SUMMERTIME, AND THE SEASON IS SILLY :

George W's 'scandal' (Robert Novak, July 11, 2002, Town Hall)

The dominant subject at President Bush's rare press conference Monday evening was not new corporate scandals that threaten America's capitalist economy. It was a 12-year-old stock sale by private citizen George W. Bush. That caused a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) official, who long ago gave Bush a clean bill of health, to ponder the wondrous ways of Washington.

That official was not, as National Public Radio suggested Tuesday morning, then Republican SEC Chairman Richard Breeden (appointed by the elder President George Bush). It was SEC enforcement chief William McLucas, now a partner in one of Washington's most prestigious law firms -- and a Democrat. He recently produced the report that revealed the Enron scandal. McLucas told me, "I can see no reason" to replay his 1990 Bush inquiry. [...]

The major new accusation against Bush has been that he was eight months late filing a confirming report of the stock sale, though he earlier had alerted the SEC as required by law. The tardy report was in McLucas's hand when he ruled. "If you went to court against every late filing with us," McLucas told me, "we would be in court on 2,000 cases."

Washington is notorious for stories like Harkengate. In the dog days of Summer, when there's nothing much else going on, it's just easier to whip up a fake story than to do any actual reporting. Posted by Orrin Judd at July 11, 2002 7:03 AM