OLD SMEAR CAMPAIGNS NEVER DIE...

Old smear campaigns never die, and sometimes they just won't fade away...CNN is reporting that three south Florida House Republicans are doing their best to link Teresa Heinz Kerry to Fidel Castro. This is part of an old campaign to link Heinz Kerry's philanthropic activities to every imaginable objectionable group, and been thoroughly debunked.

Meanwhile in Miami, three Republican members -- Reps. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, his brother Mario and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen -- will charge that Teresa Kerry's foundation has "connections" to and has helped finance "Fidel Castro's Internet network."

A Diaz-Balart spokeswoman would not elaborate, but she did say it involved the Heinz Endowments' financial ties to a group called the Tides Center and the Tides Foundation.

There is a financial connection between the Heinz Endowments and the Tides organization, and between the Tides organization and an Internet project based in Cuba. But the connection between the Heinz Endowments and the Cuban project is very tenuous.

The Heinz Endowments have issued approximately $8.1 million in grants in the last 10 years to the Tides organization, a San Francisco-based group that funds a variety of socially progressive environmental, economic and social justice projects.

About $230,000 was issued to the Tides Foundation between 1994 and 1998 and the remainder issued to the Tides Center. All grants were issued for environmental and economic development projects in western Pennsylvania, where THK has spent much of her adult life. The Heinz Endowments money was specifically earmarked for these projects.

One organization that also hired the Tides Center to manage its financial and administrative affairs is the Institute for Global Communications (IGC), which promotes "peace and social and economic justice" around the world by helping countries develop Internet and computer networks. IGC says it has had projects in the former Soviet Union, Nicaragua, Canada, Australia, South Africa, Brazil, and Argentina, among others.

It also once had a project in Cuba which involved helping the island nation establish an Internet connection. IGC has another connection to the Tides organization: It received $13,000 in grants from the Tides Foundation between 1993 and 2002 for general support, but not specifically for the Cuba project.

"I seriously doubt that any money from Teresa Heinz Kerry or the Heinz Endowment would have gone to this [Cuba] project," said IGC Director Mark Graham told CNN. "I wish that were the case. We could have used the money."

"In recent weeks, the Heinz Endowments has been accused of using its funding of the Tides Center of Western Pennsylvania to advance a laundry list of partisan causes and fringe political groups. This accusation is simply wrong," Maxwell King, president of the Heinz Endowments, said in a written statement.

I suppose this article in Canada Free Press (yes, even Canada has wingnuts) contributed to this latest absurd attack.