Daily Intel

Phone Hacking Memo to James Murdoch at Center of Inquiry

Andre Tartar — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 2:25:00 -0500

Around when James Murdoch was testifying to Parliament last November that he knew nothing of phone hacking at News of the World, which his father had already shuttered, investigators found a carton in the paper's locked offices that seemed to come from the office of Colin Myler, the paper's editor and now at the New York Daily News. Inside, was a hard copy of an e-mail he'd sent to James Murdoch in June 2008 regarding allegations by football exec Gordan Taylor that his phone had been hacked: "Unfortunately it is as bad as we feared." Myler also asked if Murdoch could meet with him and the in-house lawyer to discuss the issue. A month later, Murdoch told a government panel that he hadn't read the entire e-mail chain and was still totally in the dark about the widespread use of phone hacking by News Corp. reporters.

But turns out that this e-mail is at the heart of the ongoing investigation into, among other things, allegations of a cover-up, with a High Court judge recently lambasting the News Corp. division in question for "startling approach" to e-mail and recommending that "they are to be treated as deliberate destroyers of evidence." He may have been referring, in part, to the suspiciously timed deletion of the e-mail from James Murdoch's computer on January 15, 2011 as part of a suspiciously named "e-mail stabilization and modernization program." As the Times reports:

It is clear that on Jan. 15, when the deletion took place, the company knew it was facing civil and potentially criminal inquiries.

Further undermining Murdoch's denials was the $1.4 million phone hacking settlement he approved shortly after, and testimony from Myler and the NotW lawyer that they had fully informed Murdoch of the more damaging aspects of the Taylor lawsuit. (In the e-mail chain is a message from the paper's lawyer to Myler that included the line: "Broadly our Defence will accept that we knw of and made use of the voicemail information Mulcaire acquired..." Glenn Mculaire is a private investigator who worked for NotW.) And so the plot thickens.

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Filed Under: scandal-stained wretches ,james murdoch ,news of the world ,phone hacking

Insider Leaking Shareholder Voting Data to Companies for Cash and Gifts

Andre Tartar — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 12:37:12 -0500

A mid-level employee at a large advisory firm, ISS Boston, is accused of leaking shareholder votes to companies hoping to, for instance, push through a merger or avoid an embarrassing shareholder revolt. [NYP]

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Filed Under: corporate subterfuge ,information trading

Mitt Romney Wins in Maine, But Ron Paul Thinks He'll Still Take the Delegates

Andre Tartar — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 12:17:44 -0500

Despite skipping out on the CPAC conference (which wrapped up yesterday) and campaigning hard in Maine, Ron Paul still lost to Mitt Romney, who last night was declared the winner of that state's unusually drawn-out caucuses. Speaking on CBS' Face the Nation this morning, Paul said, perhaps for the first time, that he was "a little disappointed." However, minutes after the official results were released yesterday, showing Romney winning by just a 194 vote margin, reporters checking their inbox were greeted by a message titled "Ron Paul Victory in Maine!" But this was not some pre-drafted e-mail accidentally sent out by a bleary-eyed aide. After pointing out that the Texas congressman had just barely been "nudged out" from first place because pro-Paul Washington County had chosen not to vote, the e-mail laid out the campaign's real strategy: "We are confident we will control the Maine delegation for the convention in August."

This is because Maine, like many other states that have voted so far (i.e. Missouri, Iowa) doesn't actually pledge delegates right away. Plus, not all convention delegates are even bound to a specific candidate, which means at some point the candidates will stop caring about the voters and start promising the world and the stars to uncommitted delegates. But let's not get ahead of ourselves — there's still plenty more fun primaries to go before the delegate horse race kicks off.

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Filed Under: politics ,gop 2012 ,mitt romney ,ron paul ,maine caucuses ,delegate race

Martha Stewart Will Not Be Pushed Around

Charlotte Cowles — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 10:15:00 -0500

Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia's lawyers struck back at Macy's in court on Friday, claiming that Martha Stewart is free to peddle her wares wherever she pleases. Macy's sued MSLO a few weeks ago for striking a deal with JCPenney, which allegedly violates Stewart's contract to sell her products "only at Macy's," the tagline that Macy's sunk millions of ad dollars (and Usher!) into promoting. But MSLO's lawyers now argue that Martha Stewart's contract with Macy's wasn't exclusive at all.

Reports the Wall Street Journal:

“Macy’s simply has no exclusive right to Martha Stewart Living’s creativity order sign concepts, now or in the future,” the filing said.

While Martha Stewart Living-designed goods are sold in approximately 600 Macy’s stores, they are also available in over 6,000 retail outlets, including Home Depot and other large chain distributors, the filing said.

Meanwhile, WWD reports that MLSO is moving to invalidate the recent renewal of their contract with Macy's, which extends their partnership to 2018, due to claims that the retailer failed to "maximize net sales" of Martha Stewart's products. So, looks like this will be a nice messy lawsuit rife with terrible — and by that we mean excellent — puns like "the oven mitts are off" and "this pillow fight could leave some bruises" (courtesy of the Journal and the Post, respectively).

Sarah Palin Receives the Most Depressing Rendition of the \"Happy Birthday\" Song We've Ever Heard

Dan Amira — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 6:48:48 -0500

From the looks of the shrieking, camera-wielding mob that slowly crawled its way across the Marriott lobby this afternoon, we thought for a moment that Ronald Reagan himself had been reincarnated by CPAC scientists as this year's grand finale. But it was only Sarah Palin, still attracting the same vortex of attention — here, at least, among her people — as she ever did at the peak of her powers. This was before tonight's keynote speech, for which hundreds of people lined up hours in advance. So many people, in fact, that three overflow rooms were set up to accomodate them all. When Palin was introduced onstage at around 4:40 p.m., she was greeted by a loud, sustained standing ovation, a standing ovation that would be reprised many times.

The speech was so full of red meat that Palin may as well have just butchered a live cow onstage and tossed various bloody cuts into the crowd. It was all red meat — "the government rich," bureaucrats, "spread the wealth around," Solyndra, negotiating with the Taliban, cooperating with the Kremlin, EPA, lightbulbs, "crony capitalism," plutocrats, "community organizer," "lowering the sea levels," "Chicago politician," biased media. It was the Sarah Palin we all know and love, or despise, but nothing in between.

When it was over, Palin shook hands with a few lucky CPACers in the audience, while in the hallway outside of the ballroom, dozens of fans crowded around the doors which, over the course of the past few days, most speakers have emerged from after leaving the stage. Anxiously, they waited for Palin. And waited. The minutes ticked by. Eventually, they tried to coax Palin out by serenading her with the "Happy Birthday" song (Palin turns 48 today). It was just after they finished that a CPAC staffer informed them, "Sarah is gone. She left the building." Watch the video below, with a special cameo by my index finger.

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Filed Under: live from cpac ,politics ,sarah palin ,cpac ,videos

Mitt Romney Finally Gets Some Good News

Dan Amira — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 5:35:47 -0500

It's been a very rough few days for Mitt Romney. First, he was swept by Rick Santorum in this week's caucuses and primaries. Then he came in a very distant second to Rick Santorum in the national PPP poll released this morning. But this afternoon brought some good news for the embattled Romney campaign: He won the CPAC straw poll, with 38 percent to Rick Santorum's 31 percent.

Obviously the straw poll results are not representative of the national GOP electorate — 44 percent of the votes were cast by students, for example. But at the same time they released the straw poll results, CPAC and the Washington Times released a national poll showing Romney edging Santorum, 27-25 — much better results than the PPP poll. So, hooray! Romney won two polls over a guy who was never supposed to be a threat to to begin with!

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Filed Under: live from cpac ,politics ,mitt romney ,straw poll ,rick santorum

New DSM-5 May List Internet Addiction As a Mental Illness

Andre Tartar — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 4:43:05 -0500

That means you, who rather than sleeping, working, bathing, or picking up that heavy paper-y thing gathering dust on your nightstand, are reading this post. [NYDN]

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Filed Under: dsm-5 ,internet addiction ,psychology

Bishops Still Really Unhappy With Obama’s Contraception Compromise

Andre Tartar — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 3:39:53 -0500

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has been flexing its political muscles this week, first getting President Obama to pull back from requiring religious institutions to cover contraceptives in their employees' insurance plans, and now pushing for even greater concessions. In a statement, the bishops lay out "two serious objections" they still have with the revised policy, in which insurers foot the contraceptives bill when religious groups opt out. The first: "All the other mandated 'preventive services' prevent disease, and pregnancy is not a disease." The second, that waivers should be given to any individual "who consider such 'services' immoral." Furthermore, the bishops note a slight catch-22: "at this point, it would appear that self-insuring religious employers, and religious insurance companies, are not exempt from this mandate." While the worst of the storm may have passed, the president better keep his anorak on, as it's likely to keep raining angry prelates for some while longer.

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Filed Under: religion ,politics ,contraceptives ,birth control ,barack obama ,healthcare brouhaha

Rupert Murdoch Flies to London to Stave Off Crisis at The Sun, After Five More Arrested

Andre Tartar — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 1:49:56 -0500

Two weeks ago the offices of Rupert Murdoch's British tabloid The Sun (and the jewel in his newsprint crown) were raided while four current and former editors there were arrested as part of an ongoing police bribery investigation — this morning, five more of the paper's top editors and reporters were arrested. Murdoch along with his legal consigliere, and former NYC education chief, Joel Klein are now on their way to London to reassure Sun staff that the paper will not share the fate of its sister tabloid News of the World, which Murdoch shuttered last year. Still, that's not stopping speculations about the fate of the paper or its editor, Dominic Mohan.

But the news reports do note something striking about today's developments: These five arrests, plus the previous four, were all based on information that News Corp. itself provided the British police. According to (unauthorized) Murdoch biographer and one-man on-the-media commentariat Michael Wolff, who's feverishly been tweeting about the story all day, this is rather worrying.

New narrative is that it's not just the world against Murdoch and News, but a company that has set upon itself (each man for himself)... I've never known a point in News Corp history with so much internal acrimony

Wolff specifically proposes that Murdoch take out his scalpel and cut The Sun and the Sunday Times clean away, then double down on The Times (of London), which at least maintains a decent level of reader trust. For the moment, though, Murdoch is hammering home that The Sun is safe. The head of News International, the division that oversees the company's British newspapers, already sent out a memo to Sun staff to that effect.

You should know that I have had a personal assurance today from Rupert Murdoch about his total commitment to continue to own and publish The Sun newspaper.

As for its editor, Dominic Mohan, News International has already said that he is "not resigning."

However Murdoch plays this, he now needs to consider not only public opinion and the parallel government inquiries, but also the morale of his own employees. If he does let The Sun, Britain's largest-circulation paper, go under or decides to sacrifice its top staff, he may tighten the tourniquet just enough to staunch this whole hemorrhagic mess. Or it may all backfire horribly, undermining what's left of that famed News Corp. loyalty (and secrecy) and leaving, in Wolff's words, an "each man for himself" corporate wasteland.

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Filed Under: ink-stained wretches ,news corp. scandal ,scandal-stained wretches ,the sun ,rupert murdoch ,joel klein ,news corp.

Largest Swiss Private Bank a ‘Fugitive From Justice,’ Say U.S. Authorities

Andre Tartar — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 11:48:15 -0500

Citing Swiss bank secrecy laws, Wegelin & Co. did not send representatives to a court hearing in New York yesterday — the Justice Department has accused the bank of helping rich clients hide $1.2 billion from the IRS. [Business Insider]

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Filed Under: swiss banking ,tax evasion ,investigations

Cowboy Cop Makes the Conservative Case for Marijuana Legalization at CPAC

Dan Amira — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 11:24:42 -0500

Wearing a giant fat suit or a Captain America costume is one way to get attention at CPAC. Wearing a cowboy hat and a T-shirt that reads "COPS SAY LEGALIZE POT. ASK ME WHY" is another.

Howard Wooldridge is a retired police detective who now lobbies Capitol Hill for his group "Citizens Opposing Prohibition" — the prohibition on marijuana. He made the New York Times in October of 2005 for riding a horse for seven months from Los Angeles to Times Square as a way to bring publicity to the absurdity of anti-marijuana laws. This weekend he's pleading his case at CPAC, and it's going better than you might expect.

"The reactions have been almost 100 percent in favor of what I'm doing," Wooldridge, who claims he hasn't smoked marijuana in thirty years, tells me. "I've had about three people in the last two days out of about 200 who do not like it." Particularly with this conservative crowd, Wooldridge debates his naysayers in terms of conservative principles. "Personal freedom, personal responsibility, and limited government are what conservatives believe in," he says. "And that's what I believe in. And thats what we should do with marijuana policy. I say, 'Give me a conservative reason to keep it going,' and they dont have any."

Progress is slow for Wooldridge, but rewarding. He's been coming to CPAC for the past six years, and says that four or five people have approached him over the past couple of days to tell them that, after mulling over his arguments from past CPACs, they now oppose marijuana prohibition as well. "I know from the feedback I'm getting that I'm making small gains every time I come here," he says. "If nothing else, I create a bone that people chew on after they leave."

I vastly underestimate Wooldridge's optimism when I ask the 60-year-old whether he thinks he'll see marijuana legalized in his lifetime. "I have medium confidence, if the economics stay roughly the same, five-to-eight years." And "if the economy gets worse," he suggests, and people start to realize how much revenue could be generated from regulating and taxing marijuana, "we might reduce that to three-to-five."

Not that Wooldridge wants the economy to get worse. But the end of Pot Prohibition wouldn't be a bad silver lining.

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Filed Under: live from cpac ,howard wooldridge ,marijuana

The Costumed People of CPAC [Updated]

Dan Amira — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 7:11:51 -0500

Serious issues may dominate CPAC this year — the war on Christianity, the impending collapse of our nation, etc. — but serious wardrobes do not. Okay, they do. Most people are just dressed in suits and campaign buttons. One guy was wearing a Tebow jersey, obviously. But a select few have decided to kick things up a notch by wearing something a bit more eye-catching. These are those people.

Update: Now with even more costumed people!

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Filed Under: live from cpac ,politics ,slideshow

Asian-American Blogger Identifies Woman in ‘Racist’ Hoekstra Ad

Andre Tartar — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 6:20:13 -0500

After the brouhaha earlier this week over Michigan congressman Pete Hoekstra's "DebbySpendItNow" Super Bowl ad, it was only a matter of time until someone did some online-slash-Facebook sleuthing to figure out who the Asian woman (speaking broken English) was. According to Phil Yu, author of the Angry Asian Man blog, her name is Lisa Chan, a 21-year-old UC Berkeley graduate, last year's Miss Napa Valley, and a friend of a friend. Chan has yet to confirm she is, in fact, the girl from the ad, but Yu does pass along some "inside information" about how she is taking the backlash that does have the vague ring of truth.

From what I understand, she feels terrible (and fearful of the fallout) over her participation in this ad. [She] has partnered with a community organization to release a statement with her version of the story.

While Yu hesitates to cast blame too quickly, saying Chan may have been "manipulated by a politician's ugly tactics," it does seem rather unlikely that she was wholly duped into modifying her speech to better resemble a dastardly American job-stealing foreigner. Then again, maybe it is all Hoekstra's fault.

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Filed Under: pete hoekstra ,campaign ads ,politics

New York, Prepare Yourself for Snow!

Andre Tartar — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 6:16:12 -0500

New York City is expected to get a rain-snow mix tonight and up to two inches of powder tomorrow morning, according to the National Weather Service. Meanwhile, the city's Sanitation Department issued a snow alert for "primarily grassy, unpaved surfaces." [NYC Sever Weather]

Daily Intel

Phone Hacking Memo to James Murdoch at Center of Inquiry

Insider Leaking Shareholder Voting Data to Companies for Cash and Gifts

Mitt Romney Wins in Maine, But Ron Paul Thinks He'll Still Take the Delegates

Martha Stewart Will Not Be Pushed Around

Sarah Palin Receives the Most Depressing Rendition of the \"Happy Birthday\" Song We've Ever Heard

Mitt Romney Finally Gets Some Good News

New DSM-5 May List Internet Addiction As a Mental Illness

Bishops Still Really Unhappy With Obama’s Contraception Compromise

Rupert Murdoch Flies to London to Stave Off Crisis at The Sun, After Five More Arrested

Largest Swiss Private Bank a ‘Fugitive From Justice,’ Say U.S. Authorities

Cowboy Cop Makes the Conservative Case for Marijuana Legalization at CPAC

The Costumed People of CPAC [Updated]

Asian-American Blogger Identifies Woman in ‘Racist’ Hoekstra Ad

New York, Prepare Yourself for Snow!

America Gets the Time Magazine It Deserves