We admit to being perplexed enough by Matthew Mosk’s Sunday article in WaPo, claiming that GOP “voter fraud” zealot Hans von Spakovsky, formerly of the DoJ Civil Rights voting unit, was “cleared” by a U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) inspector general’s report, to poke around for a few minutes trying to figure out who this Mosk was, and how the hell he figured the report “cleared” von Spakovsy of anything.
vS was one of the notorious villians at the DoJ who politicized the hell out of the Civil Rights division by turning it into a blunt instrument to keep minority voters from being able to cast their lawful vote in any way he could figure out how to do.
He is also the failed nominee for the FEC who still has yet to show enough grace to remove his name from consideration, as he has singlehandedly succeeded in ensuring that the commission is entirely crippled, unable to vote on anything without a quorum, during an election year.
As the IG’s report on whether the EAC was inappropriately influenced, by von Spakovsky and others, to withhold and the re-write a bi-partisan study on voter fraud, the then-chair of the EAC, Paul DiGregorio — a Republican himself — said that “too many of [von Spakovsky’s] decisions are clouded by his partisan thinking”…vS “certainly tried to influence…There’s no question about that,” and that, the EAC chair felt that “von Spakovsky thought he should use his position (on the EAC commission) to advance the Republican Party position.”
Mosk used his WaPo article then, to quote vS alleging that the “conclusions (of the EAC IG report) represented a personal vindication” for him. Huh?
We got distracted by other business, and were unable to finish our poking around to figure out what Mosk might have been after, and why this article, on a report published three weeks ago suddenly became “news” to the Washington Post, with “clearance” of von Spakovsky as the central meme.
J. Gerald Hebert, over at the Campaign Legal Center Blog seems to have come away with the same perplexed reaction, opening his article yesterday with…
In any event, the article’s conclusion that the Report “cleared” von Spakovsky of any attempts at influencing EAC Commissioners is contrary to the facts set forth in the report.· In fact, the report indicated on several occasions that he in fact did make attempts at influencing EAC commissioners for political reasons.· In the report former EAC Commissioner Paul DeGregorio is quoted as saying that “too many of [von Spakovsky’s] decisions are clouded by his partisan thinking.” ·DeGregorio also said that von Spakovsky “certainly tried to influence” him, adding: “There’s no question about that.”·· Finally, the report stated that “according to DeGregorio, von Spakovsky thought he should use his position (on the EAC commission) to advance the Repuublican Party position.”· So it is clear from this report that von Spakovsky did try and influence DeGregorio for political reasons, but it concludes that such efforts were in the end unsuccessful.· Mosk’s story quotes von Spakovsky as saying that the report’s conclusions “represented a personal vindication.”· This is a vindication? It sounds more like an illustration of incompetence or ineffectiveness at influencing a commissioner for improper reasons.
Hebert goes on to offer more concerns about what was in the IG’s study, versus the way it was reported by WaPo, and concludes with:
So anybody have a clue what all of this is about? Who this Mosk guy is? And why this article comes out with this meme out of nowhere?
This was obviously an attempt to force the Democratic leadership to vote on vS’s nomination. The thinking was, “for anybody who felt there was a cloud over vS’s head, therefore providing legitimate reason to hold or reject his nomination, well the cloud is gone, bring him up for a vote now!”
I wonder how a vote would go for the GOP? Wouldn’t he lose on an up/down vote?
For all we know,Mosk might actually be von Spakovsky himself!!
‘Strategery’-wise, the Von Spakovsky nom is a window into the Republican Party soul:
On the one hand, if Dems are stupid enough to cave to Repub pressure and vote him in as FEC head, then he IS the fox in the henhouse, who will use his position to improperly promote Repub party interests over the interests of his country (what kind of person puts party over country?) in this crucial election year.
On the other hand, the current stalemate provided by Sen. Obama’s brilliant move to put a hold on the vS nom has similar benefits for the Repubs — for one, they have hilariously attempted to smash up the Dems for being ‘obstructionist’, although honest Americans are catching on to their dishonest tactics.
Plus, no FEC means no investigation into the McCain campaign’s violation of McCain’s own campaign-finance reform laws — a felony with substantial fines and up to five years in prison. If any other Repub campaigns are laundering money Tom Delay-style, then they will get away with it, too.
Naturally, Dems can take improper advantage of a non-functioning FEC to do the same — but they are not the architects of this stalemate, the GOP is.
So either way, the Repubs can pat themselves on the back for their machinations — because either way they can twist the situation to suit their goals. No matter that it’s at the cost of fairness and against the spirit of the Constitution, the rule of law, and other such quaint notions. Yep, them’s true patriots.
Well parsed, Des.
matthew mosk has shared a byline with the infamous john solomon, notorious dem-chaser. that’s who he is, but why the wapo would exercise such poor editorial management is the larger question.
my suspicion about mosk’s (and solomon’s) placement on staff is that this is part of a wapo lean toward ‘balance,’ though clearly not balanced journalism. balanced what, who knows? boot-licking?
yeah, that’s the ticket; balanced boot-licking. the post-modern face of american journatainment.