Stephens	Ruskin

Preston Gates' Dennis Stephens or Commercial Alert's Gary Ruskin?

It turns out that the Jack Abramoff crowd thought that Ruskin is the weasel. Check out this email exchange:

From: Dennis Stephens [Abramoff colleague at Preston Gates]
To: Chad Cowan
Cc: Abramoff, Jack

"Have you guys ever looked into Gary Ruskin, a Nader protege who runs Commercial Alert (which is attacking Channel One, our client)...The guy is a weasel...Someone should consider doing an in depth piece on Ruskin and his Nader front groups. We should have lunch and review the options."

Abramoff responds: "Great. Can you get this moving?"

Amy Berger, another Abramoff colleague, responds:
"Jeff [Ballabon, VP of Channel One] just raised this with me. He said, why aren't you guys doing more on Ruskin? Please move ahead with this! Please keep me informed. Thanks"

The irony here is that there really isn't such a thing as a "Nader front group." Commercial Alert is one of many organizations "spun off" by people who worked for Nader. It's not like they are some sort of cabal to promote Nader! And, as this report (18M PDF) from the minority staff of the Senate Finance Committee shows that the real front groups were Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform and Citizens Against Government Waste.