Skepticseye.com

. . . but we’re back! After a lovely trip to Las Vegas, marred only slightly by a bout of flu, we will ring in the New Year back home. Here’s hoping all of you had a pleasant holiday, and I promise I will get some new stuff up of relevant interest soon.

While in Las Vegas, I taped a segment of Playing Favorites, hosted by KUNV (radio) and KTNV (TV)’s Nate Tannenbaum. We talked about the Weekly Standard article, growing up in Las Vegas, and (yawn) campaign finance law. He was kind enough to mention this site several times, for which I am grateful. I will let the KUNV listening audience know when it is expected to broadcast - and if possible I will make it available for downloading here.

Wearing my Y2K NRO T-Shirt! And no one on the trail remarked about it at all.

And its 70 degrees! This was taken yesterday in Red Rock, west of Las Vegas.

Its the Holidays! I mean Christmas, fer cryin’ out loud.

Whew.

But that means planes, Dramamine for the wee ones, and an erratic schedule. So, dear readers, there will be less of the Skeptic in this next week, probably.

I wish you all the best.

Mike Antonucci’s site “Education Intelligence Agency” has combed through the NEA’s most recent LM-2 disclosure report. (HT Tapscott).

From AEI Resident Scholar (and HuffPo blogger) Norm Ornstein, as published in Roll Call (courtesy of AEI’s Webpage):

The Bush approach to presidential power is simple, straightforward and clear: “L’etat, c’est moi.” (snip)

Of course, we can feel better with the administration’s assurances that there were checks on the president’s wiretapping–by the Justice Department. Especially since those assurances come at the same time we have learned that the unanimous career-staff recommendation that the Texas redistricting scheme engineered by Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas) that violated the Voting Rights Act was derailed by Justice Department politicos. That followed on the heels of the revelation that the abominable Georgia voter identification law, also challenged by career Justice attorneys as a poll tax, was derailed by some of the same politicos.

We can be even more reassured since this week one of the key politicos in these cases, Hans von Spakovsky, was rewarded with a nomination to the Federal Election Commission. Watching Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez justify the wiretaps by relying on the inherent powers of the commander in chief suggests that the Bush Justice Department is to checks and balances what Paris Hilton is to chastity.

Bask in the wit and wisdom. Don’t ask whether the Georgia ID law really could be considered a “poll tax” (because the IDs aren’t free?) or whether the Texas redistricting really violated the Voting Rights Act - apparently those questions are settled. Ignore the character assassination (I’m more concerned about Hans’s than Paris’s, in case it wasn’t clear). This is the scholarship of no ordinary scholar, just as Paris Hilton’s celebrity is that of no ordinary heiress. It takes a special kind of scholar - a resident scholar . . .

(Rewarded? Rewarded? Not exactly.)

It’s not just the “material” facts, but the immaterial ones that make some stories just that much more fun to read. Like this:

A Columbus attorney said in a sworn statement that he was told he could get legal work through Attorney General Jim Petro’s office but he would have to contribute to Petro’s campaign for governor.

(snip)

In his affidavit, O’Brien said the exchange occurred in a brief conversation he had on a Thursday evening last summer in a Columbus bar and restaurant with Amy Gravengaard, finance director for Petro’s campaign. … Paduchik said Gravengaard remembered the guy “coming on to her” and that he was “obnoxious.”

In an interview Tuesday, O’Brien, a Democrat, stood by his affidavit, but said he had not been interested in working for Petro. “She’s very attractive. I was more interested in hitting on her (than) I was in the special counsel gig,” he said.

So far, we have a brief conversation in a bar, yet it has proceeded sufficiently to involve “coming on.” So, either the conversation hasn’t been so brief, or there might be impressive “consumption” going on. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Just an observation. (The notion that any of this would get out as public comments related to an affidavit is interesting, too.)

It was after his friend told Gravengaard that O’Brien was a collections attorney, that she said he should become a special counsel and then said if he were interested he would need to make the contribution, O’Brien said in the statement. Gravengaard told O’Brien she was “some sort of fundraiser for the Petro for Governor campaign,” his statement said. In the affidavit, O’Brien said he could not remember the woman’s last name until a friend “reminded me later that her last name was ‘Gravenguard’ (I may not be spelling it correctly).”

Can’t remember her name? Okay, I vote “consumption.” Which makes the witness kind of easy to impeach, doesn’t it?

The Skeptic received word of this today, which many of you readers may find interesting:

The Office of Government Ethics is pleased to announce that Susan Propper will be the new OGE Deputy General Counsel. Susan has been OGE’s Congressional Liaison Officer since September 2004. She came to OGE from the U.S. Senate, where she served as Counsel on the Committee on Governmental Affairs from May 1999 until she joined the OGE staff. Prior to her tenure on the Hill, Susan was an attorney and then, for 18 years, was an Assistant General Counsel at the Federal Election Commission, where she supervised the regulations staff and provided technical advice to Congressional offices on campaign finance reform legislation. Susan is a graduate of Clark University and received her law degree from the University of Denver.

A towing contractor who reimbursed contributions from three employees to Philip Giordano’s failed 2000 Senate campaign against Sen. Joe Lieberman, has himself been fined $5100.

DiNino arranged to contribute $7,000 to former Mayor Philip A. Giordano’s 2000 campaign for the U.S. Senate in return for an exclusive towing contract from the city. He admitted to illegally reimbursing $3,000 to straw contributors. Federal prosecutors said DiNino, the owner of Town Plot Auto Body & Towing Services Inc., was told that his company would not do towing work for the city unless he made the contributions.

Giordano himself remains in prison, serving a 37-year sentence for molestation.

I would assume that any FEC enforcement issues are largely irrelevant at this point. But this causes one to wonder - what’s the status of the MOU between the FEC and DOJ? Hmm?

Not the one in the sky - the newspaper, the New York Sun, doesn’t like campaign finance reform - even when unions are involved. So:

Thanks to the new law, the flood of union money in [New York] city politics will go on as before. The law’s most significant outcome may be that the health care workers’ union, Local 1199, and a building union, 32BJ, will still be allowed to make individual contributions although they are both affiliates of the Service Employees International Union. The law is a transparent effort by a predominantly Democratic City Council to preserve its most deep-pocketed source of campaign funds, but at least it eases a restriction on campaigning, which is always a good thing.

Not so in Congress. Some House Republicans tried over the weekend to regulate so-called 527 groups by inserting an amendment into the conference report on a Defense Department authorization act, meaning that representatives and senators wouldn’t have had a chance to defeat the provision before having to vote on the entire bill. … slipping “reform” through on the sly proved too much even for some of the most ardent reformers; one group, Democracy21, supports 527 restrictions but decried this secretive way of trying to enact them.

. . . making me rethink my position, just as a matter of reflex. Oh well.

While the City Council in New York managed to enact a good measure almost despite themselves, Congress was in danger of veering even further toward restricting speech. Neither case has much to do with lawmakers wanting to do the right thing. New Yorkers are just lucky that in this particular case, the self-interest of City Council members happens to coincide with protecting, even by just a half-step, the First Amendment. If that isn’t an argument against campaign finance “reform,” we don’t know what is.