Betsy Devine: Funny ha-ha and/or funny peculiar

Here’s the trial story, well-told by real reporter Eric Moskowitz in the Concord Monitor:

• Trial starts: opening statements and Charles McGee (December 6)
• McGee and Allen Raymond testify(December 7)
• Surprise defense witness, and testimony wraps (December 8)
• Last pitches by US Attorney and Tobin’s defense team (December 12)
• Juror hospitalized after day of deliberation on Tobin trial (December 14)
• Verdict: Tobin guilty on two counts (December 15)

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Now, for contrast, here’s the same trial through the eyes of a blogger:

• Up at 6 a.m. to drive to NH (December 6)
• US Attorney’s opening statement (December 6)
• Digression on “Tobin’s” lawyers (December 6)
• Defense attorney’s opening statement (December 6)
• Chuck McGee, now out of prison… (December 6)
• What is the James Tobin story-behind-the-story? (December 7)
• Telegraph-ese on Tobin (December 8)
• Hanging out with real journalists (December 13)
• Ordeal by numbers: 44 objections? (December 13)
• Jury room may be tense, but the corridor’s calm (December 14)
• Sauce for one witness should be sauce for the other… (December 14)
• Tobin guilty on two counts, his lawyer glum and mum (December 15)
• AP reporter: “What happened? What happened?” (December 15)
• Real reporters have checked in on the Tobin verdict (December 15)
• Why do bird counts count for more than election sabotage? (December 20)

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A few more information links to deep background:

• SourceWatch article on James Tobin
• James Tobin’s role in phone-jamming becomes public and he quits Bush campaign (October 15, 2004)
• Tobin indicted (May 18, 2005)
• RNC admits paying Tobin’s legal bills (August 11)

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• Opening statements and McGee (December 6)
• McGee and Raymond testify(December 7)
• Testimony wraps (December 8)
• Last pitches by US Attorney and Tobin’s defense team (December 12)
• Juror hospitalized after day of deliberation on Tobin trial (December 14)
• Verdict: Tobin guilty on two counts (December 15)

The Swedish tradition of “Sankta Lucia” fights back against midwinter blues.

My dad used to play and sing for us “Santa Lucia” — his English translation of the Italian original was full of “balmy breezes” and Neapolitan sailors. The Swedish carol is sung to the same tune but with much, much more midwinter-appropriate words, I discovered from Sweden’s English news service:

The night goes with heavy steps around farm and cottage; round the earth the sun has forsaken, the shadows are brooding. There in our darkened house, stands with lighted candles Saint Lucia, Saint Lucia. The night passes, large and mute now one hears wings in every silent room whispers as if from wings. See, on our threshold stands white-clad with candles in her hair Saint Lucia, Saint Lucia. The darkness shall soon depart from the earth’s valleys then she speaks a wonderful word to us. The day shall be born anew Rising from the rosy sky. Saint Lucia, Saint Lucia.

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p.s. Santa Lucia arrives on December 13, but I’m just getting around to blogging her in anticipation of December 21, when the year’s weakest sunshine arrives at 1:35 p.m.

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Frank Paynter gets it:

“Man bites dog” in New England is still the stuff of breathless national coverage, always will be. Stories about dead wives in California also seem to merit wide coverage. But “Republicans convicted of election fraud” will always be local news. If it was spread wider, the people would be informed about the bigger picture.

So that’s why national media didn’t cover James Tobin’s trial while regional media did one heckuva job. Even though James Tobin was a top honcho in the

• National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee when he stepped in to corrupt the 2002
• Federal election, even though Tobin is or was employed by the top
• national-level Republican lobbying and PR group, even though Tobin went on from this 2002 event to become a top honcho (and a top donor) in the
• national 2004 Presidential campaign. And the Republican
• National Committee is paying Tobin’s legal bills.

Who remembers the expression, “Don’t make a federal case out of it”? As if, in those innocent days, a “federal case” was something that would get a lot of attention.

Neither Scott Peterson nor Michael Jackson threatened the basis of our democracy–the citizen’s right to vote in a fair election. I still can’t believe that what Tobin did–promoting a brand-new way to keep voters from voting–just didn’t matter to mainstream media.

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Big thanks to Dave Winer, for linking to my outrage almost as soon as I posted it, and to other outraged bloggers OnePotMeal, Salon-blogger “A Blog Doesn’t Need a Clever Name,” KBCafe’s Bad Politics, for pushing this story.

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Breaking: The Toledo Blade sees this as part of a national story.

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So mad I could spit. The total national coverage of the Tobin trial is a few places like Wired picking up the pitiful summary AP story. Let me tell you the genesis of that story.

After the trial, after the waiting for the verdict, after the arrival of the verdict, the lawyer interviews, the attempted lawyer interviews, Real Reporters (RR) and I gathered near the courthouse door, hoping that some passing juror would give us some quotes. (They didn’t, but several RR later phoned them and got some more background. RR had provided themselves with the names of the jurors for this very reason.)

All of a sudden, a woman none of us had ever seen before rushed in through the revolving door. “What happened? What happened?” she cried. This was the AP reporter, the brand-new AP reporter, “assigned” to this story 20 minutes before she arrived.

Because the RR were working, I pulled out my notebook to help her. “Not guilty on the first count,” I said. “Guilty on each of the other two.”

“First count?” she said. “Do you happen to know what the different counts were?” I’m not putting the reporter’s name here–it wasn’t her fault that she had been thrown into a new case without any background. The AP reporter who covered the actual trial had been re-assigned pre-jury to write up human interest about Christmas bird counts.

The AP story about the verdict should have been the best, the most comprehensive story of all. Isn’t it real news that Bush’s top guy in New England was guilty of two felonies arising from an innovative technological effort to cheat NH voters out of an honest election? Instead, AP gave us a bland and bloodless mini-summary cobbled together at record speed–the entire story in its final form was on the wires by 6:15 p.m.that day–just one hour(!) after the reporter first tumbled into the courthouse waving her notebook.

And that’s now the end of the story, as national news.

Ladies and gentlemen, readers of national news, you have been robbed.

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James Tobin reacted to the first guilty verdict by shaking his head?
I missed that completely, but Kevin Wack did not.

Tobin left the courthouse with his arm around his wife? I raced home to Cambridge, but Judy Harrison hung out in the cold and came back with more of the story.

Real reporters provide more than just colorful detail. They turned each story into a standalone piece that included full background on NH phonejamming. They interviewed jurors, lawyers, political gurus. I was especially touched by the insight
Eric Moskowitz (Concord Monitor) gathered from one phone interview:

Afterward, foreman Laura Clement said the jury spent considerable time studying the language of the counts and weighing the evidence.

“It really came down to: Did the evidence support the facts, and could we agree that the government proved their case on each one of the counts?” she said, adding that the jury relied heavily on the instructions from Judge Steven McAuliffe.

Although there were differences at first, all the jurors emerged satisfied, Clement said. “If you get 12 people in a room, you get 12 people who all interpret something a little different,” she said, declining to discuss specifics about how they reached the verdict. “So the decisions didn’t come easy. But it was made, and we feel good about it, and that’s it.”

At least in NH, millions of dollars in fees to fancy lawyers won’t buy a free pass if you tamper with US democracy. Even more good news–political experts say this verdict will put a damper on dirty tricks in future elections.

And that’s good news for honest people of either party.

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During the 2002 campaign, I got a Democratic mailing at home. Even though my wife and I are both registered Republicans, the Democrats sent us a brochure at our home. This brochure had phone numbers for rides to the polls. I thought I might disrupt their Get-Out-The-Vote effort. This idea coalesced into disrupt their phone effort.”

I’m quoting my own notes of Chuck McGee’s December 6 testimony. His idea of disrupting Democrats’ phones was based 100% on having just read about phones that were used to help people get rides to the polls.

I’m still shaking my head that the Tobin defense team was able to convince this jury that when Chuck McGee told James Tobin about his phone-jamming plan, Tobin heard only about some kind of vague harassment of Democrats, with no mention of disrupting rides to the polls.

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You’ll be hearing more about this in the weeks to come:

James Tobin’s defense team worked hard to convince jurors that Tobin knew nothing about Chuck McGee’s phone-jamming plans except for the very vague first impression that led him to help McGee contact Allen Raymond.

Tobin’s isolation from the ongoing plot seems very strange in the light of McGee’s December 7 testimony that on election day, visiting lobbyist Daryl Henry knew all about the phone-jamming. McGee was surprised at how much Daryl Henry knew, and wondered who could have told him.

Just how widespread was knowledge of the phone-jamming at GOP headquarters, if even a visitor knew so much about it? And, if knowledge was widespread, did it extend up to Tobin? Or, since both Tobin and Henry worked on VIP campaign visits, maybe Henry heard about the phone-jamming from Tobin himself?

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From the official court transcript of United States of America vs. James Tobin, (CR.04-216-01-SM) December 7, 2005, morning session. Here “Q” is US Attorney Andrew Levchuk and “A” is witness Chuck McGee.

[Page 8]
16 Q. Later on on Election Day, do you have a
17 discussion about the phone jamming scheme with anyone?
18 A. That day, later in the day, I traveled to our
19 Manchester Republican Office where I spoke to —
20 specifically about this, I recall speaking to a
21 gentleman by the name of Daryl Henry. Daryl was up from
22 Washington volunteering on the campaign. I mentioned to
23 him that the phone call plan had been called off and
24 that I was a bit upset about that, and he indicated in
25 some fashion that he knew about the plan going on and

[Page 9]

1 that he had called some associates of his to pick up
2 where we left off. I took it as bravado because I
3 didn’t possibly know how he would have known about the
4 plan or who we were calling or how it had been stopped.
5 I just took it as he was trying to be a nice guy and
6 make me feel good.
7 Q. Who is Daryl Henry, sir?
8 A. He was up from Washington. As far as I know
9 he works for American Gas Association. I don’t know
10 much more about him than that.
11 Q. What was he doing in New Hampshire, if you
12 know?
13 A. He was helping coordinate some of our VIP
14 visits, volunteering in general campaign fashion. The
15 time before an election is very, very, very busy for us,
16 as you know. We spent nine million dollars that year.

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For a full transcript of the morning session, December 7, 2005, contact NH Court Reporter Diane M. Churas.

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Darell, not Daryl, Henry is a lobbyist for the American Gas Association. In January, 2004, NPR reported on a lobbying excursion where he was one of the players: http://www.weblog.nohair.net/archives/000438.html. According to Mike Gehrke, Henry took leave from his job with the AGA in 2002 to help with the NH GOP get-out-the-vote activities, and “After the election, Henry organized a fundraiser for the NH Republican Party featuring former RNC chair Marc Racicot and Ken Mehlman, who had recently accepted the position to manage President Bush’s reelection.”

Not just a Legal Sea Foods paper placemat–Frank and I each got a Legal Sea Foods paper placemat inscribed at length with a Legal Sea Foods”pledge.”

I was still pretty shell-shocked after my long day in court and the drive back home–Frank, bless him, had the energy to take me out for a dinner of crabcakes, and then to read his placemat and burst out laughing.

Here’s what set him off–the eighth of nine separate pledges:

“We pledge…To respond in a rapid, sensitive, and non-confrontational manner to requests that will enhance your dining experience.”

My spirits revived as we tried to imagine a restaurant where the waiters are confrontational:

• “Just water to drink? Oh well, if you’re that stingy…”
• “You spilled that cup of chowder–you clean it up!”
• “No dessert menu for you–you’ve eaten enough.”

Finally Frank said, “I guess that might be the kind of treatment you’d get…at ILLEGAL Sea Foods.”

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