Inside Politics

Trust in Murdoch

Comedian and professional Bush-basher Al Franken yesterday helped launch Air America — a four-station “progressive” radio network, not the old CIA-run airline. But two conservatives say Rupert Murdoch remains the best hope for liberal radio listeners.

“It doesn’t look good for Air America,” Richard A. Viguerie and David Franke wrote yesterday in the Los Angeles Times.

“But if Air America fails, liberals shouldn’t despair. Rupert Murdoch may come to their rescue,” said the writers, whose book “America’s Right Turn: How Conservatives Used New and Alternative Media to Take Power” will be published in July.

“You read that right. Murdoch is a capitalist, after all, not an ideologue. He will go where the money is, and a recent venture is the Fox News Radio Service. One of its first stars is Alan Colmes, the liberal foil to Sean Hannity on Fox News’ ’Hannity & Colmes.’

“Colmes is already carried by 34 stations, which seems to make Fox and Colmes the most successful liberal talk-radio effort in the nation. Now, isn’t that a hoot!”

A Clarke ad

“CBS News officials say they are ’exploring our options’ after the apparent use of audio from the ’60 Minutes’ interview with former White House counterterrorism official Richard Clarke in a new political commercial by the anti-Bush group MoveOn.org,” Byron York writes at National Review Online (www.nationalreview.com).

“’CBS was unaware that MoveOn.org was using CBS News copyrighted material without permission and to advocate a point of view,’ the company said in a statement. ’We are exploring our options.’

“The MoveOn commercial began playing [Tuesday] on CNN and other news outlets. This is the text of the ad, in its entirety:

“NARRATOR: George Bush shamelessly exploited 9/11 in his campaign commercials. Now, Richard Clarke, his former counterterrorism chief, said:

“CLARKE: I find it outrageous that the president is running for re-election on the grounds that he’s done such great things about terrorism. He ignored terrorism for months when maybe we could have done something to stop 9/11.

“NARRATOR: George Bush. A failure of leadership. MoveOn PAC is responsible for the content of this advertisement.

“Clarke, reached by telephone Wednesday morning, said he did know about the MoveOn ads. He said he did not have time to discuss the matter.”

Diminishing returns

To the surprise of many, President Bush’s standing in the polls rose in conjunction with former terrorism chief Richard A. Clarke’s attacks on the administration. New York Post columnist John Podhoretz thinks he knows why.

“The assaults against the president have been so constant for so many months — on every subject under the sun, from his handling of the economy to the war in Iraq and now to the War on Terror — that the law of diminishing returns has set in,” Mr. Podhoretz writes.

“The people willing to believe the worst of George W. Bush have already gotten the message. The people who like him have tuned out the liberal criticism. And everybody else is just sick of the negativity.”

The columnist added: “The second factor helping the president is the nature of the 9/11 hearings themselves. There’s something about congressional inquiries that just get people’s hackles up. The grandstanding of committee members, the discomfort of the witnesses and the way everybody drones on for hours make it all seem a bit unseemly.”

Back and forth

The leader in a south Texas primary race for Congress keeps changing as new votes are uncovered in the region with a checkered voting history.

Laredo lawyer Henry Cuellar took a 197-vote lead over incumbent Rep. Ciro Rodriguez Tuesday after recounts in two counties in the race for the Democratic nomination in the 28th District, the San Antonio Express-News reported.

The outcome of the race is still unresolved more than three weeks after the Texas primary and more recounts are planned this week in the 11-county district.

Mr. Cuellar took the lead Tuesday, in part, because of 237 votes found among 304 ballots that were either uncounted or unrecorded on election night in Zapata County.

The Rodriguez campaign is planning a lawsuit, United Press International reports.

South Texas has a checkered past in elections. In the legendary “Box 13” incident a cache of 202 votes discovered after a 1948 primary in Jim Wells County helped boost Lyndon B. Johnson to a slim victory in a U.S. Senate race.

Miami vice

Since President Bush was elected, annual federal spending for AIDS-related programs has increased from $12.2 billion in 2000 to $18.5 billion in 2004.

Included in the federal budget is funding for the National HIV/AIDS Update Conference. The four-day conference met this week at the Hyatt Regency Miami. The National Institutes of Health was a “premier” sponsor of the event.

One topic discussed in Miami (where it was 81 degrees and partly cloudy) was “more funding is needed from the federal government,” the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported yesterday.

“Terje Anderson, executive director of the National Association of People with AIDS, said the most pressing issue is the 300,000 to 400,000 people with the virus who are not getting appropriate care. … There were suggestions about the need to get people in the HIV community registered to vote and provide them transportation to the polls if necessary,” the paper reported.

“Funding has stayed flat because black folks, Hispanic folks and gay folks are not voting for George Bush,” Mr. Anderson told the Sun-Sentinel.

Dr. Paul Arons, medical director of the Florida Department of Health’s Bureau of HIV/AIDS, told the Sun-Sentinel: “Some things are not going to change until the people in power change.”

Ashcroft is back

Attorney General John Ashcroft returned to work yesterday after gallbladder surgery in an operation last month at George Washington University Hospital for a severe bout of pancreatitis that sent the nation’s top prosecutor to the emergency room.

Mr. Ashcroft, 61, thanked Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey and those who offered “prayers and expressions of support for my family and me over the past few weeks.” Mr. Comey had been empowered to act for Mr. Ashcroft while he was being treated.

The attorney general was admitted March 4 to the hospital’s intensive-care unit when doctors diagnosed severe gallstone-caused pancreatitis, a painful illness involving inflammation of the pancreas. Dr. Bruce Abell, director of surgical critical care at the hospital, performed the surgery March 9.

Mr. Ashcroft was released from the hospital on March 14 and has been recuperating.

“As I begin to shoulder the responsibility of leading the Department of Justice, I am inspired by the opportunity to work for freedom and the rule of law,” he said.

• Greg Pierce can be reached at 202/636-3285 or gpierce@washingtontimes.com.