As the annual Conservative Political Action Conference kicked off, politics reporter David Weigel analyzed the Republican Party’s evolving approach to handling its right-wing fringe. Using interviews with Tea Party leaders and top conservative and liberal journalists, Weigel highlighted the delicate balance being struck by a party that’s seeking to capitalize on the massive energy generated by right-wing activists while maintaining a serious and appealing reputation.
Spencer Ackerman investigated the question of whether the U.S. government can annul the citizenship of an American who’s been recruited by al-Qaeda in order to assassinate him. The question arose because of Anwar al-Awlaki, a New Mexico-born American citizen who served as a Muslim cleric in Virginia and moved to Yemen, where administration officials think he assists al-Qaeda in recruiting potential attackers targeting the United States. The answer, Ackerman determined through conversations with legal experts, is: No, it can’t.
Ackerman also got a major scoop from a source inside the administration: President Obama was planning to tap William Lietzau to become the Pentagon’s new deputy assistant secretary for detainee affairs — the key position for handling the treatment of detainees. But Lietzau was a central architect of the Bush administration’s military commissions, which were found unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. Ackerman spoke with a number of leading military figures, who expressed surprise — and some concern — at Lietzau’s appointment.
Joe Boven was on hand to document the death of a controversial bill that sought to expand space for religion in Colorado’s public schools. The bill, sponsored by Christian conservative state Sen. Dave Schultheis, R-Colorado Springs, would have allowed teachers to choose not to teach subjects such as evolution and sex education that might conflict with their religious beliefs, while allowing them to distribute religious material and display religious symbols in class. Finding little support for the measure, Schultheis weakened it enough that the majority Democratic committee members said it simply offered no new provisions on the matter.
Boven also revealed that untried youths are languishing in Colorado’s adult prisons, in conditions so execrable that several have committed suicide. As they await their day in court, youths are often put into solitary confinement to keep them from the adult population. State Sen. Evie Hudak, D-Westminster, recently introduced a bill to require that imprisoned children have access to education and mental health services, but she told Boven the odds are high it will fail to gain sufficient support to pass. In fact, the Colorado Association of School Boards is lobbying hard against the bill, telling Boven that it would strain the finances of school districts that have prisons within their boundaries.
Editor John Tomasic was first to report that U.S. Sen. Mark Udall said he supports a plan floated by Xcel Energy to build a nuclear power plant in Colorado. Udall said Xcel was proposing the plant as a part of a plan that would see Xcel, which provides most of the power in the state, become carbon neutral within the decade. Tomasic’s story caused a panic within the energy company, which was inundated with calls from other media and regulators unfamiliar with the plan. Officials with the utility told Tomasic the plan was merely a “discussion point,” while a Udall spokesperson said the Senator meant to say that “utilities are considering their options as they attempt to reduce carbon emissions.”
Contributor Scot Kersgaard took top traffic by reporting on the effects that the coming takeover of Denver hospitals by the Catholic Sisters of Mercy will have on local health care. Abortions will be limited to cases where the mother is at risk of death, experts said, and reproductive services will also likely be severely curtailed, as will end-of-life care, regardless of legal advance directives. Soon nearly 40 percent of Denver’s hospital beds will be run under such rules, as approved by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops. The special counsel to the Colorado Center on Law and Policy told Kersgard that the conference’s rules represent an “outrageous abuse of power.”
Jason Hancock was first to report that four Democratic state senators — Dennis Black of Newton, Keith Kreiman of Bloomfield, Rich Olive of Story City and Joe Seng of Davenport – broke with their party and signed on to a Republican petition to force a vote on same-sex marriage. While the move came too late for the bill to pass, it did put a constitutional amendment overturning the 2009 ruling by the state Supreme Court legalizing same-sex marriage within three votes of eligibility for a floor vote, something Democratic leadership vowed to stop at all costs.
As chair of the powerful Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, & Pensions (HELP), the support of U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin for using reconciliation to pass health care reform legislation with a public insurance option was highly sought. While the senator would not comment on the idea publicly, Hancock broke the news that he did promise state Democrats during a closed-door meeting that he would use the procedural move to push through health care reform, a big boost toward the effort.
Reporter Lynda Waddington got an exclusive interview with Democratic U.S. Rep. Bruce Braley, founder of the House Populist Caucus, who called out progressives for not standing up to the Tea Party activists on issues like health care reform. Urging Democrats to “speak truth to fear,” Braley said, “the problem is that Senators and House members are shaped by what’s happening in the press, what’s happening back home. People who really want health care reform have to get united and organized and let their voices be heard to help people do the right thing.”
Todd Heywood got two Democrats in the state legislature to speak out publicly against Speaker of the House Andy Dillon’s demand that this year’s expected $1.8 billion deficit be fixed only with budget cuts and not new revenues. Heywood documented a clear rift in the Democratic Party over this issue; most of the party’s state leaders disagree with fellow Democrat Dillon on his insistence that the budget can be balanced only through cuts. His reporting on this issue led to an exclusive interview with Dillon this week where we can ask him some tough questions.
Heywood also got the scoop on the cancellation of a speech at Michigan State University by Nick Griffin, head of the openly racist British National Party. He was the only reporter covering the story of Griffin being invited to campus by a new conservative student group at MSU called the Sons of Liberty. At a time when one of the big stories is the mainstreaming of the far right fringe into more traditional conservatism, in-depth coverage of that fringe has been largely missing. Heywood is becoming the leading figure documenting the activity of extremist groups in Michigan.
Heywood led state media in a report that GOP gubernatorial candidate Mike Bouchard has made payments to media consultant Scott Howell and Company, the firm behind some of the country’s most infamous campaign attacks, including ones deemed “reprehensible” by John McCain, who was one of the firm’s targets in 2000. The hiring of the company – which was behind campaigns against Max Cleland and Harold Ford, as well as push-polling targeting McCain – suggests the gubernatorial race will get into the “gutter,” according to experts interviewed by Heywood. The Michigan Messenger report was picked up and credited by MLive, a site that represents daily papers in greater Michigan. The state’s two biggest papers, the Detroit News and the Lansing State Journal, then picked up the story.
Eartha Melzer continued her investigation into Dow Chemical’s contamination the Saginaw River watershed with toxic dioxin. The only reporter in Michigan to cover the Dow case, Melzer found that the cleanup framework the EPA agreed to with Dow puts the chemical manufacturer in charge of determining cleanup priorities. Environmental experts are concerned by the arrangement, because Dow, which incorrectly believes “that living on contaminated soil does not affect people’s blood dioxin level,” is entrusted with “com[ing] up with a list of “areas of potential acute or near-term exposure risks.”
When Sen. Al Franken signed a letter urging Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to back the use of “reconciliation” to bring health care reform with the public option to a full Senate vote, Minnesota Independent’s Paul Schmelzer was the first to get Sen. Amy Klobuchar on record on the topic: While she didn’t sign the letter, she said she supported the use of reconciliation, adding that she also supported the public option. Klobuchar’s statement to MnIndy was widely reported across Minnesota and the country.
In an exclusive interview, reporter Andy Birkey discussed health care reform with Rep. Keith Ellison, long a supporter of the public option. Ellison, who signed the House version of a letter urging Senate Democrats to use reconciliation to pass the public option, had sharp words: “There’s not one legitimate argument against the public option except that it cuts into corporate profits,” he said. He believes “corporatists” are working to prevent passage of the public option, but told Birkey he remains hopeful it can pass.
Birkey also uncovered the highly controversial “birther” views of Rae Hart Anderson, a candidate for state Senate. Hart Anderson made headlines in 2006 when, in conceding to Sen. Satveer Chaudry, the state’s first Hindu legislator, wrote a letter urging him to convert to Christianity. Birkey’s story outlined her anti-Muslim, pro-Christian beliefs, and noted that Anderson now also believes Barack Obama isn’t legitimately the president of the United States because she says he doesn’t have a proper birth certificate. In Birkey’s reporting, GOP officials distanced themselves from Anderson; one party spokesperson stated that her views “do not represent my views, the views of the 5th CD Republicans or, to the extent of my knowledge, the Republican Party of Minnesota.”
The site again registered record-breaking weekly traffic with a story by editor Paul Schmelzer about a new Research 2000 Minnesota poll about Rep. Michele Bachmann. A MnIndy exclusive, Schmelzer’s story reported that a majority of Minnesotans surveyed find Bachmann “embarrassing.” While she finds approval in her district, two data points stand out: 69 percent of voters in the conservative 8th Congressional District found Bachmann embarrassing, and among independent voters – who’ll factor in November’s election – 62 percent found her embarrassing. Thanks to links in the local media and national blogs like ThinkProgress, TPM and Huffington Post, the story got more than 25,000 pageviews, making the week’s traffic (at more than 64,000 pageviews) the site’s best since August 2009.
More than 1,300 people visited NMI’s liveblog of the final full day of the regular legislative session. Contributor Larry Behrens reported that lawmakers ultimately failed to reach a budget agreement, leading Sen. John Arthur Smith, D-Deming, to declare that a special session had become a “certainty.” Heath Haussamen chased this development, revealing that while senators said they had the signatures to call such a session so legislators, and not the governor, would control the agenda, it remained unclear whether the House would agree. The new session has been slated to begin March 1.
Lawmakers did succeed in passing some key reforms, in areas NMI had followed closely and exclusively. The House overwhelmingly passed legislation that would prevent most government retirees from earning both a pension and government paycheck, commonly referred to as “double dipping,” a practice first revealed by NMI last year. The legislature also passed a bill to reform the State Investment Council, whose controversial practices have been the subject of many investigations. The reforms will take away the centralized authority from the State Investment Officer and will require that the Council, rather than the governor, be responsible for appointing the officer. Sen. Tim Keller, D-Albuquerque, told Trip Jennings that his coverage of the reform efforts helped make this progress possible. “”This is a wonderful example of how what you do makes a difference! Without you keeping a close eye on it and covering it each step of the way I doubt it would have passed. You really are the channel for public mandate on an issue that was so important to our state, but so specialized it really took pieces like yours to keep it relevant.”
IMPACT: In January, Marjorie Childress reported on the potential effects of a bill that would apply a 25 percent excise tax on medical marijuana, a rate that a patients’ rights organization, the New Mexico Medical Cannabis Patients Group, said was so high that patients who already struggle to make ends meet won’t be able to afford the drug. On Feb. 1, Childress went on to report that the state’s own Tax and Revenue Department came to the same conclusion, adding in its analysis that the levy would ” push more of the non-growing patients to grow their own or to turn to the black market.” Editor Gwyneth Doland also made the topic the subject of NMI’s online Independent Forum, where local policymakers and advocates weighed the merits and risks of the bill. At NMI’s Independent Forum event, the bill’s sponsor, Sen. John Sapien, held up a copy of the story and said he wanted to reach out to the patients’ group Childress had highlighted. Since then, the head of the group told Childress that the senator had gotten in touch, that they had a very productive conversation about how the tax would affect patients, and Sapien has amended his bill to decrease the tax to 3 percent.
IMPACT UPDATE: After Bryant Furlow first revealed stonewalling by state officials into claims of Medicaid and elder abuse – and after legislation was introduced to prevent such secrecy in the future – federal officials declared that they will now investigate the charges. The U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services told Furlow it intends to investigate the allegations raised in his reporting. The federal Department of Health and Human Services alerted the agency to the allegations only last week, an official said, following inquiries by The Independent. The news was the week’s top story.
GOOD NEWS
Michigan cited for creating green jobs
Former Apollo Alliance president Jerome Ringo, cites Michigan as a success in creating new jobs based on policies that promote a clean environment and renewable and sustainable energy sources.