Sex: Paying for it vs. ?

The Opinionator - New York Times Blog: "

National Review’s Ramesh Ponnuru, however, isn’t ready to say that Vitter should go, even if it turns out he did pay for sex. “Maybe one reason that Vitter hasn’t been more forcefully and widely condemned is that our law and culture don’t treat prostitution as simply ‘illegal,’ like drug dealing,” Ponnuru writes. “You can’t advertise for drug deals in the yellow pages, but you basically can for prostitution. And it’s not clear to me that anyone has the will to step up enforcement.”

As opposed to, say, lying about sex, rather than paying for it.

I guess right-wing pundits are ideologically committed to market activity.

I'm not quite sure whether the commitment is bought and paid for, or whether they do it for love, or lust.

Records Show Ex-Senator’s Work for Family Planning Unit

New York Times:

"Billing records show that former Senator Fred Thompson spent nearly 20 hours working as a lobbyist on behalf of a group seeking to ease restrictive federal rules on abortion counseling in the 1990s, even though he recently said he did not recall doing any work for the organization."

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Mr. Thompson’s work for the family planning agency has become an issue because he is positioning himself as a faithful conservative who is opposed to abortion.

Earlier this month, Mr. Thompson disputed accounts by the group’s former president and others, saying through a spokesman that he had “no recollection” of doing anything to aid the group’s efforts to overturn a rule banning federally financed clinics from dispensing information about abortion to pregnant women. At most, said Mr. Thompson’s spokesman, Mark Corallo, he “may have been consulted by one of the firm’s partners who represented this group.”

Oh. Sorry about that.

“The firm consulted with Fred Thompson,” he said. “It is not unusual for a lawyer to give counsel at the request of colleagues, even when they personally disagree with the issue.”

Thanks for explaining.
May Mr. Thompson and his followers among the right-wing each earn the fate they so richly deserve.

Not just a condemner of moral turpitude, he's also a client

Slate Magazine:By Michael Weiss: Sinnin' ain't easy:

Louisiana Sen. David Vitter is not just a condemner of moral turpitude, he's also a client. Phone records show that he was a frequenter of Pamela Martin and Associates, the high-priced Washington prostitution ring managed by federal racketeering indictee Deborah Jeane Palfrey. 'I asked for and received forgiveness from God and my wife in confession and marriage counseling,' said Vitter. ...

It does rather seem that the preachers and pols who go on (and on) about sin are particularly inclined to know its temptations from direct (and intimate) personal experience. Maybe they can tend to their own needs for a while and leave the rest of us alone.

And I say that as a professional ethicist.

For Libby, Bush Seemed to Alter His Texas Policy

New York Times:

“As governor, Bush essentially viewed the clemency power as limited to cases of demonstrable actual innocence,” said Jordan M. Steiker, a law professor at the University of Texas who has represented death-row inmates.

“The exercise of the commutation power in Libby,” Professor Steiker continued, “represents a dramatic shift from his attitude toward clemency in Texas, and it is entirely inconsistent with his longstanding, very limited approach.”...

As president, Mr. Bush has commuted three sentences in addition to Mr. Libby’s and denied more than 4,000 requests, said Margaret Colgate Love, the pardon lawyer at the Justice Department for most of the 1990s. He has also issued 113 pardons and denied more than 1,000 requests. “His grant rate is very low compared to other presidents’,” she said. ...

Even in cases involving juvenile offenders and mentally retarded people, Mr. Bush allowed executions to proceed, saying that he was satisfied of the inmates’ guilt and that they had received a fair hearing.

The United States Supreme Court has since barred the execution of juvenile offenders and mentally retarded people as a violation of the Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

Thompson lobbied for abortion-rights group...

Los Angeles Times: By Michael Finnegan

Fred D. Thompson, who is campaigning for president as an antiabortion Republican, accepted an assignment from a family-planning group to lobby the first Bush White House to ease a controversial abortion restriction, according to a 1991 document and several people familiar with the matter.

A spokesman for the former Tennessee senator denied that Thompson did the lobbying work. But the minutes of a 1991 board meeting of the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Assn. say that the group hired Thompson that year.

His task was to urge the administration of President George H. W. Bush to withdraw or relax a rule that barred abortion counseling at clinics that received federal money, according to the records and to people who worked on the matter.

The abortion 'gag rule' was then a major political flashpoint. Lobbying against the rule would have placed Thompson at odds with the antiabortion movement that he is now trying to rally behind his expected declaration of a presidential bid....

But Judith DeSarno, who was president of the family planning association in 1991, said Thompson lobbied for the group for several months. ...

Former Rep. Michael D. Barnes (D-Md.), a colleague at the lobbying and law firm where Thompson worked, said that DeSarno had asked him to recommend someone for the lobbying work and that he had suggested Thompson. He said it was "absolutely bizarre" for Thompson to deny that he lobbied against the abortion counseling rule.

"I talked to him while he was doing it, and I talked to [DeSarno] about the fact that she was very pleased with the work that he was doing for her organization," said Barnes. "I have strong, total recollection of that. This is not something I dreamed up or she dreamed up. This is fact."

Washington lawyers and lobbyists in private practice are generally more attentive to whether their outsize bills are being paid than to the purity, ideological or otherwise, of their representations.

The moralization of politics by right wing religious groups will pose some interesting challenges to candidates, actual and potential, who have played the Washington game for very long.

They probably deserve one another.

Building network news credibility

Los Angeles Times :

The report of the hefty fee — coming at a time when NBC Universal is undergoing companywide cost-cutting — spotlights how the television networks regularly skirt their own ban on checkbook journalism. The practice, a badly kept secret in the industry, takes many forms: free hotel rooms and entertainment while interview subjects are in New York, payment for the 'licensing' of home videos and photos to illustrate the story, and other incentives, according to industry veterans. If the costs are too egregious, often the project is shifted to a network's entertainment division, which can pay subjects through production contracts.

CBS News offered Jessica Lynch possible movie and book deals through its sister corporate divisions in an effort to land an exclusive with the former U.S. Army private in 2003. ABC News paid Steve Irwin's widow hundreds of thousands of dollars to use footage of the late naturalist in a prime-time interview with Barbara Walters last fall. (ABC executives said the license fee was necessary because Irwin's widow, Terri, owned all the footage of the 'Crocodile Hunter,' who died in September.)

This spring, NBC agreed to pay a reported $2.5 million for the rights to air a tribute concert in July marking the 10th anniversary of the death of Princess Diana. Subsequently, Matt Lauer landed an exclusive with Princes Harry and William, which aired in prime time Monday.

"It seems like there are end-runs all over the place, and they are being done in the name of competition," said Al Tompkins, who teaches broadcast ethics at the Poynter Institute, a media resource and school in Florida. "I don't know what transpired here, but what I do know is that any compensation that comes through a network — whether it's a book deal or movie deal or offering special access — none of that has any place in news.

"In the end, that is not what builds network credibility. People are not going to tune into any network based on who gets Paris Hilton. It just adds an even more unseemly element to a story that seemed like it couldn't get more unseemly."

Oh, sure it can. This is America. No limits!

Selling It: ABC Says It Was Outbid for P*ris Hilt*n Interview

New York Times: By BILL CARTER

How much is an interview with P*ris Hilt*n worth? Representatives of ABC News said yesterday that they had lost to NBC for the first interview with P*ris Hilt*n after her release from jail next week because ABC was unwilling to make a “high six-figure deal” with Ms. Hilton’s family." ...The spokeswoman for NBC News, Allison Gollust, insisted, however, that “NBC News does not pay for interviews — never have, never will.” ...

Ms. Walters told ABC executives that Ms. Hilton’s father, Rick Hilton, after getting the ABC offer last Sunday, called back Wednesday to say that the interview would go to a competitor, because at $100,000 ABC was “not even in the same galaxy” in terms of what was being offered. ...Ms. Walters told ABC executives that Ms. Hilton’s father, Rick Hilton, after getting the ABC offer last Sunday, called back Wednesday to say that the interview would go to a competitor, because at $100,000 ABC was “not even in the same galaxy” in terms of what was being offered....

Ms. Walters questioned the decision, the ABC representatives said, noting that the Hilton side previously emphasized that Ms. Hilton’s credibility was the paramount issue in the decision to be interviewed. But ABC said Mr. Hilton replied, “Nobody turns down money like this.”

An actual amount was not discussed, but Ms. Walters told ABC that based on her previous conversations with the Hilton representatives, she believed that the offer from NBC surpassed $750,000.

Selling one's (cough) "news integrity" for an interview with Paris Hilton?
Makes one proud of American capitalism.

Apparently the network news divisions pay the family for collateral production assistance (e.g., P*ris' baby pictures?), to maintain their pristine aversion to paying for the interview itself? And they crucified Bill Clinton for his excessive legalisms on what the definition of is, is? A plague on all their houses--and on the public culture they seek to satisfy.

(I guess I better not bold face or index "P*ris Hilt*n.")

Bloggers on "Palestinian TV" tactics

From Instapundit:

THEY'VE ALREADY USED AMBULANCES, so why should anyone be surprised when Palestinian terrorists use a car labelled 'TV' to stage an attack? It's all upside for them -- no significant outrage now, and maybe it'll lead the Israelis to accidentally shoot up a truck full of real reporters, which will then cause worldwide condemnation. Of the Israelis.

UPDATE: TigerHawk comments:

And when it happens that condemnation will be outrageous precisely because it is so predictable. Palestinian strategists understand the objective, which is to put the Israeli military in an impossible situation. Everybody else also understands the objective, and -- this is the big point -- everybody understands that the Palestinian strategists understand. It is one giant cesspool of known-knowns...

That's why it's hard for me to even pretend to take moralizing in this area seriously.

Just so. Must be time for another self-righteous UK vote on boycotting Israeli journalists, for something or other. Maybe that will get the wayward Brit journalist out of Palestinian captivity. (Sometimes the hypocrisy gets to me.)

Wolfowitz : Another country heard from

Wolfowitz critics point to his lack of ethics - MSNBC.com:

JAKARTA, Indonesia - The controversy surrounding World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz spotlights a lack of ethics that was apparent two decades ago when he was U.S. ambassador to Indonesia, say critics who recall how he failed to speak out against corruption and rights abuses.

Today, as head of the bank, Wolfowitz has been arguing that corruption is crippling the world’s poorest nations. But that was “the very thing he closed his eyes to” when he served as ambassador from 1986 to 1989 during the regime of the dictator Suharto, said pro-democracy activist Binny Buchori.

“He’s a hypocrite,” she said. “He should quit.”

And now we wait for Christopher Hitchens?