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

What did the White House know and when did they know it? Current RNC ChaIr Ken Mehlman says that none of the many calls James Tobin made in the course of the phone-jamming conspiracy gave him any information about that plan.

Former RNC chair Ed Gillespie tells a different story–two different stories, in fact–saying that his decision to have the RNC pay $2.8 million or more for Tobin’s lawyers was made either before or after consulting with the White House.

Gillespie told the Washington Post that “”it’s the custom, not written anywhere, that you covered your people.”

And, speaking of things not written anywhere, check out the absence of any code of conduct* in James Tobin’s consulting contracts with the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the Republican National Committee itself. The only bad behavior he’s told to avoid is revealing the NRSC’s secret list of donors.

* The RNC says it will now add a “Tobin clause” to future contracts, stating explicitly that they won’t pay for your lawyers. I hope they also check out some of the many online codes of conduct such as, for instance this one, which would have stopped the phone-jamming before it ever started:

When faced with a business decision that seems to have ethical overtones, here are several questions you should ask yourself to determine if your actions are proper:
1) Am I adhering to the spirit, as well as the letter, of any applicable law or .. policy?
2) Would I want my actions reported on the front page of a newspaper?
3) What would my family, friends or neighbors think of my actions?
4) Will there be any direct or indirect negative consequences for .. [this organization]?
…If you remain uncertain about what to do, stop and ask for help. Refer to the relevant section of this Code. Speak with your supervisor or, if you prefer, communicate with any of the other points of contact indicated in this Code.

Update: Why stop at “covering your people” by paying legal fees when you can just pardon them?

Something fascinating is happening today online at the Portland Press Herald story by Kevin Wack. Readers are posting impassioned responses to James Tobin’s ten-month sentence for phone-jamming. I was surprised by the near-unanimity in this morning’s first comments:

Justin of Saco, ME
May 18, 2006 7:44 AM
He should have to do more time for this…I question why the Herald staff isn’t looking more closely at the numerous calls he placed to the White House during this whole scheme? That is where the big story is.

Robert Malloy of Portland, ME
May 18, 2006 7:39 AM
He should have got a stiffer sentence… I also wonder why the RNC poured two million dollars into James Tobin’s legal defense–might they be covering up some naughty doings?

Phil of Portland, ME
May 18, 2006 7:36 AM
Regardless of how upstanding his character might be in other portions of his life, he made a “direct assault” on the democratic process, and feels no remorse in his actions. He should have received the maximum sentence.

vince of glassboro, nj
May 18, 2006 7:23 AM
How did I know before reading past the headline that this guy was a Republican ? He’s just another in a long list of GOP operatives that think nothing of playing “dirty tricks. To them the “frat house rules” are fine in our government. Gordon Liddy, Donald Segretti, Ollie North, Tom Delay, Dick Cheney and Karl Rove.

Jim of Brunswick, Me
May 18, 2006 7:00 AM
He should have received the maximum sentence. According to the judge Tobin was not particularly remorseful and didn’t appreciate the gravity of what he had done. Another Republican scandal goes insufficiently unpunished.

Matt of Wells, ME
May 18, 2006 6:51 AM
No the sentence is not fair. He should have gotten LIFE. Anyone that interfere’s with an election is the most VILE enemy of our way of life. There should be no mercy for such criminals.

Later others chimed in, for the opposite point of view:

Jennifer of Arlington, VA
May 18, 2006 11:11 AM
I am outraged that the Portland Press Herald would sink so low as to ask its readers whether they think Jim Tobin’s sentence was fair. Jim Tobin is a man of integrity and heart, evident by the countless individuals who spoke out on his behalf. He should not be subjected to liberal criticism by folks who know little to nothing about the true facts of this case; and I would be willing to bet that most of your readers fall in that category. Mr. Tobin’s sentence is completely devastating to his family, friends, community, and church. There are far better ways to take shots at the Republican Party. Jim Tobin should not be your scapegoat.

Jeff of Portland, ME
May 18, 2006 11:00 AM
The reality, which most of you seem to have missed, is two other people who were obviously guilty threw a good man under the bus. They were trying to save themselves and lied and did whatever they could to get what they wanted, much shorter jail time for their crimes!!!! They should be ashamed of themselves, as should all of you who are writing comments with absolutely no frame of reference.

Rick Bornemann of Bridgton, ME
May 18, 2006 10:24 AM
Despite appeals to Jeffersonian rhetoric threats to the sanctity of voting, and whining about violated “rights,” the Tobin verdict was, and the 10-month sentence is, beyond ridiculous.

Mr. Tobin and friends engaged in a harmless, though silly, prank. It was the political equivalent of “jamming” a homeowner’s phone to ask whether he had Prince Albert in a can. We’ll also have to start arresting 10-year-olds when they violate another right – that to “privacy” – by using the phone to ask the elderly and other “vulnerable” people whether their refrigerators are running. And, the tykes advice to “catch it” would get them another 6 months…

Go read them yourself; this is a stirring example of free speech in action–messy, confusing, sometimes not a pretty sight. But it’s what our nation is built on; we can’t thrive without it.

Ten months in prison–that will lead most people’s stories. (And Jason Szep at Reuters has a good brief report already.)

But the much bigger news, to my mind, is —bail denied. That’s the kind of harsh treatment usually given to dangerous felons.

What that means is that, no matter how many lawyers get hired to dance appeals on the head of a legal pin, James Tobin goes to prison on June 23. So, if Tobin’s refusal to spill the beans rested on the belief that his RNC-paid lawyers could keep him out of prison indefinitely–that belief should now be officially dead. This puts his future into Mr. Tobin’s own hands. If he continues to stonewall investigators, he’s off to prison. But if, as his lawyers contend, Mr. Tobin is a wonderful father whose children shouldn’t be deprived of his company, then perhaps he’ll decide that he cares more about his four children than about protecting whatever secrets the RNC has so far spent almost $3 million to keep silent. It’s his decision.

I spent many hours in NH Federal District Court today, at the sentencing hearing of phone-jamming co-conspiratorJames Tobin. In addition to the Real Reporters (TM) who covered every minute of James Tobin’s trial in December (their stories should be on the Web by tomorrow), reporters and photographers showed up from Reuters, AP, and a bunch more places. A very big thank you to Mike Gehrke, Hilary Sargent, Christy Seltzer, and others at the Senate Majority Project, whose efforts finally got this case the media spotlight its many strange twists deserve!

…my cellar, that is. Springtime rain is over-staying its welcome. If I open the cellar door, I hear water flowing across its uneven cement floor, with occasional punctuation by thumping sump pump.

My little sister’s Victorian house has a well built into its cellar. Back before city water mains, having a well in your house was the ultimate luxury. When the water table rises, you don’t feel so lucky!

When Marie and I were very little, we lived out in Candia, in a little house with a well. One summer, our well ran dry, and we were trundled around to various neighbors’ houses to take daily baths. Then the Artesian Well Man drilled us a well, with much loud banging of metal…very impressive! The next summer, everyone else’s well ran dry. It was our turn to host neighorhood shower parties.

Later, our family moved to Manchester’s North River Road–by this time, we had two more little brothers. Not far down the hill from our house, some little kid (was it maybe Chris Morris) lived in a house with a stream running through the sand floor of his cellar. We all thought this was simply magnificent. The house was Colonial, with foundation walls of fieldstone. It was as if a piece of the outdoor world had mysteriously been walled from the sky with four walls and a roof on it–but the stream kept running anyway.

In case you can’t tell, I’m hoping these fond thoughts of water will make me feel better about my own cellar.

Bloggers take a slam from a new and unusual quarter–the sentencing memo where James Tobin’s lawyers explain why he should spend zero time in jail.

What about deterring future election sabotage? Mr. Tobin, his lawyers explain, is a fine human being who has already suffered enough…cruel treatment from bloggers, for instance:

Mr. Tobin’s case has also received extensive coverage on the internet, and many blogs
and opinion sites have written about him. A search revealed that over 90,000 website entries
have postings about Mr. Tobin and this case and over 1,000 blog entries have discussed Mr.
Tobin’s case. Due to the nature of these sites, this information is not only often inaccurate, but
sometimes quite personally insulting. One site calls Mr. Tobin a “skunk” and a “hypocrite.”12
Another website put Mr. Tobin’s face on a playing card, in an apparent attempt to mimic the
playing cards of most-wanted Iraqi regime leaders distributed by the United States military in
Iraq.13 Finally, more than one site has compared Mr. Tobin to a terrorist.14

12 See http://www.gophypocrites.com/2005/12/hyp05050.html
13 See http://www.billionairesforbush.com/cards2.php#3
14 See http://phlipsrants.blogspot.com/ 2006/04/rnc-is-can-now-
also http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/ archives/000390.php

Compared him to a terrorist? If you check out those links for footnote 14, you see that both posts are making fun of an over-the-top warning from the Department of Homeland Security that describes “tying up company phone lines to prevent legitimate calls” as a terrorist tactic.

Just for the record, Mr. Butswinkas, I don’t consider James Tobin a skunk or a terrorist. And I still don’t understand why you and he failed to make a plea bargain with the US Attorney. The much-less-expensive lawyers of Allen Raymond and Chuck McGee understood that such a bargain was in their clients’ best interests.

As a result of those plea bargains and their testimony, even the NH Democratic Party urged the court to show leniency in sentencing them.

In the case of James Tobin, however, a lenient sentence would send the wrong message to politicians who think about tampering with our elections.

Mr. Tobin may be a fine human being, but I still find it telling that he knew exactly where Chuck McGee could find somebody willing to jam people’s phones. McGee on his own had tried many telemarketers–all turned him down. James Tobin had the right name on the tip of his Rolodex.

James Tobin’s trial for phone jamming was a curious spectacle. At the front of the courtroom, Dane Butswinkas painted a heart-warming picture of Tobin as the smalltown boy who made a simple mistake. On the spectators’ benches, half a dozen young lawyers took careful notes on behalf of defendants in the civil suit–no doubt also burning up many RNC dollars. In the center of it all sat James Tobin–anxious and unhappy, but holding to his denial of guilt, his refusal to cooperate, and his determined silence. In my opinion, that’s how conspirators behave. And our only resource to persuade others to act differently is to sentence closed-mouth conspirators–like Mr. Tobin–to some serious time in federal prison.

Finally somebody in DC has noticed the conflict of interest that may have slowed and short-circuited Department of Justice investigation of the phone jamming scandal!

The senior Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee asked the attorney general Friday to appoint a special counsel to investigate the jamming of get-out-the-vote phone lines in New Hampshire in 2002…
“The Department appears not to be reviewing the extensive contacts between the plotters of the phone jamming and high-level Republican officials,” Conyers wrote.

Senate Majority has posted the letter’s full text.)

Thank you, U.S. Rep. John Conyers of Michigan!

Why did Duke Cunningham stop cooperating with investigators? Because federal prosecutors rushed into the sentencing phase of his trial, leaving him no motivation to assist them in prosecuting other wrong-doers.

“If I were Duke Cunningham, frankly, I wouldn’t be cooperating,” Melanie Sloan, a former federal prosecutor and the Executive Director for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, told me. “They sentenced him too fast — once you’re sentenced, you’re done. There’s no more carrot and stick.”

Meanwhile, in NH, the US Justice Department is racing to sentence phone-jamming felon James Tobin, cutting off his motivation to testify against others who may have played a significant role. (Senate Majority has more, including sentencing recommendations from the US Attorney, Tobin’s defense team, and the NH Democratic Party.)

• Lisa Williams has “annotated” her desk. Best inspirational signage ever!
• Niek Hockx wonders what happened to springtime as he shutterclogs off to the beach
• Congratulations to Ronni Bennett, who’s soon going “home” to the place she once longed for but lost.
• Tingilinde has some great tips on walking.
• Liz Lawley recommended Luna Bars in February–my family has been enjoying them ever since!
• Dave points to some ongoing hot OPML action.

Great quote from Liz Henry about an emotion I think of as “movie whiplash”:

I had that feeling… where you’ve been perfectly manipulated emotionally by a movie and can SEE exactly how and it’s sort of cheesy and embarrassing, but also incredibly profound and moving. So I’m being overanalytical on the movie at the same time as I’m crying a little bit and going “Nooooooo! Get on the train!!!!!” or “Kiss her, you fool!” or whatever.

And Pen-Elayne posted her own fine linkfest, including a pointer to this hilarious Metabloggery at No More Mister Nice Blog:

Let’s see: Here’s Atrios complaining about Mark Kleiman complaining about Atrios favorably linking to Digby complaining about Wonkette complaining about Peter Daou complaining about the media refusing to proclaim that Stephen Colbert was funny at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.

Give that man a prize for the ultimate in meta-blogging! As for me, sorry for my recent light blogging–I’m having a “crisitunity,” so thank goodness the rest of the world keeps on doing such interesting things.

The head US Attorney for the District of NH is Thomas P. Colantuono, appointed to his post by George W. Bush in 2001. *

In the 2004 Presidential campaign, Colantuono’s wife made election-law news (Concord Monitor, October, 2004):

It’s illegal for clergy to campaign for a candidate on church property, but that didn’t stop a staffer for the Republican National Committee from soliciting help re-electing President Bush last week.

In an e-mail to “pastors, church leaders and ministries,”Pam Colantuono, wife of Tom Colantuono (a Bush-appointed U.S. attorney for New Hampshire), asked clergy for help getting a pro-Bush flier to parishioners. Colantuono was clear about how priests could do this without breaking the law.

“Please place these in your parking lot, or when you have a church activity have someone hand them out outside the church. This is very important,” the e-mail read. It continued in bold letters: “Pastors, do not display within the church and make sure you are not handing these out personally within your church. Assign someone to do this for you. We want to protect you.”

Colantuono also asked clergy to keep this effort “underneath the radar as we do not want any negative press.”

The flier was paid for by the New Hampshire Republican State Committee. In her e-mail, Colantuono said God had told her in her prayers that it would win the election for Bush.

The flier is pretty standard fare. It compares Bush and Democrat Sen. John Kerry on several “family values,” namely partial-birth abortion, pro-life judges and parental notification.

David Lamarre-Vincent, executive director for the New Hampshire Council of Churches, hadn’t seen Colantuono’s e-mail but was concerned when he heard its contents.

“This is troubling because often religious leaders don’t know where the line is,” Lamarre-Vincent said. “And out of no mal-intent, they might say or do something that crosses the line.”

Jayne Millerick, chairwoman of the state committee, defended the flier and Colantuono’s efforts to circulate it to church-goers.

“It’s something we are pretty proud of,” she said. “It really points out in a clear way where the candidates stand on issues that are important to folks of faith.”

The RNC paid Pam Colantuono a $4,000 for “Political consulting” in 2004. She also addressed the NH Right to Life group on behalf of Bush-Cheney ’04, but it’s not clear whether or not she worked with RNC executive James Tobin, who was New England chairman of Bush-Cheney ’04 during that time.

Anyway, if you have been wondering…

• why the US Attorney’s Office has moved so slowly in its investigation of the 2002 phone-jamming scandal…
• why the US Attorney never indicted or even revealed the name of phone-jammer James Tobin until NH Democrats forced the issue…
• why the US Attorney has actively interfered with the civil suit filed by NH Democrats …
• why RNC defense attorney* * Robert Kelner seems to have an inside line on what the US Attorneys are doing…

…one possible explanation could be that the chief US Attorney in NH may have personal and/or political ties to many of the people his team is supposed to be investigating.

* Interesting news story about the enthusiastic bidding of GOP Presidential hopefuls for support from NH politicians (January, 1999):

Conservatives, such as newly elected Executive Councilor Thomas P. Colantuono, were among those who got the most big-name support. He received checks from committees affiliated with Quayle, Sen. John Ashcroft (R-Mo.), publisher Steve Forbes, conservative activist Gary Bauer, former Tennessee Gov. Lamar Alexander, and Sen. Robert C. Smith (R-N.H.), a potential favorite son.

    The support paid off: Colantuono’s close win over an incumbent Democrat returned the five-person council to unanimous GOP control.

    Colantuono said he had not solicited the money, but called it a “pleasant addition” to his campaign. He said it was too early, however, to decide whom he would support in 2000.

In fact, Colantuono endorsed George W. Bush.

* * One of the few individual donors to Tom Colantuono’s unsuccessful bid for a seat in the US Congress was Ovide P Lamontagne, an attorney with Devine, Millimet, and Branch who is defending the NH Republican Party against the phone-jamming civil suit filed by the NH Democrats.

Happy May 2 birthday to Dave Winer! (And thanks to Halley for reminding me.)

In other May 2 news, today is the day of Leslie Gore’s birth, J. Edgar Hoover’s death, and the first sighting of the Loch Ness Monster.

Today’s also the day of the first just-plain-bookstore-appearance for Fantastic Realities, at the Harvard Coop Bookstore at 7 p.m. World Scientific managed to get us some advance copies for Frank to sign after he gave a bunch of public lectures during April. (And I’m happy to say that every single book sold out, every single time!)

But a public lecture is, by now, pretty familiar–while a bookstore “appearance” is brand-new and strange. So I’ll be having cold feet all day today, despite the warmth of those beautiful birthday candles. Frank won’t though; he never worries about stuff like this.

Update: Thanks to all who came–it was a lot of fun, the Coop’s Richard gave a charming and enthusiastic introduction, Frank read a few short chapters and a couple of poems, I read just a little bit from my blog, and all but two of the books on display got signed and taken home. Next time, maybe I’ll imitate Frank in not worrying about stuff like this…