HispanicBusiness

A reporter with the neo-conservative Weekly Standard says he was roughed up during a D.C. fund-raiser Tuesday night by an affiliate of Democratic Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley. John McCormack, the magazine's deputy online editor, writes that Coakley had dodged a question he'd asked about Afghanistan during a brief Q and A session with reporters inside a Capitol Hill restaurant named Sonoma. "Attorney General Coakley, you said last night that there are no terrorists in Afghanistan -- that they're all in Yemen and Pakistan. Do you stand by that remark?" he said, according to a post he wrote in the Weekly Standard. Her response, according to McCormack: "I'm sorry, did someone else have a question?" Afterward, he followed her outside to ask another question: why are healthcare lobbyists supporting her at the fund-raiser? McCormack says she again ignored him. Shortly after, he said he was accosted by a man who appeared to be one of her staff members, Michael Meehan, who allegedly shoved McCormack into an iron gate. "I ended up on the sidewalk," McCormack wrote." I was fine. He helped me up from the ground, but kept pushing up against me, blocking my path toward Coakley down the street." McCormack said when he asked Meehan who he worked for, he replied: "I work for me." The incident was caught on video and posted on YouTube. The video shows McCormack struggling to simultaneously show his press credentials and sidestep a man who is blocking his way. A blogger for First Things, an ecumenical publication funded by Catholic theologian Richard John Neuhaus, reports that Meehan is also a vice president at Virilion, a "democratic advertising company" that represents the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America.