"Terrific News" For Speech Cops
Dan Rather: "Good evening. Prospects for legislation in Congress to stop, or at least stem, the flood of unregulated special interest money into political campaigns got a boost today from the U.S. Supreme Court. Opponents of the campaign finance bill, including President Bush, have suggested such limits might be unconstitutional. But in a five to four ruling in another, but related case, the justices upheld campaign finance restrictions. CBS's Bob Schieffer is on Capitol Hill where the ruling sends a strong signal. Bob, what's the real deal on this?"
Bob Schieffer: "Well, Dan, this is just terrific news for campaign reformers who, as you say, are trying to ban soft money. That's those backdoor unlimited contributions that both parties now collect. Opponents of this legislation have always said it would be unconstitutional to ban them because it would be a violation of free speech. Today's case was not about soft money, but here is what is important: A majority of the Court has now said it is constitutional to regulate coordinated campaign contribution collections as a way to fight corruption."
-Beginning of the June 25 CBS Evening News.
Republicans vs. Reformers
"Reformers want to give patients who are denied coverage the right to sue their HMOs in state courts and thats the hang up. Most Republicans believe that would just drive up costs. They want to cap damages and try the cases in federal court. Reformers say that would take too long since federal dockets are already so crowded."
-Bob Schieffer on the so-called patients' bill of rights, June 21 CBS Evening
News.
Flourishing Under Communism
"Well, one year after Elian Gonzalez returned to Cuba he is taking his final second grade mathematics exam today and, at least according to his father, is a normal seven-year old. In the middle of the schoolyard during recess, the child who spent seven months at the center of an international custody war. His only apparent concern when we saw him Tuesday: winning at games like musical chairs. His father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, a waiter at a tourist resort near their fishing village two hours from Havana says his son has made a good adjustment, is doing well in school and at home."
-NBC's Andrea Mitchell, who was given exclusive permission by the Castro government to report on Elian Gonzalez from Cuba, June 27
Today.
Trumpeting a Left-Wing Leak
"We start tonight with an exclusive report about health care and it's bound to make a lot of people angry. ABC News has obtained a study which finds that many people in charge of major health providers are being paid huge sums of money. At the same time, patients in many of those health plans are being denied coverage, and the frustration level for millions of people is rising."
-ABC World News Tonight anchor Elizabeth Vargas on June 20, introducing a Linda Douglass story about a report by Families USA, a left-wing group that promoted Hillary Clinton's 1993 attempted government takeover of health care. Douglass merely described Families USA as "a consumer group" and "a critic of HMO cost cutting."
Less PR, More Abortions
"Are you and your people willing to go to jail to hand out literature, to hand out pills, to perform procedures, if that's what it takes?"
"But if you're not prepared to go to jail, and if you don't have a license, and you can't perform procedures, and you can't give out pills, why isn't this any more, anything more than just a publicity stunt?"
-Questions from CBS's Bryant Gumbel to Yoka Van Kampe, spokeswoman for Women on the Waves, who planned to use a boat to transport pregnant women from Ireland, where abortions are illegal, to international waters where abortions would be performed,
The Early Show, June 15.
No Fair! We Thought "Compassionate" Really Meant Liberal
"What we're seeing is sort of the unraveling of the public's belief in this whole idea of being a 'compassionate conservative.' What they're seeing now is the corporate conservative that George W. Bush actually is. He's in favor of big business...and you see it over and over again in all but the most egregious cases....He definitely came across, during the campaign they thought compassionate conservative meant 'I'm a pragmatist.' There's not going to be any fighting. Al Gore said 'I'll fight for you.' George W. Bush said, 'There won't be any fighting because I'm bringing a bipartisan spirit. I'm going to work with you. I'm on your side.' They thought this meant that he was a pragmatist, sort of along the lines of a Bob Dole. No, he's not. He is a right-wing conservative, for the most part, on many issues, and that's coming out now, especially on the issues of the environment and issues of this patients' bill of rights."
-ABC World News Now co-anchor Derek McGinty on This Week, June 24.
Geraldo's Summer Book Picks
"Did the Supreme Court of the United States rob the American people of their duly-elected President?...Yes, says Alan Dershowitz. That history-making heist is exactly what happened when the justices issued their highly controversial Bush vs. Gore ruling last December. The 5-4 decision stopped the Florida ballot recount, as you recall, put George W. Bush in the White House and, according to Professor Dershowitz, forever tarnished the exalted reputation of this nation's highest court. Now the professor backs up his charges in this hard-hitting and maybe his best, certainly in the non-fiction area, Supreme Injustice: How the High Court Hijacked Election 2000."
-CNBC host Geraldo Rivera, who also gushed "I think it's a great book," on
Rivera Live, June 18.
"Should five of our nations nine Supreme Court Justices be imprisoned? That's the opinion of famed former prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi. He says the justices who supported George W. Bush in the election dispute are almost treasonous white-collar criminals. He'll explain why."
"It is a scathing indictment of the high court of the United States, at least these five conservative justices. And I really, really, I urge law students especially, but anyone who's interested in the machinations of the Court, to check this out. Vincent Bugliosis The Betrayal of America."
-Beginning and end of Geraldo Riveras interview with Bugliosi, CNBC's
Rivera Live, June 25.
Yeah, We're Twisting the News
"They're definitely seeing this through the prism that the press has provided here, which is that coverage has been overwhelmingly 'Bush in the pocket of the oil companies harming the environment.' Personally, I don't totally disagree with that, but I think there's no question that the press has framed it that way."
-Newsweek Assistant Managing Editor Evan Thomas on why the public holds a low view of President Bush's environmental policies, June 23
Inside Washington.
Hard-Right Bret Schundler
"The 42-year-old Harvard graduate, who combines hard-right conservative stands on abortion, school vouchers and gun control with a record of striking policy and political achievements in gritty, majority-minority Jersey City, is running ahead of former U.S. Representative Bob Franks, 49, who was handpicked by New Jersey Republican leaders to take over the post vacated by Christine Todd Whitman, according to public and private polling."
-Article by the Washington Post's Thomas Edsall on New Jersey's GOP gubernatorial primary, June 25.
Hero to Millions of Liberals
"Good morning, everybody. It seems it was just a few years ago when Geraldine Ferraro became a hero to millions of Americans, particularly American women."
-NBC's Ann Curry on the June 19 Today, informing viewers that Ferraro, the Democrat's 1984 vice-presidential nominee, has a terminal form of cancer.
"Before the 1984 Democratic convention, Walter Mondale was under a lot of pressure from women's rights activists to put a woman on the ticket. If he does that, cynics said, Mondale will look like he's caving in to another special interest. He did name a woman, Geraldine Ferraro, Democratic Congresswoman from Queens, New York. But the reaction was not what the cynics expected. People were genuinely excited....Women found themselves caught up in the thrill of it all, Democrats were over the moon."
-CNN's Bill Schneider on Inside Politics, June 19.
Conservatives Are Sleazy
"A best-selling author who wrote a book harshly critical of Anita Hill now says he was lying to discredit Hill after she testified against confirming Clarence Thomas to the U.S. Supreme Court. David Brock says he was out to ruin Hill's credibility and now describes himself as, and I quote, 'a witting cog in the Republican sleaze machine,' end of quotation."
-Dan Rather on the CBS Evening News, June 27. Brock did not recant any facts from his book on Hill, only a single assertion made in a separate book review.
"This is really a pretty serious commentary about journalism, because the first book, The Real Anita Hill, was taken very seriously. The stuff in the American Spectator, which is a propaganda sheet, was taken very seriously. David Brock admits that he didn't know anything about journalism when he wrote The Real Anita Hill, that he was a tool of the right, that that's what he was doing, that he'd never had any journalistic training. And this is a pretty bad commentary on where we've come in our profession."
-National Public Radio's Nina Totenberg, Inside Washington, June 30.
Diane's Democratic Dreamboat
"Today is the day the Senate may pass that patients' bill of rights, which would guarantee your right to sue your HMO. When that happens, one big winner out of Washington will be one of the bill's key Democratic backers, North Carolinas newcomer John Edwards. He is said to have the combined political skills - are you ready for this? - of Clinton and Kennedy, Kennedy and Clinton together, and also to have a very good shot at the White House."
-ABC's Diane Sawyer, Good Morning America, June 29.
