{"id":29749,"date":"2012-08-22T08:13:13","date_gmt":"2012-08-22T13:13:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=29749"},"modified":"2012-08-31T13:38:49","modified_gmt":"2012-08-31T18:38:49","slug":"idle-hands","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=29749","title":{"rendered":"The District, Part IV: Idle Hands"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last spring, this blog got into a bit of a flap with the sitting leadership of the MNGOP’s Fourth Congressional District over airing out a report that the district’s chairman, John Kysylysczyn, was pondering not getting involved<\/a> in the district’s various legislative elections or, for that matter, the CD4 Congressional race. \u00a0 The evidence? \u00a0An email from Kysylyczyn to a BPOU chair which circulated to a much, much wider group.<\/p>\n

Along with that came a report – from a source inside the district’s leadership who asked for anonymity to protect themselves from reprisal –\u00a0that Kysylyczyn was pondering not making the customary donation to the district’s endorsed candidate, Tony Hernandez.<\/p>\n

While that idea apparently never got past the pondering stage – the donation did in fact pass the full committee<\/a>\u00a0– if current plans remain in effect, the district’s leadership apparently still doesn’t believe there’s a role for the district in the campaign (the flap also earned me a stern tongue-lashing from Kysylyczyn, who in a move unprecedented in CD4 politics, used the district’s website<\/a> to tell the membership that he wouldn’t talk with bloggers because, apparently, the mainstream media is fairer to Republicans or something).<\/p>\n

In a couple<\/a> of announcements<\/a> on the CD4 GOP website and the district’s Facebook<\/a> page, the district’s leadership cancelled the October meeting – the only meeting remaining before the election.<\/p>\n

And while under normal circumstances it’s just another meeting, these aren’t normal circumstances. \u00a0It’s election season. \u00a0CD4 endorsed a candidate for Congress, Hernandez, who is running an aggressive and active campaign. \u00a0Campaigns take money. \u00a0The Fourth CD reportedly has a decent little chunk of cash, in its “federal” account –\u00a0$6139.48, as of the August committee meeting<\/a>\u00a0– which\u00a0has<\/em>\u00a0to be spent, by law, on matters pertaining to federal races. \u00a0It’s a broad category; it can be spent on training, software, computers, consulting…<\/p>\n

…or, naturally, the race its endorsed candidate is running.<\/p>\n

The district can donate a maximum of $5,000 from this amount (on top of the earlier donation) to the Hernandez campaign – but not without a full committee vote<\/a>. \u00a0Which requires a full committee meeting.<\/p>\n

Which has just been cancelled until after the election.<\/p>\n

Is this\u00a0<\/em>what the 4th CD GOP is supposed to be doing with its mandate?<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

CLOSED CIRCUIT TO CHAIRMAN KYSYLYCZYN<\/p>\n

In your little riposte to me on the CD4 blog<\/a> last spring you sniffed that you’d only talk to journalists whose publications subscribed to the “Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics<\/a>“.<\/p>\n

With one small exception, the SPJ Code is nothing but a framework of big thoughts that journalists use to provide justifications for their abuses (the exception, of course, is plagiarism, which among professional journalists is just about the only chargeable offense).<\/p>\n

Because notwithstanding the fact that the only codes I observe in this blog are The Golden Rule, the Ten Commandments (including Reagan’s Eleventh Commandment), the Minnesota Defamation statutes and The Buckley Rule, the fact is that I did more in the way of “journalistic ethics” than any “legitimate” reporter would have done; I sent you four or five emails seeking clarification of the original story; you’d be doing well to get more than one from Erik Black or Tom Scheck.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last spring, this blog got into a bit of a flap with the sitting leadership of the MNGOP’s Fourth Congressional District over airing out a report that the district’s chairman, John Kysylysczyn, was pondering not getting involved in the district’s various legislative elections or, for that matter, the CD4 Congressional race. \u00a0 The evidence? \u00a0An […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[163],"class_list":["post-29749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mngop","tag-mn-cd4"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29749","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29749"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29749\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29751,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29749\/revisions\/29751"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}