(Schwuler = Fag in German)
Posted on 03/17/2006 2:48:11 PM PST by BillyDee53
It reads like a novel on the New York Times best selling list. A little over a year before a U.S. Senatorial campaign, two politcal operatives who work for an influential and clearly partisan U.S. Senator, illegally obtain the personal credit report of an African-American U.S. Senatorial candidate, who's trying to make history by being the first black U.S.Senator to represent the state of Maryland. At first glance, it looks like a slam dunk for any news media individual or company trying to garner attention and sell papers or increase their ratings.
The story involves "illegal political spying" which seems to be close to "domestic spying", an area the media surely loved to report on, when you take into account the coverage of "President Bush's domestic spying program" over the last 4 or 5 months. Even the attention-getting charge of "racism" could be injected into this story since the U.S. Senator and two researchers were white and of course the potentially history-making U.S. Senatorial candidate is black.
But the problem with this situation for the media companies involves politics and in this case the politics override higher ratings and more revenue. You see the Senator overseeing the personal research is non other than the liberal U.S. Senator from the state of New York Charles Schumer and the violated candidate is black conservative Republican Michael Steele. Ironically, Senator Schumer has been one of the loudest crusaders for strong protections from identity theft. And you know how much the media loves to expose hypocritical behavior by politicians, yet they're passing up what seem to be an idealic circumstance.
Were a couple of members of Virginia conservative Republican Senator George Allen's staff to get caught illegally obtaining the credit record of African-American U.S. Senator Barack Obama, in an effort to get information to smear him, you would hear the deafening screams from nearly every member of the media nationwide. There would be headlines in nearly every newspaper and the electronic media would feast on it day and night. They would scream corruption and racism. The national news magazines Time and Newsweek would make sure to give it prominent coverage.
You know how much they love to play the race card. BUT WHY NOT NOW?. It's simple they are biased in favor of the liberal Democrats and in their eyes they can do no wrong. Plus they see black Republicans as ungrateful traitors who don't appreciate what liberal Democrats have supposedly done for them. It seems that a white person can make any kind of bigoted comment to black people, in full sight of the media, as long as those black people are conservatives. You notice that these liberals portray Condoleeza Rice as Aunt Jemima and Steele as Stepin Fetchit, without a word of condemnation from the media.
Back to the case at hand, Senator Schumer has utilized the excuse that he had no idea what the two Democratic resrearchers were doing, but that's hard to accept as the truth when you take a look at the background of the two partisan workers who were involved. Veteran background worker Lauren Weiner committed the transgression and the person overseeing her work was another veteran Democratic researcher, Katie Barge.
Lauren Weiner is no novice because she was previously employed by U.S. Senator John Kyle of Arizona and in 2004 she was working for the Democratic National Committee. And the thought of political mukrakking is not new to her since in April of 2000, Ms. Weiner wrote an article about accessing the private personal records of individuals while utilizing the internet. This interesting piece was done while Lauren was an undergraduate at Northwestern University. Would it be a stretch to assume Senator Schumer had employed Ms. Weiner who pleaded guilty in the case, for the specific purpose of acquiring items like the credit report of Mr. Steele? And how exactly did she acquire the records? When did the other parties find out about it? I think it's worth our time to ask the esteemed Senator and his staff some of these questions.
And as for Katie Barge ,who also pleaded guilty, she has an even more prolific history of being involved in the operations of political campaigns. She worked for failed Democratic Presidential hopeful John Edwards and was also employed by partisan liberal internet entity Media Matters for America. Ms. Barge has been a researcher and employee for former Bill Clinton confidante Erskine Bowles, who also ran for the U.S. Senate. How could she not know what Ms. Weiner was doing? And if it's true that getting the personal credit report was a mistake, then what information exactly was it okay that she acquire? Also has this been a practice she's been involved in, on previous campaigns?
The Federal Fair Credit Reporting Act, makes it a felony charge punishable with a fine and maximum of two years in prison, for knowingly and willfully obtaining a credit report under false pretenses. Isn't obtaining another person's credit report while using the other party's Social Security Number, while digging up information to assassinate that person's character, violating this law in a tragically reckless manner? If Ms Weiner was the sole individual to acquire the file, then what exactly is Ms. Barge guilty of? Shouldn't these questions be posed to the prosecutors?
Why is The Democrat Senate Campaign Committee chairmanned by Senator Schumer, picking up the $400.00 per hour tab for Katie and Lauren's attorneys? How can a tremendous defender of U.S. citizens' personal credit records like Senator Schumer be in favor of paying the legal bills of two individuals who blatantly violated the Civil Rights of Mr Steele? Shouldn't these experienced individuals be held out as examples with regard to the seriousness of breaking this law? Shoudn't they be forced to cover their attorney fees themselves? Or could it be that Schumer and the DSCC are afraid that the two staffers might start giving information to the FBI that might incriminate their higher ups?
In addition, I would like to see the media ask Senator Schumer if the fact that two of his most experience operatives were sidelined, have anything at all to do with his weak questioning of Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito? Did the fact that his smear merchants were unavailable leave the Senator hamstrung during the questioning part of the nomination sessions?
It deeply saddens me when the media passes up such a unique opportunity that could be used to help expose the corruption immoral tactics surrounding political campaigns. The media could help us clean up things and therfore help attract more quality people nationwide to world of politics.
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Bump
Because it does not advance the agenda of the Antique Media.
"Forget about your silly whim, It doesen't fit the plan"
oops sorry bout that ! you beat me by 13 seconds.
Kuz he's an "Honorary Member" of that tribe known as Liberal Journalists.
Ain't that the truth.
Why so little coverage?
Because the Rat media support the Rats, come hell or high water. They do not regard crimes against Republicans as worthy of attention, because they do not regard Republicans as equal citizens or equal human beings.
We need to stop being surprised by these things, and start getting really angry.
bump
Bump.
Had a Republican been caught doing this, it would have been on the front page of every newspaper and on every talking head show. They would be saying that Rove set it up and W knew all about it. Since a democrat did it, nobody will ever find out.
They probably feel that a black republican doubly deserves it for leaving the dem plantation.
It's not covered because the Democrats who work in the news media don't care when a Democrat's staffers get caught breaking the law. Which is what the staffers did. Does anyone expect the leftist stooges at the New York Times to run a front pager on this?
"They probably feel that a black republican doubly deserves it for leaving the dem plantation"
Very true. What could be more loathesome to a Democrat than a black conservative?
Despicable.
Has this really been nowhere in the MSM? Maybe it at least needs to be forwarded to some of the columnists in the DC area (sorry to utter these words ... but, um, like the BaltSun; WPost; even -- ack -- AP and NPR.) Because in light of the recent withdrawal of Hackett in Ohio, this becomes a creepy pattern even these guys could understand.
16 or 17 questions asked in this article. I doubt any will ever be answered. Pathetic.
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