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The Latest News
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Published on Nov. 1
THE PAY-OFF
The Nader/Green Surge
Has Given Many Young Folk a Taste for the Excitement of Radical
Organizing. People Carry Such Hours and Days with Them for the
Rest of Their Lives
JIM CROW AT
EPA
Carol Browner Heads Up
a Racist Sinkhole
JESSE VENTURA
Fun Guy, But
What's He Done?
OUR LITTLE SECRETS
Studs Terkel
Describes a Dinner
With Churchill
Gen. Wesley Clark
and His '67 Mustang
Published on Oct. 15
The Final Stretch:
Will the NYT
Nail Bush as
a Coke Dealer?
Caught in the
Headlights:
Gore Freezes as
Doubletalk Catches
Up With Him
NOW's Sad Descent From
Feminist Rallying
Point to Democratic Party Shill
The Nation,
In These Times
Rally Round
the Flag
CounterPunch
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Read All About Al Gore:
a User's Manual, the explosive new book by CounterPunch editors
Alexander Cockburn
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Reviews of Gore: a User's Manual
Whiteout:
CIA, drugs & the press
by Alexander Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Finally Back in Print!
The book the CIA Didn't Want You to Read
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November 5, 2000
Sen. Grams' Demon
Seed For Minnesota
By Steve Perry
Senator Rod Grams, a perennial toast of such groups
as the American Conservative Union and the Christian Coalition-which
recently proclaimed him "a solid voice for pro-family issues"-September
was one bad month. On the 24th Grams's 22-year-old son, Morgan,
pitched himself out the third-story window of a Super 8 motel
in Las Cruces, NM, in a vain effort to elude sheriff's deputies
who'd tracked him there. Grams the Younger was taken into custody
along with an 18-year-old friend and the 15-year-old runaway
girl they had brought along with them on a four-day joyride that
started in Minnesota; he was subsequently charged with three
felony counts of theft for stealing a shotgun, a Chevy Blazer,
and $2,500 worth of silver and antique coins.
Over the past couple of years Morgan Grams has
made headlines in Minnesota more often than his father, a former
TV newscaster and notorious back-bencher whose sponsorship of
legislation is usually confined to commemorative proclamations
and "sense of the Senate" resolutions. (One notable
exception: When the racist disparity between crack and powder
cocaine sentencing guidelines became a public issue, Grams successfully
co-sponsored a bill to remedy it-by raising the penalties for
powder.) In July 1999, Rod Grams telephoned the sheriff's office
in Anoka County, Minnesota, to ask their assistance in finding
his son, who had disappeared with a rental vehicle borrowed from
a co-worker several days earlier. A deputy duly located Morgan
Grams in the company of his merry band. He would subsequently
report finding nothing amiss with the vehicle or its occupants.
The incident might never have made the papers
if two other deputies had not arrived at the scene a couple of
minutes after the first deputy. One of them saw a Grams passenger
stuffing something in the waistband of his pants. It was one
of nine bags of pot the youth proved to have in his possession;
a tenth was discovered under Grams's seat. There were also several
empty beer cans in the vehicle, according to the accounts of
a passenger and the man from whom Grams had taken the car. All
Grams got from the deputy was a front-seat ride back to his motel,
but he was not so lucky two weeks later when he stole a car and
a purse from a woman he had taken to a suburban Twin Cities bar.
That stunt landed him on probation, which he subsequently violated
by failing to show up for a court-mandated drug test. He was
wanted on a skip warrant at the time of his New Mexico arrest.
Following his son's latest apprehension, a tearful
Rod Grams met the press to offer assurances that, unlike last
time, Morgan would have to face the music. But at least his travails
with his son pushed into the background another family-related
September scandal. Earlier in the month the Minneapolis Star
Tribune published a report indicating that a series of anonymous
smear emails about Mike Ciresi, a candidate in the state's Democratic
Senate primary appear to have originated with the Grams campaign's
political director, Christine Gunhus. If true, this bit of political
dirty trickery would also be illegal under Minnesota campaign
law. Gunhus has been a key Grams operative since his 1992 election
to the House; more recently she was the chief of staff in his
Senate office before departing to head his campaign. The family
connection? Last year Roll Call identified her as the girlfriend
of Grams, who divorced his wife in 1994. CP
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