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STAR TRIBUNE: E-MAIL SMEAR IS TRACED TO RIVAL AIDE
By Michael B. Brodkorb | August 31, 2006
Wow – Democrat bloggers expose Democrat operative sending emails about another Democrat candidate. I love DFL infighting!
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"[Jason] Amundsen did not return phone calls or respond to e-mail Thursday seeking comment. But his resignation appears to link him to a much broader and mysterious e-mail campaign against Ellison since early this summer that also circulated information about his campaign finance violations over several years.
In that e-mail campaign, the anonymous writer copied campaign finance records documenting the violations and sent them in June from the e-mail address "britishflyonthewall@yahoo.co.uk."
In denying any knowledge of Amundsen's role in circulating negative information about Ellison, Ostrow said Thursday, 'The policy of my campaign from Day One has been we would respond to published reports, and that's what we have done.'
In July, a day after the Star Tribune reported on the campaign finance violations circulated by britishflyonthewall, Ostrow held a news conference to say he was 'deeply concerned about Rep. Ellison's repeated ethical and legal lapses.' Ostrow also called on Ellison to explain himself or be considered unfit for the office.
The same day, Amundsen, in his role as campaign manager, wrote an item for Ostrow's website calling Ellison a scofflaw.
Amundsen's secret role emerged this week, shortly after the latest e-mails from britishflyonthewall were sent. Two blogs traced it to Amundsen by comparing the Internet Protocol address of a computer associated with the e-mails to an IP address on earlier e-mail Amundsen wrote in his role as campaign manager." Source: Star Tribune, September 1, 2006
Click here for complete story.
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25 Responses to “STAR TRIBUNE: E-MAIL SMEAR IS TRACED TO RIVAL AIDE”
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August 31st, 2006 at 10:24 PM
nice piece, MB. I had no idea you were working for Ostrow. congrats, but aren’t you supposed to disclose relationsdships like this?
August 31st, 2006 at 10:27 PM
I’m not working for Ostrow’s campaign.
August 31st, 2006 at 11:11 PM
I am proud of how Paul Ostrow has handled this. If he had kept Amundson on, he would be no better than Mark Kennedy.
August 31st, 2006 at 11:54 PM
COMMENT DELETED AT REQUEST OF AUTHOR
September 1st, 2006 at 12:02 AM
Can’t you get it?!? There are a lot of us that DO NOT approve of dirty tricks or corruption no matter WHAT the party affiliation…
… that’s the difference between SOME of us and you, Michael. You are a partisan hound-dog through-and-through. Otherwise you’d be on the bash-John-Kline bandwagon. In my opinion, and many others, he is the dirtiest campaigner, takes the most tainted funds and is the Minnesota congressman least responsive or responsible to his constituents. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, if he were a Democrat and voted my way on all the issues I would be just as fervently against him.
Coleen Rowley is a solid, moderate/conservative alternative. His attempts to dismiss her (her campaign volunteer that is… he hasn’t the cajones to take her on man-to-man unless Jason Lewis is protecting him) as an ultraliberal are even appalling to some of the conservatives posting here.
For the record, my presidential voting pattern over my life has been:
Ford, Reagan, Reagan, Bush, Bush, Dole, Bush, Kerry.
George W. is imploding. Did you see the Brian Williams interview where the best his father can offer him is “unconditional love” (not support for his policies). With a high ninties percent partisan voting record John Kline IS George Bush in this midterm. This IS a referendum on George Bush.
It’s finally unraveling. I urge any of your viewers to LOOK AT THE BRIAN WILLIAMS INTERVIEW themselves. I’m sure it will be available in Quicktimes movies on the Internet, or on YouTube.
The best soundbite of today was about Bush’s “Katrina Foreign Policy.” I could not have put it better myself — that’s it in a nutshell. Ronald Reagan saw us as a shining city on the hill and I bought it, and voted for him, and was happy with the Gipper. Ronald Reagan is (unfortunately) dead, and these are new times. Bush Jr. is the biggest mistake the country has made — why the hell did you righties allow John McCain, a man of unquestioned integrity, get Swiftboated back in 2000? What a different world we would now be living in if HE would have won as the Republican nominee. I have no doubt that I would have voted for his re-election in 2004 instead of voting for Kerry.
You think this is rage? DAMN RIGHT it is rage. Look beyond your freaking partisan agenda and realize that the Republican party needs an enema. And its not going to happen by returning lapdogs like John Kline and dozens like him across the US to Congress in November.
If everyone on this blog would pull their heads out of their asses and realize that this nation is in the biggest crisis since the Civil War, and that there are no guarantees that we will survive this administration with our civil rights and freedoms intact, we can strike back. I’d gladly still be a Republican if it still meant anything but a team jersey anymore. I hope it becomes the party of Lincoln again.
September 1st, 2006 at 12:09 AM
Good news!
Apparently there is now an opening in Ostrow’s Campaign.
But if Jason is gone…does that mean that there will be no more ‘good stuff’ coming out on Ellison?
We will have to rely more heavily on this blog site and on MB hehehe
Hason, be a sport…come back!!!!
September 1st, 2006 at 12:45 AM
STARTRIBUNE HEADLINE: 2 state soldiers killed in Iraq
For what? Are we safer than we were on 9/11? Hooey! The 9/11 commission’s recommendations are largely unexamined, much less implemented!
Iraq and 9/11 were NEVER linked. We are GROWING terrorists with our policies in the Mideast NOT fighting them there!
What the fuck have we done for our own citizens from the Katrina disaster? WATCH THE DAMN NEWS COVERAGE!
This is NOT your father’s Republican party.
There is NO GUARANTEE that the United States will stand forever. Every civilization ends up rotting from within and going away. Let’s not let that time be NOW. Throw off your partisan games and fight for the future of this country by rejecting this retard Bush and his rubberstamps and come back with a worthy and honest Republican candidate again. It’s not going to happen without some cleansing, folks.
September 1st, 2006 at 6:53 AM
Help! Can anybody help me find a job?
September 1st, 2006 at 6:58 AM
This has to be a very embarrassing day for you Mr. Brodcorb. You were caught as part of the conspiracy to scuttle Mr. Ellison, rather than doing the “original reporting” you claim to do.
Instead of YOU exposing the true story of a smear campaign of one Democratic candidate against another, YOU are found to be an instrument of the offending campaign and a LIBERAL site is the one that exposed the dirty trickster.
Your site is a muckraking site, and while entertaining your posts simply attack based on party affiliation, facts be damned (and this is revealed in your site name and your site’ stated purpose).
I have been heartened to see some of your conservative posters start to note that John Kline has gone too far in trying to paint his opponent as a left wing extremist, when in fact she is a retired FBI special agent and long-time Republican voter. It let’s me know that there are some people here with minds that while partisan, are open, and aren’t afraid to let a little light come in. We need that on both sides — there is a left wing nut for every right wing nut, and neither party has a corner on ethics or ideas.
Do you remember why we voted in Newt Gingrich and crew? A Democratic Congress that had grown lazy and corrupt. Do you know why the country now needs to clean House? A Republican party that has done the same. Only this time it has captured all three branches of federal government and is in a cycle of doing nothing except self-preservation.
It would be really something to see you change the name of this site to “Corrupt Politicians Exposed” or “Dirty Politics Exposed” and cover these things on both sides of the aisle. However, I imagine that would get you fired from the Republican public relations firm you make your living from. Of course, wink-wink, we all know that there is no connection between your work on this site and the Republican campaigns that put bread on your table.
Had enough?
September 1st, 2006 at 7:26 AM
I love comments 1 and 2 above. If you were blogging on them, the story would read:
“MDE DENIES BEING PAID OSTROW OPERATIVE!!! INVESTIGATION CONTINUES!!
There’s more to come on this story later!”
September 1st, 2006 at 7:39 AM
Geo,
Did you just call Coleen Rowley moderate/conservative? HA!!!!
She supports socialized healthcare, cut-and-run in Iraq, a military draft, repealing the Bush tax cuts, abortion on demand, gay marriage, etc…
Name ONE position where she is “moderate.”
September 1st, 2006 at 7:58 AM
Uh, yeah, I’ve had enough…of Geo’s thread-jacking.
Please, if you want to post your rants, get your own blog and spare ther rest of us the need to scroll down the page every other comment.
September 1st, 2006 at 8:04 AM
“Coleen Rowley is a solid, moderate/conservative alternative.”
Thanks for starting my day with a good laugh. Rowley – “solid” – haahaa – “moderate” – hohoho!
That was great. A great joke to start a Friday.
September 1st, 2006 at 8:16 AM
“You think this is rage? DAMN RIGHT it is rage. Look beyond your freaking partisan agenda and realize that the Republican party needs an enema.”
Geo, I liked you better when you were on your meds. So much for civil discourse.
September 1st, 2006 at 8:55 AM
Maybe the number of earmarks increasing twelve fold since the Republicans took over Congress is a sign of conservatism.
Maybe taking a sizeable surplus left over when Clinton left office and turning it into ra string of record deficits is a sign of conservatism.
Maybe dismantling a robust FEMA that we had under Clinton into a job shop for political cronies unable to to react to Katrina is a sign of conservatism.
What gives this current crop of Republicans any right to the term “conservative?” It sure as heck isn’t fiscal conservatism. It sure as heck isn’t the old liberatrian notion of “live-and-let-live” that used to define conservatives in my youth.
I’ll take people like Coleen Rowley “conserving” my civil liberties any day. I’ll take the pre-George Bush surpluses as a conservative any day.
If your definition of “moderate/conservative” is gay-bashing, anti-affordable health care for families, shifting of the tax burden to those less able to pay, staying the course in an ill-conceived, ill-executed war without any ideas on how to fix it, then I suppose you would be right that I am not using the labels according to your definition.
Master of None, thanks for your clever comment. Yes, I need to vent once in a while too. Especially after watching a couple hours of TV news coverage of Donald Rumsfeld labeling anyone who dares question the administration as Nazi appeasers. And when I hear George Bush first deny that he links Iraq and the war on terror and then spends the next two days doing exactly that.
September 1st, 2006 at 9:02 AM
And Master of None, please note my second rant was in reaction to two more Minnesotans being killed in this “war on terror” in Iraq. One of them was a Hmong. An immigrant to this country, who died in this country’s service. And then I think of all the negative comments John Kline made last week on WCCO about immigrants, and how that’s the big difference between him and George Bush is that George Bush is too soft on immigration. You know, even George Bush gets things right some days. Law of averages, impossible not to.
September 1st, 2006 at 9:20 AM
Oh, I get it. Coleen Rowley is a conservative…if you redefine what the term conservative means.
Geo, we’re all sick of your rambling nonsense. Get your own blog. Better yet, get a life and stop posting rambling nonsense that has nothing to do with the current post.
September 1st, 2006 at 9:22 AM
So this is therapy for you? I’m glad to see it’s doing somebody some good. Explain again why it belongs in this thread, on this blog?
September 1st, 2006 at 11:49 AM
Here’s what I see when there’s a Geo post:
Wah-wah-wah…wah-wah-…wah-wah-wah…I hate George Bush…wah-wah-wah…Republicans are the cause of all evil in the universe….wah-wah-wah…I worship Satan….wah-wah-wah….
(Okay, maybe not the last one but it fit so I went with it…)
September 1st, 2006 at 11:55 AM
RR said “I am proud of how Paul Ostrow has handled this. If he had kept Amundson on, he would be no better than Mark Kennedy. ”
A more appropos comparison would be Coleen Rowley RR…….
September 1st, 2006 at 11:58 AM
“Coleen Rowley is a solid, moderate/conservative alternative. ”
Geo – you have GOT to be kidding me! I have gone over Coleen’s issues site and there is NOTHING conservative about her. Her issues page is pure DCCC talking points. What is conservative about THAT?
September 1st, 2006 at 2:28 PM
Actually, Geo is right when he says we’re in the biggest crisis since the Civil War; the War on Terrorism is much more dangerous and arguably requires much more restriction of what in the past were considered civil liberties (in the salad days of pre-9-11 America). I’ll take fighting Nazis and (civil war) Rebels any day to Extremist Muslim radicals standing in line at the Multi-plex with an oddly wired fanny-pack.
We really need to wake up before we get put to sleep, permanently.
September 1st, 2006 at 10:51 PM
Northsider – haven’t you heard of bcc? Just because Britt Robson is the only listed recipient, doesn’t mean that Robson was the only recipient who got the message.
September 2nd, 2006 at 9:23 AM
To Britt Robson, City Pages, and the Star Tribune,
I apologize unreservedly for openly suspecting that the ONLY possible sources of the e-mails that were published by MNPublius.com and danweinand.com might have been intentionally from someone inside City Pages or the Star Tribune, or that their leaking may have been the result of some sort of sloppiness, or lack of institution integrity, with confidential information within either of your organizations.
There is clearly a way that these e-mails could be presented on the MNPublius and Weinand sites in the form that they were where the source did not have to be from inside one of your organizations. I clearly do not understand e-mail as well as I though I did.
I have asked Michael Brodkorb to remove the
comments I posted on this matter. Again, my apologies.
September 2nd, 2006 at 9:53 AM
Eva,
Apparently, I’m a total dumbass. Readers of any future comments I might post should take that into account.