St. Petersburg Times: Dirty Harris

[paineinthearse]

See related post in LBN - Harris Shuns Spending Requests -
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=2143458&mesg_id=2143458

http://www.sptimes.com/2006/03/03/Opinion/Dirty_Harris.shtml



Dirty Harris
A Times Editorial
Published March 3, 2006

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U.S. Rep. Katherine Harris may have given her dirty campaign money to a charity, but she can't pretend to have cleansed herself. "Representative B," as she is called in a federal prosecutor's account of bribery and election fraud by Washington defense contractor Mitchell Wade, is too close to this scandal to brush it off. Voters deserve more answers than the vague statement she released Thursday night.

Leave aside the fact that, in March 2004, Wade personally placed 16 $2,000 campaign checks with the same date in Harris' hands. Now comes the disclosure that one of her aides, Mona Yost, left last May to work for MZM Inc., the company Wade owned. Further, Harris dined with Wade in early 2005 and then asked her Defense Appropriations subcommittee to set aside $10-million for an MZM facility in Sarasota. The subcommittee refused.

This is past the point where Harris can credibly claim ignorance. She claimed in her statement Thursday night that she requested the money to bring jobs to Sarasota, not in exchange for contributions she says she did not know would be illegally reimbursed. Let's get this straight: Harris is handed $32,000 in checks by an executive who wants a $10-million defense contract, she dines with him to discuss the request and then she writes a letter specifically for his project after her other appropriations requests were submitted? And she is unclear about the intent?

Unfortunately, Harris has experience at this game. Wade paid people to write the campaign checks in an attempt to evade federal election law limits, which was the same practice of "straw contributions" to which Sarasota insurance company executives pleaded guilty in step beyond merely accepting the curiously bundled checks.

more....


edit - added related post.


F*ck you and the horse you rode in on!

[DoYouEverWonder]

1. Election law means nothing to this freak

I wish we could nail her for the 2000 election. Especially when she wouldn't give WPB 5 more minutes to finish counting votes because she had to 'enforce' the law. Then she was an expert on election law, now she doesn't know shit.

[SheilaT]

2. You might want to change

your headline so it at least gives the correct first name. She's Katherine, not Kathleen Harris.

[paineinthearse]

3. thanks

I'll change it to the newspaper's original.

[The Backlash Cometh]

4. She seems too short for the stirrup.

[autorank]

5. Public enemy # 1. Rate this sucker up! Please & thank you;)

Nice pic paine! She and condi have this fashion thing.