ELEANOR CLIFT

She's a contributing editor and columnist for NewsWeek and is one of the few liberals I can think of who get air-time on the cable shows. Her columns have a nice combination of facts and opinion.

She provides a nice summary of the 2002 phone-jamming scandal in New Hampshire and reasons why the story may have broader implications:

A little noticed scandal in New Hampshire about phone-jamming is gaining traction. Initially dismissed as a petty political trick, it led to the trial and conviction for telephone harassment last December of the New England political director for the Republican National Committee, James Tobin. That in itself would barely register on anybody’s radar except Tobin was represented by one of Washington’s white shoe law firms, Williams & Connolly, and his legal fees were $2.5 million. The Republican National Committee picked up the tab, which suggests this may not have been a rogue operation.

Meeting with reporters over breakfast Wednesday morning, Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean said an examination of Tobin’s phone records revealed “hundreds of calls” between the White House and New Hampshire party operatives at the time of the phone-jamming on Election Day 2002. “I don’t think they were discussing the weather,” Dean said.

The jamming was traced to an Idaho telemarketing firm. The fee for the jamming service, reportedly $15,600, was paid by the New Hampshire Republican Party through a Virginia consulting firm. Public records filed by the state GOP show three checks, each for $5,000, conveniently arriving to cover the charge just before the election. One was from Tom DeLay’s Americans for a Republican Majority; the others from Indian tribes that were clients of the now indicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

In addition to Tobin, two others have already been convicted, Charles McGee, who was executive director of the New Hampshire Republican Party in 2002, and the Virginia telemarketing executive hired to do the job. Meanwhile, a civil suit against the state’s GOP is in the courts. “We’re not going to let this go,” says Dean.

Oliver Willis has a list of other liberal columnists who are worth reading, although Joe Klein seems to be a Zell Miller-liberal.