To Michael Finley, The Exclusivity I referred to in our phone conversation concerns (excerpted now from my journalism text) exclusivity as to "thematic or conceptual presentation". Even with your bias in this matter, by reading your two letters below you must see the significant "thematic or conceptual" overlap. I applaud your intent to get your point of view seen by one and all in the Twin Cities but one has to question your intent. You met Greg but once and now you embark on a letter campaign ? You say you are not on any campaign committee yet you started to answer "yes" to that question before you likely thought better of it. Lastly, I thought long and hard about apologizing about my comments about Irish politics but concluded Irish politics, historically, break social contracts like the journalistic exclusivity requests and thus Irish politics and political writers, in general, have almost always lived in a zone without ethics, a zone whose only value is winning. To Michael Finley, Since this letter will, most likely, arrive at the same time as the letter I mailed last night (or soon after), I want to say a few more things : a) This will be last communication with you one sided as it is. b) I did, indeed, simply call you up to get some info for a potential piece on campaign practices. No other intent was my focus. c) I did not, by any means, call you to bother you. Things got out of hand, and I will take reponsibility for that. d) I simply had (and do have a bit at times) a difficult time believing that someone who has met Greg but one time would he such a fervent admirer without being connected in some peripheral way to the campaign or campaign participants. e) I also strongly support the ethical standards of newspapers in requesting readers to mail their pieces to individual papers exclusively. Having worked at a number of papers, I know how papers feel about "doubledipping". It feels like cheating. Papers also cannot check on the exclusivity of each letter and thus rely on the honesty of the writers. Thus, the source of my initial displeasure in my conversation with you. f) Having said that, however, I woke up this a.m. with a very bad taste in my mouth about my letter and phone conversation with you. That taste, I knew, grew overnight because of my stupid comments'-'-"--about ethicless Irish politics and writers. To make blanket statements like that is horrid enough but to not apologize for them is worse. Therefore, I wish to apologize for those words. You are undoubtedly a very principled man. You’ve already proved that by the effort you've put, as a private citizen, into this campaign