Professional Courtesy?

The Washington Post has uncovered an even seedier level of corruption surrounding disgraced former Congressman Randy “Duke” Cunningham (R-CA) and the defense contractors that made him a millionaire. According to sources within a federal investigation, money wasn’t the only thing the contractors stuffed into the Duke’s pants, and Cunningham may not have been alone:

Federal authorities are investigating allegations that a California defense contractor arranged for a Washington area limousine company to provide prostitutes to convicted former congressman Randy “Duke” Cunningham (R-Calif.) and possibly other lawmakers, sources familiar with the probe said yesterday.
In recent weeks, investigators have focused on possible dealings between Christopher D. Baker, president of Shirlington Limousine and Transportation Inc., and Brent R. Wilkes, a San Diego businessman who is under investigation for bribing Cunningham in return for millions of dollars in federal contracts, said one source, who requested anonymity because the investigation is ongoing. …
The Cunningham investigation’s latest twist came after Mitchell J. Wade, a defense contractor who has admitted bribing the former congressman, told prosecutors that Wilkes had an arrangement with Shirlington Limousine, which in turn had an arrangement with at least one escort service, one source said. Wade said limos would pick up Cunningham and a prostitute and bring them to suites Wilkes maintained at the Watergate Hotel and the Westin Grand in Washington, the source said.
Cunningham resigned from Congress after pleading guilty last November to accepting $2.4 million in bribes from four co-conspirators, including Wilkes and Wade. The former lawmaker was sentenced to eight years and four months in prison. Wade pleaded guilty to his part in the scheme in February and is cooperating with investigators. Wilkes has not been charged.
The allegations about prostitutes were reported this week by the Wall Street Journal. Asked yesterday about the allegations, Wilkes’s attorney, Michael Lipman of San Diego, said: “My client denies any involvement in that conduct.” Cunningham’s lawyer, K. Lee Blalack II, declined to comment.

Why should this be shocking? After all, Cunningham prostituted his office for his own personal gain. One might even expect that the financial arrangements may have been mitigated from a sense of professional courtesy.
The investigation will focus on government contracts given to Shirlington and its president by the Department of Homeland Security. Baker has a criminal record for misdemeanors including drug charges and larceny, and managed to avoid conviction on felony charges for armed robbery. He has had problems with the IRS — well, who hasn’t? — and filed for bankruptcy twice. Despite all of these background issues, Baker managed to win multi-million-dollar contracts with DHS for transportation services, the first time as the only bidder for the contract. In the past two years, it has received $25 million in contracts with DHS.
On the surface, and way below that, this looks like Shirlington secured its contracts through its longstanding support for Cunningham and his “entertainment”, a relationship that goes all the way back to the early 1990s when Baker first launched his limousine service. Two possibilities exist if federal investigators can establish a connection between Cunningham and the awarding of the DHS contracts. Either Baker paid Cunningham off in hookers, or Baker blackmailed Cunningham with the knowledge of the Congressman’s track record in personal entertainment.
Once again, we see in a petty and tawdry way why government spending on foolishness creates the opportunity for corruption. It’s the trap that captures politicians of both parties and keeps lobbyists highly paid. It turns the entir federal government into a bunch of whores, and the irony in this story is that the actual prostitutes are probably the least blameworthy and most honest out of everyone involved.
Addendum: The Post’s article is a late entry, TPM Muckraker reminds us. The Wall Street Journal and the San Diego Union-Tribune have much more on this subject, including the scope of the investigation. The feds think that the Duke may have had Congressional company on his nights out with the ladies.

Brits Finally Start Checking On Galloway

British investigators have finally started checking into MP George Galloway and his role in the Oil for Food scandal at the United Nations. The London Times reports that their diplomats have approached Tariq Aziz, the former deputy prime minister under Saddam Hussein, to see if he will talk about Galloway’s relationship with the Hussein regime:

BRITISH diplomats in Baghdad have asked Tariq Aziz, Iraq’s former deputy prime minister, to help an investigation into allegations that George Galloway was given cash by Saddam Hussein under the Oil-for-Food programme.
The diplomats made the secret approach through Mr Aziz’s lawyer this week on behalf of Parliament’s so-called “sleaze buster”. The lawyer, Badie Izzat Arief, claimed that they offered to try and secure Mr Aziz immunity from prosecution on any charges arising from the Oil-for-Food scandal.
Embassy officials want to meet Mr Aziz, 70, in the US-run detention centre where he is held with other top members of Saddam’s regime to put a series of questions from Sir Philip Mawer, the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards.
Sir Philip is investigating claims that the MP for Bethnal Green & Bow took money under the UN Oil-for-Food programme — a charge that Mr Galloway strenuously denies and about which he has already successfully sued and won damages from one national newspaper.

Galloway won a lawsuit against the London Telegraph for publishing the documents uncovered by the Coalition forces that showed him receiving oil futures for his efforts to support Saddam and opposition to military action. In the UK, truth is not an absolute defense to libel, and the paper lost on the basis of the damage the documents caused to Galloway’s reputation. Since then, more evidence has been found of Galloway’s corruption, and in January the Brits hauled off “thousands” of documents on the scandal and its relation to British politicians. At the time, the Guardian (UK) reported that the British would consider opening an investigation; apparently it took them longer than expected, but they have done so.
Galloway’s reaction reflected the strange, contradictory, and combative nature of the Saddam shill himself. He noted that Aziz had had heart attacks, strokes, and been denied medical treatments, implying that Aziz would make a less-than-credible witness due to his Coalition-imposed infirmities. In the very next breath, he then proclaimed confidence that Aziz would clear him of all charges. Perhaps only such a confused and handicapped witness could do so.
Aziz, for his part, is not likely to cooperate. He has steadfastly refused to testify to Saddam’s crimes, rejecting all arrangements for immunity for his cooperation. His lawyer tells reporters that Aziz’s health is deteriorating, but the most interesting information to come from Aziz’s counsel is that the British visit by investigators is their first since Aziz’s surrender in April 2003. One has to wonder whether the British simply did not want to hear about backbencher complicity in Saddam’s corruption if they have never bothered to ask about it.

Reid Blinks

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid backed away from his demand that the immigration-reform bill currently before the Senate receive a direct vote with no amendments from Republicans, a condition that scuttled the compromise agreement before the Easter break. Reid told reporters yesterday that he would allow a certain number of amendments as long as they did not unduly burden the bill:

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid said yesterday he is willing to allow consideration of Republican amendments to the comprehensive immigration bill, a concession that removes a primary obstacle that killed the bill earlier this month.
“We’re willing to work through these amendments,” the Nevada Democrat told reporters yesterday. “If they want to have these votes, we’ll have the votes.”
Republicans said they welcomed Mr. Reid’s change of heart, while Democrats cautioned that other obstacles remain.
“What part of ‘yes’ doesn’t he understand,” said Sen. John Cornyn, Texas Republican, who has offered several amendments that Democrats refused to allow to be considered. “That is exactly the position that I and others interested in immigration reform took three weeks ago. We could have had a bill voted out of the Senate three weeks ago today if he hadn’t been the one who obstructed votes on amendments on the floor.”
Reid spokesman Jim Manley said later that while his boss is flexible about amendments, he remains opposed to allowing the legislation to be bogged down by too many. Mr. Reid and Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee say they are still negotiating over precisely how many amendments will be considered.

The Democrats had previously thought that stalling on immigration hurt the Republicans more than themselves and that they had enough crossover support from John McCain and others that the GOP would be forced to accept their direction. However, after Reid suddenly imposed the no-amendments condition and McCain publicly upbraided him for it, Reid and his caucus found themselves painted as the deal-killers. Senate Democrats received most of the criticism for the failure to pass the Senate legislation before the recess, and now Reid has to deliver some cooperation in order to get himself off the hook.
Reid and Frist will negotiate the number of amendments and their scope in the coming days, probably in time for Monday’s session. The one amendment offered by Cornyn as mentioned above will almost certainly receive a vote now, although the Democrats claims it “guts” the reform bill they crafted. It’s difficult to see why denying citizenship to people who have been convicted of felonies or three misdemeanors while living here illegally offends Democrats to such an extent. Even legal immigrants who reside here face deportation if they get convicted of such crimes. Why should illegal aliens get preferential treatment?
The Democrats say that they will easily defeat such amendments, and that they do not represent the spirit of the legislation. If that were true, then Reid would have allowed the amendments to come to a vote three weeks ago, as Cornyn also noted. The truth is that amendments such as Cornyn’s and another which mandates a physical barrier system at the southern border will likely pass with bipartisan support. These will make the Senate bill that much closer to the House legislation that awaits a conference committee, and it will strengthen the Republican position in that negotiation. That is the real cause for Reid’s obstructionism, and his capitulation makes it much more likely that a truly meaningful reform package will emerge for Bush’s signature.
As I have written many times before on this blog, border security is the primary goal of immigration reform; regardless of what we do with the people already here, we have to stop the flood of people crossing the southern border. After that, the question of earned citizenship becomes much less problematic, and the proposals offered have some rational benefits for assimilation and identification of the truly undesirable. However, any proposal that treats this group better than legal immigrants, such as noted by Cornyn’s amendment, will be found unacceptable by fair Americans. This is one example where the amendment process serves a good purpose.

Hiltzik Loses Column Over Sock Puppetry

Last week, Patterico’s Pontifications discovered that Los Angeles Times columnist and blogger Michael Hiltzik had created multiple personas for comments on Patterico’s blog as well as Hiltzik’s own. When Patterico posted the evidence of the phony personas, Hiltzik’s newspaper suspended his blog while it investigated the behavior of its Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist. Now the Times has announced that Hiltzik will lose his column for his violation of their ethics policy, although he will remain as a reporter with the paper:

The Times is discontinuing Michael Hiltzik’s Golden State column, which ran in the Business section, because the columnist violated the newspaper’s ethics guidelines. This follows the suspension last week of his blog on latimes.com, which also has been discontinued. Hiltzik has acknowledged using pseudonyms to post a single comment on his blog on latimes.com and multiple comments elsewhere on the Web that dealt with his column and other issues involving the newspaper.
Hiltzik did not commit any ethical violations in his newspaper column, and an internal inquiry found no inaccurate reporting in his postings in his blog or on the Web. But employing pseudonyms constitutes deception and violates a central tenet of The Times’ ethics guidelines: Staff members must not misrepresent themselves and must not conceal their affiliation with The Times. This rule applies equally to the newspaper and the Web world.
Over the past few days, some analysts have used this episode to portray the Web as a new frontier for newspapers, saying that it raises fresh and compelling ethical questions. Times editors don’t see it that way. The Web makes it easier to conceal one’s identity, and the tone of exchanges is often harsh. But the Web doesn’t change the rules for Times journalists.
After serving a suspension, Hiltzik will be reassigned.

I never had a high opinion of Hiltzik before the sock puppetry, and have an even lower opinion of him now. However, one has to wonder whether the Times went overboard with its reaction. As the editors state, Hiltzik didn’t break any rules in his column or in his reporting for the newspaper, at least according to the editors. The violations occurred on the Golden State blog and at Patterico’s Pontifications.
It seems to me that killing the blog and suspending Hiltzik would have been sufficient for the violations he committed. Don’t get me wrong; I don’t think Hiltzik wrote well enough or posed good enough arguments to warrant his own column anyway, as his silly and ignorant rantings over Hugh Hewitt’s Sitemeter stats proved well enough. If the Times thought so, then they should have just deep-sixed the column for that reason and been honest about it. If they liked Hiltzik’s work on the column, then they should have kept the punishment to the same venue in which the violations occurred.
The message the Times wants to send with this action doesn’t appear very clear to me. Why go through all the hassle to kill his blog and his column, suspend him, and then have his work still appear in their newspaper? Cancelling his blog acknowledges that he has shot his credibility in this arena, and the suspension serves as a financial penalty for embarrassing his newspaper. But canceling his column demonstrates a lack of faith in Hiltzik’s credibility as a columnist — which must then also apply to his work as a reporter. The Times has kneecapped Hiltzik for any other assignment at the Times.
The Times had the right principles in mind when they addressed this situation; they held Hiltzik accountable for his sad and pathetic attempts to invent people who would agree with him. Either they went overboard in their attack on his print work, or they should have fired him outright, and to do the latter would have been completely dishonest. The true punishment for Hiltzik’s foolishness is the knowledge that he made himself into a joke. The Times couldn’t leave it at that and turned him into a tragedy instead.

Still More Server Problems

We’ve come under attack all day here at the Hosting Matters community, apparently by Saudis who have issues with free speech. Michelle Malkin has some of the background at her site, if you can access it. The only thing I know is that the folks at Hosting Matters have treated me very well, and I’m not going to burn my friends when they’re getting attacked.
This, too, shall pass. In the meantime, I think I’ll check to see if my backup site still works for later use.
UPDATE: Please bookmark my backup site. I’m guessing we’ll see more of these attacks in the coming days, and if so I will post updates on the old Typepad blog. It’s kind of like coming back to your parent’s house and having to sleep in your old bedroom — it makes you feel a bit diminished, but the memories are priceless.

IAEA: No Cooperation From Iran

The IAEA decided to bypass diplomatic niceties on the lack of cooperation coming from Iran on their commitments to nuclear non-proliferation in a new and disturbing report to the UN Security Council. The Washington Post reports that the international nuclear watchdog has highlighted new centrifuge development and “information gaps” that prevent the inspectors from knowing the full extent of nuclear research by the mullahcracy:

The United Nations’ atomic monitoring agency reported Friday that Iran continues to expand its uranium enrichment technology and to hold back information that would allow inspectors to determine whether a covert military nuclear program exists.
The report by the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency said Iran is conducting an enrichment program in defiance of U.N. Security Council demands to halt it. Agency inspectors who visited Iranian sites observed construction of additional centrifuges for expanding uranium enrichment operations, the report said.
Agency inspectors found no “undeclared nuclear material in Iran,” the report said. But it added that because of information gaps, “including the role of the military in Iran’s nuclear program, the agency is unable to make progress in its efforts to provide assurance about the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran.”
The report gives the United States and other Western countries ammunition to convene a debate in the U.N. Security Council next week on possible sanctions or other international pressures against Iran. Within minutes of the report becoming public late Friday afternoon Europe time, British officials urged such a debate.

George Bush told reporters that the US and the UK would bring the matter back to the Security Council, where both will press for economic sanctions as a response to Iranian defiance. Russia and China will likely oppose such a move, with both cautioning today against hasty action that would drive the Iranians from the NPT. That argument lost quite a bit of credibility when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared that Iran “won’t give a damn” about the IAEA or the UNSC.
The report reflects the same defiance. The IAEA repeatedly notes where Iran refused to discuss the open issues of compliance, balked at providing the documentation for nuclear designs it knows Iran purchased from the AQ Khan network, and ignored deadlines for meeting the agency and UNSC resolutions. It generally points out that Iran has stonewalled inspectors in private just as much as they have insulted negotiators and made wild threats in public.
The case for further action is clear. Iran has openly defied the UNSC and the IAEA. US ambassador John Bolton told reporters that the next step will likely be to make the previous resolution mandatory, a step opposed by Russia and China in the first round, and to establish another short deadline for compliance. The two Iranian allies will probably bend on making the resolution mandatory, allowing them to procrastinate another few weeks. If the two oppose it, or if the next deadline comes with the same result and they oppose further action for enforcement, they will have given the US and its European allies the political opening the West needs to pursue their own solution to the Iranian problem. They will also have driven a stake through the heart of their policy of using the UN to diplomatically restrain the US.
Much rides on the next step. Too bad the main actor in this drama is a nutcase like Ahmadinejad.

Quit Digging

Minnesota Senator Mark Dayton, recently selected by Time Magazine as one of the top five worst Senators in office, just can’t seem to stop justifying his inexplicable office closing shortly before the 2004 presidential elections. The Star Tribune tries to assist him by giving him another shovel with which to dig the hole ever deeper:

As Sen. Mark Dayton contemplated closing his office because of a terrorist threat 18 months ago, he huddled privately with his top aides, who warned him that such an unprecedented decision would spell his demise.
“I said, ‘If you close the office and you do so alone, you’ll be committing political suicide. You’ll be isolated.’ … I think my prediction bore out,” said Jack Danielson, Dayton’s chief of staff.
For Dayton, D-Minn., it is the one issue that won’t go away, dragging him down more than a year after he announced he wouldn’t run for a second term and playing a key role in Time magazine’s decision last week to pan him as one of America’s five worst senators.
“It is likely to be my Senate epitaph, which is not what I would choose,” Dayton said in an interview in his Capitol Hill office. His office is fighting back, providing new behind-the-scenes details on his decision, which he says he’s still convinced was right.

Dayton then tries to explain how dire the intel sounded when first released to Congress. He claims that he only had his staff in mind when he shut the office down and sent them home, even though his was the only Congressional office to close down in fear on the basis of that intelligence. The Star Tribune includes accolades from the staffers and their families for this decision, even as it also reports that Dayton’s chief of staff (and presumably a member of the same office) tried to warn him repeatedly that doing this on his own would destroy his career and reputation.
What the Strib fails to include are the contemporaneous reactions of his peers when he unilaterally shut down his offices, including observations from his own caucus that Dayton’s actions appeared unstable:

The surprising response by the freshman senator from Minnesota to the latest in a series of warnings prompted ridicule and a flurry of angry reactions yesterday. Mayor Anthony A. Williams (D) said Dayton’s decision was “ill-informed.” Minnesota’s senior senator, Norm Coleman (R), called Dayton reckless. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) compared him to the boy who cried wolf. Colleagues on both sides of the aisle whispered “paranoid.” …
Dayton’s reaction to the extreme possibility was ridiculous, D.C. Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey said.
“It’s not based on any credible information that’s come in. Nobody knows why he is doing what he is doing,” Ramsey said. “It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to think that the White House and the Capitol are targets. But there is no credible information about planned attacks — nothing to set off the reaction we saw.” …
“He’s damaged us. He’s unnecessarily panicked people across the United States,” said Norton, who has often questioned the federal government’s security moves in the capital. “Now we have a member of Congress who steps out and says, ‘I’m going to tell you something the rest of Congress won’t tell you.’ That’s unfair to the entire security network that is in constant communication about this place.”

No matter how one tries to sell it, Dayton’s actions showed a remarkable lack of testicular fortitude in wartime. When 99 out of 100 Senators all read the same intel and all come to the conclusion that it doesn’t require the government to shut its doors in panic and fear, it highlights the pusillanimity of the 100th member. Dayton can spend the rest of his life trying to justify it, but it won’t wash. Most of us here in Minnesota saw this as either another example of Dayton’s emotional instability or a rather transparent attempt to embarrass the administration on national security in the days before the election. I lean more towards the latter than the former, and I believe Dayton’s bitterness on this topic comes from the fact that his fellow Democrats allowed him to twist in the wind instead of following his example.
Dayton should remember the First Rule Of Political Holes: quit digging.

Lukashenko Jails His Opposition … Again

The man known as Europe’s last dictator lived up to his reputation once again in suppressing dissent in the former Soviet satellite Belarus. Alexander Lukashenko threw opposition leader Alexander Milinkevich in prison for a fortnight after Milinkevich attended an “unsanctioned” protest:

Alexander Milinkevich, the pro-western leader of Belarus’s opposition, was yesterday jailed for 15 days for attending an unsanctioned protest as President Alexander Lukashenko tried to keep a lid on dissent in his Soviet-style regime.
Mr Milinkevich, who won 6% of the votes in March’s discredited presidential election in which Mr Lukashenko claimed 83% and a third term, was arrested by riot police and taken to court. He was charged with the “administrative offence” of attending a 7,000-strong unsanctioned protest on Wednesday to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster. The nuclear accident badly contaminated Belarus, yet the Lukashenko regime has played down its impact and urged people to farm land still regarded by some experts as contaminated.

Apparently Lukashenko only allows people to protest in approved ways, which defeats the entire notion of protest at all. The Belarussian leader has come under diplomatic fire for weeks after running a rigged election in which Lukashenko took 83% of the vote. Europe and the US refuse to issue travel visas to Lukashenko and his staff, leading to the last-minute rerouting of a plane carrying the Belarussian Prime Minister from a trip to Cuba a week ago.
The Belarussian government has made no secret of its affiliation with Vladimir Putin, and the latter has made no secret of his desire to use Belarus as a buffer between NATO and Russian soil. Putin has seen many of his former buffers disappear, the victim of populist uprisings against the corrupt strongment that Moscow props up. Inevitably, this results in hostility towards Russia on behalf of the people oppressed by its erstwhile allies.
Putin and Lukashenko may win the short game, but they are losing the long war against tyranny and autocracy. Tyrants who feel the need to hold mock elections are already one foot into forced exile. When the Belarussians decide that they have had enough, Lukashenko had better already have his Moscow dacha selected and purchased outright. With this flimsy excuse for a detention, that day may come even quicker than Lukashenko imagines.

Southern Border Crossings Not Just For Workers Any More

Thomas Joscelyn reports that transcriptions of Guantanamo Bay hearing uncovered plots by two different Islamist terror groups to send its volunteers into the United States through Mexico, exploiting the border we seem unwilling to credibly secure:

The detainee explains his travels thusly:
I did not take a boat from one country to another. I did take a small boat to cross rivers inside Mexico. I do not know all the countries I went to. I did take a plane from Pakistan to Guatemala. From there I traveled by foot and vehicle to Mexico.
The most intriguing aspect of the transcript concerns the allegations surrounding the smuggler responsible for getting the detainee across the border. The government alleges:
The smuggler responsible for the above-mentioned vessel has close business ties with an individual known to help coordinate smuggling operations for members of Hizballah and al-Gama’at al-Islamiyya; Hizballah and al-Gama’at al-Islamiyya are known terrorist groups.

Joscelyn reminds his readers that Hezbollah is one of the oldest and most successful of the Islamist terror organizations operating. It has conducted operations in Argentina, killing a number of Jews in a string of bombings that culminated in an attack on a Jewish community center in 1994. Al-Gama’at al-Islamiyya has affiliated itself with al-Qaeda occasionally, but has more exposure as the group run by Sheiks Omar Abdel-Rahman, the “blind sheikh” who conspired with other terrorists to bomb the World Trade Center in 1993. Rahman currently resides here in Minnesota as a permanent guest of the federal government, and over the years IG has proclaimed a desire to set him free through extortion and terrorism.
Read all of Joscelyn’s post. Remember that we have long worried about the ability of terrorist groups to infiltrate the US through the porous southern border. It highlights the stubbornly naive approach taken by the Senate and endorsed by the White House in pursuing immigration reform. This underscores the need to secure the border first before we discuss normalizing those left inside the US.

Goodman: Stop Kerry Before He Runs Again!

With John Kerry making more high-profile appearances and having his opinions published in the New York Times, everyone assumes he plans to make another presidential run in 2008. Despite having the advantage of Bush Derangement Syndrome on his side, not to mention CBS’ 60 Minutes Wednesday, Kerry could not win the general election in 2004. Boston Globe columnist and Kerry supporter Ellen Goodman sees no reason to believe he could do better in 2008, either:

The signs that John Kerry is going to run for president in 2008 are rising faster than the pollen count. There was the requisite New York Times op-ed — How many days late? How many dollars short? — on getting out of Iraq. There was the Globe op-ed that preceded the speech supporting war dissenters at Faneuil Hall to an audience of groupies yelling ”Run” and ”2008.” There was Ted Kennedy’s remark, ”If he runs, I’m supporting him.”
And then there was his op-ed in The Manchester Union-Leader defending New Hampshire’s place as first-in-the-nation primary. A true profile in courage.
All of this leads me to blurt out: ”Stop him before he kills (the Democrats’ chances) again.”

Goodman, who has voted for Kerry six times now, makes the rather obvious point that Kerry turned out to be a rather bad politician. He ran on a paper-thin legislative record despite his lengthy tenure in the Senate, and tried to transform that into substance while he waffled on everything from Iraq to Cambodia. As Goodman implies, he had everything going for him in the last election — an unpopular war, general unease about the economic situation (misplaced though it was), and a majority of the electorate looking for a change — and he couldn’t close the sale.
Why does Goodman fear for her party? She explains rather baldly that Kerry doesn’t believe in anything as much as he has proposals for everything. He has no real vision for the nation except that he should lead it. The lack of substance in two decades of Senate work reflected in a general lack of substance on the campaign trail, where Democrats embraced him mostly because they discovered that Howard Dean couldn’t get elected or even win a primary outside of Vermont.
Of course, these are the same reasons why Republicans want to see Kerry give it another try. The real subtext of Goodman’s column isn’t so much that she opposes Kerry as a candidate, but that she knows a serious run in the primaries will damage the eventual national ticket on which Kerry has no chance of appearing. In this she probably doesn’t have that much cause for concern. Russ Feingold is the candidate that will split the party between the ANSWER/MoveOn crowd and the DLC-type moderates. Kerry will receive the polite yet slightly embarrassed acknowledgement that one gives a celebrity whose star has long faded but fails to realize it.