I'm following up on some links review for stories quoting CREW(Citizens for Ethics and Repsonsibility in Washington) and I came across a link via Google to a mobile version of the Center for American Progress's "Progress Report". The date is 09/28/2006. In that mobile report the editors blurb that CREW "launches a blog".

 

These are the headlines for the posts at the CREW blog for 09/28/2006.

 

8:41AM — 485: Number of documented White House/Abramoff team interactions

 

9:25AM — The Rove—Abramoff connection: much closer than previously revealed

 

11:11AM — CREW asks House Ethics Committee to investigate Rep. Mark Foley

 

At 6:39PM that same day, the editors post that the server is responding slowly due to an "extremely heavy load". After that, the editors go all Foley all the time.

 

Is it strange that that the CREW blog timeline begins 09/06/2006? Not really.

 

Is it strange that the the Progess Report doesn't even notice the blog of an organization they have linked to repeatedly over the past year until 09/28/2006? Not really.

 

Is it strange that on the morning the Foley story breaks, prior to airing, the Progress Report highlights the CREW blog with the misleading headline indicating it just launched?

 

I can't conclude much beyond the presence of curious timing. And that's the way it appears, for now.
 
 
The Center for American Progress' (CAP)tip off to the CREW blog might explain how folks were tuned into CREW and the ABC broadcast.

Robert Dreyfuss reports in the March 1, 2004 edition of The Nation: "The idea for the Center began with discussions in 2002 between [Morton] Halperin and George Soros, the billionaire investor.  Halperin, who heads the office of Soros' Open Society Institute, brought [former Clinton chief of staff John] Podesta into the discussion, and beginning in late 2002 Halperin and Podesta circulated a series of papers to funders."

 

Soros and Halperin recruited Harold Ickes —— chief fundraiser and former deputy chief of staff for the Clinton White House —— to help organize the Center. It was launched on July 7, 2003 as the American Majority Institute. The name was changed to Center for American Progress (CAP) on September 1, 2003. The official purpose of the Center was to provide the left with something it supposedly lacked —— a think tank of its own.

 

Regarding the new think tank proposed by Soros and Halperin, Hillary Clinton told Matt Bai of The New York Times Magazine on October 12, 2003, "We need some new intellectual capital. There has to be some thought given as to how we build the 21st—century policies that reflect the Democrat Party's values." She later told The Nation's Robert Dreyfuss, "We've had the challenge of filling a void on our side of the ledger for a long time, while the other side created an infrastructure that has come to dominate political discourse. The Center is a welcome effort to fill that void."

 

Persistent press leaks confirm that Hillary Clinton, and not Podesta, is ultimately in charge of CAP. "It's the official Hillary Clinton think tank," an inside source confided to Christian Bourge of United Press International.