Notable Quotables - 07/22/2002

Lobbying Against Weaker Law

Late tonight the Senate passed, 97 to nothing, a bill aimed at shoring up investor confidence by creating harsh new penalties and jail terms for corporate fraud....The Senate version now must be squared with a different, weaker measure, thats already been passed by the House.
Tom Brokaw on the July 15 NBC Nightly News.

The Senate has moved with stunning speed to pass this very, very tough legislation, legislation that never would have even been possible a few weeks ago....The question now, Peter, is what will happen to this? Will it become law? The House passed a much weaker version, and the lobbyists are swarming over Capitol Hill to try to get the House to water down what the Senate has done.
Linda Douglass, ABCs World News Tonight, July 15.

The Senate version must be reconciled with the weaker House package. And with some Republicans and the accounting lobby already promising a fight, its unclear at the moment how tough the final reforms will be.
CBSs Bob Orr on the July 15 Evening News.

 

No Credibility Without Regulation

This is a President who has made no bones about the fact that he is not a great fan of regulation, he talks about cooperation, not regulation. Does he have a credibility problem?
CNNs Aaron Brown to Los Angeles Times reporter Ron Brownstein on NewsNight, July 8.

 

Scandalous Support for Business

There are also many who say that you have questions to answer about your close ties to corporate America. In fact, in this mornings New York Times theres a headline that says Liebermans Pro-Business Views May Haunt Him.
ABCs George Stephanopoulos questioning Democratic Senator Joseph Lieberman on This Week, July 14.

The same President who, for most of his term, has been partner-in-chief with big business, now wants to recast himself as the toughest cop on the street.
Wyatt Andrews on the July 8 CBS Evening News.

 

Shut Up, Mr. President

Last week the President spoke, the market went down. Yesterday, the President spoke, the market went down. Should he be quiet for a while?
CBSs Mark McEwen on the July 16 Early Show.

 

Judicial Watchs Vanishing Label

A conservative legal group, Judicial Watch, is counting here as well, trying to figure out, it says, what standard Broward officials used when they counted the ballots and found Al Gore the winner.
Kerry Sanders on the NBC Nightly News, Dec. 19, 2000.

vs.
The legal group, Judicial Watch, that made headlines helping Paula Jones with her lawsuit against President Clinton, today sued Vice President Cheney.
NBCs Campbell Brown on the July 10 Nightly News.

In May, Judge Royce Lamberth issued an order to the Department of Commerce to produce documents being sought by Judicial Watch. Its a conservative group investigating foreign contributions to Democrats and the Clinton presidential campaign.
Correspondent Phil Jones on the CBS Evening News, December 6, 1996.

vs.
Vice President Cheney, already facing a six-week-old SEC investigation, was sued by a watchdog group alleging investor fraud.
Correspondent Wyatt Andrews on the CBS Evening News, July 10.

Larry Klayman, a conservative lawyer who filed the lawsuit, says the Democrats are trying to hide [Clinton fundraiser John] Huang until after the election.
ABCs Brian Ross, World News Tonight, Oct. 24, 1996.

vs.
A legal activist group called Judicial Watch filed a lawsuit today against the Vice President and Halliburton, the energy company he used to run.
ABCs Peter Jennings, World News Tonight, July 10.

 

Incredible Transformation

If you had told us that within a year of the September 11 attacks, [Judicial Watch Chairman] Larry Klayman would lead one of the newscasts, we would have been dubious. But there he was leading The CBS Evening News with Dan Rather last night, and playing big in the first blocks of WNTWPJ [World News Tonight with Peter Jennings] and TNBCNNWTB [The NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw].
The July 11 edition of The Note, an ABCNews.com daily political column assembled by ABC News political director Mark Halperin and his staff.

 

Making Bush Pay for Whitewater

Consistency counts, and my gut says if the President were Clinton, this decade-old story would be hyped to death all over the radio, through at least half the Congress, probably around more than a few water coolers, and maybe, just maybe, the Justice Department....Would the same people who now urge reporters to drop the Harken story have said the same thing three years ago, a different President from a different party, different times?
CNNs Aaron Brown on NewsNight July 9, justifying his earlier coverage of President Bushs 1990 stock sale.

Hysterical Public Missed the Point

For a hysterical moment, [9th Circuit Court Judge] Alfred Goodwin replaced Osama bin Laden as the most reviled man in America. The federal judges crime was to attack two of the 31 words that constitute the Pledge of Allegiance.... Lost amidst all the flag-waving and God-avowing furor was the fact that Goodwin may have had a point.
Times Nadya Labi in Time.com story posted June 29.

 

Dont Let Good News Ruin Story

New numbers about Americas poorest children seem to suggest that things are improving. The National Institutes of Health this week said the poverty rate among kids is holding steady at 16 percent. Its the lowest level since 1979, but according to a recent study thats still higher, in many cases much higher, than in 18 other wealthy countries.
ABCs Bob Woodruff on World News Tonight, July 13.

 

Ruing Americas Moral Weakness

The U.S. has to distinguish itself from what I call the thugocracies that rule places, and until recently ruled Afghanistan, that certainly rules Iraq. And to establish moral leadership the U.S. has to establish that it is governed by the rule of law and that it is willing to submit to the rule of law around the world. However, its a very tricky issue at a time when the U.S. continues to hold citizens of other countries without access to counsel, without access to evidence held against them, in military tribunals, in Guantanamo Bay.
ABCs Michel Martin on This Week, July 7.

 

Goofing Up Liberal Talking Points

Cars emit an estimated 60 percent of Californias greenhouse gases.
Peter Jennings on ABCs World News Tonight, July 2.

Emissions from cars and light trucks account for 40 percent of the greenhouse gases produced in California.
Bill Whitaker on the CBS Evening News, July 6.

 

Public Display of Vindictiveness

Senator, you had many friends who were political opposites. One was George McGovern....Lieutenant George McGovern in 1944, 1945 piloted 24 hazardous B-4 missions over Nazi Germany and Austria. Like you, he was one of the genuine heroes of World War II. Yet some critics, like Newt Gingrich, have lambasted McGovern Democrats as symbolizing a lack of patriotism or anti-Americanism. Is patriotism too often, as Samuel Johnson famously said, the last refuge of scoundrels?
Wall Street Journal Executive Washington Editor Al Hunt in a pre-taped interview with former Senator Bob Dole on CNNs Capital Gang, July 6.

 

Gorbasm from Across the Pond

Mr. Gorbachev earned worldwide admiration for ushering in the era of glasnost and perestroika in Russia. He worked relentlessly to force the U.S. and others to join his campaign to cut weapons of mass destruction and improve world security. But yesterday he was despairing of the aggressive agenda coming from the White House....
Oonagh Blackman, deputy political editor of Londons Daily Mirror, in a July 11 news story.

 

hil Donahue, Model Moderate

Conservatives have been very successful at defining liberal as anything that is not conservative; they have redefined the center, said [Alex] Jones, defining a true liberal as someone like Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Noam Chomsky, who considers the New York Times a really reactionary tool of the government....I dont think Donahue is anything like Chomsky.
From Elizabeth Jensens July 10 Los Angeles Times story on Donahues new show, quoting ex-New York Times reporter Alex Jones, now Director of Harvards Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy.

 

Ken Starr Aided Terrorists

Geraldo Rivera: I dont want the country to disintegrate back into that partisan bitterness...that marked the end of the Clinton years where everybody was just hating everybody because of your political party. To me thats so irrelevant.
Co-host Kelly Ripa: Do you think that leaves us more susceptible to terrorist attacks when they know were so distracted by other things?
Rivera: Hundreds of FBI agents were working on Monica Lewinsky! I mean, there were 12 of them the day they busted her at that hotel in Virginia. Dont you wish those guys were looking for terrorists before September 11th?
Exchange on the July 10 Live with Regis and Kelly.