NH Phone Jamming & Watergate

From The New York Times:

A Small-Time Crime With Hints of Big-Time Connections Lights Up the Net

The Internet is a great breeding ground for political conspiracies, and there is a new one lighting up computer monitors across the country. Bloggers are fascinated by what they see as eerie parallels between Watergate and a phone-jamming scandal in New Hampshire. It has low-level Republican operatives involved in dirty campaign tricks. It has checks from donors with murky backgrounds. It has telephone calls to the White House. What is unclear is whether it is the work of a few rogue actors, or something larger.

In 2002, there was a hard-fought Senate race between Gov. Jeanne Shaheen, the Democrat, and John Sununu, the Republican. On Election Day, Democratic workers arrived at five get-out-the-vote offices to find their phone lines jammed. It turned out that the jamming was being done by an Idaho telemarketing firm that was being paid by a Virginia consulting group. The fee for the jamming, reportedly $15,600, was paid by New Hampshire Republicans.

The executive director of the New Hampshire Republican Party and the president of the Virginia consulting group pleaded guilty for their part in the scheme. James Tobin, who was the New England political director for the Republican National Committee, went to trial and was convicted of telephone harassment last December.

Now, Jack Abramoff and his Indian tribe clients have joined the cast of characters, and some records of phone calls to the White House have turned up, though the significance of both of these revelations is hotly disputed. The evidence that the phone-jamming scandal goes higher than Mr. Tobin remains scant. But the watchdogs are right about this: the news media, prosecutors and the general public should demand more information about what happened.

The parallels drawn with Watergate are a good place to start:

1. The return of the "second-rate burglary." The New Hampshire phone-jamming scandal is being dismissed as small-time, state-level misconduct, but it occurred at a critical moment in a tough election.

In November 2002, Republicans were intent on winning a Senate majority so they would control the White House and both houses of Congress. They saw the Sununu-Shaheen race as pivotal. On Election Day morning, the phone lines were jammed at the Democratic offices and at a get-out-the-vote operation run by a firefighters' union. The police were called, and the lines were eventually freed up. The election wasn't as close as expected. Mr. Sununu won, and Republicans retook the Senate.

2. The return of the high-priced lawyer. Aficionados of the Watergate connection like to point out that one of the first clues that the Watergate burglars were not ordinary small-time crooks was the presence of a slick lawyer in an expensive suit at their first court appearance. In the New Hampshire case, Mr. Tobin was represented by Williams & Connolly, a pre-eminent white-collar criminal law firm. The legal bills, which published estimates have put at more than $2.5 million, were paid by the Republican National Committee. Democrats are asking why the committee footed the bill, if Mr. Tobin was a rogue actor who implicated the national party in a loathsome and embarrassing crime.

3. The return of "follow the money." (As if it ever left.) New Hampshire Democrats pored over the filings of the New Hampshire Republican Party and found three contributions for $5,000 each, all shortly before the election. One was from Americans for a Republican Majority, Tom DeLay's political action committee. The other two were from the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians and the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, tribes that were clients of Jack Abramoff. Those checks add up almost exactly to the cost of the phone jamming.

Republicans say that a lot of money flows into a campaign and that there is nothing to tie these checks to the phone jamming. But New Hampshire Democrats argue that it is highly unusual for Indian tribes to contribute to a state party in a state that does not have federally recognized Indian tribes or Indian gambling.

4. Does anybody get to ask: "What did they know, and when did they know it?" Democrats would, of course, like to connect the jamming to the White House, and this month they found a possible link. The Senate Majority Project, a pro-Democratic campaign group, examined the phone records that came out in Mr. Tobin's case and found that he made dozens of calls to the White House's office of political affairs right when he was executing the phone-jamming scheme. Ken Mehlman, the Republican National Committee chairman who was the White House political director at the time, insists that close contact of this kind between political operatives is the norm on Election Day, and that none of the calls mentioned the jamming.

New Hampshire Democrats have filed a civil lawsuit seeking to learn more about what occurred. They want the judge to give them access to e-mail messages that could shed light on the phone calls to the White House, and to let them question officials of the Republican National Committee and the White House. In March, a federal grand jury indicted a fourth person in the jamming scheme, the former co-owner of the Idaho telemarketing firm. The Senate Majority Project has been putting key documents on its Web site (www.senatemajority.com) and is continuing to investigate.

The phone jamming could turn out to be the work of a few bad actors. It could, on the other hand, take the Abramoff scandals to a new level of skullduggery. At least, 34 years after Watergate, we know the right questions to ask.

Senator Expects Seven Lawmakers To Go To Jail

From the AP:

U-S Senator Tom Coburn isn't naming names, but he expects six congressmen and a fellow senator will go to jail.

That's because he thinks they'll be facing corruption charges following investigations involving lobbyist Jack Abramoff and others.

Speaking at a town hall meeting in Wagoner last night, Coburn said that "if you've been keeping up with things, you've got a pretty good idea" of who the seven lawmakers are.

The Oklahoma Republican says members of both parties have been involved in questionable dealings.

The remarks were made in relation to his attempts to curb "earmarking," which is the practice of inserting appropriations for specific projects into unrelated bills.

Donations for a Congressman, Profits for His Wife

From The Washington Post:

On Capitol Hill, there is widespread agreement that the annual congressional salary of $165,200 just does not go far enough on today's dollar. The clamor for ethics reform will likely make things tougher, forcing congressmen to pick up lunch and dinner tabs and pay their own way to Redskins games.

One enterprising member of the House, Rep. John T. Doolittle (R-Calif.), and his wife, Julie Doolittle, have found an innovative — and apparently legal — way to boost the family salary.

Julie Doolittle has set up a fundraising company, Sierra Dominion Financial Services. Two of her clients are John Doolittle's campaign committee and his leadership PAC, the Superior California Federal Leadership Fund. Julie Doolittle's company gets 15 cents of every dollar raised by her husband's political committees.

The United Parcel Service PAC, for example, has given $15,000 to the leadership PAC and $10,000 to the campaign committee, which, in turn, means a commission of $3,750 for Julie Doolittle's company.

Overall, in the 2005-2006 election cycle, according to PoliticalMoneyLine, Sierra Dominion has collected $82,127 from the Doolittle committees. That is already ahead of the $77,947 in commissions in the 2003-2004 cycle, even with nine months to go until the election.

Asked about the propriety of Julie Doolittle's profiting from campaign contributions to her husband, Doolittle spokesman Richard Robinson replied by e-mail: "Sierra Dominion's compensation is based entirely upon performance in that it receives a percentage of what it is directly involved in raising. This arrangement is not only consistent with that of other fundraisers, but was designed to avoid the appearance that Sierra Dominion is compensated for anything other than its tireless and effective work."

Robinson contended that "having family members paid for such work is both legal and ethical." He said that "the Federal Election Commission approved such activity in 2001 when it issued a formal advisory opinion to Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.), who wanted to hire his wife as a campaign consultant, and the House Ethics Committee has advised us that such activity is in compliance with the House rules so long as compensation is consistent with the market rate."

Julie Doolittle and Sierra Dominion Financial Services have become issues in John Doolittle's reelection bid. The controversy involves not only the commissions from the political committees but also payments to Sierra Dominion by Jack Abramoff and Abramoff's former law firm, Greenberg Traurig, to raise money for Abramoff's Capital Athletic Foundation, a charity. On Jan. 3, Abramoff pleaded guilty to fraud, tax evasion and conspiracy to bribe public officials.

Union vs. University of Miami

Two important figures in the Democratic Party — Service Employees International Union President Andrew L. Stern and University of Miami President Donna E. Shalala — are at loggerheads in a fight to organize janitors at the university.

Stern is aggressively pressing Shalala, who was secretary of health and human services during the Clinton administration, to intervene on behalf of the janitors seeking to form a union. The janitors work for a private Boston-based company, UNICCO, hired as an outside contractor by the university.

Stern, who has criticized Shalala in a commentary on the liberal Huffington Post Web site, wants her to pressure UNICCO to allow janitors to decide to unionize under a system called a card check, instead of through a secret-ballot election held under the auspices of the National Labor Relations Board.

Under the card-check system, if accepted by the employer, a union is recognized when a majority of workers sign cards declaring their support.

In an interview, Shalala said she cannot intervene, for a variety of reasons. First, she said, it would be wrong on principle to oppose an election. Second, she argued: "It's not our fight — Andy and our contractor are having a fight, and I'm trying to stay out of it. Andy keeps trying to drag me into it."

The Politics of Students

A new poll by scholars at Harvard University found that religion and morality are playing important roles in shaping the politics of college students of all political leanings.

More than half of students interviewed at schools around the country said they are worried about the moral direction of the country. But the poll, conducted by the Institute of Politics at Harvard, also noted that students were sharply divided along party lines over whether religion ought to play a strong role in politics and government.

Fifty-six percent of Republicans thought it should, but only a fifth, or about 20 percent, of Democrats agreed. The poll found that college students did not fall neatly along liberal and conservative lines. While the largest group of students was still traditional liberals (44 percent), the numbers of religious centrists (25 percent) and traditional conservatives (16 percent) have grown in the past year. The number of secular centrists (15 percent) has declined.

The study's authors noted that the religious centrists are a key group for politicians to watch. "Optimistic about the future and very likely to participate in elections, the Religious Centrists' views are characterized by a deep concern over the moral direction of the country that is likely influenced by opposition to Roe v. Wade and belief that homosexuality is immoral," they wrote.

Moving into real-world politics, the poll showed that college students have a more dismal view of the job President Bush is doing than the general public has, with only 33 percent approving. As for Bush's possible successor, Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) each received 40 percent support in a presidential matchup.

Quote Of The Day

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their consciences."

– C. S. Lewis