Sestak Confirms White House Account

OK, Mr. Ice-uh, which federal law was broken?

I guess this story is a living thing. I’m mean if it won’t go away and the press and republicans have nothing to do with it sticking around.

The only intriguing part about this story is Clinton being involved.

If nothing else, they can easily say “we didn’t offer him a job if he stayed out of the Senate race but rather a job that we would like to be handled by a military veteran in the House.”

Right, who knows why this story won’t go away? CNN will be spending the next hour investigating why.

Kate Pickert:
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don’t expect this issue to go away
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Is that because the political press corps will dutifully stenograph partisan talking points, in the quest for the next nice, gratifying Whitewater?
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Issues do not “go away” or “stick around” by themselves, we know this. It takes a truly vapid, venal, ennui-burdened political press corps to make those decisions. Do you really have such little respect for your readers?
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Look, I’m not criticizing you out of some partisan duty, Kate Pickert. I’d be the first one to applaud you for tackling a real quid pro quo, something that had meaning and significance, like, say, the deals the White House made with PhRMA and the hospitals prior to HCR passage. I’m not after “balance.” I’m not asking you to be in charge of balance, that’s our job as readers. I just would like not to be insulted by your refusal to admit your own (and your editors’) hands in what goes away (drug importation) and what doesn’t (Sarah Palin’s privacy problems).
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So when you make passive statements like “go away,” as if political issues were active agents that journalists merely observe in the course of natural events, expect to be asked why this issue won’t “go away” while others clearly do, and what the press corps’ hand in that corrupt state of our affairs is.
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You know, these games you people play with language are quite irritating, Kate Pickert. It doesn’t matter if you disappear the words “my vapid colleagues” or “my amoral editors” from the sentence.
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We still know quite well that
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“don’t expect this issue to go away”
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means
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“don’t expect Politico to stop driving the conversation with it, or us to stop talking about it ad nauseum, or you readers to really be informed about the real world of quid pro quo in the Beltway, at least not the world of any consequence, anyway…”
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Fine, Kate Pickert. We won’t “expect this issue to go away,” and, in return, you shouldn’t expect the national press corps’ plummeting public credibility to crawl its way back out of the tabloid toilet anytime soon.
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Deal?

Kate,
If you really want to write something that has value, how about writing an article about the mechanics of how a non-scandal about a perfectly legal, moral, and ethical transaction gets flogged by media partisans into a pseudo-scandal. You can use the White House’s contacts with Sestak as an example of how a fake scandal gets created.

Excellent idea. But that might require actual journalism, so don’t hold your breath.

Let’s put Mr. Issa in a little perspective.
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4. Issa Accuses Valerie Plame of Perjury
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On July 11, 2007, the House Judiciary Committee held a session to discuss the misuse of presidential clemency powers in President Bush’s commutation of Scooter Libby’s sentence. That hearing occurred just four months after outed covert CIA operative Valerie Plame had testified under oath before Congress on March 16, 2007.
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Not content to merely confront Ambassador Joe Wilson during his testimony, Congressman Issa accused both Wilson and his wife of perjury:
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“I certainly believe Ambassador Wilson at his word, but I hope he believes me at my word, which is that in fact having read all the information, I believe that his wife will soon be asking for a pardon, that in fact she has not been genuine in her testimony before Congress and, if pursued, Ambassador Wilson and Valerie would be asking for the same sort of treatment, which is that in fact we put this behind us.”
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5. Issa Drives the Firing of U.S. Attorney Carol Lam
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As it turns out, Congressman Issa was also a key player in another major Bush administration scandal, the political purge of U.S. attorneys.
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Carol Lam, who successfully prosecuted disgraced San Diego Republican Congressman Randy “Duke” Cunningham, was one of the 8 U.S. prosecutors forced out by Alberto Gonzales’ Justice Department. But it was Issa who helped create the façade that supposedly lax immigration enforcement by Lam’s office was behind her dismissal.
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It was Issa, after all, who released an anonymously written 41 page Border Patrol report which claimed “that Lam was giving less attention to human smugglers than she should.” As the Voice of San Diego reported in March 2007:
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Six days after the Associated Press story broke, Issa’s office sent a letter to Lam, in which the congressman called the memo “an embarrassment to your office.”
Monica Goodling, a Justice Department spokeswoman, sent the letter to Kyle Sampson, Gonzales’ chief of staff who resigned in the attorney firing scandal’s wake, and two other high-ranking officials.
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“FYI,” she wrote, “the assault continues.”
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Lam was eventually sacked, as TPM Muckraker concluded, “despite the fact that no one from the Justice Department ever confronted Carol Lam over her performance on immigration prosecutions.”
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6. Issa Blames Software for White House Email Destruction
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Committed to defending Bush administration wrong-doing at every turn, Darrell Issa in February weighed in on the White House’s destruction of millions of emails. Now a self-proclaimed IT expert, Issa claimed that the likely criminal loss of the emails, including those for critical time periods such as the breaking PlameGate scandal, was just the result of a software glitch.
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Mother Jones described Issa’s feeble attempt to blame IBM’s Lotus Notes software then used by the Bush White House, an accusation he was later forced to recant:
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Defending the White House’s decision to switch from the Lotus Notes-based archiving system used by the Clinton administration, Issa compared the software to “using wooden wagon wheels” and Sony Betamax tapes. To observers of the missing emails controversy, Issa’s comments seemed little more than an attempt to deflect blame from the White House for replacing a working system for archiving presidential records with an ad hoc substitute. But to IT professionals who use Lotus at their companies, Issa’s remarks seemed controversial, if not downright slanderous. Now, according to an executive at IBM, the software’s manufacturer, the California congressman has apologized for his characterization of Lotus and offered to correct the congressional record.
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7. Issa Offers Howard Krongard a Ticket to the White House Christmas Party
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Last November, Americans learned of the staggering corruption, ineptitude and conflicts of interest of then State Department Inspector General Howard Krongard. Within days of his devastating appearance before Waxman’s House Oversight Committee (including his admission that his brother served as an adviser to Blackwater), Krongard resigned over allegations he impeded “ongoing criminal investigations into the construction of a new, $740 million U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and security firm Blackwater Worldwide.”
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But during his calamitous Congressional hearing in November, Krongard was praised by Darrell Issa. After Krongard earlier noted that he had never met President Bush, Issa told him:
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“Thank you for your service. And I’ll end by saying that the first week of December the president’s having a Christmas party. I have an extra guest ticket. After today, I know that you’ve earned it. I would be happy to have you use my guest ticket and then you’ll get your picture with the president and you’ll get to meet him as well you should.”
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8. Issa Forces Jerry Nadler to Withdraw Truthful Statement about Bush’s Illegal Domestic Surveillance
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Last August as Congress debated revisions to FISA under the so-called Protect America Act, Rep. Issa went on the attack against opponents of President Bush’s domestic surveillance program.
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During the debate, Congressman Jerry Nadler (D-NY) spoke out against the codification of President Bush’s regime of warrantless wiretapping, domestic surveillance which prior to August 2007 was almost certainly illegal:
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“This bill is not needed to protect America from terrorists. The only purpose of this bill is to protect this administration from its own political problems and cynicism, and its own illegal actions it has taken outside the law without any authorization.”
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For his part, Issa demanded that Nadler withdraw his assertion that the Bush administration had engaged in illegal activities. ThinkProgress detailed the Issa brouhaha that ensued:
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After some pause, Nadler said he would withdraw his “truthful and accurate statements” in order to proceed with the floor debate. Issa, unhappy with Nadler’s retraction, said, “He is not withdrawing it if he claims they’re accurate.” Nadler responded, “I’m withdrawing them without any reservation but I retain my opinion.”
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9. Issa Defends Roger Clemens Against Steroid Allegations
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During February hearings in which neither political party did itself credit, Henry Waxman’s House Oversight and Government Reform Committee probed the use of performance enhancing drugs in major league baseball. Perhaps conscious of lingering allegations that George W. Bush turned a blind eye to his players’ own steroid use while running the Texas Rangers, Republican committee members rushed to Roger Clemens’ defense.
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None more so that Darrell Issa. Issa called Clemens’ alleged supplier, Brian McNamee, “a drug pusher” and proclaimed that McNamee’s diploma-mill PhD stood for “pile it higher and deeper.” Amazingly, Issa compared Clemens’ use of B-12 to his own “mother getting B-12 shots from our family physician,” adding, “She was pre-menopausal and simply a little anemic she thought.” Issa then concluded by lecturing McNamee, “Shame on you.”
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10. Issa Blames His Brother for Past Brushes with the Law
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Which is a lot of chutzpah for as shameless a pol as Darrell Issa. When it came to his own brushes with the law, Issa, too, pointed the finger at someone else: his brother.
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In the run-up to his aborted 2003 campaign for California governor, Issa faced scrutiny over his arrests in 1972 and 1980 on auto theft charges. While the charges were ultimately dropped in both cases for lack of evidence, the 1980 episode was a damning one:
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The Santa Clara case happened in February, 1980, when Issa was a 27-year-old U.S. Army officer, and his brother was 29, according to the Chronicle. The brothers were arrested on a felony auto-theft charge. According to prosecutors said, William Issa sold his brother’s car to Smythe European Motors in San Jose for $13,000 cash and three $1,000 traveler’s checks. Hours later, Darrell Issa reported the car stolen from the Monterey airport, near his Army post at Fort Ord.
For his part, Issa was quick to blame his brother for both his run-ins with the police and his later riches selling car security systems:
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“William has inflicted pain and sorrow upon our family since he was a teenager. Obviously, his past continues to inflict pain today,” said Issa, who became a multimillionaire manufacturer of electronic auto alarms, including the popular “Viper” anti-theft device. “When people ask me why I got into the car alarm business, I tell them the truth. It was because my brother was a car thief.”
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And so it goes. At every turn, Darrell Issa has served as the faithful Republican hatchet man, defending his President and his party from all foes. (The only exception, as arch-conservative Debbie Schlussel complains: the Lebanese-American Issa’s outreach to Syria and defense of Hezbollah against the Israeli incursion in 2006.) While death and taxes are said to be the only certainties in life, new additions to the Darrell Issa Hall of Shame seem inevitable.
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http://www.perrspectives.com/blog/archives/001007.htm

“But don’t expect the issue to go away”. Of course! Cable will go into overdrive, you will rinse and repeat until another “scandal” comes along. The name Clinton will bring out all the RW rabid dogs who must be salivating at the prospect of looking for piles of dung.

And then you will cry: “what has journalism been reduced to?”

What happened to the emergency in the Gulf???? Malia put an end to that?

But don’t expect this issue to go away.

Trust me, I don’t have enough respect for the press corps to expect that.

Gunny: thanks for taking the time to remind us about Darrel Issa and his brushes with the law.

Stuart, I couldn’t agree more. I love the whole “it’s not our fault this story is still around” attitude of the DC press corps. As if stories truly did have a “life of their own.” Please.

What made this “news” in the first place isn’t that Sestak was offered a deal to get out of the race, it’s clear now (and has been clear all along) that there’s nothing out of the ordinary in that. What changed is that Rep. Issa decided to threaten the administration. Not because he had any special evidence to show this was different than all of the other deals cut in the past; no, he just decided to pitch a fit.

At that point, the real “news” item is that a Republican Congressman chose to attack an administration about something that’s been done hundreds of times in the past. The person to be investigated and questioned is Issa, not Sestak.

That’s like another “story that won’t go away:” Obama’s birth certificate. It’s still around because some people won’t accept facts, not because there are any doubts about those facts. Again, the focus should be on the questioners, not the President.

But this would require the media to do several things they don’t like to do: think independently, avoid laziness, rise about base partisan political attacks or at least report them as such and honestly report when someone is wrong, even if that will cause some discomfort for you and your media entity. It’s not “taking sides” when you’re reporting facts.

Instead, let’s hope keeping the story alive brings in a few more viewers or readers and visitors, right?

I’ll reiterate what everyone else is saying.
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Why, exactly, is this still news?
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Based on what we now know that happened, from the accounts of the only two parties who could ever actually tell us what happened, was exactly did they do that was wrong, or was a law we don’t know about (an unwritten one, maybe) broken here?
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An my own question: Now that we know what happened, does anyone still care?

Any coverage of this “story” that fails to mention that these charges are BS (as a Bush Jr. ethics adviser explains here), that Reagan and everyone else ever has done the same thing, is a disservice to truth, journalism, justice, and the American way.
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Remember how we were sold a pack of lies as to why we invaded a country on the other side of the world? And how “[t]he media did a really bad job of covering the run-up to the war”? And how asking tough questions of the administration is scary and unnecessary?
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And now we get this coverage from you people.
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Why?
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Because the GOP tells you what to type, and you obediently type it for them and put it in the magazine. That is why this story won’t go away. The media is incapable of discovering and reporting facts; it can only type up the spin from each side.
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Just follow Newsweek and go bankrupt if this is all you can do.

And I say it’s a federal felony for Issa to issue press releases without adult supervision.

Responsible media sources investigating the issue through objective experts have generally concluded the Republican claims of illegality are a load of crap. Continuing to give Issa and his ilk a soapbox is irresponsible.

Don’t they usually separate criminals so they can’t compare lies and come up with the same story under questioning? Bribery is an IMPEACHABLE OFFENSE. Time to throw these Chicago thugs and Alinsky-ites out of Washington.

Bribery of an elected official.

Are you a Regent Law school grad? You seem to lack any grasp of the law whatsoever.
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There was no crime committed here. Feel free to continue to froth at the mouth about it but nothing will come of it.

Bribery usually involves money. This was, by all accounts, an offer for an uncompensated advisory board role.
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Or maybe the rules for bribery are different in your country, Ricardo.

Ricardo is from the UK. I think the concept of a constitution that’s actually written down is a little foreign for him.

Sestak is a f’ing moron, starting this whole frenzy by puffing himself up on air, and everyone’s bending over backwards to not call him the f’ing moron he is. This whole thing is such a non-issue it’s embarrassing, when there are real consequential things happening and not being covered.

Thanks gunny: Issa is one of the nastiest pieces of work in the House. In interviews he comes across as Mr. Charm. During commitee hearings he goes for the jugular.

square1: Isn’t it funny? How many posts today on Sestak and Palin and then they have the nerve to act shocked that the topic wont go away. Sometimes it is like you fell through the looking glass.

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