“Let’s face it if a member of the legislature had done what Ms. Webb did you would be calling for their resignation. Apparently your publication promotes double standards. Wrong is wrong, and what Ms. Webb did was unethical, and possibly illegal. This is not a Republican or Democrat issue, but honesty in government issue.”

So commented Del. Steve Landes (R-Augusta) on Commonwealth Commonsense in response to one of my posts on the matter.

When asked by several of the Republican lawmakers for campaign donations, Katie Webb, lobbyist for the Virginia Hospital and Healthcare Association, refused their requests and stated the reason why: They voted against sale tax increases VHHA felt were needed to fund Medicare reimbursements to hospitals.

The letter was unusual in its bluntness, but what it said was obvious: If you don’t vote our way, don’t expect contributions. Somehow, Landes, who did not receive one of the letters, thinks that’s unethical and suggests this is an “honesty in government issue.”

I can’t understand the complaint. Webb was being honest. What would be dishonest is to make up some tortured reason that wouldn’t offend the lawmakers, which is what often is done, or to simply ignore the request. Lawmakers know they get contributions from people and organizations that want them to vote certain ways. Many folks don’t like that idea, thinking it provides too much power to the rich and corporations, but that’s the way the game is played. And unlike many liberals, I really have no problem with campaign contributions buying access because on election day, my vote counts just the same as a rich woman’s or a CEO’s vote.

Landes tried to get Attorney General Jerry Kilgore to weigh in on the matter, but his office declined, saying the AG doesn’t rule on the facts of a case. Landes wants Webb charged with bribery. The Washington Post reports the AG’s definition of bribery as “the offering, giving, receiving, or soliciting of anything of value with intent to influence the recipient’s action as a public official.” Boy, if that were followed to the letter, politicians wouldn’t receive enough to pay for a cup of coffee.

“There’s nothing shocking in this,” said Mark Rozell, chairman of the Politics Department at Catholic University. “It was just that the PAC’s response was so candid in admitting that they do what everyone else does.”

In fact, last week, Kilgore’s campaign solicited a donation from the Virginia Hospital and Healthcare Association as part of a broad mailing, a campaign spokesman said.
In his request, was Kilgore saying if you contribute to my campaign, “I’ll be sure to consider your point of view and the bigger the contribution the larger the consideration”?

Landes, who probably wouldn’t have any standing in a lawsuit, said he’ll leave it up to the lawmakers who received the letter to decide whether to pursue the matter in court. But that tact is losing its appeal.

“The truth is, we all have bigger fish to fry,” said Del. L. Scott Lingamfelter (R-Prince William). “I thought the letter was inappropriate. But having said that, I don’t think Ms. Webb got up in the morning intending to break the law. She overstated her point.”

Similarly, Sen. James K. “Jay” O’Brien Jr. (R-Fairfax) said he was ready to let things rest. “I thought it was in awfully poor taste,” he said. “She crossed the line, I thought. But it just shows you the nature of things in Richmond these days.”

At lease one of those who received the letter said he saw nothing unusual in it.

“I didn’t take any offense at the letter to begin with,” said Sen. Bill Bolling (R-Hanover). “Different people could read the letter in different ways. They were saying that they were not going to be supportive and here’s why. I thought they were being very honest in their position, and you can’t ask for more than that. I frankly never understood the angst.”

I haven’t understood it either.

A showing of Fahrenheit 9/11 on Thursday, July 8, at the Cinema Arts Theatre in Fairfax will be followed by a discussion moderated by Rich Rubinstein, Professor of Conflict Resolution and Public Affairs at the Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University in Fairfax.

The Cinema Arts Theatre is in the Fairfax City Mall on Little River Road in Fairfax. The discussion will follow the 7:40 showing of the film. Panelists include Marc Raskin of the Institute for Policy Studies and (awaiting confirmation) Joshua Muravchik of the American Enterprise Institute. Anyone interested in attending should buy tickets early; they expect to sell out.

A common journalistic line in this campaign is that John Kerry lacks charisma. Backbone, maybe; charisma, I’m not sure because I’m not sure what charisma is. And I doubt many journalists can give us a clear definition or benchmarks we can touch that put push candidates off the charisma scale.

But that doesn’t stop them from writing about it ad nauseum. Let’s face it: It’s easier than trying to understand, interpret and report on policy matters.

But this morning, the “Campaign Desk” from the Columbia J-School has an interesting retrospective about what the press is saying now about Kerry and possible running mate Sen. John Edwards and what the press was saying four years ago when Kerry was being considered for the No. 2 slot by Al Gore. Seems like in the four years since, Kerry has gotten uglier, less charismatic, more wonkish and more “aloof, condescending and soporific.”

In a word, these stories aren’t worth the price of newsprint, but reporters will keep on reporting them.

The F-word continues to reverberate both on Capitol Hill and in the Washington Post newsroom.

VP Cheney, who uttered “Fuck Yourself” to Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) late last week, refused to apologize or express any misgivings that he said it.

OK. Most of us have probably said this at some point, though probably not to a U.S. Senator. But here’s what Cheney said to Bush before they were elected, er I mean stole the election.

“I look forward to working with you, Governor, to change the tone in Washington, to restore a spirit of civility and respect and cooperation.…The days of the war room and the permanent campaign are over. . . . We take seriously the responsibility to be honest and civil.” So said Mr. Cheney in February 2001, in his first major speech as vice president.

But Friday he said,

“I expressed myself rather forcefully, felt better after I had done it,” Cheney told Neil Cavuto of Fox News. The vice president said those who heard the putdown agreed with him. “I think that a lot of my colleagues felt that what I had said badly needed to be said, that it was long overdue.”

Badly needed to be said? Did he think that Leahy would as a result change his position on the war become a Republican because the VP pointed out the senator’s inability to contort himself?

Evidently, the usually pompous and pious Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) was OK with remark, too.

“With regard to the vice president’s comments, I did not hear the comments, did not witness the comments, but clearly they reflect a lot of that emotion,” he said. “Without taking one side or the other, a lot of personal feelings are being expressed, and that emotion came out by the vice president, and I’ll let the American people judge as to whether or not it was warranted.”

Pressed whether he condones the use of such language in the Senate, Frist pointed out that the chamber was not in session at the time, “so I am not going to condone, I am not going to overly criticize the language that people in the — the language that people use to express themselves.”

The “Wear-my-religion-on-my-sleeve” Dubya was also sanguine about it.

On Saturday, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said President Bush had no problem with his vice president’s language. “It’s not an issue with the president,” McClellan said.

Meanwhile, The Washington Post, which set tongues a-wagging when it published the obscenity uncensored, felt the need to explain itself and address the lack of consistency that we highlighted last week.

“When the vice president of the United States says it to a senator in the way in which he said it on the Senate floor,” says Executive Editor Leonard Downie Jr., “readers need to judge for themselves what the word is because we don’t play games at The Washington Post and use dashes.” At the same time, the article recalled that in 2000 then-candidate George Bush made an off-mike comment about Adam Clymer, then a New York Times reporter, calling him a “major-league [expletive],” to which Cheney responded, “Big time.” Downie said the paper used the vulgar term for an orifice at the time and he saw no reason to repeat it in yesterday’s newspaper.

The Post also editorialized on the matter.

Whenever one of these angry moments comes along, someone points out that politics has always been rough-and-tumble, that attacks were pretty vicious in Thomas Jefferson’s day, and so on, all of which is true. It’s also true, though, as Mr. Cheney said in 2001, that there’s been less and less willingness in recent years to assume good faith on the other side, a trend that makes governing more difficult. Mr. Cheney indicated yesterday on Fox News that he has no regrets (“I felt better after I said it”), which in itself is another sad milepost.

The inability of this administration to admit fault continues to have deadly consequences, which are certainly more critical than an occasional “fuck.” But that the VP could not, as most had expected, simply say “I’m sorry I lost my temper” raises the question of whether that inability is seriously pathological.

Bush Can Hold Citizens Without Trial

Looks like the Bush administration is trying to use the FCC to stifled dissent. Roll Call reports that the FCC general counsel has issued an advisory that ads after July 31 for the Michael Moore film may violate the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance law.

In a draft advisory opinion placed on the FEC’s agenda for today’s meeting, the agency’s general counsel states that political documentary filmmakers may not air television or radio ads referring to federal candidates within 30 days of a primary election or 60 days of a general election.

The opinion is generated under the new McCain-Feingold campaign-finance law, which prohibits corporate-funded ads that identify a federal candidate before a primary or general election.

The proscription is broadly defined. Section 100.29 of the federal election regulations defines restricted corporate-funded ads as those that identify a candidate by his “name, nickname, photograph or drawing” or make it “otherwise apparent through an unambiguous reference.”

Should the six members of the FEC vote to approve the counsel’s opinion, it could put a serious crimp on Moore’s promotion efforts. The flavor of the movie was encapsulated by a recent review in The Boston Globe as “the case against George W. Bush, a fat compendium of previously reported crimes, errors, sins, and grievances delivered in the director’s patented tone of vaudevillian social outrage.”

The FEC ruling may also affect promotion of a slew of other upcoming political documentaries and films, such as “Uncovered: The Whole Truth About the Iraq War,” which opens in August, “The Corporation,” about democratic institutions being subsumed by the corporate agenda, or “Silver City,” a recently finished film by John Sayles that criticizes the Bush administration.

Another film, “The Hunting of the President,” which investigates whether Bill Clinton was the victim of a vast conspiracy, could be subject to regulations if it mentions Bush or members of Congress in its ads.

Perhaps working in tandem, one of the GOP 527 groups is planning a complaint to the Federal Elections Commission that Moore’s film violates the law.

David Bossie, the president of Citizens United, plans to allege that “Fahrenheit 9/11” violates federal election law, arguing that “Moore has publicly indicated his goal is to impact this election season.”

Bossie had planned to file a complaint with the FEC yesterday but postponed action because his lawyers want to review it at the last minute, said Summer Stitz, a spokeswoman for Bossie’s group.

“I don’t think much of Michael Moore or his two-hour political advertisement — that’s all it is,” Bossie said. “He uses all of these words to make it look like he makes documentaries, but it’s the furthest thing from the truth. Documentaries tend to be fact-based.”

Don’t you love it, Republicans worrying about fact-based anything.

Meanwhile, MoveOn, the liberal advocacy group, says it has organized more than 1,500 “Turn-Up-the-Heat” parties across the nation for Monday night. They will include a conference call with Moore. To find a party near you, go here.

Following up yesterday’s post about the state of the economy: Bill Scher provides more detail in his Center of American Progress “Think Again” column.

“Fuck yourself.” OK, it’s two words. This unoriginal and weak insult by VP Dick Cheney is quoted in this morning’s Washington Post page A4 story by Helen Dewar and Dana Milbank. Cheney’s office doesn’t deny it. No Democrats expressed outrage. Even A4 is probably giving too much attention to the remark, which seems to be the writers’ attitude.

First, there is the inscrutable lead: “A brief argument between Vice President Cheney and a senior Democratic senator led Cheney to utter a big-time obscenity on the Senate floor this week.” What makes “fuck yourself” “big time”? If anything, it pretty small time and lame as far as insults go. Perhaps it’s because it’s Cheney’s nickname, but given and used by whom we don’t know.

And there’s the curious blend of the four letter word I’ve never seen before in the Post and this later in the story:

This was not the first foray into French by Cheney and his boss. During the 2000 campaign, Bush pointed out a New York Times reporter to Cheney and said, without knowing the microphone was picking it up, “major-league [expletive].” Cheney’s response — “Big Time” — has become his official presidential nickname.

Then there was that famous Talk magazine interview of Bush by Tucker Carlson in 1999, in which the future president repeatedly used the F-word.

Saying this is a “foray into French” either revels the writers’ attempt to further demonize the French or a playfulness suggesting that they had a hard time writing this story with a straight face.

But why do they replace what I assume is “asshole” or the more passe “jerk-off” with “expletive deleted”? Is asshole or jerkoff more offending than fuck? Or is it all right to reveal the VP’s crudeness but not the president’s? And why refer to the president’s use of fuck as “the F-word”? Maybe one of the two reporters is salty and the other prim and proper and the compromise was using the word only once. Who knows?

The reporters, however, are quick to mention Republican hypocrisy.

Gleeful Democrats pointed out that the White House has not always been so forgiving of obscenity. In December, Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kerry was quoted using the same word in describing Bush’s Iraq policy as botched. The president’s chief of staff reacted with indignation.

“That’s beneath John Kerry,” Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. said. “I’m very disappointed that he would use that kind of language. I’m hoping that he’s apologizing at least to himself, because that’s not the John Kerry that I know.”

My view is that this point was unnecessary. After all, with the Republicans that control this White House, finding hypocrisy isn’t all that difficult, and certainly we’ve learned by now that there’s not much that’s beneath them.

Tickets on sale for the shows tomorrow at the Fairfax Cinema Arts. First time I’ve ever bought tickets for a movie a day before it opened. Even for a Woody Allen movie.

Brad deLong’s blog entry yesterday is getting good coverage – with good reason. He writes that the economic news sounds good, if you listen to reporters. But reporters frequently don’t have a clue as to how to interpret news; they tend to simply regurgitate the spin. The news actually isn’t all that good.

That the labor market is finally improving–that it is no longer becoming harder and harder month by month to find jobs–does not mean that the labor market is good. A few months of employment gains are good news: they mean that it is a little less bad out there in the labor market than it used to be. But don’t confuse rates of change with levels: there are still perhaps 4 million people either unemployed or out of the labor force who would have jobs if we had a labor market in equilibrium. (And there are 6 million who would have jobs if we were in a boom like the late 1990s.) It’s still unusually hard for Americans to find work–just not as unusually hard as it was six months ago.

The best little chart in the one of how more of our national income is going to profits than to labor compensation than it has in 40 years.