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Friday, October 27, 2006

GOP AIDE BEHIND ATTACK AD QUITS WAL-MART POST

By Marilyn Geewax | Friday, October 27, 2006, 05:46 PM

WASHINGTON — Wal-Mart Stores Inc. announced Friday night it no longer is doing business with a controversial political consultant responsible for a political attack ad widely condemned as racist.

The consultant, Terry Nelson, had been working for Wal-Mart as a “voter participation expert.” He also heads the Republican National Committee unit responsible for the ad attacking Harold Ford Jr., the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Tennessee.

Wal-Mart spokesman David Tovar issued a statement saying that Nelson’s company, Crosslink Strategy Group, had “sent a letter to Wal-Mart ending its working relationship with our company. We believe this is the right course of action.”

Nelson did not return a call for comment on Friday. But in an interview with the Associated Press, he said, Wal-Mart had “come under political pressure from liberal special interest groups” as well as labor unions. “It’s unfortunate that this pressure has had an impact on Wal-Mart.”

He said about the Ford ad, “There was no intention to offend anybody, and its unfortunate if people took offense. That was certainly not what people planned for or hoped for.”

Earlier Friday, civil rights icon Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., said that if Wal-Mart didn’t cut ties with Nelson, it would show “disregard” for its African-American workers and customers.

The TV ad features a bare-shouldered blonde white woman who claims to have met Ford at a Playboy party. With a wink, she says: “Harold, call me.”

Ford, now serving in the House, is seeking election as the South’s first black senator since Reconstruction.

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Everybody in the pool

By Ken Herman | Friday, October 27, 2006, 11:01 AM

Press Secretary Tony Snow, scoffing at the notion, said today there was no way that Vice President Cheney had endorsed “water boarding” – an aggressive technique for getting suspected terrorists to talk – when he was asked about interrogation methods during a radio interview this week.

Here’s what Cheney said Tuesday to Scott Hennen of Fargo’s WDAY on Tuesday:

Hennen: I’ve had people call and say, “Please, let the vice president know that if it takes dunking a terrorist in water, we’re all for it, if it saves American lives.” Again, this debate seems a little silly given the threat we face, would you agree?

Cheney: I do agree. And I think the terrorist threat, for example, with respect to our ability to interrogate high-value detainees like Khalid Sheik Mohammed, that’s been a very important tool that we’ve had to be able to secure the nation. Khalid Sheik Mohammed provided us with enormously valuable information about how many there are, about how they plan, what their training processes are and so forth. We’ve learned a lot. We need to be able to continue that.

Hennen: Would you agree a dunk in water is a no-brainer if it can save lives?

Cheney: Well, it’s a no-brainer for me, but for a while there I was criticized as being the vice president for torture. We don’t torture. That’s not what we’re involved in. We live up to our obligations in international treaties that we’re party to and so forth. But the fact is, you can have a fairly robust interrogation program without torture, and we need to be able to do that.

Here’s some of what Snow said today when White House reporters asked about Cheney’s comments:

Snow: The vice president didn’t make any comments about water boarding.

Q: That was what the question was about.

Snow: No, the question was a loosely worded question. Now the vice president never talks about questioning techniques in a theoretical or a real manner. We just don’t talk about that.

Q: The question was, “Would you agree a dunk in the water is a no-brainer if it can save lives?” Cheney: “It’s a no-brainer for me.”

Snow: Yes, but that is not a question — do the words “water boarding” appear there?

Q: No, they don’t, but …

Q: What was he talking about?

Snow: He did not interpret it as water boarding.

Q: Come on. What is that supposed to mean? Let’s be real here.

Snow: I am being real here. Do you really think the vice president is going to talk about water boarding when we have said many times …

Q: I don’t know.

Snow: The answer is no.

Q: No, he said he doesn’t support torture, but there was sort of a wink implied with the …

Snow: No, there’s not. Let me just say one more time, let me be very clear, and then you can go at me as many times and I’ll say the same thing over and over, which is: We don’t talk about techniques, that would include water boarding. He neither confirms nor denies its use; neither supports nor shows a lack of support for it. He is not, that was not the context that he thought it was being asked in.

Q: He didn’t explicitly talk about …

Snow: Not explicitly or implicitly.

Q: But he certainly…

Snow: No, you think he did. A reasonable person interpreting this when the questioner …

Q: A reasonable person interpreting this …

Snow: Well, … I’m telling you what the vice president’s view is, which is it wasn’t about water boarding and he wasn’t talking about it. Period.

Q: Then what was it about? What is a “dunk in the water” then by vice president?

Snow: It’s a dunk in the water. It’s a dunk in the water, as I said.

Q: To elicit answers?

Snow: No, look, you can look at the transcript.

Q: So the detainees go swimming?

Snow: I don’t know. We’ll have to find out.

Q: It just doesn’t make sense.

Snow: No, what doesn’t make sense is I’ve already told you what his position is, and also you know as a matter of common sense that the vice president of the United States is not going to be talking about water boarding. Never would, never does, never will.

Q: We know that’s your policy, but did the vice president slip up and …

Snow: No. Are you kidding? You think Dick Cheney is going to slip up on something like — no. Come on.

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Senators Oppose EPA Library Closing

By Rebecca Carr | Friday, October 27, 2006, 10:51 AM

The Environmental Protection Agency’s plans to shutter regional libraries around the country is meeting vigorous opposition from prominent Democrats.

Sens. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., and Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., urged colleagues this week to keep the network of 10 regional libraries and the headquarters library open to the public.

The senators sent a letter this week to the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Appropriations Committee’s panel overseeing the agency, saying the libraries are an important repository of information to protect the public’s health and enforce environmental laws.

“We are concerned that the EPA is already dismantling its unique library system without including the public or members of Congress in the decision-making,” Boxer and Lautenberg wrote. “Congress should not allow EPA to gut its library system.”

EPA officials did not have an immediate comment about the letter. Marcus Peacock, deputy administrator of the agency, recently addressed the closing on the blog site Yubanet. In a letter to the site, Peacock wrote that the “EPA is providing comprehensive access to agency documents and materials through the EPA’s public web site.”

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You Do the Math

By Marilyn Geewax | Friday, October 27, 2006, 10:46 AM

The political spinning began moments after the Commerce Department announced this morning that the U.S. economy grew at the slowest pace in three years — an annual rate of 1.6 percent — in the third quarter.

Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., senior Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, said “the numbers show that the economy is slowing to an even greater extent than had been widely expected,” and fretted over the “particularly troubling” problem of wage stagnation.

“If the Democrats win control of the House of Representatives in November, dealing with the wage problem will be high on our agenda,” he promised.

But House Majority Whip Roy Blunt, a Republican from Missouri, stubbornly stuck to the GOP story that the economy is booming. “The economic numbers prove we are experiencing strong, steady economic growth,” he said in a statement released just before the stock market opened and began tumbling. “The Dow is at a record high, unemployment is at a record low, home ownership and consumer confidence are up, and gas prices are down.”

He warned that Democratic control of Congress would “dampen this robust recovery.”

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