Tag: Politics

Judge Tuttman and the truth

The easy vilification of Superior Court Judge Kathe Tuttman, the Mitt Romney-appointed judge who freed Daniel Tavares, is looking more problematic by the day. Tavares, who’d been imprisoned for killing his mother, is now suspected of murdering a couple in Washington state.

Earlier this week, the Boston Herald reported that an oversight by Tuttman’s office several years ago, when she was an Essex County prosecutor, resulted in a child rapist’s being improperly released from prison rather than recommitted in civil court.

But, now, Essex County District Attorney Jonathan Blodgett tells Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly reporter Noah Schaffer that Tuttman was being “magnanimous” when she took the rap in a 2005 interview with the Daily Item of Lynn. And an anonymous source informs Schaffer that the paperwork had landed on the desk of an assistant court clerk and died there. As a prosecutor, Tuttman would have had no authority over a clerk, who was an employee of the judiciary.

Also, in an editorial, Lawyers Weekly presents a strong argument that the bail hearing leading to Tavares’ release was, from the point of view of any judge, absolutely routine, and that if there was any fault to be apportioned, it was a failure on the law-enforcement side to place all relevant facts before Judge Tuttman.

There’s also an especially nice description of a Herald column by WTKK (96.9 FM) talk-show host Michael Graham: “a lazy rant … that was bereft of any sort of research whatsoever,” leading up to “a caveman-level conclusion: that Tuttman had been appointed only because Romney wanted to add some ‘chicks’ to the bench.”

Finally, Jonathan Saltzman and Keith O’Brien report in the Boston Globe today that the Bristol County district attorney’s office had evidence that Tavares had killed a Fall River woman — Tavares actually led officials to her grave in 2000 — but that Tavares was never charged.

Add this earlier report that the Worcester County DA’s office had been lax in tracking down Tavares, and you begin to see that blaming Tuttman for what happened — or, at least, blaming Tuttman solely for what happened — is ridiculous.

Jay Severin, unreliable source

Here’s the kind of false propaganda Jay Severin pumps into the heads of his listeners, whom he likes to call “the best and the brightest.” Within the past 15 minutes, he went into a riff about how the mainstream media, out of “professional courtesy,” would not cover the fact that CNN had allowed Democratic ringers to take part in the YouTube debate. He specifically mentioned the New York Times as refusing to cover the story.

In fact, both the New York Times and the Washington Post ran prominent stories today, both of which were featured on Jim Romenesko’s heavily trafficked media-news site, along with Media Nation. Now, the Times and the Post are only the two most important newspapers in the country. But just for good measure, check out the results of this Google News search.

Severin either lied about today’s Times (and the rest of the media), or bloviated about what he imagined the Times had done without bothering to check. I’m not sure which is worse.

How CNN blew it

If CNN executives took citizen media seriously, then they wouldn’t be facing charges that they’re in the tank for the Democrats. Well, OK, they probably would, but the charges wouldn’t seem as credible.

Following Wednesday night’s CNN/YouTube debate, it was revealed that retired general Keith Kerr, a gay man who asked the candidates a pointed question about why they oppose letting openly gay men and lesbians from serving in the military, was a prominent supporter of Hillary Clinton’s. And that turned out to be only the most notable of what conservative blogger Michelle Malkin is calling Democratic “plants.”

Well, of course, it was incredibly stupid of CNN to do such a poor job of vetting the 5,000 or so videos that were submitted by YouTube users. And it certainly didn’t help that Kerr was allowed to hector the candidates from the audience. His question was perfectly legitimate, but his Clinton affiliation should have disqualified him. (And it’s too bad that Anderson Cooper is getting tainted by this. I thought he did an exceptionally good job of keeping the proceedings moving along while remaining substantive.)

But why is CNN deciding which videos to use in the first place? As my former Boston Phoenix colleague David Bernstein wrote after the first Democratic YouTube debate in July, CNN “pretty much created a TV show out of the free raw video materials, not entirely unlike an episode of America’s Funniest Home Videos.”

So let me repeat and expand on a suggestion I made back then: If CNN wants to harness the power of citizen media, then it should go all the way. Here’s what I’d do:

  • Have people upload videos in six or eight subject categories — the war in Iraq, terrorism, taxes, immigration, the environment, whatever.
  • Subject those videos to light vetting to make sure none is tilted for or against a particular candidate, or is grotesquely offensive.
  • Let the YouTube community vote on the best video in each category. Those are the questions that will be asked.

Such a system wouldn’t be perfect. One problem, of course, is that the candidates would get to see the questions ahead of time. But so what? We should be looking for thoughtful answers rather than making these debates a test as to who can spit out the best instantaneous soundbites.

There’s also the possibility that the process would be hijacked in some way. But I think that’s a risk worth taking. Besides, how would that be any worse than letting people associated with Hillary Clinton’s and John Edwards’ campaigns ask questions, as CNN did?

“Score this one for the people,” says the Boston Globe in an editorial today. Well, no. This was CNN’s show from start to finish. Let the people decide — then we can celebrate.

Mooning Obama

I don’t need to say anything about the Washington Post’s shockingly bad story today about persistent but false rumors that Barack Obama is a Muslim, and about how that may affect his presidential candidacy. Paul McLeary has already hit every low point at CJR.org.

But just to pile on a little — the Post fails to point out that one of the purveyors of religious hatred against Obama, the online magazine Insight, is owned by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church.

The Governor’s Council strikes again

How pathetic is this? The Boston Herald reports today that two members of the Governor’s Council are unhappy they were not told about Kathe Tuttman’s role in letting a child rapist go before they approved her nomination as a judge. In fact, they have no one but themselves to blame for their ignorance.

Tuttman, of course, is the judge at the center of the controversy over convicted killer Daniel Tavares, who was released and is now the suspect in the murder of a young couple in Washington state. Mitt Romney, who appointed her to the bench when he was governor, is now demanding her resignation — despite a plethora of evidence that Tavares was released because of a systemic breakdown involving several public officials, as Shelley Murphy reports in the Boston Globe.

According to today’s Herald story (link now fixed), by Dave Wedge and Jessica Van Sack, Councilor Marilyn Petitto Devaney says she is “shocked and outraged” that the council was never told about the earlier incident, while Councilor Mary-Ellen Manning has joined her in asking Gov. Deval Patrick to take steps to remove Tuttman from the bench.

Yet, as Wedge wrote yesterday, the Daily Item of Lynn reported on the child rapist’s release in 2005, six months before Tuttman, then an Essex County prosecutor, had even been nominated as a judge. Referring to the fact that the rapist, Daniel Parra, had been released because Tuttman’s office had missed a deadline to recommit him civilly, Tuttman told the Item: “In terms of our own internal protocol, we have, since this occurred, developed a system to keep a case from falling through the cracks again.” (In today’s Item, Thor Jourgensen reports that Essex County District Attorney Jonathan Blodgett is defending Tuttman’s track record.)

And get this: Manning lives in Peabody, which is part of the Item’s circulation area. Shouldn’t Governor’s Council members read the papers in their district?

The Herald story also quotes Mitt Romney’s lieutenant governor, Kerry Healey, as saying the administration didn’t know nothin’. “I wish that sort of information had been more available during the public hearing process,” Healey said. “It seems this process, despite its thoroughness, and I can attest to its thoroughness, failed.” Hmmm … I would assume that the customary definition of “thoroughness” would include checking the clips.

So why exactly do we have a Governor’s Council? It is nothing but a useless holdover from Colonial times — a third branch of the Legislature, when, in fact, two are quite enough. Let the Senate hold hearings and vote on judicial appointments. The senators might not be any better at it than the councilors. But they’re better known and more accountable than members of the Governor’s Council are.

Maybe the hearings would even get some attention — which would make it more likely that stories such as the one involving Tuttman, hidden in plain sight, would come to light before any vote was taken.

Romney claims victim status

Now why didn’t Michael Dukakis think of this? If only the Duke’s campaign had whispered that Willie Horton “had once threatened to assassinate him,” as Mitt Romney’s people want us to believe was the case with Daniel Tavares Jr., he might have been elected president.

More: Not to be overly flip. Here’s something that’s on Tavares’ Massachusetts Department of Correction release form: “In February 2006, he threatened to kill the governor and attorney general of MA, Bristol County Sheriff, and other law enforcement officials when released.” So, no, the Romney folks aren’t making this up.

An awkward moment for Obama

My friend and former Phoenix colleague Michael Crowley has beaten me to it.

Yesterday I was listening to the podcast of “Meet the Press,” which this week featured Sen. Barack Obama. For the most part, it was standard-issue Tim Russert, as Obama easily batted away questions of the tired old “how can you be for campaign-finance reform when you raise money from special interests” variety.

But, as I was driving past Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Custom House, I nearly had to pull over for this exchange:

Russert: [O]ther critics will say that you’ve not been a leader against the war, and they point to this: In July of ’04, Barack Obama, “I’m not privy to Senate intelligence reports. What would I have done? I don’t know,” in terms of how you would have voted on the war. And then this: “There’s not much of a difference between my position on Iraq and George Bush’s position at this stage.” That was July of ’04. And this: “I think” there’s “some room for disagreement in that initial decision to vote for authorization of the war.” It doesn’t seem that you are firmly wedded against the war, and that you left some wiggle room that, if you had been in the Senate, you may have voted for it.

Obama: Now, Tim, that first quote was made with an interview with a guy named Tim Russert on “Meet the Press” during the convention when we had a nominee for the presidency and a vice president, both of whom had voted for the war. And so it, it probably was the wrong time for me to be making a strong case against our party’s nominees’ decisions when it came to Iraq.

Obama — shading the truth then, telling it straight now? Not a very good campaign slogan. Or as Crowley writes, “Obama might argue that there’s a difference between speaking as a nominee and speaking about the nominee. Still, even by his own account, this episode hardly seems to live up to the tough standards he set last night” — referring to a rousing speech Obama had given in Iowa the night before.

In July 2004, Obama went beyond cooling down his rhetoric in order to accommodate John Kerry and John Edwards, and his explanation for that now is cynical. Obama’s flagging campaign has caught a few sparks in the past week. It will be interesting to see whether he did himself any real damage yesterday.

Update: Media Matters reports that Russert creatively sliced and diced Obama’s comments from three years ago. No surprise there. But what concerns me is what Obama said yesterday.