Yesterday’s Randell Beck column was regarding letters that were critical of Representative Stephanie Herseth:
Most of the recent letters in question, purporting to be written by several different people, attacked U.S. Rep. Stephanie Herseth, D-S.D., as a diabolical shill for the Republican Party and urged all liberals - all nine of them here in God's Country - to send her packing.
"Herseth ... has never supported any liberal Democratic legislation and cowtowns (sic) to the GOP,'' one particularly intelligent letter writer from Sioux Falls said.
"Many liberal voters have observed that there's little difference between the Republican agenda and Herseth's voting record,'' another one wrote.
And, apparently joining the avalanche of public opinion, still another criticized the congresswoman's support of the recent federal bankruptcy reform legislation: "In her zeal to defend the profit-bloated credit corporations, Herseth voted for legislation devastating to the working poor.''
To be honest, the fact that several people would take issue with Herseth, seemingly one of our more popular politicians, never triggered a question in my mind.
I, along with several other editors, read the letters every day before publication. And I've learned one thing over the years: You just can't predict what people are going to think or say.
But then the Argus Leader received an complaint from the Herseth camp and the Argus was all too happy to investigate it:
But after Herseth's office raised a question last week about the authenticity of the letters, we started nosing around.
The letters, ostensibly authored by different people, originated at the same apartment on Kiwanis Avenue. And all shared the same phone number. We require both pieces of information with all submitted letters so that a clerk can verify them.
While we are careful to verify authors of letters by calling them before publication, our system is not designed to cross-check addresses and phone numbers to spot cases where several letters might originate from the same place.
I don't recall that ever happening. Maybe we've been too trusting.
The letters in question were written sporadically during a six-week period; given the enormous volume of letters we receive, nobody logically could be expected to remember that this letter from a "Mark L. Chandler," one of the authors, bore the same address and phone number as two others from "Justin R. Sanders" or "Jack R. Thompson" several weeks earlier.
For the record, the telephone book has no listings for Chandler, Sanders or Thompson.
But we published their letters anyway - or at least, letters that claimed to be from them.
I am sorry that happened because I don't think those people exist.
So who would be behind such trickery:
When I called the apartment on Kiwanis last week to locate the mysterious letter writers, a young gentleman answered the phone. He identified himself as Kurt Woodard, who, not coincidentally, wrote a letter to the editor published on Sept. 5.
A quick Internet search identifies young Mr. Woodard as the state coordinator for an organization called Progressive Democrats of America, a fledgling national organization devoted to pushing the Democratic Party to the left. Among its supporters are actor Ed Asner, 1960s radical Tom Hayden and ... well, you get the idea. It seems fair to say the PDA probably is not enamored of Herseth's affiliation with the more conservative wing of the Democratic Party.
A little more Internet search would have provided Beck’s readers with more insight as to who is behind this organization. Representative John Conyers, a nineteen term Democrat from Michigan and one of the founders of the Congressional Black Caucus.
Then there is Medea Benjamin:
one of 1000 women nominated collectively for this year's Nobel Peace Prize, has been a powerful and charismatic force in human rights activism for over 20 years. Ever since 9/11, Medea has been organizing against a violent response. She traveled several times to Afghanistan and lead a delegation of 9/11 families there to highlight civilian casualties caused by the US invasion. At the start of 2005, Medea accompanied a delegation of grieving US military families to the Jordanian border to bring a shipment of humanitarian aid for Falluja. Medea is the founding director of Global Exchange, helped to bring together the coalition United for Peace and Justice, and co-founded Code Pink, a women-initiated grassroots movement working to end the war in Iraq, stop new wars, and redirect resources into life-affirming activities. She is currently on a book tour for CODEPINK's first book, Stop the Next War Now.
United for Peace and Justice and Code Pink were behind the Cindy Sheehan crusade in Crawford during the August recess and the September anti-war protest in DC.
And we have Chad Schuldt and other South Dakota leftist bloggers who support Sheehan and the anti-war movement. They also refer to themselves as "progressives". And as Randell Beck found out, these people will resort to lies and deception. Rush Limbaugh said this in regard to the response Louis Freeh is getting from his new book titled "My FBI":
Well, we know the Clinton administration didn't care about terrorism, but I'm going to tell you something. All these denials, this has taken this back to the Clinton years. There'd be all these things come out, every time they'd say, "It's untrue, nothing to it," in the Clinton administration. If you went to work for the Clinton administration, either the press office or in the chief of staff office, your job was to lie for a liar -- and Mac Mclarty job was even more special. He was in charge of coverups for awhile. "Clinton has maintained friendly ties with the Saudis since leaving office. In January 2002, he got $750,000 in speaking fees for going to Saudi Arabia. On a 2003 Saudi visit, Clinton brought along 40 friends at Saudi expense in a private plane, including the actors Chevy Chase and John Cusack and the two founders of Google." This was in the New York Sun. "The Saudis then flew Clinton and his pals to the world economic forum in Davos, Switzerland and then on to Germany. Less than three months later, Clinton praised Saudi Arabia to the 9/11 Commission." So the trashing of Louie Freeh has begun and it will only get worse as the weekend unfolds.
