevated alert for a retirement that it has assembled its own “SCOTUS Short List,” a document resembling Roll Call’s “Face Time” feature tracking appearances on Sunday talk shows. Instead, the “Short List” tracks the number of major media mentions of a potential nominee to the Supreme Court.

The current leader is Michael Luttig, a judge for the Richmond-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, with nine mentions in top publications such as Legal Times and the Wall Street Journal. Three other appellate court judges — John Roberts of the District of Columbia Circuit, Michael McConnell of the 10th Circuit and Harvie Wilkinson of the 4th Circuit — are tied with eight mentions as of June 1.

Buttressing the Progress for America campaign, the Judicial Confirmation Network, a coalition of “grasstop” and grass-roots activists around the country, expects to spend at least $3 million on its media campaign for a Supreme Court nomination fight. The group, whose lead counsel is Wendy Long, a former clerk to Justice Clarence Thomas, has focused its efforts in the judicial filibuster fight on moderate Republicans in Democratic-leaning states.

For the Supreme Court fight, the Judicial Confirmation Network expects to expand its reach into Republican-leaning states with Democratic Senators, particularly North Dakota, where Sen. Kent Conrad (D) faces re-election in 2006.

Combined, the two conservative groups set an opening ante of more than $20 million in the fight over a Supreme Court nomination — already almost doubling the estimated cost of what was spent in the spring by both liberal and conservative groups over the future of the filibuster.

One of the leading groups on the left opposed to Bush’s nominees, People For the American Way, mocked the amount of money and the claim by McCabe that they had no inside knowledge of a pending retirement. “What do they know that we don’t know?” Ralph Neas, the organization’s president, asked in a statement. “They must be expecting an extremely controversial nominee, if they need to spend that much on the confirmation process.”

With Rehnquist battling thyroid cancer, groups on the left and right as well as many Senators, are convinced that at least one justice will retire when the court’s term comes to an end later this month. No vacancy has occurred since 1994, the longest run without a retirement since the early 1820s.

In the filibuster fight, Neas’ group spent $5 million to defend the right of Democrats to filibuster Bush’s judicial selections. He was joined by the Alliance for Justice and MoveOn.org’s PAC in TV campaigns, adding up to roughly $10 million spent on the left in the fight that served as a prelude to the Supreme Court battle.

Those liberal groups have so far declined to release their spending plans for a potential court vacancy.

McCabe’s organization, according to documents it provided Wednesday, spent $3.2 million on its TV campaign to back up Majority Leader Bill Frist’s (R-Tenn.) effort to make a parliamentary move to end filibusters. Other conservative groups did not engage that heavily in terms of TV ads.

What the groups on the right lack in experience in terms of judicial battles — Neas and his allies at Alliance for Justice and the Leadership Conference on Civile Rights have been involved in the issue since the early 1980s — they are trying to make up for with money and efficiency.

Progress for America has taken the lead role on the right as central nervous system for media campaigns on all top conservative causes, particularly judicial nominations and Bush’s efforts to revamp Social Security.

McCabe declined to spell out precisely what percentage of his $18 million would be dedicated to the TV campaign, but said the percentages would be similar to previous efforts.

The group has so far spent $11.1 million on its Social Security and filibuster fights, with $7.9 million, or 71 percent, going to TV commercials.

If that percentage holds up, Progress for America will spend about $13 million on paid media. Half of that will go to a national ad campaign, with the remainder going to targeted states where Senators will be hit with commercials urging them to support the nominee.

On the filibuster fight and in the pending Supreme Court battle, some other conservative groups will also go on the air but not with the volume of Progress for America, according to those involved in the discussions. Judicial Confirmation Network’s primary focus is on getting activists in key states to apply pressure on wavering Senators.

Focus on the Family, one of the most prominent social organizations because of the popularity of James Dobson’s radio show, is also expected to take a lead role in driving activists around the country.

The Committee for Justice, founded by Bush family ally C. Boyden Gray, and the Federalist Society will serve as a nexus for legal scholars and the dissemination of information about the nominee’s background to the media.

Gray is expected to also be one of the leading surrogates on network and cable TV news programs once a nominee is announced.
http://www.rollcall.com/issues/50_132/news/9700-1.html