Slattery campaign launches campaign spam

Imagine my surprise today when I fired up my computer and had a new email from someone named Julie Merz. The subject line proclaimed, ” Kansas needs a new pair of track shoes”, and I nearly clicked my spam button and moved on. I’m so glad I didn’t.

Merz is apparently the new campaign manager for the Jim Slattery campaign and former district director for Dennis Moore. I found the email very interesting, not the least of which because I never signed up for email updates from the Slattery campaign. A quick search of my spam folder revealed more emails from the Slattery campaign…none of which I ever signed up for. One has to wonder if this email tactic is something Merz picked up from Moore’s office and is bringing along with her to the Slattery campaign.

In any case, a quick scan of the email as I began to read revealed the words “Jon Stewart” and “Daily Show”, two names that have little media validity with me. At the very least, I’m hoping Slattery doesn’t regard him and his show as ‘mainstream’ media.

I read on anyway. Here’s what was written to me:

What a disappointing turn in the campaign already. I turned to the Roberts website for his take on the issue. Here’s just a few points.

Myth 1: The statements report was “slow-walked” by Committee Republicans and a draft report was never presented to the Committee membership prior to the change in the Senate majority in 2007.

Fact: The Democrats were the ones who employed delaying tactics. The statements draft did take a long time to prepare because of excessive and extraneous information requests from Committee Democrats. Here’s the actual time-line: Committee members were presented with the staff’s work which compared the statements submitted by Committee Democrats (nearly 400 statements) and Committee Republicans (approximately 100) to the intelligence at a May 2005 business meeting. Members were asked to judge for themselves whether the statements were substantiated by the intelligence. Committee Democrats rejected this plan and then insisted that the Committee interview policymakers before any determination had been made regarding whether the policymakers’ statements were substantiated by intelligence. In November 2005, Committee Democrats insisted that the Committee prepare a draft which included “all” of the available intelligence, necessitating a new document call for over 40,000 additional documents from the intelligence community. This information was incorporated into a draft and circulated to Committee members in September 2006, before the change in Senate majority. (The majority knows this because they used that draft as the primary source of intelligence information for their own report.) Despite the demands from Committee Democrats in the last Congress to include “all” of the intelligence, analyze 400 statements, and interview policymakers, the majority’s Phase II “statements” report does none of those things. This suggests that these demands were mere delaying tactics by the Democrats.

and…

Myth 3: Members of Congress did not have the same ready access to intelligence as senior Executive branch policymakers.

Fact: All of the intelligence analyzed in this report was readily available to Members of Congress. In fact, some of the intelligence used for comparison to administration statements was only available to Members of Congress because it was provided during closed Committee hearings. Much of the other intelligence included in the report was from major intelligence products with wide dissemination, including National Intelligence Estimates—some requested by Members of Congress—and daily intelligence products sent to the Intelligence, Armed Services, Appropriations, and Foreign Relations Committees.

You can read more about the report here.

How very unfortunate the Slattery campaign has decided to steal email addresses and send spam that isn’t even factual.

I hope Jim Slattery does a 180 and decides to run a campaign based on facts and not lies.