What did the president-elect know, and when did he know it?

And I think, too, that I can say that in my years of public life, that I welcome this kind of examination because people have got to know whether or not their President's a crook. - Richard Nixon

But as this is an ongoing investigation involving the governor, I don't think it would be appropriate for me to comment on the issue at this time. - Barack Obama

To be fair:

Later in the conversation, ROD BLAGOJEVICH said he knows that the President-elect wants Senate Candidate 1 for the Senate seat but “they’re not willing to give me anything except appreciation. Fuck them.” - Criminal Complaint

President-elect Barack Obama owes the public more than a short statement. The incoming administration owes the public a complete accounting of their contacts with Blagojevich regarding the open US Senate seat in Illinois. Specifically:

1. Why did David Axelrod tell Fox News Obama "...has talked with the governor and there are on on whole range of names many of which have surfaced, and I think he has a fondness for a lot of them"? That's a pretty specific statement to have mispoken.

2. What was done on behalf of Valerie Jarrett, and what caused her candidacy for the senate seat to be withdrawn?

3. Who was the conduit between Blagojevich and Obama discussing the Senate vacancy? What was suggested to the Obama camp? How did Blagojevich hear about what the Obama camp was willing to offer?

4. Was "appreciation" really nothing, or just an inadequate offer?

5. Does Obama or any of his staff expect to be called as witnesses?

6. Where did Blagojevich get the idea that billionaires Warren Buffet and Bill Gates might be willing to set up a charitable foundation for Blagojevich to slide into when he was no longer governor?

7. Why did Blagojevich believe Obama might help Blagojevich's wife find placement on corporate boards?

8. Who at the SEIU contacted Obama on behalf of Blagojevich, and what was the Obama camp's response?

9. At any time did Blagojevich receive any communication from the Obama transition team or the campaign regarding the federal investigation?

10. Will Fitzgerald be allowed to continue as a federal prosecutor under the Obama Administration?

11. Will Obama support an impeachment of Blagojevich?

12. What was the role of Obama aide and former Blagojevich legislative director Michael Strautmanis?

A comment about blogging, civility and fevered swamp stuff

I had planned on commenting at length on Peter Di Guadio's post-election meltdown (see comments), but given intervening events I won't bother. He's pulled down his blog, and meanwhile some jackass put up a parody site making matters worse.

I'm not happy about the outcome of Tuesday's presidential election either. But silliness about "not my president" really is counter-productive and will only turn off the few people we need to reach in four years.

Besides, last I checked Obama became President-elect for the United States, not just for those that voted for him. It's not like you have to sacrifice goats to him*. You are his constituent, too.

After all, do you think the mayor of Waukesha hangs up the phone when I call just because I didn't vote for him? (Sorry Larry.) If he does a good enough job, I may even vote for him when he runs for re-election. (This is, of course, purely hypothetical.)

Talk of assassination wasn't funny when the left did it, and it's not funny now. I remember when the left would claim Vice President Dan Quayle was President Bush's insurance policy against assassination and how outraged I was when I heard it. Well, it didn't take long before I heard the same joke about Al Gore and Bill Clinton, and it wasn't funny then either.

Going deep into the fevered swamps of conspiracy theories like some did during the Clinton era (my favorite was the Little Rock cocaine cartel story) is harmful in two ways: it discredits opposition to Obama's policies and it discourages people from getting involved. Don't do it. It's just not worth it, and you can spare yourself a lot of agony and embarrassment. For the next four years I do not want to hear about how Obama is a plant by the Indonesian Al-Qaeda faction to destroy every Jewish deli in New York.

Finally, Ann Coulter recently wrote,

In the spirit of reaching across the aisle, we owe it to the Democrats to show their president the exact same kind of respect and loyalty that they have shown our recent Republican president.

Starting tomorrow, if not sooner.

In the same column she called Congressman John Murtha's constituents "retards." Gee, thanks Ann. Do you think in four years they might remember that?

I realize that it gets frustrating to see the left get away with unimaginable vitriol. But it doesn't make it easy to criticize the left when some on our side decide to fight fire with fire.

There is an alternative.

In 1992, I remember the day after the election sitting in a campaign office by myself listening to the radio. It was a disaster. Worse, it meant that not only was I unemployed, but there were probably no political jobs to be found. And quite frankly, my initial exposure to politics probably soured me on the whole process.

But Rush Limbaugh came on and he was more upbeat than ever. He gave his audience advice I have never forgotten and follow to this day. Go out and live your lives the best way you can. The best revenge is not letting the other side get to you. Raise your children well. Keep your optimism up. Fight them on ideas. Don't give in to anger and despair. Don't stoop to their level. And eventually we will prevail.

Two years later everything changed with the Contract with America.

We can succeed, and we can succeed the right away. Don't give in, but fight them with ideas, fight them in the way we live, fight them by showing we're better than they are. The double-standard is unfair. So what. We were given the higher standard; let's use it.

When Col. Oliver North came to Waukesha to campaign in 1988, the hippy-dippy left was out in full force. They were screaming and waving things and generally looked like the stereotypes we all know and love. A bunch of us showed up in suits to counter-demonstrate. We smiled at the cops and talked to them. When the cops thought one of our chants was causing more tension, we changed it. We had fun while members of the other side were giving themselves high blood pressure. A few of them got arrested for crossing the protest line. A couple even resisted. (Some advice: if that's a Waukesha deputy hauling you to the paddy wagon, don't resist or you might end up eating the bumper on your way in.)

Both sides ended up on television. Guess who looked better? (Of course, I'm always good looking.)

That doesn't mean that we shouldn't tell jokes or make fun of them on occasion. Derision works, too.

It doesn't mean we can't criticize them. We can, and we ought to. Frequently. Vociferously.

But we ought to know where the line is, and we ought to behave like the civilization we want to defend.

This country survived electing Andrew Jackson and Woodrow Wilson. It survived Jimmy Carter and Richard Nixon almost back-to-back. It will survive President Obama, and it won't hurt to call him that. Pretending, and that's what it would be, that his election is somehow illegitimate will only hurt ourselves in the long run.

*yep, I'm getting four years out of this joke.

White House aide directed FBI domestic spying program against political opponents

How will I explain this to my children?

An article in today's Wall Street Journal takes us back to the Lyndon Johnson era when some familiar faces were conducting political intelligence work with the FBI. Here's a few of the examples:

Only a few weeks before the 1964 election, a powerful presidential assistant, Walter Jenkins, was arrested in a men's room in Washington. Evidently, the president was concerned that Barry Goldwater would use that against him in the election. Another assistant, Bill Moyers, was tasked to direct Hoover to do an investigation of Goldwater's staff to find similar evidence of homosexual activity. Mr. Moyers' memo to the FBI was in one of the files.

When the press reported this, I received a call in my office from Mr. Moyers. Several of my assistants were with me. He was outraged; he claimed that this was another example of the Bureau salting its files with phony CIA memos. I was taken aback. I offered to conduct an investigation, which if his contention was correct, would lead me to publicly exonerate him. There was a pause on the line and then he said, "I was very young. How will I explain this to my children?" And then he rang off. I thought to myself that a number of the Watergate figures, some of whom the department was prosecuting, were very young, too.

+ + + + + + + + + +

It was not only Republicans that Johnson targeted with the FBI. He must have been obsessed with the Kennedy political threat because he used the bureau to determine whether officials in his administration were too close to Robert Kennedy after Kennedy left the administration. Ironically, one of his White House assistants, whom he inherited from JFK and was a particular subject of this sort of surveillance, is now married to LBJ's biographer. I refer to Richard Goodwin, the husband of Doris Kearns Goodwin.

Some of Johnson's suspicions of the Kennedys were rather amusing. He became convinced that the Washington Star was secretly owned by the Kennedy family and that is why he received less favorable coverage from the Star than from the Post. He insisted that Hoover unearth those connections. Hoover plaintively tried to explain that the Star was owned by the Kauffmann family and that they were Republicans.

Silberman suggests that it was Johnson's relationship with Hoover that may have been (in part) the genesis of the "White House Plumbers" and Watergate:

Hoover's shenanigans may well be the genesis of Watergate. I noted in the files that he had an early private meeting with the new President Nixon. I surmised that he must have let Nixon know something of what he had done for prior presidents; it would have been too dangerous not to. I further suspect that Nixon, whose ethical standards were quite relative, would have concluded he should have the same services that were available to his predecessors. But he didn't trust Hoover totally, so he set up his own political intelligence gathering network outside the FBI--the plumbers. During Watergate, Nixon would occasionally mutter that prior presidents were culpable of secret political intelligence investigations. He even suggested that the Justice Department should substantiate that claim. We ignored him, but I am sure he would have seized on the Post's revelations of the secret files--if they had appeared earlier.

(ht: John McAdams)

An effective alderman where?

A letter to the Waukesha Freeman today from Pewaukee takes issue with Jessica McBride calling Michael McGee Jr a "thug", complaining whitey is never called a thug, and that McGee Jr is just as effective as Richard Nixon. Really, I can't make this stuff up.

No, the author wasn't David Mokros, but I had to look.

(ht: Spring City)

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