Monday, December 11, 2006

Bill Clinton's Fascination With Princess Diana's Sex Life

At this point in history, we know enough to know Bill Clinton was more interested in arranging secret, sexual trysts with White House intern Monica Lewinsky in the Oval Office than he was in mobilizing the U.S. intelligence community to defeat Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda terrorists. We now learn that his administration engaged U.S. Secret Service resources to eavesdrop on Princess Diana's phone calls, including the night she died, without the permission of British intelligence. The London Evening Standard reports:

American intelligence agencies were bugging Princess Diana's telephone over her relationship with a US billionaire, the Evening Standard has learned.

She was even forced to abandon a planned holiday with her sons in the US with tycoon Teddy Forstmann on advice from secret services, who passed on their concerns to their British counterparts.

Both US and British intelligence then forced Diana to change her plans to stay with Mr Forstmann in the summer of 1997, saying it was too "dangerous" to take her sons there. Instead the princess took the fateful decision to take a summer break with Harrods owner Mohamed Fayed. This ultimately led to her going to Paris with his son Dodi, where they died in a car crash.

The revelation from independent inquiries by the Evening Standard comes as it emerged that Princess Diana's phone was bugged by US intelligence agencies on the night she died without the permission of the British secret intelligence services.

It seems our government was concerned about her relationship with U.S. billionaire Teddy Forstmann, a name which is not familiar to this writer. Diana reportedly planned to travel to the U.S. with her two sons, William and Harry, to be with him, but British intelligence vetoed the trip based upon U.S intelligence concerns about her security. If she had made that trip, the Evening Standard speculates she may never have met Dodi Fayad and been in Paris on that fateful night, August 31, 1997. The newspaper talks about more files the Secret Service gathered on Diana:

The Evening Standard also understands that US secret services have a number of secret files on Diana and her closest associates that are held by the national security agency. The files, which include reports from foreign intelligence - thought to include MI5 and MI6 - come under both top secret and secret categories. The reports cannot be released because of "exceptionally grave damage to the national security". The documents on the princess seem to have arisen because of the company she kept rather than through any attempt to target her.

This revelation is very disturbing. You can count on it having several immediate consequencs. American public opinion in Britain, which is already riding low, will be further dampened. Conspiracy theories, which have already been ramping up, are going to escalade and make her death a greater subject of conspiracies than the death of former President John F. Kennedy. More importantly, there will be even greater distrust of America among Muslims and Arabs than there already is. Conspiracy theorists, fueled by claims of Dodi Fayad's father, believe she was killed to prevent a marriage between a British royal and an Arab.

I can't wait to hear former President Clinton's reaction to the disclosure. Let me guess what he'll say: "This is the first I've heard about it. It's news to me." I took a gander at a number of the liberal blogs today after the news broke. The same bloggers who bash Bush endlessly over the U.S. government's wiretapping program for combatting terrorism are noticeably silent on this topic. Can you imagine their reaction if Bush had been the one wiretapping Diana? It makes no sense to me at all that U.S. intelligence agencies could claim this information to be "top secret." The American people should demand an explanation, but I'm guessing this won't be a high priority for the new Democratic-controlled Congress.

UPDATE: CBS News is reporting tonight that the NSA is denying it eavesdropped on Princess Diana's calls, although it had files on her because of conversations she had with other persons of interest. According to the report, more than 1,000 pages are held by an unidentified U.S. intelligence agency on Diana. The report speculates on why the U.S. may have been keeping tabs on her. One reason given is as a favor to the British because she had been stripped of her official security detail after her divorce from Prince Charles. The other reason is based on her work in eradicating land mines and reports she came into contact with known arms dealers as part of her humanitarian efforts. The report notes that this news will give conspiracy theorists more reason to believe her death was not an accident.

Mayor Wants To Waste More Time On Violent Videos

During his first term as Indianapolis mayor, Bart Peterson (D) pushed for and got a city ordinance banning certain violent video games in gaming arcades. The ordinance, not surprisingly, was ruled unconstitutional. Peterson made taxpayers shell out money to appeal the case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, costing city taxpayers several hundred thousand dollars in legal fees. Peterson never cared whether the law was constitutional or not; he was only interested in scoring political points with a certain demographic which responded well to the issue in polling data--namely, soccer moms. And so now it's an issue he wants to nationalize as the newly-installed president of the National League of Cities. The AP reports:

The new president of the National League of Cities says he'll try to focus national attention on the effect of media violence on children.

Indianapolis Mayor Bart Peterson, who was elected Saturday at the group's national convention in Reno, said a growing body of research shows a link between aggressive, anti-social behavior and exposure to violence in video games, television shows, movies and songs.

Peterson, who has had little success limiting violent video games in Indianapolis, questioned whether media violence is to blame for school shootings.

The number of deadly school shootings has risen and fallen over the last 15 years. Overall school violence has shown a declining trend, although it has increased lately, according to a government study issued earlier this month.

"Can media violence be blamed in part for tragedies like Columbine?" he asked. "All I know is that when I was a kid there were disaffected students, students who felt ostracized ... but they didn't shoot up their schools. Something has changed.

"Most don't follow up hours of video-game violence with criminal acts, but can we ignore the connection when we have evidence of many who do, and when we see so plainly that our society is cruder and our crime rates are rising?"

Last month, a media watchdog group said a chainsaw-wielding killer and blood-splattered shooting rampages are featured in some of the 10 video games that should be avoided by kids and teens.

Peterson said he wants to initiate a national dialogue on the issue in an effort to come up with solutions.

"I don't expect us to find clear-cut, irrefutable answers to the questions posed today ... but we will be in a better position a year from now to talk with parents and our other constituents about media violence," Peterson said in his acceptance speech.

Peterson has had little success restricting video games in Indianapolis. In 2002, Indianapolis agreed to pay the video game industry $318,000 for lawyers' fees and other costs. The industry successfully challenged an ordinance -- backed by Peterson – that restricted arcade games.

The law would have required minors to show parental consent before playing violent or sexually explicit video games in public arcades. City officials said research shows a link between children's anti-social or violent behavior and media violence.

But the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled no evidence backs that up, and attempting to shield children from exposure to violent images would be "not only quixotic, but deforming."

There is nothing more upsetting that when politicians pick issues like this one to score political points, knowing there really is no real public policy answer to the problem, but it might make them look good to voters while they're talking about it. As a mayor, you aren't going to stop kids from growing up to be criminals by getting rid of violent videos. The problem runs much deeper than that. Mayor Peterson would have far more impact on our city's crime rate if he focused on making the Indianapolis Public Schools the best rather than the worst public school system in the country. And if he's really concerned about Columbine-style massacres, he might want to ask Eli Lilly and other pharmaceutical companies why they're pushing psychotic drugs on all our children. No, I guess that wouldn't be politically smart to do that.

Star's Double Standard In Township Coverage

The Star's attitude towards Carl Drummer's Fleecing of Center Township seems to be one of "hear no evil, see no evil." But it's always quick to the draw when it comes to any of the other townships, particularly those fighting the Mayor's fire consolidation plan. Today's target is Wayne Township and its decision to turn over its fire training center to a local school district. The township claims the move will save $200,000. It is more likely the transfer occurred to keep the outgoing Republican Trustee, Don Gammon, in charge of the facility. Gammon will be chairman of a nonprofit overseeing the training center, and his wife will be paid to run it.

The Wayne Township move is definitely worthy of scrutiny and doesn't pass the smell test by a long shot. It pales, however, in comparison to what Center Township Trustee Carl Drummer has been doing with taxpayers' money, including several allegations of criminal wrongdoing. While the IBJ did an exhaustive investigative piece detailing Drummer's misuse of township funds to build his own personal fiefdom, the Star has done zero reporting on Center Township's huge real estate portfolio and how it's being misused. It seems if you don't fit into the Star's personal agenda of seeing fire consolidation through, you get a pass on your misdeeds. If you fight its agenda, you get blasted on its editorial pages.

Sunday, December 10, 2006

Abduallah Failed To Comply With Campaign Finance Law

City-County Councilor Patrice Abduallah (D) shamelessly violated campaign finance laws which require municipal candidates to file reports disclosing the source of their campaign contributions and how they spent those funds when he first sought election to the Indianapolis city-county council in 2003. According to the reports he filed with the Marion Co. Election Board, he received $10,300 in contributions and expended $9,243.50 during the 2003 election cycle. Beyond that, it is difficult to make heads or tails out of reports which were sloppily and improperly prepared. But what can be discerned from them is very troubling.

Abduallah claimed as his single, largest contribution a $3,450 receipt from the Greater Indianapolis Progress Committee, which is actually a municipally-run nonprofit organization barred from making political contributions. It appears the report should have identified the source as the Greater Islamic Progress Committee, which his amended report later identified as making a $300 contribution, along with a number of other individuals with Muslim surnames. Abduallah appeared to be deliberately misrepresenting the true source of his campaign receipts.

His reports also showed he received over $6,000 in loans from two individuals, including Nellye Matthews and Don Bardon, in addition to several individual contributions from Colts' owner Jim Irsay, Nellye Matthews and Ron Gibson. For his expenditures, he identified numerous small purchases from restaurants, drug stores and grocery stores. These expenditures created the impression Abduallah was using campaign funds for personal expenditures. One expenditure was represented as a food purchase for campaign workers from a CVS store.

Brad Klopfenstein, who ran against Aduallah in 2003 as a Libertarian candidate, filed a complaint against Abduallah with the Marion Co. Election Board after he discovered numerous discrepancies in his reporting. "The numbers never added up even after he filed an amended report," Klopfenstein told AI. The minutes of a March 23, 2004 meeting of the Board indicate that the Board took up Klopfenstein's complaint after twice tabling it. Klopfenstein complained that Abuallah made no attempt to amend his reports until after the election was over. The Board treated the complaint as a "defective report." An attorney for Abduallah insisted that he had worked hard on trying to come into compliance with the law by filing amended reports. The Board unanimously agreed to slap Abduallah on the hand by issuing him a mere $100 fine.

Klopfenstein found the Board's treatment of Abduallah's violation of the campaign finance laws disillusioning. He said then-election administrator Robert Vane tried to dissuade him from pursuing the complaint. Only then-Board chairman Candace Marendt showed any interest in acting upon his complaint. It is rather pointless to have the law if the Election Board is willing to overlook such brazen violations in the campaign finance reporting requirements. Klopfenstein was particularly disappointed in the media's lack of concern that a city-county councilor had misrepresented his campaign finance reporting. If you examine Abduallah's reports, you can't help but conclude that a 10-year-old could have done a better job preparing the reports. The fact is they remain incorrect to this very day, even after the Board fined Abduallah.

AP: Romney Letter To Log Cabin Republicans Points To Hypocrisy

An AP story discussing a letter then-U.S. Senate candidate Mitt Romney (R) wrote to the Log Cabin Republicans is also coming back to haunt him as he seeks the 2008 presidential nomination. AI wrote last week questioning Romney's decision to abandon his past support of gay rights in an effort to assuage the religious right. The AP writes:

Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R) is facing new questions about his beliefs on gay issues after the emergence of a letter he wrote during his 1994 U.S. Senate run, in which he promised to be a stronger advocate for gays than Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D).

The Massachusetts governor has emphasized his opposition to same-sex marriage in recent months as he positions himself for an expected 2008 run for the Republican presidential nomination.

The 1994 letter was written to the Log Cabin Club of Massachusetts, a gay Republican group, when Romney was courting gay voters during his unsuccessful campaign against Kennedy.

Citing Kennedy's record of advocacy for gays and lesbians, Romney wrote: "For some voters, it might be enough to simply match my opponent's record in this area. But I believe we can and must do better. If we are to achieve the goals we share, we must make equality for gays and lesbians a mainstream concern. My opponent cannot do this. I can and will" . . .

Tony Perkins, president of the conservative Family Research Council, said Romney's comments were "quite disturbing."

"This is going to create a lot of problems for Governor Romney," Perkins told the New York Times. "He is going to have a hard time overcoming this."

Conservative activist Paul M. Weyrich told the Times, "Unless he comes out with an abject repudiation of this, I think it makes him out to be a hypocrite."
The AP story also mentions the Bay Windows interview AI cited in its post last week wherein Romney described in detail his support for gay civil rights and how he, as a Republican, could be more effective than Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA) in advancing the cause. Romney's move to the right on this issue is not proving satisfying to the very people on the right he's trying to assuage at the same time he's risked losing all the support he once had from supporters of gay rights.

Tully Asks Why Peterson Is MIA On Coroner Fiasco

Star political columnist wonders today why Mayor Peterson was off in Reno this past week taking on a new job as President of the National League of Cities instead of tending to matters at home, such as the growing mess surrounding the Marion Co. Coroner's office. Tully writes, in part:

It seems the job of being mayor would be plenty. Apparently it is not.

I bring this up because as Peterson spent six days in Reno, the drama in the Marion County coroner's office worsened. As the mayor attended what I'm sure were great seminars -- perhaps even the one titled "Leading Great Meetings with Effective Parliamentary Procedures" -- his county looked for a leader to take on Kenneth Ackles, the disastrously inept coroner . . .

It must sometimes stink to be mayor. Ackles is an elected Democrat, as is Peterson. Calling him out would likely cause the mayor headaches in certain circles just as he prepares to launch a re-election campaign.

It's a tough spot.

But Indianapolis has given Peterson a nice job and a nice title. In return, he needs to stop avoiding this mess. More than anyone, he has the power to make it clear Ackles must go.

The Star can say it. The public can say it. Indianapolis needs its mayor to say it.

When he gets home from Reno, that is.

More Welfare For The Rich

You've got to hand it to Mayor Bart Peterson (D). When it comes to helping the rich, there's no mayor in America who can claim he does more to help this oppressed class. Whether it's $25 million and free parking for the Simons and their employees at their glittering new corporate headquarters shadowing the State House, or three-quarters of a billion dollars to build the nation's best football stadium for Jim Irsay's Colts, Mayor Peterson is willing to make the working men and women of Indianapolis bite the bullet and dig deeper into their pockets to support the lifestyles of the rich and famous. And now he's preparing to make you all sacrifice again to the tune of about $55 million to subsidize the construction of a luxury hotel by one of his mega-millionaire friends and political supporters. The Star's Jeff Swiatek reports today on the big decision the city will make regarding the construction of another hotel:


Will Downtown's biggest and grandest hotel yet be built by a team headed by one of Democratic Mayor Bart Peterson's major political donors? Or by a rival group that includes a former Republican Party operative and one of Indiana's richest businessmen?

A mayoral committee will recommend one of the two competing hotel proposals later this month, in a politically charged decision that will commit millions of dollars in city money to a skyline-changing project.

One option is a soaring 44-story tower that would hold a luxury hotel under the banner of British-based InterContinental Hotel Corp. It would rise on Pan Am Plaza, across from the main entrance to the RCA Dome, but the team has yet to buy the site.

The team's lead developer is Michael G. Browning, a major Peterson contributor who originally developed Pan Am Plaza.

The other proposal is a cluster of four Marriott-brand hotels, with the flagship a 25-story JW Marriott Hotel holding 800 to 1,000 rooms. The Marriott team's deep-pocketed investors include Whiteco Industries of Merrillville, controlled by 83-year-old billionaire Dean V. White. Its lead developer is one of Browning's former business partners, Michael W. Wells, who now runs REI Real Estate Services in Carmel and was once campaign manager for a Republican mayor.

Each team is asking for about the same amount of city subsidies -- $40 million to $55 million to help pay for a huge new ballroom, a parking garage and pedestrian walkways linked to the Indiana Convention Center.

Let's answer the first question. It's politics stupid. Of course the Mayor is going to take care of his close friend and biggest political supporter, Michael Browning. Does anyone think he's going to reward Michael Wells? Remember, former Mayor Steve Goldsmith (R) gave the development rights to the site of what's now the Conrad Hilton to Wells, only to have it taken away from him by Mayor Peterson so Peterson could reward his political cronies with his first big downtown development deal. While the selection committee members, including city-county councilors Monroe Gray and Marilyn Pfisterer, insist the selection committee will not play favorites, the deck is already stacked in favor of the InterContinental proposal pushed by Browning. Gray told Swiatek: "I'm kind of neutral. I'm waiting to see the final presentations." Gray, of course, initially denied having any role in the 300 East bar at the Julia Carson Government Center. It later turned out his wife owned an interest in the bar, along with the man Mayor Peterson appointed as President of the Indianapolis Airport Authority, Lacy Johnson. Browning, coincidentally, is a client of Lacy Johnson's.

The next question is why the city feels it necessary to offer a tax subsidy to yet another business venture downtown. Swiatek writes, "The city is willing to put taxpayer money into a privately owned mega-hotel because it would help lure more and larger conventions, boosting spending on hotels, restaurants, rental cars and the like." Now remember that taxpayers are already forking over close to $300 million to expand the convention center to lay the golden egg in the form of larger conventions to fill up downtown hotels. The city would have us believe that noone would risk building a large hotel adjacent to the expanded convention center unless the city provides a substantial subsidy for the project. Here is a very telling item within Swiatek's story about Marriott's plan to build a new hotel regardless of the outcome of the city's selection process:


If Marriott team loses the contest, it likely will go ahead and build one or more of its proposed hotels anyway, adding 500 to 600 rooms, Wells said.

That news "might make financing a lot more difficult" for the InterContinental project, by providing more competition to it, Wells pointed out.

Also missing from the discussion is the Hyatt Hotel. Simon recently moved its employees out of that building to its new corporate headquarters across the street, opening up a lot of vacant space in the building, which could be easily converted to new hotel rooms to support more convention business. The city's excuse then will be that none of them have a large enough ballroom to support the increased convention trade--that's because the city is removing the ballroom it has in its existing facility and not including plans for one in the expanded facility.

So it seems we're left with the proverbial question: Which came first, the chicken or the egg? In this case, the answer is whichever one assures a huge financial windfall for one of the Mayor's cronies.

Friday, December 08, 2006

Foley Fallout: GOP Negligent, Not Criminal

A bipartisan House Ethics Committee report on the handling of former Rep. Mark Foley's inappropriate behavior towards House pages has concluded that Speaker Dennis Hastert (R) and his GOP leadership team were negligent, but not criminal in their response to reports they received of his inappropriate behavior at least as early as last spring, if not much sooner. A pattern of conduct "to remain willfully ignorant of the potential consequences" set in out of members' concern they "risked exposing Foley's homosexuality" and because of "political considerations" according to the report.

Democratic members of the House Ethics Committee assure the public the report wasn't a whitewash. "This is not the jury-rigged result of a series of compromises but rather the right report on this subject," Rep. Howard Berman (D-CA) is quoted as saying. Foley's behavior remains under investigation by Florida law enforcement for potential criminal wrongdoing on his part.

Thursday, December 07, 2006

What Happened To Mitt Romney?

If Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) loses the 2008 presidential race, the man he will most likely lose to is Gov. Mitt Romney (R-MA), who did not seek re-election this year, and who will now be able to devote himself full-time to running for president. Gov. Romney has distinguished himself as a leading, outspoken opponent of a Massachusetts high court ruling legalizing gay marriages. He lately has been fighting to get an initiative on the ballot to overturn that court ruling. It's hard to believe that not too many years ago, it was hard to find a Republican, or Democrat for that matter, as supportive of gay civil rights.

A Bay Windows interview from 1994 when Romney was taking on Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA) highlighted Romney's pro-gay stances. He said then, “I feel that as a society and for me as an individual, it’s incumbent on all of us to respect one another, regardless of our differences and beliefs, our differences in sexual orientation, in race and that America has always been a place, and should be a place, to welcome and tolerate people’s differences." He added, “I personally feel and one of my core beliefs is that we should accept people of all backgrounds and recognize everyone as a brother and a sister because we are all part of the family of man.”

And that just wasn't talk he told his interviewer. He intended to be an advocate to ensure what he called the "free agent." As he explained: "When I speak of free agency, I don’t just mean that each person can do what they want to do, I mean that our society should allow people to make their own choices and live by their own beliefs. People of integrity don’t force their beliefs on others, they make sure that others can live by different beliefs they may have. That’s the great thing about this country: it was founded to allow people to follow beliefs of their own conscience. I will work and have worked to fight discrimination and to assure each American equal opportunity." He noted that the company he ran then, Bain & Co., had a non-discrimination workplace policy.

And then there was his comparison to Gov. Bill Weld (R-MA). "I think Bill Weld’s fiscal conservatism, his focus on creating jobs and employment and his efforts to fight discrimination and assure civil rights for all is a model that I identify with and aspire to.” He said he would have opposed efforts by then-Sen. Jesse Helms (R-NC) to ban federal funding to public schools which supported "homosexuality." He said he supported the federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) to protect gays from workplace discrimination. He supported efforts to reduce the gay teen suicide rate. He supported domestic partner benefits for federal workers. And while he didn't support legal recognition of gay marriages in 1994, he did support the recognition of some of the incidents of marriage for same-sex couples.

Romney made a point I've often made as a Republican in explaining the importance of having Republican allies in the fight for gay civil rights. I couldn't have said it better than he did then:

“There’s something to be said for having a Republican who supports civil rights in this broader context, including sexual orientation. When Ted Kennedy speaks on gay rights, he’s seen as an extremist. When Mitt Romney speaks on gay rights he’s seen as a centrist and a moderate. It’s a little like if Eugene McCarthy was arguing in favor of recognizing China, people would have called him a nut. But when Richard Nixon does it, it becomes reasonable. When Ted says it, it’s extreme; when I say it, it’s mainstream.

“I think the gay community needs more support from the Republican Party and I would be a voice in the Republican Party to foster anti-discrimination efforts.
Unfortunately, Gov. Romney's march to the right to assuage the religious right has completely alienated the support of centrists he will need if he is to win the general election. I suspect the Romney who spoke those words was the man his father, former Michigan Gov. George Romney (R), taught to respect the importance of civil rights for all Americans. Maybe there's some hope he will return to his roots in the event he succeeds in winning the GOP nomination in 2008.