Brendan Nyhan

Go read Wonkette

Ana Marie Cox is officially on fire this week - go read Wonkette ASAP. Here's my favorite item so far:

Fox News and others are reporting that the President just got "his own bird's eye view" of Katrina's damage as Air Force One flew over the devestated region. Shortly after, Bush gave prepared remarks to the press pool:

We are making progress in New Orleans. The flood is in its last throes. Clearly, the hurricane has a hateful ideology and does not like our freedom or our dryness. We cannot surrender to it. In New Orleans, they are working on a draft evacuation; it is an evacuation process, and we must expect that if we are to bring American-style democracy to the Mississippi Delta.

The president added that "to pull out now would only give aid to the elements."

She's also devastating about the racial coding of the Katrina aftermath, in which Mississippi governor Haley Barbour apparently referred to looters (many of whom happen to be black) as "sub-human" and news photos of black and white looters described them as "looting" and "finding" merchandise, respectively.

Slate and the future of intermediation

My debate with Jack Shafer made me realize something: the next casualty of blogs may be general-interest intermediary publications like Slate. Just a few years ago, the need for a meta- approach to the news seemed compelling. But with so many expert blogs now available for free, I don't need a general interest intermediary anymore. Via RSS, I can easily read political analysis from Josh Marshall and Kevin Drum, economic analysis from Brad DeLong and Marginal Revolution, etc. And given that you have to consume information before determining its value (a key economic feature of the media, as Jay Hamilton points out in his excellent book on the subject), I can have more confidence that posts from trusted bloggers are worth reading than I can with articles on Slate, which are written by a large array of staff and freelancers. (There are obviously bloggers and columnists whose work I knowe well on Slate to whom this doesn't apply, but on a day-to-day basis, most articles are not by those authors.)

The upshot may be that the aggregation/meta-commentary model is not that compelling, at least for heavy media consumers like myself, who (a) get a major national newspaper that does original reporting and (b) read multiple bloggers via RSS, so they don't need a general-interest intermediary. In the near term, of course, Slate is fine; MSNBC.com dumps it huge numbers of visitors each day. But in the long run, RSS may undermine general interest online publications faster than people realize.

The "Bush Boom," Harper's Index style

Number of articles touting the "Bush Boom" on nationalreview.com: 44.

Change in median income 2001-2004: -$673.

Change in the number of Americans in poverty: +4.1 million

Change in the number of Americans without health insurance: +4.6 million

(All statistics are from Census data via the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.)

Debating journalism at Slate with Jack Shafer

Last Friday, I linked to some criticism of Slate by Eric Alterman and wrote this:

[T]he problem with Slate is that it's virtually content-free. There's almost never new reporting, so the articles have to present really smart takes on the news to be worth reading. But as Alterman points out, there's only one Michael Kinsley, so instead you get a lot of faux-clever "everything you know is wrong" pieces, which almost never succeed.

In comments, Jack Shafer, Slate's editor-at-large, took exception to the post:

Nyhan writes, "In general, the problem with Slate is that it's virtually content-free. There's almost never new reporting..." (Emphasis added.)

You don't supposed Nyhan could add a few more qualifiers to couch his criticism of Slate, do you?

What does Nyhan consider "new reporting"? The latest quotation from an oft-quoted talking head? A first person account of an event? Do telephone interviews count as "new reporting"? Document searches or database dumps? Is it "new reporting" to spend the day in the Library of Congress reading books? Is a piece to be considered "reported" only if it shouts out that it's "based on 27 interviews with top authorities in the field"? Is a work of journalism "unreported" if the writer spends time collecting quotations and facts but doesn't use them because they don't advance the story?

He then goes on to list his specific disagreements with Alterman (which weren't really my concern.)

So let me get right to the point. I don't particularly care about "reporting" per se. There are lots of ways for writers to add value to stories, which include the kinds of research that Shafer describes. But as I said, the problem with most Slate stories is that they don't add much value with either reporting or original factual research. When you're parasitic on the news in this way, your take has to be really novel to be worth reading. (This applies, of course, to all bloggers, including myself.) There are notable exceptions at Slate, of course -- Daniel Gross, Fred Kaplan, Will Saletan, and Shafer are all talented journalists who you should read regularly. You'll be a better person for it. In my experience, however, they're the exception rather than the rule.

Shafer also chooses rather strange grounds to defend Slate, which has explicitly sought to deemphasize reporting and fact-gathering. In 1999, Columbia Journalism Review quoted Slate's founder and then-editor, Michael Kinsley saying "I don't think the world needs more scoops," which CJR described as "defending his decision to curtail original reporting." And I've seen no sign that Jacob Weisberg, the new editor, has gone in a different direction since he took over. Does Shafer really think that more than a small percentage of Slate stories involve the kind of research he's talking about?

What I see on Slate a lot more often are first-person narratives, summaries of other media, and -- of course -- everything-you-know-is-wrong Kinsley-style journalism, as exemplified (at its worst) by defenses of vote fraud and the Pacers-Pistons riot. At the time Slate was founded, this meta- approach to the news was somewhat novel (and thus more compelling), but bloggers are doing it better now -- and that's why I so rarely read a site that was once a favorite of mine.

What is Eric Alterman talking about?

Today, Eric Alterman writes:

Will Bush become the most unpopular president in the history of Gallup Polling? Here. (And will the mainstream media continue to refer to him as "well-liked" by the country?)"

I agree -- Bush's approval ratings make the phrase "well-liked" totally inappropriate. So I took Alterman at his word and tried to find examples of the media using the phrase to describe the President. But I couldn't find one example in the last six months (academic Nexis: bush w/10 "well-liked" and president w/10 "well-liked" in the major newspapers, magazines and journals, and news transcripts categories).

This is the same thing that happened when Alterman claimed in June that the political media was repeatedly calling Bush a "popular president" -- no one that I could find had done so since Bush's second inauguration except for Chris Matthews (a notable exception, to be sure, but still an exception).

The media does tend to overestimate Bush's popularity, but that doesn't mean you can just put phrases in quotes and claim people in the media are repeating them.

Things you should read

My friend Chris Mooney's book The Republican War on Science is out today -- pick up a copy! I'll have a full review by next week (haven't quite finished reading it yet), but in the meantime, see his blog for links to excerpts and reviews.

Also, Dateline Hollywood, the satirical entertainment website that my friend Ben Fritz co-edits, was profiled Sunday in the Los Angeles Times. Make sure to check out the site and the article.

Jon Stewart's beatdown of Christopher Hitchens

Via Marginal Revolution, here a partial transcript (and video link) to John Stewart's destruction of Christopher Hitchens during a debate about the Iraq war on the Daily Show last week. Stewart only challenges his guests infrequently (apparently for fear of being too preachy), but when he does, it's borderline revolutionary. Before Hitchens, the best example is the way Stewart savaged Henry Bonilla during the campaign about the phony talking point that John Kerry was the Senate's #1 liberal. Let's hope we see more of this...

Stewart: The people who say we shouldn't fight in Iraq aren't saying it's our fault. That is the conflation that is the most disturbing to me.

Hitch: Don't you hear people saying that we made them nasty. . .

Stewart: I hear people saying a lot of stupid [bleep]. . . But there is reasonable dissent in this country about the way this war has been conducted, that has nothing to do with people believing that we should cut and run from the terrorists, or that we should show weakness in the face of terrorism, or that we believe that we have in some way brought this upon ourselves. They believe that this war is being conducted without transparency, without credibility, and without competence...

Hitch: I'm sorry, sunshine. I just watched you ridicule the president for saying he wouldn't give a timetable...

Stewart: No, you misunderstood why. . . .What I ridiculed the president [about] was [that] he refuses to answer questions from adults as though we were adults and falls back upon platitudes and phrases and talking points; that does a disservice to the goals that he himself shares with the very people he himself needs to convince.

Light posting this week

I was out of town over the weekend, classes start today, and I'm leaving for the American Political Science Association's annual meeting on Wednesday, so blogging will be light this week. But I will be posting occasionally, so stay tuned...

Tony Blankley, polling mastermind

Via Atrios, Media Matters has a hilarious quote of Tony Blankley trying to convince himself (and others) that the Iraq war is popular:

These mis-characterizations of the president's view on victory are important, because public support of the war is largely based on an expectation of victory. In a major USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll from three weeks ago 32 percent of the public said we can't win the war in Iraq. Another 43 percent predict victory, while -- critically -- 21 percent say "the United States could win the war, but they don't think it will."

If one adds that "could win, but don't think we will win" 21 percent to the 43 percent who predict victory -- one has a very solid 64 percent supporting the war.

Non-reality-based poll interpretation! You gotta love it. For example, if you add the 58% of the public who think President Bush is doing a "only fair/poor" job to the 40% who think he's doing an "excellent/pretty good" job, then you have a very solid 98% of Americans supporting Bush! Just think of the possibilities...

Update 8/26: Michael Koplow makes an excellent point in comments -- Blankley is also claiming that perceptions of the likelihood of US victory in Iraq translate directly into support or opposition for the war, but that isn't necessarily true.

But of course, assessments of the war and support for it are closely related. And if you look at the results of poll Blankley refers to, it found that 58% of Americans believe we won't be able to establish a stable democratic government in Iraq and 51% of Americans believe the Bush administration deliberately misled the American people about WMDs in Iraq. Other recent polls show that 61% of Americans want to bring our troops home in the next year, 54% think we made a mistake in invading Iraq, 54% think the war was not worth it and 56% think the war is going "moderately badly" or "very badly." So it's very hard to believe that more than 45% of the public supports this war right now.

Eric Alterman on Slate

A while back, Eric Alterman had a nice precis on what's wrong with Slate and "counter-intuitive" journalism:

It’s not easy trying to be as smart as Mike Kinsley; in fact, for mere mortals like you and me, it’s impossible. I’ve always thought the biggest problem over at Slate is that nobody there got the memo that read “Don’t try this at home,” (or in the office, for that matter). More often than once a week, there’s someone over there making some contrarian argument for the sake of contrariness with none of Kinsley’s brilliance, panache or, ironically, intellectual modesty. (One of Kinsley’s greatest attributes, as Paul Simon might put it, is that he knows what he knows... and vice-versa.)

Exhibit A this week is Jack Shafer’s perfectly “contrarian” brief on behalf of biased book reviewing. There is a case to be made that nobody is really “objective” about anything, and that the search for the appearance of an objective book reviewer can result in the choice of a less than ideal review, but Shafer’s argument, which mocks the very idea of fairness is quite a different thing. (Kinsley has actually gone so far as to argue against reading books before judging them, but, of course, he somehow managed to come up with a pretty good argument.) But Shafer—like the rest of us—is no Mike Kinsley. What’s more, he’s never written a book. Here he treats the book itself as an unimportant appendage to the review. Good books take years to write and the authors who undertake them deserve an honest hearing for their work from someone who can at least try to judge them on the basis of their merits. From a societal standpoint, moreover, they are important cultural artifacts, perhaps the single most important avenue for a culture to learn—or at least discuss—arguments and data that are either complex or uncomfortable--and require both evidence and explication to elucidate. Shafer’s argument reveals the limits of Slate’s reification of the contrarian wiseguy, together with the flaws of Kinsleyless Kinsleyism.

In general, the problem with Slate is that it's virtually content-free. There's almost never new reporting, so the articles have to present really smart takes on the news to be worth reading. But as Alterman points out, there's only one Michael Kinsley, so instead you get a lot of faux-clever "everything you know is wrong" pieces, which almost never succeed.

Intelligent design: Truth in advertising

I haven't read all of the recent coverage of "intelligent design" in the news, which I understand has been hit-and-miss due to reporters' insistence on treating both sides of a controversy as equally valid, but here are two signs of progress. A week ago on NPR's "Morning Edition," host Susan Stamberg referred to "the teaching of creationist-based intelligent design in Kansas," and on Tuesday, the New York Times referred to "creationism or its doctrinal cousin, intelligent design, both of which depend on the existence of a supernatural force." Amen. Intelligent design is religion, not science, and descends directly from creationism.

Also, Bill Frist recently tried to blur the same distinction in an early pander for 2008:

Frist, a Republican from Tennessee, spoke to a Rotary Club meeting Friday and told reporters afterward that students need to be exposed to different ideas, including intelligent design."I think today a pluralistic society should have access to a broad range of fact, of science, including faith," Frist said...

Via Brad DeLong, here's Pharyngula taking apart Frist's statement:

I don't even understand what he's babbling about in that first sentence—he's muddling together fact, science, and faith, and implying that faith is a subset of the first two. What does it mean to have a "wide range" of those things? Do facts have reasonable ranges, such that we can simultaneously argue that humans evolved, and humans were created? That science, the study of the observable, should encompass religion, the invention of the invisible?

Frist's statement is a logical disaster. And yes, the man is a doctor who should know the difference between fact, science, and faith. (Hint: Intelligent design belongs to only one of those three categories.)

Note: For much more on the debate over intelligent design, see my friend Chris Mooney's science policy blog and his forthcoming book, The Republican War on Science, which I'll be blogging more about soon.

More smearing of dissent from the Bush administration

Via (ugh) the Progress Report and E&P, here's presidential spokesman Trent Duffy suggesting that critics of the war in Iraq don't want to win the war on terror:

Q: Is the White House concerned about the protests that are planned in Salt Lake City today?

MR. DUFFY: The President addressed that directly. He can understand that people don't share his view that we must win the war on terror, and we cannot retreat and cut and run from terrorists, but he just has a different view. He believes it would be a fundamental mistake right now for us to cut and run in the face of terrorism, because if we've learned anything, especially from the 9/11 Commission Report, it is that to continue to retreat after the Cole, after Beirut and Somalia is to only empower terrorists and to give them more recruiting tools as they try to identify ways to harm Americans.

So he believes that people have a fundamental right to express their views. That's one of the reasons we're fighting this war on terrorism, to protect our fundamental rights. But at the same time, he disagrees strongly.

And via the Progress Report again, here's Donald Rumsfeld comparing critics of the war in Iraq to those who praised Stalin and Communism during World War II:

Of course, some are arguing that the effort in Iraq is doomed. Recently we've again been told that Iraq may prove worse than Vietnam, and it's been alleged that we're not winning...

Throughout history there have always been those who predict America's failure just around every corner. At the height of World War II, a prominent U.S. diplomat predicted that democracy was finished in Britain and probably in America too. Many Western intellectuals praised Stalin during that period. For a time, Communism was very much in vogue. It was called Euro-Communism to try to mute or mask the totalitarian core. And thankfully, the American people are better centered. They ultimately come to the right decisions on big issues. And the future of Iraq is a very big issue. So those being tossed about by the winds of concern should recall that Americans are a tough lot and will see their commitments through.

For more on attacks on dissent since 9/11, see my Spinsanity column from Sept. 2004, All the President's Spin, and Henry Farrell's updated list of claims that the left is rooting for the other side in Iraq or the war on terror.

Update 8/25: Readers seem to think my objection to these comments wasn't laid out in enough detail, so here's a bit more. (I try to keep it brief generally since I've written so much about the smearing of dissent that I don't want to repeat myself. See what I've written in the past [linked above] for more information.)

Duffy's quote uses a key tactic that is employed in attacks on dissent - blurring the distinction between a handful of people on the fringe who actually want the US to lose the war on terror and the vast majority of Americans, who do not. Duffy, speaking generally about anti-war protests and opposition to the war, says that Bush "can understand that people don't share his view that we must win the war on terror." That is a smear. You can protest against the war in Iraq and still believe we "must win the war on terror" -- indeed, that is undoubtedly the position of most opponents of the Iraq war.

Another tactic that is frequently used is to associate political opponents with hated figures -- Saddam Hussein, Nazis, North Korea, etc. We wrote about this frequently on Spinsanity. And I believe Rumsfeld's statement is very much in that vein. Yes, he is making a historical analogy, but it disguises an attempt to liken war opponents to Communist sympathizers. That analogy implies that war opponents sympathize with the other side. That, again, is a smear. With the exception of a handful of fringe figures, it is not a fair statement about those who question the war in Iraq.

Various readers will undoubtedly respond by saying that obscure extremist X or Y said something favorable about the insurgency. And they may be right. Such statements are loathsome, but they do not excuse making sweeping generalizations about a huge swath of people. 56% of Americans believe the war in Iraq is going badly -- are they sympathizers with the insurgents? Do they believe we don't need to win the war on terror?

A fun fact about 2008

Here's a fun fact that my father-in-law on Monday thinks hasn't gotten enough attention -- assuming Dick Cheney doesn't run for president, 2008 will be the first election since 1952 in which neither an incumbent or vice president is running on either side.

2004: George W. Bush (incumbent)
2000: Al Gore (VP)
1996: Bill Clinton (incumbent)
1992: George H.W. Bush (incumbent)
1988: George H.W. Bush (VP)
1984: Ronald Reagan (incumbent)
1980: Jimmy Carter (incumbent)
1976: Gerald Ford (incumbent)
1972: Richard Nixon (incumbent)
1968: Hubert Humphrey (VP)
1964: Lyndon Johnson (incumbent)
1960: Richard Nixon (VP)
1956: Dwight Eisenhower (incumbent)

Historical challenge: How many other times has this happened in American history?

How weak is Mitt Romney in MA?

The same poll that shows John Kerry losing to Hillary Clinton in a Massachusetts presidential primary also reveals that Governor Mitt Romney, a supposed 2008 contender for the GOP nomination, badly trails the leading Democratic gubernatorial candidate:

As Romney weighs whether to forgo a reelection bid to prepare a run for president in 2008, the poll found that his chief Democratic rival for the governor's office, Attorney General Thomas F. Reilly, has continued to hold his lead over Romney. Reilly leads Romney by 51 to 38 percent in a matchup for a potential 2006 governor's race. In March, Reilly led 48 to 41 percent.

The survey of 503 adults, completed last week, found that 41 percent said Romney has accomplished little as governor, posing a challenge if he tries to promote himself on the presidential trail as an effective chief executive and political leader. Only 16 percent said he has accomplished ''a lot" and another 34 percent think he has been blocked by the Legislature.

The portion of adults who think he should be reelected remains at a precariously low level, with 30 percent saying he should be given a second term, and 51 percent saying someone else should be elected. That is statistically the same finding as in a Globe poll in March.

The poll found that Romney also would fare poorly in a potential GOP presidential primary in Massachusetts. Asked their choice if the GOP primary were held now, Republicans preferred both former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani and Senator John McCain of Arizona to Romney.

Once again, if you can't win in your home state, you're probably not a strong presidential contender. These are horrible numbers.

Good for Bob Costas

If only TV hosts had the guts to do this more often...

The longtime NBC sports and talk show host [Costas], who signed on this year to be an occasional substitute for Larry King on CNN, resisted a request last Thursday to be the host of a King program devoted to interviewing guests about the already widely covered Natalee Holloway missing-person case in Aruba.

When he could not get the show's topic changed, Mr. Costas said he respectfully decided not to participate.

George Allen shows his gravitas

TNR's Michael Crowley, who is guest-blogging for Josh Marshall, catches George Allen using a silly metaphor:

When Republican senator/presidential hopeful George Allen was on ABC's This Week today praising the Bush administration for its training of Iraqi security forces, George Stephanopoulos suggested that the Post's story has some pretty troubling implications for that utterly essential element of our success there. Not to worry, Allen said -- factional divisions are nothing new:

[Y]ou have that even in our United States. We have local police, we have state police, and you have the FBI.

Got that? Bloodthirsty Shiite militiamen really aren't so different from, say, Virginia state troopers. To which a startled-looking Stephanopoulos objected: "They're not militias going out and killing people outside the law!"

It's amazing, come to think of it, that Stephanopoulos didn't burst into laughter. There may be reassuring responses to the Post's story, but Allen's certainly wasn't one of them. Let's hope someone in the White House has a better answer.

Given that one of the knocks against Allen is that he isn't that sharp, this looks pretty stupid.

(To read all my previous posts on Allen, click here.)

John Kerry is not a popular guy, part 2

More from the John Kerry is not popular files: a Boston Globe poll in Massachusetts finds that Hillary Clinton leads Kerry 33%-21% in a 2008 trail heat among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents in his own state. Ouch.

Matt Bai buys into the Internet politics bubble

Logical fallacies in action: We have lots of choices now, so political parties will wither on the vine!

That sounds pretty silly, but it's the suggestion that Matt Bai makes in his New York Times Magazine piece on the death of the 527 group called America Coming Together (ACT):

ACT represented the first serious challenge to the industrial-age structure of the modern political party. Before [George] Soros and [Peter] Lewis plunked down all that cash for ACT, liberal donors had assumed that their only avenue into the political system was through supporting the party and its candidates...

ACT helped to usher us into the post-party world. We are now confronting a period in which the power and the innovation in American politics will reside not in some party headquarters on Capitol Hill but in a decentralized network of grass-roots groups, donors and Internet impresarios, all of whom seem to be increasingly entwined with one another. There's peril in this trend -- it would seem to favor millionaires over workers, and ideologues over pragmatists -- but it was probably inevitable. Everywhere else in American life, after all, we see evidence of what the Democratic speechwriter Andrei Cherny, in his 2000 book, ''The Next Deal,'' presciently identified as "the Choice Generation"... Was it really reasonable, then, to expect the same top-down system that has governed American politics since the time of Martin Van Buren to somehow survive the revolution intact? In the end, ACT's contribution was to act as a bridge from the last political moment to the next, hastening the chaotic process of democratization -- even without the capital ''D'' that its founders would have preferred.

But as Mike Tofias put it in an email to me, this is probably wrong:

I agree that the future is in the networks, but I am not sure how you read 2004 and say the party is dead. If anything the rise and fall of ACT and Dean's takeover of the DNC suggests that parties are still the political vehicle of choice. Anything else is probably just a fly-by-night outfit.

In short: Yes, you can create your own 527. Yes, parties will increasingly work in alliance with a decentralized network of independent groups, and the power of those groups could pull the parties further away from the center. No, that doesn't mean parties are going away or will be replaced by independent groups or anything like that. Mike's right -- if parties are outmoded, why did Dean jump from his own group (Democracy for America) to take control of the Democratic Party?

Another problem with Bai's article is the simplistic notion that parties have been "top-down" since Van Buren and are now being "democratized." The Democrats were largely paralyzed by the divide between northern and southern Democrats for decades, and later operated more as a loose coalition of interest groups than anything else. Also, the relatively unified Republican caucus in Congress is largely a creation of Newt Gingrich and only dates back to the late 1980s/early 1990s. Over the long term, the level of control that parties exert over their members has varied for a whole series of reasons.

In the end, it's not at all clear that the advent of the "Choice Generation" is going to reduce "top-down" party influence. If anything, we've seen a trend in the opposite direction, with both parties trying to practice a more parliamentary style of politics in which internally unified parties deliver coordinated messages to the electorate. This is especially true on the Republican side, where independent groups follow the dictates of Karl Rove rather than battling him for control of the GOP. The party lives!

(For more on the Internet politics bubble, see this post, which also includes links to a number of past posts on the subject.)

More attacks on dissent against Sheehan

The smearing of Cindy Sheehan as a traitor continues, as Media Matters documents here and here. Some of the worst offenders:

Michael Barone: "Today, we have many in the press -- not most, I think, but some at least -- who do not want us to win this war and think that we don't deserve to win this war. It's a more critical press."

Frank Gaffney: "It will clearly be the case that enemies of this country, in a global war, of which Iraq is one front, will be emboldened and hardened, even as I think they are by these sorts of indications that we're losing our nerve, that we're being bloodied and that we're going to try to -- or at least some of us -- are going to try to compel the president to give up, that will only bring the threat we currently face, principally overseas, to our shores and, I think, do so in a way that will make the losses we've sustained in Iraq pale by comparison.

Chattanooga Times Free Press: "[I]t is unfortunate that Mrs. Sheehan's sadness now has caused her to be used as a 'front' and a personal 'symbol' by a variety of political anti-Bush and anti-war activists who are seeking to undermine the American military effort to establish freedom and defeat terrorism in Iraq and throughout the world... It is saddening that Mrs. Sheehan has lost a son. It is saddening that Mrs. Sheehan's demonstration has sought to undermine the purpose of his service in a way that surely encourages his murderers."

David Horowitz: "Cindy Sheehan is the most prominent symbol and chief mouthpiece of a psychological warfare campaign against her own country in time of war that can only benefit its enemies on the field of battle. It is one thing to criticize a war policy... She has made herself a willing tool of anti-American forces in this country that want America to lose the war in Iraq and the war on terror generally... She has betrayed his sacrifice and embraced his enemies."

Charles Krauthammer reportedly also said that Sheehan is "hurting our troops and endangering our troops," and said that her statements "have to be attacked because they are libeling America, endangering America, and they are untrue from beginning to end." According to Media Matters, when this claim was questioned by Juan Williams, Krauthammer said, "You don't think it's encouraging, you don't think it's going to encourage Iraqis who are attacking us, particularly this kind of stuff about American imperialism?"

What's especially sad is that this sort of anti-democratic smear campaign is par for the course since 2001, as I documented on Spinsanity. Henry Farrell of Crooked Timber has compiled an updated list of commentators claiming that the left is rooting for the other side in Iraq or the war on terror.

The battle of grieving parents over Iraq

The Wall Street Journal ran the inevitable op-ed from a grieving parent whose child was killed in Iraq, which begins, "I lost a son in Iraq and Cindy Sheehan does not speak for me."

This was inevitable because Sheehan and others like her are being treated like martyrs. Maureen Dowd wrote that "the moral authority of parents who bury children killed in Iraq is absolute." No, it's not. As horrible as losing a child is, parents whose children have died in Iraq are citizens just like the rest of us. (To his credit, the author of the Journal op-ed recognizes this fact, and disavows Dowd's claim.)

Surprisingly enough, Ana Marie Cox put it best on Wonkette:

Over at The Corner, Kate O'Beirne finally suggests what we suppose is inevitable, that anti-war grieving mother Cindy Sheehan should be countered with pro-war grieving mothers: "Surely a fair number of such family members are in Texas? Let's hear from them. . ."

Is that what the debate has come to? Which side can corral the saddest crop of widows, parents, and orphans? Call it a harms race. Better: an ache-off. We hope the grimly absurd image of two competing camps of mourners illustrates why it is we've been somewhat reluctant to weigh in on Sheehan's cause: Grief can pull a person in any direction, and whatever "moral authority" it imbues, we can't claim that Sheehan has it and those mothers who still support the war don't. The Bush administration knows all about exploiting tragedy for its own causes, including re-election. Whatever arguments there are against the war in Iraq, let's not make "I have more despairing mothers on my side" one of them. The only way to win a grief contest is for more people to die.

Amen. Let's have a real debate over the war, not an "ache-off."

WSJ agitprop on CBO report

In an editorial today (subscription required), our friends at the Wall Street Journal make a series of mendacious claims about the new CBO report, which notes a surge in revenue in this fiscal year:

[T]his windfall means that tax revenue as a share of the economy is climbing back to normal levels. As the nearby chart shows, at 17.5% of GDP this year, Uncle Sam's tax take is close to the 17.9% postwar average. And CBO estimates that as the economy continues to grow, the tax take will slowly rise throughout this decade to 17.8%.

This is because more Americans are thrown into higher tax brackets as their incomes rise. Economists call this "real bracket creep," and what it means is that most taxpayers will see their tax burdens gradually rise even under the lower Bush rates of 2003. The burden will be that much higher still if the lower Bush rates are allowed to expire after 2008 (on dividends and capital gains) and 2010 (on income taxes).

The CBO estimates above are also featured in this graphic, which accompanied the editorial:

But that graphic cuts off at 2010, and the CBO estimates it presents do not include the costs of extending the tax cuts that expire in 2008 and 2010. Yet the Journal writes that "The burden will be that much higher still if the lower Bush rates are allowed to expire after 2008 (on dividends and capital gains) and 2010 (on income taxes)" -- a statement that implies that the actual tax burden would be higher than the CBO estimates, rather than lower as will actually be the case.

This is obvious when you look at the CBO report, which lays out the costs of extending the expiring tax cuts and reforming the alternative minimum tax cut. If you reduce projected revenues accordingly (taking into account increased debt service), the Journal's chart looks strikingly optimistic:

In fact, revenue would decline back below 17 percent of GDP -- a level that, before Bush, hadn't been reached since the Eisenhower administration (PDF).

The WSJ continues:

A second fact you won't see in many other newspapers is that the federal budget deficit has also declined to close to its modern average. CBO says the deficit will fall to 2.7% of national output in the fiscal year that ends at the end of next month. It is expected to continue to fall to 2.4% of GDP next year and 2.0% in 2010, even if the Bush tax rates stay in place.

But the situation worsens dramatically over time if AMT reform and tax cut extensions are enacted, as the Journal's own reporters showed (subscription required) -- take a look at the graphic that ran with their story:

You can see that the Journal's 2010 date is cherrypicked -- the effects of extending President Bush's tax cuts are modest in that year, but explode over the next five.

Once again, the lesson here is simple: never trust the Wall Street Journal editorial page.

(Also see my blog posts and Spinsanity's articles on the WSJ editorial page.)

Murdoch and Hillary: Strange bedfellows?

Here's David Carr on favorable coverage of Hillary Clinton by the New York Post:

Both sides could benefit from the thaw. The News Corporation is in the midst of a counteroffensive against a change in the Nielsen ratings that it says undercounts minorities, and that, oh, by the way, could cripple its local stations...

Mr. Murdoch has a history of backing and engaging political winners, most notably Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain... Because he has no romanticism for lost causes, The Post apparently will not try to maim Mrs. Clinton in a Senate race with Ms. Pirro that is beginning to seem over before it has begun. They still whack Ms. Clinton occasionally, but it is more on general principle - they do it to stay in shape - and not with the same glee as in the past.

Over the long haul, the Murdoch-Clinton detente cannot last. In its phenomenal success, Fox News has used institutional enmity of the Clintons as one of its guiding principals [sic]. But in the meantime, the fight between Ms. Pirro and Mrs. Clinton will help ratings and circulation numbers, and the prospect of a Clinton presidential candidacy will agitate and engage the News Corporation's core audiences.

"Fox News and The Post need Hillary to run for Senate and president," said James Carville, a political consultant who worked in the Clinton White House. "There is only one politician in America that gets people to watch television for or buy a newspaper, and that's her. No one else comes close."

I don't buy Carr's argument that Rupert Murdoch needs Hillary Clinton's help in Washington -- she's a powerless Democrat like everyone else in her caucus -- but the other two possibilities are intriguing:
(1) Murdoch privately believes Clinton might actually win the presidency in 2008 and wants to hedge his bets;
(2) The profit incentives of a Hillary presidential candidacy are so great that News Corp. will hold its fire until after she wins the nomination. Then, of course, Fox will put Arkansas Whitewater Obsessives for Truth on the air for six months straight.

#2 might also be important in explaining the positive coverage she's (shockingly) received thus far from the political press as a whole. Yet another explanation is that Republicans are being nice to her (maybe because they privately want her to win the Democratic nomination?), which cues reporters to treat her better.

More ideas welcome in comments...

Democrats appease activists on Roberts

After conceding that Roberts is going to get confirmed, Democrats were accused of rolling over by lefty interest groups, so they now have to run around squawking for the benefit of NARAL et al:

Major liberal groups accused Democratic senators yesterday of showing too little stomach for opposing John G. Roberts Jr.'s Supreme Court nomination, saying newly released documents indicate he is much more conservative than many people first thought.

The response was quick and pointed, as two key senators unleashed their sharpest criticisms yet of Roberts and sought to assure activists that the battle is far from over.

AP: "$50 laptop sale sets off violent stampede"

Via Wonkette, this AP story is almost literally unbelievable:

A rush to purchase $50 used laptops turned into a violent stampede Tuesday, with people getting thrown to the pavement, beaten with a folding chair and nearly driven over. One woman went so far as to wet herself rather than surrender her place in line.

Clearly there's an undersupply of cheap computers out there. Just go to your local university town and read the classifieds...

Dem opposition to Roberts collapsing

Looks like I was right -- this is not a winnable fight for the Democrats:

Democrats have decided that unless there is an unexpected development in the weeks ahead, they will not launch a major fight to block the Supreme Court nomination of John G. Roberts Jr., according to legislators, Senate aides and party strategists.

In a series of interviews in recent days, more than a dozen Democratic senators and aides who are intimately involved in deliberations about strategy said that they see no evidence that most Democratic senators are prepared to expend political capital in what is widely seen as a futile effort to derail the nomination.

DeLay vs DeLay

Tom DeLay quoted in the Boston Globe (10/9/98) speaking about Bill Clinton:

"I believe that this nation sits at a crossroads. One direction points to the higher road of the rule of law... Now, the other road is the path of least resistance. This is where we start making exceptions to our laws based on poll numbers and spin control. This is when we pitch the law completely overboard when the mood fits us."

Tom DeLay arguing against judicial review on the Justice Sunday telecast two days ago:

Mr. DeLay, the highest ranking of six Republican congressmen who participated, questioned the Supreme Court's power to strike down federal laws it deemed unconstitutional.

The Constitution assigned Congress the power to make laws and limited the federal courts to applying and interpreting those laws, Mr. DeLay said, but "this fact, understood by every high school civics student, has been forgotten in recent decades by too many members of the American judiciary, including, most notably, the United States Supreme Court itself."

As evidence, he and others cited Supreme Court decisions about abortion, sodomy, obscenity and government support for religion. "That's not judicial independence," Mr. DeLay said. "That's judicial supremacy, judicial autocracy."

And, of course, let's not forget the ethics troubles of Mr. Rule of Law, nor DeLay's statement that he pursued impeachment because Bill Clinton didn't share his "Biblical worldview."

What are Tom Curry and Bob Brigham talking about?

The Internet politics bubble continues. Tom Curry has a story on MSNBC.com that opens with this lead:

Democratic bloggers say they are beginning to transform the way political campaigns are run, pointing to their recent success in raising more than $550,000 for Democratic congressional candidate Paul Hackett, a Marine veteran of the Iraq war, who came within 4,000 votes of defeating Republican Jean Schmidt two weeks ago in a special election in a heavily Republican district in Ohio.

The work of such bloggers as Bob Brigham of Swingstateproject.com points toward a day when the traditional campaign -- tailored by Washington-based consultants, centered on 30-second TV ads, with fund-raising driven by Washington-based party committees -- might become obsolete.

But as Holly Martin points out on Wonkette, "campaigns require, you know, knowledge and shit." As Curry himself points out, "To win the open seat in Iowa's first congressional district next year, for example, one needs to know very place-specific details." Consultants, TV ads and local knowledge are not going away. That's know-nothing hype of the sort we saw during the Internet bubble in business. The lefty blog infrastructure is going to help liberal candidates raise more money, but it's not going to change politics as we know it.

Part of Curry's article profiles Bob Brigham of the Swing State Project:

On Monday, Brigham and his allies are launching a new political action committee (PAC) called "Leave No District Behind.”

Brigham wants the Democrats to field House candidates in every congressional district, instead of allowing dozens of districts to go uncontested as they did in last year’s campaign.

He reckons that $100,000 invested in each of the uncontested House districts would at least give the Democrats a candidate and a minimal staff.

His rationale is that Republicans in uncompetitive races were able to campaign for their colleagues rather than staying home to defend their own turf. But why divert so much time and effort into unwinnable races? It's completely idiotic.

The problem is that lefty bloggers think the Howard Dean/Paul Hackett phenomena are replicable, and they're not. No one wants to work for a loser -- or give one money. And a few hundred thousand dollars in Internet contributions does not make most uncompetitive districts winnable. Those are cold, hard facts. How much money will Bob Brigham waste before he comes to terms with them?

(For past posts on the Internet politics bubble, see here, here, here, and here.)

Steve Forbes spouts supply side nonsense

The politically convenient but intellectually unsupportable claim that tax cuts increase revenue will not go away. Today, Steve Forbes follows President Bush's example in the Wall Street Journal (subscription required):

How would a flat tax do this? What so many "experts" can't grasp is that taxes are not only a means of raising revenue for governments but also a price and a burden. The tax you pay on income is the price you pay for working; the tax on profits is the price you pay for being successful, and the levy on capital gains is the price you pay for taking risks that work out. When you lower the price of good things, such as productive work, success and risktaking, you get more of them. The flat tax does that dramatically.

Experience demonstrates time and time again -- the Harding-Coolidge tax cuts of the 1920s, the Kennedy cuts of the '60s, the Reagan cuts of the '80s and the Bush reductions of 2003 -- that lower tax rates lead to more economic activity, which leads to more government revenue.

(If you're interested, Michael Kinsley annihilates takes some satisfying potshots at Forbes' plan in the Washington Post.)

Democracy vs. spending restraint

The New York Times reports on the division over spending among conservatives, who are in the process of eating their young in Colorado and elsewhere for not cutting spending enough. The solution they're proposing? Constitutional limits at the state level:

Conservative frustration with government growth increased with President Bush's first term, which added more than $1 trillion to the national debt. Conservatives once talked of electing their own; they now talk of electing their own and tying their hands.

Stop us before we spend again? "Yes, that's really it," said Mr. [Dick] Armey, who argues that the pressures to spend, reinforced by lobbyists and contributors, can overwhelm even the firmest conservatives.

In Ohio, the secretary of state, J. Kenneth Blackwell, is gathering signatures for a ballot initiative this fall. A Republican running for governor next year, Mr. Blackwell readily concedes that the increased spending over the past decade has come with Republicans controlling both the legislature and governor's mansion.

"The G.O.P. has given the state the two largest tax increases in state history," he said. "You need fiscal architecture in the Constitution that establishes guardrails."

Armey blames the problem on lobbyists and contributors, but who's missing from that list? Voters! Republicans refuse to consider the possibility that voters sometimes really do want more spending on education, health care, police, prisons, roads, etc. (There must be a reason that Republicans keep saying they're going to cut government and then failing to do it.) And if voters do want more spending, shouldn't they get it? After all, we live in a democracy. It's one thing to put a balanced budget requirement in a state constitution, where it is harder to amend, but why should the level of government spending be put outside the realm of year-to-year democratic choice? I'm sorry that Republican politicians have such a hard time following the dictates of Grover Norquist, but that doesn't make constitutional spending limits good public policy.

Lowered expectations in Iraq

Is the Bush administration rejoining the reality-based community?

The Bush administration is significantly lowering expectations of what can be achieved in Iraq, recognizing that the United States will have to settle for far less progress than originally envisioned during the transition due to end in four months, according to U.S. officials in Washington and Baghdad.

The United States no longer expects to see a model new democracy, a self-supporting oil industry or a society in which the majority of people are free from serious security or economic challenges, U.S. officials say.

"What we expected to achieve was never realistic given the timetable or what unfolded on the ground," said a senior official involved in policy since the 2003 invasion. "We are in a process of absorbing the factors of the situation we're in and shedding the unreality that dominated at the beginning."

"Never realistic"? "Unreality"? Who are these people, and what did they do with our government?

Wry reporter humor

From a New York Times story on the deluxe accomodations in some military bases in Iraq:

"We had no idea conditions were going to be this great!" said Lieutenant Deaton, 25, the public affairs officer of the 256th Brigade Combat Team and an ambassador of the exclamation mark. "My first thought was, oh my God! This is good!"

The phrase "ambassador of the exclamation mark" is a great little commentary on Deaton's email punctuation style and the happy-happy mantras of the military PR flack. Love it.

Misleading ads can backfire

One more comment on the NARAL ad against John Roberts that was pulled down this week.

To me, this seems like a classic example of a pathology of the political ad business -- the desire to use paid advertisements to generate media attention. Consultants intentionally overstate their case in ads so that they will create controversy, figuring that drawing more attention to the ad will ultimately hurt the other side more than their own. But it's strategically stupid, in my opinion, because you run the risk of going too far and damaging your credibility and that of your allies, as NARAL has done.

I learned this the hard way in 2000 when I was working for Ed Bernstein in the Nevada Senate race. A Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee ad criticizing our opponent, John Ensign, needlessly overstated his position on abortion, and Republicans pushed back, labeling Bernstein as a liar, which led to a death spiral for our campaign in the polls. You can see a truth watch segment on the DSCC ad that was aired by a Las Vegas TV station here.

The AP scorches GOP over Tobin

Here's a justifiably scathing piece from the AP over the GOP's payment of James Tobin's legal bills even as it denounces voter fraud and suppression:

The Republican Party says it still has a zero-tolerance policy for tampering with voters even as it pays the legal bills for a former Bush campaign official charged with conspiring to thwart Democrats from voting in New Hampshire.

James Tobin, the president's 2004 campaign chairman for New England, is charged in New Hampshire federal court with four felonies accusing him of conspiring with a state GOP official and a GOP consultant in Virginia to jam Democratic and labor union get-out-the-vote phone banks in November 2002.

The Republican National Committee already has spent more than $722,000 to provide Tobin, who has pleaded innocent, a team of lawyers from the high-powered Washington law firm of Williams & Connolly.

..."The object of the conspiracy was to deprive inhabitants of New Hampshire and more particularly qualified voters ... of their federally secured right to vote," states the latest indictment issued by a federal grand jury on May 18.

The Republican Party has repeatedly and pointedly disavowed any tactics aimed at keeping citizens from voting since allegations of voter suppression surfaced during the Florida recount in 2000 that tipped the presidential race to Bush.

Correlation vs. causation: Family dining edition

The New York Times makes a classic error, portraying the correlation between eating together as a family and various positive outcomes as a causal relationship:

The family dinner table, meanwhile, has mostly managed to retain something of a sanctified aura - the last meeting ground left in a world of working parents, relentless afterschool activities and an array of solitary technological amusements.

Science backs tradition: numerous research studies have shown that eating together as a family does everything from raise test scores to reduce the risk of behavioral problems, drug addiction and depression. One recent University of Michigan study found the communal dinner had more influence on a child's development than church-going or studying.

It's more likely, of course, that eating together is a proxy for various unmeasured characteristics of the family -- unless someone wants to claim that the meal itself is driving all of those factors? I doubt it.

Down in the polls, Bush brings back 9/11

Ever since the march toward war in Iraq began, 9/11 has always been the administration's hole card. They pull it out every time they get in trouble. It makes sense politically given that Bush's approval rating was boosted to ridiculous levels by 9/11, and has been rapidly declining ever since. But it's offensive given that that there is no evidence of any link between Iraq and 9/11.

That's why I'm not surprised to see that the administration, with its low approval ratings and unpopular war, is going to make a big deal about 9/11 on the fourth anniversary of the attacks:

The Pentagon will hold a massive march and country music concert to mark the fourth anniversary of 9/11, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said in an unusual announcement tucked into an Iraq war briefing yesterday.

"This year the Department of Defense will initiate an America Supports You Freedom Walk," Rumsfeld said, adding that the march would remind people of "the sacrifices of this generation and of each previous generation."

...Word of the event startled some observers. "I've never heard of such a thing," said John Pike, who has been a defense analyst in Washington for 25 years and runs GlobalSecurity.org.

The news also reignited debate and anger over linking Sept. 11 with the war in Iraq.

"That piece of it is disturbing since we all know now there was no connection," said Paul Rieckhoff, an Iraq veteran who heads Operation Truth, an anti-administration military booster.

Rieckhoff suggested the event was an ill-conceived publicity stunt. "I think it's clear that their public opinion polls are in the toilet," he said.

Rumsfeld's walk had some relatives of 9/11 victims fuming.

"How about telling Mr. Rumsfeld to leave the memories of Sept. 11 victims to the families?" said Monica Gabrielle, who lost her husband in the attacks.

What will the Bush administration do when 9/11 stops bailing them out? For better or worse, the public is turning against this administration and the war in Iraq, and a "Freedom Walk" isn't going to change that.

NARAL pulls Roberts ad

According to the Associated Press, NARAL is withdrawing its misleading and controversial ad attacking John Roberts -- hallelujah:

After a week of protests by conservatives, an abortion-rights group said Thursday night it is withdrawing a television advertisement linking Supreme Court nominee John Roberts to violent anti-abortion activists.

"We regret that many people have misconstrued our recent advertisement about Mr. Roberts' record," said Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America.

"Unfortunately, the debate over that advertisement has become a distraction from the serious discussion we hoped to have with the American public," she said in a letter Thursday to Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., who had urged the group to withdraw the ad.

The attack machine versus Cindy Sheehan

The conservative attack machine is starting to turn up the heat against Cindy Sheehan, the mother who has turned her son's death in Iraq into a crusade against the war. They know that her vigil outside President Bush's Texas ranch could become a potent anti-war symbol if she isn't smeared into submission first.

Enter (surprise!) Matt Drudge, who posted an article claiming Sheehan had "dramatically changed her account" about a private meeting with Bush in 2004. But as Media Matters and Salon's Eric Boehlert have pointed out, Drudge was quoting the original article out of context; Sheehan had actually told the reporter that she opposed the war, but had decided not to express those feelings to Bush at the time. Nonetheless, the claim bounced around right-wing blogs before being picked up on two different Fox News shows.

Now, conservative pundits are trying to silence Sheehan with anti-democratic accusations that she is betraying her country. Here's Bill O'Reilly:

I think Mrs. Sheehan bears some responsibility for this [publicity] and also for the responsibility for the other American families who lost sons and daughters in Iraq who feel this kind of behavior borders on treasonous.

A writer in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution went even further, publishing a shameful op-ed devoted entirely to smearing Sheehan as a traitor:

The insurgents were Casey's enemy. The president of the United States is his mother's. What is wrong with this picture? Would he be proud of her near-treasonous actions? Hardly.

This woman is a representative example of typical, illogical anti-war activists. She thinks Bush, not the terrorists, killed her son. She supports those who killed Casey by wanting to pull out and let them kill more innocent people, unhindered. The lady is on the wrong team. She's disgraceful.

If Sheehan wants to continue to make a fool out of herself, I suppose that is her business as a free American. Her son and our brave troops have given her even the right to orderly protest against the very actions providing the freedom that allows her to speak out.

My suggestion to her, however, is that she think about the lives of those still in Iraq. Undermining public support for our efforts in Iraq helps the enemy, her son's murderers. They love people like her, but hate those like her heroic son.

I will repeat the point I made about the NARAL ad attacking John Roberts: Criticizing the war in Iraq doesn't mean you support the insurgents, and filing a brief in a court case doesn't mean you endorse the defendant's actions. In a democracy governed by laws, people have a right to speak their mind freely, and an obligation to speak up for the correct application of the law to even the most loathsome criminal. We must not lose sight of those principles.

Update 8/12: I can't resist linking to this item on Michelle Malkin's hypocrisy in purporting to speak for Sheehan's dead son.

Update 8/26: It's worth noting that the New York Times corrected a story saying Bill O'Reilly called Sheehan treasonous. He did not say so directly. But he did suggest as much in the quote presented above -- O'Reilly's statement that Sheehan "bears... responsibility" for the perception of her actions as treasonous implies that he endorses such a view.

Pirro: Gone in 32 seconds?

Via Wonkette, Crooks and Liars has posted a devastating Democratic ad that mocks Jeanine Pirro's 32-second pause during her announcement speech. This race may be over before it begins...

More on NARAL ad

Following up on my post from yesterday, the NARAL ad against John Roberts is already drawing criticism from prominent NARAL allies:

Within the larger liberal coalition of which Naral is a part, there was considerable uneasiness about the advertisement, although leaders of other groups generally refused to speak on the record. One who did, Frances Kissling, the longtime president of Catholics for a Free Choice, said she was "deeply upset and offended" by the advertisement, which she called "far too intemperate and far too personal."

Ms. Kissling, who initiated the conversation with a reporter, said the ad "does step over the line into the kind of personal character attack we shouldn't be engaging in."

She added: "As a pro-choice person, I don't like being placed on the defensive by my leaders. Naral should pull it and move on."

Walter Dellinger, a former acting solicitor general in the Clinton administration and longtime Naral supporter, sent a letter on Wednesday to the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and its ranking Democrat, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, respectively. Mr. Dellinger said he had disagreed with Mr. Roberts's argument in the Bray case but considered it unfair to give "the impression that Roberts is somehow associated with clinic bombers." He added that "it would be regrettable if the only refutation of these assertions about Roberts came from groups opposed to abortion rights."

NARAL has also issued a lengthy rebuttal to the Factcheck.org analysis of the ad. I'm not familiar with some of the legal points in dispute, but NARAL certainly does not refute Factcheck's claim that the thrust of the ad is misleading.

The decline in Bush approval is real

Via Mickey Kaus, Mark Blumenthal, aka the Mystery Pollster, has a great post showing that the decline in President Bush's approval numbers during 2005 shows up in almost every major national poll. It is not an artifact of any one poll, as some have claimed.

The Times rakes Jeanine Pirro over the coals

Though she's not well known statewide, Jeanine Pirro could potentially make Hillary Clinton work a little bit in her Senate re-election race. In principle, Pirro fits the perfect profile for a Hillary opponent -- a moderate, pro-choice woman. This allows her to portray Hillary as too liberal and neutralizes any advantage Clinton might gain with women, especially on the choice issue. Plus she has the pledge issue on her side and could raise millions from direct mail if the race is close.

But the problem is that Pirro is not necessarily as a very strong candidate. That has set the initial storyline for the press, as we saw today in the New York Times story on her announcement, which -- as Ian McDonald pointed out to me -- contains a couple of jabs at Pirro for being unprepared and less than forthcoming. Check out this lead:

Decrying Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton's "empty promises," Jeanine F. Pirro got her 2006 Senate campaign off to a fiery but rocky start today, broadly attacking Mrs. Clinton in a speech but struggling with questions about abortion, taxes, Iraq and her husband.

The NYT reporter also timed a pause in the middle of the speech when Pirro was missing a page in her text - yikes:

Ms. Pirro appeared poised during her first interaction with reporters today, even during a 32-second pause, mid-speech, as she searched for a page of text. "Could I have Page 10?" she asked an aide, Michael McKeon, who provided the text and said later that she had been writing until the last minute and left that page in another room.

Pirro is also getting bad press for flip-flopping on past issues and dodging questions, particularly about her husband, who apparently has a checkered past. Not a good start. If this becomes the storyline -- rather than critical coverage of Hillary -- Pirro has no chance.

Frist supports '08 rival Allen

A brief note on the strange customs of legislator-to-legislator campaign donations.

Peter Hardin has an article on Senator George Allen's fundraising for his 2006 re-election campaign. Allen already has more than $5 million in the bank -- and no opponent. That means that, like Hillary Clinton, he is likely to have millions of dollars left over that he can plough into his 2008 presidential campaign.

So here's the puzzle. Allen is likely to run for president. Bill Frist, the Senate majority leader, is likely to do so as well. Yet Frist's PAC gave Allen $10,000 -- money that Allen may use in the primaries against Frist! Why? My guess is that this is some sort of mutual back-scratching in which Frist repays Allen for heading the National Republican Senatorial Committee last cycle.

(It's also worth noting that Allen's report show signs of potential early 2008 support from top conservatives, including donors such as former Colorado Senate candidate Peter Coors of Colorado, Jerry Falwell's wife, former White House operative Mary Matalin and former independent counsel Ken Starr. For more on Allen, see my previous posts about him.)

"He said"/"she said" goes op-ed

Via Kevin Drum, here's an excellent post from my friend Chris Mooney on the way USA Today has taken the awful "he said"/"she said" approach to journalism (which we denounce in ATPS) and applied it to op-eds:

Just because your editorial page takes a stance in favor of evolution, that doesn't mean you have to publish nonsense as a rejoinder. But USA Today just did that today with this op-ed, from a Utah Republican (not a scientist), which has the gall to claim: "There is zero scientific fossil evidence that demonstrates organic evolutionary linkage between primates and man." Absolutely outrageous...

[W]hile the op-ed page may be the place for airing a range of opinions, it is emphatically not the place for the airing of falsehoods and misinformation. This is a classic example of "balance" run amuck.

Indeed. Drum notes the ugly implications of this kind of pseudo-journalism:

When USA Today runs an article on September 26th about the 100th anniversary of the Theory of Relativity, as I hope they do, will they feel obligated to print a rebuttal from one of the many crackpots on the web who say that Einstein was wrong? I suspect not. Why then, do they feel the same need with evolution, which, if anything, rests on a more solid evidentiary foundation than relativity?

It's a mystery. Perhaps in the future, instead of reporting on actual science, USA Today will simply take a poll and publish one of its cute graphics telling us what the majority of the citizenry believes. Then we can teach that in our public schools instead of just parroting the politically correct line from the liberal elites in our scientific establishment. Happy days!

The self-absorption of Charles Schumer

According to the New York Times, Senate Judiciary chairman Arlen Specter wrote a letter to Supreme Court nominee John Roberts that "raises pointed questions about two recent court decisions invalidating legislation Congress passed under its authority to regulate interstate commerce."

Chuck Schumer's reaction? To act like he made up the idea, and refer to himself in the third person: "'Arlen Specter sounds exactly like Chuck Schumer,' said Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York and a member of the Judiciary Committee."

Or as The Hotline headlined the item, "Why Everything In Life Points To Chuck Schumer."

NARAL tries to stir up Roberts fight

Let the interest group hysteria begin!

NARAL, playing the role of the middle school crowd that taunts kids into fighting each other, has released a nasty ad that "accuses Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr. of siding with violent extremists and a convicted clinic bomber while serving in the solicitor general's office," as the Washington Post put it.

After showing a woman injured in a bombing of an abortion clinic, the ad states that "Supreme Court nominee John Roberts filed court briefs supporting violent fringe groups and a convicted clinic bomber," with the announcer later adding, "America can't afford a justice whose ideology leads him to excuse violence against other Americans."

I have no opinion right now on the argument Roberts made to the Court -- I'm not familiar with it, and I'm not a lawyer. But the implications of NARAL's attack are troubling. Our society is based on the rule of law. That means that if a statute is being applied incorrectly, it is wrong to enforce no matter how loathsome the defendant may be. Would NARAL have the government cease to file amicus briefs on behalf of violent criminal defendants? And remember, Roberts was working for the government at the time. The brief he filed may or may not reflect his personal views.

Here's the context the ad omits (from the Post):

The case came during a period of widespread blockades of abortion clinics, including in the Washington suburbs, and involved figures convicted of anti-clinic violence. The issue before the court in Bray v. Alexandria Women's Health Clinic , however, focused more narrowly on whether the anti-discriminatory Ku Klux Klan Act could be applied against abortion protesters.

In his oral argument before the court, Roberts said, according to a transcript of the proceedings, "The United States appears in this case not to defend petitioners' tortious conduct, but to defend the proper interpretation" of the statute.

Roberts's allies said his views on violence were clear from a 1986 White House memo, endorsed by Roberts when he served in the White House counsel's office during the Reagan administration, which said violent abortion protesters should not receive special consideration for presidential pardons. "No matter how lofty or sincerely held the goal, those who resort to violence to achieve it are criminals," the memo said.

And of course, even though the ad clearly implies Roberts was "supporting" the clinic bombers and "excuse[d]" their actions, NARAL denied this to the Post, with their president saying that "We're not suggesting that Mr. Roberts condones clinic violence."

Right.

The irony is that this is the same sort of black-or-white logic that liberals denounce when the shoe is on the other foot. Criticizing the execution of the war on terror doesn't mean you support Osama bin Laden. And filing a brief against the application of a law to violent anti-abortion protestors doesn't mean you support their actions. If we can't make these sorts of elementary logical distinctions, our democracy is doomed.

Update 8/9: Here's FactCheck.org on the ad:

[T]he ad misleads when it says Roberts supported a clinic bomber. It is true that Roberts sided with the bomber and many other defendants in a civil case, but the case didn't deal with bombing at all. Roberts argued that abortion clinics who brought the suit had no right [to] use an 1871 federal anti-discrimination statute against anti-abortion protesters who tried to blockade clinics. Eventually a 6-3 majority of the Supreme Court agreed, too. Roberts argued that blockades were already illegal under state law.

The images used in the ad are especially misleading. The pictures are of a clinic bombing that happened nearly seven years after Roberts signed the legal brief in question.

Andy Kindler saves the world

If you haven't heard about him before, you should know about Andy Kindler, a comic the New York Times profiled last week who is near-legendary in the industry for mocking his colleagues:

Among those things in past years have been a joke-by-joke deconstruction of a Robin Williams HBO special and an offer of $1 million to anyone who could provide "footage of Whoopi Goldberg being humorous."

But Mr. Kindler's favorite target by far each year is Jay Leno, whose dominance of the late-night ratings at the expense of David Letterman he sees as a triumph of mediocrity over true comedy genius.

This year he focused on Mr. Leno's role in the Michael Jackson trial. "The judge put a gag order on Jay Leno," he told the crowd. "If I knew that was possible, I would have spent the last 10 years down at the courthouse."

Needless to say, no matter how important such a booking may be to a comedian's career, Mr. Kindler has never been on the "Tonight" show, and he said he wouldn't accept an invitation if he received one. (A "Tonight" spokeswoman did not respond to messages asking for comment.)

Nor is he eager for more sitcom work. He calls himself a fan of the format itself and acknowledges that well-written sitcoms like "Everybody Loves Raymond" do occasionally make it onto the air. But he phrased his thoughts on the current state of television comedy in the form of a hypothetical question: "Should I go out for a guest role on 'Will & Grace' or should I hang myself? It's a dilemma."

Ben Fritz, my friend and former Spinsanity co-editor, worked with Kindler on a pilot for AMC recently, and (in my biased opinion) it was extremely funny. What's strange is that even though celebrity snark is popular on blogs, it's rare on TV outside of the Daily Show or late-night talk show monologues because people are so scared to make enemies. Kindler is fearless in his mockery (see his diatribes against Leno above), yet he's likable while he does it -- a hard combination to pull off. So tell your favorite cable channel to put him on the air!

PS If I haven't mentioned it recently, Ben, who writes for Variety, also co-edits a satirical entertainment news website called Dateline Hollywood that is consistently more clever than The Onion (now sadly moribund). One of their pieces just got picked up on Gawker today.

The persecution complex of the right

Matthew Yglesias makes an apt point on Tapped last week about the new right-wing comic book series about a dystopian future of "ultra-liberalism," which is part of a long series of persecution fantasies coming from the right:

It's rather odd to see persecution fantasies coming from the right at a moment when Republicans control the House of Representatives, the Senate, the Executive Branch, the judiciary, most statehouses, and most state legislatures. And yet a right-wing persecution complex is evident to even a casual consumer of right-wing media. To hear the conservative blogs, magazines, and radio shows tell it, despite total conservative domination of the political system a coalition of liberal reporters, academics, and Hollywood stars manage to be the real governing force in America.

We're asked by various individuals to believe that this conspiracy is so vast that it improbably includes the entirety of the American defense, intelligence, and foreign-policy apparatus as well as (needless to say) a judiciary whose membership was overwhelmingly appointed by Republicans.

And yet, given how crazy this notion is, it's not totally crazy. Biomedical research keeps moving forward, as do gay rights. The government is getting bigger, not smaller. Endless screaming has yet to lead to invasions of even half the countries conservatives want to see overthrown. The problem, however, isn't that a liberal conspiracy is keeping the right down. The problem is that the right's agenda is patently unrealistic. The United States lacks the capability to implement conservatives' favored national-security agenda. Nobody has any idea how to stem America's slow-but-steady evolution toward greater tolerance of gays and lesbians. And the government is big primarily because it provides services people value. Most of all, the elites who run institutional conservative politics couldn't care less about accomplishing anything on this agenda -- they're too busy staying in power and cashing in on K Street.

Ironically, the very people Liberality for All is looking to as America's saviors are the essence of the problem. The conservative rank-and-file is being exceedingly ill-served by FOX News and right-wing talk radio. These are the outlets that ought to be sounding the alarm about the Republican Party's abandonment of conservatism. Instead, they've decided to join in the party and become GOP propaganda outlets rather than bastions of ideological conservatism. Meanwhile, they seek constantly to entrench the persecution complex ever more deeply in the minds of their followers in order to allow their own betrayal to escape scrutiny.

Rush Limbaugh is a master at this game. He blames liberals for every constraint preventing the conservative wishlist from being implemented. It's a monocausal theory of history -- Karl Marx would be proud. And now liberals are starting to blame their defeats on conservative conspiracies. Everyone's a victim, apparently, in 21st century politics.

No solid evidence on Ohio fraud allegations

Kevin Drum flags Matt Taibbi overpromising and underdelivering on his allegations of vote fraud in Ohio. No surprise there. The Democrats even conceded that there was no evidence of fraud when releasing their report on irregularities in Ohio (which does show that we to improve access to the polls so that people don't have to wait in line for hours).

More importantly, Walter Mebane, a respected political scientist at Cornell who consulted on the DNC report, told the Washington Post that it is "highly unlikely" that Kerry would have won Ohio no matter what:

Walter R. Mebane Jr., a professor of government at Cornell University and member of the task force, said Ohio suffered from a "gross administrative failure" on Election Day. But he later said there was no "support whatsoever for the claim that there was a large-scale misallocation of vote from [Democratic nominee John F.] Kerry to [President] Bush in Ohio" and said it is highly unlikely Kerry would have won the state in any case.

...Mebane stopped short of charging that Republicans had deliberately set out to frustrate Democratic voters. He said the scope of the study could not determine whether there was any partisan intent and noted that local election boards, which determine the distribution of voting machines, are bipartisan.

Barring more solid evidence, it's time to put this conspiracy theory to bed.

Are we in the midst of a major social revival?

Writing in the New York Times today, David Brooks notes that a series of social indicators that are all moving in a positive direction:

The decline in family violence is part of a whole web of positive, mutually reinforcing social trends. To put it in old-fashioned terms, America is becoming more virtuous. Americans today hurt each other less than they did 13 years ago. They are more likely to resist selfish and shortsighted impulses. They are leading more responsible, more organized lives. A result is an improvement in social order across a range of behaviors...

In short, many of the indicators of social breakdown, which shot upward in the late 1960's and 1970's, and which plateaued at high levels in the 1980's, have been declining since the early 1990's.

I always thought it would be dramatic to live through a moral revival. Great leaders would emerge. There would be important books, speeches, marches and crusades. We're in the middle of a moral revival now, and there has been very little of that. This revival has been a bottom-up, prosaic, un-self-conscious one, led by normal parents, normal neighbors and normal community activists.

Is this the post-Information Age social revival that Robert Putnam and Francis Fukuyama predicted? Though many people took issue with Putnam's pessisism in his original "Bowling Alone" article, it's less well known that he believes a major social revival is likely to occur as outdated social arrangements are replaced with more effective ones.

Here's an excerpt from the background statement to the Saguaro Seminar, an effort to promote such a revival that Putnam co-chaired at Harvard (which led to the book Better Together):

History further tells us that we have the ability to bolster our civic connectedness. One hundred years ago, in 1897, the United States faced similar circumstances. Americans were not connecting with one another to the degree that was desirable, from 30 to 40 years of dramatic technological and social change rendering obsolete a whole stock of social capital. American society displayed classic symptoms of social-capital deficiency: huge problems in the cities, concerns about political corruption, and growing class antagonism.

Then, within the next two decades, American civil society righted itself in one of the nation's greatest bursts of social innovation. Virtually all of the major civic institutions that endure to this day were created during these 20 years: the YWCA, the Boy Scouts, the American Red Cross, the League of Women Voters, the NAACP, the Urban League, trade unions, fraternal organizations, and many others. Almost all of these institutions were created in response to the decay and irrelevance of earlier forms of social connectedness.

The Saguaro Seminar is posited on the belief that we are poised on the threshold of a similarly innovative era. Society is different and the causes of a stagnant stock of social capital are different than they were in the 1890s. Thus, the solutions will be different. We need to determine what institutions, mechanisms, incentives, and approaches will significantly increase our stock of social capital and re-engage Americans with their communities.

Fukuyama made roughly the same argument in The Great Disruption. Back in the late 1990s, both predictions seemed optimistic, but if they turn out to be correct, it will mark a major turning point in American society.

Bush suggests tax cuts increased revenue... again!

For the 500th time, President Bush's tax cuts have not increased federal tax revenue -- they've dramatically reduced it. (See my last post on this subject for details.) But Bush keeps suggesting that his tax cuts have made the deficit smaller. The latest example comes from his weekly radio address:

The tax relief stimulated economic vitality and growth and it has helped increase revenues to the Treasury. The increased revenues and our spending restraint have led to good progress in reducing the federal deficit. Last month we learned that the deficit is now projected to be $94 billion less than previously expected. I set a goal of cutting the deficit in half by 2009, and we are ahead of pace to meet that goal.

This is intellectually fraudulent. But because Bush has done the same thing so many times before (and because the subject isn't dramatic or titillating), the press will once again ignore it.