THIS FAR AND NO FURTHER
A Timeline of Events Surrounding the Radical Right's Attempt to Subvert American Democracy
Written and Compiled by Black Max
March 2007:
Week Two
Due to size considerations, this page has been divided into subpages.
Use the menu below to navigate the week's contents.
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- March 8: White House political guru Karl Rove, whose fingerprints are all over the firings of eight US attorneys for political reasons, gives the administration's spin at a speech in Arkansas.
US Attorney firings
Rove says, in part, "Look, by law and by Constitution [sic], these attorneys serve at the pleasure of the president and traditionally are given a four year term. And Clinton, when he came in, replaced all 93 US attorneys. When we came in, we ultimately replace most all 93 U.S. attorneys -- there are some still left from the Clinton era in place. We have appointed a total of, I think, 128 US attorneys -- that is to say the original 93, plus replaced some, some have served 4 years, some served less, most have served more. Clinton did 123. I mean, this is normal and ordinary. What happened in this instance, was there were seven done all at once, and people wanted to play politics with it. And it's served at the disadvantage at the people who.... Look, some of these were removed for cause. Some of them were policy disagreements. One United States attorney refused to file cases...of death penalty case...refused to ask for the death penalty, contrary to policy. Another United States attorney was doing an otherwise excellent job in the San Diego district. [She] refused to file immigration cases...at the direction of the Attorney General, she was asked to file, and she said I don't want to make that a priority in my office. Others are [because of] with performance issues." - Rove continues, "But this is the right of any president to appoint people to these offices. They serve at the pleasure of the president. And my view this is...unfortunately a very big attempt by some in the Congress to make a political stink about it. And the question is did they have the same reaction if they were in Congress in the 90's, or did they have the same reaction if they were in the 80's. Because every president comes in, appoints United States attorneys and then makes changes over the course of their time." Rove also says, again, that all of the US attorneys who are now serving indefinite "interim" appointments will, at some point, go through the Senate confirmation process. And former Clinton chief of staff John Podesta rebuts Rove's spin regarding the Clinton administration's handling of US attorneys, saying, "Mr. Rove's claims today that the Bush administration's purge of qualified and capable US attorneys is 'normal and ordinary' is pure fiction. Replacing most US attorneys when a new administration comes in -- as we did in 1993 and the Bush administration did in 2001 -- is not unusual. But the Clinton administration never fired federal prosecutors as pure political retribution. These US attorneys received positive performance reviews from the Justice Department and were then given no reason for their firings. We're used to this White House distorting the facts to blame the Clinton administration for its failures. Apparently, it's also willing to distort the facts and invoke the Clinton administration to try to justify its bad behavior."
- Although Rove is a past master of spin, his remarks, as usual, don't match with the facts. The San Diego attorney, Carol Lam, testified under oath that she was never asked by the Justice Department to change her office's handling of border cases. In fact, the Justice Department communicated their satisfaction with Lam's performance on immigration prosecutions in a letter to Democratic senator Dianne Feinstein just three months before Lam was fired.
- Linda Sanchez, says of Rove's remarks, "Judging from his confusing and blatantly false distortions, Karl Rove is apparently trying to prove that he knew nothing about why these US attorneys were fired. For instance, his statement that Carol Lam 'refused to file immigration cases' -- when her office actually had the second highest number of immigration prosecutions in the country -- demonstrates almost complete ignorance on the issue. Unfortunately, he needs to try harder. I would love to hear Mr. Rove's explanation for why US Attorney Bud Cummins was fired to make room for one of Mr. Rove's former aides. I am working with House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers to cut through the multiple excuses and get to the truth of what happened. Our hearing earlier this week raised significant concerns about who is making the decision to fire federal prosecutors and why they are doing it. Today, we sent a letter to the Justice Department demanding additional information, including relevant documents and interviews with key officials."
- A Washington lawyer who blogs under the initials "PF" corrects Rove's misstatements in a post to the blog TPM Muckraker. "PF" writes, "Taking things sequentially in his statement, the notion that 'US Attorneys serve at the pleasure of the president' is true, but irrelevant in this context. Congress is not investigation whether the president has the legal authority to fire these USAs -- it is investigating what factors the president permits to influence his judgment. It is one thing to say 'I am legally entitled to do X;' it is quite another to expect that you can do X for nefarious reasons and expect to go unchallenged in the political arena by a coordinate branch of government. Given the supine nature of Congress over the past six years, though, I can understand why Rove believed 'because the president says so' is a reasonable excuse.
- "Rove's reliance on 'the president can do it' to try to shut down debate, is specious for another reason. The president, for example, has unfettered rights to pardon people. If President Bush started selling pardons, under Rove's logic, Congress would have no right or reason to investigate what the president had done. Many Republicans certainly took a different tack with respect to investigating President Clinton's perhaps-poorly-considered pardon of Marc Rich. Second, Clinton's firing of 93 US attorneys was far less insidious than what happened here. Clinton's decision was generally applicable to all US attorneys -- you were hired by a different administration and I will replace you without regard to the status of any of your ongoing investigations. No one was spared, and thus no single US attorney's conduct was at issue. Here, however, Bush has not created a rule of general applicability (i.e., at the beginning of his second term seeking resignation of all US attorneys). Rather, his administration has apparently systematically chosen to replace US attorneys who were not malleable enough with respect to particular investigations of individuals or entities allied with the Republican party. There is simply no comparison between these two acts." (TPM Muckraker [link to video], TPM Muckraker, Think Progress [link to video])
- March 8: At least one House Republican is carrying water for the military -- and against the soldiers -- in the Walter Reed scandal.
Walter Reed scandal
During hearings in the House Armed Services Committee about veterans care, Phil Gingrey says the conditions in Walter Reed's now-infamous Building 18 aren't so bad. Instead of criticizing the cockroach infestation, for example, he says, "I was glad to know that those cockroaches were belly up. It suggested to me that at least someone was spraying for them." As for the conditions, Gingrey blames the soldiers themselves: "And, of course, if you leave food around in a motel room or a dorm room at a college, you're going to get some mice show up at some point in time." Instead, Gingrey blames the media, specifically the Washington Post, for the fallout, and says that he is "shocked" that Army Secretary Francis Harvey and Walter Reed commander George Weightmann were fired. "[A]sk the Washington Post whose head should roll, I think [President Bush] probably would be...the only satisfaction," he snarls. After trying to blame everyone but the military for the problems at Walter Reed, he intones, "[L]et's try to take some of the politics aside and some of the rhetoric, and try to solve the problem." (Think Progress [link to video]) - March 8: Consortium News founder Robert Parry takes the Washington Post editorial page, and Post editor Fred Hiatt and publisher Donald Graham in particular, to task for misrepresenting and lying about the history behind the Libby verdict and the leak of CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson's identity.
Lewis Libby perjury trial
Parry writes, "Fred Hiatt's...editorial page and George W. Bush's presidency have a lot in common -- most notably an arrogance of power so extreme that they believe their very words can alter reality." Parry uses the recent editorials from Hiatt and the Post editorial writers to establish that for years, the Post editorial writers "continue...to manufacture a false history of the case, [consistently] slamming Plame's husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson." - Parry writes, in part quoting the March 7 Post editorial, "The real reality of the case is that in 2003, a hubristic administration sought to damage a critic, Wilson, who had offended Vice President Dick Cheney by accusing the White House of having 'twisted' Iraq War intelligence. The anti-Wilson operation ended up exposing Wilson's CIA wife. Then, recognizing the potential criminality -- not to mention the political dangers -- the White House launched a cover-up. But that is not what the Post's editorial page wants you to understand. It pins much of the blame for the scandal on Joe Wilson, whom the Post says 'will be remembered as a blowhard.' The Post also distorts Wilson's statements in a way that parrots long-discredited White House talking points. 'Mr. Wilson was embraced by many because he was early in publicly charging that the Bush administration had "twisted," if not invented, facts in making the case for war against Iraq,' the Post editorial states. 'He claimed to have debunked evidence that Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger; suggested that he had been dispatched by Mr. Cheney to look into the matter; and alleged that his report had circulated at the highest levels of the administration. A bipartisan investigation by the Senate intelligence committee subsequently established that all of these claims were false -- and that Mr. Wilson was recommended for the Niger trip by Ms. Plame, his wife. When this fact, along with Ms. Plame's name, was disclosed in a column by Robert D. Novak, Mr. Wilson advanced yet another sensational charge: that his wife was a covert CIA operative and that senior White House officials had orchestrated the leak of her name to destroy her career and thus punish Mr. Wilson.... The [Libby] trial has provided convincing evidence that there was no conspiracy to punish Mr. Wilson by leaking Ms. Plame's identity -- and no evidence that she was, in fact, covert."
- As Parry notes, every single allegation in this editorial is, in Parry's words, "either a gross distortion or a lie." (The March 7 editorial pairs up nicely with the February 18 op-ed by conservative attorney Victoria Toensing, which in its content and timing came perilously close to jury tampering. See the February 2007 item for more information. The Post is wrong in saying that Wilson did not debunk the allegations of Iraq attempting to buy uranium from Niger. The Post is wrong in saying that Wilson was sent to Niger by his wife, and the Senate investigation proved it. The Post is wrong by saying that Wilson alleged he was sent to Niger by Cheney personally, as Wilson never made that allegation. And the Post is wrong by alleging that Wilson's information did not reach the highest levels of the administration. The Senate Intelligence Committee did not conclude that "all [Wilson's] claims were false." That assertion was pulled from "additional views" submitted by three right-wing Republicans, senators Pat Roberts, Orrin Hatch and Christopher Bond, who, in Parry's words, "carried the White House's water in claiming that Wilson's statements 'had no basis in fact.'" Like anyone else who has bothered to keep up with the events in question, Hiatt and the Post editorial writers know full well that Wilson was chosen by senior CIA officials, not Plame, to journey to Niger, and that Wilson was well qualified for the assignment since he had served in embassies in Iraq and Niger. The Post is dead wrong in once again asserting that Plame was not a covert CIA agent, and in asserting that Wilson was not the target of a White House smear campaign. All Hiatt and his colleagues are doing is repeating the long-debunked lies from the right.
- Parry points out that numerous articles from Post reporters stand in stark contrast to the editorial page's dishonest fabrications. He gives just one example out of many: on September 28, 2003, a Post news article reported that a White House official disclosed that the administration had informed at least six reporters about Plame and did so "purely and simply out of revenge" against Wilson. Fitzgerald made the same point in a court filing, stating that the investigation had uncovered a "concerted" effort by the White House to "discredit, punish or seek revenge against" Wilson because of his criticism of the administration. How do we know about this court filing? The Post printed it on the front page on April 9, 2006.
- Parry concludes, "So, what can be said about a newspaper's editorial board that willfully lies to its readers and slanders an American citizen, Joe Wilson, who took on a difficult assignment for his government at no pay and who later tried to blow the whistle on a White House misleading the public on an issue as important as war? In a normal world, a newspaper would praise Wilson for his dedication and patriotism. But the Post editorial board can't seem to get past its own gullibility in buying into the administration's bogus WMD claims in 2002-03. Rather than apologize for enabling Bush and Cheney to lead the nation into a disastrous war, Hiatt and Graham apparently have judged that they have the power to continue smearing Joe Wilson and other American citizens who had the foresight and courage to get the facts right."
- The Washington Monthly's Kevin Drum agrees with Parry, writing sarcastically, "We see nothing particularly wrong with half a dozen different Bush aides recklessly outing the name of a CIA NOC in order to distract the public from the fact that they had lied about Saddam Hussein's nuclear program before the war. Doesn't everyone do that kind of stuff?" About the Washington Post editorial, he writes, "Really, guys, if you're just going to transcribe White House talking points, why not ditch the pretense and outsource the whole editorial page to Tony Snow? It might save everyone some effort in the future." (Consortium News, Washington Post, Washington Monthly)
- March 8: Conservative columnist Robert Novak takes chutzpah to a new level by weighing in -- critically -- on the Libby verdict.
Lewis Libby perjury trial
Novak is, of course, the columnist who outed CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson on July 14, 2003, at the behest of his White House cohorts. Novak was an enthusiastic participant in the White House smear campaign against Joseph Wilson, if not completely informed of the smear campaign's inner workings. - Novak writes that Democrats, who he says had been "slow to react to my column of July 14, 2003, which reported that former diplomat Joseph Wilson's mission to Niger was suggested by his CIA employee wife, Valerie Plame Wilson," had decided by September that they "smelled another Iran-Contra affair or Watergate." Novak says, "They were wrong." Like his fellow conservatives, and the mainstream media editorialists such as the Washington Post's Fred Hiatt (see the item immediately above), Novak claims, falsely, that "[t]he Libby trial uncovered no plot hatched in the White House." Instead, Novak writes, "The worst news Tuesday for firebrand Democrats was that Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald was going back to his 'day job' (as U.S. attorney in Chicago)." He goes on to say, "With no underlying crime even claimed, the only question was whether Libby had consciously and purposefully lied to FBI agents and the grand jury about how he learned of Mrs. Wilson's identity." As is extensively covered throughout this site, Novak, like his conservative buddies, is dead wrong.
- Novak then downplays his own role in the Libby trial. "Subpoenaed by his defense team, I testified that I had phoned him in reporting the Wilson column and that he had said nothing about Wilson's wife. Other journalists said the same thing under oath, but we apparently made no impression on the jury." True, but the journalists Novak is referring to, including the Post's Walter Pincus and Bob Woodward as well as himself, testified on February 12 that they did not learn of Plame's identity from Libby, but from other White House officials who were also leaking Plame's name to the press. Novak, of course, was the one who actually chose to reveal Plame's identity in his column; the others demurred. And Novak ignores the testimony from three other journalists -- Judith Miller, Matt Cooper, and Tim Russert -- who did testify that Libby leaked Plame's name to them in an effort to have them reveal Plame's identity to the public. He also ignores the array of government officials who testified that Libby, along with his boss Dick Cheney and White House political guru Karl Rove, were orchestrating the smear campaign against Plame's husband, Joseph Wilson. In other words, Novak is not merely being disingenuous, he is blatantly misrepresenting the central thrust of the prosecution that convinced a jury that Libby was, indeed, guilty.
- Novak goes on to repeat the conservative canard that Plame was not technically a covert CIA agent. This has been refuted so thoroughly that it is hard to understand how Novak and his fellow conservatives can continue to insist on it. "The trial provided no information whatsoever about Valerie Plame's status at the CIA at the time I revealed her role in her husband's mission. No hard evidence was produced that Libby was ever told she was undercover. Fitzgerald had argued that whether or not she was covert was not material to this trial, and US District Judge Reggie B. Walton had so ruled. Yet in his closing argument, Fitzgerald referred to Mrs. Wilson's secret status, and in answer to a reporter's question after the verdict, he said she was 'classified.' In fact, her being classified -- that is, that her work was a government secret -- did not in itself meet the standard required for prosecution of the leaker (former deputy secretary of state Armitage) under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982. That statute limits prosecution to exposers of covert intelligence activities overseas, whose revelation would undermine US intelligence. That is why Fitzgerald did not move against Armitage." Again, Novak is being deliberately misleading. He fails to inform his readers that, as investigative journalist Robert Parry reports, "Libby's defense attorneys had successfully argued against admission of the evidence of Plame's covert status on the grounds that it would prejudice jurors who might be inflamed by the idea of exposing a covert CIA officer and her spy network. In addition, Plame's undercover work was not considered essential to a case narrowly constructed about Libby's lying." In other words, Fitzgerald, who was trying a man charged with perjury and obstruction of justice, could not go into detail about the covert status of a CIA agent. Fitzgerald chose not to charge Libby with revealing Plame's identity, not because of Libby's innocence, but because of the difficulty of proving such a charge under the narrowly constructed IIPA. But, being Novak, the columnist slants, cherrypicks, and misrepresents the truth.
- Novak notes that attorney David Boies, appearing on Fox's Hannity & Colmes, said that "Fitzgerald never should have prosecuted Libby because there was no underlying criminal violation. Boies scoffed at Fitzgerald's contention that Libby had obstructed him from exposing criminal activity. Boies, who represented Al Gore in the 2000 election dispute, is hardly a Bush sympathizer. But neither is he a Democratic partisan trying to milk this obscure scandal." Both Novak and Boies are wrong. The rationale for Fitzgerald's prosecution of Libby for perjury and obstruction of justice, but not for the leak itself, has been exhaustively examined elsewhere in this site. As an attorney, Boies is entitled to his opinion, as is pundit Novak, but unlike Boies, Novak has an obligation to fairly and accurately represent the truth. (Novak also waves Boies's representation of Al Gore as a flag to "prove" that his contentions are nonpartisan, forgetting the weak and restrictive efforts Boies made in Bush v. Gore.)
- Novak's concluding paragraph is perhaps the most breathtakingly arrogant and misleading of his entire article. He writes, "George W. Bush lost control of this issue when he permitted a special prosecutor to make decisions that, unlike going after a drug dealer or Mafia kingpin, turned out to be inherently political. It would have taken courage for the president to have aborted this process. It would require even more courage for him to pardon Scooter Libby now, and not while he is walking out of the White House in January 2009." I will leave it to the reader to find the myriad reasons why the self-serving and lying Novak is so hatefully, knowingly wrong. (Washington Post, Consortium News)
- March 8: Attorney General Alberto Gonzales meets privately with top members of the Senate Judiciary Committee to try to paper over the senators' concerns about Gonzales's performance as Attorney General, but the meeting does not seem to agree with Gonzales.
US Attorney firings
He agrees to "let" -- i.e. not oppose -- Congress limit his powers and interview Justice Department officials as part of an escalating battle over the firings of eight US attorneys. Gonzales knows, as do some of the senators, that another scandal about the FBI abusing Americans' privacy is about to break (see items below), and knows that he is losing support even among the GOP faithful. "What else do you want us to do?" he asks the senators. - The answer to that might be twofold: resign, and face the consequences of his actions. Referring to the FBI scandal, he says, "If there are questions raised, I have an obligation to make sure that we're doing things in the right way. I expect people to do their jobs. And if they don't, there's going to be accountability." Gonzales might not like the accountability he is being held to. "It almost seems like no one's in charge at the Justice Department," says Democratic senator Charles Schumer, who has called for Gonzales to step down. "There's just problem after problem after problem, and he doesn't seem to understand the seriousness of what's happened. ...He doesn't quite understand that it's a new ballgame." Schumer's Republican colleague, Arlen Specter, says before meeting with Gonzales in the committee that "one day there will be a new attorney general, maybe sooner rather than later," though he says he isn't implying that Gonzales should resign. One of the most hardline Republican House members, James Sensenbrenner, says "there ought to be some heads that roll" over the FBI scandal, and calls the US attorney firings "ham-handed." One GOP advisor to the White House sums up the feelings surrounding Gonzales: "This attorney general doesn't have anybody's confidence. It's the worst of Bush -- it's intense loyalty for all the wrong reasons. There will be other things that come up, and we don't have a guy in whom we can trust." (Washington Post/San Francisco Chronicle)
- March 8: Democrat Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, says he has asked special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald to testify before his committee about his investigation into the leak of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson's identity.
Plame outing
Plame has already agreed to testify before Congress on March 16 (see below item). Fitzgerald recently won a conviction against former White House senior aide Lewis Libby (see items above). Waxman and other Democrats want to hold hearings on Fitzgerald's investigation that would span a wider range than Fitzgerald's narrow prosecution of Libby. Fitzgerald would be asked to provide evidence he obtained during the course of his three-year investigation about the roles Dick Cheney and other White House officials played in the Plame leak. Waxman has sent a letter today to Fitzgerald asking him to voluntarily appear before his committee. Waxman writes, in part, "I recognize that as a federal prosecutor, you are constrained by the rules of grand jury secrecy. But you undoubtedly recognize that Congress has a responsibility to examine the policy and accountability questions that your investigation has raised. As a result of your investigation, you have a singular understanding of the facts and their implications that bear directly on the issues before Congress.... Your investigation had a narrow legal focus: Were any federal criminal statutes violated by White House officials?" - Fitzgerald has already hinted that he would cooperate with any such request to testify.
- In his letter, Waxman notes, "After the verdict was announced yesterday, one juror expressed the view that former chief of staff to the vice president Libby was only a 'fall guy.' This juror's views encapsulated questions that many in Congress and the public have about whether the ultimate responsibility for the outing of Ms. Wilson rests with more senior officials in the White House." Waxman says the Libby trial raised important questions about whether "senior White House officials, including the vice president and senior adviser to the president Karl Rove, complied with the requirements governing the handling of classified information" related to Plame's classified status within the CIA. "They also raise questions about whether the White House took appropriate remedial action following the leak, and whether the existing requirements are sufficient to protect against future leaks. Your perspective on these matters is important." In 2005, Waxman requested similar hearings, but was turned down by the then-Republican leadership in the House. He told Democracy Now in July 2005, "I think that the Congress must hold hearings, bring Karl Rove in, put him under oath, and let him explain the situation from his point of view. Let him tell us what happened. It's ridiculous that Congress should stay out of all of this and not hold hearings." Since Waxman's original request, information about Rove's and Cheney's involvement in the Plame leak has become far more evident; Fitzgerald himself told jurors that both Rove and Cheney were heavily involved in orchestrating the leak. He added that his investigation into the true nature of Cheney's involvement was impeded because Libby obstructed justice. And Libby's own defense team implied that Libby was, as the one juror said, a fall guy for Rove and Cheney. (Truthout)
- March 8: The Nevada Democratic Party refuses to participate in a proposed presidential debate to be sponsored by Fox News in August, after Fox president Roger Ailes compares Democratic senator and presidential candidate Barack Obama to Osama bin Laden.
Conservative media slant
In his speech at the First Amendment Awards ceremony, Ailes also made a bad joke about Bill Clinton's infidelities and obliquely threatened presidential candidate John Edwards, who quickly announced that he would not participate in any such debate if Fox sponsored it. (A clip of Ailes's performance can be viewed here.) - In a joint letter faxed to Fox News executive producer Marty Ryan, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Tom Collins, the head of the Nevada Democratic Party, write, "A month ago, the Nevada Democratic Party entered into a good faith agreement with Fox News to co-sponsor a presidential debate in August. This was done because the Nevada Democratic Party is reaching out to new voters and we strongly believe that a Democrat will not win Nevada unless we find new ways to talk to new people. To say the least, this was not a popular decision. But it is one that the Democratic Party stood by. However, comments made last night by Fox News President Roger Ailes in reference to one of our presidential candidates went too far. We cannot, as good Democrats, put our party in a position to defend such comments. In light of his comments, we have concluded that it is not possible to hold a presidential debate that will focus on our candidates and are therefore canceling our August debate. We take no pleasure in this, but it is the only course of action." Fox later responds in full snipe mode: "[N]ews organizations will want to think twice before getting involved in the Nevada Democratic Caucus which appears to be controlled by radical fringe out-of-state interest groups, not the Nevada Democratic Party." Ailes himself accuses the Democratic Party of attempting to "blacklist" Fox News.
- The initial decision to participate in the Fox-sponsored debate had drawn heavy fire from Democrats angry that the Nevada state party would have any dealings with Fox News, who has a long and well-documented track record of falsely smearing Democrats at any given opportunity. The debate quickly became a rallying point for Democratic grassroots organizations such as MoveOn.org and bloggers such as the 100,000-plus denizens of the Daily Kos, who loudly opposed such a move. Over 265,000 Democratic voters and activists signed a petition calling Fox "a mouthpiece for the Republican Party, not a legitimate news channel" and urging Nevada officials to cancel. MoveOn member Danny Coyle, who introduced a resolution overwhelmingly passed by the Carson City Democratic Central Committee to call on the Nevada state party to drop the debate, says, "I am glad and relieved that the Nevada Democratic leadership has come to its senses. Any kind of relationship with Fox is bad for the party."
- Reid had initially defended the decision to work with Fox, arguing that it might help Democratic candidates reach out to right-leaning Fox viewers. But party activists argued from the start that any connection with Fox was a mistake, and Ailes's inflammatory comments about Obama sealed the decision to dump Fox. Robert Greenwald, director of the movie Outfoxed, calls the move a "victory for truth and journalism." Some 280,000 people have viewed Greenwald's new YouTube film "Fox Attacks: Obama," which is linked along with the petition at the Web site Fox Attacks. "By standing up to Fox's right-wing smears," Greenwald says, "the patriotic grassroots, netroots, Senator Reid, Senator Edwards, and the Nevada Democrats have all worked together to protect one of the most important elements of a free society -- the press." MoveOn's executive director, Eli Pariser, adds that he hopes the decision not to have any dealings with Fox will "set a precedent within the party that Fox should be treated as a right-wing misinformation network, not legitimized as a neutral source of news."
- Shortly after the decision, Jonathan Prince, the deputy campaigh manager for Edwards, writes in an e-mail to supporters, "Fox News has already proven they have no intention of providing 'fair and balanced' coverage of any Democrat in this election. In recent weeks they have run blatant lies about Senator Obama's background. And Fox was only too happy to give Ann Coulter a platform to spew more hate a few days after her bigoted attack on Senator Edwards and the gay community. ...The truth is, Fox News can 'report' whatever they want. And when it works for us, we'll deal with them on our terms. But this campaign is about responsibility and accountability, and we need to send the message to Fox that if they want to be the corporate mouthpiece of the Republican Party more than they want to be an impartial news outlet, they shouldn't expect Democrats to play along."
- Less than a week later, the Congressional Black Caucus withdraws from its planned co-sponsorship of a presidential debate in South Carolina with Fox, and instead agrees to co-sponsor the debates with CNN. The CBC listened to complaints from a number of black Democratic organizations, including Color of Change, which wrote to the CBC, "Fox News is not a 'fair and balanced' source of information or political debate, and it has repeatedly proven itself hostile to the interests of Black Americans. Fox on-air personalities and regular guests consistently marginalize Black leaders, culture, and institutions. ...No network that calls Black churches a cult, implies that Senator Barack Obama is a terrorist, and uses the solemn occasion of Coretta Scott King's funeral to call Black leaders 'racist' should be given a stamp of approval by the CBC Institute. Validating Fox as a legitimate source of news hurts Black America." Another group, Afro-Netizens, weighed in by writing, in part, "Irrespective of their rhyme or reason, we implore you to join Color of Change and Afro-Netizen in urging the CBCI to lead with integrity and to not make another deal with the devil. In September of 2003 the Congressional Black Caucus co-sponsored a Democratic presidential candidate debate with Fox News at Baltimore HBCU, Morgan State University. Progressive-minded Blackfolk should have acted then, and we simply have no excuse not to act today towards keeping it (and any of its affiliated organizations) accountable."
- Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, the proprietor of the Daily Kos and a savvy political observer, says that the big winners of the debate debacle are Edwards, whose early refusal to have any dealings with the debate proposal fueled the counterattack against Fox, and the grassroots/netroots progressive movement, which came together in anger and solidarity to call on Reid and the Nevada Democrats to repudiate Fox. He calls the other Democratic presidential campaigns (with the exception of longshot Bill Richardson, who bailed on the debate an hour before the Nevada Democrats cancelled) "mild losers," particularly the campaign of Obama, "who could've shown some leadership and hit back at the network that has been tormenting them with non-stop smear attacks. Instead, they played it safe." The big loser, in Moulitsas's opinion, is Fox itself, "which will now face a whole new round of stories discussing their 'conservative bias' and propaganda function. For a network that wanted this debate to obscure their partisan purpose, this is the worst of all worlds."
- Moulitsas says that Fox's crying and snarling about the Democrats being too cowardly to let Fox host a debate is ridiculous. He notes that Fox backed away from a proposal to co-host the debates with liberal talk radio network Air America, writing, "They didn't want to be paired off with a progressive operation because it would ruin the point of the debate for them -- to present themselves as an unbiased and credible news operation. Had FNC agreed to share the stage with Air America, this debate would've likely survived." (Think Progress, Huffington Post, Daily Kos, MyDD, John Edwards, American Prospect/Crooks and Liars [link to video])
