Posted on 02/11/2005 9:19:59 AM PST by advance_copy
Democratic legislative leaders, skeptical that a longtime aide to Governor Ehrlich acted alone when he spread rumors about Mayor O'Malley, say it will take more than an inquiry by the governor's legal adviser to resolve questions about the incident that has roiled state political waters.
But Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller said Thursday Democrats won't rush into any investigation of their own.
"We are going to let the matter percolate for two or three days. We're going to see what else comes forth, analyze what steps the governor is taking," Miller said.
He said he and House Speaker Michael Busch will then try to come up with a way to resolve the matter that will be acceptable to Republicans and Democrats.
Ehrlich asked Jervis Finney, a former state senator and head of his legal staff, to investigate the role Joseph Steffen played in spreading rumors about O'Malley's personal life and whether his Internet postings were done with state equipment on state time. Ehrlich fired Steffen and asked him to apologize to O'Malley.
In an e-mail to O'Malley, which Steffen provided to The Associated Press Thursday, he said he was "truly sorry, ashamed and remorseful and I ask that you and your family please find it in your hearts to forgive me."
"I have no excuse for joining web (or other) conversations that are reckless, mean-spirited and personally damaging in nature," the e-mail said.
Raquel Guillory, spokeswoman for O'Malley, said the mayor received an e-mail "through the Baltimore City Web site allegedly from Steffen. The mayor has no further comment at this time."
O'Malley and his wife, Catherine, held a news conference Wednesday to say that rumors that the mayor has been unfaithful to his wife were untrue, with O'Malley describing them as "despicable lies."
Miller said an apology from Steffen was not sufficient and that the governor also should apologize for the actions of someone who was on his staff when he was in Congress and then came with him to state government.
"It happened on his watch. If he didn't know, he should have known," Miller said. "If he would apologize, maybe we could put an end to this."
Ehrlich said Wednesday he would not tolerate what Steffen did, but also would not apologize personally for Steffen's actions. The governor refused to answer questions about any topic at his one public event Thursday, a ceremony to dispense to charities $20,000 donated by state employees for tsunami relief.
House Majority Leader Kumar Barve, D-Montgomery, said he believes an inquiry outside the governor's office is needed to look at Steffen's actions and whether other members of the administration were involved, but he said House leaders had not discussed what form the inquiry should take.
But some key Democratic leaders, include House Speaker Michael Busch and Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee Chairman Bryan Frosh, also think an inquiry should be expanded to look into the way the Ehrlich administration has carried out what Frosh described it as "a statewide purge of people who are politically undesirable."
Busch said one of the Steffen's main duties was to go into state agencies and root out people who might not be loyal to Ehrlich so they could be fired.
"They removed long-serving employees, nonpolitical employees, put armed guards at offices, posted pictures of (fired) employees in the lobby of the building where they worked," the speaker said. "That's the police state mentality that state government is now in."
Busch said an independent inquiry is needed into whether Steffen had spread rumors on state time on state equipment and whether other people were involved.
"I certainly don't think it should be left to some kind of investigation done by the administration," he said. "That's the ultimate fox guarding the hen house."
If our politics were a full 180-degrees and a full coast different, I'd hate to think what would happen.
Self-ping. : )
I'm terribly curious but know you'll use the info wisely which probably means my curiosity will go unsatisfied for now. :-)
Ditto for your reply #52.
I do that a lot too, but then you just have to sort of "run into" them. I'd really like a way to see the new sign ups every day and track them for a while. So man of them are media types here to cause dissension.
I agree with everything you just said. I hadn't seen you around the threads in a while; it's good to "see" you.
Beware Old Media...your day in court is coming.
Laz, you are gonna get in trouble some day,,,I'M telllllinnnnngggggggg
Glad you pinged me to that, prairie. They should be afraid. Very afraid. They are already losing market share like crazy.
I do the same thing..spell rumor, rumour, and have to correct it many times. It is the British spelling..and yet I seem to have always spelled it rumour.
Ping to Jim Robinson's #20.
Bump!
I spell "color" and "rumor" as "colour" and "rumour". It looks strange otherwise and I think that I've spelled them incorrectly.
chloec
superwoman4u2
Tracing this thing back to the original "rumor thread" not only did MD4Bush throw out the rumor, so did these "same day registration" posters who posted around MD4Bush.
Could this all be a set-up?
Could this entire thing be a way to trap Ehrlich? Release a phony rumor, get others to put it out there hoping a GOP operative picks it up, then blame it all on the GOP...
RE: He is a good guy.
From reviewing his posts I could really see that. He's good people.
It has the earmarks of entrapment. Very, very dirty ops.
Uh oh..... this means there were two of them?
Is there any way you can force this information into the public arena?
It was definitely a set up, probably to quiet the rumors and turn the tables on the govenor's office. Actually, the lengths that they went to trap the guy, make me wonder if the story is actually true about the mayor.
Yeah, I noticed that.....what a cowardly fraud. I can't wait 'till his identity is released.....hope he goes down in flames.
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