Alaska vs. Florida
Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, Florida Republican, has seized on Sen. John Kerry’s comments last week that he would allow oil drilling off the coast of Florida.
“It is incredibly two-faced of Senator Kerry to come down to Florida and criticize President Bush’s environmental policies and then say that he would not oppose drilling off the coast of Florida,” Mr. Diaz-Balart said.
Mr. Kerry, citing environmental concerns, has fought against oil drilling in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. However, speaking in Tampa, he said, “I support oil drilling in the right places.”
The presidential candidate added, “There is a capacity to protect what we have today — the protections for the coast of Florida — and still be able to drill in those locations where they’re already permitting, already had the environmental-impact study, they’ve already had the leases.”
The Bush administration stopped efforts to drill for oil off the coast of the Florida Panhandle in 2002.
“Kerry opposes oil drilling in Alaska, which the majority of the state’s constituents support, but he favors drilling where the vast majority of Floridians strongly oppose?” Mr. Diaz-Balart said. “Perhaps Kerry should provide a detailed map for everyone showing exactly where he considers ’drilling in the right places.’”
Dinner question
“Will Cardinal Edward Egan try to block Sen. John Kerry from the 59th Alfred E. Smith Dinner?” New York Daily News columnists George Rush and Joanna Molloy ask.
“The annual gathering, sponsored by the Archdiocese of New York, isn’t until October, but organizers are already said to be worrying about whether Egan may take a hard-line against the Democratic candidate because he supports abortion rights,” the columnists said.
“Friday, the Vatican’s Francis Cardinal Arinze said a Catholic politician who supports abortion rights ’is not fit’ to receive Holy Communion. Bishop Raymond Burke of St. Louis, for one, has said he would refuse Kerry Communion.
“Last week, we hear, members of the Al Smith Foundation met to discuss what to do if Egan takes a similar position or tries to bar Kerry from the dinner, named for New York Gov. Al Smith, who ran for president in 1928 against Herbert Hoover.
“’They’re concerned that Egan may do something to win favor with the Pope,’ says a source. ’Some people were nervous that the Cardinal wouldn’t recognize a Catholic who is pro-choice.’
“Archdiocese spokesman Joseph Zwilling said Egan was traveling in Europe but told us, ’I haven’t heard any discussion about John Kerry and the Al Smith dinner.’ …
“While not quite a sacrament, the Smith dinner has become an important ritual for pols, who don white tie and tails in the final weeks before the election. Candidates George W. Bush and Al Gore both attended it [in] 2000.”
Challenging Toomey
The Republican Main Street Partnership Political Action Committee is airing a new 30-second radio that questions whether Rep. Patrick J. Toomey is a real Republican.
The conservative Mr. Toomey is challenging liberal Sen. Arlen Specter in today’s Republican primary. The group said the ad was running in Philadelphia and York during the last 48 hours before polls close.
“Arlen Specter is the true Republican choice in this primary,” said PAC advisory board member Rep. Doug Ose, California Republican. “He has served as a loyal Republican in the U.S. Senate for 24 years and has earned the support of President Bush and GOP leaders both in Congress and in Pennsylvania.”
The ad says Mr. Specter’s challenger has received substantial financial backing from the Club for Growth, which “does not care about the Republican Party.”
Mr. Ose said, “The Club routinely rebukes President Bush and the Republican Party. How can Pat Toomey claim to be a true Republican when he is running for the Senate against the White House’s will and when his campaign is reaping millions of dollars in benefits from an organization that is constantly bashing the president? A vote against Specter is a vote against the Republican Party.”
Clinton’s memoirs
Former President Bill Clinton’s memoirs will reach bookstores in late June, publisher Alfred A. Knopf announced yesterday.
“My Life,” an account of Mr. Clinton’s life through his White House years, will go on sale nationwide, with a first printing of 1.5 million copies. It also will be available from Random House Audio (abridged), read by Mr. Clinton.
Sonny Mehta, president and editor in chief of Alfred A. Knopf, said the book will be “the fullest and most nuanced account of a presidency ever written, and one of the most revealing and remarkable memoirs I have ever had the honor of publishing.”
Mr. Clinton will embark on a national and international author tour immediately upon release of the book, which comes about a month before the Democratic National Convention in Boston. Some Democrats have expressed fear that Mr. Clinton and his book would overshadow presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry.
Nonpartisan affair
The NAACP Freedom Institute’s third annual Freedom Weekend kicked off Thursday in Detroit with a speech from Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and ended Sunday with a speech from Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, New York Democrat.
President Bush “lied to the Congress and now is sending out babies to die in Iraq,” Mr. Farrakhan said, according to a Detroit Free Press account. “But are you so upset with Bush that you’re going to give Senator John Kerry a free ride?”
Mrs. Clinton used the opportunity to criticize the Bush administration, calling it “the most radical presidency” in the nation’s history.
She accused Mr. Bush of inadequately funding his No Child Left Behind initiative and said the fight for decent education, wages and health care rages on.
“Some of the people in this room used to get invitations to the White House when she lived in it,” said the Rev. Wendell Anthony, president of the Detroit branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. “Now we only get bad news from the White House since she moved out of it.”
The Detroit-based Freedom Institute, founded by Mr. Anthony, pays no taxes as a government-certified, nonpartisan 501 (c)(3) organization.
Another booster
“After Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry on Friday afternoon addressed the convention of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, C-SPAN’s cameras caught the group’s attorney, who also counsels the White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA), boasting to Kerry: ’I’d like to say I really hope to be able to sit across from you at the head table next year’ at the WHCA dinner ’when they’re honoring you’ as the new president,” the Media Research Center’s Brent Baker reports at www.mediaresearch.org.
• Greg Pierce can be reached at 202/636-3285 or gpierce@washingtontimes.com.
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