I am writing today to announce the closure of the Michigan Messenger. After four years of operation in Michigan, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news into a single site, The American Independent at Americanindependent.com. This is part of a shift in strategy, towards new forms [...]
An abstinence-only presentation provided to numerous school districts in Calhoun and Eaton Counties in October of this year provided false and misleading information to students about HIV, experts allege.
Two county registers of deeds filed a class action lawsuit Monday on behalf of Michigan’s 83 counties alleging that the Mortgage Electronic Registration Services owes millions of dollars in property title transfer taxes.
Despite evidence of the impact of mercury on children and public health, Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette last month joined with 24 other state attorneys general in filing a lawsuit to scuttle new EPA regulations that would reduce mercury emissions from power plants.
Rep. Peter Hoekstra seems not to have learned the first rule of politics: If you’re already in a hole, stop digging. He’s come out swinging at those who have criticized him for revealing the exact location and itinerary of a Congressional delegation to Baghdad that included him to his Twitter account, posting a PDF file to his House website pointing to the alleged hypocrisy of Democrats.
He points to several previous delegations abroad that did not have a communications blackout prior to and during the trips:
In fact, senior Democrats have followed a different policy. President Obama, Speaker Pelosi, Secretary Clinton, and even Chairman Reyes are among the many Democrats who have announced their travel to Iraq or other sensitive destinations before arrival or while in country, and have participated in publicized events abroad before returning to the United States.
He lists several Congressional delegations in the past that have had press reports in advance of the trip and even press conferences called to announce those trips. And of course, he’s right. Lots of delegations abroad are publicized in advance and that fact is taken into consideration when planning the security for those delegations.
But did he notice that this particular trip did not begin that way, that there was no advance press at all because no one in the media had been informed of the trip? And has he bothered to wonder why that was or whether that fact perhaps has something to do with why he was told not to reveal anything about the trip until after they came back?
No where in his attack on Democrats does he dispute that he was specifically told not to talk about this trip before or during the trip. CQ Politics, the non-partisan news agency of record for Congress which first reported this incident, makes very clear that this trip “was supposed to be a secret.” They also reported that they had found out about the trip in advance and agreed not to report on it precisely because those charged with security for the delegation believed it would endanger those in the delegation:
Before the delegation left Washington, they were advised to keep the trip to themselves for security reasons. A few media outlets, including Congressional Quarterly, learned about it, but agreed not to disclose anything until the delegation had left Iraq.
And again I must ask the same question I asked the other day: If Rep. Hoekstra really believes that he didn’t do anything wrong by posting all of this to his Twitter account, why did he remove those posts from his account?
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