DNC = Donations Not Coming?

Now some fresh pickings from the Political Grapevine:

Just weeks after Howard Dean (search) took over as chairman of the Democratic National Committee in February, he said fund raising was already going "better than we had dared to hope." But in the months since, the DNC has fallen far behind its Republican rival.

According to a new report in Business Week magazine, the DNC raised $14.1 million dollars in the first quarter of this year, while the RNC raised $32.3 million. What's more, the report says, Dean and his Democratic colleagues have attracted about 20,000 new donors to the DNC, while Republicans have lured more than 68,000 new donors.

Dollars For Democrats

Speaking of political donations, it turns out top officials at Amnesty International (search), the self-described "independent" and "impartial" organization that called Guantanamo Bay the "gulag of our times," have recently given thousands of dollars to Democratic campaigns.

Executive director William Schulz (search) donated $2,000, the maximum legal amount, to John Kerry's presidential bid last year, and another $1,000 to Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy's re-election campaign for next year.

Amnesty Board Chairman Joe Pitts III (search) also gave $2,000 to Kerry's campaign. But, an Amnesty spokesman insists, "We strive to do everything humanly possible to see that the personal political perspectives of our leadership have no bearing whatsoever upon the nature of our findings."

'America's Premier Media Monitor'?

The Columbia Journalism Review has always insisted it is "America's Premier Media Monitor," and not, as some have suggested, a liberal political journal masquerading as a journalism review. But whom has it turned to lately for guidance? Why, Victor Navasky, the publisher and editorial director of the staunchly liberal magazine The Nation. According to CJR executive editor Michael Hoyt, Navasky has "gradual[ly]" been taking on a key role over the past few months, a role, Hoyt says, that's higher than his own.

But, Hoyt insists it's "99 percent financial," saying that every Friday Navasky meets with staff to "talk business side. ... He doesn't push anything editorially." Navasky tells Editor & Publisher magazine that the next issue of CJR will list him as "Chairman."

As Post Put It...

The Washington Post reported yesterday that after learning that Deep Throat was actually former FBI number-two Mark Felt — "former Nixon speechwriter Patrick J. Buchanan (search) labeled Felt a 'traitor' for having worked with reporters on stories that did severe damage to the administration."

What's more, while chatting with readers about it online later in the day, one Washington Post reporter called Buchanan's reaction "darkly hilarious." But Buchanan never called Felt a traitor. In fact, in an interview with Chris Matthews, Buchanan said that because Felt had no personal loyalty to Nixon, "I don't consider him a traitor." The Post has now issued a correction.

— FOX News' Michael Levine contributed to this report