Macho Nachos

The Life of Nacho

I begin law school on Monday. My professors are already trying to kill me. However, they have grossly misunderestimated my ability to read.

As a consequence, however, I may not be blogging much over the weekend. Especially given that there's not much newswise that's happening right now. Keep checking, though - if I have time I will try to bang some stuff out tomorrow night.

The Mysterious Morphing Letter

Ever since Cindy Sheehan began denying that she wrote the "My son joined the army to protect America, not Israel" email, we've been a little suspicious of the truthfulness of those statements. More specifically, Josh Trevino was suspicious enough to contact Cindy Sheehan's press spokeswoman, Michelle Mulkey, to get the story "straight from the source," as it were. According to Josh, he spoke with Ms. Mulkey on the phone as she stood next to Cindy Sheehan, and subsequently sent her this email: Michelle, This is Josh Trevino from tacitus.org, whom you spoke with this afternoon. As per our conversation, I am writing to confirm that the e-mail at this URL.... http://groups-beta.google.com/group/bullyard/msg/7f523b1a73be1a36?hl=en ....was in fact written by Ms Sheehan to ABC's Nightline program. I am pasting the full text of the e-mail below. (Josh then pasted the text of the email in question) To which Ms. Mulkey responded - again, in the immediate proximity to Sheehan: I can confirm that this is NOT Cindy. She had a hacker send this email last spring and then changed her password after she was alerted to it.

Aug 18th, 2005: 17:56:54

That is, certainly, an eye-opening explanation for the existence of this email. Josh thought so, too, and asked a follow-up:

Michelle,

Thanks so much for your swift reply. I'm surprised to find the e-mail is not Ms Sheehan's, given the following:

1) Nightline has given confirmation to other journalists that it is from Ms Sheehan.

2) The text and themes of the e-mail are, to my knowledge, consistent with Ms Sheehan's other public statements.

3) Ms Sheehan was not a major public figure (especially compared with her status now) in March 2005, and hence was an unlikely target for hackers.

Any clarity you might provide on this would be helpful, specifically on the following points:

1) Which specific passages in the e-mail Ms Sheehan especially wishes to disassociate herself from.

2) Whether any progress has been made in identifying the hacker, given that this may be a Federal crime for which Ms Sheehan may rightfully seek recourse.

3) Any insights you may have on why ABC's Nightline apparently believes the e-mail to be a genuine missive from Ms Sheehan.

Again, your help is sincerely appreciated. Many thanks.

Most resp.,

Josh Trevino

tacitus.org

To that bevy of reasonable questions, Ms. Mulkey had only this to say in response:

That stuff will take a while. She may not have told Nightline about the incident, but she was a public figure and had been vocal for months by the time this happened.

Now, since that time, someone has apparently alerted Ms. Sheehan to the total implausibility of this story, given that her official excuse for the existence of this email now stands as follows:

Another "big deal" today was the lie that I had said that Casey died for Israel. I never said that, I never wrote that. I had supposedly said it in a letter that I wrote to Ted Koppel's producer in March. I wrote the letter because I was upset at the way Ted treated me when I appeared at a Nightline Town Hall meeting in January right after the inauguration. I felt that Ted had totally disrespected me. I wrote the letter to Ted Bettag and cc'd a copy to the person who gave me Ted's address. I believe he (the person who gave me the address) changed the email and sent it out to capitalize on my new found notoriety by promoting his own agenda. Enough about that.

Now, even folks who are pretty non-familiar with the internets can see that this is, first of all, a totally different explanation for the existence of this email. First, her claim was that someone "hacked" into her email account and sent the email, totally unbeknownst to her. Upon some reflection, given the extreme implausibility of this scenario, and further given that the entire rest of the letter is vintage Cindy Sheehan to a T, they have concocted this, "the person I sent it to modified it." A less humble person than Josh might wonder whether his rather pointed and unanswerable questions prompted the change in story in the first place.

What is most interesting about this explanation is that, if it were true, Ted Bettag should have received a copy of the original email, since a cc is, by definition, a copy.

Needless to say, this "explanation" presents more questions than answers. And it still is pretty much the same stuff that Cindy Sheehan has said elsewhere. What about her widely publicized appearance at the VFP rally where her comments about America made the ones she is disputing seem charitable by comparison? What about the remarks she made at the Lynne Stewart rally at which she said, among other inflammatory things, "America was not worth dying for?" Does Ms. Sheehan wish to speak to those, either?

Why the heck is no media person asking her these questions? Instead, we get Anderson Cooper asking her once, tentatively about the single statement in question, and when she-who-must-not-be-questions says, "I never said that," Cooper responds, "You never said that? OK. Glad we had an opportunity to clear that up."

One presumes that Anderson Cooper has not been taking lessons from any of the journalists who have been dealing with Scott McClellan recently.

Air America and the SEC

Brian Maloney has the investigative report for today, and does a great job of covering Nova M, and all the possible issues of "fraudulent conveyance" involved in the formation of this new company. Specifically, however, I'd like to take a look at one of the things Brian said in particular:

Disclosing Air America's future plans to a room full of rabid supporters might seem smart, especially if it brings potential investors to what inside sources say is an effort to raise $5 million to fund the new company.

Was such a public disclosure legal, however? Since Nova M Radio's offering is set up as a private placement, there have been no indicated or available US Securities and Exchange Commission filings.

Could the speech be considered an indirect attempt to solicit investors, in a way that would trigger required SEC disclosures?

As it so happens, I have a... uh... very close relationship with a securities lawyer who worked for several years at the SEC before going private. I ran these sentences by her, in an email that said:

Can you give me a five minute rundown of the regulations that govern disclosure of private offerings? For instance, if someone in charge of a company that is set up as a private placement, and therefore has no filings with the SEC, were to discuss plans for the formation of that company in a very public forum, what are the possible repercussions? Does it hinge on the extent to which that person could be said to have solicited investments for that company?

To which she responded (capitalizaiton and punctuation cleaned up because this was emailed from a Blackberry):

It's hard to give you a rundown in five minutes especially from (current location edited), but the short answer to your question is: Yes, it is possible someone could blow their private offering exemption if they talk with specificity about their company in a public forum (on the internet or get quoted in the press) to the point where they could be said to have made a public offering of their securities.  The remedy would be that their investors could sue for rescission of their investments or the SEC could sue them for violations of Section 5; although, if the investors are all sophisticated and there are no other legal violations this provision is almost never enforced in this context.

So, I translate that roughly as - yes, it's technically illegal, but unless the other investors raise a stink about it, almost never prosecuted. Yet more activity from the Drobnys that skates right on the borderline of legal and illegal, and wanders squarely into the territory of slimy.

I don't want to belabor the point that Brian has already hammered home with great efficiency, but this Nova M maneuver is the most Enron-esque move we've seen from the Drobnys and their Air America partners, yet. Switch the name "Drobny" with "Fastow" and you've got something straight out of Conspiracy of Fools. Will Al Franken condemn this shell game maneuvering?

More at Michelle Malkin.

Teri Student Loans: Bureaucracy or Company?

As many of you are aware, I am starting law school this year at one of the prominent law institutions in the country. One of the things that inevitably goes along with this kind of endeavor, if one is not independently wealthy, is securing loans to help pay for living expenses. This is especially true of folks who have families, like me.

 

I have been attempting to secure a private loan through a company called NextStudent, who is underwritten by Teri. I was told, in the beginning, that my funds could reach me before school starts next Monday.

 

To make a long story short, my application has been delayed for two days due to the error of a woolheaded staffer at Teri. Now, I understand that these things happen from time to time. However, now that the company has looked through all my files and has approved everything, they are telling me that they must wait 48 hours to disburse my check. Why? Company policy, is the only answer I've gotten.

 

Seems to me that a company would try to do the right thing by a customer, here, and nix the 48 hour waiting period as compensation for their 48 hour blunder. A bureaucracy would feel that the process was more important, and say, "to heck with the customer. We're keeping our arbitrary 48-hour waiting period." Companies that turn into bureaucracies are inevitably one step away from failure.

 

So the question before us is, is Teri a company, or a bureacracy?

 

Updates to follow.

Investigative Report Breakdown

I've had just a little time to digest some of the massive amounts of information that Michelle and Brian provided yesterday, and I have a few preliminary thoughts. Ideally, I would have several quiet hours to pore over this and formulate something more thorough, but I don't have that kind of time luxury over the next several days, so I will do what I can in brief.

First, the Diamond court order. Now, this order has to do with the payment of legal fees for having essentially lost a lawsuit. Despite the fact that the two parties in the dispute reached a settlement, the judge clearly believed that Air America was on the losing end of that settlement, and accordingly ordered Air America to fork up the legal fees - and additionally gave tehm a scalding for failing to live up to the terms of the settlement agreement. The total that they were ordered to pay, apparently, was $255,518. I haven't had time yet to determine how much of that is settlement money, and how much is attorney's fees.

Next, to the complaint by Multicultural Radio. There are several things about this complaint that I frankly don't understand. If the original judgment was entered June 23, 2004 - in other words, AFTER the transfer of Air America to Piquant LLC, why is Multicultural accusing Piquant of fraudulent conveyance of assets? Further, if they are especially concerned (point 1 of their complaint) with the $255,000 and change that was owed to them as of the November 2004 court order, it makes even less sense to accuse Piquant of fraudulent conveyance of assets to avoid this judgment, given that the assets in question (Air America) were transferred from Progress Media to Piquant LLC in May of 2004 (as I recall. It could have been June).

Now, this is the first company that I'm aware of to flat out accuse Piquant LLC of fraudulent conveyance, which is something that we've speculated might be possible before. But to me, the dates just don't seem to add up at this point.

The second thing that strikes me as a little off about this complaint is that they spend about 1/4 of their time accusing Piquant LLC of fraudulently conveying assets to avoid debt, and then the rest of their time establishing the fact that Piquant has absolutely no money to pay them with anyway. If you're seeking to establish the fact that a company is shifting their assets around to avoid paying you, it seems, to me, to be a little counterproductive to spend most of your time arguing in your complaint that they have no assets at all. But that's just me.

More later as I have a chance to chew over this thoroughly.

Inquirer Blogswarm Story hits Press

At long last, Beth Gillin's piece on the Air America scandal, and the blogswarm that provoked its notice in the MSM, is available online. Be sure to check it out.

The Hits Just Keep Coming

When you are a new blogger, every month is a record month. However, August is looking to be an especially fine month indeed, and I am optimistic that we will pass the 30,000 hit mark this month (my first major goal as a blogger). Additionally, tomorrow I will be featured in an article (with Michelle and Brian and perhaps others) in the Philadelphia Inquirer about the Air America stuff. So, it's been a big month in a lot of ways.

I'd like to take just a second to thank the good folks who have been linking me, and to let those of you who have become regular readers know about some other really great sites that you might not be visiting a lot.

So, I've compiled a report based on typepad's statistics of the top ten sites that have given me links - in terms of the number of inbound hits from those locations. Thanks a lot to all of you, and be sure to check out all these great authors:

1. Michelle Malkin
2. RedState.org
3. John Cole
4. Manually typing the address in the address bar (thanks to you guys especially!)
5. Brian Maloney
6. Decision '08
7. Protein Wisdom
8. Wizbang
9. The Anchoress
10. Captains Quarters

Thanks again to all my readers, and those who are providing the links. Much appreciated!

This Radio Station Will Self Destruct in 10, 9, 8...

Well, now we know the answer to whether the folks at Piquant have made a good faith effort to pay off the creditors of Progress Media, and also whether the transfer of the AA assets passed muster with the courts. The short answer, they didn't. The term for today, boys and girls, is "fraudulent conveyance."

Michelle Malkin has the full scoop, and I'll try to digest it later tonight.

Fair Game or Foul Play?

John Cole is gasket-blowing angry at Michelle Malkin over Michelle's posting of the Sheehan divorce papers. A quick ecosystem check informs me that John and Michelle are the two bloggers most likely to link to my humble abode, so a smarter man would just let this whole thing slide.

I have never been accused of being a smarter man.

First, let me say that Cole has a valid point: Cindy Sheehan's rantings are so prima facie insane that they serve as an automatic discredit to her point (not that you'd get the mainstream media to notice that, by the way.) I agree that it's not necessary to bring her divorce into the picture to show that her message should not be taken seriously and that the left is disgraceful for using her. I further agree that the moral high road, in this case, would be to just let the divorce stuff slide on by.

However, I gotta disagree with both the vehemence of John's points, and his contention that Michelle is due heaping helpings of ridicule and abuse. As Michelle points out, the first person to bring Cindy Sheehan's family into this fracas was none other than Cindy Sheehan. In fact, this whole ordeal is just one long exercise on Sheehan trading on her family relation to her son.

It is perfectly rational that any half-arsed reporter who might be interested in covering anything not directly in front of his nose might take it upon him/herself to wonder what the rest of the family thinks about this. Maybe, they might even think to themselves, "Most kids have two parents. I wonder what Dad thinks about this." In so doing, even a half-arsed reporter would discover that Dad filed for divorce in the midst of all this.

Now, a lot of folks have made the point that that, in and of itself, says nothing. This is not exactly correct. Divorce always says something. It might not say, necessarily, that Patrick divorced Cindy because of this moonbat crusade, but it says something. It's enough, at the very least, to raise an eyebrow. The dumpster-divers at the Associated Press agree:

The husband of Cindy Sheehan, the mother camped outside President Bush's Texas ranch to protest the death of a son in the Iraq war, has filed for divorce, according to court documents.

Patrick Sheehan filed the divorce petition Friday in Solano County court, northeast of San Francisco. His lawyer did not immediately return a call seeking comment Monday.

The article, I will note, provides a lot more commentary than Michelle did.

So, I guess my point is, the story isn't necessary. But it is a story. And it's at least partly of Sheehan's own making. If Sheehan was just another garden variety war-protesting moonbat, she would never be accorded this celebrity. However, she chose to make it novel by dragging herself out to Crawford, setting up "camp Casey" and demand answers on behalf of her son, for questions he never asked. Why did she do these things? The obvious answer is to get her and her family noticed.

Now, she's complaining that her family has gotten noticed. From my perspective, she's making it harder to feel sympathy for her every day that goes by. The right thing to do at this point, as Mark Coffey points out, is to bring this woman home and get her some grief therapy, before she is left with nothing and no one in the world, besides a bunch of political activists who will discard her like an empty soda can when their cause moves on.

UPDATE: John Cole has since offered an unqualified apology for his remarks.

Why am I still covering this??

Sort of like the temporary paralysis I suffered when the non-story of Plamegate was in full-brew, I find myself endlessly fascinated with the shiny object that is Cindy Sheehan. In particular, I'd like to take a whack today at her denial that she ever said, "My son joined the Army to protect America, not Israel. You get America out of Iraq and Israel out of Palestine and you'll stop the terrorism." The full transcript from Anderson Cooper reads thusly:

COOPER: You were also quoted as saying, "My son joined the Army to protect America, not Israel. You get America out of Iraq and Israel out of Palestine and you'll stop the terrorism." How responsible do you believe Israel is for the amount of terrorism in the world?

SHEEHAN: I didn't say that.

COOPER: You didn't say that? OK.

SHEEHAN: I didn't -- I didn't say -- I didn't say that my son died for Israel. I've never said that. I saw somebody wrote that and it wasn't my words. Those aren't even words that I would say.

I do believe that the Palestinian issue is a hot issue that needs to be solved and it needs to be more fair and equitable but I never said my son died for Israel.

COOPER: OK, I'm glad I asked you that because, you know, as you know, there's tons of stuff floating around on the Internet on sites of all political persuasions.

SHEEHAN: I know and that's not -- yes.

COOPER: So, I'm glad we had the opportunity to clear that.

SHEEHAN: Yes, and thank you because those are not my words. Those aren't -- that doesn't even sound like me saying that.

COOPER: OK. I'm very glad we got that...

SHEEHAN: And I have read it. I have read it. I'm glad you did too.

You'll pardon us saying so, Ms. Sheehan, but that sounds like exactly the sort of lunatic thing that you might expect to find Cindy Sheehan saying. So the "it doesn't even sound like me" defense isn't really probably your strongest. But what about the rest of Sheehan's statement?

Well, technically, Sheehan did not "say" that her son died for Israel. She wrote it. And also, technically, she is not accused of saying that her son died for Israel. She is accused of indignantly claiming that her son did not sign up for the military to defend Israel. So, Robert Jordan readers, is it possible we are dealing with an Aes Sedai? Perhaps she isn't lying, but the truth we're hearing might not be the truth we think it is.

As is widely known by now, the article was posted to a group called bullyard from Cindy Sheehan's AOL account. Someone from bullyard apparently forwarded the letter on to Nightline, with Cindy Sheehan's name on it. Rich Lowry originally claimed that the letter was signed, but has since backtracked, saying only that her name was on the letter in question.

So, in order to believe this story, one would have to believe that someone hacked into Cindy Sheehan's AOL account - in March 2005, before she was a widely known personage outside of the extreme left (who all love her anyway), and sent this to bullyard. Further, according to the person at Bullyard, they sent a copy of the letter to Sheehan, explaining that it would be sent to Nightline, and never got a response from Sheehan. Hmm. That seems like the kind of thing I might want to disassociate myself from, if I didn't say it, and someone was telling me they were about to send it to a major news organization.

In point of fact, that email, which I still strongly suspect is authentic, is not the only place Sheehan has made inflammatory anti-Israel remarks. She duplicated the "Israel out of Palestine" remarks at a Veterans for Peace rally, as covered by fellow anti-war sympathizer Mike Ferner:

He died to make your friends richer. He died to expand American imperialism in the Middle East. We're not freer here, thanks to your PATRIOT Act. Iraq is not free. You get America out of Iraq and Israel out of Palestine and you'll stop the terrorism.

Call me crazy, but that sounds pretty much exactly like the letter in question - minus the phrase "agenda to benefit Israel", it's the exact same sentiment - including the part where Israel is at fault.

It's very strange to me, personally, given the other bizarre conspiracy theories she has embraced, and continues to embrace, that she would bother even attempting to distance herself from this one. I mean, if you're going to say that America is evil, unjust, and not worth dying for, why would you care about stepping on the toes of the Israelis?

If any prominent news personage develops the testosterone-producing organs to ask such a question, or any other question about her ridiculously extremist rhetoric, we'll be here to report.

UPDATE: Welcome, Michelle Malkin readers!