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LOUISVILLE /JEFFERSON COUNTY
DEMOCRATIC PARTY NEWSLETTER
Week of December 9, 2007
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CLICK HERE FOR CURRENT LIST OF EVENTS
Updated on a regular basis
Bulletin Board:
- The Louisville/Jefferson County Democratic Executive Committee meets the 4th Wednesday of every month at 5:00 pm at Democratic Headquarters,
- 640 Barret Avenue .
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This newsletter will carry, in this space, any Democratic candidates' notice of events or communications (250 words or less) to our readers that the candidate provides to the editor at rcrider@louisvilledem.com
VOTE
RS,
YOUR NEXT ASSIGNMENT
DITCH MITCH
VOTE FOR AMERICA WITH YOUR CONSUMER DOLLARS, by Jim Hightower
Hey, it’s the holiday season – time to go out there and do your part for our American economy by buying tons of cheap stuff made in China!
Wait – that doesn’t make sense, does it? First, you’ll notice that most of those “cheap” goods from China aren’t really cheap by the time they’re on the shelves of Wal-Mart, Nieman Marcus, and other U.S. retailers. Yes, they’re produced by cheap labor, but this savings is pocketed by the brand-name marketers who get their stuff made there.
Isn't there a better way to spend our consumer dollars? Yes. Buy Made-in-the-USA products this holiday season… and throughout the year! Do such products exist? Yes, again – though you wont find many at your local MegaMart. Your best bet is to try local stores and internet shops, where you can find a cornucopia of U.S.-made goods.
For example, a web site called toysmadeinamerica.com lists dozens of internet locations for all sorts of gifts you can buy for the tykes on your list – dolls, doll houses, wooden trains, space-age action toys, playscapes, puppets, puzzles, banjos, books, board games, tutus, marbles, pogo sticks, skateboards, wiffle balls, play kitchens, and so much more, made right here by Americans. Also check out usmadetoys.com, shopforamerica.com and madeinusa.org to point you in the right direction.
We are not powerless consumers. We’re sovereign citizens who can send a potent message to corporate profiteers by voting with our dollars. So… do it!
After All These Years, Press Still Wrong on NAFTA, by James Parks
Going into the 2008 primaries, it’s clear America’s voters, concerned about their jobs and the impact of globalization, are rethinking the nation’s recent approach in shaping trade agreements that benefit corporations at the expense of working families. And that’s making a lot of policy wonks and their corporate mouthpieces noticeably nervous.
Just today, The Washington Post let loose in a vitriolic editorial, attacking Democratic candidates like Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and Barack Obama for denouncing the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). See, according to the Post, NAFTA has been a big boon for Mexico’s economy.
Not so, says Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. From the very first, the Post gets it wrong, asserting incorrectly that Mexico’s gross domestic product (GDP) quadrupled since 1987, when in fact, it grew by just over 67 percent in that period, Baker writes in Beat the Press. Seems the Post editorial writers didn’t adjust for inflation.
As Baker points out:
If we don’t adjust for inflation, then we can conclude that Mexico’s GDP quadrupled over the last 20 years. Of course, no reasonable person would ever assess growth without first adjusting for inflation, since it has no meaning. If we don’t adjust for inflation, Zimbabwe’s economy, wracked by hyperinflation of several thousand percent annually, is the fastest growing economy on the planet.
On the most basic measure of economic performance, per capita GDP, Mexico’s economy has been lackluster since 1994, growing just 1.5 percent a year, a slower pace than the growth rate in the United States under the Bush administration.
Check out CEPR’s analysis of reports that Mexico’s economy has gained since NAFTA. What the Post and other corporate media should acknowledge is that NAFTA has not been good for anybody but the corporate elite in any of the three countries that signed the agreement. According to a study by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), the trade pact has failed workers in Mexico, Canada and the United States.
- In each nation, while workers’ productivity grew, their wages remained stagnant or dropped and the wealth of those at the top increased significantly.
- More than 1 million jobs that would have been created were lost in the United States.
- In Mexico, many of the new jobs that were created were low-wage with no benefits and no future.
- In Canada, the United States’s largest trading partner, wages stagnated and inequality increased.
Baker hits the nail on the head when he says:
NAFTA was about putting non-college educated workers in direct competition with their low-paid counterparts in Mexico, while maintaining the protection for the most highly paid professions (investment bankers, doctors, lawyers, editorial page writers). This redistributes income upward. The effect of NAFTA itself was limited, since it was a small part of a much larger trade agenda, but its opponents are not foolish to identify it as a cause of pain.
Democratic National Committee Backs Employee Free Choice, by Mike Hall
The long list of supporters of the Employee Free Choice Act got a significant new addition last week when the Democratic National Committee gave unanimous approval to a resolution calling the workers’ rights legislation “a top priority” for any new Democratic administration and Congress in 2009.
The presidential candidates who attended the Virginia meeting spoke out in support of the legislation that was passed by the House this spring, but was blocked by Senate Republicans. New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, Sens. Joe Biden (Del.) and Barack Obama (Ill.), former Sen. John Edwards (N.C.) and Rep. Dennis Kucinch (Ohio) voiced their support for the measure to protect workers’ freedom to form unions and bargain collectively.
Sen. Hillary Clinton (N.Y.) was forced to cancel her appearance at the meeting because of the hostage crisis—which was peacefully resolved—at her New Hampshire headquarters. Sen. Chris Dodd (Conn.) was on the campaign trail in Iowa. Both Dodd and Clinton support the Employee Free Choice Act. Former Sen. Mike Gravel (D-Alaska) has not take a postion on the measure.
The DNC resolution addresses the routine use of illegal tactics by employers to thwart workers’ efforts to join unions and the insignificant penalties for violations of workers’ rights. It also points to the Bush administration’s anti-worker, anti-union National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) as among the major obstacles for the 60 million U.S. workers who say they would join a union if given the opportunity.
The DNC resolution says the work by the bills’ chief sponsors, Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.) and Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), to build support for the Employee Free choice Act is an important prelude to final passage in 2008, or at the very latest during the first 100 days of the 111th Congress. The resolution says:
If the Employee Free Choice Act is not passed by Congress in 2008, the DNC urges the new Democratic president and Democratic leadership in Congress to make passage of the Employee Free Choice Act a top priority in 2009.
The resolution also calls on Democratic officeholders and candidates at all levels to support local organizing and collective bargaining campaigns. The DNC did just that last week when it moved its meeting to a unionized hotel in Virginia from its original location at a Maryland hotel, where the new owners are refusing to negotiate with the workers’ union.
The DNC joins a long list of organizations and national, state and local lawmakers and legislative bodies that have passed resolutions or signed letters supporting the Employee Free Choice Act.
In 2005, the DNC approved a resolution backing the Employee Free Choice Act that was before the 109th Congress.
When the Rich Are Pinched, Only Then Is Our Economic Crisis Real, by Tula Connell
Today’s Wall Street Journal provides more vindication for progressive economists who have been warning us over these past months about the faltering state of our nation’s economy. Seems a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll finds voters more worried about the economy and health care than terrorism.
Fifty-two percent of Americans say the economy and health care are most important to them in choosing a president, compared with 34% who cite terrorism and social and moral issues, according to the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll. That is the reverse of the percentages recorded just before the 2004 election. The poll also shows that voters see health care eclipsing the Iraq war for the first time as the issue most urgently requiring a new approach.
The Journal precedes this new polling data with a profile of a Republican lawyer so worried about the economy, he’s voting Democratic in 2008.
Bolstering the poll is a Wall Street Journal investigation published yesterday that finds far more home owners affected by the nation’s subprime debacle are in the middle- or upper-income brackets.
The surprisingly high number of subprime loans among more credit-worthy borrowers shows how far such mortgages have spread into the economy—including middle-class and wealthy communities where they once were scarce.
Suddenly, it’s not just the fault of foolish low-income home owners for taking out loans they ultimately can’t afford. If the upper income are involved, it must be more than home owner negligence.
The analysis also raises pointed questions about the practices of major mortgage lenders. Many borrowers whose credit scores might have qualified them for more conventional loans say they were pushed into risky subprime loans. They say lenders or brokers aggressively marketed the loans, offering easier and faster approvals—and playing down or hiding the onerous price paid over the long haul in higher interest rates or stricter repayment terms
Funny. In much of the media coverage over the past few months describing the deleterious effects of the subprime crisis on lower-income Americans, many of those interviewed said the same thing: Lenders and brokers aggressively, and sometimes duplicitously, marketed them loans. They could do so unhindered by regulatory laws or federal oversight. But rather than supporting their statements, the media often followed up with moralistic tsk-tsking about how low-income people taking a risk should have known better. Not so now.
As Princeton economist Paul Krugman notes, mainstream policymakers ignored the warning signs along the way to the subprime chaos. But at least now we can all rest assured. With the Bush administration-driven economic morass seeping into the handsomely groomed homes of the nation’s well-to-do, policymakers and the media will start to take seriously our economic woes.
Comments to the Editor:
None this issue
DAILY GRILL
"[T]he administration
was opposed to voting on it [whether to go to war in Iraq] in the fall of
2002." - Karl Rove,
11/21/07
VERSUS
MSNBC'S JOE SCARBOROUGH: We have to start with something that we all are
talking about a couple of days ago where Karl Rove went on Charlie Rose and
he blamed the Democrats for pushing him and the president into war. Is that
how it worked?
CARD: No, that's not the way it worked. -- Then-White House chief of staff
Andrew Card,
11/29/07
*****************
"I told you the administration was opposed to voting on it in the
fall of 2002." -- Karl Rove,
11/22/07, on the pre-Iraq war vote
VERSUS
"It was
definitely the Bush administration that set it in motion and determined the
timing, not the Congress." -- Former White House spokeperson Ari Fleischer,
12/1/07
*****************
"[Y]eah, I believe they [Iranians] want to have the capacity, the
knowledge, in order to make a nuclear weapon." -- Bush,
10/17/07
VERSUS
"[W]hen was the president notified that there was new information available?
... As I say, it was, in my recollection, is in the last few months." --
National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley,
12/4/07, on when President Bush was notified of the intelligence
community's
assessment of Iran's halted nuclear program
*******************
"The classified version of this National Intelligence Estimate was
briefed to the President last Wednesday, November 28, and has been delivered
to relevant congressional committees this morning." -- National Security
Adviser Stephen Hadley,
12/3/07
VERSUS
"I'm told that [Israeli Prime Minister Ehud] Olmert had a private discussion
with Bush about it during Annapolis -- before Annapolis [on
Nov. 26]. Bush briefed him about it." -- The New Yorker's Seymour Hersh,
12/4/07
Quotes of the Day
"Putting a station like the old WHAS 840 in the hands of the Clear Channel barbarians is like putting the U.S. Constitution in the hands of Dick Cheney. They don’t get it. They don’t like it. They don’t care what they break." Billy Reed Says Read More
********
"Let's not just talk about putting Ronald Reagan on Rushmore, let's
show it," says former ambassador Fred J. Eckert, a staunchly
conservative former Republican congressman from New York. Mr. Eckert served
two tours of duty as a U.S. ambassador under Mr. Reagan, and National
Journal once ranked him as the member of Congress most supportive of the
Gipper's agenda.
An award-winning photographer, Mr. Eckert has actually taken one of his images of Mount Rushmore and worked with acclaimed aviation artist Ted Williams, who has incorporated Mr. Reagan into the granite mountain next to Lincoln.
********
"Brett Hall is a liar," Bunning said in a conference call with Kentucky political reporters.
Recent Senate Votes
Recent House Votes
Editor's Note: The House is in recess until Tuesday, December 4.
HUMOR
"President
Bush told leaders of 40 nations in Annapolis, Maryland that achieving peace
in the Middle East is the central goal of his final year as president. He
then left the peace conference to return to the White House and continue
planning war with Iran." --Bob
Hirschfeld, Maryland
"During the Republican debate on Wednesday night Mitt Romney and John McCain
sparred over what constituted torture. You know what torture is? It's
watching a bunch of Republicans debate
for two hours." --Gary Bachman, Maryland
"Oprah Winfrey will be campaigning for Barack Obama because she says she is
impressed with his candidacy. In response Hillary Clinton noted Oprah was
also once impressed with the authenticity of author James Fry." --Bob
Hirschfeld, Maryland
"The Republican candidates sparred bitterly over abortion during last
night's debate as they each claimed to be the most 'pro-life.' Most of the
candidates did so by promising to try to overturn Roe v. Wade, but Rudy
Giuliani improvised by impregnating three women in the audience." --Jake
Novak, New York
"Because of the writers strike, CBS has cancelled the televised Democratic
presidential debate scheduled for December 10th. As a result, Americans have
never been more pro-union than they are right now." --Jake Novak, New York
"Al Gore met with President Bush at the White House for a discussion on
global warming. The White House press secretary called the meeting 'cordial'
and noted that Bush even presented Gore with a holiday gift—a snow globe
filled with chads." --Bob Hirschfeld, Maryland
"Doctors administered an electrical shock to Vice President Dick Cheney's
heart and restored it to a normal rhythm during a 2 1/2 hour hospital visit
Monday. It required 1/2 hour to normalize his heartbeat. The other two hours
were spent trying to locate his heart." --Gary Bachman, Maryland
"It was announced that Dick Cheney would undergo a heart procedure
today…talk about microscopic surgery! Of course you know what that
means…America is only a heartbeat away from George W. Bush
actually running the country."
--Ken Dull, Illinois
IRAQ -- CARD REJECTS ROVE'S CLAIM THAT CONGRESS PUSHED BUSH TO WAR: 'HIS
MOUTH GETS AHEAD OF HIS BRAIN': Former White House adviser Karl Rove
recently asserted that "[t]he
administration was opposed" to voting for a war resolution in the fall
of 2002. "It seemed to make things move too fast," he argued. As
ThinkProgress documented, key leaders in both the House and the Senate
-- including then-Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD) -- were asking Bush in
2002 to delay the war vote. But as Daschle recalled, when he asked Bush to
delay the vote, Bush "looked at Cheney and he looked at me, and there was a
half-smile on his face. And he said: 'We
just have to do this now.'" This morning, the White House chief of staff
at the time, Andrew Card, appeared on MSNBC and completely discredited
Rove's argument. "Karl Rove went on Charlie Rose and he blamed the Democrats
for pushing him and the president into war. Is that how it worked?" asked
host Joe Scarborough. "No,
that's not the way it worked," replied Card. "Sometimes his mouth gets
ahead of his brain."
ROVE'S DISINGENUOUS ARGUMENTS: On Fox News Sunday yesterday, Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) confronted Rove on his revisionist history, challenging him to "retract" his "outrageous comments." But Rove refused while changing his story in the process. On The Charlie Rose Show, Rove had said definitively that "the administration was opposed to voting on it in the fall of 2002." But after being confronted about this statement, Rove backtracked, claiming that he was just saying that it's "simply not true" that Bush "was the only person pushing the Congress to vote on the war resolution before the November election." Rove then cherry-picked old Daschle quotes that he claimed supported his point. In particular, Rove pointed to a Sept. 16, 2002 quote from Daschle, in which he said, "I think there will be a vote well before the election, and I think it's important that we work together to achieve it." Rove doesn't mention that at the time Daschle made his comment, he had already tried to stop Bush from pushing for an early vote, but had been rebuffed by the President.
ETHICS -- RICE 'PLANTED' QUESTION WITH 'FRIENDLY JOURNAIST' TO 'HELP ERASE' PRE-WAR LEGACY: In 2003, then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice helped push America into war with Iraq. She disregarded at least two CIA memos and a personal phone call from CIA Director George Tenet stating that the evidence behind Iraq's uranium acquisition was weak. She infamously said, "[W]e don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud." In an interview with C-SPAN's Washington Journal on Friday, Washington Post reporter Glenn Kessler, author of Confidante: Condoleezza Rice and the Creation of the Bush Legacy, revealed that after President Bush promoted her to Secretary of State, Rice mounted a "public relations" campaign to distance herself from the pre-war fiasco. A Rice aide "planted" a question with a "friendly journalist" asking whether Rice "would be interested in running for president -- to give her the aura of someone who might have presidential aspirations, make her seem more powerful than she was." In October, FEMA also clumsily staged a "fake" press conference where agency employees posed as journalists.
ADMINISTRATION --
WOLFOWITZ RETURNS TO BUSH ADMINISTRATION AS WMD ADVISER:
Newswee
ETHICS -- EMBATTLED LARRY CRAIG ESCAPES TO BALI TO STALL GLOBAL WARMING
TREATY: Currently the subject of an
ongoing ethics investigation, facing continued
allegations of being gay, and
stripped of his leadership positions on the
IRAQ -- DASCHLE REBUTS ROVE, SAYS HE'S A 'JOKE' WHO IS 'TRYING TO SELL
SOME BOOKS': On the
Bill Press Show yesterday, former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle
(D-SD) dismissed Karl Rove's
false claim th
WHAT DID BUSH KNOW?: The new NIE was reportedly completed a year ago but blocked by the White House. When the NIE was released on Monday, National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley said Bush was briefed on its findings "in the last few months." But despite knowing otherwise, the White House falsely warned that Iran was trying to "build a nuclear weapon" that could lead to "World War III." Bush maintained that he was not told to avoid this rhetoric, but this contradicts Hadley, who said Bush "was basically told: stand down" by the intelligence community. White House officials are obfuscating on what they knew and when they knew it because the answer has the potential to further damage the credibility of what they have asserted about Iran in the past few months. Following these revelations, VoteVets called for an congressional investigation into the Bush administration for warning of a false Iran threat despite knowing the key findings of the NIE.
ETHICS -- STATE DEPARTMENT AWARDED BONUSES TO STAFF OVERSEEING BLACKWATER: Internal State Department cables obtained by TPMmuckraker show that the Department "has slated two Diplomatic Security officials who oversee private-security contractors guarding U.S. diplomats in Iraq and Afghanistan for salary bonuses." The bonuses, which range from $10,000 to $15,000, recognize the "outstanding performance" of two key deputies, Kevin Barry and Justine Sincavage, who "directly oversaw" Blackwater USA security operations. In October, just a month after the Sept. 16 shootings that left at least 17 Iraqis dead, the State Department quietly promoted Barry and Sincavage; earlier that same week, their boss, Ambassador Richard Griffin, stepped down over the Blackwater shooting controversy. House Oversight Committee chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) said that it was hard not to come to the conclusion "that the State Department is acting as Blackwater's enabler." A new agreement signed yesterday by Gen. David Petraeus and Amb. Ryan Crocker outlines contractor operations in Iraq, including when armed guards may use force in self-defense, but it does not address "the legal framework to prosecute any State Department contractors who violate the law."
NEED COMPUTER ASSISTANCE??
Democrat Activist Mike Bailey is now providing “Professional Computer Support.” He can be contacted at 502-558-4026, or mikebailey2000@usa.net.
Think Fast
Ann Coulter suggests she should be the new White House press secretary. "She told a crowd gathered at the National Press Club for the National Journalism Center's 30th anniversary that she deserves" to be White House press secretary for the last six months of Bush's presidency. "I'm sure she would find it to be a fascinating experience," said White House Press Secretary Dana Perino.
House Democratic leaders say they are "hopeful" that the full House will consider a motion of contempt against former White House counsel Harriet Miers and White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten before the end of the year.
$1 million: Amount the national debt expands per minute, totaling approximately $1.4 billion a day. The debt is up from $5.7 trillion when President Bush took office in January 2001 and it will top $10 trillion sometime right before or right after he leaves in January 2009."
"The Food and Drug Administration is so underfunded and understaffed that it's putting U.S. consumers at risk in terms of food and drug safety, an advisory panel to the FDA says in a report to be discussed Monday."
The "ex-chief of staff to former Republican Rep. Curt Weldon of Pennsylvania was charged Tuesday with allegedly using his wife" to accept $19,000 in kickbacks to "help a consulting firm get federal funding."
A new campaign ad from Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO) claims that immigrants coming into the United States are "pushing drugs, raping kids, and destroying lives." He adds that these "tactics of vicious Central American gangs" are coming into the United States because of "gutless politicians."
Sen. Joseph Biden (D-DE), the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said President Bush's claim of not having previously learned of the National Intelligence Estimate's findings is "unbelievable." "I refuse to believe that," he added. "If that's true, he has the most incompetent staff in modern American history, and he's one of the most incompetent presidents in modern American history."
Missing from Monday's "black-tie White House holiday ball for all three branches of government" was Vice President Cheney, who skipped the gala for "his favorite pastime: hunting." Supreme Court Justice and former Cheney hunting partner Antonin Scalia did attend the party, and reportedly "regaled some partygoers with stories of his hunting exploits."
INTERESTING
Big Insurers Get Big Bucks from Taxpayer-Funded Medicare, Slighting Services for Seniors, by Mike Hall
The federal government is overpaying billions of dollars a year to the private insurance companies that operate Medicare Advantage plans. Those private, for-profit plans currently account for about one in five of all Medicare participants and that number could grow even larger under the Bush administration’s push to further privatize Medicare, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP).
Today, several members of the senior advocacy organization, the Alliance for Retired Americans, along with other consumer advocates, will deliver more than 48,000 hand-signed petitions from seniors around the nation calling on Congress to eliminate or reduce the billions of dollars in overpayments and to strengthen Medicare.
The Republican Congress in 2003 gave big insurance companies that provide Medicare insurance what amounts to a huge subsidy with the Medicare Advantage program. These private insurers were supposed to introduce competition into the Medicare system and reduce costs.
But as the CBPP reports:
According to the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC), these private plans are paid an average of 12 percent, or $1,000 per year, more to cover a Medicare beneficiary than the cost of traditional Medicare to cover the same beneficiary. Private Medicare Advantage fee-for-service plans are paid on average 19 percent more than the traditional Medicare fee-for-service program.
In addition, studies show the private insurers target younger and healthier seniors whose health care costs are less, resulting in even larger profits. There are some 35 million older and disabled Americans enrolled in regular Medicare and about 8 million in Medicare Advantage plans. Those overpayments to private firms—estimated to cost between $150 billion and $160 billion over the next 10 years—force participants in the normal Medicare program to pay higher premiums for their coverage.
Says CBPP:
[M]any elderly and disabled beneficiaries are being charged more so that private companies can make larger profits and a much smaller number of beneficiaries can get some added benefits.
Sadie Coleman, an Alliance for Retired Americans member and Medicare beneficiary, says the $24-per-year amount may sound small, but to many low-income seniors, the extra cost can be a burden, especially if Medicare premiums continue to increase and the overpayments are not checked.
There are people who can’t afford it. It seems there are all these new private programs popping up and we’re the ones paying for it. That money [the overpayments] could be put to a better use.
In June, AFSCME told the U.S. House Budget Committee:
The financial security of Medicare is threatened by the drive to privatize the program. Overpayments to Medicare Advantage plans are causing a shift of beneficiaries out of the more efficient government-administered program into more costly private plans. Overpayments to these private plans may make them highly profitable, but they also have a deleterious impact on the federal budget, the Medicare program and the Medicare beneficiaries….Over the next 10 years, these overpayments to insurance companies will cost an additional $160 billion.
Coleman is the mother of 10 children and grandmother of 45. She asks, if the government continues to squander tax dollars on private insurance,
What kind of Medicare coverage will be there for them. What are they going to be able to afford?
Tomorrow, the Senate Finance Committee is scheduled to mark up legislation relating to Medicare, including the Medicare Advantage overpayments. Click here to read more about the problems with Medicare Advantage plans from the Alliance for Retired Americans.
Fox News refuses to run pro-Constitution ad
Fox News has refused to air an ad produced by the Center for Constitutional Rights that criticizes the Bush administration for "destroying the Constitution" by the use of renditions, torture, and other tactics. The ad, "Rescue the Constitution," which is narrated by actor Danny Glover, can be viewed here and here.
In an email provided to Media Matters for America by the Center, Fox News account executive Erin Kelly told Owen Henkel, the Center's e-communications manager, that Fox would not run the ad:
Hi Owen --
We cannot approve the spot with it being Danny Glover's opinion that the Bush Administration is destroying the Constitution. If you have documentation that it is indeed being destroyed, we can look at that.
Sorry about that,
Erin
In 2005, Fox refused to run an ad critical of then-Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito Jr., who had been nominated by President Bush to succeed retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.
VIDEOS
"Brett Hall is a liar," Bunning said in a conference call with Kentucky political reporters.
FLASHBACK: Mike Huckabee’s Phone Call From God
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