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Sunday, May 25, 2003 |
Josh Marshall on the media’s delay in covering DeLay: they expect this kind of stuff from him. “DeLay is benefiting greatly from his long-established reputation as someone who hugs the letter of the law while breaking its spirit, if not more, again and again.
"How else do you explain the following situation: the House Majority Leader was directly and intimately involved in activities that are now the subject of investigations by two cabinet departments and grand jury proceedings in Texas. Yet Washington is still barely paying the matter any attention. How do you explain that?”
Marshall also discusses DeLay’s formidable money machine. People know that money is power in politics, but they don’t always understand the mechanics. Greensboro’s own Howard Coble wields enormous clout, and it’s not because of his sparkling oratory or his refusal to accept his congressional pension – his power stems in large part from the almost $1 million in campaign funds he controls, which he can give to the Republican Party to dole out to other candidates. That’s one measure of the kind of power these guys wield. And that’s one reason politicians are hesitant to mess with Tom DeLay.
9:11:24 PM 
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Joe Lieberman addresses Tom DeLay’s possible misuse of the federal Homeland Security apparatus in the Texas legislative caper, will ask White House to get involved (low in transcript): “This smells, and I'm going to ask Andy Card of the White House to get into this this week, to examine any contacts that any federal officials had with federal departments...
There could be a federal law violation. There could be a misuse of federal resources and an abuse of power…I want to know whether anybody at the White House was contacted by Tom DeLay, or anybody in the Texas Republican Party, to get involved in this.”
Kudos to Fox News host (and former Greensboro Record writer) Tony Snow for pursuing this story.
1:47:05 PM
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Orson Scott Card, Greensboro’s most famous author since O. Henry, is writing the story for a video game, which he will then turn into a book and, he hopes, a movie (via thoughtsignals). After that, he can write a book about synergy.
I don’t know Card, although we’re neighbors, and I read his column every week in the Rhino Times. He’s such a good writer and thinker that I wish he’d aim a little higher in his subject matter, but even when I shrug at stuff like his reviews of potato chips or, for that matter, his chip on the shoulder about perceived slights to regular folks—which leads him to champion awful movies like Sweet Home Alabama, which actually is an insult to regular folks—he’s opinionated and entertaining.
9:36:30 AM
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Business 2.0’s Jimmy Guterman: “(T)here are blogs -- like Romenesko -- that I trust as much as I do the Wall Street Journal. But even though it's still in its early days, WSJ.com's Media & Marketing Edition showcases what a full publication can offer that a blog can't: a process that, in theory, produces a more impressive final product. (No Jayson Blair jokes, please. He's not the rule.)”
9:29:29 AM
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© Copyright 2003 Ed Cone.
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