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Politics : John Kerry for President Free speach thread NON-CENSORED -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: American Spirit who wrote (853)	6/2/2005 5:14:39 PM
From: StockDung	Respond to of 1449

Howard Dean's Raised Voice Isn't Raising Cash JUNE 6, 2005 Washington Outlook Edited by Lee Walczak Howard Dean's Raised Voice Isn't Raising Cash One hundred days into his tenure as the high-energy, higher-decibel chairman of the Democratic Party, Howard Dean is in trouble with party moneybags. The former Vermont governor seems to be doing a better job flaying the Republicans than bridging the cash chasm between the parties. Given Dean's 2004 run as a populist crusader, moderates were never wild about his takeover of the Democratic National Committee. So some big donors are sitting on their wallets. Dean wowed the faithful in '04 with his Web-based fund-raising magic. But major business donors still count, and in his new role as party honcho, the feisty doctor seems to be struggling to connect. After achieving money parity with the GOP in 2004, Democrats have fallen far behind. According to the Federal Election Commission, the DNC raised $14.1 million in the first quarter of 2005, vs. the Republican National Committee's $32.3 million. Dean drew about 20,000 new donors, while his rivals picked up 68,200. The bottom line: Republicans have $26.2 million in the bank vs. $7.2 million for the Dems. Why the yawning gap? For starters, Dean is not a natural fit for the "stroke and joke" style that traditional party chiefs use to extract cash from well-heeled contributors. "It appears that the chairman has come to the conclusion that he doesn't need major donors," sniffs one fat cat. "He hasn't made any effort to reach out." Personality factors aside, Dean's business-bashing '04 campaign makes him a hard sell in corporate circles. "There's a wait-and-see attitude from business and major contributors," says Nathan Landow, a Maryland developer and big-time donor. "This guy has some work to do to get the comfort level up." William W. Batoff, a Philadelphia real estate developer and longtime Democratic fund-raiser who backed President Bush in 2000 and 2004, is less diplomatic. "Howard Dean is the wrong person to be chair," says Batoff, who claims he will help fund the Dems' congressional efforts but will boycott the national committee while Dean reigns. "Kind of a Dustpan" Recent evidence of big-donor discomfort: A DNC event scheduled for May 25 at Manhattan's cavernous Jacob K. Javits Convention Center was scaled back to a smaller venue at the Essex House hotel. Bridget Siegel, the DNC's New York finance chair, says the event was moved because the new room "just worked better." According to his defenders, Dean is doing just fine in the money wars. Internet and direct-mail appeals have started pulling in $1 million a week, says party spokeswoman Karen Finney, and the chairman "is pleased overall with [the pace of] fund-raising." Former DNC Chair Steve Grossman, a close ally, says Dean "is becoming more comfortable with [asking for money] by the day." Dean may yet find ways to build bridges to reluctant donors, but few think he'll ever be another Terry McAuliffe, the human money machine whom he replaced. "McAuliffe was like a vacuum cleaner," says Rutgers University political scientist Ross K. Baker. "Dean is kind of a dustpan." He may be no McAuliffe, but Dean defenders note that his predecessor's golden cash register was accompanied by stinging setbacks at the polls. The new boss represents the grassroots' desire to take the fight to the Republicans. That he's doing. Still, unless Dean narrows the huge cash disparity, he may not be able to build the political dynamo he promised.

To: American Spirit who wrote (853)	6/5/2005 4:45:50 PM
From: StockDung	Respond to of 1449

Edwards Undecided About Running in 2008 By GARY TANNER The Associated Press Saturday, June 4, 2005; 11:16 PM NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- Former Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards said Saturday that he has not decided whether he will run for president in 2008. The former U.S. senator from North Carolina said his family is focused on the recovery of his wife, who was diagnosed with breast cancer the day after the 2004 general election. "Our first priority right now is making sure Elizabeth gets well," Edwards said at an annual state Democratic fundraising dinner. "There's a lot of work left to be done." Edwards also disagreed with Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean's controversial comment in a speech to liberal activists Thursday that many Republicans "have never made an honest living in their lives." "The chairman of the DNC is not the spokesman for the party," Edwards said. "He's a voice. I don't agree with it." On Saturday, Dean continued his barrage on conservatives while visiting Montana, lambasting the Bush administration for its fiscal irresponsibility and war on terror. He said President Bush needs to get tough on real threats to national security, nations like North Korea and Iran that claim to have nuclear weapons, rather than nations like Iraq, where no weapons of mass destruction were ever found. "I would make the argument that America is safer when Democrats are in the White House, than when Republicans are in the White House," Dean said in a speech to Democratic supporters. There was no immediate response from the GOP to Dean's comments Saturday, but RNC spokeswoman Tracey Schmitt said after Thursday's speech that Dean's "priority is to generate mudslinging headlines rather than engage in substantive debate." ___ Associated Press Writer Sarah Cooke contributed to this report from Helena, Mont. © 2005 The Associated Press

To: American Spirit who wrote (853)	6/6/2005 2:10:34 PM
From: StockDung	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1449

Use of confidential sources. Watergate story showed how to do it right way By John Ferrugia Guest Commentary Article Launched: 06/02/2005 01:01:00 AM This week's revelation that Deep Throat was a top FBI official who directed Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein through the Watergate maze has again brought to the fore the debate over the use of unnamed, confidential sources. This will likely be one of the major topics of discussion as the national Investigative Reporters and Editors meeting begins in Denver today. Clearly, The Washington Post could not have continued to move the story forward without the information provided by W. Mark Felt, the FBI's second-ranking officer, who had access to key investigative files. But it is important and instructive to understand, from Bernstein's perspective, just how Felt's information was used. Referring to the book "All the President's Men," which detailed the Post's investigation, Bernstein noted: "You see there that Felt/Deep Throat largely confirmed information we had already gotten from other sources." That is exactly what sets the Post's reporting apart from the journalistic fiascoes in recent months which have resulted in embarrassment for both CBS News and Newsweek magazine. The CBS case involved documents critical of George W. Bush, purported to have been written by his National Guard commanding officer. CBS had the documents vetted selectively by favorable handwriting experts who had no expertise with typefaces or typewriters. Before the story ran, CBS got no independent confirmation that such a document was produced by anyone in the National Guard unit. Perhaps most damning was that several days after the story aired, CBS interviewed the commanding officer's former secretary, who said the documents weren't authentic. As the story began to unravel, CBS admitted the documents had come from a confidential source: a longtime critic of the president who had reason to attack him. In the end, CBS may have gotten the same story by using Woodward and Bernstein's method of simply tracking down everyone associated with the military unit and interviewing them. Yet, CBS reporters and producers never authenticated the documents nor did they track down sources concurrent with the questionable documents until after the story aired. And, finally, not one of the experienced senior producers stood up and asked the obvious questions. The changes implemented at CBS News make it clear this was an abuse of the use of confidential sources. In the second case, a brilliant investigative reporter from Newsweek wrote a story alleging U.S. military investigators had found that American interrogators at the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, had flushed a copy of the Koran, the sacred Muslim text, down a toilet. The incident was alleged to have been noted in a military command report. The most disturbing aspect of this story is not that it was based on confidential sources, but that the reporter apparently had never seen a copy of the report. What's more, the story was based on a single confidential source. Where were the editors at Newsweek? Just because I or any other reporter have been right 100 times in the past doesn't mean we don't need someone questioning us every step of the way. How could anyone be sure a single source, no matter how reliable in the past, wasn't honestly mistaken? Unlike Woodward and Bernstein (and Ben Bradlee, then the Post's executive editor), the reporters in these stories weren't using confidential sources to confirm information; they were using confidential sources as the only source of unconfirmed information. That's not about the use of confidential sources; it's about sloppy reporting, and should be a warning to all of us who have the hubris to believe that when we are working at the top of our game, we are immune from rookie mistakes. John Ferrugia is an investigative reporter for KMGH-Channel 7 in Denver.