Everybody lawyer up!

Gonzales Hires a Top Gun
Still under investigation by Congress and Justice Department lawyers who once worked for him, the former attorney general has turned to a leading Washington attorney to help him beat the rap.
Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball, Newsweek
Oct 10, 2007

No sooner did Alberto Gonzales resign as attorney general last month than he retained a high-powered Washington criminal-defense lawyer to represent him in continuing inquiries by Congress and the Justice Department.

Gonzales’s choice of counsel, George Terwilliger—a partner at White & Case—is ironic if not surprising. A former deputy attorney general under the first President Bush, who later helped oversee GOP lawyers in the epic Florida recount battle of 2000, Terwilliger had been a White House finalist to replace Gonzales—only to be aced out at the last minute by retired federal judge Michael Mukasey.

The top concern for Gonzales, and now Terwilliger, is the expanding investigation by Glenn Fine, the Justice Department’s fiercely independent inspector general, according to three legal sources familiar with the matter who declined to speak publicly about ongoing investigations. Originally, Fine’s internal Justice probe—conducted in conjunction with lawyers from the department’s Office of Professional Responsibility—focused on the mass dismissal of U.S. attorneys late last year. The investigation has since broadened to include, among other matters, charges that Gonzales lied to Congress about the Bush administration’s warrantless surveillance program and the circumstances surrounding his late-night March 10, 2004, visit to the hospital room of then attorney general John Ashcroft. At the same time, Congress is continuing to pursue more documents on harsh CIA interrogation techniques approved by Gonzales.

Fine’s investigators, who received high-level security clearances, have been interviewing key players involved in the now-famous bedside confrontation in Ashcroft’s hospital room, according to the legal sources. During the visit that evening, Gonzales, then White House counsel, sought to persuade an ailing and heavily medicated Ashcroft to overrule department lawyers who had refused to sign off on classified surveillance activities ordered by President Bush because of concerns about their legality. A rash of senior Justice Department officials—including then deputy attorney general James Comey and FBI Director Robert Mueller—threatened to resign over the incident.

Yet when Gonzales appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee in February 2006, he testified that “there has not been any serious disagreement” about the president’s surveillance program. He did acknowledge disputes about “other intelligence activities” that he declined to identify.

One former administration official close to Gonzales’s team (who, like others interviewed for this story, requested anonymity in talking about an ongoing probe) said the former attorney general is concerned that Fine may end up making a criminal referral to the Public Integrity Section of the Justice Department—or even seek the appointment of a special counsel to determine if Gonzales made false statements to Congress.

The former official—who did not believe such action was warranted—said that Gonzales’s camp is increasingly worried that Fine might feel compelled to make such a move to avoid any suggestion that he was protecting his former boss and to reassert his independence. That would subject Gonzales to the unusual situation of being subject to a formal criminal investigation by the very department he used to head. “That is certainly one possible outcome of this,” said the former official.

Terwilliger, who recently began discussions with Fine’s investigators, confirmed to NEWSWEEK that he is representing Gonzales. But in an e-mail exchange, he declined to discuss any of the particular allegations against his client.

“We have been engaged to assist Judge Gonzales in his continued effort to provide assistance to the Department of Justice as it examines the Department’s role in various programs and operations to combat the terrorist threat,” Terwilliger wrote. “An unbiased assessment of the facts will show that Judge Gonzales, while holding high public office during a time of great peril, worked to help maintain the safety and security of the American people and acted always with the intent and commitment to honor the rule of law.”

The stakes for Gonzales were ratcheted up last week when Jack Goldsmith, the former assistant attorney general in charge of the Office of Legal Counsel, testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee about the dispute. Goldsmith, a key player who was present when Gonzales and Andy Card, White House chief of staff at the time, showed up at Ashcroft’s bedside. Goldsmith made clear that he, like others in the room, believed that the hospital meeting was indeed about the Terrorist Surveillance Program (TSP).

Asked by Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer what he made of the statement by Gonzales “that there was no serious internal dissent about the TSP,” Goldsmith replied: “I would just say there were … enormous disagreements about many aspects related to the TSP.”

Goldsmith added, however, that “there is a technical interpretation of what he [Gonzales] said that is true … but it’s very difficult to talk about it” in an unclassified setting.

Goldsmith’s testimony echoed that of former deputy attorney general Comey and FBI Director Mueller. Like Goldsmith, Mueller has testified that he considered the hospital dispute to be about the Terrorist Surveillance Program—and his own contemporaneous notes indicated as much. But Gonzales’s defenders have repeatedly said he was being extremely careful in his testimony because the underlying issues involved in the dispute—the particulars of the program that Goldsmith and others at Justice thought were in violation of the law—remain so highly classified that it was impossible for him to speak candidly. They and others have also suggested that, in part because of the Justice rebellion, aspects of the program were modified before its existence was publicly acknowledged by the White House. Therefore, they say, Gonzales was telling the truth when he said that there were no disagreements about the TSP “that the president has confirmed.”

In recent days, the White House—seeking to gain a speedy confirmation for Mukasey and to win passage of new surveillance legislation from the Democratic-controlled Congress—has hinted that it may finally share key legal documents about the program with Capitol Hill. In a letter to the leaders of the House and Senate Intelligence and Judiciary Committees, White House lawyer Emmet Flood said the White House “has agreed to assemble” a stack of materials relating to the program, including “all legal opinions” by the Office of Legal Counsel—a category that would include the memo Goldsmith wrote in 2004 that triggered the hospital room incident. Noting that these documents include “extraordinarily sensitive national security information,” Flood pointedly did not commit to turning over any of this material—only to continue talking to congressional leaders about them.

But the Democrats appear to be running out of patience. Their version of proposed new surveillance legislation, unveiled yesterday by House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, contains a striking provision that would require Fine’s office to do a full audit of all surveillance activities undertaken by the Bush administration since September 11, 2001—and then prepare a public, declassified report to be delivered to Congress six months after the law is passed. In a conference call with reporters Tuesday afternoon to discuss the Democratic bill, a Justice official said that this one of the provisions the administration has “concerns” about. ++

Gonzales can resign but he can’t hide
Former attorney general tries to hide behing Hispanic values
JOSE DE LA ISLA, Capital Hill Blue
October 11, 2007

Only hours after announcing in late August he would resign, embattled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales talked to Ruben Navarrette, a columnist with the San Diego Union Tribune.

Gonzales told Navarrette he wanted to be remembered “as someone who did the best he could … based on what was right and what was just.”

That sounds like a fair yardstick for measuring his public service. But there was more about Alberto Gonzales not yet known.

When Gonzales resigned, Richard Prince, in his online column “Journal-isms,” pointed out that all of the stories about the attorney general’s resignation mentioned he was the first Hispanic to hold that position. The designation supposedly complicated or constrained some commentators from being too critical of him. After all, a Latino as attorney general was a milestone achievement, a source of pride.

Navarrette seems to have been one of those who wasn’t sure Gonzales got a fair shake throughout the legalistic capers the AG was embroiled in. In the interview with Navarrette, Gonzales recognized “at some point, all the facts will come out and people can judge for themselves.”

That time has come. Those who were sanguine might now find the facts not going down very well.

On Oct. 4, The New York Times disclosed that shortly after Gonzales became attorney general in February 2005, his Justice Department issued a secret opinion. In it, Gonzales approved a legal memo authorizing agents “to barrage terror suspects with a combination of painful physical and psychological tactics,” according to the Times.

The methods included head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures. Some torture practices had been recanted earlier when they were disclosed after a Gonzales-led task force in the White House had given them legal sanction.

As legal counsel to President Bush, Gonzales had orchestrated the group that devised the draconian torture papers, giving legal sanction to methods violating the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of war prisoners.

That alone did not block him from getting appointed attorney general. Soon, he was implicated in questionable White House interference leading to the firing of nine regional U.S. attorneys. In crucial hearings into the matter, Gonzales testified 71 times he didn’t remember or couldn’t recall important meetings concerning the matter.

Late last year, with his leadership at Justice in question, Gonzales faced scrutiny over whether he testified truthfully, stonewalled or misled congressional inquiry into the firings and National Security Agency’s surveillance programs.

Now with the revelation he endorsed the harshest interrogation techniques used by the CIA, even Gonzales’ stalwart defenders will have a hard time rationalizing on his behalf. His own deputy at the time, James Comey, told colleagues at Justice they would all be ashamed when the public learned of the memo.

Two days before the Times expose, on a seemingly different matter concerning Hispanic Heritage Month, Gonzales provided a guest commentary to CNN. In it, he defined Hispanic values as comprised of sacrifice, hard work, personal initiative, dedication to family, and perseverance in the face of adversity. Those are good, and unsurprisingly similar to the personal values he referred to during the turbulent weeks before his long-sought resignation.

They are not the distinguishing qualities that result from the “Hispanic experience.” In fact, the response sounds remarkably like the platitudes used for high-sounding, little-meaning political patronizing.

A more accurate portrayal of the Hispanic experience, especially coming after the 1970s, would recognize the Latino push for voting rights and representation at all levels of government, a demand for a just government that is responsive to the community, an opportunity to participate in all sectors of society and the economy, fair procedures, and respect for civil rights. These values cut across party lines. They are not anyone’s exclusive property. They rest in the domain of social values — even universal standards — not just personal ones.

These social values too should be used to measure how the former attorney general performed when he occupied that position. Those who seek to justify torture should never be allowed to hide behind Hispanic values. Breaking the public trust will find no safe harbor in Hispanic civic values. ++

Jose de la Isla, author of “The Rise of Hispanic Political Power,” writes a weekly commentary for Hispanic Link News Service.

Rove Linked to Alabama Case
ADAM ZAGORIN/WASHINGTON
Wednesday, Oct. 10, 2007

A Republican lawyer claims she was told that Karl Rove — while serving as President Bush’s top political adviser — had intervened in the Justice Department’s prosecution of Alabamaďż˝s most prominent Democrat. Longtime Alabama G.O.P. activist Dana Jill Simpson first made the allegation in June, but has now provided new details in a lengthy sworn statement to the House Judiciary Committee. The Committee is expected to hold public hearings on the Alabama case next week as part of its investigation of possible political interference by the Bush Administration in the activities of the Department of Justice.

Simpson said in June that she heard a close associate of Rove say that the White House political adviser “had spoken with the Department of Justice” about “pursuing” Don Siegelman, a former Democratic governor of Alabama, with help from two of Alabama’s U.S. attorneys. Siegelman was later indicted on 32 counts of corruption, convicted on seven of them, and is currently serving an 88-month sentence in Federal prison.

If Simpson’s version of events is accurate, it would show direct political involvement by the White House in federal prosecutions — a charge leveled by Administration critics in connection with the U.S. attorney scandal that led to the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. But her account is disputed; those who she alleges told her about Rove’s involvement during a G.O.P. campaign conference call claim that no such conversation took place. Rove himself has not responded to Simpson’s allegations, which are clearly based on second-hand information, and the White House has refused to comment while Siegelman’s case remains on appeal.

Still, the Judiciary Committee plans to air Simpson’s testimony as part of its probe into political involvement in federal prosecutions. TIME has obtained a copy of Simpson’s 143-page sworn statement to the Judiciary Committee. She recalls conversations in early 2005 with Rob Riley, Jr., son of Alabama’s current Republican governor, over his father’s coming gubernatorial race, in which Siegelman appeared to be the top Democratic challenger. The younger Riley, she says, told her that his father and Bill Canary, the state’s top Republican political operative and a longtime friend of Rove, contacted Rove in late 2004, after which he intervened with the Justice Department’s Public Integrity section to push for criminal prosecution of Siegelman. Months later, in May 2005, Siegelman was indicted, setting off a chain of events that led to his imprisonment and the end of his political career.

Simpson also claims Riley, Jr., named the judge who would eventually be assigned to the case, and says Riley told her the judge would “hang Don Siegelman” because of a grudge against the former governor. She says he also specified one of the exact charges that Siegelman would later face. She says Riley, Jr., told her that Siegelman had conceded the close 2002 governor’s race to his father only after being told he would no longer be subject to possible federal corruption charges.

Contacted by TIME, Riley said, “Ms. Simpson’s statements have gone from being not only untrue to absurd and ridiculous.” He added, “She has now gone way beyond her original affidavit, to make claims so important that it’s inconceivable they would not have been included in her original statement.”

Simpson also provided evidence aimed at refuting the younger Riley’s claims, when the allegations first surfaced last June, that he barely knew Rove. This evidence includes a letter, over which a message is scrawled in what Simpson says is Riley’s handwriting. The message reads, “To: Jill — I e-mailed this to (name redacted), Karl (signed) Rob”.

Simpson says Riley’s reference is to Karl Rove. Riley counters that “Karl” refers to another lawyer. The president of the company whose case Riley was handling at the time said: “Rob Riley mentioned Karl Rove about four or five times as someone he was getting in touch with to help settle our business in Washington.”

When the Judiciary Committee publicly examines the Siegelman case next week, sources close to the panel say that former Alabama U.S. attorney Doug Jones will likely be a witness. Jones had been Siegelman’s lawyer until 2005, and says that in July 2004, he was told by federal prosecutors that only three areas of potential wrongdoing by the former governor were under investigation. Yet when Siegelman went to trial, he faced a 32-count indictment. “We on the defense believed that the case would soon be over, based on that conference with Federal prosecutors in July 2004,” Jones said.

By late 2004, the same prosecutors had rethought the entire case. Jones claims he was told by one prosecutor that the reason for the change was that the Justice Department in Washington had ordered a “top-to-bottom review,” revisiting all possible charges against Siegelman after more than three years of investigation. After that, Jones says, the case unexpectedly “kicked into high gear” as witnesses were called before a grand jury.

But Steve Feaga, a U.S. attorney who dealt with Jones, has a different recollection. “The offenses charged against Siegelman were the same ones we discussed all along with his lawyers,” Feaga says. “The prosecution never conducted a top-down review at the direction of DOJ in Washington; that review was done at our own initiative.”

The Judiciary Committee will examine the timing of prosecutors’ “top-to-bottom review” of their case with the timing of Rove’s alleged intervention with the Justice Department. That’s one reason Simpson was summoned before the Judiciary Committee last month to explain herself under penalty of perjury. ++

“So keep fightin’ for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin’ ass and celebratin’ the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.”
~ Molly Ivins, 1944 - 2007

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.

Add comment October 11th, 2007

Flock alert!

The SCHIP debacle is creating a lot of ripples … the kind that rock the boat; the public debate is connected the dots back to the actual challenges of both the medical and insurance industries. As new evidence of Dubby’s problematic Medicare program comes in, this … and the obvious abandonment of poor kiddies … is the debate of the moment — and high on the list of things the public wants addressed NOW.

Enter the Frost family from Maryland, who were used as an example of the middle-class need for SCHIP assistance because of their two afflicted children … and who have caused an uproar in the Righty camp that has proved, yet again, that the soul-less’ness of the clone class knows no bounds.

The first blog piece here is one of the clearest and most demystifying on SCHIP I’ve read — after that, the bloggers weigh in on the Limbaugh/Malkin attack of the clones against one Graeme Frost, disabled twelve year old.

I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that the dedicated Ditto Heads have hearts the size of split-pea’s and that they have a “friend” in little Georgie Bush, torturer extraordinaire and liar supreme; birds of a feather. Flocking. Squawking. Shatting.

Small children beware.

The good news of the day is that all but the mean spirited are looking on with contempt … rethinking support for these lame ducks, and siding with those who’ve been flocked. And it turns out the Frost’s are the perfect people to illustrate what’s wrong with the health care system and the middle-class decline.

Jude

George Bush, Secret Socialist
Bill Curry, HuffPo
October 10, 2007

Nearing the end of a catastrophic presidency George Bush seeks redemption in odd ways. Having wrecked Iraq he takes aim at Iran. Having denied global warming, he asks others to fix it. Having waged war on a credit card, he mimics fiscal prudence in symbolic budget battles with Congress.

It’s all too little and too late; sort of like Britney Spears staying home a night a week in hopes of being named mother of the year. But for Bush, it’s never too late to do some damage, which brings us to a tough topic for Britney and Bush: the health of children
In a saner world, Bush’s veto of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program bill would be unexplainable. The basic facts:

SCHIP insures 6.5 million kids in families earning less than 200% of the federal poverty level, or $41, 300 a year for a family of four. States can set lower limits and many do. The bill Bush vetoed raised eligibility to 300% of poverty, extending coverage to 4 million children. The cost: 35 billion over 5 years. Bush makes two arguments: we can’t afford it and even if we could, it’s creeping socialism.

Bush’s math is as fuzzy as ever. He says his budget strengthened SCHIP. Read the fine print. The $5 billion he’d add over five years is only a third of the inflation rate. That means a substantial cut, not an increase, in the number of children covered.

He says the bill he vetoed covers families of four earning as much as $83,000 a year. It’s true, but only in one state, New York, which somehow brokered an eligibility limit of 400% of the FPL. He could have pared New York back had he not shunned negotiations sought by the bill’s cosponsor, Republican Charles Grassley of Iowa.

The real eligibility limit for a family of four would be $62,000, qualifying it not for free insurance, but only a cap on its annual medical expenses set at about $3,000. Bush says it would rob them of “initiative.”

Before agreeing, do something he never does. Imagine it’s your family living on $62,000, shelling out $1,000 a month or more for health insurance. Now add $10,000 in bills, an ‘adjustable’ mortgage, a daughter looking at colleges and $3 a gallon gas.

Behold: A middle class family, circa 2007. Poor? No. Living the American Dream? Not even close. In need of a hand? You bet, and the sooner the better.

Most eligible families earn far less than $62,000. If a family member has a preexisting medical condition they pay far more in premiums–if they have insurance at all. For the children, millions of them, health care that ought to be a right is out of reach.

After seven years of war, gluttonous pork barrel spending and massive tax cuts, Bush saying we can’t afford health care for our children is like a father coming home to say there’s no money for groceries because he spent it all on drink or at the track. Thus the need for a second argument, that the bill is ‘European’ or ’socialist.’

If this were a movie it would be funny. Until Bush held them up at the border, seniors flocked to Canada for lower drug prices. They’d have swum to Europe if it weren’t so far.

As for socialism, we have it now. Government pays the lion’s share of health care costs and gets less for it every year because it can’t tame the insurance industrial complex. Bush cries ‘free market’ but his pork fest of a Medicare drug bill stifled competition and guaranteed industry profits. It’s called corporate socialism and Bush is its Lenin.

Amazingly enough, Republican presidential candidates stumble over one another in a rush to back him up. As a wise man said, never underestimate the capacity of an entire social order to commit suicide.

Republicans in Congress may have keener survival instincts. Their choice: to feel the gratitude of the children or the wrath of the adults. Democrats gave them time to mull it over while they batter them with negative TV ads. In one, a droll child threatens to stop having his picture taken with Republicans until they get him some health care.

The ads follow up a Democratic radio pitch featuring young Graeme Foster, who thanked SCHIP for footing his hospital bills after an automobile accident. Republicans answered in their usual style, peddling false charges that the family defrauded the program.

Yes, it has come to this–Republicans swift-boating twelve year olds. You must admire the chutzpa it takes for the folks who gave us Harry and Louise to question a young coma survivor gamely facing life with a paralyzed vocal chord.

One wonders how Harry and Louise are doing 14 years after fretting over Hillary-Care. Do they still worry about high prices and big bureaucracies or did they reach Medicare eligibility? No doubt they could teach the Fosters a thing or two about waiting one’s turn.

Republicans look both slimy and clueless. It doesn’t matter if the Frosts are secretly middle class; middle class families can’t pay their health care bills either. To help them government must play a bigger, smarter role, as in every other developed nation.

We pay twice what any other country pays for overhead, as much as 30 cents of every health care dollar. “Socialist” Canada is second at about 16 cents. Until voters find out that Aetna charges 20 cents to do what Medicare does for a nickel and that federal law guarantees their right to go right on doing it, real change will elude us.

The Clinton, Obama and Edwards plans all include options to buy insurance through government. In quality and price, their public plans will blow private plans out of the water. They spend their time reassuring us we can keep current coverage. They should also explain why so few of us will.

Republicans are better than Democrats at debate because they still look to think tanks for policy while Democrats look to pollsters for themes: Republicans say SCHIP costs too much and sends us down a slippery slope to statism. Democrats say Bush hates kids.

The voices of children should be enough to win this round but to get universal care through Congress Democrats must explain why we need government not only to expand access but to bring down costs. That mean adults getting on the radio and telling us what they know about the cost of corporate socialism. ++

The Swift-Boating of Graeme Frost
Karen Tumulty, TIME
Wednesday, Oct. 10, 2007

WASHINGTON - If you listen closely to the two-minute radio address that 12-year-old Graeme Frost delivered last week for the Democrats, you can hear the lingering effects of the 2004 car crash that put him into a coma for a week and left one of his vocal chords paralyzed. “Most kids my age probably haven’t heard of CHIP, the Children’s Health Insurance Program,” he says in a voice that sounds weak and stressed. “But I know all about it, because if it weren’t for CHIP, I might not be here today.”

Graeme, whose sister suffered worse brain injuries when their family SUV hit a patch of black ice, was making an appeal for President Bush to reconsider his veto of legislation that would have expanded the program designed to provide health coverage to children of the working poor — those who are too rich to qualify for Medicaid, but unable to afford private insurance.

Since then, Frost and his family have been introduced first-hand to something else that most kids his age haven’t: the reality of how brutal partisan politics can be in the Internet age. It started over the weekend, when a blogger calling himself Icwhatudo put up a post on the conservative website Freerepublic.com noting what he had found by scavenging around the internet: that Graeme attends a private school, lives in a remodeled house near one that had sold for $485,000 in March and is the child of parents whose wedding was announced in the New York Times. The post also noted that his father purchased a $160,000 commercial space in 1999.

“One has to wonder that if time and money can be found to remodel a home, send kids to exclusive private schools, purchase commercial property and run your own business… maybe money can be found for other things,” the blogger wrote. “Maybe Dad should drop his woodworking hobby and get a real job that offers health insurance rather than making people like me (also with 4 kids in a 600sf smaller house and tuition $16,000 less per kid and no commercial property ownership) pay for it in my taxes.”

That was just the beginning of what turned into a Category 5 hurricane on the blogosphere. Typical of the tone was what Mark Steyn wrote on National Review Online: “Bad things happen to good people, and they cause financial problems and tough choices. But, if this is the face of the ‘needy’ in America, then no one is not needy.” Nameless commenters to conservative blogs were even harsher. “Let ‘em twist in the wind and be eaten by ravens,” wrote one one on Redstate.com, who was quoted in the Baltimore Sun. “Then maybe the bunch of socialist patsies will think twice.”

It turns out, however, that not everything about the Frosts’ life pops up on a Google search. While Graeme does attend a private school, he does so on scholarship. Halsey Frost is a self-employed woodworker; he and his wife say they earn between $45,000 and $50,000 a year to provide for their family of six. Their 1936 rowhouse was purchased in 1990 for $55,000. It was vacant and in a run-down neighborhood that has improved since then, in part because of people like themselves who took a chance. It is now assessed at $263,140, though under state law the value of that asset is not taken into account in determining their eligibility for SCHIP. And while they are still uninsured, they claim it is most certainly not by choice. Bonnie Frost says the last time she priced health coverage, she learned it would cost them $1,200 a month.

In short, just as the radio spot claimed, the Frosts are precisely the kind of people that the SCHIP program was intended to help.

While the family continues to support the vetoed bill that would expand the program to 4 million more children, they are hoping to remove themselves from the middle of the storm. After giving a few interviews, Halsey and Bonnie Frost now say they don’t want to say anything more, though network camera crews have planted themselves in front of their house.

Halsey did have this to say in an e-mail to me:

“My son Graeme has helped put on a human face, that of a young boy, representing the needs of children and families across this nation. We are a hard working family that has stepped forward to support SCHIP. Mudslinging from the fringe has now been directed at the messenger. To be smeared all over the Internet and receive nasty e-mail — my family does not deserve this retribution. It is both shameful and pathetic.

“Driven by a most dubious agenda, shortsighted cut-and-paste bloggers, lacking all the facts, have made a feeble attempt at being crack reporters. This is an aberrant attempt to distract the American people from what the real issues are. Hard working American families need affordable health insurance.

“I find it morally reprehensible, and the act of a true coward, to publicly (world wide) smear a man and his family and not sign one’s own real name to what they have written. I sign my name to what I write.

Halsey Frost”

He also passed along a letter from a friend, Andrew Gray, who wrote:

“Chances are, Bonnie, Halsey and their kids will survive this. The sad reality is that they’ve already been through much worse. But what does it say about us as a nation that we seek to destroy the reputations of those we should honor? Have we become so cynical and nasty that we no longer can recognize simple courage and decency?”

Politics has never been a gentle game. As far back as 1895, satirist Finley Peter Dunne’s fictional saloonkeeper Martin Dooley observed that women, children and prohibitionists would do well to stay out of it, because “politics ain’t beanbag.” But surely, even Mr. Dooley could never have imagined a day would come when a mere seventh grader could be swift-boated. ++

Rush Smears 12-Yr Old: ‘They Filled His Head With Lies Just As They Have Some Of These Soldiers’
Think Progress
10/09/07

Yesterday, ThinkProgress noted the right wing has been orchestrating a coordinated effort to smear a 12 year old recipient of SCHIP. These conservatives have been propagating baseless “facts” to suggest that young Graeme Frost was actually a rich kid being pampered by the government.

Rush Limbaugh has joined in the smear campaign. On his radio show yesterday, Rush introduced his hit job on Graeme by saying, “I had some rudimentary information on this two weeks ago, and it wasn’t enough for me to trust going with. But since then, it has been verified, and most of it’s been verified by a ‘Freeper’ at Free Republic.” Apparently, a posting by a “freeper” is all Rush needs for confirmation.

Rush proceeded to recycle the myths that Graeme and his sister must be fat-cat recipients of government welfare because they attend “one of Baltimore’s expensive private schools” and own a house in a decent neighborhood. As we noted yesterday, Graeme has a scholarship to the private school. His sister’s tuition is covered by the state due to her brain injuries, and the house was purchased for $55,000 in 1991 when the neighborhood was not as safe as it is today.

Limbaugh then tried to draw a parallel between Graeme and his “phony soldiers” remark:

So the bottom line for me is: They can’t rely on truth to make their case for their cause. They have to lie. Be it about me, be it about their own voters (such as the Frosts) be it about President Bush, they must lie — and anybody who stands in the way of their succeeding with that lie becomes an enemy, becomes a target. That’s where I and my buddies in talk radio come in. We are a thorn in their side because we represent the truth they are trying to hide, the truth that they are lying about, and they have to do something about it — and they have to do that by lying. […]

They send the kid out to lie. They filled this kid’s head with lies just as they have some of these soldiers about me. Put lies in the kid’s head or put it on the script that he’s reading. He goes out and reads it. He’s 12-years-old! They will use anybody! They’ll corrupt anybody, to get where they’re headed. That’s who they are, folks.

Listen to it [open link.]

The real “bottom line” is: Rush propagates baseless information from a “freeper” to attack a 12-year old, fails to determine the facts for himself, and then accuses others of not being able to “rely on truth to make their case.”

When right-wingers attack soldiers who disagree with them on Iraq or kids who disagree with them on health care, that is indeed where Rush and his “hate radio” buddies “come in.” The right-wing attack machine personally assaults anyone for daring to disagree. ++

What, Me Worry?
digby, Hullabaloo
10/10/07

Who’s this:

After my husband quit his job earlier this year (to become a full-time stay-at-home dad), we had a choice. We could either buy health insurance from his former employer through a program called COBRA at a cost of more than $1,000 per month(!) or we could go it alone in Maryland’s individual market. Given our financial circumstances, that “choice” wasn’t much of a choice at all. We had to go on our own.

We discovered that the most generous plans in Maryland’s individual market cost $700 per month yet provide no more than $1,500 per year of prescription drug coverage–a drop in the bucket if someone in our family were to be diagnosed with a serious illness.

With health insurance choices like that, no wonder so many people opt to go uninsured.

That was in 2004, so you can imagine how much more expensive those plans in Maryland are today. Health care costs are rising in double digits each year.

Still wondering?

It’s hard to believe, but it’s none other than our lady of the internment camps herself: Michele Malkin.

As far as “choices” are concerned. Mark Steyn patiently explained once again today that parents of four children earning 45,000 dollars a year should just work harder and sell their house to pay for health insurance:

Mr Frost works “intermittently”. The unemployment rate in the Baltimore metropolitan area is four-percent. Perhaps he chooses to work “intermittently,” just as he chooses to send his children to private school, and chooses to live in a 3,000-square-foot home. That’s what free-born citizens in democratic societies do: choose. Sometimes those choices work out, and sometimes they don’t. And, when they don’t and catastrophe ensues, it’s appropriate that the state should provide a safety net. But it should be a safety net of last resort, and it’s far from clear that it is in this case.

Setting aside the total dishonesty of that — surely Steyn has been informed by now that the Frost kids go to private school on scholarship and the house was bought for 55,000 in 1990 — what has become crystal clear in this debate is one that I think needs to be discussed. The Republicans believe that people should be completely destitute, living in a one room shack and working two jobs before they “deserve” subsidized health insurance. The middle class who are one car accident or one cancer diagnosis away from losing their jobs, being unable to afford either the cadillac COBRA plans from their employers (my last one here in California was $1700.00 a month and I’m healthy) must not be allowed to keep ANY assets.They must be, as Steyn’s pal wrote, “dying on the streets with sores on their bodies” before they qualify for aid.

But, of course, neither will they necessarily even be able to buy private health insurance at any price even if they do live in a one room apartment with their four kids and work two jobs. (I was turned down recently because I had had gum surgery in 1996.)

This is the world in which we live. Insurance companies only want to cover young, healthy or rich people. And even if you manage to pay the expensive premiums with huge deductibles, they will try to find a way to avoid paying for your care anyway. That’s the way it works. If you are lucky enough to have health insurance at your employer you’d better hope you never lose that job. More importantly, you’d better hope you never get sick.

One of the things these snotty critics fail to acknowledge is that even if the Frosts had had private health insurance, after their kids got sick they would very likely have had to go bankrupt. Those kids spent five months in the hospital. The bills came to the millions of dollars and no middle class person, no matter what good “choices” they make, can afford to pick up the 20% or so they’d have to pay under an “affordable” health care policy when something like that happens. Medical bankruptcy happens every day, although our fabulous new bankruptcy laws make it far more difficult to get a fresh start than it used to be, even if you have a special needs kid and can’t work full time.

If the free-wheeling capitalists of the right wing believe that you can keep an economy dynamic, growing and flexible in a twisted system like this, they are even more blindly ideological than I thought. This is not just a moral crisis, it’s an economic crisis and if these people are determined to continue down this path then I suggest the rest of us start buying land in Costa Rica because this country is going to fail. Hugely. The numbers do not add up.

As John Cole pointed out yesterday, the Frosts should be the Republican dream family. Mr Frost is a blue collar entrepreneur; Mrs Frost is a part time worker with four young children, two of whom have serious health problems. They live in a house they’ve fixed up themselves which is their only real asset aside from an “investment” that has gained $500 in value in ten years. (Like many Americans, I doubt these people have Roth IRA’s and 401K plans and stock portfolios, don’t you?) Despite the nosy uninformed discussion of their kitchen counter tops, these people are not living high off the hog. They have virtually no disposable income. They are just average, working Americans trying to do their best.

Apparently, that’s not enough. Malkin and her husband are lucky enough to qualify for wingnut welfare and have healthy children. Bully for them. They got theirs and are now railing against the “choices” made by two working parents who make 45,000 a year. But I think she and her stalker squad are going to be surprised to find that most people don’t see things their way — this smug judgmentalism and rank callousness is not the American way. That’s not what freedom is all about.

And I think they may be even more surprised to find that a lot of American businesses are going to get on board health care reform in a big way. They are beginning to see the writing on the wall if we don’t get a grip on this crisis. Tax cuts will not rein in costs. They will not mitigate the kind of risk required to compete in the global marketplace. They will not ensure a healthy workforce. And without that, we’ve got serious, serious problems. At least some people who want to keep making money in America must see that even if the blind ideologues of the right don’t.

Of course, many of them are Ayn Rand acolytes and consider sick kids to be “parasites,” so I may be too optimistic on that. Hopefully, they can at least see it in terms of pure self-interest. All they have to do is run the numbers. ++

Scum on Toast
Mahablog
October 10, 2007

The right-wing hate campaign against Graeme Frost has finally seeped into mainstream media. Here’s Richard Wolf in USA Today:

Bloggers showed a photo of the couple’s glass-front cabinets and 1992 wedding announcement in The New York Times. Democrats “filled this kid’s head with lies,” Rush Limbaugh said on his radio show.

The blogs were “pretty insulting stuff, and really just low,” Halsey Frost, Graeme’s father, said Tuesday.

Bloggers said the house was worth more than $400,000. It turns out it was bought for $55,000 in 1991 in a Baltimore neighborhood where “there were drug dealers and prostitutes on our street,” Bonnie Frost said. Halsey Frost, a woodworker, did most of the renovations, which are “still not done,” Bonnie said.

Bloggers said Graeme and Gemma go to private Park School, where tuition costs about $20,000. Graeme gets a scholarship, while Gemma’s brain injuries were so severe that the city pays to educate her at a school for children with disabilities, the couple say.

The commercial property, which bloggers noted was bought for $160,000 in 1999, was intended to house Frostworks, Halsey’s business. It folded soon after, he said — partly because of the cost of health insurance.

He has worked for small companies and is trying to restart his own business. She works part time for a consulting firm. The couple — who have four children in all —earned about $45,000 last year, well below the $55,220 limit for a family of six set under the original SCHIP program. Maryland’s program goes higher, to nearly $83,000 for a family of six. “We are struggling,” Bonnie Frost said. “We live paycheck to paycheck.”

Yesterday I was struck by the number of rightie bloggers who demanded that the Frosts abandon their notions of independent business ownership — scuttled in part by the costs of health insurance — and report for work at the nearest big corporation, assuming there are any hiring at the moment. So much for the American pioneer spirit. We’re all supposed to be wage slaves to Big Corporate Massa now, and “market based” health “insurance” is the chain binding us to our servitude.

Even right-wing blogger A.J. Strata, no S-CHIP supporter, understands that his brother and sister righties have fallen off the sanity wagon.

[The Frosts] are self sufficient entrepreneurs who try to give their kids the best. They supposedly paid their taxes, which in my mind gave them the right to access those government programs. They have 6 wonderful children and they have stayed together as a family. As one leftwing site noted yesterday they are really a poster family for the GOP.

And that is what should have been leveraged instead of the low-brow attack mode some have lazily come to rely on for political discourse. …

… The Frosts had an emergency and we, their neighbors, were going to subsidize them one way or the other. Either through taxes or premiums we were going to help out. So to say they are free-loading on the rest of us through their decisions in mindless bunk.

The Baltimore Sun has a photo of Mr. and Mrs. Frost sitting on the stoop of their lavish “$400,000″ home — an estimate quoted by one rightie blogger after another as gospel — and which the New York Times says is actually worth $260,000. In some parts of the country $260,000 can still buy a pretty nice place, of course. In Manhattan it might get you a new, generously sized corrugated cardboard box in a prime location under an overpass.

Anyway, the Baltimore Sun article, by Matthew Hay Brown, talks about the accident that injured the children.

Bonnie Frost was driving children Zeke, Graeme and Gemma in Baltimore County in December 2004 when the family SUV hit a patch of black ice and slammed into a tree. Graeme sustained a brain stem injury; Gemma suffered a cranial fracture.

The family relied on SCHIP during the more than five months that the children were hospitalized. Graeme had to learn again to walk and talk, his parents say; he remains weak on his left side and speaks with a lisp. Gemma is blind in her left eye; she has difficulty with memory, learning and speech, and sees a behavioral psychologist to help her deal with her frustration.

“Her personality has changed,” Bonnie Frost said yesterday. “She’s not the same girl.”

Then Graeme recorded the Dems’ radio address –

It was the news coverage of that broadcast that set off the blogo- sphere. A pseudonymous contributor to Free Republic cataloged the $20,000 cost of tuition at the Park School, the $160,000 Halsey Frost paid for his warehouse in 1999 and the $485,000 for which a neighbor sold his home in March. Links were provided to photos of the Park School’s 44,000-square- foot Wyman Arts Center and the Frosts’ 1992 wedding announcement in The New York Times.

Soon strangers were posting accusatory messages describing Halsey Frost as a business owner who lived on a street of half-million-dollar homes, worked out of his own commercial property and paid to send his children to private school, yet still took advantage of government-funded health care.

“Bad things happen to good people, and they cause financial problems and tough choices,” Mark Steyn wrote on the National Review Online. “But, if this is the face of the ‘needy’ in America, then no-one is not needy.”

The Redstate contributor was less civil.

“Hang ‘em. Publically,” the contributor wrote. “Let ‘em twist in the wind and be eaten by ravens. Then maybe the bunch of socialist patsies will think twice.”

David Herszenhorn writes for the New York Times:

The critics accused Graeme’s father, Halsey, a self-employed woodworker, of choosing not to provide insurance for his family of six, even though he owned his own business. They pointed out that Graeme attends an expensive private school. And they asserted that the family’s home had undergone extensive remodeling, and that its market value could exceed $400,000.

One critic, in an e-mail message to Graeme’s mother, Bonnie, warned: “Lie down with dogs, and expect to get fleas.” As it turns out, the Frosts say, Graeme attends the private school on scholarship. The business that the critics said Mr. Frost owned was dissolved in 1999. The family’s home, in the modest Butchers Hill neighborhood of Baltimore, was bought for $55,000 in 1990 and is now worth about $260,000, according to public records. And, for the record, the Frosts say, their kitchen counters are concrete.

Certainly the Frosts are not destitute. They also own a commercial property, valued at about $160,000, that provides rental income. Mr. Frost works intermittently in woodworking and as a welder, while Mrs. Frost has a part-time job at a firm that provides services to publishers of medical journals. Her job does not provide health coverage.

Under the Maryland child health program, a family of six must earn less than $55,220 a year for children to qualify. The program does not require applicants to list their assets, which do not affect eligibility.

In a telephone interview, the Frosts said they had recently been rejected by three private insurance companies because of pre-existing medical conditions. “We stood up in the first place because S-chip really helped our family and we wanted to help other families,” Mrs. Frost said.

“We work hard, we’re honest, we pay our taxes,” Mr. Frost said, adding, “There are hard-working families that really need affordable health insurance.”

Michelle Malkin has taken a lead role in the attacks on the Frost family, and she’s not backing down. Today she’s blogging about “Democrat poster-child abuse, the nutroots’ pushback, and the continued campaign to silence the Right.”

Silence the Right — ooo, that’s rich. Here’s a woman with several national megaphones, including frequent gigs on Fox News, who has been leading a high tech lynch mob against some ordinary citizens who had the guts to speak up, and she’s screaming because she thinks someone is trying to silence her.

Actually, I don’t want to silence her. I want everyone in the nation to know about this little episode so they will realize what Michelle Malkin really is — scum. A hateful, bigoted, foaming-at-the-mouth neo-fascist.

People used to say, “pick on somebody your own size.” Malkin can hurl insults at politicians or other prominent media personalities all she likes, but when she tries to destroy an ordinary family just because they had the nerve to say something she doesn’t like, that’s something else entirely.

If you can stand it, take a look at Malkin’s post and note that throughout she has “corrected” means-tested to asset-tested. Apparently Malkin had said the Maryland S-CHIP program does not have means-tested eligibility requirements, when in fact it does. So now she’s howling about asset testing, which I assume means that because the Frost’s have some home equity they shouldn’t be eligible for S-CHIP.

I don’t know what mortgage load the Frost’s are carrying, but we can guess they have about $200,000 in equity in their home. So, in order to qualify for aid, Michelle wants them to sell their home and everything else they can liquify, move into a cardboard box, and then apply for aid once the $200,000 is gone, which these days would take about six months. We’ll destroy any chance they had of clinging to middle-class status, make sure they are permanently destitute, and then help them. OK.

Does anyone on the Right ever, you know, think?

The idea behind “safety-net” type programs is supposed to be to help people enough so that they don’t slide into destitution, but get back on their own feet. But in Rightie America, people who have had a run of misfortune must be utterly crushed.

Shamanic writes for Newshoggers:

Basically, she doesn’t approve of the choices that this family has made. Doesn’t approve of their jobs. Doesn’t approve of their home. Doesn’t approve of what the schools where they send their children. So she strongly, vehemently believes that the state of Maryland should have forced them to sell their home, burn through the profits and any savings they may have on medical bills, and then, once they were really poor, I guess we could talk about whether, as Michelle repeatedly states, “Taxpayers of lesser means should…be forced to subsidize them.” (Sorry, her statement is a more of a commandment, that taxpayers should not be forced to subsidize them.)

Voters also have choices. We can let people like Michelle Malkin run interference for a party that wants to punish us and take away everything we’ve worked for if, God forbid, something terrible happens, or we can vote for a different kind of society, where a safety net exists to ensure that a family in need doesn’t lose its home when a car accident lands two children in the hospital. Go and read her piece. Ponder the philosophy behind her words, one where everyone is truly on your own regardless of circumstances, and ask yourself if that’s the country that you want.

I know I’ve been going on about Malkin and the Frosts quite a lot lately, but IMO this episode gets right to the heart of what kind of nation we want to be, and what kind of nation we are becoming.

Do we want to live in a nation in which ordinary citizens must live in fear of saying the “wrong” thing? Of drawing the attention of powerful people who will publicly crucify them?

Do we want to live in a nation in which most of us are one accident or illness away from losing our homes and everything we’ve ever worked for?

(Canadians, are you paying attention to this? You’d better get started building your border fence now.) ++

“So keep fightin’ for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin’ ass and celebratin’ the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.”
~ Molly Ivins, 1944 - 2007

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