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Thursday, April 22, 2004
Unlike me, apparently, multiple persons managed to remain awake throughout Kerry's drone-in on Meet the Press Sunday, and they are now reporting that the senator was adamant in defending his wife's refusal to release her tax records to the public. According to Robert Novak, one of the granite tablets that fell from Kerry's mouth during the proceedings was engraved with the words, "My wife is doing exactly what the law requires, I mean, we have laws in America, and the law requires that the candidate release their tax returns." Novak goes on to point out that this particular tablet must have contained a misprint, because there is no law requiring candidates or their spouses to release tax information. In recent elections, they've simply done it in the interest of full disclosure. "Just why she is so reticent is a mystery," writes Novak, "though it hardly could be concern about privacy considering the flood of personal publicity welcomed by the Kerrys." He speculates the couple may be worried about repeating the experience of Al Gore:
That excites curiosity about her charitable contributions (which are not reflected in official U.S. Senate financial disclosures). Release of Vice President Al Gore's tax returns in 1998 revealed an embarrassingly small charitable contribution of $353 on an income of $197,699.Stunningly, the New York Times has even expressed concern about Mrs. Heinz-Kerry's nondisclosure. Today's NYT editorial says, in part:
We hope the senator realizes that there cannot be too much disclosure by a candidate seeking the trust of the public for the nation's highest office.With this high standard in mind, we urge that the candidate's wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, release her tax returns. Limited financial records of Mrs. Heinz Kerry, a millionaire heiress, are available as part of the Senate's disclosure requirements. Beyond that, Mrs. Heinz Kerry points out that she is not the candidate and deserves some privacy... They may file separate tax returns, but the comfort of the Kerrys' assets is a fact of life in the senator's campaign. The public is entitled to more detail, even though nothing nefarious has been alleged.All this is starting to remind us of Louis Freeh's FBI and George Tenet's CIA. Novak and the NYT are sifting through the available intelligence and forwarding a memo of nonspecific concern. Unless Novak is being disingenuous and the NYT downright untruthful. Nothing nefarious has been alleged? Or did all these media geniuses completely miss this:
Teresa Heinz Kerry has financed the secretive Tides Foundation to the tune of more than $4 million over the years. The Tides Foundation, a “charity” established in 1976 by antiwar leftist activist Drummond Pike, distributes millions of dollars in grants every year to political organizations advocating far-Left causes. The Tides Foundation and its closely allied Tides Center, which was spun off from the Foundation in 1996 but run by Drummond Pike, distributed nearly $66 million in grants in 2002 alone. In all, Tides has distributed more than $300 million for the Left. These funds went to rabid antiwar demonstrators, anti-trade demonstrators, domestic Islamist organizations, pro-terrorists legal groups, environmentalists, abortion partisans, extremist homosexual activists and open borders advocates. (You can read the rest of the article here; it's full of provocative details.)So what, you say. So the nice lady is a little bit to the left of her husband. What does this have to do with the current election? Remember all that clapping from the gallery when Richard Ben Veniste was doing his Joe McCarthy impersonation with Condoleeza Rice? The clappers were the 9/11 widows. No, not all of them. Some very specific 9/11 widows, members of a political organization called Peaceful Tomorrows. And who are they? According to Little Green Footballs:
“Peaceful Tomorrows” is the anti-war September 11 victim group often seen onstage at International ANSWER rallies, and their representatives have been quoted (usually without any context) in nearly every story about President Bush’s new advertisements [referencing 9/11]. Would you be terribly surprised to discover that, according to their web site, Peaceful Tomorrows is a project of the Tides Center—the far left funding group to which Teresa Heinz Kerry has given millions of dollars?If the New York Times thinks "nothing nefarious has been alleged," then they can hardly take the position that the Bush administration ever had any actionable intelligence prior to September 11, 2001. The CIA may simply have had the same policy as the NYT -- ignore any intelligence that include unacceptable partisanship or, heaven forfend, invective. Maybe it's time we found a replacement for the word 'intelligence.'
And just where is that evil chuckling coming from? Is that you, Novak?
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