John Bentley of CBS sent me this e-mail yesterday, and I just got a chance to read it today:
Mr.
Warthen:Thank you for reading our blog and
posting your comments (I’m assuming the comments are yours – if you could,
please reply to this e-mail to verify that I’m talking to the authentic Brad
Warthen). My editor and I have changed the posting to reflect your concerns.
My original copy was vetted before it was posted and we believed your posting to
be reflective of The State’s stance on Senator Thompson; however, if we have
taken that out of context, I hope the updated posting addresses the
issue.Sincerely,
John
BentleyReporter, CBS
NewsPolitical
Unit
I checked the updated post, and it’s all better. I wrote Mr. Bentley back to tell him so, reiterating The State does not have a position of any kind with regard to Mr. Thompson, and can no way be held responsible for my off-the-cuff, blog-level opinions. And yes, absolutely — anything you see on the blog is by "the authentic Brad Warthen" (don’t be fooled by cheap imitations!).
We are working with the Giuliani, Romney and Thompson campaigns to get them in this week, but of course, none of them will really be focusing on us until Wednesday morning, and so far nothing is pinned down. We have our calls out to the Democrats, but will try to put them off until next week, since we’re so squeezed on the Republicans already, and we plan to run our GOP endorsement Jan. 13, which is the Sunday before the GOP primary. With the Dems, we’re aiming for Jan. 20.
I have a feeling that, the way things are unfolding, these things will be done very much on the fly, with short notice. Maybe, once N.H. is over Wednesday morning, we’ll be able to schedule the Dems a few days ahead of time. But we’ll have no such luxury with the Republicans…
If we don’t get the remaining GOP candidates in by the end of the day Thursday, we’re are up the creek, sans paddles.
By the way, in addition to McCain and Huckabee, we have talked to two other candidates — Sam Brownback and Joe Biden. Fat lot of good that does us now, huh? But I don’t regret it; both were interesting.
Brad, Rudy has expressed justification that his liaisons with his then mistress and the budgeting for police acting as body guards for her were properly reported. When pressed by Russert on this issue, Rudy exclaimed that threats were directed at him, his family, and those he cares about.
Does he simply not understand that the act of running around with the mistress, on the tax payer dime, in the first place is a major part of the issue!? Please consider asking him.