*Ø* Republican Dirty Tricks, Much?
["Born yesterday...NOT! — Orwell Himself Couldn't Have Imagined This Bullshit!" — Lisa -v]
No Trespassing
Bush admin move may keep Kerry and other candidates
from stumping on federal property
By Amanda Griscom
Grist
The Statue of Liberty, Mount Rushmore, NASA headquarters, and the Washington Monument are among the many federal properties that may be off-limits to presidential and congressional candidates for campaign photo ops this election season, thanks to a guidance recently released by the Bush administration's U.S. Office of Special Counsel.
The OSC is an independent federal agency that investigates and prosecutes issues ranging from whistleblower complaints to concerns that federal employees are participating in campaign activities prohibited by the Hatch Act, which defines election-related political no-no's for people on the government payroll.
Kerry advisers and some environmentalists are royally peeved about the advisory, calling it at best deliberately ambiguous and misleading, at worst a deliberate maneuver to gain advantage over John Kerry's presidential campaign.
The guidance is "an extraordinary reinterpretation of the Hatch Act," said David Hayes, who oversaw national parks as deputy secretary of the interior under Clinton, and who now serves as a senior adviser to the Kerry campaign. "It is a patently ridiculous and extreme measure that the Bush administration is taking to cover up its appalling record on funding and protecting national parks after promising in the 2000 campaign to make it a priority."
But OSC spokesperson Cathy Deeds told Muckraker that her agency is merely "restating the Hatch Act" in response to repeated queries over the last several months from federal employees at various agencies about which campaign activities they can participate in and what federal property is fair game. [Yeah, yeah. -v] On Aug. 9, the office issued a government-wide guidance in an effort "to clear up the confusion." That just happened to be the very day that John Kerry made a campaign stop at the Grand Canyon and delivered a speech criticizing the shortfall of funding for national parks under the Bush administration. [Emphasis added. -v]
CONTINUE
["Born yesterday...NOT! — Orwell Himself Couldn't Have Imagined This Bullshit!" — Lisa -v]
No Trespassing
Bush admin move may keep Kerry and other candidates
from stumping on federal property
By Amanda Griscom
Grist
The Statue of Liberty, Mount Rushmore, NASA headquarters, and the Washington Monument are among the many federal properties that may be off-limits to presidential and congressional candidates for campaign photo ops this election season, thanks to a guidance recently released by the Bush administration's U.S. Office of Special Counsel.
The OSC is an independent federal agency that investigates and prosecutes issues ranging from whistleblower complaints to concerns that federal employees are participating in campaign activities prohibited by the Hatch Act, which defines election-related political no-no's for people on the government payroll.
Kerry advisers and some environmentalists are royally peeved about the advisory, calling it at best deliberately ambiguous and misleading, at worst a deliberate maneuver to gain advantage over John Kerry's presidential campaign.
The guidance is "an extraordinary reinterpretation of the Hatch Act," said David Hayes, who oversaw national parks as deputy secretary of the interior under Clinton, and who now serves as a senior adviser to the Kerry campaign. "It is a patently ridiculous and extreme measure that the Bush administration is taking to cover up its appalling record on funding and protecting national parks after promising in the 2000 campaign to make it a priority."
But OSC spokesperson Cathy Deeds told Muckraker that her agency is merely "restating the Hatch Act" in response to repeated queries over the last several months from federal employees at various agencies about which campaign activities they can participate in and what federal property is fair game. [Yeah, yeah. -v] On Aug. 9, the office issued a government-wide guidance in an effort "to clear up the confusion." That just happened to be the very day that John Kerry made a campaign stop at the Grand Canyon and delivered a speech criticizing the shortfall of funding for national parks under the Bush administration. [Emphasis added. -v]
CONTINUE
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