BeldarBlog

Beldar's take on the first debate

Neither candidate screwed up.  Kerry needed a Bush screwup, a huge gaffe, to change the dynamics of the race, and it didn't happen.  Thus in the big picture, Bush won.  That's true regardless of whether you grade Bush with a "B" and Kerry a "B+" or vice versa.  Both candidates crossed the finish line standing; and I think that means Bush will win the election, regardless of how you may "score" this debate on "points" and in isolation.

*******

Small pictures and impressions:

I think Sen. Kerry was at his very best tonight — much better than he was in any of the Democratic primary debates, and in the perfect, very formal and isolated-from-humanity environment to show off his strengths to their best advantage.  The format was one where the smartest kid in the class gets to show off, with nobody humming "Hail to the Chief" on a kazoo, and with none of the human interactions that make him look so robotic and inhuman.

Probably because of that, his mannerisms that annoy me the most were fairly muted.  But they could not be wholly extinguished.  Ask yourself this question:  Wouldn't it have been a huge home run for John Kerry if he could have gone through this entire debate with the self-discipline never to mention his Vietnam service?  To the extent that his combat service is going to favorably influence some subset of the voting public, hasn't he already gotten the full benefit of that history?  And yet, there he is — incapable of holding back the impulse to say, again and again, in effect, "Do you know who I am?  You realize, don't you, that I served in Vietnam?"  I don't know whether it's two percent or ten percent or thirty percent of the "undecided" or "swing" voters, but some percentage of those voters who are currently leaning Bush and might otherwise might have ended their viewing of this debate by saying, "Kerry's not so bad," were shaking their heads at every Vietnam allusion and muttering the word that I think will doom Kerry's chances for election:  "Phony."

Dubya was simply himself.  What is important — not shocking or surprising, but important — is how different today's Dubya is from the 2000 election version of himself; and of course, the transformation was 9/11.  In contrast to the candidate from 2000, this is a guy who has a very clear and consistent picture of what being the President is all about. 

He does not have, and never has had —  and has looked in the past (e.g., in 2000) at his worst when trying to pretend to have —  the Clintonian policy-wonk's command of subpoints and figures and verbal arguments with Roman numeral signposts going from III to III-A to III-A(4)(b)(vii).  When he makes successive supporting points, you can always count them on one hand and usually have a digit or two left over.  In fact, stylistically, I wish he would have transcended the format — not felt the need to keep talking until the yellow light flashed on — and repeated himself less.  (Man, what a contrast that would have been, because when Kerry speaks, you can see behind his eyes how he's doing a mental multitasking to plot how many more points he'll have time to score before the buzzer sounds.)

*******

Final aside:  What a difference this debate was from any of the Gore-Bush debates of 2000, and from some of the run-up to this one!  Nobody's going to be writing tonight or tomorrow about anybody's audible sighs or invasions of personal space, or about Kerry's tan.  The Bush-is-a-chimp crowd are posting gleefully now about "moo-lahs" and "nukular," but that's an exercise of political masturbation for them at this point, a self-pleasing ritual they're bound to engage in that has no connection to the substance of anything that happened beyond the fact that Dubya showed up and spoke aloud for a while. 

For everyone else, this was a serious exercise appropriate to a nation at war, a nation from which 9/11 has banished, at moments like these, most of the frivolities that we had the luxury and innocence in which to engage ourselves back in 2000.  But I don't think this debate changed any votes that were already strongly intentioned, nor — despite what I think was an optimal performance, as good as Kerry's capable of giving, in the best possible format for him — do I think it is likely to have swayed many genuinely undecided folks in a different direction than they were already leaning.

Mr. Burkett, if it's really you ...

Not to step on any toes or anything — I mean, I'm really not trying to pick on a sore subject — but to the proprietor of the blog receiving the Trackback ping I'm sending with this post: 

If you are who you say you are, and want people to take anything you say seriously — and I'll bet you surely do have lots more to say, sir, if'n you're who you say you are — then you might oughta consider posting some bona fides.  Maybe ask one of your longtime friends over for a cold Lone Star, let him watch you post something on your blog, and then let him go call a press conference in front of the county courthouse or something. 

I'm just an ole Lamesa boy, really trying to help.  (Or "hep," as we tended to say in West Texas when I was growing up there.)  I'm sure you know where Lamesa is, sir — I-20 west to Big Spring (pronounced "Big Sprang," never "Big Sprangs," 'cause there's only one, and it's gone dry), then north on US 87, only 150 miles from Abilene.  You watch, this post will send a buncha internet traffic your way. 

But ... they're likely to be kinda ... skeptical.  Now, my readers are a pretty well-behaved bunch, and include some yellow dog Democrats amongst 'em, so I'm hopin' they'll behave themselves over on your website too.  (Whoever got you set up was right smart to require comment registration, but I suspect you're still gonna have to be poundin' on that mouse button over the "delete" icon a fair bit.)

One last recommendation:  If you're gonna get into this bloggin' business in a serious way, you might wanna check out a pretty good code of bloggin' ethics.  Heck, they was written up by a libral blogger, but she's a purty girl and smart, too, and I'm proud to introduce ya to her.  Good luck, sir, and welcome to the blogosphere!  (Hat-tip to AllahPundit — but you don' even wanna ask about him, now, Mr. B, just trust me on this one.)

Beldar answers Orin Kerr's three questions on Iraq

Off the top of my head, here are my answers to Orin Kerr's three questions for pro-Iraq War bloggers:

First, assuming that you were in favor of the invasion of Iraq at the time of the invasion, do you believe today that the invasion of Iraq was a good idea? Why/why not?

Absolutely.  After ousting the Taliban, Saddam's Iraq was the next obvious target.  Sanctions were hurting the wrong people; Oil for Food was making the worst people rich; diplomacy never would have worked.  Saddam's forces were shooting at our planes on a daily basis.  Google on "sarin + 'artillery shell'" and tell me again that he wasn't dangerous; we didn't find WMD stockpiles, but we found capabilities, and we know from past experience that he had the willingness desire and intent, plus cash out the wazoo.  America and the world are better off knowing that America's threats aren't idle and that the American military is fully two generations beyond any military power it's likely to have to face in open combat.  And because we used force in Iraq, there's a far better chance that force won't be necessary against other state sponsors of terrorism (start with Libya, head east to Syria and Iran, keep going to North Korea).  The myth of Mogadishu has been exploded; messing with the US has consequences — potentially including military consequences — in a way that no one has really believed since at least Desert One.  That's just on the Homeland side; stopping a regime that practiced day-to-day mass murder on its own people and giving millions of Iraqis a decent chance at liberty and democracy would have been ample cause on its own, especially given the moral debt we owed those people after encouraging, then wimping out on them, after the Gulf War.

Second, what reaction do you have to the not-very-upbeat news coming of Iraq these days, such as the stories I link to above?

I am entirely unsurprised by either the fact that there's been continuing violence or the massive over-reporting thereof (and under-reporting of encouraging news).  Anyone who's ready to give up now has absolutely no sense of history, nor of the risks we'd face if we did so.  We're no longer on the horns of the dilemma we faced in Vietnam or even Korea; taking the fight to the enemy will cost lives, but not at anything remotely like the rate at which American lives were lost in Korea or Vietnam, and now we're not faced with instant global thermonuclear incineration if we push too hard.  Every killed or wounded American/Coalition/Iraqi soldier or sailor or airman or policeman or civilian is a tragedy, but the only catastrophe would be to render meaningless their sacrifices by cutting and running.  Our military understands that freedom's never free; maybe that's trite, but it's basically the same thing Jefferson said about watering the roots of the tree of liberty with the blood of patriots and tyrants.  I just hope our public will remember that, without having to have another 9/11-or-worse reminder.

Third, what specific criteria do you recommend that we should use over the coming months and years to measure whether the Iraq invasion has been a success?

In the short term, obviously, the elections are very important, even if they're marred by violence.  (We've already passed one huge short-term milestone, the return of sovereignty.) In the middle term, a gradual increase in Iraqi domestic security and economic well-being and opportunity must be maintained.  In the long term, everything else depends on establishing and maintaining democracy, even if (as is likely) a genuinely independent and democratic Iraq ends up being less grateful and friendly than Americans would like.  We've done this drill of encouraging and nurturing and protecting democracies before — Italy, France, Germany, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan — each different, some much harder than others, probably none as hard as what we're trying to do now.  To paraphrase Benjamin Franklin, we'll give them a republic, and then we'll see if they can keep it — albeit hopefully with help from civilized allies in America and elsewhere.  I don't expect Iraq to ever  resemble Iowa; but something Venezuela-like would mean real progress; and even if they end up in twenty years no better off than Egypt is now, that still will have been a huge improvement for America and for the world.  Twenty years is too short a time-frame in which to measure, for that matter.

I'm sure I've missed something important or stated things less eloquently here than I'd like to have, and everything I've just said can be quibbled with and picked at.  But I gather Mr. Kerr wants something that would approximate what I might tell him if he bought me a beer at a friendly bar.  Cheers!

Pre-fisking the "60 Minutes" yellowcake story

How cool is this?  Jim Lindgren at The Volokh Conspiracy is pre-fisking CBS News' temporarily delayed/shelved story on Saddam's efforts to buy yellowcake uranium.  Actually, Jim fisks MoveOn.org's demands that CBS News run with the story even though it's bogus.  Gosh, I wonder who could be behind MoveOn.org's pressuring ... and whether his middle name could be "Micah"?  Just a hunch.

I'm coo-coo for Cocco puffs! (And so's CBS News!)

While drafting (pun recognized but not intended) and following up on my post below about CBS News' scandalous broadcasts intended to create fear among voters over the return of conscription, I stumbled upon an interesting chronologic sequence, prompted by Rathergate.com's reprint of a September 9th letter to the editor from CBS News' star draft-fearful soccer-mom, Ms. Beverly Cocco of Walton Park, PA, to the Northeast Times, which appears to be a Philadelphia News-owned local-events supplement (proudly serving "Bucks, Chester, Delaware and Montgomery Counties and the Main Line").  Of that September 9th letter to the editor, more later. 

But as it turns out, there's an earlier letter from Ms. Cocco there too, from way back on June 17th (boldface added):

Put the chill on the draft bill

Just this week I received an e-mail so upsetting that I forwarded it to all my friends, who then forwarded it to all their friends. We are now a good size group.

The e-mail concerned Bill S89 and HR 163. The bill is about reinstating the draft, beginning in the spring of 2005. The draftees will be all males and females between the ages of 18 and 26. There will be no deferments; seniors will be allowed to finish the year, and underclassmen will only be allowed to finish the semester. There is already a document signed between the U.S. and Canada, the "Smart Border Declaration," which will prevent crossing the border.

Since this is a federal bill, I was advised to contact Sen. Specter, Sen. Santorum and Congressman Joe Hoeffel. Sen. Specter’s office said that these bills are a "secret."  [Yeah, that's why they're given code-numbers and hidden away in the Congressional Record, in print and online — to keep them "secret." — Beldar]

When I told him that the cat was out of the bag, he offered to connect me with the Washington office. That office assured me that the senator was against this bill. I am still waiting for Sen. Santorum to respond, but Congressman Hoeffel is undecided. His office is sending me a letter detailing his thoughts.

We are now in the process of collecting as much information as possible about this bill and the candidates.

We keep getting told that there are no sponsors for this bill and not to worry about it. But why did South Carolina Sen. Ernest Hollings draft this bill, and why is it sitting in the Senate? We think that it is important to find out before the election.

Meanwhile, we are starting an organization called Parents Against the Draft (PAD).  For more information, call me at [deleted — Beldar].

Beverly Cocco
Walton Park

The proposed new law in question, by the way, the "Universal National Service Act of 2003," was introduced in identical form in both chambers — in the House as HR163, and in the Senate as SR89 — way back on January 7, 2003, by Congressmen Rangel, McDermott, Conyers, Lewis (of Georgia), Stark, and Abercrombie, and by Senator Hollings, all hard-left Democrats.  [Update: Both bills were promptly referred to the appropriate committes, whence, as best I can tell, they've neither stirred nor come up for any discussion or vote ever since.  Yet there are unconfirmed reports that from the darkness surrounding them has occasionally been heard a hiss — "My preciousssss!" — with an odd Massachusetts accent.]

The above-referenced Pennsylvania Democratic congressman (and senate candidate), Joseph M. Hoeffel, in fact published a follow-up letter to the editor of his own on July 1st, stating that he opposes HR163, and concluding that by "enhancing incentives and increasing possibilities for engaging in volunteer service, we can improve our armed forces without reinstating the military draft." 

And by the time of Ms. Cocco's September 9 letter, it sounded like she'd been cured of her barking moonbatism after speaking with Pennsylvania Republican Senator Arlen Specter at a town meeting (boldface added):

Thank you, Sen. Specter

I had the opportunity to speak to U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter at his recent town meeting in Northeast Philadelphia. During the question-and-answer section, I identified myself along with my friend, Cookie Catinella, as officers of Parents Against the Draft.

I asked the senator about the prospect of a draft in the future. He was adamant that there will be no draft and eloquently explained to everyone why it was important that we finish up in Iraq, what our future plans are, and why there will be no draft or any need for one.

We found Sen. Specter very knowledgeable and want to thank him for addressing and explaining this very complicated and troubling issue.

But someone, we wonder who, somehow managed to get Ms. Cocco properly fearful again just in time for CBS News' broadcast.  Now I wonder who that could have been?

Meanwhile, here, by the way, are Lexis-Nexis transcripts of the CBS News broadcasts as they aired on Tuesday night's evening program and this morning's CBS News broadcast.  No mention there about corresponding with congressmen or cross-examining senators, nosireebob.

Finally, I wonder if Newsday columnist Marie Cocco — author of this August 2nd piece headlined "Kerry eyes disillusioned GOPers: The Democratic nominee hopes to find support among Republicans upset with Bush" (reprinted in WaPo on August 4th), a bunch of other anti-Dubya op-eds (including one from April 27th that accused Bush, pre-SwiftVets, of "smearing Kerry's war record"), and who's also flacked for John Kerry's claims about the so-called "back-door draft" on Chris Matthews' Hardball — might be related to Ms. Beverly Cocco?  [Update: Apparently there's no relation; see update below. — Beldar.]

Update (Wed Sep 29 @11:50pm): In an earlier version of this post that was only up for a few minutes while I was fixing broken links, proof-reading, and such, I quoted from some Congressional Record pages that I thought were Rep. Hoeffel's statements on the House floor, raising the likelihood of the return of conscription, because I'd seen them posted on his congressional website.  After studying those quotes more carefully from the full .pdf files from the Congressional Record, however, I've concluded that although Rep. Hoeffel spoke during the same sessions in July and September, and has elsewhere, like Sen. Kerry, spoken out against the so-called "back-door draft," the particular lines I originally quoted were instead from Rep. Ted Strickland (D-OH), so I've removed those quotations from the post.  Mea culpa; I hope Rep. Hoeffel will stick with his position as of his July 1 letter to the editor, and I encourage him to discourage his colleagues like Mr. Strickland from threatening/promising the return of the draft if Dubya's re-elected.

Update (Thu Sep 30 @ 3:55am): Turns out that Rep. Hoeffel's anti-draft position hasn't made much of a splash since July 1st.  Libertarian Party nominee Elisabeth "Betsy" Summers announced her bid for Sen. Specter's seat on August 17th, and claims that she's the "only anti-war anti-draft candidate running." 

Gosh, perhaps Rep. Hoeffel should respond immediately and forcefully to this!  Maybe he oughta reprint his July 1 letter to the editor on his campaign website, since it turns up zero Google search hits for "draft," "conscription," or "163," and all the references to "draft" on his congressional website were made by other Democratic congressmen!  Unless — oh double-gosh, you don't suppose he'd rather (yes, pun intended) just let the fear-mongering run amok?  Geepers-golly, that would be sorta cynical, wouldn't it? When grilled by Ms. Summers at one of his own rallies, Rep. Hoeffel was quoted as saying "You're smart, because you're using my event to get some publicity." But Rep. Hoeffel said he would support Ms. Summers' "participation in any debates leading up to the Nov. 2 election."  So in this merry dance involving Ms. Cocco, Rep. Hoeffel, and Ms. Summers, who exactly is using whom?

Update (Thu Sep 30 @ 4:50am and I'm gonna pay for this tomorrow): Blogger Bill from INDC Journal has a fabulous bit of investigative reporting on the not-so-investigative reporting done by CBS News — an interview with CBS correspondent Richard Schlesinger.  Regarding the whole subject of the draft, Schlesinger admits:

Whether or not there’s any reality to there being a draft, is almost besides the point. Do I think there’s going to be a draft? No. But it's an issue that people are talking about.

Regarding how they found Ms. Cucco:

Long story short, she’s a Republican. When we put the story together, I went looking for a Republican. We worked backwards from the e-mail, that’s how we found her. She told me that she was going to vote for Bush, though she said she may flip-flop.

Sucker (at best)!  But wait, there's more:  Bill also interviews CBS News spokesperson Sandra Genelius, who's typically clueless, and CBS News segment producer Linda Karas, who has this bit of damning idiocy (ellipsis in original from INDC Journal; boldface mine):

I know that she’s affiliated with the group, and what her views are on the draft, and that’s what I was interested in. I was looking for a character that has a personal story that might be affected by the issue. And to be honest, I was looking for a Republican. I e-mailed several groups that deal with this issue, and she was the woman who responded that fit the profile and was the most interesting voice, because this is a woman with two sons ... and she is concerned about the issue. If I had some rampant leftist on there, what would you say?

I'd say she's at best a kook and more likely a political activist, of whatever political stripe, whose activism CBS News knowingly concealed.  Suh-weet!  From their own mouths, the admission that they were on notice — and hence not acting in good faith — yet again.  Read the whole beautifully ugly thing!

Update (Thu Sep 30 @ 5:15am):  A quick note of caution:  In reading some of the stuff that's ricocheting through the blogosphere right now, I'm seeing all sorts of takes on Ms. Cocco, ranging from (my paraphrases) "she's a stalwart Republican and CBS News made it look like she has doubts about Bush that she really doesn't have" to "her name's listed on a website that is linked to the Communist Party of the USA."  To be absolutely clear:  I don't know what to believe about Ms. Cocco, but assuming that the letters to the editor quoted above are actually from her, that's enough to show that she's no naive soccer-mom; and with what Karas admits in the quotes above, CBS News knew that and concealed it.  As to the CPUSA stuff — whoa, Nellie, be careful there; and make sure you haven't blurred "People Against the Draft" with "Parents Against the Draft" — the former being, apparently, a much larger group that listed Ms. Cocco's contact info on their webpage as "Philadelphia Lancaster/Bucks County affiliate: Parents Against the Draft." 

Update (Thu Sep 30 @ 8:22am): The Ratherbiased.com folks, temporarily blogging courtesy of Rathergate.com, have screenshots proving the "nacht und nebel"/stealth addition to the CBS News website of a disclosure regarding Ms. Cocco's affiliation with "People Against the Draft."  As noted above, I'm not sure whether that's a fair way to describe Ms. Cocco's connection; she does seem to be affiliated with "Parents Against the Draft," and indeed its co-founder.  But whether she and her fellow members of "Parents" knew of possibly unsavory connections that the "People" group may have, or even authorized her name to be listed on the "People" website, hasn't yet been established.  Regardless, the fact that she is an active participant in some sort of grass-roots activist organization clearly was known to CBS News before they ran their broadcast portraying her as an average (Republican) soccer mom, and the stealth edit to their webpage is both a tacit admission that they should have disclosed that critical contextual information to begin with, and further evidence in itself of CBS News' utter lack of candor, good faith, and respect for journalistic ethics.

Update (Thu Sep 30 @ 10:20am): Via a very polite and prompt email reply to my inquiry, columnist Marie Cocco advises that she's not, to her knowledge, related to Beverly Cocco.  Some odd coincidences really are just odd coincidences.

NYT corrects; Beldar takes a bow

I probably wasn't the only one to send NYT public editor Daniel Okrent a few link-filled emails.  But I sent my share, and had blogged about it, and hence was pleased to see this correction (warning: link probably won't last long, it seems to be a changing-content page) today:

• An article on Thursday about political advertising in the presidential campaign, including a commercial that accused John Kerry of having "secretly met with the enemy'' in Paris in the 1970's, misidentified the parties with whom Mr. Kerry said he had met at the Vietnam peace talks. (The error was repeated in articles on Friday and Saturday.) The parties were the two Communist delegations — North Vietnam and the Vietcong's Provisional Revolutionary Government — with whom he discussed the status of war prisoners. He did not say he had met with "both sides." (Go to Sept. 23 Article), (Go to Sept. 24 Article), (Go to Sept. 25 Article)

Okay, three NYT stories repeating this mistake, versus one paragraph in the corrections.  By NYT standards, that's progress, I guess — but still awfully sad.  Shouldn't the NYT maybe run a text version of the sixth SwiftVets ad for free, to balance things out?  And where's the hard-hitting NYT investigative journalists' piece on Kerry's later trip(s) to meet with the enemy in Paris, eh?  (Yeah, I sent them the links to get them started on that, too, but I suspect my email has been lost in the pajama filter.)

Update (Wed Sep 29 @ 8:45pm): After further review, I've noted that the NYT has corrected the online version of the three articles to add the text of the correction paragraph at the bottom of each, and a conspicuous reference to the correction at the top of each; hopefully they'll go that way into the Times' own archives and Lexis-Nexis versions.

No kin o' mine

Jim Geraghty reports on Florida voter fraud involving the mayor of Orlando.  I'm not licensed to practice in Florida, but I'd gladly pay a Florida lawyer's fee to get said mayor a legal name change.

CBS News spreads more partisan lies, this time about the draft

By the time I graduated from high school in May 1975 — a month after the last choppers left the American embassy in Saigon — they were still running the birthdates lottery each year, but had long since stopped calling up young men, so I never had any worries about being drafted. 

However, I've got four kids of my own now, and my oldest, Kevin, will turn 17 in November.  So I think I can claim to have about as personal an interest in the possibilities for a revival of the draft as anyone not currently draft age.  Do I, therefore, identify with the subject of this CBS News article (which parallels one of their broadcasts this week)?

Beverly Cocco has spent most of her life protecting children in Philadelphia.

She spends most of her time worrying about other people's kids. But as Election Day approaches, it's her own two grown sons who Beverly is most worried about.

"I go to bed every night and I pray and I actually get sick to my stomach," she says. "I'm very worried; I'm scared. I'm absolutely scared; I'm petrified."

Beverly is petrified about a military draft — and she's not alone. There's an undercurrent of anxiety; mass e-mails are circulating among parents worried their kids could be called up.

"I think there's a good possibility," Beverly says.

No.  I don't much identify with Ms. Cocco.  In the first place, I already knew, as CBS News' report immediately goes on to say, that

neither President Bush, nor Sen. John Kerry has said he will re-institute the draft. In fact they both say they won't.

Nor am I of the type likely to be misled and frightened by — and that is exactly the purpose and intended effect of — the email and inuendo campaign that CBS News' report mentions, but disingenuously fails to identify a source for.  Yes, both candidates are against the draft; but one of them knows damn good and well that his own partisans are behind that fear campaign, and has done little or nothing to stop it.

In fact, even before I first read about the email scare campaign on Betsy's Page back on September 21st, I knew full well that the chances of the draft being reinstated in the United States were slim-to-none, regardless of what either presidential candidate may say, because I already knew what America's post-Vietnam military experiences, through and including the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, have demonstrated to everyone who's paid any attention to them, especially including the military's own leaders.  To understand why, you can start with a splendid book by the general who led us through major combat operations in both of those wars, Tommy Frank's American Soldier (the next edition of which will, I'm sure, included on its back cover a reference to its coveted five-star rating on BeldarBlog's sidebar).  That book will take you through the astonishing transformation of the American military from Vietnam through today, and leave you with no doubts about why the amazingly professional, well-trained, high-tech, and joint-acting American military of this century is extremely unlikely to revert to conscription.

There's no shortage of other sources to debunk this rumor — Factcheck.org being one that does so fairly comprehensively.

But as it turns out — and as we should have expected, given the source of this story as it roared into the mainstream media — Ms. Coco almost certainly knew better, too, since she's not quite the ordinary soccer-mom and uninvolved-but-likely-Bush-voter described in CBS News' broadcast, but instead (as they've just added a stealth disclosure on their website version of the story to at least partly reveal) the local chapter leader of an organization dedicated to spreading this hysteria on a national basis.  [Yeah, she knew better — see new post above. — Beldar]

CBS News has again willingly propagated another ugly, partisan hoax.  Rathergate.com, Little Green Footballs, RatherBiased.com, Power Line, Hugh Hewitt, Catherine With a C, and many other blogs are on top of this.  I don't have anything new or original to add, nor much capacity left to be shocked by CBS News' sorry abuse of the public trust. 

Update (Wed Sep 29 @ 10:51pm):  The update previously here has been moved to a new post of its own, just above.

Update (Thu Sep 30 @ 5:45am):  I've deleted a couple of sentences from the end of this post, one of which repeated Mr. Cocco's email address; even though it is on the net elsewhere, I'm not urging folks to contact her directly at this point.  The other sentence urged folks to let their CBS affiliates know of their feelings, but just didn't fit gramatically any more; I still think that's a good idea.

Seventh SwiftVets ad features POWs' wives

John Kerry's antiwar activism had a devastating and foreseeable effect on the American POWs who were still being held in Vietnam while he was condemning the American military as war criminals.  It also affected the families of those POWs.  The just-released seventh SwiftVets' ad, offers evidence of the collateral consequences of Kerry's actions on two wives of POWs (who've also been featured in the parallel Stolen Honor campaign).

John Kerry: Lapsed lawyer of little legal luster

I began doing the research for this post on the assumption that John Kerry and I have something in common — that we are both experienced trial lawyers. 

I ended that research having concluded that John Kerry's claims to be an accomplished trial lawyer and top prosecutor are almost certainly more overstated than his claims to have been a great war hero — and that for at least the past eight years and probably longer, he'd have been committing a crime himself if he'd actually tried to represent any client in any court.

I. Kerry's campaign rhetoric:  "Top prosecutor"
will be tough on crime, but fight for rights

A Google search on John Kerry's campaign website for the word "prosecutor" returns sixty-three hits.  For example, from his official biography page:

Later, John Kerry accepted another tour of duty — to serve in America's communities. After graduating from Boston College Law School in 1976, John Kerry went to work as a top prosecutor in Middlesex County, Massachusetts. He took on organized crime and put behind bars "one of the state's most notorious gangsters, the number two organized crime figure in New England." He fought for victims' rights and created programs for rape counseling.

From his webpage on civil rights:

As a former prosecutor, John Kerry also knows the importance of strong law enforcement and a judicial system that upholds the hard-won rights of all Americans....

As a former prosecutor, John Kerry knows that racial profiling is nothing more than ineffective law enforcement and must be prohibited.

On his metropolitan agenda webpage:

As a former prosecutor, John Kerry is committed to vigorous prosecution and punishment of violent criminals.

From his "Women for Kerry-Edwards" webpage:

As a prosecutor, his first conviction of a felon put a rapist behind bars ....

On his "Lawyers for Kerry-Edwards" page:

John Kerry has always been tough on crime. As a prosecutor for one of America's largest counties, he prosecuted a murderer, a rapist and a mob boss. As an assistant District Attorney, he transformed one of the largest and most active District Attorney's offices in the nation into an efficient crime-fighting organization. He started a white-collar crime unit, a program for fast-tracking violent crimes to trial, and a victim's rights unit that was the first of its kind in Massachusetts and one of the first in the nation.

And from a speech on September 9, 2004, to the National Baptist Convention, as reprinted on his website:

You know, I used to be a prosecutor.  I sent criminals to jail for murder and rape for the rest of their lives.

No wonder the Dems thought Kerry would innoculate their party from any "soft on crime/mollycoddling liberals" charges, eh?  I'm somewhat surprised that Sen. Kerry hasn't volunteered to personally prosecute Osama bin Laden, when and if he's caught, to bring these credentials into use on foreign policy issues as well. 

II.  Kerry's law school record, 1973-1976

Noticeably missing from Sen. Kerry's campaign website, however — and indeed, from his entry in the West Legal Directory and the public domain generally — are any details about his law school record, other than that he graduated with the standard law degree, a J.D. (Doctor of Jurisprudence — despite its title, not an advanced law degree) in 1976.  As I've written before, I don't fault Kerry for having attended Boston College, which is a fine law school, albeit one that lacks the national prominence of its local rival Harvard or Kerry's undergraduate institution, Yale.  Wisconsin Law Professor and blogger Ann Althouse has speculated that, given that he was "a law school applicant with extraordinary plus factors, the money to go to any school he wanted, and a history of choosing elite, prestige institutions," Kerry's attendance at Boston College Law School

raises the inference — for reasons detailed in my earlier posts — that his undergraduate record and his LSAT weren't very good, which is evidence that he isn't as smart as he's been made out to be.

I've not been able to find any references to Kerry's test scores or grades, either as an undergraduate or as a law student, but we can reasonably infer from the absence of any "cum laude"-type designations or other listings of academic honors that whatever his class rank was, he wasn't at or very near the top at either Yale College or Boston College Law School.  Michael Kranish et al.'s John F. Kerry: The Complete Biography By The Boston Globe Reporters Who Know Him Best reports (at page 166) that in his third year of law school, Kerry did serve as an "outstanding member" on his school's national moot court team.  Certainly participation in moot court competition (like Kerry's participation in Yale's debate team) can be valuable and practical training for a lawyer-to-be; while a legitimate résumé credential, however, it is not an academic honor, as would have been selection to the Order of the Coif (a ceremonial organization) or the Boston College Law Review (or perhaps one of the other student-run scholarly journals at that school).

From the date of Sen. Kerry's admission to the Massachusetts bar — December 29, 1976 — we can infer that he probably took the summer bar exam after his graduation and passed it on his first attempt.  (The current overall pass rate for that exam is 72 percent; although I can't find data for 1976, if it's like most states' bar exams, the pass rate then was probably higher.)

On the whole, however, Sen. Kerry's undergraduate and law school academic record cannot help but remind me of the old joke from a slightly different context:  Q: D'ya know what they call the guy who finishes last in his class at medical school?  A: "Doctor!"  (The legal equivalent of the joke has the answer as "Your Honor!")

III. Kerry's track record as a prosecutor, 1977-1979

Certainly Sen. Kerry's website gives the impression that he spent years and years of fighting for victims' rights and locking away the badguys.  That's true — if by "years and years" you mean some number less than three.  Kerry was a licensed practitioner and prosecutor from December 29, 1976, through sometime in the early spring of 1979.

I suppose you could count the months Kerry spent while working in the prosecutor's office after graduation and before his bar results came in.  You might even count the months he as a "student prosecutor" while still a third-year law student at Boston College Law School.  According to the Kranish biography (at page 167), while still in school, Kerry

handled minor cases before juries of six, winning all of the twenty-five to thirty cases he prosecuted....  "I'm glad to say I never lost a case in Middlesex [County]," Kerry said.

Wow, that's an impressive conviction rate, isn't it?  Certainly it is!  At least until you consider that they were, by definition, minor misdemeanors — probably traffic tickets, maybe littering — in which the defendants most likely didn't have lawyers.

Well, so he at least must have wracked up the trials once he got his license and became a "real" prosecutor, didn't he?  Says the Boston Globe:

After joining the staff of aging District Attorney John J. Droney, Kerry moved with Julia to Newton, nearer the East Cambridge office. On New Year's Eve 1976, the couple's second daughter, Vanessa, was born. Less than a month later, Droney promoted Kerry to the position of first assistant, giving him free rein to overhaul the office.

Droney veterans were stunned. Many of his assistants were resentful.

Having been promoted to an administrative position within a month of receiving his license, it seems clear that Kerry wasn't ever a front-line in-the-trenches prosecutor.  Older than average among the other rookies just out of law school, he did already have demonstrated skills before the TV camera — so much so, reports Jeffrey Toobin, writing in a May 2004 article in the New Yorker, that the new prosecutor was quickly dubbed "Live-Shot Kerry."  Kerry became the right-hand man for Droney, an ailing district attorney whom Kerry longed to succeed in office, but who essentially booted Kerry soon after winning re-election in November 1978. 

So how many felony cases did Kerry actually try to a jury?  Kerry's website claims that he "he prosecuted a murderer, a rapist and a mob boss," but I've only been able to confirm the first two.   

Toobin describes Kerry winning a rape conviction against one George Edgerly, who was also convicted of murder and fraud by other prosecutors in different trials.  And WaPo's Dale Russakoff reported in a January 25, 2004, article that Kerry won a murder conviction against "one Dana Monsen, who had stabbed a man to death for impregnating a friend's wife."  Russakoff reports that Mr. Monsen is still in prison, and Toobin reports that Mr. Edgerly is as well, so Sen. Kerry's current claim that as a prosecutor, he "sent criminals to jail for murder and rape for the rest of their lives" may be technically accurate — two being, after all, a plural number of criminals — depending perhaps on how long these two men survive.  (Mr. Edgerly, however, was actually sentenced not to life imprisonment, but to "eighteen to thirty years" for the rape, according to Toobin.)

But as for the current claim that Sen. Kerry "took on organized crime and put behind bars 'one of the state's most notorious gangsters, the number two organized crime figure in New England,'" the Kranish biography tells us (at pp. 174-75):

Another exaggerated claim involved the notorious Somerville pinball extortion case.  A 1982 campaign announcement claimed Kerry prosecuted the case.  Although Kerry did directly oversee the investigation, coaxed reluctant witnesses to testify, and introduced evidence to the grand jury, it was [J. William] Codinha, an assistant DA — not Kerry — who tried the case.  (The same announcement also described Winter as "the number two organized crime boss in New England," though [defendant Howie] Winter[, whom the Kranish book (at page 169) says was "convicted in a scheme to force local businesses to install in their clubs pinball machines owned by a gang associate,"] "was not even 'Number Two' in Greater Boston, much less in New England," the Boston Globe reported.)

Boy, I'll bet that severe crimp in their pinball machine racket brought organized crime in Boston and Greater New England to its knees! 

So what did Kerry do during his stint as a prosecutor?  Per Toobin:

Kerry reached all the way to Washington in order to overhaul the office and, most dramatically, its budget. Under President Carter, the Justice Department was making grants to local prosecutors, and Kerry proved adept at tapping into those funds. "We hired a full-time grant writer, and I got more federal money than any other office in the country," Kerry told me. With the money — a reported $3.8 million — he initiated a raft of new programs: a priority prosecution program that sought to bring violent offenders to trial in less than ninety days; an organized-crime task force; an arson task force.

And according to WaPo's Russakoff:

In two years, the office grew from 27 part-time to 90 full-time prosecutors. More than half of Kerry's new hires were women, and many were young idealists who turned to law as a force for changing government after Watergate.

Of course, one can spin this as needed progress, or one can spin this as bureaucratic bloat; and the truth is probably somewhere in the middle.  How much of what Kerry's said about his effectiveness and efficiency is spin?  The Boston Globe reports:

Kerry's selective account of his achievements in the East Cambridge courthouse, however, exaggerates some accomplishments and omits the excesses of what became a polarized office under his leadership.

"The office was divided," said George E. Murphy, who served as an assistant DA in Middlesex for 20 years and now has his own practice. "There were Kerry people, and there were Droney people."

In listing his accomplishments, Kerry greatly inflates the reduction in the backlog of cases on his watch, an achievement that he has described in more grandiose terms over time.

These days, he often says he wiped out an inventory of 12,000 criminal cases. That's up from a claim in a 1984 Kerry campaign biography of a cut to 228 from 11,000 in 18 months. But in a May 1979 interview with The Sun, Kerry said he engineered a drop to 228 from 3,000 before the backup climbed to about 500. A 1978 Droney reelection advertisement, which Kerry helped write, said the dropoff was from 4,523 cases to 716.

State records for the period show a sharp dropoff in the criminal caseload of every county of the state, led by Middlesex, which was helped by a $250,000 federal grant. The precise figure could not be determined from official reports, however. But they show the entire superior court caseload, including backlog, never exceeded 7,265 during Kerry's tenure.

Kerry said he isn't sure where his figures came from but recalled a concerted effort to clean up a mess. "We adjudicated a number of them, we had to dismiss a whole bunch for lack of evidence, lack of witnesses, people had moved or didn't want to testify," he said. "We went through every case."

Gotta love that royal "we," doncha?  "We" mowed through the cases just like "we" mowed down the VC in Vietnam, I guess.

IV. Kerry's private practice, 1979-1982

Of Kerry's brief tenure in private practice from early 1979, after he left Droney's office, until his election as Michael Dukakis' lieutenant governor in November 1982, Russakoff of WaPo writes:

Kerry & Sragow, the partnership he established with one of his star prosecutors, Roanne Sragow, later a girlfriend, was an instant success, drawing malpractice, personal injury and wrongful death clients to a tony State Street office. A decade had passed since the antiwar veteran had riveted the nation with his testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

The questions Kerry grappled with as a lawyer hardly seemed as grand. In one of its more lucrative periods, Kerry & Sragow was representing bald men who had suffered grotesquely unsuccessful hair implants. Lead plaintiff Charles DiPerri, then maitre d' at the exclusive Brookline Country Club, still remembers Kerry holding up color photographs of an oozing sore in DiPerri's scalp and demanding of the jury — in an oddly familiar cadence — "How do you ask a man to work with the public with his scalp in this horrendous condition?" DiPerri was awarded $90,000 in damages.

This does at least explain the Kerry-Edwards ticket's insistence that it has the "best hair," I suppose.

Although he describes at length one high-profile criminal case that Kerry and Sragow undertook to exonerate a man wrongly convicted of murder, Toobin — and Kerry — make clear that she carried the bulk of that work: 

“Roanne was the court-appointed attorney, and I was the helper,” Kerry said. “She did the lion’s share of the work, but that case taught me a lot.”

And Toobin dispels any notion that while in private practice, Kerry was able to use his famous ability to see "nuance" and "principle" to fight for the rights of those on the sharp end of the criminal justice system's stick:

Kerry’s background as a prosecutor made criminal work unappealing to him. "I took a court appointment once in a criminal case, and I realized I just didn’t want the guy out on the street," Kerry told me. "I knew he was guilty. It takes a certain kind of makeup as a lawyer to dedicate yourself to having someone like that out on the street. I know our system says someone has to represent everyone, but I just couldn’t do it. I went to the court and asked them to take me off the case."

To some conservatives, that may seem like a bully good position to take.  To most liberals, and to anyone who believes in the basic premises of the adversary system — and I'd include myself in that second category, having represented, on a pro bono basis, a capital murder defendant through two Fifth Circuit appeals and an intervening habeas trial in federal district court, and having overseen for several years a large Houston law firm's pro bono criminal appellate appointments program — it's hardly a noble position.   Even the one criminal matter on which he assisted Sragow had a selfish political motivation for lawyer Kerry:

The timing of the Reissfelder case was propitious for Kerry. By the summer of 1982, he was running in a Democratic primary for lieutenant governor of Massachusetts, and his efforts on behalf of the wronged inmate were drawing attention in the local press.

I've found no reference to lawyer Kerry ever performing any pro bono work — an ethical obligation of every lawyer, at least in theory.  Perhaps he did so, quietly.  Or perhaps he viewed such work in much the same way that he's later viewed out-of-pocket charitable contributions:

In 1995, Kerry reportedly had a taxable income of $126,179, and made charitable contributions of $0. In 1994, he gave $2,039 to charity. In 1993, the figure was $175. In 1992, it was $820, and in 1991, it was $0.

Nor was there a shortage of high-profile pro bono work for Boston lawyers in 1979-1982.  Kerry could have volunteered for all sorts of civil rights litigation, for instance.  But rather than take on a politically risky cause like school busing and desegregation (a topic that Kerry's ex-brother-in-law and lifelong friend David Thorne recalls Kerry informally debating with Dubya back at Yale, according to page 40 of the Kranish book, and that continued to simmer for many years after its famous 1974 crisis in Boston), it appears that Kerry  was satisfied with his existing civil rights credentials (which, as best I can tell from the Kranish book, at pp. 27-28, consisted of having been friends with the only black teacher, and delivering a since-lost speech entitled "The Plight of the Negro," at St. Paul's prep school, pre-Yale).

Finally, what enduring precedential contributions did John Kerry leave in the law of Massachusetts from his practice there from 1977 to 1982, either as a prosecutor or a lawyer in private practice?  A Lexis-Nexis search of all reported Massachusetts civil and criminal appeals (in a database going back at least through 1972, well before his bar admission) does not find his name among counsel of record on even a single appellate decision. 

V. Kerry from 1983 forward

It's now clear enough to me that unlike his running mate, John Kerry has never been much of a trial lawyer; rather, he's always been a prominent member of the subspecies Lawyerus Politico.  That's well and good, I suppose — except for the fact that he's trying to use his awfully thin credentials as a prosecutor as a basis for his Presidential campaign. 

The natural reaction that Sen. Kerry's supporters will likely have to this post will be to argue George W. Bush's pre-political credentials.  I've written before, at my usual tedious length, about why I'm personally glad that Dubya didn't get into Texas Law School and went instead for a Harvard MBA after finishing up his TANG service.  If you're less impressed than I am with how that MBA and his business experience helped prepare him for his current job, you're welcome to that opinion, of course; Bush should be, and is, running for re-election largely on the basis of how he's done as President, not what he did in 1968-1971 or 1976-1979.

Fairly viewed, of course, John Kerry isn't a career lawyer, but a career politician.  And he's running for the top position in the nation's Executive Branch, not for a seat in its Judicial Branch.  Even though in his career in the U.S. Senate he's been noted more for quasi-prosecutorial investigations than nuts-and-bolts lawmaking, he hasn't, strictly speaking, been engaged in the active practice of law since 1983.  That no doubt explains why Sen. Kerry's membership in the bar of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is currently on "inactive status."  When I phoned the Massachusetts Board of Bar Overseers today, I was advised that Sen. Kerry's inactive status goes back at least as far as 1996; how much earlier than that, their computerized records would not readily reveal.

So strictly speaking, John Kerry is today a law school graduate, but not a lawyer with an active license to practice in Massachusetts or any other state.  While he could presumably return to active status by filing the appropriate paperwork and paying required fees, nevertheless, as of today, John Kerry would be committing a crime under Massachusetts law were he attempt to appear in court there on behalf of a client.

Of course, the senior senator from Massachusetts, Edward M. Kennedy, is also a career politician and has been a nonpracticing lawyer for many years (having been admitted to the Massachusetts bar in December 1959 and serving only a short time as an assistant district attorney in Suffolk County in 1961 before going into the Senate in 1962).  And yet, Sen. Kennedy has seen fit not only to maintain the active status of his license to practice law in his native state, but has qualified for, and maintained his membership in, the District of Columbia bar. 

I do not suggest that Sen. Kerry has engaged, or is engaging, in the illegal unauthorized practice of law.  But my readers can decide for themselves whether, as a matter of political ethics, it would be appropriate for Sen. Kerry to perhaps footnote all those "prosecutor" references on his website to mention, and likewise reveal in all his speeches, that his law license is and has long been "inactive."

And likewise, I leave it to my readers to draw their own conclusions as to whether Sen. Kerry has a sound basis for claiming that his past law practice as a prosecutor and a private lawyer has fitted him to be President. 

But just speaking as one crusty old trial lawyer — I'm decidedly unimpressed.  I'd pay a small ransom — heck, I'd pay his back bar dues! — for the chance to square off against lawyer Kerry on either side of any case in any courtroom, any time and anywhere.

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A footnote:  Pondering Sen. Kerry's inactive law license, I can't help but think of Thomas M. Griffith — the current general counsel of Brigham Young University and one of President Bush's stalled nominees to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.  Mr. Griffith's appointment faces strong Democratic opposition in part because he failed to catch a dues-paying oversight by his staff that resulted in a temporary lapse in his license to practice law in the District of Columbia — a lapse that apparently has been remedied retroactively as far as the District is concerned, but that has blocked his reciprocal admission to the bar in Utah and may have doomed his chances for confirmation.  I'm unacquainted with Mr. Griffith and his qualifications for the bench in general, but I must admit that I was surprised and deeply troubled by this report.  I know that my blog's readership includes some former, inactive, and/or nonpracticing lawyers, but I suspect they'd agree with me, and most lawyers of any stripe, that one's bar status is not to be taken lightly.