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

Thank you, thank you, to Benjamin and Christelijne van den Hout for the photos of both one and many gray European sea lions from our shared “super snelle rubberboot” adventure in the North Sea. When I finally got my own (non-digital) photos back, there were many of beach vistas and many others of physicists, but my one shot of North Sea sea lions didn’t appear, not even as a blurry memory. So I am especially grateful to Benjamin and Christelijne for sharing their own excellent digital photos with me, and even for letting me share some of them with you. I was warned by my guidebook that, although friendly and curious, North Sea sea lions can (if you get too close) “become quite aggressive.”

I so much prefer that phrase in its Dutch translation:

“When the phone-jamming happened in 2002, you should have known right away that Republicans did it!” I’m paraphrasing here, not someone from the tinfoil-hat crowd, but Republican lawyers, one expensive gray suit after another, demanding that the Democrats’ phone-jamming civil suit be thrown out of court. Er–maybe–but back in 2002, most election dirty tricks were the work of enthusiasts whose official connection was tenuous or non-existent.*

In two days of hearings on the statute of limitations, Republicans, not Democrats, wanted to find out “what did the other guys know and when did they know it?”

Republicans say the Democrats’ long-postponed suit has run past the statute of limitations because…

• Democrats were remiss by not suspecting {every defendant} when phone lines were jammed on Nov. 5, 2002.
• Democrats were remiss by not suspecting Republican National Committee involvement when they first saw the the GOPMarketplace website in mid-January, 2003, because that website mentions that Allen Raymond had worked for the RNC in the 1990s.
• Democrats were remiss in not doing their own diligent investigation of who was behind the phone-jamming. Communicating with the phone company and the police is not enough. Asking Jayne Millerick (who denied involvement) is not enough. Researching a rumor that turned out to have no foundation is not enough. Multiple letters to the US Attorney and NH Attorney General asking them to investigate…not enough. The burden of proof is on the Democrats to prove that they themselves “diligently” investigated.
• False statements denying knowledge of the phone-jamming may have been made to reporters and the FEC by various NH Republicans–but that doesn’t constitute “fraudulent concealment.”*

I’d still like to transcribe my notes on Kathy Sullivan’s long testimony, which filled in a lot of gaps in the phone-jamming story. Today’s proceedings were also enlivened by another exchange between NH RSC lawyer Ovide Montagne and NH Democrats’ lawyer, which the judge brought to a surprising but very civilly-worded and soft-spoken finish. From my notes:

Judge Mangones: Mr. Lamontagne, I will choose my words carefully. This is not the first time you have engaged in a course of action that has bollixed up the proceedings. [three asterisks] Chuck McGee came here in response to a request from Mr. Williams. You essentially gave him permission to go home. And you did this withough consulting Mr. Williams. In the future, you might want to re-think such behavior.
Attorney Lamontagne: Your honor, if I may…
Judge Mangones: You may not, sir. Sit down, sir.

To clarify, we got a second surprise today. After Finis Williams spent several minutes on the theme that “Chuck McGee told me he would come here today so that he could serve as a witness, but he doesn’t seem to be here…” Ovide Lamontagne finally got up and said that McGee had been there. “But I told him in the hallway that if he hadn’t been subpoenaed, then he didn’t have to stay.” So McGee had simply gone home again.

Readers, bear in mind that I’m transcribing impromptu notes I took on people in fast conversation. I probably don’t have every word exact–but I hope the gist of it survives my transcription. It’s a lot more informative than newspapers will be. For better or worse, today I was the only “reporter.”

* * Obligatory reference to the whispering campaign against John McCain in the presidential primaries of 2000–it wasn’t suspected until long after 2002 that non-fruitcakes would have done something so over-the-top…

[three asterisks] Judge Mangones may have been referring, not to yesterday’s kerfluffle, but to some other episode(s), for example the Republicans’ last-minute failure to produce an expected witness in October, 2004.

July 20, Manchester, NH: A nasty start to the latest phone-jamming hearing…with funny lawyering both peculiar and ha-ha. That’s the short version of what I saw in Judge Philip Mangones’s Courtroom #2 of NH’s Hillsborough County Courthouse. At stake: will years of stone-walling the Democrats’ civil suit now pay off for the phone-jammers with complete amnesty? Republicans say it should, based on NH’s three-year statute of limitation.

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Josh Roger covered the hearing for NPR, Anne Saunders was there for AP, Hilary Sargent was there for Senate Majority, and somebody from WGIR had a microphone. The RNC and NRSC had fresh lawyers flown in from DC, with reservations home again last night. (I wonder if they’ll show up for Friday’s hearing.)

James Tobin‘s NH lawyer was there, but his DC ones were absent and so was he. Chuck McGee showed up “pro se,” listening stony-faced to the story of how his phone-jamming played out in the lives of real people.

Ovide P Lamontagne, whose ties to US Attorney Tom Colantuono may have helped the NH Republican State Committee throw delays into the path of the civil suit, represented the NHRSC by (among other things) determinedly mispronouncing the name of Allen Raymond’s company GOPMarketplace “gopp marketplace.” (I’m told he also likes to refer to the Democratic party as “the Democrat party,” on the grounds that they’re not democratic; I look forward to hearing him do this but he didn’t yesterday.)

Lamontagne also may or may not have been the author of a clever trick that forced the hearing to spill over into an extra day of testimony. As the hearing began, NH Democratic Party attorney Finis Williams told the court that Lamontagne had assured him only the federal defendants–Tobin, the RNC, and the NSRC–were claiming the statute of limitations applied to them. Lamontagne leaped out of his seat to say that Williams was mistaken. The NHRSC, and in fact all the other defendants, had “decided” they should be included in statutory relief, based on a wide variety of different reasons and different cut-off dates.

Williams was visibly surprised and upset, saying that he had brought evidence to argue the federal cases only. Spirited argle-bargle then ensued* — both Williams and Lamontagne seemed to believe that Williams would now have to argue against all the different defendants that day, using only evidence that he’d already brought with him. It would have been a very cute trick, if it was a trick,* * and if it worked. Judge Mangones intervened between the combatants, assuring Williams that he would have time, on a future court date if necessary, to present all his material.

That’s enough for one blogpost–more after this afternoon’s hearing!

* After the judge departed at five o’clock, Lamontagne was still defending himself, possibly to his own group of co-lawyers now stuck with an extra court date they hadn’t expected, “I never told him that! I didn’t say that! That’s not what I said!”

* * The opening minutes of James Tobin’s trial were marked by two similar situations. First, an (alleged) verbal promise by Tobin’s attorneys to deliver a key piece of evidence fell through. (Dane Butswinkas told the court that the RNC had Tobin’s calendar “somewhere,” but he couldn’t get it.) Next, just before prosecutor Nicholas Levchuk was about to begin his opening statement, Butswinkas objected to a small piece of text on a large poster Levchuk had planned to use as a visual aid. Surprised, Levchuk asked if he could meet the objection by covering or blotting out that piece of text. Butswinkas instead demanded that Levchuk should make his opening statement without the visual aid he had built it around. And Levchuk did so–he had no other choice.

In August, 1929, fourteen-year-old Florence Wolfson got a red leather diary where she could summarize each day in four lines of longhand.

For five years, she did just that.

In July, 2006, the New York Times transforms now ninety-year-old Florence into a public figure, with a feature article on her (dumpster-dived) diary, putting much emphasis on “male and female lovers” including her unrequited crush at fifteen on Eva Le Gallienne, whom the NYT breathlessly sums up as “the openly lesbian actress.”

Oh well, the good news is that Florence (and her ninety-five-year-old husband) seem to be perfectly OK with this situation. But I’m wondering how many MySpace bloggers would feel the same, even ten years from now, seeing their naughtiest bits all condensed and made public…

“Thoroughly modern” blogger Millie Garfield explained one of the great things about blogging when she told* reporter Maura Welch that in real-life conversation, someone else is always trying to talk…

“But on my blog I can finish my thought.”

Isn’t real life conversation often exciting, meaningful, intimate, full of surprises, and in so many ways better than writing in blogs?

Of course. But writing things down so that you clarify your own thinking is also of value.

And I’m glad that Millie and all the rest of the wonderful bloggers I read are finishing their thoughts and then letting us read them.

Real life should also have more hypertext, don’t you think?

Zero minutes to spare–I raced down Dock #4 to the Ocean King. With a bit of help, I clambered over the side and onto a bench–then we were off, putt-putting toward open water.

Then…. WHOOM! That yellow rubber boat took off at top speed. Spray flew up into our faces from left and right. We laughed and held handrails and were grateful our benches were padded, as our boat took off from the crest of a wave and then whomped us down again several times in rapid succession. Each turn tipped the boat up and slid us in unison sideways.

I had (now we come to the symbolic part of my narrative) exactly one photo left in the single-use camera I bought in Amsterdam. (My digital camera…but that’s another story.)

Only one photo, and I was saving that photo for a Vlieland sea lion.

Or, and this was also a possibility, I might have zero photographs left in the camera. I might already have used up every picture at last night’s celebration of Gerard ‘t Hooft.

The difference between ‘1’ and ‘0’ is very important in math and physics, but on a single-use camera (and in your real life), the distinction is so hard to guess that it’s almost not there.

Sea lions appeared, first distant and sunbathing lumps on a long narrow sandbar, then inquisitive gray and black spotted visitors swimming out to our boat to stare up into our faces from deep liquid eyes.

Then I took my camera out of its hidden pocket and spent several minutes looking for one final picture. One friendly seal came quite close to the boat–but I wasn’t quick enough. Then I saw a chance to photograph two or three sea lion faces in the same image–as soon as the shutter clicked I knew the shot could have been better, that if I’d spent more time on it I might also have put the whole sandbar into its background.

Of course, I won’t know until I get the film developed if I got any sea lion picture at all. (Fortunately, a kind young Dutch couple said they’d send me some of their photos, so I still have something to hope for if that happens.)

Now, I really truly had zero photos left. Only my own eyes would see all the rest of the journey–I felt free and empty and very, very happy.

A wonderful trip.

Reading up on the gray European sea lion this morning, and noticing how far my skills at reading Dutch have declined since 1998 when we lived in Leiden.

No sea lions haunt the sugar-sand North Sea beach near our Vlieland hotel, so I’m setting off on a last-minute quest to see some. Vlieland is a lovely peaceful family resort that Dutch families know about and other folks mostly don’t, so the amount of signage in English is little or none.

Fortunately, there is a “super snelle rubberboot” (super-fast rubber boat) that likes to take local tourists out to ogle sunbathing sea lions (“Zeehonden die liggen te zonnen”). And we might also see some “kleine dolfijn” (little dolphins, I hope!)

Lord knows what I’m getting into here, but surely going off on a Dutch-speaking boat adventure comes under the heading of “making trouble today for a better tomorrow.” Niek today posted one of Frank’s own mantras about making trouble, so I’m sure he’ll sympathize!

Investigators are (finally) heading for Washington, to get White House phone records and sworn statements from top officials, after NH Judge Phillip Mangones today gave a death blow to the long cover-up of NH’s 2002 phone-jamming scandal. NH Republicans–with enthusiastic help from the US Justice Department–have managed to postpone now for many years the Democrats’ efforts to take sworn statements from any of the phone-jamming co-conspirators. Republicans got court orders to postpone the Democrats’ civil suit on the basis that the (very few) criminal defendants pursued by the US DOJ should not have to answer questions under oath for a civil suit.

This morning, this long charade finally came to an end, as Judge Philip Mangones ruled that NH Democrats could now finally pursue their civil suit.

He also granted the Democrats’ itemized request to demand sworn statements from White House record keepers, past and present chairs for the Republican National Committee, and others whose role never drew US DOJ attention despite the evidence and sworn testimony suggesting their involvement.

You’d like to think our government would take more of an interest in election sabotage, but at least Judge Mangones is finally letting the Democrats pursue their own investigation…

• John DiStaso in the July 14 Union Leader
• Senate Majority July 13 press release on the decision
• Short AP story issued July 13
• Slightly longer and later Reuters story
• Washington Post has the AP and Reuters versions–not sure what it would take to wake up any of their “investigative reporters.”

Farewell to the dock duck, we’re on the road again, so I leave you, dear blogreaders with a few more of the most ducky stories from this blog….

• Whither Duck Cheney (April 2005)
• This story quacks me up (July 2003)
• To quack or not to quack, that is the question… (August 2003)

When does a convicted phone-jammer go out of the business of selling teleservices?

In the case of Allen Raymond’s GOPMarketplace, the shades were pulled down in February 2003, after federal prosecutors declared their intent to start looking into the phone-jamming scandal.

Talk about funny ha-ha, though, John Ashcroft’s Justice Department took its own sweet time about asking actual questions, so all the culprits had a plenty of time to clean up their mess and acquire foggy memories. According to Chuck McGee’s sworn testimony, the FBI finally got around to interviewing him more than a year after the phone-jamming took place.

Now Hilary Sargent and the sleuths at Senate Majority have discovered something the prosecutors never seemed to notice. Allen Raymond shut down GOPMarketplace in February, 2003…but he opened its virtual twin in March, 2003. “Telus, LLC” has the same mailing address, same personnel, same text on the website…

I’d be curious to see its client list, wouldn’t you?