Kate vs. Greg

Following his piece on the "Great Florida Ex-Con Game," Greg Palast and Katherine Harris get into a brief sparring match over the Choicepoint issue (which I referenced a few weeks ago) in the letters section of this month's Harper's Magazine. Harris writes:

Greg Palast's Annotation ["Ex-Con Game," March] distorts and misrepresents the events surrounding the 2000 presidential election in Florida in order to support his twisted and maniacally partisan conclusions. To the chagrin of responsible journalists everywhere, Palast's effort implodes under the slightest scrutiny, owing to his abject failure to check the accuracy of his facts.

To which Palast responds:

Regardless of where Harris seeks to shift the blame, her office clearly did wrong. The NAACP has filed suit over the voter purges uncovered by our BBC and Guardian reports. NAACP v Harris goes to trial in August. Katherine, if you've got an alibi for operating a Jim Crow election operation, tell it to the judge.

Katherine Harris, cochairwoman of Florida's George W. Bush for President campaign and now candidate for Congress, accuses this London reporter of "partisanship." To that, one hardly knows how to respond.

That last comment from Palast is classic...

NB: If you pick up the July issue, be sure to check out Stanley Fish's piece on "Postmodern Warfare" and Edward Said's "Impossible Histories". Fish tackles the relentless and ill-informed attack on postmodernism in 9-11's wake, while Said reviews Bernard Lewis' What Went Wrong? and Karen Armstrong's Islam: A Short History.