Plus: How to make Andrew Sullivan swoon!

Jason Turner, NY mayor Giuliani's welfare commissioner and a kausfiles hero, ran one of the few welfare programs in the nation that required recipients to work in public jobs if necessary.  But Turner's efforts in NYC were hampered because under NY state law, if recipients refuse to work, they only lose part of their monthly welfare check -- it falls from $588 per month to $475 for a family of three, plus they get to keep food stamps, public housing, and Medicaid. The liberal NY state legislature prohibits a tougher "sanction." (Allegedly it would violate a vague state constitutional provision requiring "aid, care and support of the needy.") Recipients soon learned they could take the $113 hit and then tell the welfare department to get lost when it tried to get them into the labor force. ...Only 17 states have this weak penalty-- most states have a "full-check sanction" that eventually cuts off welfare entirely. But the 17 states include New York and California, which between them have 32 percent of the nation's welfare cases.  ... Republicans in the House recently tried to require that all states install a "full-check sanction" or else pay for the continuing benefits out of their own funds. But the provision was gutted by GOP Ways & Means chairman Bill Thomas, who stuck in an exemption for New York and California. Thomas argued the two states were going to keep paying the benefits anyway, so why make them take the budgetary hit? But the underlying debate among reformers is whether Congress should tell states (and can get away with telling states) what to do in this sort of detail. ...  Turner makes his case here. ... 6:15 P.M.

Two weeks ago a BET.com message board  called on its readers to post their "Happy Father's Day shout-out." The site's staff urged: "Go ahead, tell your father how much you love him." BET.com expected "positive messages of love and support." Instead, its audience posted messages like:

I WANT TO THANK MY DAD FOR … NOT BEING THERE FOR ME. I WANT HIM TO KNOW HOW MUCH I HATE HIM!!

So much for any thought of glossing over the crisis of the black family. (In a follow-up, BET.com says it was "surprised" by "the intense anger shown on the message boards.")  ... Maybe the Bush administration's "marriage promotion" PR initiative isn't such an idiotic idea after all. ...(Link via Instapundit and MarriageMovement.org) 1:00 P.M.

WaPo reports that former FBI deputy general counsel, Thomas A. Kelley, who is heading the Congressional intelligence committee's inquiry into the bureau's pre-9/11 antiterrorist performance, was accused of obstructing the Danforth inquiry into Waco:

According to a December 2000 internal FBI memo, Kelley "continued to thwart and obstruct" the Waco investigation to the point that Danforth was forced to send a team to search FBI headquarters for documents Kelley refused to turn over.

Danforth himself is quoted saying that getting documents from the FBI "was like pulling teeth." ... He's just a bit gruff, say his defenders. .. Note: As I read it, WaPo only charges that Kelley obstructed Justice, not that he obstructed justice. (Link via Instapundit)  2:00 A.M.

How to make Andrew Sullivan swoon: Tell him you'd marry him! ... Robert Reich has come out in favor of gay marriage, and Sullivan, who disagrees vehemently with Reich on probably 80 percent of all other issues, says, "For this reason alone, it seems to me voters in Massachusetts should vote for Reich."  ... I would suggest that Andrew has lost perspective. Meanwhile, Reich has brilliantly solved his fundraising problem (he'll now get contributions from gay rights supporters all over the country). ... 1:30 A.M.

Sunday, June 23, 2002

LAT's Tim Rutten busts kausfiles  for comparing Woodward and Bernstein's Watergate coverage to blogging and arguing that their blog-like methods -- producing a steady stream of stories that force sources to react, even if that comes at the expense of 100-percent accuracy -- are superior to former LAT editor Bill Thomas' method of "Do It Once. Do It Right."