Pages

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Tom DeLay GUILTY: Jury Convicts Republican In Money Laundering Trial

THE HAMMER FALLS




JUAN A. LOZANO
11/24/10 07:33 PM


AUSTIN, Texas — Former U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay – once one of the most powerful and feared Republicans in Congress – was convicted Wednesday on charges he illegally funneled corporate money to Texas candidates in 2002.
Jurors deliberated for 19 hours before returning guilty verdicts against DeLay on charges of money laundering and conspiracy to commit money laundering. He faces up to life in prison on the money laundering charge.
After the verdicts were read, DeLay hugged his daughter, Danielle, and his wife, Christine. His lead attorney, Dick DeGuerin, said they planned to appeal the verdict.
"This is an abuse of power. It's a miscarriage of justice, and I still maintain that I am innocent. The criminalization of politics undermines our very system and I'm very disappointed in the outcome," DeLay told reporters outside the courtroom. He remains free on bond, and his sentencing was tentatively set to begin on Dec. 20.
Prosecutors said DeLay, who once held the No. 2 job in the House of Representatives and whose heavy-handed style earned him the nickname "the Hammer," used his political action committee to illegally channel $190,000 in corporate donations into 2002 Texas legislative races through a money swap.
DeLay and his attorneys maintained the former Houston-area congressman did nothing wrong as no corporate funds went to Texas candidates and the money swap was legal.
The verdict came after a three-week trial in which prosecutors presented more than 30 witnesses and volumes of e-mails and other documents. DeLay's attorneys presented five witnesses.
"This case is a message from the citizens of the state of Texas that the public officials they elect to represent them must do so honestly and ethically, and if not, they'll be held accountable," Travis County District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg said after the verdict.
Prosecutors said DeLay conspired with two associates, John Colyandro and Jim Ellis, to use his Texas-based PAC to send $190,000 in corporate money to an arm of the Washington-based Republican National Committee, or RNC. The RNC then sent the same amount to seven Texas House candidates. Under Texas law, corporate money can't go directly to political campaigns.
Prosecutors claim the money helped Republicans take control of the Texas House. That enabled the GOP majority to push through a Delay-engineered congressional redistricting plan that sent more Texas Republicans to Congress in 2004 – and strengthened DeLay's political power.
DeLay's attorneys argued the money swap resulted in the seven candidates getting donations from individuals, which they could legally use in Texas.
They also said DeLay only lent his name to the PAC and had little involvement in how it was run. Prosecutors, who presented mostly circumstantial evidence, didn't prove he committed a crime, they said.
DeLay has chosen to have Senior Judge Pat Priest sentence him. He faces five years to life in prison on the money laundering charge and two to 20 years on the conspiracy charge. He also would be eligible for probation.
The 2005 criminal charges in Texas, as well as a separate federal investigation of DeLay's ties to disgraced former lobbyist Jack Abramoff, ended his 22-year political career representing suburban Houston. The Justice Department probe into DeLay's ties to Abramoff ended without any charges filed against DeLay.
Ellis and Colyandro, who face lesser charges, will be tried later.
Except for a 2009 appearance on ABC's hit television show "Dancing With the Stars," DeLay has been out of the spotlight since resigning from Congress in 2006. He now runs a consulting firm based in the Houston suburb of Sugar Land.

Elizabeth Warren Helped Shoot Down Bill That Would Have Sped Foreclosures, Calendar Shows

 Elizabeth Warren
Elizabeth Warren, Assistant to the President and Special Advisor to the Secretary of the Treasury on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau


First Posted: 11-24-10 05:13 PM

Updated: 11-24-10 05:37 PM
Shahien Nasiripour shahien@huffingtonpost.com


Elizabeth Warren was the first senior Obama administration official to recognize the potentially incendiary impact of a bill that would have made it significantly easier for mortgage companies to foreclose on homes, and her subsequent warnings played a crucial role in persuading the President to veto the measure, according to freshly released documents and people familiar with the deliberations.

The disclosure that Warren was instrumental in halting a bill that would have streamlined the foreclosure process comes as she confronts fierce criticism from Republicans on Capitol Hill for the way she was appointed to construct a new consumer financial protection bureau, and characterizations that she is inclined to take an overly punitive tack with Wall Street.

A long-time advocate for greater regulation of the financial system and a prominent critic of predatory lending, Warren now finds herself at the center of an intensifying debate over the relationship between the Obama administration and the business world.

For consumer advocates, who have long decried what they portray as Wall Street's outsized influence in Washington, Warren represents their greatest hope that big banks will be more tightly supervised following the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. For a vocal group of business leaders and their Republican allies, Warren has become Exhibit A in their case that the Obama administration is anti-business.

The decisive way in which she labored behind the scenes to stymie a bill that would have eased requirements for documentation in the foreclosure process underscores how her arrival has altered the administration's relationship with major banks.

The bill, which passed both houses of Congress and awaited President Obama's signature to become law, essentially would have compelled notaries to accept out-of-state notarizations, regardless of the rules in those states.

State officials across the country--who have been pursuing probes looking into wrongdoing within the foreclosure process-- feared that those jurisdictions with lax standards could have become hotbeds for foreclosure documentation fraud. Lenders and mortgage companies could have used those states as central clearing houses to produce bogus foreclosure paperwork, and then export those documents to other states with more stringent regulations--an expedient bypass around the strictures.

Obama ultimately declined to sign the law, and the House of Representatives failed to override the veto.

Officials said Warren was among the first federal officials to recognize the significance of the notary bill, titled the Interstate Recognition of Notarizations Act of 2010. She met with authorities from several states and then relayed their concerns to influential administration officials.

During the morning of Oct. 6, Warren's team at the Treasury Department wrote the first memos on the bill, raising questions about the possible consequences if it became law, these people said.

That evening, Warren met for 30 minutes with Peter Rouse, Obama's interim chief of staff, her calendar shows. She later spent an hour on the phone with Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan, who once sued Countrywide Financial and exacted an $8.4 billion multi-state settlement.

The next day, Warren participated in an afternoon meeting on the bill, her calendar shows. During that meeting one of Obama's top spokesmen, Dan Pfeiffer, posted an entry on the White House Blog explaining why Obama would not sign the bill.

On Oct. 8, Obama declined to sign the bill into law, citing the need for "further deliberations about the possible unintended impact" of the bill on "consumer protections, including those for mortgages."

Documents released Wednesday show that Warren met or spoke with at least eight state officials leading a 50-state investigation into possibly-fraudulent mortgage documentation practices.

The state attorneys general, secretaries of state and bank supervisors are probing the way in which major mortgage companies have pushed through thousands of foreclosure cases at a time, as if on a factory assembly line, by short-cutting the required documentation process.

Recent weeks have featured a host of unsavory disclosures about how mortgage companies employed so-called robo-signers-- people whose sole job was to sign foreclosure documents without reading them or confirming basic facts, as required by law. The volume of cases and shoddy handling of paperwork is reflective of the messy and indiscriminate lending practices that characterized the nation's housing boom, as Wall Street eagerly handed mortgages to seemingly anyone willing to sign off.

The states' investigation and a parallel multi-agency federal probe are now roiling the mortgage industry, heightening the possibility that major lenders could face potentially huge fresh losses as bad loans continue to emerge. With legal and regulatory uncertainty now enshrouding the industry and public outrage trained on foreclosures, the banks could have trouble limiting those losses by selling off the homes pledged against bad mortgages.

The nation's biggest lender, Bank of America, has seen its share price drop 18 percent through yesterday's market close since the day before the states announced their joint inquiry.

Warren serves as an assistant to Obama and a special adviser to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner as she leads the effort to create the new Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection, a watchdog designed to protect borrowers from abusive lenders. Her calendar from Sept. 20 to Nov. 2 was released per a Freedom of Information Act request.

The longtime Harvard Law School professor and consumer advocate met or spoke with the state attorneys general from Iowa, Illinois, Texas, North Carolina, Massachusetts and Ohio, her calendar shows. She also met with Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, and spoke with New York's top banking regulator, Richard H. Neiman. They are among the leaders of the combined state probe.

Warren has long chided federal regulators for their lax oversight of the financial industry and slipshod protection of consumers. She's championed state regulators, however, who have often been ahead of their federal counterparts when it comes to consumer finance issues.

Warren's calendar also shows numerous meetings with bankers and their representatives. Financial executives and lobbyists have noted that Warren was reaching out to them more than they initially expected. The calendar confirms her outreach.

On Sept. 20, the same day she took a photo for her Treasury Department badge, Warren spent an hour and a half meeting with bankers from Oklahoma, her calendar shows. She spent an hour having lunch with Geithner that day as well.

Since then she's met with the chief executives of the nation's largest banks, including Vikram Pandit of Citigroup; Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase; John Stumpf of Wells Fargo; James Gorman of Morgan Stanley; Richard Davis of U.S. Bancorp; W. Edmund Clark of TD Bank Financial Group; David Nelms of Discover Financial Services; Niall Booker of HSBC North America Holdings; and Kenneth Chenault of American Express.

The calendar entry for Chenault's one-hour meeting on Oct. 13 notes that "He's flying here for us."

Warren also met with officials from Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank, Germany's biggest lender and one of the world's biggest financial institutions.

Notably absent from Warren's calendar are officials from Bank of America, the biggest bank in the U.S. by assets and branches, including its chief executive, Brian Moynihan.

Warren's calendar includes meetings with investors and trade groups, like the Consumer Bankers Association, the Independent Community Bankers of America, the Financial Services Roundtable and the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association.

Though Warren is known for her vigorous advocacy on behalf of consumers, she's spent more time with bankers and their lobbyists than with consumer groups and advocates during her roughly two months on the job.

Warren's 2007 journal article calling for the creation of a dedicated consumer agency inspired policymakers to enact it into law. Big banks opposed it.

Warren has also met with nearly two dozen members of Congress from both sides of the aisle, including the likely incoming chair of the House Financial Services Committee, Rep. Spencer Bachus, and the top Republican on the Senate Banking Committee, Richard Shelby. The Alabama Republicans have been particularly critical of Warren and her new agency.

Warren's calendar features numerous White House meetings, like a two-hour dinner on Sept. 23 with top Obama adviser David Axelrod and breakfasts and lunches with another top Obama counselor, Valerie Jarrett. She's also met with the heads of all the major federal financial regulatory agencies, including Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke.

Among Warren's early initiatives are efforts to make credit card disclosure forms shorter and easier to read, and simplifying mortgage documents. Her first major speech since joining the administration was a Sept. 29 address to the Financial Services Roundtable, a Washington trade group representing firms like JPMorgan Chase, BlackRock and State Farm. She asked the assembled executives to work with her to create a new system of consumer regulation focused on core principles rather than a mountain of specific rules.

The real problem: Income inequality


rajan.joe.pugliese.top.jpg
University of Chicago economist Raghuram Rajan By David Futrelle, contributing writer


(MONEY Magazine) -- Raghuram Rajan wasn't the only economist who warned of the financial crisis before it struck. He was, however, the sole one brave enough to make this prediction in front of Alan Greenspan at a 2005 Jackson Hole Conference devoted to celebrating the legacy of the once-seemingly infallible Fed chief.
Nor is Rajan unique in blaming the panic on the decoupling of risk and reward in the financial sector. But he stands out as one of the few economists who cite income inequality as another root cause.

That's hardly the type of theory you'd expect to hear from an economist at the University of Chicago, a bastion of free-market thinking. But he argues that this income gap inspired politicians on both sides of the aisle to push low-income housing loans as a palliative for the poor, which helped to send the housing sector into overdrive.
The author of Fault Lines tells MONEY contributing writer David Futrelle that unless we come to terms with our economy's structural problems, we may be setting ourselves up for another fall.
The recession is officially over, but it sure doesn't feel like it. Why not?
We haven't had this kind of recession -- created by a financial meltdown and high leverage -- since the Depression. These take longer to recover from.
It used to take eight months from the trough of a recession until jobs came back. In 2001, it took 38 months. It will probably take five to six years this time around.
Why so long?
Much of the growth we created to come out of the last recession was unsustainable. We pumped up the real estate sector, and that created a lot of jobs.
But many of those people, whether they were construction workers or real estate brokers, now have to find jobs elsewhere because that industry is not coming back to the level it was any time soon.
Many blame the financial crisis on housing. But you've suggested the real estate bubble itself was a bungled political attempt to deal with the real root cause: rising income inequality. Can you explain?
In the 1980s we saw a widening of income inequality. Typically the political reaction to that is to redistribute wealth. But in the '80s and '90s there was a sense that we'd had too much redistribution, too much welfare. So you had to find something else, and housing fit the bill for both political parties.
The Democrats thought it was wonderful to support home ownership for the poor, their natural constituents. The Republicans figured property owners would eventually vote Republican.
Congress, of course, can't make loans. But Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac both enjoy this tremendous government subsidy, and politicians used that as a lever. So you had a massive amount of money flow into housing.
Homebuyers were told there was no risk of loss -- that ever since the Depression we've never had an across-the-board housing price fall. They were also told homes are a great way to build equity, and you can borrow against that equity.
The brilliance of the home-equity loan, which was a substantial feeder of consumption growth, was that people could borrow without guilt because the rise in home values offset that additional borrowing. What people didn't realize was that some of this asset value was illusory.
The easy credit you describe has gone away, but the inequality remains.
Yes. And societies that have extremely high levels of inequality eventually break down. The politics get ugly, and then the economics get ugly.
It used to be that many Americans felt they had a good chance of becoming really wealthy. But the route to getting there is a good education, and too many Americans can't afford that. A significant part of society doesn't believe it can get access to wealth.
What can government do to reduce inequality?
In the long run, redistribution doesn't work. Focusing on improving the quality of the workforce -- through education and skill building -- is probably the only answer.
While unemployment benefits have been extended this year, you've argued that our limited safety net may be exacerbating the political desire for quick fixes.
When you have a very thin safety net, losing your job means you lose health care and your unemployment benefits run out quickly. There are benefits to a thin safety net. Those who lose their jobs have a strong incentive to look for one.
The question is, is it better to focus on strengthening the safety net? If you do, you could actually have less pressure on policymakers to pull rabbits out of the hat by trying to create jobs where there are none.
The tolerance for unemployment in the United States is far lower than in Europe. Spain has 20% unemployment. I think we'd have a revolution in the U.S. if we had 20% unemployment. That puts pressure on Congress to pass big stimulus bills, and on the Fed to keep interest rates low.
The standard Keynesian economic response to stimulate the economy is with government spending and low rates, right?
This is where I depart from economists like [New York Times columnist] Paul Krugman, who has been emphasizing the need to pump up demand, whether it be through monetary policy or through fiscal policy.
My view is that it's not all about demand. In the jargon of economists, we don't just have a cyclical problem, we have a structural problem. There's a fundamental mismatch between the skills of the labor force and the kind of jobs that the economy is creating.
Pumping up demand again may create an illusion of growth, but until we fix the underlying problems we will not have sustainable growth. The Fed can keep rates low for a very long time, and pump up asset prices and create new lending booms, but if the underlying dynamics aren't sustainable, we'll end up creating an eventual bust.
But wouldn't raising short-term rates now potentially send the economy into a deflationary spiral?
I'm not saying raise rates tomorrow to 5%. We are still in an environment of great uncertainty. I'm saying we should exit panic mode as soon as we're confident that we are out of the panic.
And my sense is that as confidence about Europe's financial system -- a potential source of the next panic -- increases, we should start to raise rates, and bring real rates at least to zero. They're still negative after you factor in inflation, and that's worrisome.
What's the harm in keeping rates low?
Japan has had extremely low rates for almost 10 years, with little effect in revitalizing its economy.
People here are saying there are no bubbles around, so why worry? My point is we don't recognize bubbles until it's too late.
By the time you're staring inflation in the face, it's too late. So we can't look at what's going on and say, "We have plenty of room, let's keep things going the way they are."
We cannot keep rates low until the jobs come back. And we can't keep spending indefinitely. If the U.S. government's financial situation were to be questioned by the markets, it would be a calamity beyond any we've seen.
When you argue for raising rates, you sound like a conservative. But when you talk about inequality you sound like a liberal. Which is it?
I would call myself pragmatic. I believe that in general markets work. Growing up in India, I saw what can happen when markets are weighed down by too much government intervention driven by vested interests. But markets don't work independently of regulatory support. We need to find a balance that works.
For now, foreigners don't seem to mind our structural problems since they keep bailing us out with investments.
The immediate effect of this crisis has been to push more money into the U.S., because Japan and Europe look even worse. However, as industrial countries stabilize, and if emerging markets start to look more creditworthy, people will ask more questions of the U.S.
If a divided Congress can't cut spending, but also can't raise taxes, investors are going to question the size of the U.S. deficits and the unfunded liabilities of Social Security and Medicare. And they're going to say this looks like a government that doesn't have the will to bring its liabilities under control. At that point they will question our debt, the dollar, and our monetary policy.
Could the U.S. lose its economic superpower status?
Nothing can be ruled out. One reason that a country like the United States has remained successful for so long is that its institutions have by and large worked. When problems became big enough, we've been able to come together and forget our differences.
But high levels of income inequality hurt that consensus. We need to worry about inequality not just because it upsets our sense of fairness but because it creates dangerous political dynamics.  To top of page

When Congressmen Attack!


Pistols, canes, bowie knives, and fireplace tongs: a brief history of congressional violence

Upset with Massachusetts Sen. Charles Sumner's abolitionist rhetoric, South Carolina Rep. Preston Brooks approached him on the Senate floor and beat him unconscious with his cane in 1856. Brooks later told the House he "meant no disrespect" by the assault, and mused about his choice of weaponry in a floor speech: "[I] speculated somewhat as to whether I should employ a horsewhip or a cowhide; but knowing that the senator was my superior in strength, it occurred to me that he might wrest it from my hand." Image: Wikimedia Commons.

Incoming Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) sounds like he's spoiling for a fight. He's fired a gun at an Iraqi detainee, told his supporters to "grab your muskets, fix your bayonets," and come this close to hiring as his chief of staff a woman who wants to string up undocumented workers. It's tempting to view West's record as a sign that we're entering a chaotic new era of congressional belligerence. Or maybe not. If anything, West's incendiary style is a throwback to the days of yore, when the world's greatest deliberative body witnessed its share of violence perpetrated by its members upon one another. Here's a collection of some of the most memorably deplorable incidents.

Sen. Franken on Bullying: "We Are Failing Our Kids" [VIDEO]

posted by: Robin Marty 1 day ago



Minnesota Senator Al Franken has made it a mission to see that the bullying of GLBT students stop.  His latest effort?  A push for an anti-bullying bill in the lame duck session.

Via Andy Birkey at The Colu.mn:

Sen. Al Franken urged Congress to pass strong anti-bullying protections for LGBT students at a press conference on Thursday. Franken is the author of the Student Non-Discrimination Act which would add sexual orientation and gender identity to existing school civil rights laws. Franken was joined by Tammy Aaberg whose son Justin took his own life in July.

“Right now not all LGBT kids are getting a fair shake at a public school education and that’s because most LGBT kids are bullied. Sometimes these kids do the unthinkable and tragically take their own lives,” said Franken. “We are failing our kids by sending them to schools where they don’t feel safe."That’s why I’ve sponsored the Student Non-Discrimination Act in the senate. This bill would give LGBT kids the same civil rights protections against harassment and bullying as other kids that applies to other students on the basis of race, sex, religion disability and national origin.”

Franken is pressing Congress to pass the SNDA during the lame duck session. The bill faces stiff opposition from the religious right.


Senator Sanders on The Rachel Maddow Show


Fascinating account of AP/UPI pool reports of 1963 JFK assassination:


Albert Merriman Smith
Newspaper Reporter, United Press International
Georgia State Flag
Born in Savannah, Georgia, on February 10, 1913, he was a life-long newspaper reporter. However, he was probably most famous for the news that he flashed to the UPI wires while a passenger in a car in the John F. Kennedy presidential motorcade in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963 when the President was assassinated. This was the first news of the attack on the President.  He died at his home in Washington, a suicide victim, on April 13, 1970 and was granted burial in Section 32 of Arlington National Cemetery (next to his son) by special permission by the Commanding General of the Military District of Washington.



The following was written by Unipresser Patrick J. Sloyan for the May 1997 issue of the American Journalism Review: The 20th Century's finest performance by one reporter on a breaking news story ended as Merriman Smith of United Press International stood and tucked in his shirttail. He had pulled up his shirt to show me the welts on his back from the flailing fists of Jack Bell of the Associated Press. Oddly enough, the bruises were proof that it was Smith -- not Bell -- who had administered an unforgettable beating.
It was the night of November 22, 1963, in the UPI Washington Bureau. There is a global generation of men and women who froze, gasped, and forever remembered exactly where they were and what they were doing on that day 34 years ago. It was when the first news came that President John F. Kennedy was fatally wounded by gunfire in Dallas, Texas.
I can fix the moment the world became breathless: 12:39pcst. That is nine minutes after a bullet shattered the young president's brain. The time -- 39 minutes after noon, central standard time in Dallas -- comes from a copy of the A-wire of UPI. More than a year later, after hearing from hundreds of witnesses, the presidential commission headed by Chief Justice Earl Warren concluded that Kennedy was shot at precisely 12:30 P.M. Nine minutes later, Walter Cronkite and other anchormen ripped the report clacking out at 60 words per minute from the UPI machine in their offices and relayed it to the world. They were riding an emotional roller coaster set in motion that day by Smitty. Almost everyone called him that except President Dwight Eisenhower who always struggled with Smith's old Georgia family name. "Well, Merriman," Ike would say.
The UPI coverage of the Kennedy assassination was unparalleled in the history of journalism because of one man. Albert Merriman Smith, UPI's White House reporter, dominated the most important spot news story since Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor. These two events became indelible in the American psyche as nothing else in the 20th Century. December 7, 1941 was truly shocking but, in journalistic terms, little more than a government statement to the wire services. Foot speed was most important in reporting such proclamations.
The end of World War II was announced by President Harry S. Truman in his office. There was no live television broadcast. Instead Smith raced to his phone in the White House with the other wire service reporters. He slipped, fell, broke his collarbone, got up and dictated a flash. Medical care came after he was finished.
In UPI protocol, the flash designation preceding a few cryptic words on the wire was reserved for only for what were known as earth shakers.
"Flash -- FDR dead," was a flash Smith handled in 1945 when President Franklin D. Roosevelt died in Warm Springs, Georgia. Earth shakers were tough on everyone involved -- the switchboard operator, the dictationist, the slot editor and the teletype operator, who was called a "puncher."
A mistake by anyone in the chain could break the link with the world and end in journalistic disaster. It was up to the puncher to ring 15 bells to alert editors around that globe that UPI was sending news that would stun everyone. Stories preceded by "Bulletin," got five bells and contained a single paragraph of what was certainly an important story. "Urgents," with a two or three paragraph top of a good story, also got five bells. Like anything, the flash was sometimes overused.
Editors knew that a major news development was coming but, when it actually happened, used the flash. For instance, the demise of an ailing statesman or baseball star was anticipated but the death was flashed.
The assassination of the young, handsome, witty Cold Warrior in Dallas contained the shock of Prince Diana's premature end in Paris. But in terms of importance, Di's death was a global tremor while Kennedy's was off the Richter scale of news.
The day Kennedy was killed required perception, accuracy, speed and judgment that Smith displayed while relishing the fire of competition. Smith did not merely beat Jack Bell, the opposition. That day in Dallas, Merriman Smith burned the Associated Press to the waterline. And delighted doing it.
It was a time that has almost vanished now with UPI just about gone and wire service competition at a low ebb. In those days, a few seconds or a 1 minute beat ahead of the AP was something of a victory. There was no mulling at a typewriter. A breaking story came off the top of the head, rolled off the tongue and through the fingers of dictationists who had the dispatched ripped away by the slot editor after every paragraph.
Twice each day, the Washington Bureau of UPI where I worked on November 22, 1963, posted an accounting of competition. Major dailies were surveyed across the nation and around the world to see whether UPI or AP was preferred by editors. There were two distinct reports for newspapers--morning (AMS) and afternoon (PMS.). For radio and television clients, the radio wire was refreshed constantly for the rip and read set.
New York headquarters that prepared the daily accounting would single out reporters who were "ahead" on a breaking news or a writer who produced an "admired" first paragraph. Defeats were also noted where we were "late" or had an "awkward" writing job. Slow, awkward or inaccurate reporters had a way of vanishing from the payroll after about their third mishap. No easy riders at UPI.
Some attribute Smith's triumph that day in Dallas to luck. But Bob Clark of ABC News saw it as Smith's relentless competition. Clark was in the Kennedy motorcade that day in Dallas, six cars from the president's open limousine. Clark, Smith and Jack Bell of the AP were riding in the wire car, a black sedan owned by AT&T, one of the favors Ma Bell offered the media in those days. The biggest favor was the radio-telephone in the front seat. It might have been the AP's turn that day to sit in front, closest to the phone. The seat was supposed to rotate between UPI and AP each day. But Smith would routinely grab the seat closest to the phone.
"The wires were supposed to take turns but Smitty would intimidate the younger AP reporters," said Clark, who use to be in the front seat rotation while covering the White House for International News Service (INS). "Smitty was always looking for an edge."
Smitty was 50 that day, some gray in his hair and his mustache which tended to divert the eye from his pockmarked cheeks. There was only a hint of drawl left in his gravely voice used to embellish all kinds of tales. His presence was enough to silence a younger AP man who thought it was his turn in the front seat. But Jack Bell was no youngster. He was 59, a contemporary with almost white hair and a manner as sour and cantankerous as Smith was extroverted and sunny.
Smith and Bell despised each other. Smith traced the start of often nasty competition to covering New York Gov. Thomas Dewey's presidential campaign. Smith was sent from his White House beat to cover the GOP candidate in the 1948 race who was favored to oust President Truman. Bell was already in Albany when Smith arrived. Jim Haggerty, Dewey's press secretary, later recounted how Bell warned that Smith was a Truman supporter sent to do a hatchet job on Dewey. "Bell tried to cut me out every way he could," Smith said .
Smith struck back by being the first reporter to use a wire recorder. Suddenly, Smith's reports on Dewey included large block of quotes from his speeches. Bell had only the traditional paraphrase of the candidate's comments along with perhaps a three or four word phrase in quotes. When AP headquarters wanted to know where Smith was getting all the quotes, Bell could only seethe. Smith loved new gadgets, particularly if it involved communications.
The biggest news stories are worthless unless they can be relayed to the A-wire. So there was no discussion of who was supposed to be in the front seat when the Kennedy motorcade left Love Field with an elaborate police escort. Smith just grabbed it and Bell got in back, sitting next to Clark who was representing the networks while riding in the wire car as the broadcast pool reporter. Bell probably did not know enough to protest. Bell was a political writer, not a White House regular. Kennedy's trip to Dallas was a political one, designed to make peace between warring Democratic factions in Texas. Bell was looking for nuance and angles that he skillfully crafted into thoughtful dispatches that could run on the AP wire days later.
Smith, by contrast, was gathering the more mundane for what promised to be a mildly interesting spot story. But when the wire car pulled into Dealey Plaza, Smith was the first to recognize the sounds.
"We heard the first shot and somebody said, 'My god, that must be a police backfire,'" Clark said. Then two more sounds came. It was Smith who concluded they were gunshots. "I was certain it was gunfire," Smith said that night. He had a collection of rifles and a .357 magnum revolver. He would sometimes visit the pistol range used by Secret Service agents to show a newsman could shoot, too.
"Smitty was a gun fancier," Clark said. "We knew he was an expert. He said, 'Those were shots.'" Time suddenly was in slow motion. Clark instantly understood the dilemma facing Smith and Bell. "It was a very difficult moment: All we knew was that those were shots but what the hell do you file?"
They were too far back. Clark estimated the presidential limousine was 80 yards away. Smith saw a flash of pink, probably Jacqueline Kennedy's suit, but nothing more. Two minutes went by before Smith picked up the radio-telephone. The motorcade picked up speed then raced away. Smith told the operator to connect him with the Dallas bureau of UPI.
"He was dictating to his office in Dallas," said Clark. "He was having trouble. Those radio-telephones were often staticky (sic). Smitty was repeating. He was trying to get one sentence off. I can still remember what he said."
Around the world, editors heard five bells and a bulletin precede on the UPI machine:
     UPI A7N DA
          PRECEDE  KENNEDY
      DALLAS,NOV.22(UPI)--THREE SHOTS  WERE FIRED AT PRESIDENT KENNEDY'S
MOTORCADE IN DOWNTOWN DALLAS.
JT1234PCS..
Chicago's UPI Bureau had been filing a murder trial report when Dallas grabbed the A-wire and sent Smith's bulletin. Chicago tried to resume sending but UPI New York interceded with a terse order in wirese:
      'BUOS -UPHOLD-DA IT YRS' . That meant all bureaus stay off the
A-wire. Dallas, it is yours.
In every newsroom, editors looked at the AP A-wire teletype that always sat next to the UPI machine. There was no hint of what was unfolding in Dallas.
The wire car had begin to pick up speed as Kennedy's motorcade headed on to the freeway for the nearest hospital, Parkland. No one in the car knew where they were going but Smith was still on the radio-telephone.
"Bell is beginning to realize that Smith is driving an ax through his skull by getting anything off from the wire car," Clark said. "Jack got pretty upset." He demanded the phone as the motorcade hit 60 miles an hour. Smith bent over in the front seat with the phone. "I told Bell they couldn't hear me clearly," Smith said that night, beaming at his own duplicity.
"They can't hear me," Smith told Bell, according to Clark. "I'm asking them to read it back."
"Give me the goddamn phone," Bell yelled. He leaned over the seat and took a swipe at the phone. Then, Bell began pounding Smith's head and back. Clark recalls only one or two blows. But Smith, doubling his body over the handset, kept the phone from Bell until the car pulled up at the hospital emergency entrance.
When the car halted, Smith said he flung the phone at Bell and jumped out. As Smith headed for the hospital emergency entrance, he said he heard Bell on the radio-telephone saying, "No one knows if there was any gunfire." In the AP Dallas Bureau, staffers remember only a cryptic call -- "This is Jack Bell..." -- before the line went dead.
Clark joined Smith as they hustled to the presidential limousine. Kennedy was stretched out lifeless in the bloody rear seat. Smith saw a dark stain spreading down the right side of his dark gray suit. Jacqueline Kennedy was holding her husband's head in her lap. "Jackie shielded the wound in his head," Clark said. "We were standing two feet away." Texas Gov. John Connally was conscious but moaning. Men were yelling for stretchers. Women were sobbing.
Smith knew Mrs. Kennedy's Secret Service agent, Clint Hill. It was Hill who jumped on the rear deck of the presidential car after the shooting, telling her to sit-down. He clung to the rear deck throughout the ride to Parkland. Now, he was taking off his coat and leaning over the limp president.
"How badly was he hit, Clint," Smith asked.
"He's dead, Smitty," Hill replied.
Smith raced into to the hospital emergency room. He burst in the cashier's cage and grabbed the phone. "How do I get outside?" Smith demanded. "The president has been hurt and this is an emergency call."
"Dial nine," said the shaken cashier. Smith dictated what turned out to be a slightly awkward flash from UPI Dallas. Editors saw an urgent addition to his first bulletin interrupted mid-word:
          FLASH
          FLASH
         KENNEDY SERIOUSLY WOUNDED
PERHAPS SERIOUSLY
PERHAPS FATALLY BY ASSASSINS BULLET
JT1239PCS
That flash was later a source of second-guessing but only by wire service reporters. Why not: Secret Service Agent says Kennedy dead?
"I would have had a trouble composing as responsible a flash as Smitty did if a Secret Service man had told me he was dead," Clark said. "But he was conservative and that's part of being a great wire service reporter, which Smitty was."
But that is picking fly dung out of black pepper. Smith kept nothing back. No sooner has the flash cleared than Smith was rolling with a bulletin first lead on a story that editors could put on the front-page:
  UPI 9N
BULLETIN
   1ST LEAD SHOOTING
 DALLAS, NOV.22(UPI)--PRESIDENT KENNEDY AND GOV. JOHN B. CONNALLY OF
TEXAS WERE  CUTDOWN BY AN ASSASSIN'S BULLETS AS THEY TOURED DOWNTOWN
DALLAS IN AN OPEN AUTOMOBILE TODAY.
ë  MORE JT1241PCS
UPI A10N DA
     LST ADD LST LEAD SHOOTING DALLAS(9N DALLASXXTODAY
    THE PRESIDENT, HIS LIMP BODY CRADLED IN THE ARMS OF HIS WIFE, WAS
RUSHED TO PARKLAND HOPSITAL. THE GOVERNOR ALSO WAS TAKEN TO PARKLAND.
     CLINT HILL, A SECRET SERVICE AGENT ASSIGNED TO MRS. KENNEDY,
SAID, "HE'S DEAD," AS THE PRESIDENT WAS LIFTED FROM THE REAR OF A WHITE
TOURING CAR, THE FAMOUS BUBBLETOP, FROM WASHINGTON. HE WAS RUSHED TO
AN  EMERGENCY ROOM IN THE HOSPITAL.
   OTHER WHITE HOUSE OFFICALS WERE IN DOUBT AS THE CORRIDORS OF THE
HOPSITAL ERUPTED IN PANDEMONIUM.
MORE
At about the same moment -- 12:41 P.M. -- AP moved its first bulletin. But, to a limited audience. The wire was on a split and the Dallas earthshaker had only a regional distribution until it was relayed on the A wire by AP New York. Bob Johnson, the Dallas bureau chief at the time, wrote it based on an eyewitness account of Kennedy getting shot by AP photographer Ike Altjens who snapped an historic series of photographs in Dealey Plaza.
DALLAS,NOV.22(AP)--PRESIDENT KENNEDY WAS SHOT TODAY JUST AS HIS
MOTORCADE LEFT DOWNTOWN DALLAS. MRS. KENNEDY JUMPED UP AND GRABBED 
MR. KENNEDY. SHE CRIED, "OH,NO." THE MOTORCADE SPED ON.
There was nothing of Hill's verdict that Kennedy was dead, Connally's wounding or the hospital scene.
William Manchester, a former Baltimore Sun reporter, was awed by Smith's performance which he recounted in his book, "The Death of a President." Eleven minutes after Kennedy was shot, UPI was giving editors a usable dispatch more than 500 words long. Smith was dominating those early moments with speed and accuracy while Bell and the AP seemed to fall apart. Bell's first effort, based on the grisly emergency room entrance scene along with comments by Kennedy's aide, Kenneth O'Donnell, were ruined by a grief-stricken AP puncher. On the AP wire, the aide's name came as "Kenneth Oí;$9,,3))," and bloodstained was, "blood stainezaac rbmthing." Kennedy's body came out, "he laaaaaaaaaaa."
"The wire service war of seconds had grown to minutes and AP was falling farther and farther behind," Manchester wrote. "That was only the beginning. All afternoon the AP was a source of misleading and inaccurate reports."
One bogus AP dispatch said Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson had been wounded. But UPI had quite a different version of Johnson's activities. Smith was still filing when reinforcements sent by Jack Fallon of the Dallas bureau arrived at Parkland. Smith filed his second flash of the day after the formal announcement by deputy White House Press Secretary Malcom Kilduff:
"President John Fitzgerald Kennedy died at approximately 1 o'clock."
Smith was still filing. "The doctors were getting ready for a very interesting news conference," he said. But Rufus Youngblood came up and alerted him: "Smitty, the president wants to go back to Washington." Youngblood was Johnson's Secret Service agent and it took Smith a beat to realize that the man dead in the emergency room was no longer president.
Jiggs Fauver, of the White House transportation office, told Smith a three-man pool was getting ready to leave--now. Smith told his UPI colleagues he was leaving with Johnson for Washington and alert UPI Washington. Outside, a panicky Kilduff had already left in the wire car, leaving the pool stranded. Smith pleaded with a police officer to take him and two other men in a squad car. With siren shrieking, Smith and reporters representing broadcasters and newsweekly magazine raced to Love Field.
But there was no one from AP. Bell refused the same offer to be in the Air Force One pool and remained dictating in the hospital.
Inside the Boeing 707, it was hot and dim. The shades were drawn and the door closed when Johnson, with the blood-stained Jackie Kennedy next to him, was sworn in as president. Smith counted 27 people crammed into one spot on the plane. The words and the color of the historic moment were captured in a dispatch that Smith pounded out on a White House typewriter aboard Air Force One. Sidney Davis of Westinghouse Broadcasting, a pool reporter for radio and television, was getting off. Smith handed Davis the typewritten dispatch along with the Dallas bureau phone number.
"Sid, would you please dictate this to my office," Smith asked. Davis, who had to stay with the story in Dallas, agreed and waved as the gangway was pulled away from Air Force One. As the door closed, Smith could see a leg-churning AP reporter racing for the plane. Too late. The AP had only a brief fill from Davis who was in a rush.
"Now, let's get airborne," Johnson ordered. Four engines screamed as the plane pulled away. Smith smiled to himself. UPI had the swearing in and events on the somber ride home until 7 p.m. EDT. Then AP used the pool report by the news magazine reporter, Charles Roberts of Newsweek.
At dinner in the National Press Club, Smith recounted the day and the grim flight back to Washington. Johnson kept coming to Smith to tell him the presidential schedule after they landed at Andrews Air Force Base.
"He treated me like I was a member of his staff," Smith said, finishing his coffee. I sat spellbound with the UPI Overnight editor, Bill Umstead. Smith's next move was being plotted by Umstead.
It was near midnight and Smith was not finished. Now came the overnight, the second-day version of events that was an eye-witness account. It began:
           BY MERRIMAN SMITH
      UPI WHITE HOUSE REPORTER
    WASHINGTON,NOV.23(UPI)--IT WAS A BALMY, SUNNY NOON AS WE MOTORED
THROUGH DOWNTOWN DALLAS BEHIND PRESIDENT KENNEDY.
Umstead read the 1,000 word dispatch and handed it to his deputy, Frank Jackman. It was spotless. No typing errors. Umstead had only to mark the start of paragraphs. "You've got to know when to leave it alone," Umstead said.
Months later, Smith came into the bureau and confided some news -- from the editor of the Cleveland Press. "Louis Seltzer just called me," Smith beamed. "I won the PP." A week later, the formal Pulitzer Prize award cited Smith's overnight dispatch.
Smith frequently showed up in the Bureau at night. Sometimes it was with a celebrity in tow. I still remember meeting Abe Burrows who did the lyrics for, "Guys and Dolls." Even before Dallas, Smith was something of a celebrity. His book, "Thank you, Mr. President," was a bestseller. Now, however, he seemed to be on Jack Parr's. "Tonight" show more often along with some spots on daytime television.
One night, Smith came by after a farewell party for the press and an aging former President Truman.
"Jack Bell got really drunk," Smith said. "When Harry said this will be our last meeting, Bell started sobbing and yelling, 'No, no, Harry.'"
Saying Jack Bell was drunk was really the pot calling the kettle black. Today, Smith would be called an alcoholic but then he just drank too much as did many in Washington. On any given day, the president, most of the Senate and too many people at UPI drank too much. The stress, strain and boredom of covering the White House produced heavy drinkers and bad marriages. Smith would end up weaving, slurring, disappearing. Years before Dallas, drinking too much got him temporarily yanked from the White House that he began covering in 1941.
When he was sober, as he was the day in Dallas, it was often with help -- from the White House physician's pill bottles.
He vanished on me one day when I was the slot editor. Johnson was on the verge of picking Sen. Hubert Humphrey as his Vice Presidential candidate in 1964. When I finally tracked him down by phone, Smith said he was sleeping in the Lincoln bedroom and hung up. Later than night, he was thrown off Air Force One for yelling at the president. "King Corn," Smith called Johnson.
On another day, Smith walked in the president's footsteps as Johnson toured a pocket of poverty in an Applachian hollow to promote his Great Society program. Johnson knelt beside a grimy youngster plainly overwhelmed by the White House entourage. I was just like you, Johnson told the lad. Go to school, work hard and someday you can be just like me, Johnson said. As the president rose amid whirring cameras, Smith sidled up to the little hillbilly and said: "Bullshit, kid, you'll always be poor."
Still, Johnson doted on Smith, even gave him the nation's highest civilian award in 1967, the Medal of Freedom. Smith was the first and, judging from current mutual disdain, probably the last reporter to get such an award from a president. Perhaps Johnson was influenced by Vietnam. Smith's son, Merriman Jr., an Army helicopter pilot, was killed that year when his chopper crashed near Saigon.
Smith's first marriage, it lasted 29 years, had ended the year before. The new wife was a slim blonde, an architect from California. They lived in an Arlington, Va., house that looked as if it has been wheeled in from Malibu. He still went hunting with me now and then. It was the spring of 1970 and we sat peering for woodchucks in Virginia pastures. He talked about being pursued by the Internal Revenue Service. "They want $25,000," he said. He might as well said $20 million.
We were supposed to go hunting the week he killed himself. He used his .357 Magnum while sitting in the bathtub. He was 57.
Jack Bell outlived Smith by five years. There was no mention of Dallas in his 1975 AP obituary. But he could not outlive what happened in Dallas. "I should have yanked the goddamn phone out of its socket," he would tell colleagues.
When Bell retired from the AP in 1969, he took a job writing a political column with Gannet Newspapers. During one campaign, Bell wound up going to dinner in Philadelphia with Gene Gibbons of the UPI Washington Bureau.
It was the 1972 presidential primary season. Malcom Kilduff, the Kennedy spokesman that day in Dallas, was working for one of the contenders in the Pennsylvania primary. Gibbons' brother, Charlie, a local newsman, was along for the dinner with Bell. The mention of Kilduff's name got Charlie talking about Dallas.
"What a story," said Charlie. "I was in our office hanging over the wire machines. There was the first bulletin on the UPI machine. Nothing on the AP. Then there is a flash on UPI. Nothing on the AP. Then there is another bulletin on UPI. Still nothing from the AP."
Gene kept kicking his brother beneath the table but it did no good. "I couldn't shut him up," said Gibbons, now senior correspondent for the Reuter Washington Bureau.
Still, like Charlie, few remember Jack Bell being there Nov. 22, l963 in Dallas.
Merriman Smith is the one you remember.



SMITH, MERRIMAN
NONE
DATE OF BIRTH: 02/10/1913
DATE OF DEATH: 04/13/1970
BURIED AT: SECTION 32  SITE 823
ARLINGTON NATIONAL CEMETERY

Video: Rep. John Boehner on MTP January 5, 1997


TurBaconEpic Thanksgiving - Epic Meal Time



A bird in a bird in a bird in a bird in a bird in a pig.

Thanksgiving Trivia: ULTIMATE Quiz For Turkey Day 2010

The Huffington Post   |  Craig Kanalley First Posted: 11-23-10 03:37 PM   |   Updated: 11-23-10 03:37 PM



With Thanksgiving 2010 just around the corner, it's a great time to test your general knowledge about all things Turkey Day with our Thanksgiving trivia quiz!
Put your mind to the test with these 10 questions, some more mind-boggling than others. Play against your friends and see how you stack up against the rest of the HuffPost community!
But no cheating! Wikipedia and Google are normally your friends, but in this case, they'll take all the fun out of this special Thanksgiving quiz.

                    

Thanksgiving is always celebrated on the last Thursday of November.

True
False

Thanksgiving is only celebrated in the United States.
True
False

In what year was the first Thanksgiving Macy's Day Parade held?
1885
1899
1924
1945
What year did Congress officially make Thanksgiving a national holiday?
1917
1941
1956
1970

Approximately how many Americans travel 50 miles or more for Thanksgiving each year?
150 million
100 million
40 million
20 million

What was the first year the National Football League's Detroit Lions played on Thanksgiving?
1921
1934
1947
1959
Which American statesman lobbied to make the turkey the national symbol of the United States?
Ben Franklin
Thomas Jefferson
Alexander Hamilton
John Adams
Which state produces the most turkeys?

North Carolina
Ohio
Indiana
Minnesota
What's the average cost per pound of a frozen turkey?
50 cents
$1
$2
$5
We all know the country "Turkey" but which of these states does NOT have a place called Turkey?
Texas
Pennsylvania
Louisiana
North Carolina





Answers


Thanksgiving is always celebrated on the last Thursday of November.  Every year. T

Thanksgiving is only celebrated in the United States. Canada celebrates it too. F

In what year was the first Thanksgiving Macy's Day Parade held? 1924

What year did Congress officially make Thanksgiving a national holiday? 1941

Approximately how many Americans travel 50 miles or more for Thanksgiving each year?  
40 million.

What was the first year the National Football League's Detroit Lions played on Thanksgiving?  
1934.

Which American statesman lobbied to make the turkey the national symbol of the United States?  
Ben Franklin

Which state produces the most turkeys? Minnesota.

What's the average cost per pound of a frozen turkey? $1.00

We all know the country "Turkey" but which of these states does NOT have a place called Turkey?  
Pennsylvania.

Video: Do big businesses want compromise?