They’re demanding a retraction of Monday’s story about Gallegos and the Bear River Band donation. The article also contains a sharp denial from BRBR of any wrongdoing.

”The decision to donate $10,000 to the Friends of Paul Gallegos was approved by a 5 to 0 vote of the tribal council,” McGinnis said. “Similar requests for contributions have recently been made by other candidates for elected office, and the tribe will not be intimidated into remaining silent about its support for selected candidates by irresponsible journalism.”

Absent from the response was any kind of discussion about why they supported Gallegos so strongly. Richard Marks is asking that very question – again, like Muller he is asking, not asserting.

Heraldo’s posting about it, pointing out that Gallegos has no obligation to respond to any paper. True enough, but then Glenn Simmons was correct to note in yesterday’s editorial that it’s pointless then to complain about an article published without all the facts. The article is being slammed for what it seems to imply rather than anything actually stated. But as I’ve said twice now, the whole point was to highlight the appearance of impropriety created by the facts at Ms. Muller’s diposal. That Gallegos haters would seize on the implications to score political points isn’t an issue of responsibility for the writer. Simmons is right. Refusing to talk to a newspaper you feel is hostile does nothing to clarify the issue for the public. Note that President Clinton was willing to face down Fox News reporter Chris Wallace – literally. Comment – then if you’re misquoted or quoted out of context, scream about it later.

Believe me, I’m no fan of some of Gallegos’ critics – particularly some of the anonymous posters of local blogsville. I’ve been critical of the Eureka Reporter, and even Heather Muller on at least one previous occasion. However, in this case she was forced to publish without all the facts because Gallegos wouldn’t respond to her. Yes, he’s been trying a complex murder case, which is probably very consuming. But in two minutes he could have stated that he cleared the questioned procedure with the Attorney General and that he was pressed for time but could get back to her about the details once he’d had time to review the file. Or he could have referred her to Cardoza who negotiated the plea agreement (which was incidently approved by one of the more conservative-yet-streetwise local judges), so that she could know that she wasn’t putting the deputy on the spot for potentially violating Gallegos’ prior order about comments to the media – although I don’t believe that the order applies to cases being handled by the deputies.

I will admit that the article had a profound effect on me such that I was wonderinaterna, , ,
amlingspartiet återstår att se, men ambitionen att nå väljarna mellan valen är det inget fel på. Insikten är förstås att valkampanjen inför 2010 börjar nu.

Pingat på intressant.se. Andra bloggar om: , , , , ,

Update: Okay, I don’t know what happened at the end there. Don’t have time to fix it now. But no, I did not start typing in tongues.

Second Update: Okay, as Heraldo noted in the comments, the portion of my post that got cut off – looks almost like my post crashed into somebody elses on the information superhighway – dealt with the fact that upon reading the article on Monday and the report of Gallegos’ lack of response I was wondering if he’d actually slipped up, or worse. My gut level response, based on the fact that I know the man (a statement that garnered a bit of resentment from at least one anonymous poster), was that he was innocent of the wrongdoing. That crime would have outweighed all the previous allegations of incompetence, favoritism, and plagiarism combined at their worst. I simply didn’t believe he was capable of taking a bribe to let a rapist, even a mere statutory rapist, walk. But with the facts presented in the article, I had to accept the possibility on the intellectual level, although the facts as we now know were far from adequate to draw any conclusions. And in this instance Ms. Muller did the same. She presented the facts, as incomplete as they were, and hoped for the opportunity to follow up with a more complete picture. Instead, Gallegos gave the story to the TS.

I’m certain that’s more than I said.

I also made note of attorney Michael Acosta’s letter to the ER today (and I’m pretty sure I misspelled the name earlier). In it he explains that his donation was made before any of the issues would have come into play, and that it was based on his belief that Paul was the best candidate, even though he’d had some serious disagreements with the D.A. over cases including Kat Zimmerman. I suggested that there might have been some hypocricy from certain Gallegos haters who criticized him for other cases, but not that one. They’re sort of like the conservatives at the national level who slam the NY Times for the young gossip columnist they fired, but fall dead silent over the NY Times’ refusal to give the boot to veteran reporter Judith Miller for her deceptions in favor of the president’s Iraq war policy.

Coincidentally, Mr. Acosta got a mention on Ed’s blog yesterday.

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