There’s a saying in journalism that the only dumb question is one not asked. I don’t normally do media criticism but I want help non-journalists understand why a potentially good scoop by the Washington Free Beacon could have been made better with an extra question asked…..
The reporter got an on-the-record statement from an agency spox that danced around the question of whether grants would be given for safe smoking kits that include crack pipes. The next logical step was to specifically ask if pipes were included….
The flack might have come back with a “yes.” Big story! Or maybe, when the flack checked with legal, the agency staff would have said, holy shit, the WFB is asking about pipes and they would have said no. Not quite as good a story but the logical follow-up question would be…
What’s the point of a safe smoking kit without pipes? I quote the Drug Policy Initiative as saying they expected pipes to be funded, so the story could have been about $ spent on a nonsensical policy. But instead the WFB assumed the kits included pipes…
Not necessarily a bad assumption, for reasons noted above. But they didn’t have that fact cold and made the spox comment appear much more definitive. That gave the administration a chance to claim that was never the policy and attack the reporting…
With one more question, the WFB might have nailed the administration. Now the Biden folks have some plausible deniability even though, as I said, a smoking kit without glass stems doesn’t make much sense and harm-reduction advocates say it's a reversal....
The WFB and HHS shared the email exchanges with me and I detail the reporting process in this report, with both sides giving their version. Readers can judge for themselves. washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/…
Update: Sarah Lovenheim, top HHS spox, sent this statement: “The Biden-Harris Administration has never authorized the use of federal funding for smoke pipes and will not in the future. We have not yet approved any harm reduction grants and no money for the program has gone out.”

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More from @GlennKesslerWP

Feb 10
Trump today claimed the Clintons "took large amounts of furniture out of the White House." That's right -- but they returned 28K after a series of stories in The Washington Post by the late George Lardner Jr., a brilliant reporter, exposed it. Here's how it played out....
First, Clinton reported that he had retained $190,027 worth of gifts that he had received. .... washingtonpost.com/archive/politi…
George started investigating and revealed $28,000 of the gifts were intended for the White House, not for the Clintons personally, based on documents he reviewed and interviews he conducted with donors. ... washingtonpost.com/archive/politi…
Read 4 tweets
Dec 17, 2021
It's time for the Pinocchios of the Year! Trump's continuing 2020 election lies and falsehoods about the Jan. 6 attack top the list.....washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/…
...Biden's claim about the Georgia election law and what we call his "Flights of Fancy" are also featured ... washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/… Image
Sen. Ron Johnson and his campaign of vaccine misinformation also make the cut ... washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/… Image
Read 5 tweets
Nov 8, 2021
This is detailed at length in Robert Caro's Pulitzer Prize-winning book on Robert Moses, "The Power Broker." See especially pages 318-319: "He began to limit access by buses; he instructed Shapiro to build the bridges across his new parkways low -- too low for buses to pass."...
..."Bus trips therefore had to be made on local roads, making the trips discouraging long and arduous. For Negroes, who he considered inherently 'dirty,' there were further measures. Buses needed permits to enter state parks; buses chartered by Negro groups ...."
"...found it very difficult to obtain permits, especially to Moses's beloved Jones Beach; most were shunted off to parks many miles further on Long Island." There's much, much more. Easily one of the best nonfiction books ever written. amazon.com/Power-Broker-R…
Read 5 tweets
Jun 30, 2021
The new C-SPAN poll of presidential historians is out! Always interesting to see how reputations rise and fall. In two decades, Ike shot up from #9 to #5 and stays there. Obama moves into the top ten. ....
Meanwhile, Woodrow Wilson has fallen from #6 to #13, and Polk had also dropped from #12 to #18. Bill Clinton had moved up from #21 in 2000 to #15 in 2017, but now slips back to #19. ....
No surprise that Trump makes his debut in the bottom five. The pathetic James Buchanan retains his lock on last place -- but Trump finds himself behind a guy who only served in office for a month before he died.
Read 7 tweets
Jun 11, 2021
A few days ago I tweeted about the bravery of an aunt and uncle who saved two Jewish children during World War II. Not every heroic act in the war had a happy ending. My father and aunt’s cousin, Johan Herman “Jan” Kessler, a son of my great-Uncle, was in the Dutch resistance….
He was carrying documents when caught by the Germans. This is an account of his torture and death at the hands of the Nazis, from Jan Braakman’s “The War in the Corner” (2010). It’s difficult to read… Image
Jan stayed silent, refusing to give up information. After one beating, he could barely stand. In the middle of the night, his cellmate realized he had no pulse and his body was cold. The Germans dragged the body away….
Read 7 tweets
Jun 9, 2021
My Tante (Aunt) Bep, my father’s sister, passed away in 2015 at 97, having lived a remarkable life. Newly married when Holland was occupied by the Nazis in World War II, she and my Uncle Bob decided in 1942 to hide two Jewish children from transport to the Nazi death camps...
She wrote a short history for family members. There was a constant threat of exposure. The German once came to the house to round up young men for the factories in Germany…
My father, 16, narrowly escaped by leaping out of a second floor window. That also distracted the German soldiers from discovering the children, who were brother and sister…
Read 8 tweets

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