David Rosenbaum, Antigun NYTimes reporter, Dies after mugging
Published: January 9, 2006
WASHINGTON, Jan. 8 - David E. Rosenbaum, a retired reporter and editor for The New York Times who for more than 35 years wrote about the intersection of politics, economics and government policy with uncommon depth, clarity and a keen eye for the story behind the story, died Sunday. He was 63.
Those who knew David Rosenbaum can share their remembrances of him by sending an e-mail to [email]washington@nytimes.com[/email]. [b]His death was caused by a brain injury suffered when he was struck in the head and robbed Friday night while walking near his home in Northwest Washington,[/b] police officials and his family members said.
Mr. Rosenbaum served at various times as chief Congressional correspondent, chief domestic policy correspondent, chief economics correspondent, assistant news editor and business editor in the Washington bureau of The Times.
For years, he was the specialist of an occasional Times feature called The Fine Print, which dissected hidden, confusing or hypocritical details of legislation that was pending or just passed.
Mr. Rosenbaum joined The Times in 1968 after working at The St. Petersburg Times in Florida, a chain of suburban newspapers in London and Congressional Quarterly, and he worked in the Washington bureau for all but three years in the early 1980's when he was the paper's special projects editor in New York. He retired last month, but kept his old desk, and planned to keep contributing articles to the paper about politics and politicians.
"He was a reporter with a deep understanding of policy, and of the interaction between policy and politics," said Robert D. Reischauer, the former head of the Congressional Budget Office and a frequent news source. "All of us tend to speak in jargon. He would say: 'Come on! Explain it, explain.' He would get enough from several of us to then turn it into something the average reader would find understandable and interesting. He was one who wanted to peel back the layers of the onion from the smooth and superficial that the spinmeisters would like us to think is the real world, to the core that makes your eyes start to cry."
Mr. Rosenbaum shared the George Polk Award for national reporting for his coverage of the 1990 budget deal in which the first President George Bush abandoned his pledge not to raise taxes. He covered a sweeping range of other long-running stories, from the Senate Watergate hearings of 1973 to the Iran-contra hearings of 1987 to more recent debates over trade, taxes, tobacco, energy, Medicare and Social Security.
Mr. Rosenbaum was born on March 1, 1942, in Miami and grew up in Tampa, Fla., where his father founded a citrus cannery. He received his bachelor's degree from Dartmouth College in 1963 and a master's in journalism from Columbia University in 1965.
For more than 25 years, he was a member of the steering committee of the Reporters Committee for the Freedom of the Press, a nonprofit organization devoted to protecting the First Amendment and reporters' legal rights.
He is survived by his wife, Virginia, a researcher at the Investor Responsibility Research Center and the author of several books on corporate governance; a daughter, Dorothy, of Bethesda, Md.; a son, Daniel, of Washington; a brother, Marcus, of Washington, a senior editor at National Public Radio; and two grandchildren.
================
In the May 23, 1999 New York Times, [b]David E. Rosenbaum[/b] argued that there had once been two “extremes” in the gun debate – those who wanted to ban handguns, and those who wanted “the right to own and carry guns more or less at will.”
Now both sides had found a “third way,” he exulted. Both had agreed that some “common-sense” gun control was necessary. Sound familiar?
Rosenbaum compared the situation to the fight over health care. Some extremists had wanted to socialize medicine, he noted, while others had opposed government meddling altogether. Eventually, we got Medicare and Medicaid, said Rosenbaum – the perfect “third-way” compromise.
Or was it? Decades later, Senator Hillary Clinton is still demanding national health care. Those who want government out of medicine altogether have become an extinct species.
When Hitler marched on the Rhineland, the Allies did nothing. When he took the Sudetenland, they did nothing again. At each step, the Allies hoped to appease Hitler with “compromise.” But each compromise only brought the Führer closer to his goal.
================
BELLEVUE, Wash., Jan. 9 /U.S. Newswire/ -- The District of Columbia's gun ban has claimed another victim, and this time a veteran newsman has died, all because criminals know citizens in the nation's capitol cannot fight back, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (CCRKBA) said today.
"Our hearts and prayers go out to the family of veteran New York Times reporter and editor David E. Rosenbaum, who died Sunday from injuries he suffered during a brutal robbery Friday night near his home in northwest Washington, D.C.," said CCRKBA Chairman Alan M. Gottlieb, who is also publisher of Gun Week, a nationally circulated firearms newspaper. "We cannot know whether Mr. Rosenbaum would ever have kept a gun for personal protection, but we do know that every law-abiding citizen now living in the District can't. And we also know that for years, criminals have taken advantage of this environment of public disarmament, as hungry wolves prey on defenseless sheep.
"How many more victims of the District's gun ban will it take," Gottlieb wondered, "before common sense once again returns to the city? By all accounts, Mr. Rosenbaum was minding his own business, as have so many previous victims of violent thugs, when he was savagely beaten and robbed. His slaying will get plenty of attention, as it already has from the Washington Post, because of his stature and his professional background.
"But what about all the other victims, whose names have largely been forgotten," Gottlieb continued. "Because criminals in the District have known for years that the public was legally disarmed, they've become bolder. They know that the odds are all in their favor, that in a victim disarmament zone like Washington, they won't be facing a legally-armed citizen the next time they want to rob and kill. It is an outrage that city officials so callously defend this gun ban, while the body count of innocent victims continues to pile up.
"How sad and pitiful it is," Gottlieb concluded, [b]"that the New York Times has a record of supporting every deplorable, restrictive, anti-self defense gun law that ever came along; laws that disarm good people while doing nothing to stop the bad ones. These are the kinds of laws that have created risk-free working conditions for murderous predators in the District of Columbia, and ultimately, it is decent, honorable people like David Rosenbaum who so often pay the price for such despicable public policy."[/b]
With more than 650,000 members and supporters nationwide, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms -- [url]http://www.ccrkba.org[/url] -- is one of the nation's premier gun rights organizations. As a non-profit organization, the Citizens Committee is dedicated to preserving firearms freedoms through active lobbying of elected officials and facilitating grass-roots organization of gun rights activists in local communities throughout the United States.
[url]http://www.usnewswire.com/[/url]
WASHINGTON, Jan. 8 - David E. Rosenbaum, a retired reporter and editor for The New York Times who for more than 35 years wrote about the intersection of politics, economics and government policy with uncommon depth, clarity and a keen eye for the story behind the story, died Sunday. He was 63.
Those who knew David Rosenbaum can share their remembrances of him by sending an e-mail to [email]washington@nytimes.com[/email]. [b]His death was caused by a brain injury suffered when he was struck in the head and robbed Friday night while walking near his home in Northwest Washington,[/b] police officials and his family members said.
Mr. Rosenbaum served at various times as chief Congressional correspondent, chief domestic policy correspondent, chief economics correspondent, assistant news editor and business editor in the Washington bureau of The Times.
For years, he was the specialist of an occasional Times feature called The Fine Print, which dissected hidden, confusing or hypocritical details of legislation that was pending or just passed.
Mr. Rosenbaum joined The Times in 1968 after working at The St. Petersburg Times in Florida, a chain of suburban newspapers in London and Congressional Quarterly, and he worked in the Washington bureau for all but three years in the early 1980's when he was the paper's special projects editor in New York. He retired last month, but kept his old desk, and planned to keep contributing articles to the paper about politics and politicians.
"He was a reporter with a deep understanding of policy, and of the interaction between policy and politics," said Robert D. Reischauer, the former head of the Congressional Budget Office and a frequent news source. "All of us tend to speak in jargon. He would say: 'Come on! Explain it, explain.' He would get enough from several of us to then turn it into something the average reader would find understandable and interesting. He was one who wanted to peel back the layers of the onion from the smooth and superficial that the spinmeisters would like us to think is the real world, to the core that makes your eyes start to cry."
Mr. Rosenbaum shared the George Polk Award for national reporting for his coverage of the 1990 budget deal in which the first President George Bush abandoned his pledge not to raise taxes. He covered a sweeping range of other long-running stories, from the Senate Watergate hearings of 1973 to the Iran-contra hearings of 1987 to more recent debates over trade, taxes, tobacco, energy, Medicare and Social Security.
Mr. Rosenbaum was born on March 1, 1942, in Miami and grew up in Tampa, Fla., where his father founded a citrus cannery. He received his bachelor's degree from Dartmouth College in 1963 and a master's in journalism from Columbia University in 1965.
For more than 25 years, he was a member of the steering committee of the Reporters Committee for the Freedom of the Press, a nonprofit organization devoted to protecting the First Amendment and reporters' legal rights.
He is survived by his wife, Virginia, a researcher at the Investor Responsibility Research Center and the author of several books on corporate governance; a daughter, Dorothy, of Bethesda, Md.; a son, Daniel, of Washington; a brother, Marcus, of Washington, a senior editor at National Public Radio; and two grandchildren.
================
In the May 23, 1999 New York Times, [b]David E. Rosenbaum[/b] argued that there had once been two “extremes” in the gun debate – those who wanted to ban handguns, and those who wanted “the right to own and carry guns more or less at will.”
Now both sides had found a “third way,” he exulted. Both had agreed that some “common-sense” gun control was necessary. Sound familiar?
Rosenbaum compared the situation to the fight over health care. Some extremists had wanted to socialize medicine, he noted, while others had opposed government meddling altogether. Eventually, we got Medicare and Medicaid, said Rosenbaum – the perfect “third-way” compromise.
Or was it? Decades later, Senator Hillary Clinton is still demanding national health care. Those who want government out of medicine altogether have become an extinct species.
When Hitler marched on the Rhineland, the Allies did nothing. When he took the Sudetenland, they did nothing again. At each step, the Allies hoped to appease Hitler with “compromise.” But each compromise only brought the Führer closer to his goal.
================
BELLEVUE, Wash., Jan. 9 /U.S. Newswire/ -- The District of Columbia's gun ban has claimed another victim, and this time a veteran newsman has died, all because criminals know citizens in the nation's capitol cannot fight back, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (CCRKBA) said today.
"Our hearts and prayers go out to the family of veteran New York Times reporter and editor David E. Rosenbaum, who died Sunday from injuries he suffered during a brutal robbery Friday night near his home in northwest Washington, D.C.," said CCRKBA Chairman Alan M. Gottlieb, who is also publisher of Gun Week, a nationally circulated firearms newspaper. "We cannot know whether Mr. Rosenbaum would ever have kept a gun for personal protection, but we do know that every law-abiding citizen now living in the District can't. And we also know that for years, criminals have taken advantage of this environment of public disarmament, as hungry wolves prey on defenseless sheep.
"How many more victims of the District's gun ban will it take," Gottlieb wondered, "before common sense once again returns to the city? By all accounts, Mr. Rosenbaum was minding his own business, as have so many previous victims of violent thugs, when he was savagely beaten and robbed. His slaying will get plenty of attention, as it already has from the Washington Post, because of his stature and his professional background.
"But what about all the other victims, whose names have largely been forgotten," Gottlieb continued. "Because criminals in the District have known for years that the public was legally disarmed, they've become bolder. They know that the odds are all in their favor, that in a victim disarmament zone like Washington, they won't be facing a legally-armed citizen the next time they want to rob and kill. It is an outrage that city officials so callously defend this gun ban, while the body count of innocent victims continues to pile up.
"How sad and pitiful it is," Gottlieb concluded, [b]"that the New York Times has a record of supporting every deplorable, restrictive, anti-self defense gun law that ever came along; laws that disarm good people while doing nothing to stop the bad ones. These are the kinds of laws that have created risk-free working conditions for murderous predators in the District of Columbia, and ultimately, it is decent, honorable people like David Rosenbaum who so often pay the price for such despicable public policy."[/b]
With more than 650,000 members and supporters nationwide, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms -- [url]http://www.ccrkba.org[/url] -- is one of the nation's premier gun rights organizations. As a non-profit organization, the Citizens Committee is dedicated to preserving firearms freedoms through active lobbying of elected officials and facilitating grass-roots organization of gun rights activists in local communities throughout the United States.
[url]http://www.usnewswire.com/[/url]
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