Jon Lauck author of the DVT blog was accused of being factually incorrect in a letter in today's Argus Leader:
Benjamin D. Lehman Watertown published: 4/24/2004In a recent story, David Kranz quoted South Dakota State University assistant professor Jon Lauck attacking Sen. Tom Daschle, D-S.D. I am concerned that the Argus Leader is quoting Lauck as some sort of unbiased academic. Lauck is a rabid and controversial partisan who is deeply involved with former Rep. John Thune, R-S.D.
• In 2002, Jon Lauck was the head of Lawyers for Thune and as the Argus Leader has reported led Thune's efforts to falsely accuse Native Americans of voter fraud.
• Lauck operates a Web site that primarily attacks Daschle.
• Lauck recently campaigned with Thune when he came to Brookings.
On top of all of that, his analysis in Kranz's story is also factually inaccurate. Lauck claims that the energy bill failed because of passage of the Medicare bill. The Medicare vote came a week after the energy bill.
The last paragraph does not provide the entire history. Conference reports of both issues were being dealt with at the same time by the Senate as described by this MSNBC report:
An attempt on Friday to shut off debate and bring the measure up for a final vote fell two senators short of the 60 needed. Repeated attempts failed over the weekend to find two lawmakers willing to change votes, GOP sources said.On Monday, the White House stepped up pressure on House Republican leaders to support a proposal that would strip away a controversial provision in the bill that would give manufacturers of a gasoline additive, MTBE, protection against environmental lawsuits.
The MTBE issue prompted widespread criticism of the massive bill when it came before the Senate.
While progress was being made in the House to try to strip out the MTBE liability language, it became increasingly clear late Monday that Republican leaders were not going to get the votes needed in the Senate.The GOP source said several Democrats had expressed a willingness to shift their votes and support the energy bill if the MTBE liability provision was taken out, but backed away from the idea after Republicans won a key vote on a prescription drug bill.
So on Friday 11/21/04 the vote on cloture relative to the energy bill failed, but the issue was still alive. Then on Monday 11/24/04, the vote on cloture regarding the Prescription Drug benefit for Medicare prevailed and that prevented a second attempt to stop the filibuster on the energy bill. Daschle did not have the clout to convince fellow Democrats to allow the Republicans to provide two victories that were beneficial to South Dakota. Another vote on cloture regarding the energy bill was doomed.
Benjamin D. Lehman owes Jon Lauck an apology, but I doubt it will happen. Lehman has a brother (Jonathon) who is a legislative assistant on environment and energy for Tom Daschle. DVT has received additional insight on this partisan Daschle supporter:
Let me tell you a little bit about Ben Lehman. This isn’t the first letter he has written for Tom “Puffy” Daschle”. He writes about a letter every other month for Puffy. First he is a law student at William Mitchell law school in the Twin Cities. (From what I heard he doesn’t spend much time in Watertown SD). His brother works for Tom Daschle in Washington DC. Ben is also engaged to a woman who works for the Tom Daschle campaign. She also worked for the Tim Johnson campaign in 2002.This is just another example of how the Daschle supporters will try anything, including false and misleading attacks, to prevent a full and complete disclosure of what happens in Washington DC.
Also note that the Daschle supporters have blamed the Republicans for the energy bill's demise, because Republicans would not remove the MTBE liability provision. Note the MSNBC report instead mentions that the Democrats that were demanding the removal of the MTBE liability provision gave up entirely on the energy bill after the prescription drug benefit vote. The MTBE liability provision became mute.
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