Good morning everyone. Will try to do these news round ups more often from now on Monday mornings since there are so many developments taking place every day in number of issues we cover here at Common Cause. This is shaping up to be a busy week. First, on the subject of public broadcasting, the Baltimore Sun's Michael Hill
channels ghosts of Nixon, in referring to the recent reports of Kenneth Tomlinson investigating public broadcasting for political "balance":
"It's déjà vu all over again," says public broadcast pioneer James Day.
In quoting baseball and malaprop Hall of Famer Yogi Berra, Day was referring to recent reports about the head of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting investigating public broadcasting for political "balance."
"It happened in the Nixon years particularly," says Day, who helped found San Francisco's public television station, KQED, in 1953.
"When Nixon finally appointed the majority on the Corporation for Public Broadcasting board, it in effect began to take over programming, even though it was not supposed to do that," he says.
"A number of series were canceled, including, ironically, Bill Moyers' Journal," Day recalls.
Staying on the same topic, Democrats who are ranking members of couple of committees with control over public broadcasting are
calling for an investigation of Tomlinson:
WASHINGTON -- The ranking Democrats on two House committees with control over public broadcasting want recent activities of Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) Chairman Kenneth Tomlinson investigated to see whether he violated the 1967 law that established the private, nonprofit organization.
"Recent news reports suggesting that the CPB increasingly is making personnel and funding decisions on the basis of political ideology are extremely troubling," Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., and Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., wrote in a letter earlier this month to the corporation's Inspector General Kenneth Konz.
[...]
Specifically, they called for an investigation of a report that, without the knowledge of his board, Tomlinson contracted an outside consultant last year to monitor the "political content" of Bill Moyers' "Now" for "anti-Bush," "anti-business" and "anti-Tom DeLay" "biases." (Moyers left the show in December, but it is on the air with a new host.)
Dingell and Obey also want Konz to look into a report that Tomlinson told members of the Association of Public Television Stations meeting in Baltimore with CPB and PBS officials last November that they should make sure their programming better reflects the Republican mandate.
Obviously, we are going to keep a close eye on this story since we are collecting signatures from thousands of media reform activists who are fed up with these reports, and are asking Chairman Tomlinson and rest of the CPB Board to stop playing politics with public broadcasting. More than 32,000 activists have already
signed our petition, if you haven't done so already,
click here to join our cause today.
Switching gear to ethics,
the New York Times, looks into the link between Tom DeLay's former friend and close associate Jack Abramoff, the disgraced super lobbyist from Washington D.C. and one of the most influential figures in the GOP.
In Republican Washington, Jack Abramoff and Grover Norquist worked all the angles. One was a $750-an-hour lobbyist, the other an antitax activist, and they helped drive the Republican takeover of the capital and cement the party's power. Both had a close ally in the House majority leader, Tom DeLay. And they shared a conservative ideology and a friendship going back to their days in college.
Now, with widening Congressional and criminal inquiries in the capital into Mr. Abramoff's dealings, they are sharing trouble, too. While Mr. Abramoff has been under scrutiny for more than a year, Mr. Norquist has attracted unwelcome attention in recent weeks. A Congressional committee investigating whether Mr. Abramoff defrauded Indian tribes has subpoenaed records from Mr. Norquist's group, Americans for Tax Reform, after he refused for six months to turn them over voluntarily.
Interesting stuff - which I'd imagine an
outside counsel, beyond the parameters of
DeLay's sphere of influence and free of conflict of interest, will explore if he or she gets to investigate the allegations against Tom DeLay.
I will end with this
Washington Post update concenring the latest on what will be the topic in our nation's political landscape this week -
FILIBUSTER:
Senators in both parties said tomorrow's scheduled vote on whether to ban filibusters of judicial nominees remains too close to predict because a handful of crucial GOP members have declined to divulge their intentions. Some of those Republicans exchanged phone calls over the weekend with a few Democrats seeking an agreement that would retain the right to filibuster but make its use highly unlikely this year or next -- provided that both sides act in good faith. The negotiators plan to huddle this afternoon in hopes of striking a deal that would deny Republican leaders the votes they need to ban the filibuster, and deny Democratic leaders the support they need to continue thwarting several of President Bush's appellate court nominees.
Because they drew lines deep into the sand months ago, Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) and Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) have little to offer their colleagues, and even less room to maneuver, as they head into the biggest vote of their leadership careers. Warily eyeing the closed-door negotiations that could wrest the issue from their control, the leadership teams say they are ready for the debate's final hours.
Ed is going to be writing more on filibuster throughout the week. So please stay tuned.
