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Wash.
Post misleadingly described failure of asbestos bill a "victory for Democrats"
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Thu, Feb 16, 2006 12:37pm EST
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Wash.
Post misleadingly described failure of asbestos bill a "victory for Democrats"
Summary: A Washington Post article characterized a Senate vote blocking a bill that would have created a trust fund for asbestos victims as a "victory for Democrats and their trial-lawyer allies." In fact, 11 Republicans voted with Democrats to prevent the bill from moving forward.
The opening paragraph in a February 15 Washington Post article by staff writer Shailagh Murray characterized a Senate procedural vote blocking a bill that would have created a trust fund for asbestos victims as a "victory for Democrats and their trial-lawyer allies." In fact, as Murray noted a few sentences later, 11 Republicans joined Democrats in preventing the bill from moving forward, and later in the article, noted that "the bill created unlikely coalitions, both within the Senate and among the many interest groups with a stake in the outcome." Furthermore, in the third paragraph of the article, Murray identified Sen.
Patrick Leahy (D-VT), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, as the bill's lead co-sponsor, a fact that undermines her ...
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