Inside Today's 6 News; The News Director's Blog

What Sen. Larry Craig Can Learn from OJ Simpson

Every time I see a news item or watch another network TV joke on Senator Larry Craig these days, I think of O.J. Simpson.  The two don't have much in common, but in one aspect, they do.  I am not implying in any way that the crime to which Craig pleaded guilty compares to the murder charges Simpson faced and was eventually acquitted of, but Simpson's fall from grace holds lessons for Craig as he prepares to leave office.

Craig's legal case may be the most expensive court fight over a misdemeanor disorderly conduct conviction in the history of American justice.  According to a letter of admonishment from the Senate Ethics Committee, Senator Craig has spend a minimum of $213,000 in campaign funds fighting to reverse his guilty plea after being arrested in a Minneapolis bathroom sex sting.  We've now learned the State of Minnesota has spent $28,000 fighting Craig's fighting of his conviction.  It's a high stakes game of legal chicken in which neither side seems prepared to blink. 

But what exactly is Senator Craig spending all this and taxpayer's money fighting for?  To somehow save his reputation?  Craig's reputational hit on this issue is beyond repair.  Even if the conviction is thrown out, most would still believe Craig guilty of committing the acts of which he is accused. 

Which brings me back to O.J. Simpson, who was acquitted of murder charges.  How has his reputation fared since a jury found him 'not guilty?'

As with Simpson, the impact of Craig's arrest on his reputation has nothing to do with what the legal system thinks of his actions.  It has everything to do with what the public thinks of his actions.  A million court rulings in Sen. Craig's favor aren't going to change that ... just like the 'not guilty' verdict didn't change what the public thought of Simpson. 

Reverse the situation for a moment.  Let's say a liberal U.S. Senator came to Idaho, was arrested, pleaded guilty to a crime and then wasted tens-of-thousands of your tax dollars fighting something he had already admitted to doing.  No matter what your political persuasion, wouldn't you resent it?  I bet Craig would have publicly railed against it ... if it hadn't happened to him.

So here is our senior Senator in a quarter-of-a-million dollar court fight to overturn a guilty plea that is in reality the legal equivalent of a traffic ticket.  It is also a fight legal experts say he has no chance of winning.  I understand the Senator has rights.  I would not deny him those for a minute, but it would by my hope that he could look at the big picture and see he has put himself in a position of betraying something bigger ... his own reputation as a man who ultimately respected the rule of law.

Here's a way out.  Craig should hold a news conference and say he is giving up his legal fight.  "In my heart, I know I am innocent," Craig could tell the assembled media.  "... but in a panic, I made a mistake I will regret for the rest of my life.  However, it was my mistake, and I did not realize in fighting to right a wrong the cost to my supporters who helped finance my campaigns and to the taxpayers of the State of Minnesota.  It is not right for me to continue to burden them for a mistake I made, and so I am dropping my legal appeal."

His arrest is ancient history, and no longer a current event unless the Senator chooses to keep making it so.  As the saying goes, when you are in a hole, stop digging!  Making a public display of doing the right thing now and taking responsibility for voluntarily pleading guilty (even as he still insists he is innocent) would help the Senator put to rest a bad situation on a positive and statesman-like note.

Hillary Clinton's "All-Too-Secret" Secret Weapon

I was going through various news stuff the other day when an item hit me harder than a herd of Democrats trying to get into an Obama rally.  It was some video of Chelsea Clinton that just made me go "Wow!  That's Chelsea Clinton???!!!"  The once awkward teen has really grown up.  She 27 now, and has her mother's roundish face and blonde features, but the penetrating eyes and warm smile of her father that made many a woman's knees go wobbly back in the day.  In a glance Chelsea reveals that she is smart, confident, and aware ... and dare I say very attractive.

In other words, Chelsea Clinton has come a long way, and it says a lot about her mother.  Many years ago when I worked at a TV station in Arkansas, I can remember her as the shy and somewhat nerdy Governor's daughter.  Once the Clintons made the White House, Clinton-bashers would make snarky jokes about Chelsea.  It seemed to me a subtle way to lay it on a little thicker.  You know ... "not only is Hillary's health care plan a mess, but look what she's done as a mother!"

Boy, is Hillary Clinton having the last laugh on that one.

Reportedly, Chelsea has been out on the campaign trail a lot recently, but is very much under the radar from my vantage point.  The one headline she did make was before the Iowa caucuses when she told a 9-year-old working on a 'Scholastic News' article "Sorry, I don't talk the press."  Not exactly a Kodak campaign moment.

With her campaign now hanging in the balance, I think it is time for Hillary Clinton to put Chelsea out there more, because she is in the unusual position of being able to speak to everyone.  Chelsea can relate to the "Millennials" who up to now have been rallying to Obama because she is one of them and can talk to them generationally in way Hillary and Bill cannot.  She can also speak to generations of parents and grandparents simply by showing the world how well she turned out, and telling them what a great mother Hillary Clinton was to her.  Not only compelling, but it would deflate any criticism that somehow Clinton does not espouse "family values" because she clearly embraced them in raising Chelsea.

Maybe it hasn't happened because Hillary is still trying to protect her daughter from the harsh glare of a Presidential campaign.  When it comes to Chelsea, maybe she is still a mom first who wouldn't even think to ask her daughter for such high level help.  But Chelsea is a part of her like no one else.  The result of a mother's love and all that comes with it.  Now that Chelsea is an adult, is there something wrong with letting her tell this important part of the Clinton story?

Full disclosure, I am not a Clinton supporter, but I do have an idea for her that I think would be a home run.  Have Chelsea do a campaign commercial!

"Hi, I'm Chelsea Clinton, and here's why you should vote for my mom."  I have no idea what those reasons would be and I'm not sure it would matter.  Just seeing a woman with all these great qualities talk about the mother who gave her so much would be enough.  At the end, a twist on the standard disclaimer.  "I'm Hillary Clinton, and I always support my daughter's message!"  Done right, it could move some to tears.

When Classrooms Become Interrogation Rooms

Should classrooms be used as interrogation rooms? 

It's a legitimate question as we learn more about the investigation by Meridian police into the brutalization and rape of a 14-year-old girl by two school classmates ... 14-year-old Nathan Whitney, who has pleaded guilty, and presumably 14-year-old Ramon Baeza, whose record is now sealed because he is being tried as a juvenile.

As you saw in Jacqueline Bennett's investigative report Thursday night at 10pm, Baeza denied involvement in the rape during questioning at his home with his parents present.  After more evidence surfaced, the detectives thought they would try questioning him again at his school.  It was clearly an 'end around' where they could use much more aggressive questioning tactics without the messiness of parental interference or the possibility of him having a lawyer present to protect his constitutional rights.  There was no school official present either even though the interrogation happened in a school and Baeza was by any reasonable standard in their care.  Meridian school officials didn't even make an attempt to contact Baeza's parents to let them know what was going on, saying it is not their policy to do so.

Judge Cheri Copsey was pretty hard on the detectives in ruling that Baeza's statements to them had to be thrown out, a ruling which left him facing juvenile charges rather than adult charges.  Copsey clearly felt police were reckless when it came to violating Baeza's rights, should have known better, that they did not follow procedure in recording the entire interrogation, and she also expressed in her ruling that the report detectives ended up submitting on the case was not reflective of what really happened.

A retired Boise police officer we asked to review the evidence isn't so sure police deserve Copsey's wrath.  He feels the detectives were doing what they thought they needed to do to get to the bottom of what happened.  It was a brutal crime after all and a fairly dynamic situation.  It is easy to see where the detectives got so caught up in trying to solve the crime that they only realized after the fact they may have taken a few shortcuts too many.  My personal experience covering police is that they are not generally 'big picture' people but more hyper-focused on using what tactics they feel are necessary to find the truth.  That works fine when you are dealing with adults who should know their rights and be able to make judgments on their own.  Not sure it works so well with kids.

It is important to note that there is little doubt about Baeza's guilt.  The question the judge raised is in regards to police tactics in interrogating Baeza that led to unequal justice for him and Nathan Whitney.

But I think there is a bigger concern here than the actions of police.  That's the inaction of the Meridian School District to make sure the rights of a child in its care are being protected, even if that is nothing more than making sure the parents are notified before a felony police interrogation of that child can begin on school grounds. 

And it is not just an issue with Meridian schools.  Across the Treasure Valley and the nation, many schools have essentially abdicated any responsibility to protect the rights of children who are accused in some way of wrongdoing when they are at school, a loophole police can and do exploit.  A "St. Petersburg Times" investigation found that in Florida, officers often don't call parents or advise students of their rights when questioning them in schools about crimes.

The Columbine massacre complicated the situation further.  Afterward, many school districts began placing police SRO's in schools and in many cases, have almost completely handed discipline issues off to them.  The problem with that is if a principal deals with an issue, it is an 'incident.'  If a police officer does it, even minor incidents will likely be considered a 'crime.'

A school Principal's participation when a child is questioned by police seems pretty important to making sure that child is treated fairly and his or her rights are protected.  Unfortunately, most districts, including the Meridian School District, don't require that. 

In other words, a system that requires parental notification and permission for so many things in school doesn't when it comes to something as serious as a police interrogation.  That doesn't make sense.  Parents need to be informed and give their consent in these situations for the sake of our children and for the sake of justice.

Agree?  Disagree?  You can respond here if you wish, and I urge you to make your feelings heard by participating in our online poll.

Would You Like Some Lies With That Hamburger?

I got two interesting e-mails the other day.  One was from the Idaho Beef Council complaining about media coverage of the school beef recall.  The other was from my friend Sal Celeski over at Impact News Service who referred me to an article on summarizing what's been going on to date.

For those of you who missed it, one of the major suppliers of beef to the national school lunch program was caught on tape prodding and trying to move with a forklift so-called "downer cows."  Those are cows that for some reason are too sick to walk on their own.  The tape was shot by the Humane Society and we've run some of the footage because the meat this plant was processing was going to Treasure Valley Schools.  On Sunday, the USDA recalled all of it.  More than 140 million pounds.  Enough beef to serve two or three hamburgers to every man, woman and child in America.

The Idaho Beef Council was unhappy because, as the headline of their e-mail read last Thursday "Media Reports Inaccurately Portray Beef Holdback as Food Safety Issue."  Their point was at the time that the USDA has technically called the holdback of beef an "administrative issue" because the slaughterhouse was illegally abusing animals.  Technically true, but as we now know, it was a 'half-truth' because it left out significant details.

For the rest of the story, we go to my friend Sal Celeski.  Sal is an 'aggregator' of news who provides his service to local companies wanting to know how they are being portrayed in the press and occasionally forwards things onto the news media.  Last week, he forwarded to me is from the website foodconsumer.org that details just what was really going on here.

Author Martha Rosenburg wrote about how the meat was really being withheld for food safety reasons.  That's why the USDA was talking about downer cows at all and saying it is possible those shown on the videotape did not enter the food supply.  That would directly contradict the accounts of the humane society activist who went undercover at the Hallmark/Westland Meat Company.  As he told the LA Times ... "It would take two or three of us to get the cow to stand in front of the inspector, on wobbly legs, and he would say 'That's fine.' "

What's more, this specific plant has apparently been cited for e-coli risks in the past, but USDA officials did not acknowledge that until reporters covering the story began to press.  Geez, that would kind of be an important fact to bring up yourself, don't you think?

This has been the USDA's problem for years.  It is an agency that consumer groups complain has been asleep at the switch when it comes to protecting the consumers who eat the products they are supposed to be regulating.  There were eight USDA inspectors at the Hallmark/Westland Beef Company, yet it takes one activist with a video camera to bring this out.  It boggles the mind.

And here's the kicker.  This slaughterhouse provides meat to our children in all 50 states.  You or I might be able to survive bad meat with a few days of particularly violent vomiting, but to our children, such contamination can be deadly.  We found that out when an Idaho child died last year from e-coli from contaminated spinach that it took the feds weeks to pinpoint to a spinach processing plant in California.

When it comes to government oversight of food, a lot of it is on the honor system.  Sure, there are checks and balances, but in reality, there is no practical way the USDA can monitor all of our nation's food supply every day.  Fortunately, the vast majority of farmers and food processors take great pride in the quality of product they produce for American consumers.  There is also an economic element to this.  If someone dies because they put out an inferior product, they are effectively out of business.  As we are seeing with Hallmark/Westland, it is a risk some are apparently willing to take.

That's why the USDA really had no choice but to recall every last ounce of beef from Hallmark/Westland.  There was just no way all that meat was going onto our kids' lunch tables if for no other reason than it is going to be difficult to get it out of warehouses with all those camera crews in the way.  Parents rightfully are not going to accept their children being fed beef that is of highly questionable purity.

Food providers don't just sell food.  They sell confidence that what they are providing is of excellent quality and corners are not being cut to save a few bucks.  That's why food providers should demand that they all be held equally accountable to the highest food safety standards.

Which brings us back to the Idaho Beef Council, whose Thursday press release conveniently omitted many of the details of the Hallmark/Westland debacle, then goes onto say, “This is not a food safety issue,” added Kim Brackett, Idaho Beef Council Chairman.  “Parents need to know that government safeguards and science-based food safety practices keep our beef supply safe.”  Well guess what?  It is a food safety issue, and the Idaho Beef Council would have a little more credibility if they would have acknowledged the truth in the first place.

Why Showing "Disturbing Video" is Sometimes Important

Tonight, Tuesday February 12th, KIVI-TV 'Today's 6 News' was compelled to show you video of what are referred to as "downer cows" being prodded and poked and even an attempt to pick one up with a forklift so the cows could be taken to slaughter.  It was that very video that led to a USDA investigation into the slaughterhouse involved that led to revelations meat there was indeed tainted and then shipped to Idaho and fed to school kids.

While there is no blood or actual slaughter shown, the video is disturbing, and I did get a few calls.  I certainly understand there are some viewers who would rather not see it and rather we not show it.  That is why whenever we air a story with potentially disturbing video such as with this story, we warn viewers ahead of time so they can make a personal decision as to whether they should watch.

But we did show the video.  We show it because it is important to help you the viewer understand why this news item is important, and why you should take it so seriously.

Had the concerned people who shot it simply gone to the USDA and told them what was happening, there likely would not have been the type of response they did get.  The videotape is what got inspector's attention.  It is also what makes the story so compelling and urgent, and speaks volumes about why you should be concerned.  It is, after all, our food supply some food producers are being so reckless with.

'News' at its heart is for people who want to know things.  Important things, interesting things, sometimes entertaining things and occasionally disturbing things.  On that last one, we who work in news have to make judgments on where to draw the line.  We don't show everything ... some things should simply not be seen on television.  But we do try to show as much as we reasonably feel we can because at the end of the day, we want you to feel like you were truly informed by us, not somehow misled on the seriousness of a story because we were more concerned about protecting you than informing you.

Maybe Al Franken was Right about Rush Limbaugh After All

It's taken me several years to come to this conclusion, but maybe Al Franken really was right with the title of a book he published several years ago.  Rush Limbaugh is a big fat idiot.  You need no more ammunition to validate this point than Limbaugh's recent rantings about likely Republican nominee for President John McCain.  You see, Limbaugh and other conservative pundits such as Ann Coulter (who makes up for her lack of Limbaugh's heft by being even more of an idiot on this topic) continue to lambaste McCain as not being conservative enough.  "We are trying to stop the wanton destruction of the party, the wanton dilution of the party," Limbaugh recently was quoted as saying on his radio show in criticizing the choice of McCain.  Coulter has gone so far as to publicly say that Hillary Clinton is more conservative than McCain (an idiotic statement when you consider the American Conservative Union gives McCain a lifetime positive rating of 82 while Clinton earned a 9 ... that's even a bigger spread than your average Boise State, Utah State football game).

Time for a reality check people!  Let's begin with the realization there is virtually no way Republicans will be able to recapture either house of Congress in the 2008 elections.  It is far more likely the party will lose seats in both houses, including the possibility of a 60 seat 'filibuster-proof' majority by Democrats in the U.S. Senate that would make Republicans in Congress even less relevant than Democrats are at the Idaho Statehouse.  Should conservative Republicans stay home on election day, that would mean that the next President of the United States would be Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama along with an utterly uncheckable Democratic Congress.

The Democratic race is totally unpredicatable, but Clinton is ahead right now when you look at committed delegates and superdelegates and seems likely to take the remaining big states of Pennsylvania, Ohio and Texas, so let's say for the time being it is she who wins.  The outcome would likely create a political revolution the U.S. hasn't seen since FDR took over from Herbert Hoover that would be substantial and almost certainly irreversible, including:

• A quick draw-down of troops in Iraq.
• A new 'single-payer' universal health care system similar to those in Canada and Europe.
• A revocation of Bush tax policies and dramatic increases in taxes on the rich.
• Protectionist trade policies meant to protect middle-class jobs in America.
• A leftward turn in the Supreme Court that would among other things create a new host of precedents meant to stem the erosion of abortion rights during the Bush Administration.
• An immigration policy that would lower barriers for Hispanics here illegally to obtain citizenship and also help further swell the ranks of the Democratic Party.
• Much more stringent environmental policies.
• A national energy policy that would include a windfall profits tax on oil companies.
• The substantial expansion of social services to poor Americans.
• Non-discrimination laws that would mandate benefits to same-sex couples nationwide.
• Phased increases in the U.S. minimum wage towards a 'livable wage.'

Clinton wouldn't champion all of these, but would be hard pressed to oppose proposals from a Democratic Congress, where each issue has powerful advocates.

Most all of this is an anathema to conservatives, but here is another problem for them.  It is an agenda that is increasingly palatable to moderate independents who will likely decide the next Presidential election.  It is even becoming more appealing to Republicans who have become weary of the right wing tilt of their own party.

During his visit to Boise, Sen. Barack Obama mentioned that several Republicans have come up to him and offered their support.  I know one of them.  He contacted me after hearing Obama had come to Boise to ask what I thought, then told me that despite being a lifelong Republican who voted for Bush twice, he was backing Obama (although he would vote for McCain over Clinton).  Based on the size and enthusiasm of the Obama rally, I would even go so far as to say that Obama would have a competitive shot at Idaho's four electoral votes in November should he win the Democratic nomination and a percentage of conservative Republicans follow Limbaugh's advice and stay home.  That's a big indication of how much trouble Republicans are in right now, but it could be even worse.  Were Republicans to produce a nominee that would better satisfy its shrinking right wing, the resulting landslide would be so severe it would virtually wipe out overnight the political influence of religious and neo-conservatives.

Most Republicans seem to understand this.  That is why McCain is their man, not Huckabee or even Romney.  But Limbaugh and Coulter would rather put a gun to the head of their movement and pull the trigger in the name of ideology rather than compromise on a candidate like McCain who is more moderate than they like but much more conservative than any viable alternative.  Any way you look at it, that's pretty idiotic.