Miami Herald Reporter Slams his own Paper over Palin Smears

Remember that guy who moved in next door to the Palins so he could stalk them and write a book? Well, it's coming out next week and in it are allegations that Sarah Palin had a one-night stand with then University of Michigan basketball player Glenn Rice. Rice would soon thereafter end up in Miami where he played for the Heat. Apparently, the Miami Herald has deemed the story fit to print and this has one of its own reporters - Armando Salguero - calling out his employer.

As someone who lived in south Florida for several years, I'm familiar with Salguero's work. When I was there, he was a beat reporter for the Miami Dolphins and did a good job. First up, an excerpt from the article on the Herald's Naked Politics blog that caught Salguero's ire:

Did Miami Heat star Glen Rice and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin have a fling back in the 1980s, when she was a budding sports reporter and he was a star at the University of Michigan?

The National Enquirer is reporting that Palin, a former high school basketball standout herself, hooked up with Rice in 1987 when he was in Anchorage, Alaska, for a basketball tournament.

At the time, Palin was unmarried, just out of college and working as a sports reporter at Anchorage TV station KTUU. Rice was a junior and a basketball star -– he went on to lead the University of Michigan to a 1989 NCAA championship.

If the unhinged left is attempting to prevent Sarah Palin from getting into the presidential race with stuff like this, they may only be further encouraging her to do so.

In any event, check out what Salguero had to say in an email he sent to the entire Miami Herald Newsroom:From:

Salguero, Armando [mailto:asalguero@miamiherald.com]
Sent: Wednesday, September 14, 2011 09:57 AM
To: MIA Newsroom
Subject: Palin and Glenn Rice

The Naked Politics blog is repeating the “reporting” of the National Enquirer about Sarah Palin having an affair with former Miami Heat basketball player Glenn Rice.

It is on the FRONT PAGE of The Herald website.

So as a journalist, I ask:

Do we know this story to be TRUE? Are we certain it is TRUE because we’ve done the work or have a reasonable certainty that is TRUE?
Did anyone actually try to confirm this story before giving it Herald front page credibility? Did anyone call Glenn Rice to get independent confirmation? He lives in Miami, you know.

Is it now OK to repeat any “report” from the National Enquirer on the front page of the Herald’s website without actually reporting even one fact independently? The blog calls The Enquirer’s sources “solid.” How do we know the Enquirer’s sources — plural? And if we know the Enquirer’s sources, can’t we work them ourselves to see if they’re truly solid?

Question: Can I repeat on my blog any allegation made by the Enquirer culled from any book just because, well, if it’s in a book or in the Enquirer, Herald policy is now to assume it must be true?

There have been a couple of good Enquirer stories on athletes coming from other planets. Those are in bounds now?

If this Rice story, unconfirmed and unreported by us, can be published on our site, do the alien stories not meet the same standards?

These, by the way, are my questions relative to journalism. But there are other things at play here. The Herald, like it or not, admit it or not, is widely viewed as a liberal newspaper. Palin is a conservative.

So we put this story on our website and conservatives that read us ask why The Herald didn’t report the stories of President Obama being gay in 2007 and 2008? Those stories were in the Globe, a competitor to the Enquirer. The allegations were brought by the person who said he had a drug-crazed, gay affair with the President...

CLICK HERE to read the entire letter. I'm going to send an e-mail to Salguero, thanking him for calling out the Herald. He had to have known that he would face a backlash from readers, his employer, and potentially even Glen Rice, who is a member of the sports community Salguero reports on.

Please send him an email expressing your support as well. Send it to: asalguero@miamiherald.com

Armando gets a BIG hat tip on this one and I don't have any idea what his politics are.

h/t Free Republic

Asst Attorney General Admits Fast and Furious led to Murders

This is not insignificant. Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich, who appeared to stonewall the House Oversight Committee on Government reform back on June 15th, has sent a letter to Committee chairman Darrell Issa and Senate Judiciary ranking member Charles Grassley. In that letter, Weich admits to three murders being the result of Fast and Furious, though he does attempt to qualify that admission by saying some of the guns were purchased prior to the actual operation officially going live in late 2009. Nonetheless, this is an extremely damaging admission by the Justice Department, which has implicated itself in the commission of murder.

Via CBS:

Weapons linked to ATF's controversial "Fast and Furious" operation have been tied to at least eight violent crimes in Mexico including three murders, four kidnappings and an attempted homicide.

According to a letter from U.S. Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich to Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), the disclosed incidents may be only a partial list of violent crimes linked to Fast and Furious weapons because "ATF has not conducted a comprehensive independent investigation."

When added to the guns found at the murder scene of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry in the U.S., the newly-revealed murders in Mexico bring the total number of deaths linked to Fast and Furious to four.

If you click on the CBS link, you'll get more detail on the crime scenes referred to above. I must say, it's a bit vexing to see the Solyndra scandal get more attention than Fast and Furious; the former doesn't involve murder. Furthermore, the longer no one is identified as the individual responsible for authorizing this program, the more the evidence points directly to Attorney General Eric Holder at minimum.

HERE is a copy of the letter Weich sent to Issa and Grassley.

The man who penned that letter sat in front of the Oversight committee on June 15th and was grilled. Here is a montage of that grilling: