By Andrew Kreig /JIP Executive Director's Blog

The Justice Integrity Project announced last month that we could fulfill our mission of legal reform only if we expanded our commentary to include media trends that curtail aggressive reporting of documented abuses. Today, we’ll examine how the Washington Post's revenue stream from its Kaplan subsidiary creates a hidden agenda that undermines the paper's coverage of sensitive issues involving government officials.

Kaplan provides 62% of Post revenue. Its educational services include those from government-supported initiatives in both K-12 and advanced education, such as for-profit colleges and various test-preparation courses. This Kaplan-generated revenue compares to just 4% from newspaper circulation, which is augmented by about 15% in newspaper advertising, according to recent quarterly reports.

On Dec. 6, Dr. David Goodstein published a column in the Daily Censored entitled, “So You Want To Blow Your Whistle?”  Goodstein, 72., described how the Kaplan-owned CHI Institute in Broomall, PA promptly fired him from his position as director of education in 2006 after he expressed reluctance to bribe hospital CFOs to place two externs in a program. The program cost students $18,000 per year in tuition, 90% of it funded with federal grant money. Students and state investigators suspected that the program failed in suspicious ways to provide adequate preparation for a good job.

By Andrew Kreig

In the Justice Integrity Project's most current national round-up of news about misconduct allegations involving law enforcement, a Georgia stripper further implicated a disgraced federal judge. Also, a former Wall Street Journal editor decried U.S. State Department lawlessness apparent from the most recent Wikileaks release. 

Additionally, a New Jersey radio station will host the Project today in discussing our latest report on the national implications of an official corruption trial unfolding in Newark's federal court. Excerpted below are columns by Alabama legal commentator Roger Shuler, left, and former Journal associate editor and Reagan assistant Treasury secretary Paul Craig Roberts:

Legal Schnauzer, Did Drug Abuse and Racism Effect a Federal Judge's Rulings? Roger Shuler, Dec. 6, 2010. Jack T. Camp (right) recently pleaded guilty to federal drug charges related to his relationship with a stripper and resigned as a U.S. district judge in Atlanta. The Camp investigation produced evidence that indicates he was not an impartial arbiter on the bench, according to an article in the Newnan (GA) Times-Herald.

OpEd News, Western Civilization Has Shed Its Values, Paul Craig Roberts (below), Dec. 5, 2010. In my opinion, the most important of all the cables leaked [in Wikileaks] is the secret directive sent by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to 33 US embassies and consulates ordering US diplomats to provide credit card numbers, email addresses, phone, fax and pager numbers, frequent-flyer account numbers and biographic and biometric information including DNA information on UN officials from the Secretary General down, including "heads of peace operations and political field missions."

The directive has been characterized as the spy directive, but this is an unusual kind of spying. Usually, spying focuses on what other governments think, how they are likely to vote on US initiatives, who can be bribed, and on sexual affairs that could be used to blackmail acquiescence to US agendas. In contrast, the information requested in the secret directive is the kind of information that would be used to steal a person's identity. (Emphasis in original.)

The Project's radio interview will be New Jersey’s WRRC 107.7 FM on the Carson’s Corner show at 3:30 p.m., available through much of the central part of the state. We'll focus on our latest report, “Christie's Corruption Case Shows Horrid Legacy of 'Loyal Bushies, Cover-ups.'" The report draws national implications from the ongoing corruption trial in Newark’s federal court of former New Jersey state assemblyman Harvey Smith.

Listed below is our editor's selection of news and opinion articles relevant to the Justice Integrity Project mission, primarily from independent news outlets: 

OpEd News, Is the USA Attacking Wikileaks.org With Denial of Service Attacks? Rob Kall, Dec. 3, 2010. It has been reported that Wikileaks.org was taken down because of massive denial of service attacks. This raises the question, "Who is coordinating these attacks?" Some experts have speculated that some hackers who were annoyed by Wikileaks unleashed these attacks. I don't buy it. There's something more interesting going on here. I think the US government may be involved and that raises a lot of questions.

Washington Post/Tikkun, Save Obama's presidency by challenging him on the left, Rabbi Michael Lerner, Dec. 4, 2010. [T]here is a real way to save the Obama presidency: by challenging him in the 2012 presidential primaries with a candidate who would unequivocally commit to a well-defined progressive agenda and contrast it with the Obama administration's policies....Far from weakening his chances for reelection, this kind of progressive primary challenge could save Obama if he moves in the desired direction. And if he holds firm to his current track, he's a goner anyway.
 
American Scholar, Unauthorized, But Not Untrue: The real story of a biographer in a celebrity culture of public denials, media timidity, and legal threats, Kitty Kelley, Winter 2011. Shortly after my book Oprah: A Biography was published last April, one of Oprah Winfrey’s open-minded fans wrote to her website saying she wanted to read the book. Oprah’s message-board moderator hurled a thunderbolt in response: “This book is an unauthorized biography.” The word unauthorized clanged on the screen like a burglar alarm. Suddenly I heard the rumble of thousands of Oprah book buyers charging out of Barnes & Noble—empty-handed. Editor's Note: Kitty Kelley has accepted an invitation for the MTL "Washington Update" radio show co-hosted by JIP Director Andrew Kreig on a date TBA. We are proud to share her unique expertise regarding the marketplace for ideas and information.

The Justice Department this week resumed its massive New Jersey political corruption “Bid Rig III” case with a trial that continues the self-inflicted damage from its 2006 political purge of U.S. attorneys.

The bribery trial of former state assemblyman Harvey Smith in Newark continues the DOJ’s disgraceful 46-defendant sting that New Jersey’s U.S. Attorney Chris Christie, right, concocted years ago in consultation with the Bush DOJ headquarters.

These actions helped Christie win his state’s governorship last year with the public image of being a crime-fighting, cost-conscious reformer. Similarly, he’s now positioning himself as a contender for the presidency in 2012.

But a review of the Bid Rig case illustrates the bipartisan way that Christie and other DOJ officials waste vast sums to help their cronies and themselves, and then cover-up for each other. For these reasons, the Bid Rig case helps show why President Obama shouldn’t have decided that his administration would “need to look forward, as opposed to looking backwards” on potential prosecution of the gravest Bush-era crimes. All criminal cases look “backward.”

Obama, Attorney Gen. Eric Holder, left, and the rest of their team have made a mockery of justice to exempt law enforcement from the tough review they routinely impose on others, as I argued at the beginning of his presidency in, “Probe the Past To Protect the Future.”

The Justice Department is dropping its disreputable star witness in the latest trial of the 46-defendant “Bid Rig III” corruption case that helped propel former New Jersey U.S. Attorney Chris Christie to his state’s governorship last year. Christie’s image as a crime-fighting, cost-conscious reformer worthy of 2012 Presidential consideration has taken big hits during the last month.

More generally, the case illustrates a bipartisan pattern by which DOJ officials waste vast sums to help their cronies and themselves, with scant meaningful oversight by leaders of either party or career officials who lend their names to whitewashed internal investigations.

The first image-blow to the DOJ was the Oct. 27 acquittal of a Ridgefield mayor after the defense exposed mind-boggling ways that Christie’s team funded bank fraudster and brothel owner Solomon Dwek to inveigle local political candidates, rabbis and others into corruption schemes. Then the DOJ’s Inspector General Glenn Fine exposed Christie, right, on Nov. 9 as the nation’s leading abuser among federal prosecutors of wasting taxpayer money on government-funded trips that exceed spending limits.