Big Election Wrap-up

I think that we can all agree that City Council victories by Natalia Rudiak and Robert Daniel Lavelle do not bode well for Lil Mayor Luke or his coattails.

Change Lukey would rather not believe in:

Bram's interview with Matt Merriman-Preston, political consultant to Natalia Rudiak (& Chelsa Wagner & Bill Peduto), is definitely worth a look. (And, as I'm sure Matt knows by now Lil Mayor Luke did not break 60%.)

That Dastardly Dowd refuses to apologize to Pittsburgh's Favorite Grandson.

For the junkies who like to obsess over numbers, graphs and maps there's Allegheny County's web site, Chris Briem's last few posts at Null Space, Pitt's map and the Post-Gazette's ward map.

There's a discussion on the "power of the blogosphere" as pertains to elections in the comments section of this Slag Heap post. IMHO, the blogosphere in general can be used to raise awareness, to raise funds, to move the conversation and occasionally to actually make news. All of this is more likely to occur on the national level where you can have a viral effect -- not so much here with Pittsburgh's older demographic. That said, as Pittsburgh's MSM (print anyway) tends to read the blogs, it's probably easiest here to make the news (as in the case of the Smith Liar Flier or MacYapper's Opie in handcuffs story).

In those same comments, Potter makes the point that, "In the case of district 2, my guess would be that your door-knocking for Blotzer did more to help her than anything anyone posted online."

Here, I'm in agreement. but I'll add that having someone work the polls can be a big asset as well. Case in point would be Hugh McGough's performance in the 16th Ward. While precincts 3 - 13 pretty much had the same results as his overall unfortunate performance (cause who'd want to vote for someone for judge who was highly recommended by the Bar and endorsed by both the P-G and the Trib...). However, in precincts 1 and 2 where there was a poll watcher (and inattentive Committee folk) he came in second and third respectively. Don't know if someone clued Don Walko that a majority of voters were walking in with McGough flyers or if he went to all the polls, but he and his wife came running over with more yard signs.

Speaking of 16-1, at least a couple of registered Democrats complained that when they went to vote, the screen gave them no choices for mayor and only offered them the option to write-in a name...hmmm, just like a Republican ballot would function. A technician was called and confirmed that nothing was wrong with the machines/software. Ya think maybe a poll worker was occasionally keying in D voters as R's? This would be the same polling place that had to temporarily shut down at 7:00 PM last November because of some poll worker freak out. Voters ended up in line until 9:30 (well, those who didn't give up and leave).

Finally, speaking of temporary shut downs, could the biggest victim of Tuesday's results be Matt H?


Time will tell...
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More Bad News For The GOP

This bubbled up a few days ago but in case you missed it, Gallup has some new poll data out:

The decline in Republican Party affiliation among Americans in recent years is well documented, but a Gallup analysis now shows that this movement away from the GOP has occurred among nearly every major demographic subgroup. Since the first year of George W. Bush's presidency in 2001, the Republican Party has maintained its support only among frequent churchgoers, with conservatives and senior citizens showing minimal decline.

They have charts and numbers to back this up. And they sum things up with:

The Republican Party clearly has lost a lot of support since 2001, the first year of George W. Bush's administration. Most of the loss in support actually occurred beginning in 2005, after Hurricane Katrina and Bush's nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court -- both of which created major public relations problems for the administration -- and amid declining support for the Iraq war. By the end of 2008, the party had its worst positioning against the Democrats in nearly two decades.

I'm sure it's all the fault of the lib'rel media.

More On Cheney's Iraq/al-Qaeda Claims

It was something I missed last Friday.

Cheney has been caught in another lie. McClatchy begins:

Then-Vice President Dick Cheney, defending the invasion of Iraq, asserted in 2004 that detainees interrogated at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp had revealed that Iraq had trained al Qaida operatives in chemical and biological warfare, an assertion that wasn't true.

Chew on that for a moment before going on to the next two paragraphs:

Cheney's 2004 comments to the now-defunct Rocky Mountain News were largely overlooked at the time. However, they appear to substantiate recent reports that interrogators at Guantanamo and other prison camps were ordered to find evidence of alleged cooperation between al Qaida and the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein — despite CIA reports that there were only sporadic, insignificant contacts between the militant Islamic group and the secular Iraqi dictatorship.

The head of the Criminal Investigation Task Force at Guantanamo from 2002-2005 confirmed to McClatchy that in late 2002 and early 2003, intelligence officials were tasked to find, among other things, Iraq-al Qaida ties, which were a central pillar of the Bush administration's case for its March 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Do I need to say that no one's been able to find any credible evidence of any operational link between Saddam's Iraq and al-Qaeda?

The details:

The Rocky Mountain News asked Cheney in a Jan. 9, 2004, interview if he stood by his claims that Saddam's regime had maintained a "relationship" with al Qaida, raising the danger that Iraq might give the group chemical, biological or nuclear weapons to attack the U.S.

"Absolutely. Absolutely," Cheney replied.

A Cheney spokeswoman said a response to an e-mail requesting clarification of the former vice president's remarks would be forthcoming next week.

"The (al Qaida-Iraq) links go back," he said. "We know for example from interrogating detainees in Guantanamo that al Qaida sent individuals to Baghdad to be trained in C.W. and B.W. technology, chemical and biological weapons technology. These are all matters that are there for anybody who wants to look at it."

Except it wasn't true.

They were waterboarding to establish the link anyway - to cover their collective asses. No "ticking time-bomb" scenario here. No thwarting another attack by "the terrrists, the evil-doers." Torture to make the political case for the illegal immoral invasion of Iraq.

Prosecute the torture.

Some notes for today's primary election

The ADB has a press release from Councilwoman Smith.

Slag Heap considers what a Zappala Peck win would mean.

Infinonymous notes that Ravenstahl can't even be trusted with taking care of the beer.

The Pittsburgh Comet finds that Tony Ceoffe ♥ scofflaws.

I will be voting for Patrick Dowd for mayor and Hugh McGough for Court of Common Pleas and cribbing from Progress Pittsburgh's Big Endorsement List (among other lists) for judicial votes (Barbara Behrend Ernsberger, Joe Williams, Susan Evanshavik DiLucente, Alex Bicket, Philip Igneizi, Anne Lazarus).

If I was in District 2 I'd vote for Georgia Blotzer, if I was in district 4 I'd vote for Natalia Rudiak, if I was in District 8 I'd vote for Bill Peduto, if I was in Wards 9 & 6 I'd vote for Susan Banahasky, and if I had to choose between Motznik and Diven I'd get a really big hammer and a really big steel spike and drive it into my own head.

I'll be poll watching all day, so no more posts from me today until fairly late (if any), so I'll say it now:

GET OUT THERE AND VOTE!
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A Loaded Deck

Man, I really didn't want to go back here again, but the painfully punny "Payneful Mistake" blog has left me no choice:


Really, Payneful Mistake? The number one problem you have with Councilwoman Tonya Payne is that she supported Hillary Clinton in the Democratic PRIMARY despite her district's preference for Barack Obama?

Let's set aside that elected officials often come out for a candidate far earlier in the process than regular voters. Let's set aside that the whole reason for Super Delegates is to have a group of voters who don't necessarily represent the popular vote (not that I even like that system). Let's set aside that Payne has been a longtime supporter of the Clintons and a real fan of Hillary. Let's set aside that Clinton's candidacy was historic as well. Let's even set aside that President Obama has gotten over the primary and appointed Hillary to Secretary of State.

Let's just follow the logic of this blog where it takes us.

If Payne's judgment is so poor for having supported Hillary Clinton, if it's the number one mistake she's made and doesn't deserve reelection because of it, and if she's one of the "haters" for voting for Hillary, then so is this woman:


Well not just that woman, all of these women:




Those would be the nine out of twelve female members of the Congressional Black Caucus in 2008 who supported Clinton over Obama. All, I will add, in districts which supported Obama over Clinton. (It is true that Waters and Cheeks Kilpatrick switched their support to Obama, but only at the last possible moment -- the day of the last state primary and after they had cast their votes for Clinton in their own state primaries -- when it no longer really mattered.)

So, I ask the Payneful Mistake blog if all of the above women have poor judgement, don't deserve reelection and are haters?

[OK, now I can sleep tonight.]
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Because sexism is dead

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Patrick Dowd's Good Call

I received a call at 7:05PM on Saturday night and on comes the recorded voice of Patrick Dowd and I assume it's a typical campaign call, but it turns out to be anything but typical. Turns out it was a virtual town hall. Once I signaled my agreement to participate I was connected to a live telephone conference with mayoral candidate Patrick Dowd and thousands of my fellow Pittsburghers. The moderator said that 2,000 people were on the line over the course of the event (the number of folks participating ebbed and flowed throughout the hour-long call). Everyone was invited to ask questions of the candidate and Dowd had time to take about a dozen of them. The questions asked were wide-ranging and included pensions/debts, employment, air quality, city/county consolidation, ending waste, youth curfews, and community development.

Those asking questions came from areas that included Westwood, Brighton Heights, Mt. Washington, Greenfield, Oakland, Lincoln Place, North Point Breeze, the North Side, and Park Place. There were multiple Southsiders who asked questions because we are a mouthy bunch (I was in queue to ask a question on pensions but a city cop beat me to it).

It was an interesting use of campaign resources. I've grown accustomed to participating in these types of calls by various issue-oriented groups, as well as the primary telephone pressers that the Hillary Clinton campaign held (I received email invitations to Obama pressers during the primary but would never get the confirmation code needed to call in). However, the issue group calls (and media/blogger-only pressers) were by email invitation and you called them. The Dowd call was an unannounced call that you accepted on-the-fly.

Dowd sounded intelligent, reasonable and well informed throughout the call. I have to say that I thought it was pretty cool idea.

I hate to say it, but I believe that Lil Mayor Luke can't be beat this time around. However, I've been wavering between voting for Dowd and voting for Carmen Robinson. The town hall on Saturday pushed me into the Dowd camp.

Good call, Patrick.
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With Profound Apologies...

I found this at The Poorman Institute.


I am not really sure what to say. I thought that (hoped that) it was perhaps a parody or joke of some kind but then I found this:


Amazing.

Absolutely amazing.

Jack Kelly Sunday

This week's column, Jack takes on the recent Washington Press Corps Dinner.

Newsflash: Jack Kelly thinks the Washington Press Corps is in the tank for President Obama!

Only his "proof" is far from convincing.

And oddly enough he spends almost half of the column on Meghan McCain - even though she's not in the tank for Obama and not a member of the Washington Press Corps - as "evidence."

Huh?

He describes Ms McCain with this:

[T]he not-especially-bright daughter of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.

And with this rhetorical question:

Why would a woman of no discernible accomplishment think other people ought to know who she is, or care?

And fulfilling the comedy rule-of-three, finally with this:

Mostly, of course, because Meghan is a spoiled brat. Her father became a hero because he believed in service to his country. She thinks that for no other reason than that she is a blood relation she ought to be served.

Funny, 8 years ago a lot of people were saying the same thing about the Torturer President.

But back to McCain. She's gotten into trouble with the Republicans true believers for writing things like this:

[C]ertain individuals continue to perpetuate negative stereotypes about Republicans. Especially Republican women. Who do I feel is the biggest culprit? Ann Coulter. I straight up don’t understand this woman or her popularity. I find her offensive, radical, insulting, and confusing all at the same time.

Though I find this odd because Jack also has had issues with Coulter:

But the dyspeptic denizens of the Right believe in addition by subtraction. To make the GOP stronger, moderates must be calumnized and driven from it. Polemicist Ann Coulter is so angry with Mr. McCain's occasional embrace of Democratic ideas that she says she'll campaign for Democrats if Mr. McCain wins the nomination.

Ms. Coulter says this sort of thing whenever she feels she's not getting enough attention. Her position is extreme, even among the extremists.

I wonder if Jack still thinks McCain is "not especially bright" now?

With little or no rhetorical segue, Jack suddenly starts in on Wanda Sykes and her performace at the White House Correspondents' Dinner:

The entertainment at the dinner was provided chiefly by Wanda Sykes, a "comedian." Her routine, and the audience's response to it, says much about Washington's glitterati.

Typically at these dinners, the incumbent president is lampooned. But Ms. Sykes directed her fire at conservatives. Radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh is a "traitor." He would have been the 20th hijacker on 9/11, but was too strung out on Oxycontin to make the flight. She hoped Mr. Limbaugh would die of kidney failure.

Note the ironic quotations marks. Subtle. Before we let Jack get all PC on Sykes' jokes (if Jack were writing that it would have read: Sykes' "jokes"), let's take a look at Eric Boehlert over at Mediamatters.org. Boehlert finds similar angst with James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal. Taranto wrote:

Why do liberals find this joke funny when they should find it embarrassing? The answer, it seems clear, is that this is an example of shock humor: a genre that relies on the frisson of violating taboos. By our count, Sykes runs afoul of five taboos in her Limbaugh joke: She equates dissent with treason. She likens a domestic political opponent to a foreign enemy. She makes fun of the disabled (Limbaugh's past addiction to painkillers would entitle him to protection under the Americans With Disabilities Act). She makes light of a form of interrogation that some people consider torture. And she wishes somebody dead.

Which Boehlert deconstructs:

The comedy gold, of course, is that Taranto unwittingly describes, point-for-point, the Rush Limbaugh show as its been heard for nearly two decades. But over that 20 years time, how many times has Taranto taken to the Op-ed town hall to tsk-tsk Limbaugh's brand of hateful humor? This is just a guess, but I'm guessing it's a bullseye: ZERO.

When Limbaugh or the GOP Noise Machine equates dissent with treason, likens political opponents to a foreign arm, mocks the disabled (paging Michael J. Fox), makes fun of interrogation and wishes somebody dead, it's funny and insightful. But when a liberal comedian does it, guess what? It's the end of the world as we know it.

And what of Ms McCain? She also didn't reportedly like Sykes. From the same Daily News article Jack quotes:

“Sen. McCain gave you grief about the new helicopters you didn’t order,” said Sykes, adding, “I think Mr. McCain was a little bitter because he wanted to be in the new helicopters. Mr. McCain, I’m sure if you ask nicely, your wife will buy you a new helicopter.”

While the assembled crowd of politicos, journalists and celebrities roared with laughter, Meghan was not among them.

“I didn’t like the joke about my mom [Cindy],” the young McCain told us after the dinner. “Why talk about her at all? I (didn’t mind the jokes) about my dad, but leave my mom out of it. It really wasn’t in good taste.”

Yah, Jack left that part out.

This is how you do it

This is how you talk about torture:


(h/t to Digby)
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I'm less than human

According to Cardinal Cormack Murphy-O'Connor:


"It is a diminshment of what it is to be human, in the sense I believe humanity is directed, because made by God, I think if you leave that out, you're not fully human."
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Hey! Even The Ghost of Harry Caray Sez So.

About 3:15 in.


Waterboarding is torture. It's like the one thing everyone in Heaven agrees on.

Ceoffe/Deutsch Whisper Shout Campaign Against Banahasky

Loyal readers of the Pittsburgh City Paper already know that the race to replace retiring magistrate Eugene Zielmanski in Lawrenceville's 6th and 9th wards has already garnered more than the normal amount of attention for this office.

Loyal readers of this blog already know that we have a lot of ugliness happening this election cycle.

The latest nastiness is accusations that Tony Ceoffe ally and Ward 9 Chair, Ronald Deutsch, has been going around Lawrenceville intimidating people displaying Susan Banahasky yard signs and telling voters in the district that she's -- horrors of horrors -- a Jew! (See here and here.) Ceoffe and Banahasky are running for Zielmanski's office.

For the record, she's Catholic (click here to see that her mother was honored by Diocese of Pittsburgh for her service to the Catholic Church). And, yes, I feel almost dirty having to prove that she's not a Jew -- as if there actually was something wrong if she were -- but obviously people are playing to the bigotry (perceived or real) of some in the community.

Deutsch and Banahasky have a history. He challenged her election petitions:

Bodack is a Ceoffe ally, and he owns the building that houses Lawrenceville United. (Bodack's father, a former state senator, owns the building containing the magistrate's office where Ceoffe hopes to work.) Meanwhile, an attorney for Dowd's 2007 council campaign, Isobel Storch, represented Banahasky in response to an aborted attempt to challenge her election petitions. And who originally filed that challenge? Ward 9 chair Ronald Deutsch, who sits on the neighborhood fireworks committee -- for which LU handles the money.

And, as Pittsburgh is a small town when it comes to politics, it's easy to play Six Degrees of Ronnie Deutsch:

Deutsch was an aide to ousted Councilman Len Bodack.

Patrick Dowd, who won Bodack's seat, had questions about Deutsch seemingly performing campaign duties on City payroll time (again over ballot issues) during his City Council race.

The Post-Gazette lumped Deutsch together with former Councilman Jeff Koch and other ousted politicians who landed jobs in the Ravenstahl Administration after being turned out by the public.

So here's my nearly annual plea when it comes to Pittsburgh primaries:

Don't reward bad behavior!
Vote for Susan Banahasky, http://susanformagistrate.com
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Ravenstahl, Smith & Reilly Falsely Claim Post-Gazette Endorsements

Pittsburgh's in the middle of an epidemic, folks, but it ain't the Swine Flu. It's mendacious pols with misleading fliers which make it appear as if the Post-Gazette endorsed them when that is in fact A BIG FAT LIE.

Only yesterday the P-G ran an editorial blasting City Councilwoman Theresa Smith for her deceptive fliers which claimed a P-G endorsement when they had in fact endorsed Georgia Blotzer for Council District 2...twice. Now the P-G reports that Lil Mayor Luke and Patrick Reilly are in on the act. They all juxtapose the Post-Gazette logo on their fliers to make it appear as an endorsement. (Is their some dank basement or dark alley where these folks meet to compare notes on how best to lie to voters?)

Let's review:

The P-G endorsed Patrick Dowd for Mayor, not Lukey Steelerstahl Bathroomstahl WTFenstahl Ravenstahl.

The P-G endorsed Georgia Blotzer for City Council District 2, not Theresa Smith Kail-Smith Smith.

The P-G endorsed Natalia Rudiak for City Council District 4, not Patrick "Who?" Reilly.

http://www.dowdformayor.com

http://www.georgiaforcouncil.com

http://nataliarudiak.com
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Post-Gazette Slams Councilor Smith for False Flier

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette makes it clear that they did not endorse Theresa Smith in the race for Pittsburgh City Council District 2 -- they endorsed Georgia Blotzer -- twice.

They had to make it clear as Smith has been distributing completely misleading fliers to voters:

Campaign fliers being distributed by city Councilwoman Theresa Smith in her bid to be renominated in Tuesday's primary have left a bad taste in our mouths here on the Post-Gazette Editorial Board.

[snip]

Nonetheless, after voters chose Ms. Smith, we published a congratulatory message welcoming her to council and wishing her well in the tasks ahead. It is that editorial that Ms. Smith has reproduced on campaign material, under the headline: "Endorsed Democrat for City Council." It is true that she was backed by the local party committee, but the reprinting of our editorial below it suggests to many that she was endorsed by the newspaper.

So we'll reiterate. The Post-Gazette endorses Georgia Blotzer for City Council because we believe she is the strongest candidate for District 2 Democrats and would best serve the city as a whole.

Read the full editorial here.

Kudos again to Bram for posting the fliers!

Blog Reactions:

Councilwoman Smith: Lying Her (Bleep) Off , The Pittsburgh Comet

Pittsburgh City Councilor Theresa Smith's Deceptive Fliers, 2 Political Junkies

Friday: In the Hands of Hobbits..., The Pittsburgh Comet

PG edt blasts Smith camp, Early Returns

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Obligatory Disclaimer: As mentioned before, I've been paid by the Georgia for Council campaign to create and maintain her web site: http://www.georgiaforcouncil.com/

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More On Cheney's Use of Torture

It starts here.

After writer Lawrence Wilkerson, Secretary of State Colin Powell's former chief of staff, points out some obvious facts about the Bush Cheney administration, for example:

First, more Americans were killed by terrorists on Cheney's watch than on any other leader's watch in US history. So his constant claim that no Americans were killed in the "seven and a half years" after 9/11 of his vice presidency takes on a new texture when one considers that fact. And it is a fact.

he drops the big one on us:

Likewise, what I have learned is that as the administration authorized harsh interrogation in April and May of 2002--well before the Justice Department had rendered any legal opinion--its principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at pre-empting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al-Qa'ida.

So furious was this effort that on one particular detainee, even when the interrogation team had reported to Cheney's office that their detainee "was compliant" (meaning the team recommended no more torture), the VP's office ordered them to continue the enhanced methods. The detainee had not revealed any al-Qa'ida-Baghdad contacts yet. This ceased only after Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, under waterboarding in Egypt, "revealed" such contacts. Of course later we learned that al-Libi revealed these contacts only to get the torture to stop.

Then there's this from McClatchy:

The Bush administration applied relentless pressure on interrogators to use harsh methods on detainees in part to find evidence of cooperation between al Qaida and the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's regime, according to a former senior U.S. intelligence official and a former Army psychiatrist.

Such information would've provided a foundation for one of former President George W. Bush's main arguments for invading Iraq in 2003. In fact, no evidence has ever been found of operational ties between Osama bin Laden's terrorist network and Saddam's regime.

It leads us here. Robert Windrem at the Daily Beast reports:

Two U.S. intelligence officers confirm that Vice President Cheney’s office suggested waterboarding an Iraqi prisoner, a former intelligence official for Saddam Hussein, who was suspected to have knowledge of a Saddam-al Qaeda connection.

The former chief of the Iraq Survey Group, Charles Duelfer, in charge of interrogations, tells The Daily Beast that he considered the request reprehensible.

Much of the information in the report of the 9/11 Commission was provided through more than 30 sessions of torture of detainees.

While that intelligence official wasn't waterboarded, he WAS an official POW. For Cheney to suggest waterboarding a real life honest to goodness POW is disgusting in itself.

Joe Conason over at Salon.com adds:

Yet evidence is mounting that under Cheney’s direction, "enhanced interrogation" was not used exclusively to prevent imminent acts of terror or collect actionable intelligence -- the aims that he constantly emphasizes -- but to invent evidence that would link al-Qaida with Saddam Hussein and connect the late Iraqi dictator to the 9/11 attacks.

In one report after another, from journalists, former administration officials and Senate investigators, the same theme continues to emerge: Whenever a prisoner believed to possess any knowledge of al-Qaida’s operations or Iraqi intelligence came into American custody, CIA interrogators felt intense pressure from the Bush White House to produce evidence of an Iraq-Qaida relationship (which contradicted everything that U.S. intelligence and other experts knew about the enmity between Saddam’s Baath Party and Osama bin Laden’s jihadists). Indeed, the futile quest for proof of that connection is the common thread running through the gruesome stories of torture from the Guantánamo detainee camp to Egyptian prisons to the CIA's black sites in Thailand and elsewhere.

And he ends with:

Whether Bush, Cheney and their associates were seeking real or fabricated intelligence, they knowingly employed methods that were certain to produce the latter -- as American officials well knew because those same techniques, especially water torture, had been used to elicit false confessions from captured Americans as long ago as World War II and the Korean conflict.

Cheney now claims that he preserved the country from terrorism and saved thousands and perhaps hundreds of thousands of lives. We need a serious investigation, with witnesses including the former vice-president under oath, to determine what he and his associates actually did with the brutal powers they arrogated to themselves -- because instead their actions cost thousands upon thousands of American and Iraqi lives, all in the service of a political lie.

Investigate the torture. Prosecute the torture.

City Paper Update

Oh, I'll say it on the record: Go read Chris Potter.

He may have completely sold out whatever remnants of "cool" he may once have had when he cut off his more than shoulder length hair (and I say that as someone who also has no claim to any cool AND who cut off his shoulder length hair more than 15 years ago) but he's worth the trip to the stacks of the City Paper in the corner of the coffee shop - despite the creepy American Apparel ads on the back cover.

That having been said, I was struck with something he posted today:

Apologies for the delay in this blog post. It's been a sort of surreal few days. I mean, it's not every week that Marty Freakin' Griffin takes time away from investigating ministers' sex lives to accuse us of disregarding people's privacy.

Chris is being far too kind - but let's dive deeper into his initial point about Marty Griffin.

This article, by Melissa Meinzer.

It tells the story about Paster Brent Dugan a local Presbyterian minister who committed suicide in 2006 rather than face life after being confronted by none other than KDKA's own Marty Griffin:

In the days prior to [Dugan's] death, KDKA-TV had been running teasers for a story about him, a story set to air Thu., Nov. 2. The snippets never named Dugan, but he was clearly visible on Pittsburgh screens -- being confronted by investigative reporter Marty Griffin at a McKeesport adult bookstore.

Here in a nutshell was what Dugan faced:

During the last days of October, KDKA started running teasers in which Griffin confronted Dugan about his visit to an adult-book store. The promos never made clear what Dugan had allegedly done wrong: Griffin would later tell viewers that the station had "uncovered illicit, possibly illegal, activity by a local minister, activities which at the very least violated the rules of his denomination."

Here's what Dennis Roddy had to say about Marty Griffin back then:

Marty Griffin, the go-for-broke reporter who worked the story was quoted saying that Rev. Dugan's behavior, if not illegal, might have violated the rules of his church.

While it is gratifying to know that KDKA has taken on the job of enforcing rules for the Presbyterian Church, it might have been nicer to know just what of public interest lay in the decision to pursue a story that turned out to be fatal to a subject who must have surprised everyone by feeling ashamed. KDKA, which presumably thought it necessary for the public to know about Rev. Dugan's sex life, has gone rather mute.

Meinzer had some interesting footnotes to Griffin's Dugan story:

In 1997, Griffin's then-employer, Dallas station KXAS-TV Channel 5, paid a reported $2.2 million to settle a defamation suit arising from a story Griffin aired about Dallas Cowboys receiver Michael Irvin. In that story, a topless dancer accused Irvin of participating in a rape with two other men -- accusations she later recanted, and which resulted in perjury charges against her.

Then there's this:

Griffin also conducted a hidden-camera investigation of Irvin's purported drug-buying activities, a story for which KXAS paid an informant $6,000. The station admitted no wrongdoing in the 1997 settlement, which Griffin opposed.

Yea, Griffin is the guy to lecture Chris Potter and the City Paper on respecting privacy. I'll let Potter explain what they were trying to do:

We were seeking an explanation about how and why the court gave the Scaifes a courtesy the average divorcing couple doesn't get: the ability to have their dirty laundry aired only in secret.

This is Journalism 101, even if Griffin doesn't recognize it: If somebody says you can't get access to files or meetings that are ordinarily public, you ask why.

Short haired Potter.

Joe Torsella Won't Challenge Arlen Specter

Joe Torsella drops out of the Democratic Senate race. His video statement from his web site:



(h/t to pa2010)
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Pittsburgh City Councilor Theresa Smith's Deceptive Fliers

Bram at The Pittsburgh Comet has posted a flyer from Theresa Smith who is running in the primary election on Tuesday for City Council in District 2. He points out that the flyer makes it seem as though Smith won the endorsement of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

The P-G endorsed Georgia Blotzer (both for the May 19th primary as well as in the shockingly low turnout February special election which Smith won):

Blotzer in District 2: She's the best council choice for the Democrats
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Active choice: Blotzer deserves a seat on City Council
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Moreover, Smith's flyer also misleads voters about what funding she has secured.

Naturally, she's the Committee endorsed candidate.

[sigh]

On the brighter side, Georgia Blotzer has won the endorsement of Michael Lamb.

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Obligatory Disclaimer: As mentioned before, I've been paid by the Georgia for Council campaign to create and maintain her web site: www.georgiaforcouncil.com
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Jim Burn: Democratic Committee = "a paramilitary operation"

According to a source who attended Tuesday night's Democratic City Committee election meeting, Jim Burn, Chair of the Allegheny County Democratic Committee, let it be known that the Democratic Committee is a "paramilitary operation" with a clear chain of command and no room for dissent (even in a Democratic primary).

He also compared supporting someone other than an endorsed candidate to crossing a union picket line. If you follow Burn's logic, the late Pittsburgh Mayor Dick Caliguiri was a scab.

Nice one, Jim!

Looks like they're back to marching in lockstep (guess we should forget any previous musings from Burn on the possibility of ever having an "open primary").

Ugh!

The Ideal Committee Member (according to Burn):

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