Politicians behaving badly, part one

The North County Times pulled its endorsement for Vista City Council candidate Mario Carrillo after a San Diego Union-Tribune reporter found he'd inflated his educational experience. Carrillo had touted in his campaign materials and at council meetings that he had a bachelor's and master's degree. Turns out, the degrees came from a well-known diploma mill.

From the U-T story:

Shaftesbury University is part of a consortium of unaccredited universities called the University Degree Programs run by Jason and Caroline Abraham starting in the 1990s. According to the 2004 Chronicle of Higher Education article, sales people at call centers in Romania and Israel recruited students over the telephone. In the past, recipients of their degrees have been prosecuted for fraud in connection with the use of the degrees for employment.

Carrillo might have fibbed about his music accomplishments, too, and could lose other endorsements over the affair, the U-T reports.

Echoes of Christine O'Donnell, eh?

Christine O'Donnell and what she didn't learn while not attending Claremont Graduate University*

For a constitutional scholar, Christine O'Donnell, the Republican Senate candidate in Delaware, made some strange statements today in her debate with Democratic rival Chris Coons about the contents of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

From the Associated Press:

The exchange came in a debate before an audience of legal scholars and law students at Widener University Law School, as O'Donnell criticized Democratic nominee Chris Coons' position that teaching creationism in public school would violate the First Amendment by promoting religious doctrine.

Coons said private and parochial schools are free to teach creationism but that "religious doctrine doesn't belong in our public schools."

"Where in the Constitution is the separation of church and state?" O'Donnell asked him.

When Coons responded that the First Amendment bars Congress from making laws respecting the establishment of religion, O'Donnell asked: "You're telling me that's in the First Amendment?"

It is in the First Amendment. In fact, it's the first line: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof".

A campaign spokesman later said O'Donnell was saying the phrase "separation of church and state" didn't appear in the Constitution. But she seemed extremely skeptical about the "shall make no law" bit, too.

O'Donnell also stumbled when asked about the 14th and 16th Amendments, which enumerate citizenship rights and federal powers to collect income tax, respectively.

Why the added scrutiny for O'Donnell? First, because she says her legislative priorities are based on her understanding of the Constitution. Second, because she claimed to have taken a graduate course in constitutional government from the Claremont Institute, a conservative think tank (that is not an accredited college and offers no graduate courses). Then there was the LinkedIn profile that claimed she'd studied constitutional government at Claremont Graduate University, a real college that she did not attend and that has nothing to do with the Claremont Institute.

*Update: Let's go to the video:

Christine O'Donnell getting trounced

A couple new polls in Delaware put Republican Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell way behind her Democratic rival, Chris Coons.

Christine O'Donnell posts are not a hit in Delaware

Since Christine O'Donnell is running for the Senate in Delaware, I wondered how many people from the state had clicked on my posts about her falsified educational background. I didn't expect large numbers - the state is small, this isn't a place people come for news about national politics, and bigger media picked up the post, making it less necessary for people to stop here for the scoop. But the total is still smaller than I expected.

The day after the story broke, this site saw a fairly large spike in readers, with 1,463 page views. Of those, 87 percent were new visitors. The majority of new visits came, not surprisingly, from New York and California. Only 16 clicks originated in Delaware, and those came over a three-day period that included the initial scoop and several follow up posts.

NYT skips over Claremont

The New York Times picked up the story about Christine O'Donnell's errant educational background - sort of. The profile, written by Mark Leibovich, mentions the false claim she'd attended England's Oxford University but not the false claim that she'd attended Claremont Graduate University. East Coast bias? Here's the relevant passage:

Ms. O’Donnell has faced charges this week that she lied about her educational record — a claim on two online business networking sites that she had attended Oxford University when in fact she participated in a summer program from the Phoenix Institute, which was housed at the elite British university. “I was never dishonest about my education,” she said. “Whether someone put it there to call me a liar, whatever

The Christine O'Donnell kerfuffle

If you are a candidate for U.S. Senate who's made some misleading statements about your educational background and then someone finds more false claims in a profile posted on a popular social networking site, you probably need to craft a serious response. And if you respond that someone else created the profile to embarrass or entrap you, you need to do more than shrug it off an annoying hoax. (Especially when new evidence comes to light.)

Which basically brings us up to date with Christine O'Donnell, the Republican Senate candidate in Delaware, and the mysterious LinkedIn profile that got yanked offline yesterday. After the Washington Post and this blog pointed out inaccuracies in the profile, she called the profile a sham. Who planted this alleged educational time bomb? No one knows, and the O'Donnell campaign doesn't seem that interested in finding out.

For those who'd rather dismiss this as a liberal media witch hunt, conservative blogger Patterico offers some wisdom:

I am amazed (and yet I’m not) by the people who want me to ignore this.  Joe Biden misrepresented his own academic record and I mocked him unmercifully for it.  Why would O’Donnell deserve different treatment?

Had she simply padded the resume and then fessed up, mockery would probably be all that O'Donnell had to contend with. If it turns out she lied about constructing the LinkedIn profile page, the political repercussions could be much worse.

Four in the evening

1. Craigslist founder Craig Newmark thinks NPR is the future. Atlantic

2. NPR's Twitter followers want more hard-hitting, breaking news. NPR

3. Former LA Times executive editor John Arthur is now vice president and executive editor of the Bakersfield Californian. BC

4. Greg Sargent at the Plum Line is satisfied that Republican Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell fibbed about attending England's Oxford University. Plum Line

LinkedIn deletes disputed O'Donnell profile

LinkedIn has taken down a profile of Delaware Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell, as she requested, but has yet to determine whether the profile is a fake, as she has claimed.

Yesterday, the Washington Post and this blog reported that the profile falsely asserted that O'Donnell had studied at the University of Oxford and Claremont Graduate University. Today, the O'Donnell's camp said the LinkedIn profile wasn't hers and asked that it be removed.

O'Donnell has yet to explain why she didn't challenge the profile's authenticity when the Post first asked about the Oxford listing. In fact, the campaign had a two weeks to think about it: AOL News raised the same question in a story published Sept. 15.

O'Donnell's educational background has come under scrutiny before. As CBS News reports:

She claimed for years that she was a graduate of Fairleigh Dickinson Unversity, but she in fact only received her degree on Sept. 1 of this year, years after attending the school. ... Additionally, O'Donnell suggested in a lawsuit that she was pursuing a Master's degree at Princeton University, but she later acknowledged she has not taken any graduate courses at Princeton.

The education of Christine O'Donnell

Did Delaware Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell lie about her educational background on a social networking website? Or was she merely the victim of the website's poor design?

Or have we all been duped - either by a malevolent prankster who wanted to embarrass O'Donnell or a careless do-gooder who failed to do his or her research?

Yesterday, after reading a Washington Post story that disputed the accuracy of O'Donnell's LinkedIn profile, specifically a claim that she'd attended the University of Oxford, I decided to check whether she had attended another school listed on the profile, Claremont Graduate University. A spokesman for the school said without hesitation that were no records of her attending classes or registering there as a student.

The implication, of course, was that O'Donnell had padded (i.e., lied on) her resume.A writer for the conservative RedState blog admonished the attack-dog media to withhold judgment, saying it had failed to take into account LinkedIn's quirky design:

Depending on when O’Donnell created her LinkedIn profile, at one point you could only enter educational programs that were in the LinkedIn system. And even today, you have to hard-code in the text for places like Claremont, which are not recognized Institutions or Companies, but exist only as search terms in their system.

The idea, I guess, is that O'Donnell or one of her staffers might have been flummoxed by the website's lack of options and unfriendly design and, as a result, mistakenly listed Oxford University and Claremont Graduate University under the education tab.

The argument lost any relevance, however, when O'Donnell's campaign contacted Washington Post writer Greg Sargent and told him flatly that the LinkedIn profile was a fraud. Her statement reads in part:

There have been reports that I have released false information on a LinkedIn profile under my name. This is categorically untrue. I never established a LinkedIn profile, or authorized anyone to do so on my behalf.

This would mean someone else created the online profile and misstated O'Donnell's educational background either on purpose or by mistake.

Talking Points Memo talked with the O'Donnell camp, which says it will investigate who created the profile. A campaign spokesman would not explain why the issue of the profile's authenticity wasn't raised in the first place.

It should be noted that Sargent did reach out to the O'Donnell campaign, as any good journalist would, before he published the initial story. The campaign did not challenged the profile's authenticity and instead tried to explain why the Oxford University listing was an innocent mistake.

O'Donnell's profile has 84 "connections" - meaning 84 people have chosen to link to her profile. It would interesting to know whether any of them have ever communicated with the profile's creator. Also, all LinkedIn profiles require a working email to get them established. I've asked LinkedIn if it would release the email address associated with this account, but I won't hold my breath.

Other stories about O'Donnell and her educational background are here, here and here.

Christine O'Donnell didn't go to Claremont Graduate University either (update*)

Greg Sargent at the Washington Post's Plum Line has a story today that says Christine O'Donnell, Republican Senate candidate in Delaware, embellished her online resume to say she'd studied at Oxford University, when she'd actually taken a course from an outfit called the Phoenix Institute in a space rented from Oxford.

The same resume lists O'Donnell as having attended Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, California. The claim seemed suspicious since O'Donnell had yet to receive her undergraduate degree, from Farleigh Dickinson University, until last summer. So I asked CGU's public relations officer, Rod Leveque, if the school had any record of O'Donnell attending classes there. His response:

In short, no. Claremont Graduate University has no student or education record for an individual named Christine O'Donnell.

In 2002, O'Donnell was listed as a "Lincoln Fellow" at the Claremont Institute, a conservative think tank also based in Claremont. However, the institute is not affiliated with the Claremont Graduate University or any of the other Claremont Colleges. One of the Claremont Institute's fellows, Harry Jaffa, did teach at the Claremont Graduate University back when it was known as Claremont Graduate School.

 Incidentally, the 2002 entry for O'Donnell on the Claremont Institute website describes her as a graduate of Farleigh Dickinson University.

*Update: Greg Sarget just updated his Plum Line blog with a statement from O'Donnell in which she says the LinkedIn profile is not hers. Here's the statement:

"There have been reports that I have released false information on a LinkedIn profile under my name. This is categorically untrue. I never established a LinkedIn profile, or authorized anyone to do so on my behalf. I have always been clear about my educational background. I completed undergraduate work at Fairleigh Dickenson University. After my undergraduate work, I completed a summer program run by the Phoenix Institute, at the Institute's Oxford University location. The Institute runs programs around the world at various universities, and participants study issues of human dignity. I also completed a Lincoln Fellowship at the Claremont Institute in Claremont, CA. We would encourage LinkedIn to remove this profile.