Something I agree with the Kerry Camp on
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| Mon, 06-28-2004 - 8:50am |
I think this is completely dirty and disgusting, let alone uncalled for. There is no need for us to see anyone's divorce papers. Oh, this makes me mad.
http://www.drudgereport.com/kerryt.htm
CHASE ON FOR SEALED KERRY DIVORCE DOCUMENTS; PAPER FRENZY AFTER ILLINOIS SENATE RACE RELEASE
After last week's front page headlines over ugly unsealed divorce records in the Republican Illinois senate race, media outlets now face a dilemma: What to do about Democrat presidential hopeful John Kerry's sealed divorce records!
The race is on in political and media circles to gauge the import of Kerry's sealed July 25, 1988 divorce from his first wife, Julia Stimson Thorne.
TRIBUNE, which successfully sued a court to gain access to Illinois Republican Jack Ryan's divorce papers and child custody records , is considering a similar push on Kerry, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.
Other news outlets may soon follow.
CAMPAIGN CALLS DIVORCE DIGGING 'GUTTER BALL'
The Kerry campaign late Sunday called any old divorce digging a game of political "gutter ball."
"This is a trash hunt," said a senior Kerry source, who asked not to be named.
"No, I do not have a clue what is in the papers," explained the source. "But it is none of my business. And its none of your business, or any one's business... You're playing a game of gutter ball, Drudge."
"I would argue, adamantly, the records should remain sealed. And out of the hands of John's political enemies."
JUDGE: PUBLIC'S RIGHT TO KNOW
The Los Angeles judge which ordered the release of Ryan's sealed divorce ruled that the public interest in having access to the case records outweighed the Ryans' interest in protecting their child from the publicity that would follow the documents' release.
Ryan and his former wife released a statement saying they were "disturbed and angered" by last week's ruling by Superior Court Judge Robert Schnider, who was named a full judge by California Democrat Gov. Gray Davis.
"They were aware they were in a public court system and protection from embarrassment cannot be a basis for keeping from the public what's put in public courts," said Schnider, referring to Ryan and his ex-wife, actress Jeri Ryan. "The openness of court files must be maintained, so that the public ... can be assured that there is no favoritism shown to the rich and powerful."
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In 1991, a court also sealed a complaint amending the Kerry-Thorne divorce, concerning economic and child visitation issues, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.
In her 1996 book, "Change of Heart," Thorne said that playing the role of wife to the rising political star had made her so depressed she wanted to kill herself.
Thorne said she still associates politics "only with anger, fear, and loneliness."
She wrote "A Change Of Heart" to help other unhappily married couples; in the book, she called her relationship with Kerry a "suffocating marriage."
Developing...
Miffy - Co-CL For The Politics Today Board
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I go back in saying, whatever happened to the issues? Are they not important enough to debate? Politics is an ugly business anymore. No wonder we get the worst of the lot.
I go back in saying, whatever happened to the issues? Are they not important enough to debate? Politics is an ugly business anymore. No wonder we get the worst of the lot.>>
Refreshing words of wisdom, Sondra.
Miffy - Co-CL For The Politics Today Board
Renee ~~~
What reason did the judge give for opening them ?
Ryan documents to be unsealed
http://www.dailysouthtown.com/southtown/dsnews/183nd2.htm
Friday, June 18, 2004
By Gary Gentile
The Associated Press
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LOS ANGELES — A judge ruled Thursday that potentially embarrassing documents related to a custody battle involving Illinois Republican Senate candidate Jack Ryan and his ex-wife, actress Jeri Ryan, will be unsealed.
Superior Court Judge Robert A. Schnider ruled that portions of the documents should be released because of Ryan's high-profile candidacy.
"The overriding public interest must be served here," Schnider said.
Ryan's candidacy "establishes even a broader interest of the public to know claims about behavior that may be damaging to him, may be embarrassing to him, and may harm the child," Schnider said. The couple has a 9-year-old son.
No documents were unsealed Thursday and the judge stayed his ruling until June 28 to give the parties involved a chance to appeal.
Ryan's campaign released a statement from the candidate Thursday night, saying that he and his ex-wife were weighing their options.
"Nothing is more important to me than the health of our son," according to the statement.
Communications director Bill Pascoe said those options include appealing Schnider's ruling, but he said Ryan had not yet made a decision.
Pascoe said Ryan will be talking with other Republican leaders over the next several days. He said Ryan was determined to stay in the race against Democratic rival Barack Obama.
On March 12, Illinois Republican Chairman Judy Baar Topinka told reporters that Ryan assured her there was nothing embarrassing in the records.
"I consider him an honest man and I take him at his word," she said.
Topinka was not available Thursday night, party spokesman Jason Gerwig said.
Pascoe said Ryan tried to reach Topinka Thursday night but had been unable to do so.
Ryan addressed the issue of the records Monday when meeting with reporters, saying, "Is there anything thing in there that might be embarrassing to me? Maybe. But that's not the criterion."
All along he has that he would oppose any release of documents that could intrude on the privacy of his son.
On Thursday, a California judge ruled that most of the documents that relate to accusations the parents made against each other will be made public. Documents that relate primarily to issues involving the boy will remain sealed.
The ruling satisfied the lawyer representing the Chicago Tribune and WLS-TV in Chicago, which sued to unseal the records after Jack Ryan entered the Senate race.
"We're pleased with the ruling," attorney Susan Seager said. "We think it reaches the right conclusion."
Seager said the public has a right to see the documents, especially since Ryan "declared himself to be a family values candidate."
The judge cleared the court of all spectators, including Seager, for about 40 minutes to conduct private arguments with the two lawyers representing Jack Ryan, a millionaire investment banker, and Jeri Ryan, of TV's "Boston Public" and "Star Trek: Voyager."
Schnider said he agreed with arguments made by the attorneys for both parents that "the publicity that would be generated would become known to the child and will have a significant deleterious effect on the child."
"This is a child whose development would likely be affected by the release of information regarding his parents that might also be embarrassing to the parents," Schnider said. "That's as clear as I can get."
However, he said the public interest in unsealing the documents that deal directly with accusations between the parents outweighs the private interests. He said some portions of those documents will be edited to keep them from public view.
The judge's ruling went further than a recommendation made earlier this month by a referee appointed by Schnider to examine the 40 or so documents.
The documents were originally sealed by Schnider in 2000 and 2001 and relate to a divorce that was granted in 1995.
Ryan is running against Democrat Barack Obama in the Senate race.
http://www.dailysouthtown.com/southtown/dsindex/24-ds1.htm
No clear way out for Ryan
History shows that when a political sex scandal breaks, there is no tried-and-true fix
Thursday, June 24, 2004
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WASHINGTON — Gary Hart paid dearly for his "fool mistake," Bill Clinton bulldozed through his "bimbo eruptions," and Barney Frank won forgiveness by talking about his transgressions until everyone was tired of hearing about them.
Denial, disclosure, silence, contrition — public figures have many ways to deal with a sex scandal, none guaranteeing success. Now Illinois Senate candidate Jack Ryan, alleged to have taken his ex-wife to sex clubs, is on that familiar, treacherous path of scandal management.
Already Ryan has stepped into a bog, scandal experts say, by allowing his veracity, not just questions about his past, to become an issue. Some fellow Republicans say he misled them by assuring them there was nothing awry in divorce papers he knew contained salacious charges — whether those allegations are true or false.
"That's a gotcha," said Eric Dezenhall, a crisis-management consultant who helps corporate leaders and other figures get out of scrapes. "Whenever something emerges that directly contradicts the earlier claim, that's a gotcha."
Constitutional law expert Robert P. George, who teaches about the relationship between politics and ethics at Princeton, said candidates who drop bombshells on their party may be beyond rescue.
"The worst thing you can do is surprise people you're in a foxhole with," he said. "People can take a lot of bad news. They don't like to get bad news as a surprise."
Ryan denies his ex-wife's allegations in 4-year-old divorce files that he took her to "bizarre clubs" where he asked her to have sex in front of other people, acknowledging only that they went to one avant-garde club in Paris where they both felt creepy.
His campaign released a statement from Jeri Lynn Ryan calling her ex-husband a "good man, a loving father" without addressing the substance of her charges. George said that was another mistake. "If she's going to speak and not deny the charges, it really looks damning," he said. "Even if he's innocent, he's in big trouble."
To scan the landscape of political scandal is to see no clear road map to survival; what salvages a career in one situation sinks it in another.
After the House reprimanded Frank in 1989 for using his influence on behalf of a male prostitute he had paid for sex, the Massachusetts Democrat faced constituents for hour after hour until the subject was exhausted, and saved his career.
But Republican Bob Livingston, House speaker-designate in 1998, acknowledged he had "on occasion strayed from my marriage" and won no reward for his confession. He gave up his leadership aspirations and then his seat within months.
"These silly damage-control ground rules such as apologize, show contrition — for every example where one of these public relations dictums is held out as the right thing to do, I can show you a case where it backfired," Dezenhall said.
"A lot depends on the likeability of the person under fire and the climate under which it's happening and what voters' options are," he said.
As for Ryan, Dezenhall said, "the best of his bad options is to slug it out for a while." But he questioned whether voters will be able to shake the notion of "kinky Republicans" and take him seriously.
Suzanne Garment, author of "Scandal: The Culture of Mistrust in American Politics," says people can overlook human failings such as a past drug addiction or perhaps a case of infidelity when the aggrieved spouse has already offered forgiveness.
"To express contrition over having frequented sex clubs is harder," she said. "It's possible. It would help if he had been born again since the offense."
Even so, she added, "it's not a high crime."
Washington's rich history of misbehavior shows that denial is frequently the first instinct, even if that vaporizes when confronted with evidence such as Monica Lewinsky's blue dress.
Attempts to discredit the source also are common — a tack taken against Anita Hill when she accused Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas of lecherous behavior. It was taken again when Clinton's 1992 campaign, fighting what an aide called "bimbo eruptions," hired detectives to check some of the 20 or so women who were in various stages of coming forward to claim an intimate past with him.
In 1987, Hart challenged the press to "follow me around" to check on rumors of his womanizing. That challenge destroyed his Democratic presidential aspirations when his dalliance with Donna Rice came out and changed the standard on when private behavior becomes the public's business.
Many before and since were able to tough it out. Massachusetts Sen. Edward M. Kennedy still serves in the Senate, 35 years after his car went off a bridge at Chappaquiddick and he swam to safety while Mary Jo Kopechne, his young companion, drowned. "Irrational and indefensible and inexcusable and inexplicable," he called his actions.
Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger won his race for California governor last year despite the 16 women who came forward to accuse him of groping them over the years. He acknowledged he had "behaved badly sometimes."
George doubted Ryan could pull that off.
"It takes Clinton-level people skills to get past that," he said. "Even Clinton, without Hillary, wouldn't have survived it."
And if the charges of misbehavior had come from his wife, George added, Clinton's presidency "would have been dead in three minutes."
This is why politics make me sick!
I agree-if Bush's campaign tries to use it, I think it will backfire in a big way. Hopefully outside Bush supporters won't do it anyway without the campaign's approval, because it will still reflect badly on Bush if that happens.
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On the surface level, it would seem smart of the Bush campaign to have an "outside source" dig up as much mud on Kerry's divorce as possible, and then to make Bush look good, have Bush angrily denounce those who are dragging up the mud on Kerry.
There are two problems with that, one is that many people might not believe Bush's feigned anger, and two, it might encourage the Democrats to look deeper into Bush's "party years" where he was rumoured to have used illegal drugs such as cocaine, as well as booze.
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My belief is that not only are the journalists down in the gutter, but that both political parties are too. The only reason I believe the political parties don't dig up more mud on each other, is that both candidates have potentially too many skeletons in their respective closets.
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Most of us aren't saints, any of us who have lived awhile have done something we are ashamed of or don't want others to know of. Maybe we had an affair and cheated on our spouse. Maybe we used illegal drugs or had a drinking problem or made a fool of ourselves while drinking one night. Maybe we said something racist or sexist. Maybe we saw a shrink. Maybe we got into a violent fight or argument while drinking one night. Maybe we visited a sex club.
Maybe we had a messy divorce. The list goes on and on.
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The bad part about this is that basically good and talented men and women who may have a flaw or two, or who may have had a difficult peroid in their life, will be discouraged from running for political office. So we end up with very mediocre saints running for office who couldn't run a poscicle stand properely.
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Oh, you know it!
Miffy - Co-CL For The Politics Today Board
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