SMRs and AMRs

Thursday, September 04, 2014

What even the liberal media isn’t reporting about the Rick Perry indictment

New York Times, Wall Street Journal & USA Today brush felony charges aside. They're not telling you everything.

Paul Rosenberg, Salon

At least in 2012, Rick Perry realized he’d forgotten the name of the federal department he wanted to abolish. But when it comes to the charges he’s just been indicted for, he’s certain of what they are. “Bribery,” he said in New Hampshire recently — but he’s wrong. It’s not exactly a strong position to start from if you’re going to loudly proclaim your innocence. At least he’s got one thing right: “I don’t really understand the details,” he added.

In that, Perry is far from alone. Few, if any, of his high-profile defenders, either left or right, seem to understand much more than he does. Still, you don’t have to be a lawyer to at least have some idea of what’s being charged. The indictment is online for anyone to read, and it’s not that hard to understand — one count for abuse of official capacity, the other for coercion of a public official. Yet few in the national media seem to have figured that out.

Glenn W. Smith is director of the Progress Texas PAC, so he knows a thing or two about the Lone Star state. He was also part of George Lakoff’s Rockridge Institute, so he’s got a broader intellectual perspective as well — just the combination one would want for a perspective on what’s going on here.

“It was very clear to me that some of the pundits-at-a-distance based their initial opinions on two false assumptions,” Smith said, via email, “1) That the Perry indictments were the product of a nest of angry but unsophisticated Austin liberals; 2) That it was a governor’s constitutional power of the veto that was being challenged.”

(More here.)

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