JustOneMinute

Obama In The News, But Not

The NY Times front pages (above the fold!) a story that can be easily read as an Obama-basher or, for those so inclined, an Obama-booster, yet the blogosphere has scarcely registered a response, if Memeorandum and Technorati can be my guides.  Weird.

Let me race through the Barack-bashing version of his spiritual development - he was raised by non-practicing Methodist/Baptist grandparents, a non-practicing Muslim father, and a cultural anthropologist mother who exposed the kids to a number of religions for the "the inspirational power of the common narratives and heroes."

However, as a community organizer in Chicago, Obama was inspired by a racist, inflammatory minister who preaches "black liberation theology" and warns his congregation "against 'middleclassness', its term for selfish individualism".  By the way, in context seems to mean white middleclassedness.

About this inspirational minister,  Mr. Wright - in 1984 he traveled "to Libya to visit Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, along with the Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. Mr. Wright said his visits implied no endorsement of their views."

And Obama, who met Mr. Wright in the late 80's, took his message to heart:

Services at Trinity were a weekly master class in how to move an audience. When Mr. Obama arrived at Harvard Law School later that year, where he fortified himself with recordings of Mr. Wright’s sermons, he was delivering stirring speeches as a student leader in the classic oratorical style of the black church.

Whoa - if this were written about a Republican, the secular libs would be rending their garments or laughing out loud.

Whatever.  Here is the careful separation of church and state:

As a presidential candidate, Mr. Obama is reaching out to both liberal skeptics and committed Christians. In many speeches or discussions, he never mentions religion. When Mr. Obama, a former constitutional law professor, does speak of faith, he tends to add a footnote about keeping church and state separate.

But he also talks of building a consensus among secular liberal and conservative Christian voters. Mr. Wallis, the antipoverty advocate who calls himself a “progressive evangelical,” first met Mr. Obama 10 years ago when both participated in traveling seminars on American civic life. On bus rides, Mr. Wallis and Mr. Obama would huddle, away from company like George Stephanopoulos and Ralph Reed, to plot building a coalition of progressive and religious voters.

“The problems of poverty and racism, the uninsured and the unemployed, are not simply technical problems in search of the perfect 10 point plan,” Mr. Obama says in one of his standard campaign lines. “They are rooted in both societal indifference and individual callousness — in the imperfections of man.”

Ahh!  If a Democratic politician has a view on abortion informed by his religion, that is out of bounds.  But if his view on tax policy, welfare, health care, social services, or the environment is shaped by his religious values, its all good. I sort of see why lefties are ducking this article.

In any case, the Times advises us that the minister is prepared to be tossed under the bus:

Few of those at Mr. Wright’s tribute in March knew of the pressures that Mr. Obama’s presidential run was placing on the relationship between the pastor and his star congregant. Mr. Wright’s assertions of widespread white racism and his scorching remarks about American government have drawn criticism, and prompted the senator to cancel [Mr, Wright's] delivery of the invocation when he formally announced his candidacy in February.

...

Mr. Wright, who has long prided himself on criticizing the establishment, said he knew that he may not play well in Mr. Obama’s audition for the ultimate establishment job.

“If Barack gets past the primary, he might have to publicly distance himself from me,” Mr. Wright said with a shrug. “I said it to Barack personally, and he said yeah, that might have to happen.”

How will Barack distance himself from his minister of twenty years?  What should we expect, a Minister Souljah moment?  Mr. Wright, you're wrong?

Quite a Times story, although no one seems to think so.

MORE:  Some background on Obama's church and "middleclassedness" in this Freeper post.

Torture Works (Sometimes...)

Dean Barnett, writing at Hugh Hewitt's fine site, is fascinating on abortion, torture, and John McCain.  Let me pluck this:

And then there’s the persistent intellectual incoherence of the anti-torture voices. They can’t decide whether they’re against torture because it doesn’t work or whether they oppose it solely on moral grounds. This confusion belies their own sense of their argument’s weaknesses. If you add up the consensus of informed opinions, torture sometimes gets you some really useful and actionable information, and sometimes gets you utter rubbish. Torture opponents know this, which is why they cherry-pick experts who argue that torture never works. Because if a consensus formed that torture produced any good information, and the media acknowledged that consensus, torture opponents know their position would become politically untenable.

Let me toss in this link to Captain Ed and the Times as yet another data point in the efficacy of torture.

Now, on the question of John McCain - I was asked recently why conservatives don't like McCain and I belly-floppped badly.  I offered the caveat that I think he is a great American but maybe would not be such a great President, noted the ghastly McCain-Feingold bill, andthen stalled.  I am certain I have forgotten at least two things - his role in the torture debate in the Senate may or may not be one, and the other eludes me totally. 

I welcome some reminders here.  And McCain's fans should feel free to talk him up - I have a well-respected brother-in-law who thinks McCain walks on water (a helpful knack for a Navy guy), so there you go.

Tenet On Plame - Weak, Unsurprising, Inconclusive

Former Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet might be expected to have one or two new and exciting insights on the Valerie Plame affair in his new book.  He does not.  Tenet discusses the Plame debacle in connection with the Sixteen Word scuffle in July 2003 and manages to duck the interesting questions while hewing to the story line presented by the bipartisan 2004 SSCII report on pre-war intelligence.

Tenet tells us that the Niger trip was initiated at a low level within the CIA in response to queries from State, Defense and the OVP about a DIA report on Iraq and uranium.   The trip was not at the behest of the Vice President, and yes, Tenet uses Kristof's fateful word.

So - who suggested Joe Wilson for the Niger trip?  Tenet boldly assures us that "someone" did - Wilson had done previous work for the CIA and was easy to contact since his wife worked for the CIA. 

"Someone"? That's it? That stifles anyone arguing that Joe had been nominated by a burning bush, but leaves the rest of us dangling.  Per the SSCI, Wilson had been nominated by his wife for his previous CIA sojourn to Niger, but Tenet is moving on.
 

OK, then - was Cheney or the OVP briefed on the Wilson trip after Joe reported back?  Tenet assures us that Wilson's report was so inconclusive that it did not cause a ripple.  Tenet himself was not briefed on it; Cheney was off on a ten day overseas trip and by the time he got back his daily CIA briefer (per Tenet) would have been discussing other items of greater import.

Well, fine, but what about the rest of the OVP - was Libby briefed, or anyone else?  Are these questions too difficult for the former head of the CIA, or does he just not want to let us know?

Let's try another - why wasn't Novak quashed when he ran the Plame leak past CIA press guy Bill Harlow (who helped write Tenet's book)?  Apparently Tenet was caught up in the Sixteen Words imbroglio and Harlow did not call the Novak situation to his attention.  OK, Harlow blew it - I have no problem with that.  However, I continue to have a have a hard time believing Harlow would have blown it if Ms. Plame's classified status had been a big deal within the CIA. 

Tenet does allude to this in mentioning the criminal referral to the DOJ which followed the Novak column - he notes that it is not up to others to decide who amongst the CIA is properly classified. Hmm - hardly a table-pounding denunciation of the leakers.

All that said, there were some useful tidbits - Tenet does claim that Bill Harlow was a source for the June 12 Pincus article, and that Harlow delivered the "low level, inconclusive trip" story to Pincus.  Consequently, one does get a certain sense that Tenet was thinking to himself "Who is this Wilson guy and why is he saying these things?" when he read Wilson's NY Times op-ed and caught him with Andrea Mitchell on Meet The Press on July 6.

Perhaps others will find more in Tenet's book, but I came up empty on my first rush through the section nearest my heart.  And speaking of hearts, don't let yours stop just because "Valerie Plame" is not in the index - take a breath and check again under "Wilson".  Worked  for me.

Choking On The Coffee

The Times ruins their reader's delightful Sunday morning in April with news from Anbar Province in Iraq:

Uneasy Alliance Is Taming One Insurgent Bastion

By KIRK SEMPLE

RAMADI, Iraq — Anbar Province, long the lawless heartland of the tenacious Sunni Arab resistance, is undergoing a surprising transformation. Violence is ebbing in many areas, shops and schools are reopening, police forces are growing and the insurgency appears to be in retreat.

“Many people are challenging the insurgents,” said the governor of Anbar, Maamoon S. Rahid, though he quickly added, “We know we haven’t eliminated the threat 100 percent.”

Many Sunni tribal leaders, once openly hostile to the American presence, have formed a united front with American and Iraqi government forces against Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. With the tribal leaders’ encouragement, thousands of local residents have joined the police force. About 10,000 police officers are now in Anbar, up from several thousand a year ago. During the same period, the police force here in Ramadi, the provincial capital, has grown from fewer than 200 to about 4,500, American military officials say.

At the same time, American and Iraqi forces have been conducting sweeps of insurgent strongholds, particularly in and around Ramadi, leaving behind a network of police stations and military garrisons, a strategy that is also being used in Baghdad, Iraq’s capital, as part of its new security plan.

Yet for all the indications of a heartening turnaround in Anbar, the situation, as it appeared during more than a week spent with American troops in Ramadi and Falluja in early April, is at best uneasy and fragile.

Municipal services remain a wreck; local governments, while reviving, are still barely functioning; and years of fighting have damaged much of Ramadi.

The insurgency in Anbar — a mix of Islamic militants, former Baathists and recalcitrant tribesmen — still thrives among the province’s overwhelmingly Sunni population, killing American and Iraqi security forces and civilians alike. [This was underscored by three suicide car-bomb attacks in Ramadi on Monday and Tuesday, in which at least 15 people were killed and 47 were wounded, American officials said. Eight American service members — five marines and three soldiers — were killed in two attacks on Thursday and Friday in Anbar, the American military said.]

Furthermore, some American officials readily acknowledge that they have entered an uncertain marriage of convenience with the tribes, some of whom were themselves involved in the insurgency, to one extent or another. American officials are also negotiating with elements of the 1920 Revolution Brigades, a leading insurgent group in Anbar, to join their fight against Al Qaeda.

These sudden changes have raised questions about the ultimate loyalties of the United States’ new allies. “One day they’re laying I.E.D.’s, the next they’re police collecting a pay check,” said Lt. Thomas R. Mackesy, an adviser to an Iraqi Army unit in Juwayba, east of Ramadi, referring to improvised explosive devices.

And it remains unclear whether any of the gains in Anbar will transfer to other troubled areas of Iraq — like Baghdad, Diyala Province, Mosul and Kirkuk, where violence rages and the ethnic and sectarian landscape is far more complicated.

Still, the progress has inspired an optimism in the American command that, among some officials, borders on giddiness. It comes after years of fruitless efforts to drive a wedge between moderate resistance fighters and those, like Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, who seem beyond compromise...

The Democrats own defeat in Iraq, and are simply maneuvering politically with hopes of forcing Bush to declare it before John Hillary Obama takes over.

And the Republicans own what?  Quagmire?  Hope?  Victory?

Both parties are making a twenty-year bet somewhat reminiscent of McGovern 1972, and at least one party is going to lose.

 

David Brooks On Republicans

David Brooks tries to diagnose the Republican malaise:

And at the presidential level, things are even worse. The party is blessed with a series of charismatic candidates who are not orthodox Republicans. But the pressures of the campaign are such that these candidates have had to repress anything that might make them interesting. Instead of offering something new, each of them has been going around pretending to be the second coming of George Allen — a bland, orthodox candidate who will not challenge any of the party’s customs or prejudices.

Mitt Romney created an interesting health care reform, but he’s suppressing that in an effort to pretend to be George Allen. Rudy Giuliani has an unusual profile that won him a majority of votes on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, of all places, but he’s suppressing that to be George Allen. John McCain has a record on taxes and spending that suggests he really could take on entitlements. But at least until last week, he suppressed that in order not to offend the George Allen vote.

And just in case any of these George Allen wannabes weren’t George Allen enough for voters, Fred Thompson may enter the race as the Authentic Conservative, even though deep in his heart he’s no more George Allen than the rest of them.

The big question is, Why are the Republicans so immobile?

There are several reasons. First, there are structural barriers to change. As it has aged, the conservative movement has grown a collection of special interest groups that restrict its mobility. Anybody who offers unorthodox tax policies gets whacked by the Club for Growth and Americans for Tax Reform. Anybody who offers unorthodox social policies gets whacked by James Dobson.

Second, there is the corrupting influence of teamism. Being a good conservative now means sticking together with other conservatives, not thinking new and adventurous thoughts. Those who stray from the reservation are accused of selling out to the mainstream media by the guardians of conservative correctness.

Third, there is the oppressive power of the past. Conservatives have allowed a simplistic view of Ronald Reagan to define the sacred parameters of thought. Reagan himself was flexible, unorthodox and creative. But conservatives have created a mythical, rigid Reagan, and any deviation from that is considered unholy.

Fourth, there is the bunker mentality. Republican morale has been brutalized by the Iraq war and the party’s decline. This state of emotional pain is not conducive to risk-taking and free and open debate.

In sum, Republicans know they need to change, but they have closed off all the avenues for change.

I will score this as "Interesting, but...".  First, some of this is true - I'll vouch for a personal malaise, and incidents like Giuliani back-pedaling on gay rights are consistent with Brooks' view.

On the other hand, how new is this?  Bush's claims to fame in 2000 were Reagan-style tax cuts, a Reaganesque defense, a Reaganesque chairman of the board leadership style, and a firm commitment to keep his jacket and pants on in the Oval Office while uniting, not dividing us.  Where was the vision then?

Or from a different perspective - would Brooks be writing this column if Bush and his "team" had not made a hash of post-liberation Iraq?  Maybe - we might still have had Katrina, the Social Security "reform", and Harriet Miers, just to move away from the debacles du jour and reprise the debacles of yesteryear.

I think a Republican failure of vision has been masked by a long term failure of vision, hearing, smell, and touch by the Democrats; however, Bush has given his party a big boost in the race to the bottom.

(Big) Apples Versus (Big) Oranges

Yesterday Paul Krugman was going on (yet again) about rising income inequality, and offered an interesting comparison that he surely knew was highly misleading:

Well, in at least one respect, everything old is new again. Income inequality — which began rising at the same time that modern conservatism began gaining political power — is now fully back to Gilded Age levels.

Consider a head-to-head comparison. We know what John D. Rockefeller, the richest man in Gilded Age America, made in 1894, because in 1895 he had to pay income taxes. (The next year, the Supreme Court declared the income tax unconstitutional.) His return declared an income of $1.25 million, almost 7,000 times the average per capita income in the United States at the time.

But that makes him a mere piker by modern standards. Last year, according to Institutional Investor’s Alpha magazine, James Simons, a hedge fund manager, took home $1.7 billion, more than 38,000 times the average income. Two other hedge fund managers also made more than $1 billion, and the top 25 combined made $14 billion.

I do not dispute that contemporary hedge fund managers are highly compensated.  However, this is hardly a head-to-head comparison with old JD.

Rockefeller's income included dividends on his Standard Oil Trust holdings, but did *not* include any adjustment for increases in the book value or market value of his shares.

By contrast, the fees earned by a hedge fund increase the book value of the partner's position.  However, as Krugman eventually notes, those book value adjustment are not realized cash income and not actually subject to taxation.

So folks casting about for a comparison might consider the case of Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, or any of a number of software billionaires.  Had Krugman chosen to write this column in 2000, he could have told us that Bill Gates, with a net worth of $50 billion, had achieved annual income (primarily from unrealized gains on his Microsoft holding) which had *averaged* over three billion dollars a year from 1985 to 2000.

That makes the top hedge fund jockeys earning a mere billion and change look like wannabes.  Just as with the hedge fund managers Bill Gates income was mostly deferred; the notable difference is that with the hedge funds, folks actually track the book value of the partner's equity and go "oooh" and "aaah" at the totals.  By contrast, with Bill Gates we track his total market value and swoon (although not so much the last seven years.)

I would not expect an economist like Paul Krugman to be fooled by mere accounting conventions.  On the other hand, he could not have written a plausible Bush-basher about rising inequality in the last year of the Clinton regime.

Whatever.  Krugman certainly was writing about income inequality in the 90's, my deplorable cheapshot notwithstanding.  However his current effort includes a bit of backsliding
- was it only last year that Krugman finally and belatedly acknowledged a link between US immigration policies and US income inequality?  The poor will always be with is, especially if we always welcome more in!  But that reality is not part of the current column.

MORE:  And do I have some income inequality thoughts?  Indeed I do.

1.  Krugman obsesses about the wealth at the top .01% of the income distribution - I suspect that is because he is a highly successful academic living in Princeton, NJ surrounded by highly successful Wall Streeters and hedge fund heroes whose lawn care bills rival his compensation.  The intellectual history of income inequality would be written differently if Krugman would simply move to Dartmouth.

2.  For those of us not obsessed by the top .01 %, income mobility for the folks at the bottom is an important issue - if life is a lottery but everyone can play, the "fairness" issue is different from a world where the poor beget poor beget poor.  Access to quality education and health care would be important foundation stones for improved income mobility.  Unfortunately, although the Dems talk about health care they will never reform public education.

Restricting immigration to the US would reduce global income mobility but would probably improve mobility in this country.  Of course, that is another road the Dems won't walk - hmm, maybe Krugman's obsession with the top of the distribution fits his policy preferences as well as his personal lifestyle choices.

3.  Beware the polemic-to-policy mismatch!  After ranting about hedge fund billionaires, Krugman talks up such stand-bys as the estate tax.  Please - that is currently aimed at estates over $2 million dollars.  Don't rail about mega-wealthy billionaires and tell me the solution is to tax everyone with an estate over $2 million dollars.  And please don't tell me about guys (and gals?) earning a billion dollars (tax deferred) and then tell me the solution is to revive Clinton's "millionaire's tax" on anyone earning more than $200,000 dollars.

If billionaires bother you, figure out a way to tax them.  Good luck.

Welcome Back, Joe

Glenn Greenwald welcomes Joe Lieberman back into the Democratic Party:

...First was the amazing letter to The Washington Post jointly sent by all 50 Democratic Senators other than Harry Reid -- written in response to, and in emphatic rejection of, David Broder's self-caricaturizing attack on Reid this week

For those keeping score amongst the truly reality-based, the letter is signed by the other 50 members of the Senate Democratic Caucus, which includes Independent Democrat Joe Lieberman.

Greenwald's uniquely informed perspective is on regular offer at Salon.

April Is The Cruelest Month

A-Rod comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb.  Just wanted to say that now so I can have dibs on it in October (if the Yanks are still playing then - crikey.  We can't go without Mo.)

Tenet's New Book

A system crash has just wiped out roughly an hour's worth of noodling around, but let me push my luck and try to blurt this out about Tenet's new book (written with former CIA pressguy Bill Harlow) - neither the Times nor WaPo review make any mention of Valerie Plame, outed CIA agent.  Geez - 500 pages from the center of the storm and no mention at all?  Guess I'll have to buy the book.

Sorry, I am not even going to try to put in Times or WaPo links just yet.  Ridiculous? Yes.  But I am waiting for my blood pressure to get back in under 250.

PUSHING MY LUCK...

Tenet whacks Condi, but former CIAer Michael Scheur hangs up the No-Sale.  Tenet first, from the Times:

Although Mr. Tenet acknowledges that the C.I.A. failed to predict the specifics of the 9/11 attack, he cites repeated warnings it issued, over the years, about the dangers posed by Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda. Most notably, he describes the alarming intelligence he presented to National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice at a July 10, 2001, meeting — including information from late June of that year that predicted a “big event” was coming. Mr. Tenet’s efforts to spin the C.I.A.’s own failure to watch-list two of the 9/11 hijackers when they first came across the agency’s radar screen two and a half years earlier feel particularly lame: had they been caught, he suggests that Al Qaeda would simply have replaced the two men with other recruits.

And over to Mr. Scheur in the Wapo:

Like self-serving earlier leaks seemingly from Tenet's circle to such reporters as Ron Suskind and Bob Woodward, "At the Center of the Storm" is similarly disingenuous about Tenet's record on al-Qaeda. In "State of Denial," Woodward paints a heroic portrait of the CIA chief warning national security adviser Condoleezza Rice of pending al-Qaeda strikes during the summer of 2001, only to have his warnings ignored. Tenet was indeed worried during the so-called summer of threat, but one wonders why he did not summon the political courage earlier to accuse Rice of negligence, most notably during his testimony under oath before the 9/11 commission.

"I was talking to the national security adviser and the president and the vice president every day," Tenet told the commission during a nationally televised hearing on March 24, 2004. "I certainly didn't get a sense that anybody was not paying attention to what I was doing and what I was briefing and what my concerns were and what we were trying to do." Now a "frustrated" Tenet writes that he held an urgent meeting with Rice on July 10, 2001, to try to get "the full attention of the administration" and "finally get us on track." He can't have it both ways.

Tenet's new version was run out in what looks like this 2006 Woodward excerpt and I managed to come down firmly on both sides - I think Tenet misoverestimated the significance of the fateful Juyly 10 2001 meeting, but I also have deep reservations about Ms. Rice's job performance.

Open Thread Friday

Apologies for the rare postings - I have been fighting a mostly-losing battle with my home network and dealing with, well, reality-related stuff, so I have scarcely looked at the news.

I cling to a secret hope of being back, well-informed, and maybe even interesting.  But probably not today.

How Green Was My Candidate?

First it was Rudy Giuliani.  Now John McCain links energy independence to national security, and goes further by calling for a carbon emissions cap and trade scheme to address global warming.

Here is his speech and AP coverage.

Innumeracy At The Times Or Laziness At The Economist?

Via Glenn we are led to this posting at The Economist site:

Innumeracy, thy name is New York Times reporter

A dire article from the New York Times indicates that infant mortality is rising in the American south, particularly among blacks:

To the shock of Mississippi officials, who in 2004 had seen the infant mortality rate — defined as deaths by the age of 1 year per thousand live births — fall to 9.7, the rate jumped sharply in 2005, to 11.4. The national average in 2003, the last year for which data have been compiled, was 6.9. Smaller rises also occurred in 2005 in Alabama, North Carolina and Tennessee. Louisiana and South Carolina saw rises in 2004 and have not yet reported on 2005...

...65 more dead babies is 65 too many.  But it's a small enough number that one needs to consider things like measurement error--did Mississippi change its criteria for infant mortality?--and random variation before leaping to the conclusion, as the article does, that this is some fundamental sea change in operation.  Certainly, generalising the problem to "the south" on the basis of smaller increases in six other states, which are even more likely to be random variation, seems extreme.

And the author suggests other reason to disregard this story.

To which I say, please - there is innumeracy, and then there is laziness.  It is certainly true that other explanations *might* be in play, but that is hardly the same as demonstrating that they *are* in play.

For example, the author waves his hand (OK, keyboard) and invokes "random variation".  Fair enough - let's consider that.  The Times includes a graphic depicting infant mortality statistics in Mississippi from from 1985 to 2005.  Using eyeballs only, I would say that the current level for black infant deaths, 17 per 1000, has not been seen since the late 80's; the level has remained below (or at) 15 per thousand since about 1993.  If random variation explains the jump to 17, why has it not jumped to 17 (or 13?) at all in the the previous decade?  I have seen noisy time series, and this does not look like one.

But we aren't stopping with a simple eyeballometric estimate!  Here is some infant mortality info from the State of Mississippi website.  For 2004 we have 481 deaths, broken down as 153 white and 328 non-white.

Back Soon, But...

I have a magnum opus on nothing coming up soon (I bash some Times-bashers and dust off some stats), but here is an open thread in the meantime.

Open Thread Friday

Traveling.

Open Thread Thursday

Still a ramblin' man.  Sunday should mark my return.

Open Thread Wednesday

On the road, apparently unable to connect.

Open Thread Saturday

Still traveling.

Open Thread Tuesday

I will be traveling to a land with uncertain ISP connections.

Va Tech Killings

Just awful.

Hot Air is following this closely - this was exactly my experience as well:

Good lord. I’ve been peeking at this story for hours and until a few minutes ago there was one reported dead and the gunman was in custody. Now the death toll is 22 and the gunman is supposedly dead too.

The current headline is 32 dead, 28 wounded.

Here was the original AP lead:

One person dead; 2nd assailant may be at large; 7-8 others may be victims  —  BLACKSBURG, Va. - A shooting at a Virginia Tech dormitory on Monday left at least one person dead, a state government official with knowledge of the case told The Associated Press.

Scared Monkeys has developing coverage as well.

A Vestigal Backbone On Tim Russert

Tim Russert almost shows a spine and the cleaning lady shows her real sense of values during this exchange on Meet The Press.  The topic was, naturally, Don Imus - Russert had Gen. Zinni on to discuss Iraq and the transcript is fascinatingm but who cares?.  On to the unexpected display of backbone by Mr. Russert:

MR. RUSSERT:  I had, I had one black American say to me, you know, “He’s got to go off.” And I said, “I understand your view, you’ve laid it out very clearly.” And I said, “Do you listen to the program?” “Regularly.” He said, “I love when Bernard McGuirk puts that FedEx box on and mocks the cardinal.” And I said, “You do?  You think that’s funny?  Those are my people.”

MR. HARWOOD:  Amen.

MR. RUSSERT:  But it, but...

MS. IFILL:  You can’t, can’t account for everyone’s sense of humor.

You can't account for everyone's sense of humor, so if Russert is offended as a Catholic he should get over himself.

Whatever.  Russert knows better than to push this - given their long position of power in Europe, Catholics are considered to be a part of the dominant (male) power structure here in the US, rather than an aggrieved minority.  And we have even had an Irish-Catholic President, so its all good. 

Or Russert could have spoken up or declined to appear on the show, so maybe he was not all that bothered that the shock jock sometimes shocked him.  Or maybe he laughed it off, and maybe Media Matters laughed it off as well.

A friend of mine has insisted for years that anti-Catholicism is the last acceptable bigotry.  And is their power and not-awful recent history all that relevant?  Jews are not doing too badly in the United States, but we would still deplore anti-Semitism (unless it was on a college campus).

Oh, well - the chat moved on, and maybe I will too. 

BUT NOT YET!  Russert could have either defended Imus or denounced him in a more timely fashion, but his fence-sitting was embarrassing - having nailed down "Most Trusted Man in News", is Russert hoping to add "Most Gutless" to his resume?  What would Big Russ, mentioned so often on the Imus show, say about that?

On US Attorney Biskupic, Dems Still Have Bupkis

Adam Cohen of the NY Times resurrects the controversy begun by the Seventh Circuit reversal of the George Thompson corruption case.  His gist - did US Attorney Steven Biskupic bring a weak, politically motivated case in order to stay in the good graces of the Bushies?

Opponents of Gov. Jim Doyle of Wisconsin spent $4 million on ads last year trying to link the Democratic incumbent to a state employee who was sent to jail on corruption charges. The effort failed, and Mr. Doyle was re-elected — and now the state employee has been found to have been wrongly convicted. The entire affair is raising serious questions about why a United States attorney put an innocent woman in jail.

I posted on that last week but let me quickly summarize my main points and toss in a few new ones.

1. The corruption investigation into the Governor’s travel office was announced in Oct 2005 as a joint effort of the Feds, the Democratic State Attorney General, and the Democratic Dane County DA. Neither of them criticized the indictment or the conviction and had no criticism of Biskupic upon reversal. (The State AG, Lautenschlager, lost the Dem primary in Sept; a Rep won in November.)

2. The timeline makes no sense if this was a weak, politically motivated case - why go to trial in the spring of 2006 and risk repudiation and humiliation for Biskupic / vindication for the Governor just before the election?

Instead, Biskupic *got a conviction* in June 2006. When an attorney believes in his case enough to go to trial and then wins, that looks like evidence he had justifiable confidence in his case, yes?

3. Ms. Thompson refused to cooperate with the initial FBI investigation. It is juries, not prosecutors, that are meant to presume innocence.

4. In the sentencing memo [link to follow], Biskupic noted five instances of apparent perjury by Ms. Thompson (he argued that if the jury had believed Ms. Thompson rather than the witnesses contradicting her, she would have been acquitted.)

For example, five committee members testified that she said something like “We have to go with the Wisconsin company; the Virginia company won’t fly politically”. She denied saying that; Biskupic claimed it was evidence of a political calculation in her evaluation.  (The Appeals Court apparently believed it was evidence of her doing her job, which is certainly arguable.)

Patterico notes that Dems seem to be bending space/time - it *appears* that Biskupic was added to a hit list in October 2006, *after* he won what is now described as his implausible, weak, politically motivated case.  Hey, maybe the DoJ Bushmen are hyper-demanding - I can hear them now, muttering "Waddya mean you are only going to pull one rabbit out of that hat?"

Timesman Adam Cohen added nothing but subtracted a lot - on Biskupic, the Dems have bupkis.

ERRATA:Sorry for the no-links; points (1) and (2) are covered in the original post, and the sentencing memo documenting points (3) and (4) is on a different computer at a secure remote location.

And I notice that my previous post was inspired by a Times editorial; Mr. Cohen's effort appears on the left side of the op-ed page below the unsigned editorials. 

Maybe the Times could have a reporter look at this and get some facts?  Just ruminating out loud.

MUCH LATER: A May 2007 post includes language from the appeals court decision - apparently the law is hazy and the court felt both the prosecutor and defendant may have been sincere in believing in their guilt or innocense.

A May 2010 article tells us that the DoJ Office of Professional Responsibility cleared Biskupic:

After two years of review, the U.S. Department of Justice's internal affairs unit has cleared former U.S. Attorney Steven Biskupic of any ethical wrongs in the Georgia Thompson prosecution.

Thompson was a Wisconsin state bureaucrat convicted of improperly steering state travel contracts to a firm with connections to Democrats. A federal appeals court later overturned the conviction and ordered Thompson freed from prison immediately.

Democrats questioned whether Biskupic, a George W. Bush appointee, brought the case for partisan reasons at a time when other U.S. attorneys were losing their jobs.

The Office of Professional Responsibility "found no evidence that Mr. Biskupic was ever told his job was in jeopardy and no evidence that department personnel involved in the decision to remove certain United States Attorneys knew anything about the Thompson investigation," Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich wrote to members of the House Judiciary Committee, which had requested the internal review in 2008.

"OPR also found that Mr. Biskupic took special measures to ensure that politics did not play a role in the case by enlisting the support and assistance of state officials who were Democrats, including using state investigative resources," the letter states.

"Accordingly, OPR concluded that Mr. Biskupic did not breach any professional obligation in this matter, but rather, acted appropriately under the circumstances."

 

 

Sullivan Award Winner

George Vecsey of TimesSelect has a moving column about the first Paralympian to win the Sullivan Award as America's top amateur athlete:

Sullivan Voters Know a Star When They See One

By GEORGE VECSEY   

Jackie Joyner-Kersee. Eric Heiden. Mark Spitz. Sarah Hughes. Bonnie Blair.

These are some of the names on the Sullivan Award, given for the past 76 years to the best American athlete in the traditionally amateur sports.

A new name is now going on that trophy, that of a young woman born in Russia, without bones in her lower legs, a double amputee at 18 months.

Jessica Long of Dundalk, Md., is the first Paralympic athlete to win the Sullivan Award, given by the Amateur Athletic Union rather quietly last Wednesday night in New York.

Hour by hour, the import of this election strikes home. The voters considered a 15-year-old athlete with no lower legs to have had the best year of any American, including Michael Phelps, the swimmer; and Brady Quinn, the Notre Dame quarterback.

Comparing these national celebrities with a disabled swimmer might seem like an exercise in apples and bananas, but the Sullivan voters recognized a star jock when they encountered her.

Some family background:

Jessica’s parents recognized the heart of a champion before she turned 2. Her journey to the Sullivan Award began with the dreams of a young couple, Steve and Beth Long, whose family seemed to have stopped growing after only two children. They went to a meeting to learn about adoption, and heard about a girl in Irkutsk, Russia, who was born without fibulas and was put up for adoption by her young mother.

“We had to do a lot of soul-searching,” Steve Long said the other day, adding that their Christian faith sent them to the orphanage on the other side of the world. They came home from Irkutsk with two children, Jessica, now 15; and Joshua, now 14. Joshua needed surgery for a cleft palate but Jessica needed much more. After a few months back in the United States, the parents realized her legs would have to be removed below the knees.

“After her amputations, we were told she would need therapy to learn how to walk,” Steve Long said, referring to the training to use prosthetic limbs.

“But she just got up and starting walking,” he added. “We never made that call. She played basketball, she used the trampoline, she loved gymnastics, but they put a lot of stress on her legs. She started swimming around 10.”

Other than their complicity in the coarsening of America's culture (see below) the Long family sounds utterly admirable.

USA Today has a picture of Ms. Long at a competition, and it is a bit of a jolt if for some reason you thought that a swimmer who is a double amputee below the knees swam with prosthetic legs.

The AAU Sullivan site has coverage of Ms. Long receiving her award.

 

Well Then, I Apologize Too

Sen. Obama explains that we are all to blame for Don Imus, rap music, Grand Theft Auto, and a general coarsening of the culture.

"I think that all of us have become a little complicit in this kind of relaxed attitude toward some pretty offensive things," Obama said. "And I hope this prompts some self-reflection on the part of all of us."

Good point!  I will henceforth desist in referring to women as bitches and never again will I refer to Condoleeza Rice, or anyone else, as a 'nappy headed ho'.

I do hope that Tipper Gore apologizes and accepts her share of responsibility as well.  We have all become complicit!

Well.  Since we are all responsible, none of us are.  If, I say *IF* Sen. Obama wants to lead on this issue, he could start by pointing a finger at some real targets.  Some hard targets; waiting five days and then denouncing Imus does not merit a Profile in Courage.

Just to help him get started, I wonder whether his new friend David Geffen has any clout in the record industry; I further wonder whether Sen. Obama wants to exhort him to help clean up Hollywood.

As if.

MORE:  To Be Fair, the Senator is probably courting the Ineffectual Hand-Wringing Lib, not me, so this may be a useful tack politically.

Plame On! Email Conspiracies

The falcon cannot hear the falconer and conspiracists are in the saddle as we learn even more about the White House and its daffy email "system".  Let's cut to Marcy Wheeler of Plame fame

I'd like to talk about what recent revelations on email deletions suggest about Karl Rove. I think that--at least with respect to the Plame investigation, the scandal is at least partly about what Rove saved, not what he deleted. I'll show you what I mean by laying out my foundation--all based on the assumption that both the CREW revelations and the Waxman revelations are true (with all responsible caveats about RNC lawyers being liars by their very nature, though if this guy was the same guy who attended the Plame hearing, he doesn't look too tricky).

After arguing plausibly that the missing Rove-Hadley email was missing from both the White House and RNC servers, we are offered this:

Which means this email must be among the 5 million emails destroyed. That tells us two things. First, as CREW described,

The OA undertook a detailed analysis of the issue, which revealed that between March 2003 and October 2005, there were hundreds of days in which emails were missing for one or more of the EOP components subject to the PRA. The OA estimated that roughly over five million email messages were missing.

If I were CREW, I'd be FOIAing that report. But the report seems to outline how the deletions took place: someone deleted entire days for entire departments. Something like:

Command: Delete ALL OPA July 6 to July 14, inclusive
Command: Delete ALL OVP July 6 to July 14, inclusive

That is, the CREW sources seem to suggest that if something is missing, then an entire day of emails would be missing. (Which is why it might have been important that Adam Levine's email, about with Zeidenberg interviewed him in October 2005, was sent on the same day as the Rove-Hadley email.)

If I'm right (though I'd caution that the OA report language is ambiguous), it means someone went in and deleted--at a minimum--all of Rove's emails from July 11, 2003, the day he leaked to Cooper and--potentially--a number of other people.

Go long tinfoil.

Does anyone seriously believe that the only, or even most likely, explanation is that someone specifically deleted email on certain dates?  Call a special counsel!  Oh, wait, we had one - Fitzgerald looked at this for two years and couldn't indict anyone for tampering with evidence.  Is he even dumber than the Bushies?  Please.

Here is a simple alternative notion (and I am not a techie, so I will surely get a few buzzwords wrong).  My launching point is the CREW news that on "hundreds" of days in the roughly 1000 day period under review there were missing emails.

So - suppose the White House servers designated to handle the WH email have a storage capacity of 100 units.  In a typical day in 2001, 60 units are required; at the end of the day these emails are moved to a back-up medium, the daily servers regain 100 units of storage, and a new day dawns.

But something changes in 2003 (the report leaked to CREW covers March 2003 to Oct 2005).  Maybe people start attaching video files and pictures; maybe new technology is folded into the system, or whatever.  The result is that the daily email storage requirement moves up to, say, 85, and some days spikes over 100.

A well-designed system would have some sort of method of catching this overflow, obviously.  But it does not appear that we are talking about a well-designed system.  So maybe on "overflow days", all late emails are lost.  Or maybe late emails over-write the first emails of the day - who knows?  But the point is that because of insufficient storage, emails are lost on overflow days. 

A possible hint - per CREW, emails were lost on "hundreds" of days, with roughly 5 million lost in total.  The evidence that CREW is fulminating rather than evaluating is that they offer no obvious context for this five million figure - is that 1% of White House emails, 5%, 25%, 50%, or what?  If they know, they ought to tell us; if they don't know, they ought to find out.

*IF* it is 1% yet there are emails missing from "hundreds" of days, it is hard to believe that entire days were deleted - even if "hundreds" means "exactly 200", then 20% of all emails should be missing.  (OK, let me note a caveat here - CREW mentions multiple servers, so maybe one server of many might have an entire day deleted; that might represent only 20% of that day's emails, or 4% of the total.)

So how big a number is five million?  White House press spokesperson Ms. Perino was asked about that on Friday and she did not know:

Q    Dana, if I could follow.  We have mentioned before the group called Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.  They issued this report, and they are saying their analysis shows that between March 2003-October 2005, there were hundreds of days in which emails were missing -- this being in the White House system, not the RNC -- and that this equated -- it was estimated that roughly over 5 million email messages were missing.

MS. PERINO:  I don't know if that group actually has -- I don't know how they do an analysis on an internal White House system. But I did check it out, and we are in communication with the Office of Administration to see if there are days or partial days when there were emails that would have gone missing.  And in terms of -- "missing" is a word that -- maybe misplaced, or not necessarily lost forever.  I think there are backup tapes, there are different ways in order to go back and find emails.

And in talking with them and with the Counsel's Office, there is no indication that anyone who is working on a server or in terms of technical capability that would be able to look at a server, clean up a server, or, in terms of when we converted from Lotus Notes to Microsoft Outlook if there would have been any potential loss there, that there was any intentional loss of any document.  I think that those folks take those jobs very seriously and endeavor to make sure that all of the records are preserved for the Presidential Records Act, as well as the Federal Records Act.

Q    So, just to be clear, are you taking issue with their conclusions, or are you just saying --

MS. PERINO:  I'm not taking issue with their conclusions at this point. We're checking into them.  And, again, there's 1,700 people in the Executive Office of the President.  I don't know how -- we'll try to find out how many emails a day are sent with that many people. I can assure you it's a high number. But I also will tell you that the technical folks that we've spoken to in the preliminary discussions was that if there had been an inadvertent human error or a technical problem where there were days where emails might have been misplaced, that either, one -- well, one, it wouldn't have been intentional; and, two, there are ways that we can try to gather those if need be.

Well.  This seem like a easy questions but I can't answer them - how many emails "ought" to be generated and saved each day in an organization of 1,700 people?  And over 1000 days, how would that figure compare to five million lost emails?

Lots of firms are required to save emails so I am hoping begging for sensible guesses from knowledgeable people.

Meanwhile, conspiracists are ascendant on the left.  (The sun rose in the east.)

Kind Words Indeed

Mark Kleiman, with whom I have jousted for years, has some kind words, sort of:

Maguire is a kind of litmus test. If there's anything plausible, or even nearly plausible, to be said in defense of Republicans, Maguire will say it. But when the situation is completely, utterly, obviously hopeless, he'll admit it. In the stopped-clock crowd he runs with, that makes him a beacon of intellectual honesty. Other Red bloggers, please copy.

Oh, man, this is where we are.  And I blame Bush.  I will surely mount some scathing yet witty comeback some day (does Jan 20, 2009 work for you?) but it is hard to type through the tears.  Of laughter, let me add.

Plame On! Part 1

Some Plame quick hits:

Go, Fred:  From the Weekly Standard:

He believes that elements of the CIA were out to get Scooter Libby and his boss, Vice President Dick Cheney. Libby, though not the original leaker of the identity of CIA employee Valerie Plame, was convicted of lying and obstructing justice. "It makes me mad as the devil just to think about it," Thompson says. He had never met Libby when he volunteered to serve on the advisory board of the Scooter Libby Legal Defense Trust. Is Libby innocent? Thompson answers with one word. "Yes."

Do you think there will be negative political fallout from defending the convicted former chief of staff to an unpopular vice president?

"I have no idea. I have a hard time seeing it. If I'm wrong about the temperature of the American people on this, then I'm wrong about a lot of things about the American people. And we might as well find out."

Innocent of what?  Oh, well, sign me up!

Libby will go straight to the Appeal Court, says Matt Apuzzo of the AP:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby said Friday he no longer plans to ask for a new trial in the CIA leak case but still expects to appeal his conviction.

...

Requests for new trials are seldom granted. In documents filed in federal court Friday, Libby's lawyers said they will mount their arguments before an appeals court rather than asking for a new trial as they had planned.

I will score this as a non-surprise - Walton was unlikely to reverse himself.  Here is the 2 pager making roughly that point.

Part 2, which may appear shortly, will tackle the mail mystery and mock the usual suspects.

A Bit More On Duke Lacrosse (Show Me The Money)

Some quick hits on Duke LAX:

1.  Glenn links to a long piece by Joseph Neff of the Durham News & Observer detailing Nifong's behavior in the Duke debacle.  I think the most interesting news is this:

Brown [who became Nifong's campaign manager] agreed to meet him for lunch Jan. 2, 2006, at the downtown Marriott near the courthouse. Nifong showed up with his wife, Cy Gurney. As the women ate Caesar salads and Nifong tended to a steak sandwich, Gurney did most of the talking. Brown was struck by the first words out of Nifong's mouth.

"He said, 'I really don't want this job; I was the last one on the list. I just need three years and seven months for retirement. You won't have to worry about running another campaign for me.' "

Brown was taken aback: Did Nifong, then 55, really want to go through the hassle of a campaign? "He said, 'I know nothing about politics. That's why I need you to be campaign manager.' "

Four more years would make a big difference for Nifong's retirement. If he served five years as a district attorney, his 29 years as a regular state employee would apply to the more lucrative retirement plan for a district attorney; overnight, in April 2010, his annual pension would increase by at least $15,000 a year.

In addition to any sense of personal pride, that pension pop gave Nifong a notable financial incentive to win the primary and the election.  (Geek alert - based on this page, an insurance annuity providing $1,250 per month - $15,000 per year - would a 55 year old North Carolina man something more than $200,000.  I don't care to research what the survivor benefits might be for a NC state pension, nor do I know his wife's age, his tax status, or a lot of other things - that said, the minimum value of $200,000 strikes me as significant.)

And the dish from Nifong's campaign manager is classic - in this self-serving version, Nifong decided all by himself to railroad the Duke team, with no counsel at all from the manager.  And it may be true!

2.  KC Johnson is in North Carolina watching dirt get shoveled onto Nifong.  My suggestion to righties - the villain in this piece is Nifong; the accuser may very well be mentally, ahh, troubled - in declaring the Duke Three "innocent", the DA also discussed the accuser:

Mr. Cooper said he had considered but ultimately rejected the possibility of bringing criminal charges against the accuser, who continues to insist she was attacked at a team party on March 13, 2006, and asked him to go forward with the case. Mr. Cooper said his investigators had told him that the woman “may actually believe the many different stories that she has been telling.” He said his decision not to charge her with making false accusations was also based on a review of sealed court files, which include records of the woman’s mental health history.

If Nifong was exploiting a mentally precarious woman for his own political and financial gain, more shame on him.  But this sort of NY Post headline - "Let The Liar be Named And Shamed" (by J Pod, darn it) points in the wrong direction, I think - all the links have failed just now.  Naturally, that puts me on the same side as Susan Estrich; I picked a glorious day to switch to decaf.

No worries.  She and I are right and J Pod might be wrong - point fingers at Nifong.

3.  If some day an unscrupulous prosecutor tries to railroad Terry Moran's kids, I hope that I will feel sorry for them, and that I will not hold against them their father's wealth and influence equal justice ought to mean equal.  J Pod has more on this particular ass-clownery, so I am a big fan again.

4.  You can't get stupider than this "You will not shame me" (because she shames herself) post by  Samhita at Feministing - folks with the patience will enjoy the reader rebellion in the comments.  And no, I am not "Tom" in that thread, but I'm happy to have anyone think so.  Maybe it is the "Other Tom"?  We post as multitudes.

Jeff Goldstein takes a pitchfork to the steaming pile of... well he rebuts as much as he can tolerate.  And finds a rational response elsewhere.

There is an interesting issue in play here.  On the one hand, feminist groups want to be advocates for women who have been raped, and their goals include encouraging women to come forward without fear of being pilloried in the press and disbelieved by the police.

On the other hand, not every rape accusation holds up, as in the current case.  So how does an advocate walk the line between supporting an alleged victim and preserving their own credibility?

I don't really think it is as difficult as the Feministing author makes it appear, but it is a problem.

PILING ON:  Jon Stewart is an assassin with Nancy Grace as the target.  Gosh I wish he was on our side.  OK, I wish he had more reason to be... Go, Nancy!

And a brilliant compilation of Duke LAX quotes at ESPN.

Matching Headline To Story

The WaPo puts the boot to "abstinence-only" education programs, sort of:

Study Casts Doubt on Abstinence-Only Programs

A long-awaited national study has concluded that abstinence-only sex education, a cornerstone of the Bush administration's social agenda, does not keep teenagers from having sex. Neither does it increase or decrease the likelihood that if they do have sex, they will use a condom.

Well - the headline and the lead co-exist with a bit of creative tension.  I had the idea that critics of "abstinence-only" worried that it led to worse outcomes among teens - less use of contraception, more STDs, more unplanned pregnancies, for example.  The idea that it might be as good as a full-disclosure program ought to be a pleasant surprise. [But see "A Flaw in My Ointment" in the UPDATE].

Folks who make it to the end will find that '"abstinence-only" may even have produced slightly superior results (emphasis mine):

The results came as a bit of surprise even to Christopher Trenholm, who supervised the project at Mathematica Policy Research Inc. An early analysis by his organization showed some attitude shifts toward delaying sex among students in the abstinence programs, but those differences disappeared as students got older. One thing they also learned, Trenholm said, was that kids receiving abstinence instruction did not use condoms less often than other kids, a possibility that critics occasionally raise. They also showed slightly better knowledge about the prevention of sexually transmitted disease.

Kids in both groups were knowledgeable about the risks of having sex without using a condom or other form of protection. Knowing that did not mean they put on a condom every time, however. Condom use was not high in either group; of those who had sex, almost half said they used condoms only "sometimes" or "never."

Based on condom use, it appears that knowledge is not power.

The critics are buried in the last paragraph and seem to be reading some other study or reciting their own faith-based initiative:

[Sarah Brown, executive director of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy] said Mathematica's results underscore what other, smaller studies have shown: "The most effective programs are those that say abstinence is the best choice but birth control and protection are also worth knowing about."

An official at the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States agreed.

"Comprehensive education means teaching about abstinence and a myriad of other topics," said spokeswoman Martha Kempner. Among them, she said: "contraception, critical thinking, one's own values and the values of your family and your religious community.

"Abstinence-only was an experiment and it failed."

I will put that study on my reading list.  Here is the press release which forms the basis of the WaPo story.

At this point, if the two approaches really do produce similar results, then one might expect federal funding to be provided for other reasons - for example, conservatives prefer "abstinence-only" for values reasons while liberals prefer annoying conservatives, or advertising their separation from religious values, or something.

MORE:  From the release:

“Some policymakers and health educators have criticized the Title V, Section 510 abstinence education programs, questioning whether the focus on abstinence puts teens at risk of having unprotected sex,” says Barbara Devaney, one of the study's principal investigators and vice president and director of Human Services Research at Mathematica. “The evaluation findings suggest that this is not the case. Participants in the abstinence education programs and nonparticipating youth had similar rates of unprotected sex at first intercourse and over the past 12 months.”

My suggested headline  "Study Creates Doubt Amongst "Abstinence-Only" Critics".  Well, if they had experienced doubt, it would have merited a headline.  I suspect they are only reality-based until reality overtakes their agenda.

UPDATE- A FLAW IN MY OINTMENT.  Upon reflection, I see that I leaped to the assumption that students not in the "abstinence-only" program were enrolled in a comprehensive sex-ed classs.  That was not uniformly the case - from the study (executive summary):

Two of the programs— (ReCapturing the Vision and FUPTP) —operated in communities with a rich set of health, family life, and sex education services available through the public schools, while the remaining two programs operated in schools with limited services as part of their existing school curricula.

How much difference does this make?  Good question, since we are talking about federal matching block grants here.  On the one hand, We the People are not, at the Federal level, funding programs that are demonstrably harmful - addressing that criticism seemed to be the point of the study.

On the other hand, are we the people getting the most bang for our buck?  This study certainly does not nail down the possibility that a well-funded comprehensive program might be better.  On the other hand, it may be that local opposition may prevent many communities from taking federal money for a comprehensive program, but they will take money for this. 

Let's cut to the ACLU, from 2005:

Yet there is currently no federal program dedicated to comprehensive sex education. Averting the dollars misspent on abstinence-only education to start-up a comprehensive sex-ed program would be the responsible choice.

They also wrote that "a growing body of evidence shows [that abstinence-only programs] are ineffective at best, and dangerous at worst."

OK - this study leans towards "ineffective".

The Boston Globe and the San Fran Chronicle have more on the debate.  Well, abstincene-only apparently took off under Clinton and the Republican Congress - let Nancy fix this, if the votes are there.  One might have thought that the glorious mosaic could include funding for both abstinence-only and comprehensive programs.  The ACLU cited the REAL Act as a bipartisan starting point.

MORE:  Or, I could read the comments to find out how little I know - let me acknowledge Foo Bar's gracious correction.

Hmm.  if I switch over to "think first, then blog", a new day will dawn.

Best Wishes To The Captain

Good luck to Captain Ed in his new venture:

On Monday, I start my new full-time position with Blog Talk Radio as Political Director and will provide full-time commentary through my blog and my new daily BTR show. The phrase "dream come true" is hackneyed, but in this case the cliché applies.

Imus out, the Captain in, and so it goes.

We hope he is sailing on something bigger than the SS Minnow.  But not the Titanic!

Smoking Gun Or Smoking Dope?

Phoenix Woman, yet another poster at fdl, delivers the laughs with her link to a Kos commenter on the latest Gonzalez document dump: 

Check this out, courtesy of a fellow over at DailyKos:

Smoking gun? ( 20+ / 0-)

This was not even redacted.  Batch 5 p 14.  2/12/07 From Monica:

This is the chart that the AG requested.

It shows detail for each fired USA and each proposed replacement.  Information Abu said UNDER OATH that he did not have, and was not involved with.

His testimony should be interesting…

Yeah, it should be.

I can't wait.   

No, she couldn't wait.  Don't spoil your fun by following the link just yet.  I have omitted her red-faced UPDATE, but I will immodestly say this - the problem with this email as a "smoking gun" should be painfully obvious to anyone who looks.  So match wits with the firedogs before clicking over.

Whateverl.  Gonzalez is still gonzo, but this email isn't the proof of it.

The Email Is In The Mail (And Other Classic Lies)

I have come to the end of the road - I can not begin to grasp the extent of this White House email debacle.  Well, it was fun when Al Gore had his problems with email, so now we can watch the other side enjoy themselves.

The Anon Lib has a good Karl Rove - Valerie Plame connection:

What's particularly preposterous about this explanation is that the White House's dual email system was almost surely the subject of intense discussion in early 2004, when emails were subpoenaed in connection with the CIA leak investigation. In fact, the seemingly inexplicable delay in turning over the most discussed piece of evidence in that case, Karl Rove's email to Stephen Hadley, makes a lot more sense now that we know Rove does 95% of his email on a separate RNC account. This would also explain Patrick Fitzgerald's apparent assertion that "many emails from Cheney's office at the time of the Plame leak in 2003 have been deleted contrary to White House policy."

Per Dan Froomkin, there is a 2004 tie-in:

Until 2004, all e-mail on RNC accounts was routinely deleted after 30 days. Since 2004, White House staffers using those accounts have been able to save their e-mail indefinitely -- but have also been able to delete whatever they felt like deleting. By comparison, the White House e-mail system preserves absolutely everything forever, in accordance with the Presidential Records Act.

The timing and motivation of the 2004 switch is not explained - the obvious non-Plame guess would be that in 2004 the re-election effort ramped up and folks realized there was a modest records preservation issue in play.  The obvious Plame guess (obviously) is that the inability to comply with the Fitzgerald document requests produced red faces and a flurry of memos.

Clown show.  Expletive deleted clown show.  Someone ought to ask Fitzgerald where his emails came from, not that he will say.

MORE:  I am not seeing any spine-stiffening reaction from the right at Memeorandum, but do feel free to leave a link to anything that might help talk me off the window ledge here.  (No hurry - the rain sort of suits my mood, and I am on the first floor).

GOOD POINT!  Fred Thompson wouldn't lose emails!  Neither would Rudy.  Hillary, OTOH, will lose anything not nailed down.  Hmm, I would feel even better if Bush had campaigned on a promise to maintain deceit and denial in the White House.  Bu we are looking forward!

Unsolved Mysteries - Was Valerie Plame "Covert"?

When last we looked, the question of whether Valerie Plame was covert as defined by the relevant statute was clearly and emphatically *NOT* answered by Henry Waxman's show hearing, the whooping of lefty bloggers notwithstanding.  Instead, I argued that her status was a subtle and untested legal question which had probably not been researched by the CIA Counsel, Patrick Fitzgerald, or anyone else.  Based on the latest from Bob Novak, I appear to be right:

On March 21, Hoekstra [Ranking Republican on the House Intel Committee] again requested the CIA to define Mrs. Wilson's status. A written reply April 5 from Christopher J. Walker, the CIA's director of congressional affairs, said only that "it is taking longer than expected" to reply because of "the considerable legal complexity required for this tasking."

The CIA Counsel does not have a firm opinion, as of March 2007, whether Ms. Plame had covert status under the IIPA?  That is deeply significant - if they don't know now, there is no reason to think they knew in July 2003 when they filed a referral to the DoJ (Conyers letter) for an investigation into an "unauthorized disclosure of classified information", *not* disclosure of a covert officer.

Nor is there any reason to think Patrick Fitzgerald knew, unless he did his own research and coyly kept it from the judge and the defense.

let's review - At his show hearing Waxman announced that he had been told that Ms. Plame was "covert", but subsequent testimony made it clear that the CIA considers its officers to be either covert or overt; put another way, the CIA does not rely on the legal definition of covert in deeming its officers to be either classified or overt.

On the legal question what Waxman conspicuously did not say was anything like "The CIA Counsel has reviewed Ms. Plame's confidential file as well as the Intelligence Identities Protection Act and concluded that she qualifies as "covert" under that statute."

The latest wrinkle is a long column from Bob Novak detailing some follow-up on this. Clarice Feldman has excerpts, but the gist is this - Gen. Hayden, head of the CIA, prowled the Gridiron dinner telling people including Bob Novak, Victoria Toensing, and Rep. Peter Hoekstra that he had *not* meant to say that Victoria Plame was covert - he claims he used the word "classified" in his meeting with Waxman.

So where did that word come from?  Here is Novak:

Hayden told me Tuesday that the talking points were edited by a CIA lawyer after conferring with Waxman's staff. "I am completely comfortable with that," the general assured me. He added he now sees no difference between "covert" and "undercover" -- an astounding statement, considering that the criminal statute refers only to "covert" employees.

Mark Mansfield, Hayden's public affairs officer, next e-mailed me: "At CIA, you are either a covert or an overt employee. Ms. Wilson was a covert employee." That also ignores the legal requirements of the Intelligence Identities Act.

Well, then - any CIA lawyer would agree that Waxman's use of "covert" was acceptable, since Waxman never included the claim that it related to the IIPA.  But let me repeat the punchline:

On March 21, Hoekstra again requested the CIA to define Mrs. Wilson's status. A written reply April 5 from Christopher J. Walker, the CIA's director of congressional affairs, said only that "it is taking longer than expected" to reply because of "the considerable legal complexity required for this tasking."

So the CIA Counsel still haven't figured out what her status might be, which is what I said a month ago.

I can save time by presenting the rebuttal of the left right now - Novak is a liar, move on.

As to whether he is really inventing these emails and Hayden's Gridiron chats, well, time may tell.  But Novak's story certainly overlaps nicely with what I have been saying all along.

And since I feel like a bit of a savant, let me reprise my interesting but non-conclusive suggestion: CIA pensions are adjusted upwards for service abroad.  Now, the definition of "service abroad" employed by the CIA may or may not be consistent with whatever the legal eagles determine to be the standard embedded in the IIPA, but - did Ms. Plame get a pension adjustment in her last five years for service abroad?  If not even the CIA thinks she qualified as having served abroad under their own guidelines, sustaining the argument that she qualifies under the IIPA will be harder (but not impossible). 

Conversely, the CIA may bump every one up just to be generous - who knows?  But it seems like an easy question which the CIA ought to be able to answer.

Meanwhile, we still don't know her status, or as we say, her "covertiness".  But we have confirmed that neither the CIA nor Waxman know her status either.  (The lefty bloggers *do* know her status, but that is a faith-based initiative.)

 

I Pound The (Breakfast) Table For Rudy!

This latest "gotcha" on Rudy is fun, but a joke:

Asked by a reporter in Alabama about the price of “basic staples,” Rudy Giuliani seriously low-balled: “A gallon of milk is probably about $1.50, a loaf of bread — about $1.25, $1.30.”

Had he checked stores down the street, he would’ve found a gallon of whole milk at about $3.39 and bread for about $2. And those prices pale to what grocers charge in Manhattan.

At least he nailed pump prices. “Gas, I think, is $2.89.”

OK, it just happens that I am in a supermarket buying milk, eggs, and bread once or twice a week (OK, partial disclosure - I am Mr. Breakfast; my wife, less of as morning person, is Ms. Dinner).  Had a reporter asked me what a loaf of bread or a gallon of milk costs I would have looked him in the eye, shown him my Shaw's frequent shopper discount card, and said "I have no idea".

And that would have been a lie!  Well, sort of - sometimes I make a desperation run to the local gas station and buy milk in their convenience section for $4.99.  But whether that is for a half gallon or a gallon, I can not recall.

And why can't I recall?  Because I don't comparison shop or price shop for milk - I pick up a gallon of our brand and toss it in the cart.  Same for eggs, same for bread (Arnold Country Classic White, since you ask, and I assume it is a few bucks a loaf.)

Thank heaven for efficient markets - my shopping strategy is to free-ride on the diligent efforts of other price and comparison shoppers.  Ignorance is bliss and saves time, too.

Gas, BTW, I would have pegged at $2.90 per gallon, only because I stand in shock and awe at the self-serve pump on a regular basis.  Why Rudy knew that I can't guess - please don't tell me that a man of his lofty status is pumping his own gas.

The Audacity Of Outrage

Barack Obama, erstwhile symbol of racial reconciliation, wants Don Imus to be fired and has "no intention of returning" as a guest on his show.

Evidently racial reconciliation is not an all-inclusive project - looks like Obama's big tent is not quite big enough for older white guys who raise millions for charities, raise money for medical care for our wounded troops, and sometimes say stupid things for which they have apologized.

Hillary Clinton, or as Don Imus calls her, "Satan", won't be appearing as a guest on Imus' show anytime soon either.  As if.

John Edwards has the right idea here:

"If you tolerate this kind of language in your presence, you are essentially sowing the seeds of intolerance," Edwards told reporters in Mamaroneck this morning. "And I think all of us have an obligation to speak out and condemn this kind of language when it's used, no matter who uses it."

Edwards, though, said "we need to see what happens," in response to questions about Imus being fired or whether he would ever appear on the program again. He noted that Imus intends to meet with the basketball team to express his apology.

America loves comebacks, forgiveness and redemption - let's see how long it takes for the pro-Imus backlash to set in.  I don't know if I am a leading indicator, but I am feeling it already, and I promise you this - Imus' audience is not grooving on his groveling to Sharpton and Jackson.

Meanwhile, since Mr. Obama seems intent on judging people by their worst qualities rather than their best, perhaps we should spend more time probing his cocaine use in school.  I'd rather not go there myself, but Mr. Audacity does not seem to hold out hope for all of us.

MORE:  Jason Whitlock, a sportswriter in Kansas City, thinks Imus is a distraction:

Imus isn’t the real bad guy
Instead of wasting time on irrelevant shock jock, black leaders need to be fighting a growing gangster culture.

Thank you, Don Imus. You’ve given us (black people) an excuse to avoid our real problem.

You’ve given Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson another opportunity to pretend that the old fight, which is now the safe and lucrative fight, is still the most important fight in our push for true economic and social equality.

...

I ain’t saying Jesse, Al and Vivian [Stringer, coach at Rutgers] are gold-diggas, but they don’t have the heart to mount a legitimate campaign against the real black-folk killas.

It is us. At this time, we are our own worst enemies. We have allowed our youths to buy into a culture (hip hop) that has been perverted, corrupted and overtaken by prison culture. The music, attitude and behavior expressed in this culture is anti-black, anti-education, demeaning, self-destructive, pro-drug dealing and violent.

Rather than confront this heinous enemy from within, we sit back and wait for someone like Imus to have a slip of the tongue and make the mistake of repeating the things we say about ourselves.

...

I don’t listen or watch Imus’ show regularly. Has he at any point glorified selling crack cocaine to black women? Has he celebrated black men shooting each other randomly? Has he suggested in any way that it’s cool to be a baby-daddy rather than a husband and a parent? Does he tell his listeners that they’re suckers for pursuing education and that they’re selling out their race if they do?

When Imus does any of that, call me and I’ll get upset. Until then, he is what he is — a washed-up shock jock who is very easy to ignore when you’re not looking to be made a victim.

No. We all know where the real battleground is. We know that the gangsta rappers and their followers in the athletic world have far bigger platforms to negatively define us than some old white man with a bad radio show. There’s no money and lots of danger in that battle, so Jesse and Al are going to sit it out.

H/t to H&R.

We Live In A Better World

Don Imus has been dropped by MSNBC, and Ana Marie Cox, who built her career on jokes about anal sex, promises she won't be a guest on Imus again.  It's all for the best.

I was listening to Imus this morning and near the end of the show he played the entire Billy Joel song "Miami 2017 - Seen The Lights Go Out On Broadway".  My take, based on my extraordinary insight into human nature and my decades of listening (intermittently) to Don Imus is that he is preparing to flip us all the bird and go to a 5,000 watt WGFU in New Mexico.

Here is the particular lyric that triggered that suspicion:

They turned our power down
And drove us underground
But we went right on with the show

We will see.  I bet he cuts a Sirius deal first.  But he won't be groveling much longer.

Well.  If he restarts the Reverend Billy Sol Hargis, (from Del Rio, Texas, the gold buckle of the Bible Belt) I'll try to figure out where to tune in.

I AM BEGGING FOR A SELF-AWARENESS MOMENT HERE: Ana Marie Cox has an article about Imus in TIME where she explains she won't be going back on his show:

But do I really want to give my tacit approval to someone whose greatest gift to public discourse could be fairly described as allowing pundits to get potty-mouthed?

Heaven forbid that the woman who rose to prominence on the strength of her anal intercourse jokes would do that.  I stand by this rant from Nov 2004 and this beatdown from the post-mortem of the Dan Rather debacle holds up well.

OK, so Al Sharpton and Ana Marie Cox have been heard from.  Once Howard Stern announces he won't be appearing on Imus, my day will be complete.

North Korean Funds Unfrozen

As part of the deal with the US on their nuclear program, North Korean funds at a bank in Macao have been unfrozen.

No word on whether "Cold Cash" Jefferson was finally making himself useful.

Radio And Televison Top Ten Political Moments

This ought to enliven the right type of dinner party - pick your Top political moments on TV, radio.

The author provides his starting point:

10. "The audacity of hope" (July 27, 2004): If Barack Obama's campaign crashes tomorrow, he would still go down as the politician who got the biggest boost from a convention speech - from Illinois state senator to presidential contender in 20 minutes.

9. "They 'slipped the surly bonds of Earth' to 'touch the face of God' " (Jan. 28, 1986): President Ronald Reagan, the Great Communicator, also proved to be the Great Comforter as he addressed the nation from the White House, hours after the Challenger space shuttle exploded shortly after liftoff.

On US Attorney Biskupic, The Democrats Have Bupkis

Attorney General Gonzalez has brought this upon himself and his party - with his ghastly handling of the Eight Men Out firings, he has created the environment in which Democrats can exploit every case with political overtones.

The latest "outrage" occurred in Wisconsin - let's have the NY Times editors set the stage with their simple and unresearched opinion:

As Congress investigates the politicization of the United States attorney offices by the Bush administration, it should review the extraordinary events the other day in a federal courtroom in Wisconsin. The case involved Georgia Thompson, a state employee sent to prison on the flimsiest of corruption charges just as her boss, a Democrat, was fighting off a Republican challenger. It just might shed some light on a question that lurks behind the firing of eight top federal prosecutors: what did the surviving attorneys do to escape the axe?

Ms. Thompson, a purchasing official in the state’s Department of Administration, was accused by the United States attorney in Milwaukee, Steven Biskupic, of awarding a travel contract to a company whose chief executive contributed to the campaign of Gov. Jim Doyle, a Democrat. Ms. Thompson said the decision was made on the merits, but she was convicted and sent to prison before she could appeal.

The prosecution was a boon to Mr. Doyle’s opponent. Republicans ran a barrage of attack ads that purported to tie Ms. Thompson’s “corruption” to Mr. Doyle. Ms. Thompson was sentenced shortly before the election, which Governor Doyle won.

The Chicago-based United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit seemed shocked by the injustice of her conviction. It took the extraordinary step of releasing Ms. Thompson from prison immediately after hearing arguments, without waiting to issue a ruling. One of the judges hinted that Ms. Thompson may have been railroaded. “It strikes me that your evidence is beyond thin,” Judge Diane Wood told the lawyer from Mr. Biskupic’s office.

So the basic theory seems to be that Mr. Biskupic brought an absurdly weak case to please his zealous, politicized overlords in Washington and ensure his own job security.  That theory was fine-tuned a bit in a subsequent AP story covering the request by Senate Judiciary Democrats for  more info:

The Senate Judiciary Committee asked Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to provide documents related to the prosecution of a former state worker in Wisconsin whose bid-rigging conviction was overturned last week by a federal appeals court.

Committee chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and five other Democratic senators said in a letter sent Tuesday that they were "concerned whether or not politics may have played a role" in the case against Georgia Thompson.

And why was Biskupic vulnerable and eager to please?  Apparently he was not tough on vote fraud:

The senators asked Tuesday for documents that would show whether Biskupic was considered for dismissal and replacement after Bush's re-election. Reports of voter fraud in the 2004 presidential election had prompted a federal investigation, but Biskupic reported in 2005 that the probe found no evidence of partisan efforts to sway the outcome. Democratic candidate John Kerry narrowly carried the state.

The senators also asked for communications between the Justice Department and the White House or outside parties regarding possible voter fraud in Wisconsin, the case against Thompson and Biskupic's handling of those cases. The committee said it wanted the documents by the end of the week.

So let's see - Biskupic was a stand-up guy who announced in late 2005 that he wouldn't be prosecuting vote fraud in his district.  Just as with New Mexico's US Attorney Iglesias, who drew fire from his home state Senator, Biskupic found himself under pressure from the two Wisconsin Senators, Democrats Kohl and Feingold... OK, maybe not.

But Biskupic knew he needed something!  So in Oct 2005 he announced that, in cooperation with the Democratic State Attorney General Lautenschlager and the Democratic Dane County District Attorney, he would cooperatively investigate allegations of corruption in the governor's travel office:

Federal, state and Dane County authorities have launched a joint investigation into a travel contract given to the company of a major contributor to Gov. Jim Doyle, officials said Thursday.

The investigation will be conducted by both the FBI and the state's Division of Criminal Investigation, which is supervised by Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager. Dane County District Attorney Brian Blanchard also will play a role in the process.

"By working together, we want to avoid any accusations of bias," said U.S. Attorney Steven M. Biskupic in Milwaukee.

They want to avoid any accusations of bias?  Ooops!

Well.  Ms. Thompson was indicted in January of 2006; a verdict was returned in June and she was sentenced in September.  The Times finesses this timeline by telling us that Ms. Thompson was "sent to prison on the flimsiest of corruption charges just as her boss, a Democrat, was fighting off a Republican challenger".  However, various Dem bloggers are a bit overexcited - here is The Carpetbagger (my emphasis):

We do know, however, that shortly before a close election, Biskupic brought extremely thin criminal charges against a top Doyle administration official who apparently did nothing wrong.

"Shortly"?  To a geologist, it was the blink of an eye, but in politics, January to November isn't "shortly".

The Brad Blog also staggers on this:

...see the letter from Leahy for more details on the heels of a surprise Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals decision that issued an order immediately overturning a case brought by Biskupic against Georgia Thompson, an aide to Wisconsin's Democratic governor, Jim Doyle. Just in time for the '06 election we might add. (It didn't help; Doyle won anyway.)

"Just in time"?  Inventory managers are swooning at this nine month "just in time" concept.

Well.  Dem theorists will want to explain why Biskupic, in cooperation with two Democrats, brought a laughably weak case in January, then risked repudiation and humiliation by going to trial in the late spring.  Surely if the case was this weak and motivated simply by politics, he would have announced the indictment in the fall and been shamed in court over the winter. 

But wait!  Biskupic won convictions on two counts!  Not only did he seem to believe in his case, but he managed to push it past a jury.

I will have more, but that is a start.  My Bold Prediction - Biskupic comes through this unscathed, or, as Yogi Berra might have said, there is no "there" here.

ERRATA:  Useful defense background here; coverage of the appeals court decision here.

A BIT MORE:  Two Dems to the defense:

Two Democratic prosecutors who were consulted during Biskupic's probe of the Doyle administration defended Biskupic against the charges.

"I in no way see the decision by U.S. Attorney Biskupic to pursue charges against Georgia Thompson as a political one," said former Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager, who often feuded with Doyle.

Dane County District Attorney Brian Blanchard, a Madison Democrat, called Biskupic "a respected, apolitical career prosecutor."

Duke Lacrosse - Charges To Be Dropped

ABC News reports that the charges will be dropped.

We endorse the point endorsed by KC Johnson - the state really owes the public as full an explanation of the background as possible, not just a terse announcement that charges will be dropped because the case can not be proved.  However, that might conflict with ongoing proceedings against DA Mike Nifong.

My questions - wouldn't the families of the lacrosse players get new counsel for the inevitable and well-deserved civil suit?  And will that suit be filed promptly, or do they wait until the three men have re-located to new colleges?

Imus Without Mourning

Don Imus will be suspended for two weeks, and the Rutgers team has agreed to meet with him.

The Captain has some thoughts; Michelle Malkin has lots of links.

I'm a bit surprised by the "Hold the front page - shock jock says something shocking!" reaction, but clearly Imus' comments were outrageous, deplorable and unacceptable coming from a white guy.  In his apology appearance with Al Sharpton (who is now an arbiter of racial etiquette after building his career as a race-baiter?), Imus did point out that rappers use similar language and win Academy Awards; Sharpton responded that he deplored that as well (search on "Sharpton" for a monumental a**-kicking of hip-hoppers here), but who knew?  If Sharpton wants to organize a boycott Imus, let him organize a boycott of a few record labels, too - as if.

OlbyWatch has a classic of an Olbermann double standard on criticizing one's own network (briefly, Olby explains that Bill O'Reilly ought to whack Fox to show he's a man even though Olbermann won't go after a fellow MSNBCer); the NY Times points out that Imus has a lot of support from the media and book promoters who love his platform.

And a last thought for the Libby-obsessed - Imus was mentioned during the Libby trial because he tortured Andrea Mitchell over her changing story about whether she knew about Valerie Plame's CIA affiliation prior to the Bob Novak column.

However!  When he comes back, Imus will be on a short leash.  So, does this mean he will never vex another NBC Newser with questions about their role in the Plame debacle?  That is great news for Tim Russert and David Gregory.

It is pretty clear at this point that neither NBC News nor anyone else will report on the David Gregory mystery - did he or did he not receive a Plame leak from Ari Fleischer while in Africa?   If he did not, that contradicts prosecution witness Ari Fleischer; if he did, that contradicts prosecution witness Tim Russert.

So, will a newly chastened and compliant Don Imus let this topic go?  Or in a mad bid for relevance and in an attempt to re-establish some street cred, will he pop the question when Gregory makes a guest appearance?

I'm betting on El Foldo.

A Call For Senility On The Web

The NY Times front-pages an article about civility, and its occasional absence, on the Web. Dan Drezner wins the best title award with "It's just the 19th nervous breakdown about the blogosphere" and has the same reaction I do - where is the rest of the story?

The Times goes on about some tech bloggers but never mentions the many political bloggers and the ways they regulate comments (Registration required at many top Left sites; no comments at all at many top Right sites); never mentions the meltdown (and resurrection!) at the WaPo last year; and never mentions the policy at the Times blogs, where comments are held in a moderated queue until deemed fit for publication.

Instead, we are offered such disconnected-from-reality insights as this:

...many Internet veterans believe that blogs are part of a larger public sphere, and that deleting a visitor’s comment amounts to an assault on their right to free speech.

Speech is already a lot less than free, at least among the political blogs.

And to be clear, I do not by any means except myself from that.  This blog has been having a troll problem lately, so changes may be forthcoming - activating the Typepad registration option for commenters is a likely next step.

MORE:  A bold mechanism to reduce one's invective footprint - civility offsets.

Roll Over Goldwater

A couple months back back I noted that, despite his many appealing qualities, Republican front-runner Rudy Giuliani has a wildly different governing style from the hands-off, Chairman of the Board approach of Republican icons Eisenhower and Reagan.

Now Rudy has yet another Republican icon turning in his grave - this is from the Times:

“There is a Greek maxim: Moderation is the answer to everything, and any extreme is bad,” he said.

Say it with me - "extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!"

I don't even want to imagine the reaction of the most famous Goldwater Girl.

MORE:  The policies raised by Giuliani are interesting.  Foremost, he claims to be best qualified to keep the nation safe.  Fine.  But I like this:

Mr. Giuliani struck other central themes as well this week on a four-day campaign swing that ended in South Carolina on Thursday. The nation must find a way to become energy-independent, he said, promising as president to undertake an effort comparable to the one that put man on the moon. He said he believed there was broad agreement that human behavior was a factor contributing to climate change.

Linking energy conservation to national security has been a Tom Friedman theme, but it still makes sense.  One of my three great objections to Bush's governance is that, in the aftermath of 9/11, he did not press such a linkage.  I'm happy to see Rudy do it now, but I can't  imagine he will separate himself from the pack with that message.

And since you ask, my other two objections are:

- revenue neutral tax simplification is a political non-starter; simplification can only be done in conjunction with tax cuts, but Bush delivered only the cuts, thereby squandering another generational opportunity for real tax simplification, and;

- the "planning" for post-liberation Iraq was near-criminal.

Hmm.  Giuliani says this about taxes:

And, he said, it is time to eliminate the estate tax and vastly simplify the tax code.

I don't think he can run on a program of tax cuts, and simplification can't happen without it.  Time will tell.

I like what Giuliani is thinking, anyway.  As a big city mayor he might have a record on education reform as well, but whether he wants to run on that record or away from it is not mentioned here.

The Gore Effect Goes Regional

These are great headlines - the big IPCC study on climate change comes out:

Scientists Detail Climate Changes, Poles to Tropics

And, since timing is everything, we also see this:

Record-Shattering Cold Threatens Crops

A brutally cold surge of arctic air into the eastern half of the United States will easily bring record-low temperatures on Easter morning and could cause significant losses in some of the nation's most prolific agricultural areas.

Whatever - personally, I am loving the switch to Daylight Saving Time, since it means an extra hour to shovel snow in the evening.

MORE:  The IPCC website has more, including a link to the 23 page summary.

Open Thread Saturday

OK, I should be back on Saturday eventually.

Open Thread Friday

Still lost in space and time.

Open Thread Thursday

Still on the road and apparently out of touch.

Open Thread Wednesday

I'll be traveling for a few days and I have no idea what sort of computer facilities I will encounter, so here goes...

"Bought" Versus "Sought"; The WaPo Sells Books

The WaPo gives over space on its prestigious front page to reporter Peter Eisner, who has a book coming out (with Knut Royce) on the Niger forgeries.

Weirdly, the story overlooks the obvious news hook - Rep. Waxman has invited Secretary of State Rice to testify before his oversight committee on "the Administration’s claims that Iraq sought uranium from Niger" as well as other subjects.

Whatever - I sort of lost interest in the second and third paragraphs, which continue the Wilsonian confusion of "sought" and "bought".  Here we go from the top:

It was 3 a.m. in Italy on Jan. 29, 2003, when President Bush in Washington began reading his State of the Union address that included the now famous -- later retracted -- 16 words: "The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

Like most Europeans, Elisabetta Burba, an investigative reporter for the Italian newsweekly Panorama, waited until the next day to read the newspaper accounts of Bush's remarks. But when she came to the 16 words, she recalled, she got a sudden sinking feeling in her stomach. She wondered: How could the American president have mentioned a uranium sale from Africa?

Burba felt uneasy because more than three months earlier, she had turned over to the U.S. Embassy in Rome documents about an alleged uranium sale by the central African nation of Niger. And she knew now that the documents were fraudulent and the 16 words wrong.

The fact that Saddam did not succeed in purchasing uranium from Niger is a separate issue from the question of whether his agents made the attempt.  That seemingly simple bit of logic has stumped Joe Wilson and his admirers for years, and evidently baffles the WaPo today.

Macsmind has more, and the EmptyWheel has helpful background suggesting that early debunkings of the forgeries would not have been as easy as reported here.

The SSCI report is a key to this, and don't overlook the Majority Report of Senators Roberts, Hatch, and Bond, near the back.

We Salute The "Hebrew Hercules"

From the Times:

Abe Coleman, a squat powerhouse of a professional wrestler, billed by promoters as the Hebrew Hercules and known to opponents by the two-footed kick he copied from kangaroos, died Wednesday in New York. He was 101, probably making him the oldest professional wrestler, according to wrestling publications.

...

It was an era when an athlete was promoted by his ethnicity, and Londos, the heavyweight champion, was the Golden Greek. When Coleman wasn’t the Hebrew Hercules, he was presented as the Jewish Tarzan.

The Jewish Tarzan?  Re-write!  What about the Aramaic Avenger?  The Talmudic Terror?  Tarzan... bah.

The NY Sun has more, and here is a nice account of his 100th birthday.

Dorothy Rabinowitz On The AIPAC Espionage Trial

Pulitzer prize winner Dorothy Rabinowitz, perhaps best known for her work exposing various sex abuse cases, turns her attention to the upcoming AIPAC espionage trial.  She is writing in the WSJ but the link seems to be free.  This may be a bit cryptic, but let me try to hook you by re-printing her conclusion:

The prosecutors may in fact need all the help they can get in this trial, which, the judge has noted, concerns actions that go to the heart of First Amendment guarantees. Above all, the government will have to prove that those charged with disseminating classified information "knew that its disclosure could injure the national defense."

One of the charges against Mr. Rosen was that he enabled Mr. Franklin's illegal transmission of classified material. This occurred, according to the indictment, when Mr. Franklin said he wanted to fax a paper to Mr. Rosen, and asked for his fax number. Mr. Rosen's crime, the charge establishes, was in giving him that fax number. Such is the sort of crime for which he could get upwards of 20 years, and Mr. Weissman, 10. The document, whose classified status the government claimed it could prove, was in fact a single sheet typed by Mr. Franklin, consisting of eight bullet points stating the offenses of which Iran was allegedly guilty.

As Judge Ellis noted, the government didn't allege that the lobbyist ever asked for the document, or that it had any classification markings, or that Mr. Rosen ever even received or viewed the paper.

The consequences of this spectacle--the indictment of two citizens for activities that go on every day in Washington, and that are clearly protected under the First Amendment--far exceed any other in the now long list of non-crimes from which government attorneys have constructed major cases, or more precisely, show trials. A category in which we can include the mad prosecutorial pursuit of Mr. Libby.

The government could succeed in this prosecution of two non-government professionals doing what they had every reason to view as their jobs--talking to government officials and reporters, and transmitting information and opinions. If such activities can be charged, successfully, as a "conspiracy," every professional, every business, every quarter of society--not to mention members of the press--will have reason to understand that this is a bell that tolls not just for two AIPAC lobbyists, but also for countless others to face trials in the future, for newly invented crimes unearthed by willing prosecutors.

More excerpts after the break.