Monday, November 06, 2006

Faint Praise, or...?

Jess McBride gives a tepid endorsement of JBvH in her blog today.
My endorsement of Van Hollen is not with great enthusiasm. I know too much about
his record, and I saw him up too close during the primary. He waged a campaign
of character assassination and outright distortion behind the scenes, and that's
not something I can respect, nor was it even necessary. There are many examples
of this, but there's no point in revisiting them all now.
[snip]
At the same time, I'm having trouble feeling empathy. Maybe that's because his
campaign sent out a mass e-mail during the primary that falsely accused my
husband of releasing a sex offender on a signature bond, when my husband's
office had opposed it. You see my problem. I'm also troubled by Van Hollen's
inability to articulate a single major accomplishment in office (the mall rapist
was largely Blanchard's case), and I think he was a satisfactory U.S. Attorney
at best, although he has the misfortune of being compared to the prosecutorial
rock star, Steve Biskupic, appointed at the same time. Anyone would probably
fall short. Finally, I remain troubled by his last minute primary money influx,
obtained from an extension on a second mortgage on a home that didn't have that
much equity in it a short time ago. I also don't like his position on
first-offense drunk driving. Think what you want about these comments. I am not
going to water down my honest opinions to keep everyone happy.

The interesting part, to me at least is that she makes a charge that I'd not seen before. In all of the folderol about whether JBvH did or didn't review a sex offender's bail and choose not to revoke it or set it higher or whatever I hadn't seen a word about it being van Hollen's wife, acting as defense attorney, who was responsible for the offender being out on the street in the first place.

Is it possible that this is correct and that it hasn't come up in all the conversation about what did or didn't happen in this case? Is Mrs Bucher wrong about her facts? Did the GWC pull its punch in an effort to temper its message?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

See this case in the Circuit Court records.
http://wcca.wicourts.gov/caseDetails.do;jsessionid=63F4B8AB79DDD48579F9CC46AF3D6761.render1?caseNo=1998CF000017&countyNo=4&cacheId=C67CC805534EB7A94D878E849804930D&recordCount=5&offset=3&mode=details&submit=View+Case+Details

Is this the relevant case? (Newago is listed with several cases, quite a criminal record.) Is Lynne Van Hollen the wife of JB? (Looks like it.)

But you need to put back in the snipped sentences on this claim by McBucher. :-)