James Ridgeway

In 1965, James Ridgeway helped launch the modern muckraking era by revealing that General Motors had hired private eyes to spy on an obscure consumer advocate named Ralph Nader. He worked for many years at the Village Voice, has written 16 books, and has codirected Blood in the Face, a film about the far right. In 2012, he was named a Soros Justice Media Fellow.

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Jeb: "I Wasn't Hiding in the Closet"

—By James Ridgeway

| Fri Oct. 13, 2006 10:42 AM PDT

NewMax.com,the up to the minute conservative site has the latest in the Jeb Bush saga:

Florida Gov. Jeb Bush has disputed media accounts that said he hid in a closet to avoid anti-Republican protesters during a visit to Pittsburgh last week.

Bush encountered protesters Oct. 6 while on his way to a fund-raising event for Republican Sen. Rick Santorum at Pittsburgh's exclusive Duquesne Club.

Curiously, those media accounts seemed to focus more on the "closet" aspect of the story than on the behavior of the unruly, obscenity-shouting mob. The stories mentioned prominently that Bush sought "refuge in a subway station supply closet."

Bush said it was actually a boiler room.

Bush said he had to seek safety in the boiler room when he came across the protesters, but also said he was never concerned for his safety because he was taller and "more burly" than most of the protesters who chased him.

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Campaign Issues

Islamic Fascism in Pennsylvania; The Value of Earmarks in Montana

—By James Ridgeway

| Fri Oct. 13, 2006 12:00 AM PDT

WASHINGTON--- Debates in Pennsylvania and Montana Thursday where the Senate races are close and where Republicans are fighting hard to stave off the Democratic attack illustrate just how different this fall's campaigning can be-where candidates have to decide whether to run with the President or somehow get away from him.

In Pennsylvania where Democratic challenger Bob Casey is holding a slender lead, Rick Santorum is aggressively trying to catch up, sticking with the Bush line on just about everything. This is one of the few races where the Republican is drawing closer to Bush, not trying to run from him.

[Read the full article]

House Ethics Committee Takes Up Foley Scandal

—By James Ridgeway

| Thu Oct. 5, 2006 8:58 AM PDT

The Foley scandal lurches into the dormant House Ethics Committee Thursday morning. This committee is evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans and hasn't been able to get up the nerve to investigate anything for the last year-and-a-half. The Jack Abramoff scandal was decided in the courts, and the congress was barely able to scrape together a tepid lobby reform in its aftermath. With Bush supporting Hastert, John McCain, an all but declared presidential nominee for 2008, has jumped in to push the ethics committee on and show the Christian Right he is morally correct. Mind you these are the people who smeared McCain in 2000. But in recent months McCain has made every effort to make up with them.

If the Ethics committee actually wants to get anywhere, that is, to conduct an investigation along the lines of congressional inquiries into former Speakers Jim Wright and Newt Gingrich, it will need to hire an independent counsel. That might well be the kiss of death for Hastert, if he hangs on that long, since his own top aide is being accused of helping to cover up the scandal. To make matters worse, one of his supporters had proposed he handle the mess by temporarily shutting down the House page program, leading to yet more outcry.

Yesterday, the Republican leadership was dumping on Hastert and blaming the Democrats. George Will this morning scathingly attacks Hastert, quoting his feeble defense of himself on Rush Limbaugh: "We have a story to tell, and the Democrats have — in my view have — put this thing forward to try to block us from telling the story. They're trying to put us on the defense." This line isn't going to work. There's a good chance the ethics committee, egged on by the Hastert defenders, will stop attacking Democrats and launch an attack on gays. "Investigators for the House Ethics Committee want to know if gays in the House conspired to protect Foley," Capitol Hill Blue reports today. "We're talking
tip of the iceberg here," one House Ethics Committee staffer tells the website. "This thing will just keep getting worse."

UPDATE: The House Ethics Committee, which convened this morning, just announced that it will handle the inquiry into the page program. Republican Doc Hastings and Democrat Howard Berman have been selected to lead the investigation, which Berman said will be concluded in a matter of "weeks, not months." The AP is also reporting that in addition to the Ethics Committee investigation Hastert will also ask former FBI director Louis Freeh to "examine the page system and make recommendations on how to improve the program."

Turmoil on the Right

—By James Ridgeway

| Wed Oct. 4, 2006 2:10 PM PDT

The Foley scandal appears to be opening a deep split in the Republican base. Bush so far defends Hastert, and is trying to tie the Democrats to the scandal. But the leaders of the New Right coalition which more than any other group is responsible for the right wing Republican victories over the last quarter century, are flat out demanding Hastert quit as Speaker.
Two of the original New Right leaders, have come down hard against Hastert. Richard A. Viguerie, the direct mail whiz who built up the conservative juggernaut, told the Los Angeles Times Hastert and the leadership were not aggressive enough in getting to the bottom of the emails when they first heard about them last year. Just warning Foley wasn't good enough and was "only the most recent example of Republican House leaders doing whatever it takes to hold onto power."

Paul M. Weyrich, another founder of the New Right, the man who began the Heritage Foundation and was co-founder of the Moral Majority, said he too couldn't understand why the leadership hadn't got to the bottom of the mess when they learned of the first emails."That's the real question, and that's what has the movement people very angry," he told the Times. Weyerich tries to get the Arlington Group, made up of conservative groups holding differing views, to demand the resignation of Hastert and Majority Leader Boehner and anyone else involved in handling the Foley situation. But the executive committee backed away from this stiff version, and the final document did not directluy criticize House leaders or call for anyone to quit.

All in all, Republican House members are bitterly angry at their leadership. Bob Novak writes today, ``The virtually sure loss of one Florida seat following the scandal surrounding Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.) and the possibility of a devastating ripple effect pointed to dysfunctional House leadership where the principals do not effectively communicate with each other. The anger by rank-and-file Republican House members over the incompetence of their leaders is palpable.''

But the Christian Right, another leg of the Bush base, is weirdly silent. James Dobson, perhaps the most important figure on the religious right and an ardent supporter of the President, issued a mild statement:

Focus on the Family Action weighed in on the controversy surrounding former U.S. Rep. Mark Foley, who was forced to resign last week after sexually explicit e-mails between him and a congressional page were made public.
The ensuing scandal has led to calls for the resignation of House Speaker Dennis Hastert, on the insinuation that he didn't address Foley's behavior quickly or proactively enough.

Tom Minnery, Focus Action's senior vice president of government and public policy, said Foley "should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law" if he is guilty of preying on boys.

But he added the preoccupation with the political aspects of the incident were unfortunate.

"The lives of real families have been devastated by the conduct Mr. Foley stands accused of —so it's sad that so much of the dialogue today is so political in nature," Minnery said. "Those truly interested in protecting children from online predators should spend less time calling for Speaker Hastert to step down, and more time demanding that the Justice Department enforce existing laws that would limit the proliferation of the kind of filth that leads grown men to think it's perfectly OK to send lurid e-mails to 16-year-old boys."

Minnery added that the public's outraged reaction to the incident "indicates that as a society we do understand there are limits to 'tolerance' of our culture's anything-goes view of sexuality."

"If any lasting cultural good could come out of this awful incident," he added, "it would be Americans discarding the politically correct notion fed to us by those on the left that obscenity is just another form of free speech."

In Memoriam 911

The audio track to this video is from the 9/11 Commission.

—By James Ridgeway

| Sun Sep. 10, 2006 12:00 AM PDT

The audio track to this video is from the 9/11 Commission. During the public hearing on January 27th, 2004, the panel played a recording of flight attendant Betty Ong, who was on Flight 11 which took off from Boston at 8:00 AM crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center at 8:46 AM.

Around 8:20 AM on 9/11, Ong called the American Airlines reservation desk to tell them what was happening. She spoke with Nydia Gonzalez, an operations specialist.

Although Ong talked for 23 minutes, the recording is only 4-1/2 minutes long. The head of the Commission, Thomas Kean said: "We'll hear the entire four and a half minutes that was recorded on that call." Thus, though Ong talked for 23 minutes, we're told that only one-quarter of the call was recorded. This recording is all we have in the public domain right now.

[Read the full article]