Senator Reid a former boxer was invited as a non paying guest and could not legally pay for his ticket and still voted against the group.
This is Solomon's original article:
http://www.boston.com/....
This is his follow up piece:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060601/ap_on_go_co/reid_ethics.
Is this what you call a correction?
Paul Kiel of TPM Muckracker found out that it is illegal to reimbursed the ticket which AP did not mention.
http://tpmmuckraker.com/
Confirmed: Against the Law for Reid To Pay for Credential
By Paul Kiel - May 31, 2006, 3:46 PM
OK, so we've nailed this down. It would have been against state law for Harry Reid to have reimbursed the Nevada Athletic Commission for credentials. ...
Bob Arum, the boxing promoter who gave the credentials to Reid and Sen. John McCain, made that claim to The Las Vegas Review Journal. But I wanted to check up on that, so I called Keith Kizer, the Executive Director of the Nevada Athletic Commission. Kizer should know - he is a lawyer and former Chief Deputy Attorney General for the state of Nevada.
"It would be illegal," Kizer said, explaining that it fell under a state law prohibiting agencies or individuals for charging access to government property. The credentials provide access to the commission's area near the ring. "It would be like charging someone for access to a senator's office," Kizer added with no apparent sense of irony.
He went on to explain that credentials are given out to governmental officials and others in order to observe the commission's activity. Sometimes the credentials are provided in addition to tickets - sometimes officials sit in the commission's area.
Reid's office, meanwhile, confirmed that Reid received a credential, and not a ticket to the bout: "We know it for a fact that he had a credential."
I have written to the AP asking whether they planned on issuing a correction and was promised a reply "this afternoon." In his piece, John Solomon referred to Reid having received (reimbursable) "tickets" to the fight.
I instead question the ethics of Solomon. He should be fired and AP should issue an apology and a corrected article. Let us make known our outrage to AP.