Can We Do That Too?

A conservative radio squawker in Alaska has gotten himself in a bit of hot water and off the air.

Just like our local hosts of hate radio, the Alaskan squawker, Dan Fagan, spent most of his time bashing the liberal candidate, in this case, U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski, and singing paeans to his preferred candidate. But then he got carried away:

About halfway through Fagan's show Thursday afternoon a caller phoned in to say he had just registered as a write-in candidate in the Senate race, which includes Miller, Murkowski, and Democrat Scott McAdams. The caller's provocation -- and the reason Fagan liked the idea -- was the Division of Elections' decision to provide voters who ask with a list of the write-in candidates. The Alaska Supreme Court is currently looking at the legality of that decision. Flooding that list with 150 names ranging from Michael Ames to Kathy Jo Zurek, Fagan figured, would mean fewer votes for Murkowski.

Fagan gave the addresses of the Anchorage and Wasilla offices of the Division of Elections and urged his listeners to drive over and register as write-in candidates.

Branch Haymans, an Anchorage financial advisor, was angered by Fagan's show Thursday afternoon. Haymans is a close friend of Murkowski's and has volunteered for her campaign, but is not part of her paid campaign staff.

On Friday morning, Haymans called KFQD and spoke with Joe Campbell, KFQD's program director. Haymans said he told Campbell that he thought Fagan's on-air behavior bordered on election tampering, but didn't threaten legal action or ask for Fagan to be taken off the air.

Campbell did not return a message requesting comment for this story.

"To send people with no legitimate reason other than to create confusion and chaos in an election seemed, to me, to be over the line," Haymans said. "He was no longer a talk show host. He was just a mouthpiece for Joe Miller."

Given that at least Charlie Sykes was using his Journal Broadcast sponsored show to do fund raising for Ron Johnson and Leah Vukmir, couldn't that be considered a violation of election laws? (Yeah, we already know it's unethical, but since when have the squawkers worried about ethics unless they could use it against a political rival of their buddies?)

H/T Las Vegas Badger

An Update on Fischer's Fair Use Free For All

As I first reported this morning, FranklinNOW blogger and legislative aide Kevin Fischer is quite fond of cutting and pasting entire passages written by other authors, in violation of the Fair Use doctrine.

Curious to know whether the folks who run the NOW websites condone this kind of plagiarism, I emailed Mark Maley, the NOW Online Editor:

From: Zachary W. [mailto:XXXXX@bloggingblue.com]
Sent: Fri 6/27/2008 9:32 PM
To: Mark Maley
Subject: Fair Use on FranklinNow Blog


Dear Mr. Maley:

I'm writing this email to express my concern regarding repeated violations of the Fair Use doctrine by Kevin Fischer, a blogger on the FranklinNow website. In his blog on your website, Mr. Fischer has repeatedly posted large segments of material taken from other authors, a fact that seems to be in direct violation of the Fair Use doctrine as explained by the United States Copyright Office, which states in part:

The 1961 Report of the Register of Copyrights on the General Revision of the U.S. Copyright Law cites examples of activities that courts have regarded as fair use: "quotation of excerpts in a review or criticism for purposes of illustration or comment; quotation of short passages in a scholarly or technical work, for illustration or clarification of the author's observations; use in a parody of some of the content of the work parodied; summary of an address or article, with brief quotations, in a news report; reproduction by a library of a portion of a work to replace part of a damaged copy; reproduction by a teacher or student of a small part of a work to illustrate a lesson; reproduction of a work in legislative or judicial proceedings or reports; incidental and fortuitous reproduction, in a newsreel or broadcast, of a work located in the scene of an event being reported."

http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html

Here's a list of just a few of Mr. Fischer's blog entries which I believe violate Fair Use, and I would appreciate you taking a look at the entries in question and providing me with your opinion on whether you feel the entries in question violate Fair Use.

http://blogs.franklinnow.com/this_just_in/archive/2008/06/27/what-s-great-about-america-part-1.aspx
http://blogs.franklinnow.com/this_just_in/archive/2008/06/25/u-s-supreme-court-rules-against-detah-penalty-for-child-rape.aspx
http://blogs.franklinnow.com/this_just_in/archive/2008/06/23/sympathy-for-these-absent-minded-individuals-no-way.aspx
http://blogs.franklinnow.com/this_just_in/archive/2008/06/22/why-wiscosin-can-t-be-like-arizona.aspx

I look forward to your response.

Sincerely,

Zachary W.

Here's the response I received from Mark Maley:

From: Mark Maley
Date: Sat, Jun 28, 2008 2:40 pm
To: "Zachary W."
Cc:

Zachary:
You'll have to take this up with Kevin Fischer, who is responsible for the content of his own blog.

I'll send him a copy of your email and my response.


Mark Maley
NOW Online Editor

And perhaps the coup de grâce, a response from Kevin Fischer, the king of maturity:

From: "Kevin Fischer"
Date: Sat, Jun 28, 2008 8:32 pm
To: "'Zachary W.'"
Nice try, Drippy!

What's your next move to try to silence me?

Going to run and tattle to Senator Lazich?

Maybe you should just mind your own business, get a life, and worry about
your own sorry blog.

Fischer's Next Job: Public Relations Specialist

The other day, Fischer puts up a post blasting away at anonymous commenters on the Internet. While the example he used does indeed show how mean people can be, one cannot help but wonder what his true intentions were when he wrote this.

In the comments thread of this post, we see a Mr. Zippy, who rightfully points out that some of the forefathers of this great country of ours wrote the Federalist Papers under the alias of Publius.

Fischer then does the only thing he apparently knows. He resorts to whining and name-calling. He bemoans how "mean" people have been to him. He seems to have forgotten that the reason he even came to our attention was because he was being a bully to a young blogger, and was doing this same sort of name-calling that he is complaining about, and then some. His attacks were of a personal nature. His misbehaviors are so egregious that he has even been called on it in Milwaukee Magazine, not just once, but twice.

Because of his boorish behaviors, he came under more and more scrutiny. Since then, we have found out that he is ethically-challenged and has bilked tax payers of their hard earned money.

But the real irony is in his complaints of people choosing to be anonymous, or using a pseudonym, like our founding fathers used the moniker of Publius. Many people have written about the right to remain anonymous and/or to use a pseudonym. Greater minds and writers, from the left's Jay Bullock to the right's Owen Robinson to a Great King have all written in support of this constitutional right. Needless to say, all of these people are better writers and deeper thinkers than Fischer could hope to be, which might explain his anger, his bitterness, and his petulance.

This is all just leading up to his hypocrisy on the issue, since his boss, state Senator Mary Lazich, has already told us that he does her writing for her blog. This means, dear reader, that he too writes under a pseudonym. Yet he complains about others who choose to do so.

But despite his misogynist tendencies, his ethical lapses, his megalomania, and his churlish and childish name-calling, Fischer does have one redeeming quality. He reads Whallah! You see, when he complains about having his writing skills unfavorably compared to those of a fetid mouse turd, it came from this here post.

Ethics Matter

As demonstrated by yours truly and capper earlier this week, Kevin Fischer is no fan of ethics. Cindy Kilkenny over at Fairly Conservative has also done a great job of detailing all Kevin Fischer's foibles and ethical lapses, but today I want to take a trip in the Wayback Machine...destination 1996 (emphasis mine):

October 15, 1996, Tim Cuprison in Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

"Quit all the speculating out there about why reporter/ conservative commentator Kevin Fischer got fired last week by WTMJ-AM (620). Despite reading here that it had nothing to do with his political views, folks who saw conspiracies out there inundated my voice mail.

Well, as is the case with most companies, the Journal Broadcast Group won't talk about why Fischer was axed, except to say that it wasn't for anything he did on the air.

But nosing behind the scenes, it's clear that WTMJ management was concerned about a possible violation of the company's ethics code. While away on vacation, it seems, Fischer took a freebie to Walt Disney World's 25th anniversary celebration in Orlando, Fla., a huge media event. Fischer didn't file any reports from the bash. The next week, he lost his job. Word is that after Fischer was fired, WTMJ's radio news folks were called into a meeting and the ethics policy was restated to prevent a repeat of the situation. Fischer, by the way, won't talk about it. In fact, he angrily told me to stop typing what he said when I called him Monday afternoon, because he wouldn't talk to me on the record. He wouldn't talk off the record, for that matter. KUDOS FOR KEVIN: Meanwhile, big bucks consultant and conservative policy wonk George Mitchell wrote to Fischer's bosses praising his reporting style: "Kevin did not cloak his reporting or commentary with phony objectivity which characterizes so much of the print and broadcast journalism today. With Kevin, listeners got a clear and open expression of news and opinion. "They knew just where he was coming from, not unlike listeners to Paul Harvey, for example," Mitchell wrote. For the record, Paul Harvey isn't a reporter. He's a commentator."

So let's recap...

• Allegedly fired for violating ethics code at WTMJ? CHECK!
  
• Used more vacation time in 2006 than what he was alloted as a state employee? CHECK!
  
• Used more vacation time in 2007 - at least 46 hours worth - than what he was alloted? CHECK!

It's no wonder why Kevin Fischer says "Ethics Schmethics."

Coincidence Or Intellectual Theft?

McBride's blogging may have slowed down greatly, but she still has her contractual obligations. In today GMToday, she has an column about "her" take of the presidential election so far. Most of it her usual snarky bashing just about everyone but Fred Thompson. But what is interesting is how she starts her column:

News flash to the mainstream media: The presidential election is not "American Idol." Just because a candidate loses a single state, doesn’t mean the candidate is off the show.

This is eerily similar to a post written by Brian Fraley three days ago. In this well written post, he starts with this:

Some friendly advice for media pundits, bloggers and other observers of the 2008 Presidential race:

Politics is not a reality television show. Contestants do not get voted off the island with every week’s new episode.

Nowhere in her column does McBride credit Fraley for that line. She did change it slightly, so I doubt that it would qualify as plagiarism. (Is there a lawyer in the house that could offer an opinion? iT? How about an English teacher? Jay?) However, it is close enough that it is pretty apparent this is where she got it from.

One would think that a teacher of journalism, teaching at a college level, would have enough ethics to acknowledge the source in her column.

A Trick Question From The Brawler

Our own Brew City Brawler, in a post titled " Is Jessica McBride an ethical journalist?" points out that the Professional Journalists code of ethics requires the ethical journalist to "admit mistakes and correct them promptly."

He then asks McBride if she will admit that she is not a UWM faculty member.

Methinks that ol' Brawler is being a bit unfair. We have to first determine if she qualifies as a real journalist before we can determine if she is an ethical one.

'Knowing' Jack Abramoff

You have to admire, in a sick sort of way, the unbounded audacity of Jessica McBride to distort, twist or simply offer bald-face lies with no shame. One explanation is that she is self-deluded and believes what she writes, which is a scary defense. She probably has even convinced herself she's a UWM faculty member, although it has been pointed out that she clearly is not.

Ignorance of the law is no excuse, we're told. How about ignorance of the facts?

The latest, on a brewing scandal for Al Sharpton:

If Al Sharpton goes down over this, will fellow Democrats be tarnished for knowing him, like Republicans were tarnished for knowing Jack Abramoff? Will this be painted as symbolic of corruption in the Democratic party at large, like the Mark Foley scandal and the GOP?

Lest we forget, Republicans (and even a few Dems) didn't get into trouble because they "knew" Jack Abramoff. They got into trouble because lobbyist Abramoff pretty much owned them lock, stock and barrel, buying them with boatloads of money, gifts, free trips, and more. In return, they did his bidding in the Congress.

It's been a little while, so here's a refresher on Abramoff's misdeeds.

There is, of course, no comparison to what Sharpton's accused of doing.

Some Quick Thoughts

Just some quick thoughts, prompted by the local right-wing media:

• McBride asks "When did conservatives become pro-pollution?" The answer is "when they realized that it would increase their profit margins."
• Despite her husband running for Attorney General last year, McBride apparently still doesn't understand how elections work. She also apparently hasn't learned the lesson of ethics that Wisconsin was taught by Annette "Gut-check" Ziegler.
• According to Sykes and McBride, the only qualification one needs to be police chief is to use the word 'thug' in a sentence. Of course, neither of them live in Milwaukee, either, so that is easy for them to say.
• McBride credits Scott Walker for keeping taxes in Milwaukee County down. She said the same thing for Mark Green, and any Republican, really. Then maybe she could explain this article from the Waupaca County Post (sorry, small paper, no website):

County approves 5.57% increase in tax levy

Waupaca County supervisors approved a $74.6 million budget Tuesday.

The total 2008 budget will be supported by a $20.43 million property tax levy, up 5.57 percent over last year.

...County Finance Director Jim Bernhagen told the supervisors that the Finance Committee had approved raising the tax levy by the full amount allowed by the recently enacted state budget. The county's levy for debt service, which is not under the cap, was increased by12.84 percent...

There are two things that the gentle reader should be aware of. One is that Waupaca County is such a stronghold of Republicans, that the Democrats from Waupaca County had to join forces with the Democrats from Waushara County to have enough people to make any sort of impact. The other is that her hero, Walker, is also proposing to enter a debt program to cover his short falls. Doesn't seem too financially prudent, now, does it?