Judicial Watch has requested an investigation of Kerry’s activities after his release from active duty; namely, his discussions with delegations from North Vietnam in Paris. They’ve also joined the howling pack that would like to prove that Kerry’s medals weren’t earned. I don’t particularly feel the need to waste my time debunking these myths — you’ll note that it is not illegal for servicemen to speak with officials of foreign governments, and while it is illegal for them to negotiate with such officials, it’s hard to figure out how an ordinary citizen on inactive duty would have the power to negotiate anything. What I would like to do is discuss the claims that Judicial Watch is “non-partisan.”
The Judicial Watch case page lists 110 separate cases. Of those cases, 70 involve Democrats. 42 of those involve Bill or Hillary Clinton. Another 6 of them were filed at the right time to be directed against the Clinton Administration, but there’s not enough detail to be sure.
14 of them involve Republicans. 19 of them aren’t directly related to either political party. There are several cases involving Democrats which were filed during the Bush Administration. There are no cases involving Republicans filed during the Clinton Administration.
So while I applaud any group, partisan or non, that spends a lot of time filing lawsuits to make government agencies follow through on FOIA requests, I do think that Judicial Watch might want to stop pretending that it doesn’t have any political leanings.
2 Comments
Actually, the question about Kerry in France is a good one. However, he was on inactive reserve status at the time, so several JAG types in the blogosphere have assured us that this is not a violation of the UCMJ. As to civil law, I see no reason to go after Kerry, although Hanoi Jane is a different matter.
As to the medals, Judicial watch are only after the Silver Star with V on Kerry’s web site and here Kerry looks worse, given his comments a few years back when an Admiral commited suicide over almost the exact same thing. Absent those comments by Kerry, this would be less of an issue except that one wonders why in all the paper work for that award, all the citations get it wrong. Even ensign clerks can’t make that many bad typos.
Yeah, I’m not inclined to kvetch about the question being asked — I’m all for asking questions — I just don’t think it holds up as being very probable that there’s an issue.
I think you’re wrong about the scope of Judicial Watch’s interest in the medals, however. Quoting from http://www.judicialwatch.org/archive/2004/kerryawards.htm:
Eyewitness accounts of officers, sailors and one medical doctor (who treated a