more on Hastert and Sibel

in response to my post yesterday about Hastert's lawyer's letter published in Vanity Fair in response to the Sibel article, anon in the comments writes:

"Maybe you could take the lead on a response LTE to VF? Here's my suggestion: Post the Evans letter and your drafted response based on Miguel's points. Keeping bumping to the top of page and add a call-out to your readership to suggest new points/questions with a one-week deadline. You post revised drafts on Wednesday and Friday which incorporate the best points your readers raise. Then submit to Rose, the LTE editor and the publisher of VF"

Miguel had some further thoughts :

"That sounds like a great idea! David Rose put up a weak defense of his own article in response to Evans letter (I strongly suspect that Rose is being hamstrung by the Vanity Fair legal team in his ability to tell the full story), Sibel is gagged and cannot put up a defense on this point, so it's up to the rest of us to fight back.

To me, the most important point is to get Hastert to release all his campaign donor data to public scrutiny, so we can all evaluate for ourselves. A local reporter in Hastert's district had challenged the Speaker to do just that- here we are 5 months later and nothing has been released (Hastert later told the reporter that he had sent all his data to the FEC and asked them to speed up their inquiry. The reporter later left the publication- it's not clear whether he quit or was fired). If Denny has nothing to hide, why won't he simply release the full list?"

I'm happy to take the lead - first things first - if someone can get me a copy of Randy Evans' letter in VF (or type it up), and David Rose's response, and we can take it from there.

Does anyone have any information about the efforts of the 'local reporter' that Miguel is referring to?

My guess is that we shuold try to get a response from Hastert and/or Evans first, and depending on their response or lack thereof, we could then try to squeeze them with some publicity via VF and/or elsewhere.

I'll try to track down David Rose (author of An Inconvenient Patriot) to clarify what sort of research he did into the issue - and what roadblocks he encountered.

As I mentioned yesterday, the good news is that the Hastert/Evans (eventual) response in VF appears to suggest that they are feeling under some pressure.