From this L.A. Times story:

Fearing a conservative takeover of the nation’s taxpayer-supported radio and TV stations, congressional Democrats on Friday asked the chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to delay the selection of a new chief executive who would oversee the system.

In a two-page letter, Rep. Diane E. Watson (D-Los Angeles) and 19 other House Democrats urged Kenneth Y. Tomlinson to delay next week’s selection of a new president for CPB, saying the reported front-runner for the job, former Republican National Committee Co-Chair Patricia de Stacy Harrison, should not be under consideration.

“Under no circumstance should the president of the CPB be a former chair of a political party, be it Republican or Democrat,” said the lawmakers. “Our public media are not ideological pawns for political parties, and the CPB president must not be a partisan activist.”

She had to write it down in a letter because whenever she said it out loud, she couldn’t stop laughing — just like you’re laughing right now.

Regular readers know I am not a Michael Schiavo fan. However, this L.A. Times story says that Jeb Bush is investigating him for supposedly waiting 40-70 minutes to call 911 on the night Terri Schiavo collapsed. As far as I can tell, this request appears to be based entirely on discrepant testimony Schiavo has provided over the years regarding when he found his wife collapsed on the floor. Yet he has apparently always described the times as approximate.

If that’s really the entire basis for Jeb Bush’s request, as the story makes it sound, then that’s pathetic. And I gotta say, it looks a heckuva lot like grandstanding on the part of old Jeb.

P.S. No comments on this one. I’ve had it with comment wars over this case.

P.P.S. One more thing: let’s say that you think, like I do, that Michael Schiavo was an unreliable witness to Terri Schiavo’s wishes. Supporting nonsense like this undercuts your credibility when you make those arguments.

P.P.P.S. This is especially true given that, as I observed when the autopsy report came out, “nothing in the report suggests abuse on the part of Michael Schiavo, and plenty (including the major points I noted above) seems to contraindicate that.”

The L.A. Times reports today:

Anthony Pellicano, private investigator to the stars, was charged Friday with conspiracy and making criminal threats for allegedly hiring a man three years ago to intimidate a Los Angeles Times reporter.

The story describes Pellicano’s fame in this way: “The investigation has shaken Hollywood’s entertainment and legal community, where Pellicano had gained some celebrity working for such clients as Elizabeth Taylor and Michael Jackson.”

Pellicano has “gained some celebrity” in another way that is not mentioned in the article. As J. Bowen notes, the article curiously omits any reference to Pellicano’s documented contacts with Bill Clinton.

Pellicano is the guy who claimed in 1992 that the Gennifer Flowers tapes had been selectively edited. And he helped out Bill Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Pellicano found the guy who claimed Monica Lewinsky had said: “I’m going to Washington to get my presidential knee pads.”

And don’t forget that Kathleen Willey said she had been intimidated by a thug who, among other things, left a threatening note on her windshield. As Thomas at the American Thinker once noted: “By bizarre coincidence, a note on the windshield was also the technique used on [former L.A. Times] reporter [Anita] Busch, allegedly to intimidate her into dropping her inquiries into the underworld and Hollywood.” Bizarre indeed.

If a creep like this had a long history of connections with a former Republican president, whose wife was a front-runner for the 2008 Republican nomination — do you think that Republican would have been mentioned in the story?

You be the judge.

In any event, today’s omission does not appear to be an accident. The L.A. Times has a history of overlooking the Pellicano-Clinton connection. Today’s story is merely the latest example.

P.S. I should note that I know absolutely nothing about Pellicano’s case other than what I have read in the newspapers and on the Internet.

UPDATE 6-20-05: In the original version of this post, I used the phrase “numerous documented contacts with Bill Clinton.” A commenter at Oh, That Liberal Media objects to my adjectives “numerous” and “documented” to refer to Pellicano’s contacts with Bill Clinton. After some reflection, I continue to believe that the adjective “documented” is correct, given the information I have provided in the linked material. However, I think he has a point regarding the word “numerous.” There are arguably only two contacts documented in that linked material. The commenter says “two” is not “numerous,” and I think he’s right. That word is arguably misleading. I have edited the post accordingly, to remove the word “numerous.” Thanks to the commenter for the correction.

We heard endlessly after the Jackson verdict that no, celebrity had nothing to do with it; the jurors understood how troubling was his behavior around little boys, and they probably believed that he had indeed been guilty of molestation in the earlier case — the one where he paid off the accuser — but that there just wasn’t quite enough evidence to convict in this case.

I was skeptical, as you may remember. Today I wake up, look at Drudge, and am greeted with this AP story:

Juror Attends Jackson Family’s Big Party
Jun 18, 9:26 AM (ET)
by Linda Deutsch

SANTA YNEZ, Calif. (AP) – Michael Jackson’s family and fans – and at least one of the jurors who acquitted him of child molestation – gathered Friday night for a huge party that was billed as a celebration of thanks….

Among the approximately 400 people who arrived at the Chumash Indian Casino was juror Pauline Coccoz. When she walked into the casino and heard Jackson’s music playing, Coccoz said, the enormity of what had transpired hit her.

“They were playing ‘Beat It,’ and I almost started to cry,” she said as she waited to enter the showroom.

(Somehow, the misused word I emphasized above seems more apt than what AP meant to say.)

After running through a typically breezy description of the bash, Ms. Deutsch returns to Juror Coccoz:

Coccoz said that when someone gave her the wristbands she decided to bring her family [!], partly as a public display of her confidence in the jury’s verdict.

After the trial ended Monday, Coccoz, 45, was among the jurors who criticized the testimony of the accuser’s mother. Coccoz also questioned the woman’s parenting choices.

“What mother in her right mind would … just freely volunteer your child to sleep with someone, and not so much Michael Jackson but anyone, for that matter?” Coccoz said Monday.

Darn that mother! She should have known better than to let her kid get within seventy feet of Michael Jackson’s bed! It’s all her fault, not Michael’s, if anything happened.

The King himself couldn’t be bothered to show; perhaps he was in the midst of his own private celebration elsewhere. Pity… he missed his chance to give Ms. Coccoz a kiss and a nice, framed autograph as a memento of the “enormity” whose ending, in which she played such an integral part, moved the woman so much.

I am one of the most optimistic guys I know about the future of civilization. But some days it’s more difficult than others.

Since P-dawg hasn’t brought out the cane yet, I’m gonna sneak in one more post. It’s about law school, so it’s possibly of interest to some folks out there. More precisely, it’s about a nanny-state impulse at the University of Seattle, hectoring people about a harmless pastime: drinking coffee. Apparently the career counselors are concerned by the habits of many students to spend $3 a day on Starbucks Lattes. That adds up to, well, 365 X $3 X3 years of law school= $3285 over the course of the J.D. Since most students borrow their tuition money, the schools are concerned that students are racking up their loans on coffee.

In decades past, lenders chided college students for excessive spending of borrowed money on pizza and cigarettes, but the staggering ubiquity of Starbucks appears to have narrowed the nagging to foamy espresso drinks.

Considering the number of lawyers I know who graduated law school with pickled livers and a raging dependency on demon drink (or worse), I think the law school should be encouraging this habit. You want your students wide awake and studying in a Starbucks or Peet’s, sipping some foofy little coffee concoction, not guzzling rum and stuffing their loan checks straight into Tawanda’s cleavage at the Spearmint Rhino.

If it’s such a problem, why doesn’t the University of Seattle just put in their own coffee shop that provides a nice study environment and subsidized mocha half-caf hazelnut Frappacinos? If they were really concerned about student debt, there are probably some serious chunks of that $115k average law school debt figure they could cut. Like for instance the salary of the underworked dude who goes around worrying about how much coffee their students are chugging.