Cheap tricks

Today's big news has been that John Kerry wasn't Valedictorian at Yale but an average student, and that Dubya -- who'd been characterized as a dummy -- has earned grades at the same school that were slightly better.

Big deal, except it seemed strange to me that the Boston Globe was the paper making it seem like one.

The Boston Globe? Kerry's home-town paper? The byline . . . Michael Kranish? Kerry's biographer?

Jeez, something must be going on if after all of the work they did trying to make Kerry look gawd-like and now, oh look!. He's average!

Like a magician that gets you to focus on something else so that the slight of hand trick isn't quite so obvious?

So then I read Kranish's other article.

On May 20, Kerry signed a document called Standard Form 180, authorizing the Navy to send an ''undeleted" copy of his ''complete military service record and medical record" to the Globe.

To the Globe? So he hasn't made the records available to the public or anyone else that wants to look at them, just the Globe?

It reads that way to me.

In April 2004, Kerry said he had already released his military records. ''I've shown them, they're available for you to come and look at," Kerry said in a television interview. But when a reporter showed up at campaign headquarters, he was told that no new records would be released. That prompted a flood of Republican criticism, and the campaign responded by gradually releasing more military records on its website. Kerry then released his ''fitness reports" -- evaluations by commanding officers -- on April 21, 2004.

Sacred Cowburgers

Caught in a lie, Kerry had his campaign release additional information.

Kerry tried another Look! Nothing in my right hand, nothing in my left. with Don Imus on September 15, 2004.

IMUS: A Freedom of Information Act request by "The Washington Post" regarding your military records produced six pages of information, while a spokesman for the Navy Personnel Command said there were at least 100 pages of information available, but he was not authorized to release them. Why can't we see this stuff?

KERRY: We've posted my military records that they sent to me, or were posted on my Web site. You can go to my Web site, and all my -- you know, the documents are there.

IMUS: So is -- everything's available?

KERRY: To the best of my knowledge. I think some of the medical stuff may still be out there. We're trying to get it.

IMUS: "The Washington Post" doesn't think that it's all available, and they could go to your Web site. Maybe they did.

KERRY: Well, we released everything that they initially sent me.

"We released everything they initially sent me." That's two gross exceptions to full disclosure right there, "Mr. Nuance." What had "they" sent to you since, and you're not allowing public release of anything that isn't sent to you first.

At the same time, Judicial Watch received a response to the Freedom of Information Act request it had made:

Navy Personnel Command FOIA Officer Dave German wrote in an e-mail to Judicial Watch that the Navy "withheld thirty-one pages of documents from the responsive military personnel service records as we were not provided a release authorization."

Were those 31 pages separate from the Washington Post's 100 pages, part of WaPo's 100 pages, or is it 131 pages of information that Kerry refused to release?

Who knows. We also don't know if any of those pages are included in the information that the Boston Globe described today as, "mostly a duplication of what Kerry released during his 2004 campaign." For some strange reason, I kinda doubt it.

And we won't know if the SF-180 Kerry signed restricted what information could be released or to whom.

Polipundit removed from his site the Kerry Clock he designed. I'm keeping it and the addition to it right where I have them because Kerry still hasn't released his full military records to the public.

Where are his discharge papers and the paperwork that explains why his Honorable Discharge was awarded under the Carter Administration and not years before when his separation from service actually occurred.

And now, I also want to see the SF-180 he signed.