Last year Joey S had Mika defend him from the "liberal" media in a NYT letter. Now Markos...

My television and radio co-host has spent the last five years being equally tough on Republican and Democratic leaders in Washington. Joe was one of the first TV reporters to criticize the Bush White House during Hurricane Katrina. And while others were writing of a permanent Republican majority, Joe was predicting the collapse of the G.O.P. because of its reckless economic policies.

On our TV and radio programs, and also in his latest book, Joe urges his party to be more moderate in temperament and more accepting of dissent from leaders like former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell.

Joe’s evenhanded approach angers harsh ideologues on both sides. Last week, he was attacked by right-wing hosts for being too open-minded, and now by your liberal editorial page.

This liberal thinks The New York Times should follow Joe Scarborough’s example of speaking truth to power — regardless of which party is in power.

katherine harris' floundering u.s. senate campaign lost its high-level staff again this week and is groping for a message -- which doesn't surprise republican insiders who trace the seeds of her trouble to the story of "joe's dead intern."

this wasn't any old joe.

it was joe scarborough, host of the prime-time msnbc show scarborough country and a former pensacola republican congressman who was courted last summer by national republicans to run against harris. but before he could announce he wouldn't, harris called major donors and suggested scarborough would have to answer questions about the strange death of a former staff member in 2001, according to two former high-level harris staff members, a gop donor and scarborough.

Speaking Ill of the Dead. On the morning of July 20th, within three hours after Lori's body was found and even before her family had been notified, the ABC affiliate in Pensacola (WEAR, channel 3) published on their website "Scarborough's office says Klausutis had a history of health problems....they believe she died Thursday afternoon." When queried on WEAR's source, Tom Wahl, an assignments editor stated that he "heard a representative from the D.C. office who was in town mention 'a history of health problems'". Anna Dobbins of WEAR stated that the station had received a phone call around 11:00 AM on July 20th from Joe Scarborough himself, stating that "a young woman had died in his office and that she had a complicated medical history, specifically surrounding 'stroke and epilepsy'". About a week later, according to Dobbins, Scarborough's press secretary Miguel Serrano called back to ask that they stop reporting the "complicated health history" part of the story. Joe, he said, had spoken in error. When confronted with statements by WEAR staff that her boss had been passing on details of Klausutis' health, Scarborough staffer Lois Hoyt called it a "lie" that Scarborough had done so.

WGTX radio, 1280AM, reported on their web site "Scarborough staff members told WGTX that Klausutis was suffering with ill health for some time". When queried, Ron Kelly, news director, stated that not long before Lori's death, they'd done an on the air interview with Joe on his upcoming resignation. He also said he had spoken with Miguel Serrano who told him that Lori suffered from ill health. An associate, R. S. Miller, tells us that she then called Serrano back and told him that the reporters were standing by their stories regarding the nature and the timing of the release of the reports from Scarborough's office and, indeed, Scarborough himself. Serrano refused to confirm or deny whether he had even spoken to these newspersons, and he would not comment on whether the newspersons were lying or even mistaken. He became testy when asked about Lois Hoyt's claim that the news stations were lying and asked "Isn't there anything else you could be doing?"

Serrano seemed supremely indifferent to the notion that telling the truth to the media is important -- a strange attitude for a former Justice Department attorney and presumably an officer of the court. But this is the post-Kenneth Starr era; perhaps he's accustomed to a media that also isn't bound by the truth. When told that Hoyt called it an outright lie that Scarborough had told WEAR that Klausutis had suffered stroke and epilepsy, Anna Dobbins snapped, "What's the story here? Politicians always backtrack."

The story, Ms. Dobbins, is that Lori's family deeply resented the tales of ill health. Norm Klausutis, Lori's father-in-law, sent a scathing letter to the Northwest Florida Daily News denying that she had health problems, and members of Lori's immediate family made it clear to us that although she had been in a very serious automobile accident many years earlier, she had suffered no health problems thereafter. None. Scarborough and his staff appear to have engaged in outright fabrication of non-existent health problems, presumably to minimize press scrutiny -- and paining the family. Of course, they wouldn't have succeeded in causing the family anguish had the press been more inquisitive about how Scarborough happened to have confidential medical information on Klausutis and why he was in such a rush to disseminate it. Furthermore, as we wrote in our previous article, rumors that Lori Klausutis had committed suicide circulated. We would hope, however wanly, that these rumors did not also originate from Congressman Scarborough's office.

From page 243: Some background on how Republicans can quietly have their scandals while those of Democrats are blasted loudly on air.

"Amid rumors of infidelity, Scarborough divorced in 1999 and unexpectedly announced in May 2001 that he would resign his congressional seat. Two months later a twenty-eight-year old female staffer, Lori Klausutis, was found dead in Scarborough's Florida district office. Ruled by authorities to be the result of an injury from a fall, the death was barely mentioned in the media, even though the medical examiner in the case had his medical license revoked in Missouri in 1996 for falsifying an autopsy report. Two months previous, Chandra Levy, a federal intern with whom Democratic Representative Gary Condit admitted having an extramarital affair, disappeared. That story gathered sensational wall to wall cable coverage for months."

Only when the autopsy report was released (and that occurred only because the editor in chief of the Northwest Florida Daily News Ralph Routon's editorial demanded its issuance) did those willing to exercise their rights under Florida's Sunshine Law learn the extent of Lori's injuries.

The autopsy report revealed that Lori had suffered two skull fractures and an additional wound. A 71/4-inch crack all but spanned the top of her head, from right temple to left.

As a likely consequence of that blow, blood poured in from a steadily pumping heart to form a fist-sized hematoma at the left temple. There were separate 11/2-inch eggshell fractures, essentially pulverizing the bone, deep inside the skull behind the right ear. The back of her head was bashed, and her lungs were filled with bloody foam, suggesting that she took a relatively long time to die.

From Larry Flynt's blog