Fox and Republican media baselessly claim NEA broke laws
Advancing Glenn Beck's and Andrew Breitbart's aggressive promotion of an August 10 conference call, Fox News' Gretchen Carlson and conservative columnist Ben Shapiro have alleged that the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) broke laws against lobbying and electioneering during the secretly taped call. In fact, the transcript of the conference call released by Breitbart's website contains no evidence of illegal electioneering or lobbying by government officials.
Carlson and Shapiro baselessly claim NEA broke laws
Carlson baselessly claims NEA official's actions were "against the law." Discussing the release of secretly taped audio recordings of the August 10 conference call, Carlson claimed that "[y]ou can tell from listening to [former NEA communications director] Yosi Sergant, who, by the way, no longer has that position, because he was fired-slash-resigned from it, that, you know, we'll figure out how to talk about this legally, because here's the basic bottom line: You cannot tell federally funded organizations how they should be doing their work. In other words, you can't give them a mandate and say, 'Hey, push President Obama's health care reform plan with federal tax dollars.' That's against the law." [Fox News' Fox & Friends, 9/23/09]
Hatch Act limited to activity in support of candidates, parties
Regulations under Hatch Act limit "political activity" to "an activity directed toward the success or failure of a political party, candidate for partisan political office, or partisan political group." In his September 22 blog post, Shapiro asserted that "[t]he conference call also violates the Hatch Act ... which prohibits federal employees from 'knowingly solicit[ing] or discourag[ing] the participation in any political activity of any person who -- (A) has an application for any compensation, grant, contract, ruling, license, permit, or certificate pending before the employing office of such employee." But regulations promulgated by the Office of Special Counsel -- the agency responsible for enforcing the Hatch Act -- define "political activity" as "an activity directed toward the success or failure of a political party, candidate for partisan political office, or partisan political group." Shapiro pointed to no statements by government officials advocating for the success or failure of a party, candidate, or partisan political group, and the "full transcript" on BigHollywood.com contains no such statements.
Some facts and satire, Absolute Proof Herman Melville Wrote Dreams From My Father
