Posted by Eugene Volokh:
More on Hastert's smears of Soros:
[1]Jack Shafer (Slate's Pressbox) points to this statement from
Hastert on an Aug. 23 radio show:
Brian Lehrer: What do you think of the Swift Boat veterans ads, and
John Kerry's calls for the president to denounce them?
Dennis Hastert: Well, you find out that if you look into the
record, I was against the Campaign Finance Reform Act because
that's what I felt that would happen, that you would push into guys
like George Soros, who's dumping in $16 or $20 million. We don't
know where that money comes from. We don't know where it comes
from, from the left, and you don't know where it comes in the
right. You know, Soros' money, some of that is coming from
overseas. It could be drug money. We don't know where it comes
from.
This is further evidence (if you need more) that [2]Hastert's recent,
just slightly more ambiguous statement that "I don't know where George
Soros gets his money[;] I don't know where -- if it comes overseas or
from drug groups or where it comes from" is indeed an allegation that
Soros was getting money from drug criminals, rather than from
pro-drug-legalization groups. If Hastert has evidence that Soros is
indeed getting drug money, then by all means he should present it, and
quickly. If he doesn't, then, as I originally said, this is a smear,
and deserves to be strongly condemned.
Those who are tempted to come to Hastert's defense by saying that he
was just giving a hypothetical example -- "I'm not saying he is
getting this money, I'm just saying we can't know" -- should ask
themselves what they'd think about (the purely hypothetical case of)
some Democratic politician's saying "I don't know where Swift Boat
Veterans for Truth are getting their money, if it comes from overseas
or from neo-Nazis."
References
1. http://slate.com/id/2106176/
2. http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2004_08_28.shtml#1093943372
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