You can copy and paste from PDF text files. Just click the select text button, select the text, copy it, and then paste. You have to do some cleanup sometimes because it copies the carriage returns.
Interestingly, I got hold of the full transcript of the interview, and there was an interesting conversation caught on tape just before the broadcast.
Very good, Jjimm. Slight nitpick: Karl Rove would never say “favour”. 
Oh bollocks. I was trying so hard too.
No can do–it was scanned in and contains only dots, not text. Had I more time I’d type it in but…
Anyway, I thought Soros got his money from destroying the economies of several Asian nations. No piddly dope money for him!
::::Golf clap:::::
My transcription (IOW, I might’ve inadvertently left a word or two out) of Soros’ letter:
A piece in The Hill about Hastert v. Soros.
Still nothing in the WaPo. Seems that if Republicans just plain make shit up, that’s no big deal.
Is this actionable? Because if I were Soros, I’d sue the motherfucker 'til his ears rang.
I’m unfamiliar with the phrase. Is this a good thing, as it “oh well done”, or a bad thing like a ‘cricket clap’ - a desultory, half-hearted round of applause executed by three geriatrics and a dog, as a man who’s just been caught out for no runs trails his bat forlornly back to the pavilion?
My take on it is that Hastert meant groups pushing to decriminalize marijuana. Wallace was the one who used the word cartels. Hastert may have been thrown by that question, but his subsequent silence allows the implication to stand.
Problem is, Soros & Co need a way to make this blow up in Hastert’s face (and by extension the rest of the GOP smegmagnets) now. Trying to drag it through the courts will do two things, neither positive: First, there’s a large middle-class constituency that hates lawyers (witness the gratuitous lawyer-bashing here on the SDMB every time an opportunity arises), and a lawsuit can be spun as “running to the attorneys to let them fight his battle,” which in turn can be spun to imply some legitimacy to the charges, else why would Soros hide behind his lawyers? And second, any outcome will take months or years to resolve, during which time the original accusation can hang out there and echo dully across the political landscape. This is why throwing slime is such a common political tactic: unless the charges are so completely and utterly ridiculous (“Soros takes his orders from three-eyed Venusians who want to capture our children to eat their boogers!”) that they bounce back to impact the speaker’s credibility, the bottom line is that they’re a lot easier to levy than refute. Welcome to the Politics of Karl Rove, Prince of Lies and Darkness.
Buncha frickin’ anti-Semites.
Dumb, too. Shylock was not the title character of The Merchant of Venice; that would have been Antonio, the fellow who wound up owing Shylock a pound of flesh.
For the record- it wasn’t GOPAC, it was a website called GOPUSA which is privately run and has no offical affiliation with the GOP. And apparently the guy who wrote it is anti-neocon (I got all this from thejewishweek.com article).
While I don’t think Hastert’s comments are legally actionable since he stuck weaselly qualifiers in there, he should apologize- immediately, publicly, and clearly.
I stand corrected. The Hill is generally a reliable source, but they got that one wrong. I’ve emailed the article’s author with your link, and requesting that The Hill publish a correction. There’s a BIG difference between the two organizations: GOPAC is pretty strongly entwined with the GOP power structure, and as you say, that’s not true of GOPUSA. So it’s not a trivial mistake.
I’d agree with that.
Except that Hastert was clearly focusing on where Soros got his money from, using phrases like “where he gets his money” or “where his money comes from” three times:
Bolding mine. There isn’t enough money in drug legalization for Soros’ bank account to even notice; Soros may support drug legalization, but that’s not where his money comes from.
At any rate, Hastert’s spokesman has acknowledged that Soros doesn’t make his money from drugs, but Hastert’s not going to apologize:
Slimy bastard.
You need to understand where Hastert is coming from –
For a guy like Hastert, all money comes from someone with an agenda, and all positions are arrived at based on the agenda of the people with the money. Hastert supports corn subsidies, because he gets money from ADM. He’s against allowing the federal government to negotiate lower prescription medication prices, because he gets money from drug companies. Like most politicians, his brain has been trained to see the world from that perspective. So, anyone that supports the legalization of drugs must be getting money from “drug groups”. The idea that Soros made his money honestly, by himself, without pandering to someone for it is not an idea that Hastert can easily grasp. Even more difficult, perhaps, is the idea that Soros has a position on the legalization of drugs which is based on a thoughful consideration of the issue, rather than a position based on the the agenda of someone with money.
Cervaise, I see you point. But it seems to me the argument you make applies to politicians running for office. Soros is not a politician, and he’s not running for anything. He’s got time, money, and anger to burn. And Hastert is vulnerable here. The narraitve the Republicans are trying to establish is “The Democrats and their supporters are immoral and corrupt,” and Democratic counter-narrative should be “The Republicans are liars.” Dogging Hastert with a slander lawsuit that won’t go away would play right into that, along with the absence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and the Swift Boat bullshit. And Soros has very little to lose. If he doesn’t push back at this aggressively, they’ll continue to hit him.
Hastert has responded (it’s NewsMax, I’m so sorry).
Here’s a very modest list of web news outlets reporting on this item: http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&q=hastert+soros&btnG=Search+News
Only 8 articles on Google News (search terms “Hastert Soros”) as of right now. Yesterday there were only 3. Where’s that damn Liberal Media, anyway?
Hastert’s response doesn’t make much sense. He says he was talking about advocacy groups promoting drug legalization (actually, he says they promote drug use, but we’ll confine ourselves to one logical fallacy at a time). But this makes no sense. Soros gives money to advocacy groups, not the other way around. How on earth could Soros’ money come from advocacy groups?
True dat.
It would, except that the way our court system works, the moment the lawsuit is filed, it disappears into the black hole of legal maneuvering, about which neither party can talk publicly when the judge imposes the inevitable gag order, until such time as either a trial is held or a settlement is reached, which result will take a minimum of six months and probably more like two years.
I agree completely. But the sad fact is, if he wants to push back using means that will have any sort of impact on the election just two short months away, a lawsuit, unfortunately, is not the way to go.
And really, given your “nothing to lose” observation, there’s really no compelling reason he has to push back that hard, anyway. He’s a money guy behind the scenes. The Democrats have gotten zero traction hitting the same people on the right, like Scaife. There’s no reason to think Hastert’s attack will have any more effect than that, and really, if Soros can make himself a lightning rod, that means less attack dogs throwing the actually sticky mud at Kerry and Edwards. Not sure I see a downside here.