JustOneMinute

Row, Row, Row It Back

The NY Times, presumably still dizzy, continues to re-package the story about ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda. Their latest makes the front page, right at the fold:

Iraqis, Seeking Foes of Saudis, Contacted bin Laden, File Says

The Times has been working the story of this document for several weeks, which makes their infamous early headline ("Panel Finds No Qaeda-Iraq Tie") even more puzzling.

UPDATE: Andrew Sullivan pits Daniel Okrent against Maureen Dowd; William Kristol also opines.

Kerry The Centrist

In a story almost headlined "Good Ship "Kerry" Drifts To Center", the NY Times regales us with tales and outtakes from the Kerry campaign. Well, the outtakes require a bit of imagination, but let's bash along:

...Mr. Kerry's Democratic message for the general election campaign is emerging, many Democrats say

...His message, in part, is a return to the promise of Clintonian centrism: reducing the deficit, spurring economic growth, trying to ease "the squeeze on middle-class America," as Mr. Kerry puts it, from things like the cost of health insurance and college tuition.

...Bruce Reed, president of the Democratic Leadership Council and a longtime Clinton aide, fretted openly during the heyday of Howard Dean last year that the party was moving to the left. Today, Mr. Reed describes Mr. Kerry approvingly as "a pragmatic lying weasel in the Clinton mode."

AS IF! Scratch "lying weasel", substitute "centrist", and you are back in dull old Times-world. Here we go again - although George Bush is generally derided for his limited verbal skills, John Kerry had nothing but praise for Bush's ability to do mental arithmetic:

"...he's been the greatest divider as a president in the modern history of this country."

Oh, sure, but how is he with square roots and the decimal expansion of pi?

Mr. Kerry is still developing his governing philosophy:

Asked last month where he hoped to lead the party, Mr. Kerry said, "We are going to keep faith with the history of our party and the principles."

For the benefit if the MTV generation, Maureen Dowd shortened that to "We are going to keep... party!" Shake it like a Polaroid picture, Tall John!

Finally, the Senator gave a bit of advice to the lovelorn, quoting the Bible to explain his predilection for marrying wealthy heiresses:

Mr. Kerry said last week: "Scripture tells you where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."

Follow the money! Actually, Theresa Heinz must have repressed a snort upon hearing the rest of the quote:

Let me tell you where my heart is. My heart is with the working families, who built this country.".

Exactly.

What Is The Purpose Of Affirmative Action

The NY Times has a fascinating article about confusion in the college admissions process. Should colleges be seeking "native" American blacks, descended from slaves, as compensation for several hundred years of ghastly history? Or is the purpose of affirmative action to break down current racial barriers, in which case giving preference to immigrant blacks from the West Indies meets the goal?

Most sensible points get made in this story, eventually. The controversial Colin Powell (son of Jamaican immigrants) does not get mentioned. And there is a quote by a speaker who ought to reflect for a moment and talk to some experts:

One black admissions official at a highly selective college said the reluctance of college officials to discuss these issues has helped obscure the scarcity of black students whose families have been in this country for generations.

"If somebody does not start paying attention to those who are not able to make it in, they're going to start drifting farther and farther behind," said the official, who declined to be identified because the subject is so charged. "You've got to say that the long-term blacks were either dealt a crooked hand, or something is innately wrong with them. And I simply won't accept that there is something wrong with them."

Well, well. An alternative theory is presented earlier in the article:

Both Professor Gates and Professor Guinier emphasize that this is not about excluding immigrants, whom sociologists describe as a highly motivated, self-selected group.

If exceptional blacks immigrate to the US, we might reasonably expect them to be over-represented in places looking for exceptional blacks, such as our elite universities.

"Big Time" Dick Is Back

"Big Time" Dick Cheney evidently told Sen Pat Leahy what proper Reps think of him. But was Cheney just thinking out loud about the Energy Task Force court case brought by the Sierra Club and Judicial Watch?

Gay Marriage Is Back

The current plan in the Senate is to bring the gay marriage amendment up for a vote in July, sol et's review the landscape.

First, we favor evolution, not revolution - this issue should be resolved in the legislatures, not the courts.

Second, we continue to believe that Bush blew it on gay marriage. What he should have said to the evangelicals he is trying to mobilize is "This election is not about backing a President who will amend the Constitution; it is about backing a President who will appoint judges that will uphold the Constitution.

Kerry's position confuses us, and has probably changed by now anyway. However, he is opposed to the Musgrave Amendment (so are we).

The amendment we like is the Hatch Amendment, which puts the issue in the hands of state legislatures and takes it out of the courts. This variation seemed to get a bit of life in the Times:

One such [Amendment opponent is] Republican is Senator Gordon H. Smith, Republican of Oregon, a longtime supporter of gay and lesbian rights. Mr. Smith, who opposes gay marriage, has said the only amendment he can support is one that will allow states to decide whether to permit civil unions or offer other legal rights to gays.

On Tuesday though, Mr. Smith stood by the side of Senator Rick Santorum, the Pennsylvania Republican who is a chief sponsor of the amendment, and read a carefully worded statement that expressed support for considering an amendment, so long as the amendment met those criteria.

Ths issue is a litmus test in some Massachusetts state races, so it may go big-time nationally.

William Safire, Whippin' and Drivin' 'Em

William Safire is on a roll. His long time readers will remember that he never was quite able to strike a match under the Iraqgate scandal (aka Agri-gate). However, Safire is taking control of the UNSCAM investigation, with yet another column detailing the shenanigans.

This is our favorite bit:

...my call for a Congressional subpoena to overcome his [Kofi Annan's] attempt to limit investigation to his internal Volcker committee has flushed out a fact not hitherto disclosed. Annan's press aide complained to The Times that a subpoena had already been served secretly on BNP Paribas (the initials once stood for Banque Nationale de Paris) by the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.

...With his subpoena and investigation thus publicly revealed by the U.N., Chairman Norm Coleman of Minnesota, a Brooklyn-born Republican, felt free to take my call. "This is a major priority for us," he says. "There's a lot of stuff to cover, a big universe of documents, and we're being aggressive about it. Yes, Cotecna, Saybolt, all of them."

I am only guessing that Safire was well aware of the subpoena, off the record, when he issued his clarion call for Federal subpoenas. The earlier column provoked a reaction, and now everyone is on the record.

He also has more on the subpoenas to Exxon/Mobil and others that were reported earlier.

Media Bias

On my To Do list - save this link and track down reactions.

A Measure of Media Bias

Tim Groseclose
Department of Political Science, UCLA, and
Graduate School of Business, Stanford University

Jeff Milyo
Harris School of Public Policy
University of Chicago

September 2003

MORE: Steve Verdon, with a different link to the working paper.

UPDATE: Hmm, a substantive objection to the methodology appears in the comments. Oh, enough with the false modesty:

...the media may cite a think tank merely because a Congresssperson did; if (in the current situation) Reps are being cited based on, for example, Treasury Dept studies, and Dems are rebutting with think-tank studies, a truly "fair and balanced" story presenting both sides may score as biased. That methodological flaw would shift in an era when Dems controlled the Gov't. (Heaven forbid).

As an example (illustrative, but hardly probative), the NY Times cites the (liberal) Economic Policy Institute in this story on Kerry's minimum wage proposal. The EPI quote balances a quote from the Bush campaign, and is from one of the authors of Kerry's proposal (Kerry's experts need to keep their day jobs, for now). If I grasp the methodology of the study, this story scores as tilted left, but is it really?

Maybe Bush Really Has Driven Us All Mad

His Freedom Commission on Mental Health wants to screens us, just to be on the safe side.

This sort of stuff makes me crazy...

Happy Anniversary From Paul Krugman

Shorter Krugman: John Ashcroft is the worst Attorney General in history because, after a major arrest of possible domestic terrorists, Ashcroft did not hold a press conference to promote it. No, seriously.

Paul Krugman is worried that John Ashcroft is neglecting domestic militias while focussing on, and publicizing, foreign terrorist groups. Since this is roughly the second anniversary of Nick Kristof's column with an identical theme, we applaud the consistency of the Times columnists.

Briefly, the Justice Dept. arrested, indicted, and eventually convicted William Krar and others for possession of an impressive arms cache including the chemicals to make a cyanide bomb. However, John Ashcroft's Justice Department has not been keen to promote this seeming success against domestic terror, as Prof. Krugman tells us:

Strangely, though, the attorney general didn't call a press conference to announce the discovery of the weapons cache, or the arrest of William Krar, its owner. He didn't even issue a press release. This was, to say the least, out of character. Jose Padilla, the accused "dirty bomber," didn't have any bomb-making material or even a plausible way to acquire such material, yet Mr. Ashcroft put him on front pages around the world.

Now, Prof. Krugman lives in a world with a totally passive press corps and no political party operating in opposition to the Republicans. In that world, if a tree falls in the forest but John Ashcroft does not hold a press conference to announce it, it does not make a sound. Fortunately, Paul Krugman, Truth-Seeker and Recycler, is on the case:

At this point, I have the usual problem. Writing about John Ashcroft poses the same difficulties as writing about the Bush administration in general, only more so: the truth about his malfeasance is so extreme that it's hard to avoid sounding shrill.

And just what is the nature of the extreme malfeasance?

In this case, it sounds over the top to accuse Mr. Ashcroft of trying to bury news about terrorists who don't fit his preferred story line. Yet it's hard to believe that William Krar wouldn't have become a household name if he had been a Muslim, or even a leftist. Was Mr. Ashcroft, who once gave an interview with Southern Partisan magazine in which he praised "Southern patriots" like Jefferson Davis, reluctant to publicize the case of a terrorist who happened to be a white supremacist?

Let's regroup briefly - according to CNN, this was "one of the most extensive domestic-terrorism investigations since the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. Here we are told that the investigation made the Presidential Daily Brief. So it doesn't appear that the extreme malfeasance was in the investigation; evidently, the extreme malfeasance was a failure to promote this particular arrest.

Which prompts another question - if this story is so important, why did the NY Times not cover it? A search of their website for "Krar" turns up one previous story. Has Krugman declared the death of investigative journalism? Does this mean that the "All Abu Grahib, all the time" era never happened?

And similarly, shouldn't some earnest Democrat be screaming about this case, if publicizing it is so important? Perhaps we should be hearing calls for a Congressional investigation into the timing and content of John Ashcroft's press conferences.

A bit of a clue to this media silence can be found in the Times' coverage of the case Nick Kristof cited two years ago. The Times didn't splash a lot of ink on David Burgert, either. However, their big story opens thusly:

A Far-Right Militia's Far-Fetched Plot Draws Some Serious Attention
By BLAINE HARDEN

KALISPELL, Mont., March 2, As its secrets began to spill out here this week, Project 7 sounded suspiciously like a Monty Python sketch.

A Monty Python sketch - we're having fun now! If the Times is taking the militias just this seriously in June of 2002, how seriously should their readers be taking them now? (Sorry about the vague pronoun - feel free to take either the militias or the Times lightly).

Now, as to the question of why Ashcroft did not promote this arrest - despite Krugman's self-promoting posturing (he's Bold but Shrill!) I find it extremely plausible that this arrest did not fit Ashcroft's story line any better than it fit the NY Times story line. So what?

Or, it is possible that this silence is based on an FBI strategy, which I will label "Even paranoids have real enemies, but why goad them by publicizing it?" My casual impression is that the black helicopter/FEMA takeover-backed-by-NATO-troops crowd is motivated by a sense of persecution by the government. Maybe the FBI has concluded that the net effect of publicizing their efforts against these groups is inflammatory and counterproductive. A similar effect would not obtain with the juihadists, who have other reasons for acting. Just a thought (although I am quite pleased with it).

The question of whether the Justice Department is devoting sufficient resources to domestic groups seems to be separate, quite legitimate, and hard to answer. Despite Oklahoma City, I am inclined to suspect that after Waco, Ruby Ridge, and the Atlanta Olympic bombing debacle, domestic terror is not seen as the golden route to promotion at the FBI. That said, we haven't had another Oklahoma City, so how are we doing? Perhaps the issue of potential domestic terror is the media/poltical blind spot of 2004, as foreign terror was in Campaign 2000.

Let's give the Big Finish to Daniel Levitas. The Times buried his story on a Saturday in December, but we love this quote which appeared elsewhere:

"Excuse me, a chemical weapon was found in the home state of George Bush," says Levitas. "I'm not saying the Justice Department deliberately decided to downplay the story because they thought it might be embarrassing to the US government if weapons of mass destruction were found in America before they were found in Iraq. But I am saying it was a mistake not to give this higher profile."

Iran Seizes 3 British Navy Boats

This is the story to watch. Here is the NY Times from June 22;the BBC; and here is a recent Bloomberg update.

The "it's not a coincidence" crowd points to this, from the Times:

The arrests come during a time of strained relations between Iran and Britain, mostly over the war in Iraq and Iran's nuclear capacity. The British Embassy in Tehran has faced a series of demonstrations over accusations that British troops abused Iraqi prisoners and desecrated Iraqi holy Shiite cities. Britain also recently sponsored with France and Germany a resolution at the International Atomic Energy Agency condemning Iran's lack of cooperation with nuclear arms inspectors.

Now Iranian moderates and hardliners can play good mullah / bad mullah.

Strangely Under-reported

The NY Times does front page the news about SpaceShipOne, telling us that "Manned Private Craft Reaches Space in a Milestone for Flight". They also seem to airbush this detail:

When [test-pilot] Mr. Melvill, 63, emerged, he climbed atop the spaceship, spread his arms and gave a primal holler: "Yeeeeeeee-haaah!"

What he really said, of course, was "We're going to the moon; we're going to Mars; we're going to Jupiter, and Saturn, and Antares.... Yeeeeeeee-haaah!"

Bets Down

Gephardt will be Kerry's VP pick. He's qualified to be President, has labor appeal, and can help in a battleground state. His hawkish war stance will give faux-reassurance to those wondering whether Kerry will stay the course in Iraq; his paleo views on trade will create genuine concern.

Now, for the tin-foil hat club, no theory would be complete that failed to weigh the key consideration - is it good for Hillary!? Gephardt is good - if Kerry loses, the Gephardt 2008 campaign will not be boosted by his 2004 defeat (this would not be true for Edwards, obviously). Alternatively, if Kerry wins, Gephardt will be three hundred years old by the time Hillary finally has a chance to take her ordained place at the head of the Democratic Party.

Picking Gephardt neutalizes Edwards, so it works for Hillary, the Party, the naiton, and the world.

Love That Brit Humour

From the BBC: Deadly Sars virus found in tears.

Well, did anyone give it a hanky?

Veepstakes Suspense Ended!

Camejo has the mojo! Trivial pursuit fans, and no one else, should take note.

In other news, James P. Gannon, "a former reporter for The Wall Street Journal and editor of The Des Moines Register, is encouraging Cheney to go take a book deal.

The Wind Died

Bush supporters have the Reagan bounce, the new Pew Research Report showing an uptick in public support for the war, and the (so far successful) Administration push-back on the 9/11 Commission report and the erratic media coverage thereof. So there were indications that the wind had shifted even before the Times dropped this Kerry metaphor in our laps on Monday morning:

NANTUCKET, Mass., June 20 - Thwarted by fog, a flat bicycle tire and a tricky wind, Senator John Kerry spent most of a shortened Father's Day weekend secluded in his wife's seaside retreat here in one of the nation's most exclusive summer playgrounds.

...on Sunday morning, he sped out to a remote beach in his stepson's powerboat in hopes of kite-surfing, a new extreme sport, only to return home after half an hour without even zipping up his wetsuit.

"The wind died," Mr. Kerry, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, told reporters as he cruised by on the 32-foot Contender, a gentleman's fishing vessel said to cost about $150,000.

Excuses, excuses.

UPDATE: Hmm, do I detect a bit of a breeze?

They Linked Him, They Linked Him Not...

As the editors at the NY Times continue to pluck petals off a daisy, they manage to execute a 180 degree turn from the Saturday Editorial (Show Us the Proof) to the Sunday Week in Review on the question of whether the Bush Administration linked Saddam to the 9/11 attacks.

Saturday:

Mr. Bush said the 9/11 panel had actually confirmed his contention that there were "ties" between Iraq and Al Qaeda. He said his administration had never connected Saddam Hussein to 9/11. Both statements are wrong.

Sunday (see pop-up titled "What The Bush Administration Said":

Critics of the Bush Administration argue that it falsely created a link between Saddam Hussein and the 9/11 attacks to help justify the war. Last week, the administration countered that it had never made such an assertion - only that there were ties, however murky, between Iraq and Al Qaeda. A survey of past public comments seems to bear that out - although whether there was a deliberate campaign to create guilt by association is difficult to say.

Is this a rowback, or just a complete collapse into schizophrenia? I can hardly wait for Monday's installment - perhaps the Times can introduce an alien abduction theory.

The NY Times is running a series of promotional advertisements in my television market. Part of the pitch shows some earnest chap extolling the Times for (paraphrasing) "really surrounding a story - they give me so many ways to understand it". Maybe this is what he had in mind.