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<\/a><\/p>\nFounded and run by that other perennial boogieman of the hysterial left, Grover Norquist, ALEC pushes a conservative agenda by hosting get-togethers and suggesting legislation to – wait for it – legislators. \u00a0Mostly conservative ones.<\/p>\n
Sort of like the AFLCIO, the Ntaional Rifle Association, National Education\u00a0Association, and practically every other \u00a0organization that \u00a0pokes is nose into legislation at the state level.<\/p>\n
For the past year, a phalanx of leftybloggers and regional media have been passing on the meme hat ALEC is somehow different. \u00a0More sinister.<\/p>\n
Some have called ALEC a “lobbying” group – which is odd, inasmuch as legislators actually pay <\/em>to join the group.<\/p>\n Now,the Just a hunch, mind you.<\/p>\n I bring it up because Beth Hawkins\u00a0piece earlier this \u00a0week about an ALEC initiative on education legislation<\/a>\u00a0which reads in its entirety like a news release from a lefty attack-PR firm…<\/p>\n …but omits a number of the key facts that one might expect a “reporter” to provide in covering a “story” – the who, what, when yadda yadda.<\/p>\n Last week, the Minnesota House of Representatives did not meet on Thursday or Friday. The state Senate held a handful of hearings Thursday, but was in recess Friday.<\/p>\n Which was terribly convenient for those members of the Republican caucuses who are also members of the secretive, controversial American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which recently issued members this invitation to a confab where it was to roll out its 2012 legislative agenda:<\/p>\n <\/p><\/blockquote>\n You can plug your nose and read Hawkins’ piece for the details,such as they are.<\/p>\n Hawkins channels Sally Sorenson, snarking that the recess “was terribly convenient” for liegislators who are also ALEC members.<\/p>\n So – who went?<\/p>\n Anyone?<\/p>\n Hawkins tacitly admits she hasn’t a clue – and tries to fob her negligence as a reporter off on the legislators:<\/p>\n If you want to know whether your elected official was one, you will have better luck calling and asking as a constituent than reporters have had.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n It’s striaght out of Jesse Ventura’s “Conspiracy Theory”; lack of evidence is, itself, evidence of a coverup!<\/p>\n “It’s complete BS”, said a source on Capitol Hill familiar with the issue. \u00a0The source was not aware of any <\/em>legislators attending the event – “maybe one”, and that seemed like a long shot.<\/p>\n Read the piece. \u00a0See if you can find anything in it that doesn’t <\/em>look like it came from a press release.<\/p>\ncoverage<\/del> “coverage” of ALEC throughout the lefty alt-media has been utterly uniform in what it mentions (model bills!) and also what it omits (paid memberships), to the point that I’d bet money that the entire campaign is being run by “Media Matters” or some other lefty spin organization.<\/p>\n