Posted on 11/06/2004 11:37:25 PM PST by Tamzee
If George W. Bush and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist accede to Sen. Arlen Specter's hopes of becoming the next Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, they will be betraying a very large group of voters who re-elected the president.
Even before Specter shot off his mouth to an Associated Press reporter and warned the president to avoid naming pro-life justices to the Supreme Court, he was way out of the mainstream of his party, a radical on the issue of abortion even by the standards of the other party.
He was the worst possible choice for chairman of the important Senate Judiciary Committee.
Then came that interview with Lara Jakes Jordan.
He is alleged to have said: "When you talk about judges who would change the right of a woman to choose, overturn Roe v. Wade, I think that is unlikely. The president is well aware of what happened, when a number of his nominees were sent up, with the filibuster ... And I would expect the president to be mindful of the considerations which I am mentioning."
I believe he said something very close to that, though he denies it now.
"Contrary to press accounts, I did not warn the president about anything" and would "never apply any litmus test" on abortion, Specter said in a statement yesterday.
The problem with Specter now is that he's compromised. He can't be trusted by either side in the debate at this point. And that's a good reason for the Republican Senate to look elsewhere for a chairman of the Judiciary Committee.
But there is more to this story than meets the eye.
It isn't only Specter who should lose his job. The reporter who broke the story has no business covering politics for the Associated Press. She has betrayed a partisan ideological agenda in stories over and over again.
If you doubt what I am saying, all you need to do is Google the name Lara Jakes Jordan and check out her screeds that somehow pass as news reports. I said it before, when she set up Specter's colleague Rick Santorum years ago in an ambush interview. I'll say it again now. She is one of those undercover political activists disguised as a reporter.
Lara Jakes Jordan is married to veteran Democratic Party operative Jim Jordan, the former executive director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and former manager of Sen. John Kerry's presidential bid.
Would you trust her political coverage if you knew that? And her political activism is not reserved exclusively to the news reports she writes for the AP.
In January of last year, Mrs. Jordan was one of the signatories on a letter to her bosses at the AP attacking the news organization for "rolling back diversity" by not extending benefits to domestic partners.
In a symbolic move, the signatories to the letter returned key chains AP management gave them to "celebrate" its corporate diversity. The key chains carried the slogan: "AP Diversity: Many Views, One Vision."
Do you get the picture?
I've been in the daily news business for 25 years. When I got started a quarter century ago, there was an old newsroom saying that went like this: "I don't care if you sleep with elephants as long as you don't cover the circus."
Mrs. Jordan violated that old newsroom ethic. She abdicated her right to cover the circus because she was sleeping with an elephant – or, in this case, a donkey.
Yes, by all means, Arlen Specter has to go. He's right to apologize for the statements he made. He should never have been confiding in a politically motivated reporter with a big ax to grind. He's a disgrace to the Senate.
But he's not the only one who should be apologizing. The largest news-gathering organization in the world, the Associated Press, owes the American people an apology for continuing to assign Lara Jakes Jordan to politically sensitive stories.
If you would like to call Sen. Bill Frist's office to let him know where you stand on Arlen Specter as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, his number is (202) 224-3344.
No doubt she is spinning.
Arlen "magic bullet scottish law" Specter should be denied the seat anyway. He made promises to the Pitt P-G that make my blood boil.
It isn't just abortion that Arlen is way way off on either
"a radical on the issue of abortion even by the standards of the other party."
Didn't he vote for the partial birth abortion ban? And the one enacting a criminal penalty for harming the unborn during another crime?
Pro-choice: Will Kill For Sex
The time is NOW. Forget everything else, we have a chance to stack the court and get this country back on moral ground.
"Pro-choice: Will Kill For Sex"
Pithy, and perfect.
Is there an online resource that documents possible conflicts of interest among AP reporters like Laura Jakes Jordan, as well as other members of the MSM?
That's what I told Sen. Frist. Millions more joined the fray this cycle because we want it done, NOW. One more piece of lip service and they'll lose the votes again...
The time is NOW. Forget everything else, we have a chance to stack the court and get this country back on moral ground
Yep and when they sneer at you and say "who they going to vote for, the other side is worse" Just tell them this.
YES the other side IS worse, but the Social Conservatives CAN do what they did in 2000 and STAY HOME. Sorry but for once the Republican "Moderates" are going to have to compromise and give the Social Conservatives some of what they want. JUDGES, JUDGES JUDGES. This is THEIR NO NEGOTIATION issue. WE MUST PRODUCE.
I'm curious as to exactly what he said to them... the leftie journalists sabotage Republicans at every opportunity and don't hesitate to mischaracterize or just blatantly even lie.
I'd like to see a more conservative Senator chair the committee myself, but this "journalist" has created a situation where we now see threats to defeat Santorum and Frist in their next elections and even a thread stating Bush and Santorum committed treason. This is getting out of hand, IMHO.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1273153/posts <-- Link
He promised he'd keep 'extremist' nominees from the Supreme Court. There is an FR thread.
Specter is scum. I can't believe I voted for him. [spit]
Yes. He stood with us in banning partial birth abortions and voted for Laci and Connor's Law, our most significant pro-life victories in years. He has also voted for every single one of Bush's pro-life nominees.
I don't like Specter, but I also think Bush and Frist are too smart to allow Specter to chair the committee unless they've gotten some type of guarantee from him that he won't sabotage Bush's nominees.
I'd like to see Specter's exact words, not a leftie "interpretation" of what he said...
... and Democrats didn't care that CBS used forged memos. They decided the forgeries were "accurate", so "fake" was no big deal.
The same comments were reported by other reporters besides Jordan. Also, there is a transcript of what he said.
That pretty much sum's it up. Murder is not birth control!
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