Juxtaposition

Two stories on the front page of the Palm Beach Post today about members of Congress and some recent, um, irregularities in their conduct. One is about a Democrat and the other is about a Republican. See if you can tell the difference between the two.

First, the Democrat:

Acknowledging that accusations that he doesn’t really live in Florida are raising “concerns” among his constituents, Democratic U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler said Tuesday that he will begin leasing an apartment in his congressional district rather than continue to claim residency at his in-laws’ home near Delray Beach.

Wexler made the announcement on the same day that his two challengers produced records showing Wexler received property tax breaks by declaring his house in Potomac, Md., a “primary residence” from 1999 to 2002. He also signed a loan document with his wife in 2005 describing the house as “my/our principal residence.”

Democratic U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler says he will lease an apartment in his congressional district rather than declaring residency at the home of his in-laws.

Wexler’s chief of staff, Eric Johnson, said Wexler mistakenly signed paperwork declaring the Maryland house his primary residence when he bought it in 1997 and corrected the error in 2003 when it was brought to his attention.

Johnson said the signature on the loan document was not the same as a legal declaration of residency but was an affirmation that Wexler would be living in the house “for a good majority of the time” rather than renting it out.

Even if Wexler called the Maryland home his primary residence, Johnson contended, he still would be a Florida resident. Johnson cited an 1879 Florida Supreme Court ruling that said a Gainesville man did not lose his Florida residency when “attending to the duties of a public office” in Washington.

And now the Republican (link is to original source, which the Post picked up):

Alaska’s Ted Stevens, the longest-serving Republican senator in U.S. history, was indicted yesterday on seven charges of making false statements about more than $250,000 that corporate executives doled out to overhaul his Anchorage area house.

A federal grand jury in the District accused Stevens of concealing on financial disclosure statements lucrative gifts from the now-defunct oil company Veco and its top executives, including a Viking gas grill, a tool cabinet and a wraparound deck. At one point, Veco employees and contractors jacked up the senator’s mountainside house on stilts and added a new first floor, with two bedrooms and a bathroom, the indictment says.

The senator, who once oversaw more than $900 billion in federal spending each year as chairman of the Appropriations Committee, said he has “temporarily relinquished” his senior posts on several committees, in accordance with Senate rules, while he focuses on the legal battle ahead.

Stevens, 84, the first sitting U.S. senator to face criminal charges in 15 years, adamantly denied the allegations in a statement yesterday afternoon.

Two points:

1. Will the people, especially local bloggers, bleating about how horrible Wexler’s situation is, kindly shut the fuck up?

2. Once again, Republicans outdo Democrats on the scale of criminality. Quite an honor to uphold, there, GOP.

Heckuva job, Teddy.

(There also was a front-page teaser about a story on a 15-year-old local golfer making great strides. I went to high school with the golfer’s father, who was two years behind me. I feel old.)

Liberal media, my ass (ver. … oh, hell, I’ve lost count)

I read The Palm Beach Post because it’s my hometown paper, not because of any great journalistic standards of excellence. Indeed, they actually have a rather leftward lean in their editorials, although they do carry a disconcerting number of nationally syndicated dumbasses (Brooks, Dowd, Will, among others).

However, I find their reporting not so much biased to the right as much as just plain sloppy. I told you some weeks ago about how they cited and quoted a right-wing think tank as authority for the claim that early voting was risky and unnecessary. That seemed sloppy and lacking in journalistic credibility … and today I found another example.

In an article today about the proposed mail-in primary, written by Michael C. Bender and Larry Lipman, the subheadline states “Opposition to the idea is swift, and even both campaigns are wary.” Yet it takes nearly halfway into the article before the opposition is mentioned, and there is no particular rationale offered for the opposition.*

Worse, though, is the jump header on page 16A, proclaiming in bold type over the article’s continuation, “Party chaos could push some Democrats to GOP.” Of course, the article says no such thing — it refers instead to how “some” Democrats might vote for Huggy Bear because of the “fiasco.” How many Democrats? According to the poll cited in the article, 14%. Fourteen percent. I guess technically this is “some Democrats” being “pushed … to [the] GOP,” but the headline unnecessarily trumpets what is both an insignificant number of disaffected Democrats and an insignificant point in terms of the entire article.

Sometimes, you know, it’s not the overt, Hannityesque bias in the media that gets you. It’s the subtle stuff like this, over and over and over again.

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* I will have another post on this shortly wrote another post examining the proposal itself and the opposition thereto; for now, suffice to say I don’t understand the reasons for the opposition, and the article fails to shed much light on it.

Liberal media, my ass (ver. 3.0)

Just when I thought it was safe to read the paper, I’m met with this headline on the front page (PDF) of today’s Palm Beach Post:

Early votes’ rise stirs unease
The state’s eightfold increase since 2004 does little to boost turnout and may create errors, experts say.

What experts are quoted in the article, you ask? Let’s take a look:

Although local elections supervisors have promoted absentee and early voting as a way to lure time-starved voters to the polls, some elections experts say the trend does little to improve overall turnout and injects more possibility of error into a state that has had plenty of voting blunders.

“You’re maintaining three distinct (voting) systems, each with its own quirks,” said John Fortier, a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington and author of Absentee and Early Voting: Trends, Promises and Perils.

“Some administrators like it because they think it evens out their flow,” Fortier said, “but it robs people of information when they vote a month before the election.”

Ah, okay, so it’s a problem because … hey, hold on a second! Did you see that? The “expert” is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Fortier’s colleagues include such notables wankers as John Bolton, Lynne Cheney, David Frum, Newt Gingrich, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, and John Yoo. In short, the AEI is a wingnut’s wet dream.

The fact is that early voting allows greater turnout, despite the right-wing’s desperate spin to the contrary. Of course, more people voting generally means more Democratic voting, so it’s understandable that the AEI would want to depress voter turnout. But why is the Post quoting a wingnut “expert” on the front page? Look, Post, for every so-called “expert” from the right you want to quote, I’ll throw three reality-based experts at you — how does that sound? And when your wingnut expert skews the front-page headline this badly, that’s a 15-yard penalty for unjournalistlike behavior.

I believe this may actually rise to the level of a letter to the editor … by me. Again I say, as incredulously as ever: liberal media, my ass.

Guess who’s coming to dinner south Florida?

Why, it’s our old pal, the odious WATB Joe Lieberman (I-Can’t Believe He’s Still in the Senate).

This week, the 2008 presidential race brings Lieberman back to Palm Beach County – but on behalf of a Republican candidate. Lieberman is scheduled to make appearances in South Florida on Wednesday and Thursday for GOP hopeful John McCain as Florida’s Jan. 29 primary approaches. McCain himself isn’t expected here this week.

Lieberman’s schedule includes a Boca Raton event hosted by McCain-backing Republican state Reps. Adam Hasner and Ellyn Bogdanoff and Boca Councilman Peter Baronoff. Lieberman also is slated to campaign in Broward and Miami-Dade for McCain, who isn’t expected in Florida until after South Carolina’s primary on Saturday.

The columnist, George Bennett of the Palm Beach Post, notes that on Lieberman’s previous forays down here, as Al Gore’s running mate in 2000, the Connecticut senator was “welcomed in South Florida as a virtual favorite son ….” I imagine the greeting might be a little different this time, or at least more orchestrated …

Incidentally, Bennett also quoted Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.):

Florida’s top elected Democrat, U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, isn’t saying whether he’ll make a presidential endorsement before the Dem primary. Nelson’s GOP prediction: “John McCain is going to be the nominee, and he’s the toughest nominee that the Democrats can have. Give me a Giuliani. Give me a Romney. Give me a Huckabee.”

Hmmm … that sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

On the Republican side, Sen. Nelson was much more direct. “I’ve been saying for three months now, and I’ve said it to his face, John McCain will be the nominee,” provided he has the money to run the race. According to Sen. Nelson, McCain is the “closest thing to a leader” that the Republicans have, and he will provide the toughest challenge for the eventual Democratic candidate. “Come on!,” he fairly laughed. “Give me Giuliani! Give me Romney! Give me Huckabee! McCain is the toughest match.”

You don’t think Bennett reads Blast Off!, do you? Sure, maybe he was at the same luncheon I attended, but who knows? After all, it would be irresponsible not to speculate …

(Then again, if Bennett read Blast Off!, he might have quoted Sen. Nelson accurately …)

Liberal media, my ass

So I go out to the driveway this morning to pick up my Palm Beach Post, and I’m greeted with the smiling faces of four GOP nominees (click image for full-size PDF version):

Didja see the headline beneath the pictures? You mean the Democrats are competing in New Hampshire, too?

You wouldn’t know it from the pictures, would you? I mean, other than the idea that Sen. Clinton’s campaign is panicking because she’s “trailing.”

I’m no Clintonite, but this is ridiculous. From now on, whenever I hear that the Post is liberal-leaning, I’m just going to pull out this front page. It’s absurd.

Now, scroll down for a Caption Contest on the Huckabee picture. I can’t resist!

UPDATE (1:57 pm 1/8/08): The Post strikes again today, promoting a civics test from a conservative think tank but not disclosing that salient fact. Again I am compelled to say, liberal media, my ass.