Perhaps you remember in the 1990's when Al Gore got in a mild spot of trouble for allegedly making campaign-fundraising related telephone calls from White House/Executive Office building premises? The GOP got all hot and bothered, and investigated it because it is not legal to do that.
Can someone tell me why that would require an investigation, while Karl Rove's job is to conduct political activity from the White House? Does Karl go to a phone booth across the street to make all his political phone calls?
Either I'm missing something here, or it's another case of blatant GOP hypocrisy.
From The American Prospect (2000)
http://www.prospect.org/print/V11/11/judis-j.html"...Before the election is over, they hope that Americans will be repeating the phrases "no controlling legal authority" and "raising money from Buddhist monks" in their sleep. But nonpartisan proponents of political reform, such as the Center for Public Integrity, have also raised doubts about Gore's fundraising practices. And some liberal Democrats who plan to vote for Gore in November privately express grave reservations about his conduct. Are these reservations justified?
Gore's role in the 1996 campaign was not pretty, but the charges of criminal corruption don't hold up. There are certainly reasons to criticize his conduct and, perhaps, to question his commitment to reform, but these have to be weighed ultimately against the conduct and commitment of his opponent.
"No controlling legal authority." During the campaign, Gore made 61 fundraising calls from his White House office. According to the Pendleton Act, which was adopted in 1883, it is "unlawful for any person to solicit or receive any contribution ... in any
room or building occupied in the discharge of official duties." On the surface, that would seem to apply to Gore's fundraising calls, but the Pendleton Act was not meant to bar federal officials from telephone solicitations aimed at private individuals. There were no telephones in the White House then. The act was directed toward federal employees asking for money on federal premises from subordinate employees who might fear for their jobs. Thus while Gore spoke maladroitly, he actually got it right when he said there was "no controlling legal authority" for his actions. Indeed, in its report on the campaign finance scandals, Senator Fred Thompson's Committee on Government Affairs acknowledged that the statute didn't apply to Gore's fundraising. The vice president did not break the law, the report concluded, because there was no evidence that "any individuals called by the vice president were on federal property when they were solicited."
The controversy over the phone calls has lingered partly because Attorney General Janet Reno invoked still another ambiguity in the act to justify not appointing an independent counsel to investigate the phone calls. Reno argued that the Pendleton Act applied to soliciting "hard money" for campaigns, not to soliciting "soft money" for political parties as Gore had in his calls. But after Reno's decision, investigators discovered that some of the money Gore raised was used for the presidential campaign. In addition, testimony by former Chief of Staff Leon Panetta has cast doubt upon Gore's repeated assertion that even if some of the money was used for the presidential campaign, the vice president believed he was only raising "soft money." My conclusion: Who cares? Under the Pendleton Act, Gore's calls were not illegal either way...."
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