Friday, November 30, 2007

All the News that isn't printed...

Normally shy Joe Klein poses for a Time Magazine photo...

As a public service to Albany Herald readers, since your only available daily newspaper has apparently abandoned all pretense of national news coverage on its front page, here are some stories that you may have missed: Former New York Mayor Rudy Guliani was caught covering up expenses of his police security detail while mayor by billing them to obscure city agencies such as the “New York Loft Commission.” Rudy’s hidden security expenses included those incurred while secretly visiting his mistress (now his third wife, Judith) on Long Island during his second marriage. Rudy also illegally used city funds to have a city car and police driver chauffeur his mistress (not a city employee) around New York..

Time Magazine’s Joe Klein falsely reported in last week’s issue that Congressional Democrats had crafted a revision of the federal wiretapping law which would require a warrant before the National Security Agency intercepts communications between foreign subjects outside the United States. The Time article used the lie to slam Democrats as being soft on national security and on foreign terrorists. After being caught in the lie, Klein initially defended his story, then changed the online Time story to an ambiguous report that falsely stated that there was a genuine dispute between Republicans and Democrats as to what the bill said. He then admitted that the false accusations came from Congressional Republicans. Finally he acknowledged he had no clue as to what he was writing about, stating: "I have neither the time nor legal background to figure out who's right." Had he actually read the wiretap bill, he wold have found language in Section 105A(a)(1) which states unequivocally: “... a court order is not required for electronic surveillance directed at the acquisition of the contents of any communication between persons that are not known to be United States persons and are reasonably believed to be located outside the United States for the purpose of collecting foreign intelligence information, without respect to whether the communication passes through the United States or the surveillance device is located within the United States. “

And so it goes....