New rightwing moveon group puts out Willie Horton type ad against Kerry

[Guest guest]

Jackson's Thoreau's newest column reveals the truth about a new rightwing

copy-cat " move on " group and their Willie Horton-like dirty tricks. Margie

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This column is also at

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/viewtopic.php?topic=46205 & forum=3

 

News reports, public record contradict new 'Willie Horton' ad by right-wing

'move on' group

 

By Jackson Thoreau

 

A Willie Horton-like ad being run this week by a right-wing, copy-cat " move

on " political action committee - whose founder is a partisan Republican with

strong ties to the Bush family - is contradicted by news accounts of the case.

 

MoveOnForAmerica.org, a new 527 group that copies the successful progressive

organization MoveOn.org, plans to start airing the bogus ads on Sept. 7 in the

Washington, D.C., area. The campaign will move to swing states Sept. 13.

 

The first ad criticizes Sen. John Kerry's role as a private lawyer in

representing George Reissfelder, who spent 15 years in prison after being

wrongly

convicted of a murder, according to The Associated Press and other media

reports.

 

The ad, of course, is full of lies. MoveOnForAmerica's Web site says that

Reissfelder never served any time, which is wrong, according to news reports and

prison records.

 

The right-wing group also says that Kerry helped secure a furlough for

Reissfelder in 1974, during which he escaped for three years and eventually pled

guilty to attempted murder related to trying to pull a gun on an officer as he

was being arrested.

 

For Kerry to have worked on this case in 1974 would have been illegal, not to

mention practically impossible. In 1974, Kerry was still in law school,

according to Wikipedia. He was not admitted to the Massachusetts bar until 1976

and

immediately went to work as a full-time prosecutor in the District Attorney’s

office in Middlesex County, Mass.

 

Furthermore, Kerry and his former partner, Roanne Sragow, were not even

assigned to the Reissfelder case until 1980. Kerry left work as a prosecutor in

1979 to form a law firm with Sragow, but he was not comfortable with

representing

criminals.

 

The New Yorker wrote in May 2004 that Kerry's background as a prosecutor made

criminal work unappealing to him. " I took a court appointment once in a

criminal case, and I realized I just didn't want the guy out on the street, "

Kerry

was quoted as saying. " I knew he was guilty. It takes a certain kind of makeup

as a lawyer to dedicate yourself to having someone like that out on the

street. I know our system says someone has to represent everyone, but I just

couldn't do it. I went to the court and asked them to take me off the case. "

 

About the Reissfelder case, Kerry was quoted in The New Yorker in May 2004

saying, " Roanne was the court-appointed attorney, and I was the helper. She did

the lion's share of the work, but that case taught me a lot. "

 

Despite their case being based on obvious, easily-discredited lies, the

right-wing liars say they intend to make the case similar to the Willie Horton

campaign used by Bush and Co. against 1988 Democratic presidential candidate

Michael Dukakis.

 

Reissfelder was wrongfully convicted for shooting a railway clerk that

occurred in October 1966 during a $20,000 robbery at the Railway Express Agency

in

South Station, Boston. Reissfelder was arrested a few hours after the robbery

on a bad-check charge. After a 13-day trial in 1967, a jury convicted

Reissfelder and William (Silky) Sullivan mostly on the basis of eyewitnesses'

testimony, according to The New York Times. Both were sentenced to life.

 

Sullivan confessed on his deathbed in 1972 to a priest that he was ''sorry''

that Reissfelder was imprisoned for a crime at which he had not been present,

the Times and others have reported.

 

Reissfelder escaped during a one-day furlough in 1974, when Kerry was still

in law school, as reported before. He was captured in Jacksonville, Fla., in

1977 and sent back to prison.

 

Even the Florida parole commission voted for parole for Reissfelder, who had

been serving a concurrent 15-year sentence for the Jacksonville crime.

 

 

 

The right-wing group’s ad also says Reissfelder continued his life of crime

after being set free but fails to report his death. The New Yorker says

Reissfelder became involved with a cocaine-distribution ring, and in 1991, his

body

was found in his apartment. The death was ruled a cocaine overdose.

 

MoveOnForAmerica was created by Republican political consultant Stephen

Marks, who was a press secretary to Florida Gov. Jeb Bush in his unsuccessful

1994

campaign.

 

In the 2000 Bush-Gore race, Marks was a spokesman for Americans Against Hate,

an oxymoron-type of conservative group that ran ads trying to link Gore with

former Democratic presidential contender Al Sharpton.

 

In 2000, Marks received at least $8,132 for " consulting " from Texans for

Lawsuit Reform, a conservative group financed partly by Kenneth Lay, the former

CEO of Enron Corp. Other financial supporters of Texans for Lawsuit Reform were

Harlan Crow and Bob Perry, major donors to the 2004 treacherous campaign

against Kerry by the Swift Boat liars and Bush.

 

In addition, Marks has worked for the National Republican Senatorial

Committee, the National Republican Congressional Committee and the Republican

Governors Association. He has written for Penthouse - how does that square with

Republican family values? He regularly appears on O'Reilly's Fox show.

 

Others ads plan to raise lies about the alleged political connections between

Kerry and Sharpton and Kerry supposedly raising funds from drug lords.

 

The campaign is just one of the many dirty tricks and lies Republicans plan

against Kerry. Zell " The Turncoat " Miller took his venomous speech of lies

about Sen. Kerry's voting record at the RNC straight from an email hoax,

according

to Snopes and other sources. Check out

http://www.snopes.com/politics/kerry/weapons.asp.

 

Urban Legends has detailed more hoaxes circulated about Sen. Kerry and even

Sen. Edwards at http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/blxnew.htm. Most hoaxes

listed there are against Sen. Kerry. There is even a false, doctored photo

circulating of him supposedly shaking hands with a satanist. That tells you the

dirty tricks Bush supporters are playing.

 

Those of us who don't want to see Bush remain in office need to play some

tricks of our own. One way is to circulate this EXCELLENT by the numbers list on

Bush by Graydon Carter, the editor of Vanity Fair, at

 

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=557746.

 

Those should be turned into talking points, put on fliers and circulated far

throughout this land. And it’s all true, unlike the lies Republicans use.

Negative campaigning works - look at the Republicans' bounce by attacking Sen.

Kerry in prime time TV. Don't stay on the high road, this is too important of an

election.

 

Jackson Thoreau, a Washington, D.C.-area journalist, contributed to Big Bush

Lies, published by RiverWood Books and available in bookstores across the

country. Thoreau's new electronic book, The Strange Death of the Woman Who Filed

a

Rape Lawsuit Against Bush & Other Things the Bush Administration Doesn't Want

You to Know, can be read at http://www.geocities.com/jacksonthor/know.html.

He can be reached at jacksonthor or jacksonthor.

 

 

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