Brendan Nyhan

TNR's boring headline contest

In honor of the magazine's sale to CanWest, a Canadian company, the editors of The New Republic have provided PDFs of the magazine's best Canada-related articles, including a famous 1986 contest to see if anyone could come up with a more boring headline than "Worthwhile Canadian initiative" (which actually did run on the New York Times op-ed page). Here are some of my favorite submissions from Michael Kinsley's column on the contest (PDF):

Trade, A Two-Way Street
Beyond the News, Larger Issues
University of Rochester Decides to Keep Name
Surprises Unlikely in Indiana
Prevent Burglary by Locking House, Detectives Urge

But Kinsley picked the two best ones -- here's the (hilarious) conclusion to the column:

For its brilliant counterpoint of overexcited adjective with mundane and obscure subject matter, I was tempted to award first prize in this competition ... to the lead headline on the "Washington Talk" page of the Times, May 13: "Turbulent Days for Donald D. Engen." That middle initial is an especially bravura touch, I think. It fills the reader with an urgent desire not to know who Donald Engen is and with disbelief that his days could be all that turbulent. But in the end, the judges chose a months-old subhead from the Times science section: "Debate Goes on Over the Nature of Reality.' Further examples are welcome, but somehow, I don't think that one will ever be topped.

Bookshare.org on CBS Evening News

From 2001-2004, I worked for Benetech, an award-winning social entrepreneurial technology non-profit. Over the last year, exciting things have been happening. My boss Jim Fruchterman, who founded Benetech, won a MacArthur "genius" award back in September. And last week its project Bookshare.org, an online service that makes books accessible to people with visual and reading disabilities, was profiled on the CBS Evening News. If you know someone who could benefit from Bookshare or if you're interested in supporting Benetech, please contact me for more information.

Romney doc: "Hillary=France"

Via Drudge, the Boston Globe has obtained a Romney campaign presentation containing some clichéd anti-Hillary demagoguery -- "Hillary=France"!

The plan, for instance, indicates that Romney will define himself in part by focusing on and highlighting enemies and adversaries, such common political targets as "jihadism," the "Washington establishment," and taxes, but also Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, "European-style socialism," and, specifically, France. Even Massachusetts, where Romney has lived for almost 40 years, is listed as one of those "bogeymen," alongside liberalism and Hollywood values.

...Enmity toward France, where Romney did his Mormon mission during college, is a recurring theme of the document. The European Union, it says at one point, wants to "drag America down to Europe's standards," adding: "That's where Hillary and Dems would take us. Hillary = France." The plan even envisions "First, not France" bumper stickers.

Classy.

Hillary's two theories of power politics

Has anyone noticed the contrast between Hillary Clinton's position on responding to attacks from political opponents and her position on responding to insurgent attacks in Iraq?

On the one hand, the experiences of Michael Dukakis and John Kerry have convinced Clinton and other like-minded Democrats that the best response to domestic political attacks is to strike back fast and hard. "When you are attacked," she said, "you have to deck your opponent." To do otherwise, they argue, creates the perception of weakness, potentially encouraging more attacks. As a result, Clinton's campaign arguably overreacted in their counter-attack against Barack Obama and David Geffen, drawing more attention to Geffen's comments, linking Democrats with Hollywood moguls, and generally looking hyper-sensitive.

But in the debate over Iraq, Clinton and other Democrats take exactly the opposite perspective. She opposes President Bush's plan to counter the insurgency with an increased US troop presence. And she rejects the argument that the US should not withdraw because doing so would create a perception of weakness that would invite further attacks.

It's a strange juxtaposition.

Marshall: Cheney advanced al Qaeda agenda

It was bound to happen. For years since 9/11, Republicans have suggested that anti-war dissent helps al Qaeda. Now Josh Marshall, an influential center-left blogger, has reversed the charges, arguing that "It's hard to imagine that there's anyone in this country not under active federal surveillance who has done more to advance the al Qaeda agenda than Dick Cheney":

Why complain about anything Dick Cheney says? The man is simply too big a fool to hold any job of responsibility in the national government. Think of his history of failure, terrible judgment, reckless endangerment of the country. It's hard to imagine that there's anyone in this country not under active federal surveillance who has done more to advance the al Qaeda agenda than Dick Cheney.

I know that seems like hyperbole or a throwaway line. But it's actually very true. Is America stronger now than it was before the Cheney era? Does al Qaeda have more fertile ground for proselytizing or less?

Marshall returned to this theme in a later post:

How many American deaths is this goof [Cheney] responsible for? And who in this country has done more to advance the al Qaeda agenda and make the US more vulnerable to attack?

The problem is that this sort of rhetoric inevitably slides into demagoguery. Saying someone is "advancing" the terrorist agenda carries insinuations of treason, particularly when comparing Cheny to people under federal surveillance. And we just don't know what al Qaeda wants.

The dystopian outcome is that both sides start framing every move by their opponents as advancing the al Qaeda agenda, and we spend all our time trying to mind-read terrorists in the mountains of Pakistan rather than having an actual debate about the best anti-terrorism policy.

Gaffney redoubles attack on dissent

Undeterred by the exposure of his use of a phony Abraham Lincoln quote, Washington Times columnist Frank Gaffney has redoubled his attack on dissent, as Greg Sargent pointed out. In a column last Tuesday, Gaffney dredges up a new Lincoln quote attacking "agitators" during the Civil War who were arrested for fomenting rebellion and uses this as the pretext for another vitriolic attack on dissent as treasonous:

It is fitting that we reflect carefully on Abe Lincoln's insights and strong words, not just because this is the time of year we celebrate his remarkable life and momentous presidency. His views are all the more salient as congressional "agitators" once again justify their vehement opposition to the incumbent president's war efforts with denunciations of "a wicked Administration of a contemptible Government." Now, as then, they threaten the adequacy of the military force needed to "suppress" a violent insurgency. Whether we choose to recognize it or not, today as in 1863, the very "life of the nation" hangs in the balance if we fail to defeat the coming nexus of weapons of mass destruction in the hands of Islamofascists.

These parallels were the subject of an extraordinary December 2003 Insight Magazine article where the paraphrase of Lincoln's views was inadvertently transformed by a copy editor into a quote. Improbably, and unbeknownst to me when I wrote my column last week, the article's author was none other than a colleague at the Center for Security Policy, J. Michael Waller. The full article (which can be viewed at http://fourthworldwar.blogspot.com/2003/12/when-does-politics-become-treason.html) should be required reading for those who wish to participate responsibly in a debate about where to draw the line between legitimate dissent and unacceptable treachery, if not actual treason, on the part of legislators ever-more-stridently opposed to the present war effort.

As Mr. Waller observed, there clearly is a distinction to be drawn between constructive disagreement about the conflict in Iraq and giving aid and comfort to the enemy. The former can be compatible with a genuine commitment to the troops and to their success, as well as their safety. It would, however, require the dissenters to propose other strategies for victory -- not simply the use of code-words for defeat, like "redeployment" and "regional diplomacy."

It is highly ironic that many of those most critical of President Bush for not having a "plan" for post-invasion Iraq are conspicuously quiet about what would happen after their plan for retreat is adopted. They seem irresponsibly unconcerned about the prospect that, after America capitulates, there would be genocidal mayhem in Iraq, creation of a new safe-haven for terrorism there and a general emboldening of our enemies around the world.

Such behavior is even more intolerable when compounded by today's "agitators" demeaning the troops they profess to support -- notably, by comparing them to Nazis, terrorists, rapists and the killing fields -- and threatening to deny them (through one device or another) the means required to accomplish their mission. In the offing are new legislative initiatives aimed at limiting the authority given to the president in 2002 to achieve Iraq's liberation and tying his hands with respect to the growing threat from Iran -- even that the regime in Tehran is currently posing to our troops fighting next door in Iraq.

These critics, particularly members of Congress, must be held accountable for such destructive dissent. Our enemies believe their strategy for achieving a political victory by wearing down the United States is succeeding. They are redoubling their efforts as they perceive the rising power of irresponsible anti-war "agitators."

Abraham Lincoln understood the difference between constructive dissent and treacherous agitation. There is no mistaking his determination to "silence" the latter through means he judged to be constitutional. The question occurs: Will it take some further, even more catastrophic attack here at home -- an attack made more likely by the irresponsible behavior of today's agitators -- to silence their defeatism and reunify the country behind a necessary program for victory?

In this passage, Gaffney comes very close to calling for treason prosecutions for those war opponents who fail to propose alternative strategies for "victory." He comes dissenters to Confederate "agitators" who actively sought to overthrow the Union; suggests they are engaged in "unacceptable treachery, if not actual treason" unless they oppose withdrawal from Iraq; and suggests it will take another 9/11 to "silence their defeatism." It's awful stuff.

And lest anyone think Gaffney's views are irrelevant, check out this question from the most recent AP poll:

14. Do you think it is right or wrong for opponents to criticize the war in Iraq?
-Right, 63 percent
-Wrong, 34 percent
-Not sure, 3 percent

The question is imprecisely worded (some people could be saying "wrong" because they support the war), but it's still troubling that 34 percent of Americans say dissent against the war is "wrong."

Note: For more on Gaffney's historical claims, see Greg Mitchell at Editor & Publisher and Greg Sargent at TPM.

Paltrow: "Almost everyone" has a cell

This year's Hollywood is out of touch moment from the Oscars -- Gwyneth Paltrow's (pre-written) award introduction began with "Thanks to cell phones, almost everyone in the world is now a cinematographer." Um, "almost everyone"? There are approximately 2.2 billion cell phone subscribers worldwide, but how many of their phones can take video? More importantly, World Bank estimates show that approximately 1.3 billion people make less than $1 a day and another 1.6 billion make $1-$2 per day. Call me crazy, but I don't think many of those people are taking video with their cell phones.

Mitt Romney's baby carriage ditty

Mitt Romney is apparently trying to lock down the social conservative vote among nine-year-olds:

Republican Mitt Romney recited a schoolyard ditty Thursday to underscore his argument that traditional marriage is essential for improving education.

"First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes the baby in the baby carriage," the presidential hopeful told a crowd of about 175 people gathered at a private club.

Maybe next week Mitt will attack Hollywood's moral standards by saying "I see London, I see France, where are Britney's underpants?"

Rush Limbaugh says Pelosi has "gone hormonal"

In another anti-woman smear from the originator of "feminazi," Rush Limbaugh explains Nancy Pelosi's criticism of Vice President Cheney by saying "You know, girl's gone hormonal":

RUSH: My hero, Dick Cheney, is back. The highest levels of the administration are not backing down. He was on Good Morning America today from Sydney, Australia. Correspondent Jonathan Karl again talking to him. Question: "The speaker of the House was so upset about your comment that she called the White House to complain." But Cheney did not back down.

CHENEY: I'm not sure what part of it is that Nancy disagreed with. She accused me of questioning her patriotism. I didn't question her patriotism. I questioned her judgment. Al-Qaeda functions on the basis that they think they can break our will. That's their fundamental underlying strategy. My statement was that if we adopt the Pelosi policy, that we will validate the strategy of Al-Qaeda. I said it, and I meant it. And I'm not backing down.

RUSH: My hero, not backing down. Nancy Pelosi, not referring to her as Speaker Pelosi, just referring to her as Nancy. You know, girl's gone hormonal. Next question from Jonathan Karl. Get this. "But hasn't our strategy been failing? Isn't that why the president has had to come out with a new strategy?"

Rick Reilly smeared in SI letter

Earlier this month, I noted a Rick Reilly column in Sports Illustrated that gently turned against the war in these concluding paragraphs:

Athletes love teams, and when they run out of sports teams they sometimes join bigger teams, ones with Humvees for huddles and tombstones for trophies and coaches they've never met sending them into a hell they never imagined.

And they throw their whole selves into it anyway, because they are brave and disciplined and will chew through concrete to win the game.

But what if the game can't be won?

Sadly, one of the four letters that SI published responding to Reilly uses tactics straight out of the GOP playbook (even in Sports Illustrated, I can't escape attacks on dissent!). Mike Castelluccio of Liberty, Missouri wrote the following:

Great article, Rick. Al-Qaeda and Jane Fonda would be proud of you. To call our cause a game that "can't be won" is a slap in the face to our government, our armed forces and our country.

It's sad to see ordinary people parroting this rhetoric -- and sad to see the letter get printed. Surely some war supporter out there had a more useful take on Reilly's column.

Misperceptions of civilian casualties in Iraq

A new AP survey finds that the public is knowledgeable about American military deaths in Iraq, but they "woefully underestimate the number of Iraqi civilians who have been killed":

WASHINGTON - Americans are keenly aware of how many U.S. forces have lost their lives in Iraq, according to a new AP-Ipsos poll. But they woefully underestimate the number of Iraqi civilians who have been killed.

When the poll was conducted earlier this month, a little more than 3,100 U.S. troops had been killed. The midpoint estimate among those polled was right on target, at about 3,000.

Far from a vague statistic, the death toll is painfully real for many Americans. Seventeen percent in the poll know someone who has been killed or wounded in Iraq. And among adults under 35, those closest to the ages of those deployed, 27 percent know someone who has been killed or wounded.

...The number of Iraqis killed, however, is much harder to pin down, and that uncertainty is perhaps reflected in Americans' tendency to lowball the Iraqi death toll by tens of thousands.

Iraqi civilian deaths are estimated at more than 54,000 and could be much higher; some unofficial estimates range into the hundreds of thousands. The U.N. Assistance Mission for Iraq reports more than 34,000 deaths in 2006 alone.

Among those polled for the AP survey, however, the median estimate of Iraqi deaths was 9,890. The median is the point at which half the estimates were higher and half lower.

It is certainly troubling that Americans are so poorly informed about the consequences of the war. But Chris Gelpi, a professor in my department at Duke who studies public opinion toward war, told the AP that correcting these misperceptions would likely have little effect:

Christopher Gelpi, a Duke University political scientist who tracks public opinion on war casualties, said a better understanding of the Iraqi death toll probably wouldn't change already negative public attitudes toward the war much. People in democracies generally don't shy away from inflicting civilian casualties, he said, and they may be even more tolerant of them in situations such as Iraq, where many of the civilian deaths are caused by other Iraqis.

It would be interesting to see how casualty perceptions break down by party and views about the war.

Study: Flag makes Americans more tolerant

Contrary to the lefty hypothesis that nationalism activates prejudice toward outgroups, a new study in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin finds that subliminal exposure to the American flag reduces hostility toward outgroups (PDF - subscription required):

Three studies examined the implications of nationalistic ideologies and exposure to the U.S. flag for the activation of egalitarian concepts and outgroup hostility. Study 1 demonstrated that subliminal exposure to the U.S. flag activated participants' egalitarian concepts. In Study 2, highly nationalistic participants who were exposed to the U.S. flag reported less hostility than did those not exposed to the flag, whereas the flag did not influence the hostility of participants low in national- ism. Study 3 demonstrated that for participants high in nationalism, greater activation of egalitarian concepts on subliminal exposure to the U.S. flag was associated with less hostility toward Arabs and Muslims in the presence of the U.S. flag. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.

Update 2/26 7:27 AM: As a commenter points out below, my wording was imprecise. Individuals who are highly nationalistic are, in general, more hostile to outgroups. What I was trying to say is that this perspective would lead many on the left to suggest that exposure to the flag would prime this ingroup bias. Instead, the study above shows that subliminal exposure to the flag reduces hostility toward Arabs and Muslims. This encouraging finding mirrors other recent work distinguishing between nationalism and forms of patriotism that are not linked with outgroup hostility.

The Wall Street Journal's fuzzy math on AMT

Today, the Wall Street Journal editorial page blames Democrats for problems with the Alternative Minimum Tax, which is going to hit millions of taxpayers in coming years if it is not reformed. Apparently, however, the WSJ has no use for budget rules -- check out this creative use of scare quotes:

The estimated "cost" of this fix to the Treasury over 10 years would be some $632 billion, which is money Democrats in Congress would prefer to spend. But as Senator Grassley notes: "This tax was never meant to tax the middle class, so why should we count it as a revenue loss when we make sure they don't have to pay it?"

That "cost" is, of course, real in the context of Congressional budgeting. President Bush has repeatedly used the revenue that would be generated by the AMT explosion to reduce the apparent cost of his tax cuts and to obscure the actual state of the federal budget.

The WSJ goes on to claim that liberal politicians' "tax schemes" will eventually "soak the middle class because that's where the real money is":

There's a larger policy lesson to keep in mind as the debate unfolds over both the AMT and the looming expiration of the Bush tax cuts in 2010: Beware politicians who say they only want to tax the rich. Sooner or later their tax schemes will soak the middle class because that's where the real money is. Regarding the AMT, Democrats are now saying they'll be glad to provide AMT relief for the middle class but they'll have to raise taxes on CEOs and other high-income Americans to do it. Where have we heard that one before?

But income is, in fact, actually heavily concentrated among top income earners. The top 5 percent now receive approximately 30 percent of national income and the top 10 percent now receive approximately 43 percent. That's, uh, real money. (And it's the reason that the majority of AMT revenue would still come from households making over $200,000 in 2010 under current law.)

9/11 conspiracy theories come to Duke

Why oh why are these people showing their film at Duke?

Director Mike Berger and writer Rebecca Cerese, a resident of Chapel Hill, spoke Tuesday night in Richard White Lecture Hall and presented their film, "Improbable Collapse," which presents a controversial take on the events of Sept. 11.

The documentary retraced the events of the attacks on the World Trade Center, analyzed evidence, interviewed experts and reviewed government records to present an argument pinning the collapse of the World Trade Center on the U.S. government.

Opening with footage of the Twin Towers' collapse, the film claimed that Americans' rights and freedoms have been curtailed by the government's policies stemming from the Sept. 11 attacks.

"The true duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government," the movie stated, supporting the producers' message, which they discussed following the screening.

The audience, composed of both Duke students and local residents, engaged in an academic conversation with Berger and Cerese regarding the possibility of a Sept. 11 government conspiracy from both scientific and sociopolitical perspectives.

Berger contended that Sept. 11 was a conspiracy between the government and powerful corporations to further amass power. He said 7 World Trade Center, a third and smaller tower which collapsed, housed the second-largest CIA office as well as U.S. Securities Exchange and Commission files pertaining to Enron and WorldCom.

For those who might get sucked in by this nonsense, please read the well-regarded book by Popular Mechanics debunking 9/11 conspiracy theories.

Why Hillary should apologize for Iraq vote

Writing in Slate, Will Saletan makes a convincing argument that Hillary's refusal to apologize for her vote on Iraq is a mistake. Here's how it begins:

Five years ago, Hillary Clinton supported a Senate resolution authorizing President Bush to use force in Iraq. So did I. It took me four years to admit this was a mistake. I've been wondering when Clinton would admit it. Now, from campaign insiders quoted in the New York Times, comes the answer: never. As she told voters a few days ago: "If the most important thing to any of you is choosing someone who did not cast that vote or has said his vote was a mistake, then there are others to choose from."

This is an amazingly stupid and arrogant position. If she sticks to it, it will probably kill her candidacy. And it should.

According to Clinton's advisers, she has taken this position for several reasons. She believes in "responsibility" and would want congressional deference if she's president. She wants to look "firm," because that's what voters want. She thinks an apology would look like a gimmick and a flip-flop, repeating the mistakes of Al Gore and John Kerry. That's the "box" she's trying to avoid.

This is a misreading of history, politics, character, and common sense.

It's also worth noting that Hillary's refusal to apologize is fueling some of the pathological news coverage recently highlighted on the Daily Howler. To be fair, there's no excuse for the lousy journalism that she's facing. But her heavily parsed position seems to be making it worse by (a) confusing reporters and (b) creating complexity that they try to cut through with (often misleading) narratives.

Comparing John Murtha to Lee Harvey Oswald

In the latest attack on dissent from the right, Matthew Yglesias flags National Review's Mackubin Thomas Owens comparing Rep. John Murtha, a leading Democratic opponent of the war in Iraq, to JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald:

We Marines maintain that except for Lee Harvey Oswald, there is no such thing as an "ex-Marine." I believe that John Murtha has just joined that small club.

Joe Biden: Blowhard

Some people think the Senate has made Joe Biden more of a blowhard, but I think he's always been one. Check out this quote from Oct. 27, 1990, which has to be one of the dumbest things anyone has ever said in Congress:

Cleaning up the mess created by S&L crooks over the next 10 years will cost us the same amount that bank robberies will cost us over the next 4,000 years.

Yes, Joe Biden knows how much bank robberies will cost us in the year 5990.

Update 2/21 4:03 PM: To be clear, I recognize Biden was trying to use hyperbole, not to make a literal claim. But his phrasing is, well, idiotic.

Byron Dorgan on Iran-Contra

Here's an amusing Byron Dorgan quote from the Congressional Record about Iran-Contra (2/25/87):

Mr. Speaker, I have not said much about the Iranian scandal because I think it is embarrassing enough for everyone concerned. But last night's statement by the President, "Do you remember what you were doing on August 8," the President asked, that really strains our imagination. I will tell you one thing, if I were approving arms to the Ayatollah Khomeini, I would remember what I was doing on that date.

Draw your own analogies to the Scooter Libby case...

Exaggerated commentary on events in Iraq

After (appropriately) mocking Mickey Kaus for relying on a single report from a blogger to evaluate the prospects for the "surge," Kevin Drum makes an important point about the blogger tendency to overreact to news from Iraq:

A consistent mistake made by a fair number of partisans on both sides -- Andrew Sullivan is the archetype here -- is to make way too much out of individual day-to-day incidents. Occasionally this is legitimate (the Golden Mosque bombing, for example), but usually it's just simpleminded emotionalism. Purple thumbs: whee, democracy is coming! Helicopter crash: boo, Iraq is a hopeless mess!

But there are always going to be bits of good news and bits of bad news out of Iraq. What matters more are the underlying dynamics...

That's exactly right. And as Drum says, the underlying dynamics remain sadly unfavorable to the US and the "surge."

Dreyfuss quotes Bush out of context

Writing in the Washington Monthly, Robert Dreyfuss argues that the prospects for Iraq after a US pullout are not as bad as some have suggested. As evidence for this, he quotes a statement from President Bush out of context:

President Bush himself has warned darkly that after controlling Iraq, Islamic militants will "establish a radical Islamic empire that spans from Spain to Indonesia."

However, President Bush didn't say that militants will establish an empire from Spain to Indonesia -- does anyone think the US would let that happen? The President actually said that the militants want to "establish a radical Islamic empire":

Third, the militants believe that controlling one country will rally the Muslim masses, enabling them to overthrow all moderate governments in the region, and establish a radical Islamic empire that spans from Spain to Indonesia. With greater economic and military and political power, the terrorists would be able to advance their stated agenda: to develop weapons of mass destruction, to destroy Israel, to intimidate Europe, to assault the American people, and to blackmail our government into isolation.

Bush did warn against dismissing these goals as unrealistic:

Some might be tempted to dismiss these goals as fanatical or extreme. Well, they are fanatical and extreme -- and they should not be dismissed.

However, he certainly did not assert that militants "will" establish an empire, as Dreyfuss states. Shouldn't the Monthly correct this?

Alterman misstates report on Novak/Rove

Writing in his Altercation column, Eric Alterman quotes from Newsweek:

Indeed, [Richard] Hohlt is such a good source that after [Robert] Novak finished his column naming [Valerie] Plame, he testified, he did something most journalists rarely do: he gave the lobbyist an advance copy of his column. What Novak didn't tell the jury is what the lobbyist then did with it: Hohlt confirmed to NEWSWEEK that he faxed the forthcoming column to their mutual friend Karl Rove (one of Novak's sources for the Plame leak), thereby giving the White House a heads up on the bombshell to come.

Alterman interprets this passage to claim that Novak "cleared his Plame-leak column with Rove in advance":

What more do you need to know? The guy [Novak] cleared his Plame-leak column with Rove in advance. Are there any rules at all on the Washington Post edit page?

But the passage above doesn't state that Novak knew Hohlt would fax the column to Rove. Maybe he did, but we have no evidence for that assertion; it's purely speculation on Alterman's part.

The Summers myth echoes

The media's distortion of what former Harvard president Larry Summers said about women's representation among math and science faculty continues.

In December, the New York Times said the "idea voiced" by Summers was that "women over all are handicapped as scientists because as a group they are somehow innately deficient in mathematics." Then, earlier this month, the Times wrote that Summers had suggested "that a lack of intrinsic aptitude could help explain why fewer women than men reach the top ranks of science and math in universities."

Here are two recent examples spurred by the hiring of new Harvard president Drew Gilpin Faust. On National Public Radio's "Morning Edition" yesterday, co-host Renee Montagne said "His presidency [Summers] was marked by controversy, notably his remarks that women might not have aptitude for the sciences." Similarly, syndicated columnist Ellen Goodman wrote that "President Larry Summers suggested that a lack of 'intrinsic aptitude' was partly why few women made it in academic science."

The impression that these statements leave is that Summers said women are not as good at math and science as men. But as I've pointed out before, that's not accurate. Summers did not state that women are "innately deficient" in math and science, that they have "a lack of intrinsic aptitude," or that they "might not have aptitude for the sciences." (You should be suspicious when reporters exclusively paraphrase a controversial statement -- see the Al Gore Internet myth, for example.) In statistical terms, he did not argue that average (mean) ability was different between genders.

Summers actually made a more subtle argument that the variability of mathematical and scientific ability may differ between genders, which means that there could be more men at the high and low end. In statistical terms, he suggested that the variance of "intrinsic aptitude" might be greater for men. That claim may be wrong or offensive, but it's a more complicated one than what the media is attributing to him. Unfortunately, most reporters don't understand statistics and haven't read what Summers actually said, and so we get these distorted paraphrases instead.

The size of the GOP's evangelical base

A noteworthy fact from The Atlantic's Ross Douthat:

And although Brownback is the only candidate in the field so far with Bush’s personal connection to the party’s religious conservatives, everyone—even McCain, even Giuliani—is actively courting them. This is partly because without evangelical Christians, there would essentially be no Republican Party anymore: Evangelicals provided more votes to the Republicans in last year’s midterms than African Americans and union members combined gave to the Democrats. [my emphasis]

Man bites dog: Fox fact-checks Feith

Good for Chris Wallace for calling out the dissembling Douglas Feith on Fox News Sunday (via Atrios):

WALLACE: Now a follow-up to our interview last Sunday with former Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith. Many of you asked us to check out the claim. Here's what he said to us.

FEITH: Nobody in our office said there was an operational relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda. It's not correct. Words matter.

WALLACE: But it turns out he did make that case in a memo he sent to the Senate Intelligence Committee in October of '03. "The Weekly Standard," which saw the memo, described it this way. "Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein had an operational relationship from the early 1990s to 2003 that involved training and explosives and weapons of mass destruction, logistical support for terrorist attacks, al Qaeda training camps and safe haven in Iraq, and Iraqi financial support for al Qaeda."

Are Hillary's favorables "unusually high"?

Writing in the New York Times, David D. Kirkpatrick claims Hillary Clinton's favorable ratings are "unusually high":

Mr. Keene said, "[Hillary Clinton's] image as the wicked witch of the left was burned in the minds of conservatives and the larger public before she tried to moderate her image." He noted that polls consistently give her the highest unfavorable ratings among the front-runners, typically more than a third of the public. (Her favorable ratings are also unusually high.)

But is this really true? Consider favorable/unfavorable numbers from the latest USA Today/Gallup poll (2/9-2/11):

Hillary Clinton: 58/40
Barack Obama: 53/19
John McCain: 57/26
Rudy Giuliani: 66/22
Mitt Romney: 18/18
John Edwards: 49/31
Al Gore: 52/45

Or consider the latest Washington Post/ABC News poll (1/16-1/19):

Hillary Clinton: 54/44
John McCain: 49/35
Barack Obama: 45/29
Rudy Giuliani: 61/29

In short, Hillary's favorable numbers are not particularly unusual when compared with her most well-known competitors, and her unfavorable numbers are higher than any announced candidate (only Al Gore compares).

The Giuliani foreign policy fraud

Jonathan Chait says what needs to be said about the bizarre Giuliani-as-foreign-policy-expert meme:

he normal rule in American politics is that if you run for president and your experience comes at the state level, most people will assume that foreign policy is your weak point. You can overcome that political vulnerability--as George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and other governors did while getting elected. One would presume that this applies even more to presidential candidates whose highest office reached is mayor. And yet we have the strange case of Rudolph Giuliani.

Giuliani's presidential campaign is starting to win a cult following among conservatives. It's not his position on domestic policy that's doing it--he has nothing to say about that. Lord knows it's not his social issue positions, which even his strongest backers acknowledge are his political weak point. No, he has somehow built a record as a foreign policy guru despite having no experience beyond the municipal level.

Read the whole thing.

Is Iraq exporting sectarian strife?

Instead of creating a model democracy in the Middle East, the sectarian chaos we have created in Iraq is apparently being exported to other countries by Iraqi refugees:

Now [Laith al-Ani, a former American detainee] is among the estimated 1.5 million Iraqis who have taken refuge in neighboring Syria and Jordan, where sectarian rifts are springing up.

In one area of Damascus, Shiite refugees from Iraq have established a mini version of Sadr City, the Baghdad neighborhood. Sunni refugees, in turn, are forming their own enclaves.

What people don't realize is that ethnic hatred is not constant. Instead, as Cass Sunstein argues, it can occur as part of a "social cascade," as it apparently did in Iraq after the fall of Saddam:

During discussions of Iraq, many people have suggested that with the fall of Saddam, ancient, even primordial hatreds have bubbled up to the surface. On this view, the current situation is what it is because long-suppressed ethnic and religious antagonisms are now in full bloom. The problem with this view is that ethnic hatreds are usually not primordial. Part of what we have been witnessing is a kind of rapid "ethnification," in the form of a social cascade.

Some societies show low levels of ethnic activity. In most American cities, for example, most people do not act publicly in a way that draws even the slightest attention to their ethnicity. But some societies show slow or rapid ethnification, as people devote more of their efforts to showcasing their ethnic identity. We can easily find eras in the United States in which ethnic identification grew (usually just a bit) or declined (sometimes a lot). As Hitler obtained power, many German Jews became more closely self-identified as Jewish, in part for reasons of self-protection.

A key factor here is whether the relevant social norms impose pressure to identify in ethnic terms, or not to do so. It may be "politically correct" to broadcast one's ethnicity, or it may be politically correct to hide it. Sometimes the governing norms shift abruptly. When this is so, there can be intense pressure to self-identify in ethnic terms, sometimes to retain friends, sometimes to obtain material advantages, sometimes to save one's life.

Focusing on ethnic hatreds in the former Yugoslavia, the underlying process has been illuminatingly discussed by economist Timur Kuran in a 1998 paper (apparently unavailable on line but published as "Ethnic Norms and Their Transformation through Reputational Cascades," in the Journal of Legal Studies). Even at a late stage, people in the former Yugoslavia lived together harmoniously, and supposedly primordial hatreds played no role in the lives of most people. Old historical events were hardly salient. But as Kuran writes: "Within months, millions of Serbs who had shown little ethnic fervor began paying attention to ethnic statistics, promoting symbols of Serb exclusiveness, vilifying and ostracizing non-Serbs, referring frequently to the sufferings of their ancestors, and supporting the enlargement of Serbian-held territories." Previously happy mixed marriages disintegrated. Historical events that had mattered not at all suddenly became central to political debates.

A major conclusion is that even the most intense forms of ethnic hatred and fear can be a product of a process of ethnification, rather than a cause of that process. A careful investigation of the situation in Iraq would be necessary, of course, to know whether this conclusion holds for that country. But ethnic hatred is not in anyone's blood. Whether people focus on ethnic identity, or on something else, is partly a product of (current and recent) social pressures, not of anything that happened in the distant past. It is reasonable to speculate that Iraq has witnessed a period of ever-intensifying pressure to identify in ethnic terms--pressure that people increase even as they capitulate to it.

Some good news is that ethnic hatred can decline fairly rapidly as well, especially when it is a product of social norms to which people have unenthusiastically yielded. Some bad news is that when violence is rampant along ethnic lines, any such decline is extremely difficult to engineer.

If Iraqi refugees are spurring such cascades in other countries, the prospects for regional stability are very dark indeed.

Liberals forget the gridlock zone

It's sometimes shocking how little people understand the constraints that the separation of powers, the filibuster, and the veto place on the US political system. To change policy, the Democrats would need a 2/3 House and Senate majority to override a presidential veto. There's no way around that constraint. Indeed, Democrats can't even send legislation to President Bush without getting 60 votes to overcome a filibuster. (For more on these constraints, see my post on the gridlock zone, a concept from political science that systematizes these ideas.)

Matthew Yglesias offers a case in point -- liberals who complain that Harry Reid can't get anti-"escalation" legislation through the Senate, not realizing that there's little Reid can do without sixty votes:

Sometime in December, however, people seem to have gotten it into their head that something else would happen. That narrow congressional majorities were actually going to seize control of American national security policy in the face of determined opposition from the President of the United States supported nearly uniformly by his copartisans in congress. Thus, Matt Stoller includes on his list of "groups and individuals" who are "blocking real progress on Iraq," "Harry Reid, who failed to get a vote on a non-binding resolution in the Senate, and doesn't think his original war vote was wrong. It's Bush's fault apparently that Reid voted for the war. Like with his stance on Alito, Reid is giving the impression of action, but not the teeth."

Well, no. Look, Matt Yglesias leading a caucus of 51 Democratic Senators that includes Joe Lieberman, Bill Nelson, and Tim Johnson couldn't get much done in these circumstances either. Nor could Matt Stoller. It's not Reid's fault that there aren't 60 votes for a non-binding resolution on Iraq in the Senate... Blame Lieberman. Blame Jeff Sessions. And, again, ask yourself: If Reid's resolution is so useless, why is the GOP so determined to defeat it? And if it's so difficult to get 60 votes for this measure, what would the point be in proposing something more far-reaching that would only fail by a larger margin? The sad reality is that what Matt and I would like to see the Democrats accomplish is, under the circumstances, very difficult to achieve. Progressives should keep the pressure on for action, but we need to understand that objective circumstances matter. This is a slow boring of hard boards kind of situation, and it's extremely frustrating, but it's also George W. Bush's fault, not Reid's.

When press conferences go wrong

My friend and former Spinsanity co-editor Ben Fritz, who reports for Variety, has a great story about a press conference gone wrong on his personal blog:

This morning I'm at a press conference about a new anti-piracy study and task force featuring L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and various other government and business officials. As at most events decrying the evils of piracy, there's a wide array of pirated goods seized by law enforcement on display such as bootleg DVDs and CDs, counterfeit purses, shoes, watches, etc. They're out there for the cameras because, hey, the evening news needs a good visual.

The event was held right outside of Staples Center, which, for those of you not familiar with L.A. geography, is a big pedestrian area in the middle of downtown. So the Mayor or somebody else is talking about how awful piracy is, how it harms the Los Angeles economy and costs jobs and tax revenue, etc., etc., when I see a group of about a dozen tourists walk by. They're definitely Asian, probably Japanese.

They look at the goings-on for a minute, clearly unsure what's happening. Then they walk up to the counterfeit goods on the tables and start perusing... like they're SHOPPING. I seem to be the only one noticing this because everyone else's eyes are on the speakers in the press conference. The Japanese tourists look around, clearly expecting that somebody is going to tell them what the beautiful fake Chanel purse, or the DVD of "Norbit," costs. After a couple of minutes, they realize nobody is going to help them, and they walk away, obviously thinking that this is a poorly run counterfeit merchandise store.

Brilliant.

WT finally corrects Lincoln myth

Editor & Publisher reports that the Washington Times finally corrected the bogus quote Frank Gaffney attributed to Abraham Lincoln:

More than two days after an inflammatory quote used by a regular Washington Times columnist was shown to be fabricated -- it was attributed to Abraham Lincoln, no less -- the newspaper still had not removed it from the article, nor carried a correction. Finally, on Friday fternoon, it pulled the entire Frank Gaffney, Jr. column.

Then, on Saturday, it ran this correction: "Frank Gaffney's column in the Tuesday Commentary pages of The Washington Times included a quote erroneously attributed to Abraham Lincoln."

Meanwhile, Andrew Sullivan is asserting that Rep. Don Young repeated the phony quote knowing it was false, a charge for which we have no evidence:

It says everything you need to know about the state of the Republican Party: that they would knowingly lie about the words of the greatest Republican president in American history.

Sullivan's claim appears to be based on this post that he linked to from TPM's Greg Sargent, who asked (again without evidence) whether Young knew the quote was bogus:

Given that the discrediting of this quote has been all over the internet for over six months, we have to ask: Did Rep. Young know that the quote was bogus, but recycle it anyway? We'll never know. He certainly seemed to think what he was saying was very profound.

Does anyone think Don Young reads Factcheck.org? I don't know why we would assume he knew the quote was phony. I co-edited Spinsanity for four years and follow politics very closely, and I had never heard of it before.

Finally, it's worth noting the bizarre creation story of the myth. The writer J. Michael Waller sent an email to Factcheck.org that tells you all you need to know about the kind of journalism practiced by the now-defunct Insight magazine:

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to correct this important issue. The supposed quote in question is not a quote at all, and I never intended it to be construed as one. It was my lead sentence in the article that a copy editor mistakenly turned into a quote by incorrectly inserting quotation marks.

Additionally, I filed my story with the lead sentence ending in the words "Civil War," which my southern editor switched to "War Between the States."

Oddly, you are the first to question me about this. I'm surprised it has been repeated as often as you say. My editors at the time didn't think it was necessary to run a correction in the following issue of the magazine, and to my knowledge we received no public comment. The magazine is no longer being published.

Factcheck.org continues:

We followed up by contacting Insight's former managing editor Scott Stanley. He denied putting quote marks in Waller's copy, but said such a thing might have been done by one of six "formatting editors" at the publication, who sometimes "took liberties" with the copy. "I know Waller well enough to know that if Waller said it, he did," Stanley said. He said Waller might have put the phrase in italics, and that a formatting editor might have changed it to a direct quote by mistake, following an Insight policy of not opening a story with italicized quotes. "My guess is that somewhere along the line, somebody played with it thinking they were doing the right thing," Stanley said.

Disclosure: I used to blog with Greg Sargent at The American Prospect's Horse's Mouth blog before resigning in protest.

Correction 2/17 9:19 PM: Greg Sargent did not directly "speculate" that Don Young knew the Lincoln quote was bogus, as this post previously stated. Apologies for the error, which is corrected above.

Rep. Todd Akin on Davy Crockett's Blackberry

If you haven't heard Rep. Todd Akin's bizarre statement opposing the Democratic anti-"surge" resolution yet, well, you need to go watch it.

Here's the quote:

Could you picture Davy Crockett at the Alamo looking at his Blackberry getting a message from Congress? "Davy Crockett, we support you. The only thing is we are not going to send any troops." I’m sure that would really be impressive to Davy Crockett.

As Jon Stewart put it:

If Congress hadn't supported Davy Crockett at the Alamo, my god, who knows what would have happened there. Maybe everyone would have been killed twice. Actually, I have to think if Davy Crockett had received a message on his Blackberry from anybody, it would have been very impressive.

A Think Progress commenter also notes that the Alamo took place in 1836, a time when Texas wasn't part of the United States (it was annexed by the United States in 1845). Has Akin been taking history lessons from Don Young?

Lincoln myth spreads to House floor

TPM's Greg Sargent points out that Rep. Don Young (R-AK) repeated the phony anti-dissent quote falsely attributed to Abraham Lincoln on the House floor yesterday -- here's the video:

Yes, it's the same quote Frank Gaffney cited in his Washington Times column Tuesday, which suggested that dissent should be a "hanging offense."

In a laudable debunking of the Lincoln myth today, the Washington Post reports that Young drew the quote from Gaffney's column:

During floor debate on the Iraq war yesterday, Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska) quoted Abraham Lincoln as advocating the hanging of lawmakers who undermine military morale during wartime.

"Congressmen who willfully take action during wartime that damage morale and undermine the military are saboteurs, and should be arrested, exiled or hanged," Young declared.

One problem: Lincoln never said such a thing.

Conservative scholar J. Michael Waller did, in an article for Insight magazine in December 2003. Waller later told Annenberg Political Fact Check that the supposed quote "is not a quote at all" but that a copy editor mistakenly put quotation marks around his words, making them appear to be Lincoln's.

Annenberg has counted 18,000 references to the Lincoln "quote" by those who typically support President Bush's war policy.

After he left the House floor yesterday, Young found out that -- whoops -- he had mistakenly put words in Abe's mouth. His spokeswoman, Meredith Kenny, says the congressman took the quote from an article he read in the Washington Times on Tuesday.

However, Kenny tries to have it both ways in the final passage of the article, stating that Young "continues to totally agree with the message of the statement" but that he is "not advocating the hanging of Democrats":

"Now that he's been informed these are not the actual words of Lincoln, he will discontinue attributing the words to Lincoln. However, he continues to totally agree with the message of the statement," Kenny said. "Americans, especially America's elected leaders, should not take actions during a time of war that damage the morale of our soldiers and military -- and that is exactly what this nonbinding resolution does."

And no, Kenny said, Young was "not advocating the hanging of Democrats."

Well, what is he advocating? Arrest? Exile? The quote only offers three options.

Does corporate social responsibility work?

A new article by Aaron Chatterji, a professor at Duke's Fuqua School of Business, and UC-Berkeley grad student Siona Listokin makes a convincing argument that the progressive focus on corporate social responsibility is at least partially misdirected (free registration required):

A generation of activists has been raised on the idea of corporate social responsibility (CSR)–that large corporations can be cajoled into paying employees better, being more environmentally responsible, improving labor conditions in developing countries, retaining more American workers, embracing diversity, and donating money to fix inner-city schools. Where firms cannot be enticed, the strategy goes, they can be bullied. In the late 1970s, Nestl learned this first-hand when a massive boycott was launched to protest its overly aggressive marketing of infant formula. In 1999, a series of protests convinced Home Depot to sell more lumber from sustainable logging operations. More recently, campaigns against the fast-food industry have included a full barrage of boycotts, lawsuits, movies, and books to pressure companies like McDonald’s and Wendy’s to stop advertising to children and to serve healthier food.

In pursuit of similar success, enormous resources have been directed away from lobbying for regulatory regimes and toward recruiting powerful corporations into voluntary battle against a variety of injustices. Yet CSR campaigns have had limited success in actually changing corporate behavior in a meaningful way. More often than not, CSR crusades result in companies allocating a relatively small portion of their profits for public affairs advertising, community donations, and token changes–from signing on to "industry codes" to hiring CSR-focused senior executives or consultants. At the root of the problem is an inconvenient but implacable fact: Corporations care about profits. Corporations will not–and their shareholders do not expect them to–engage in behaviors that do not maximize profit. Indeed, shareholders would punish them if they did. In concept and in practice, therefore, CSR is at best a partial solution to solving social injustices and correcting for market externalities. After years of relative futility and millions of dollars spent, progressives who are concerned about market failures and their impact on the common good need to do the responsible thing and end their fixation on corporate social responsibility. It is time to recognize that most market failures can only be solved by governments and multilateral agreements, and progressives need to redirect activist pressure appropriately.

As the authors argue, CSR usually fails to change corporate behavior when activists are asking corporations to directly forego profits (for instance, asking Wal-Mart to pay its workers more). And in other cases, I believe that the demands of CSR activists are misguided or counterproductive (for example, the savings Wal-Mart provides to low-income Americans vastly outweigh the negative effects of the chain's operations).

However, Chatterji and Listokin seem to give short shrift to two indirect effects of the CSR movement that seem like powerful motivators of good corporate behavior:

Encouraging win-win solutions: It seems that there are potentially many more win-win instances of CSR -- so-called "strategic CSR" -- than the authors acknowledge. See, for instance, the recent New Yorker profile of the Rocky Mountain Institute's Amory Lovins, who argues that businesses are neglecting a range of profit-maximizing environmental practices. At any given moment, the business model and corporate practices of most large firms are stuck in organizational inertia. The opportunities -- and threats -- created by CSR provide incentives for firms to break out of those equilibria and adopt the kind of win-win approaches that Lovins describes. A recent example is Wal-Mart's massive new effort to sell 100 million fluorescent light bulbs, which could appreciably reduce the carbon footprint of the US and make money at the same time. It is hard to imagine Wal-Mart making such a commitment if it wasn't under fire from the left.

Raising the costs of scandal: The norms promoted by the CSR movement have raised the costs of being caught in a devastating corporate incident or norm-violating scandal (think of Exxon Valdez or Enron). CSR therefore provides further motivation for profit-maximizing corporations to preemptively prevent public relations disasters that have negative social consequences.

What do you think?

[Disclosure: I met Chatterji this past fall after he joined Duke's faculty.]

My 2002 take on Iraq and internationalism

I just came across a new attack on my American Prospect Online piece from August 2002 on Democrats' need for a new internationalist doctrine. I think it still holds up pretty well:

In recent weeks, it has become increasingly clear that there is a void at the heart of the Democratic Party.

At the outset of our first great debate over post-September 11 foreign policy -- what to do about Saddam Hussein and Iraq -- the Democrats are sitting it out, worried about taking on a popular wartime president and preferring to focus on domestic issues. In the latest issue of The Prospect, Harold Meyerson calls this an abdication of leadership on the most important issue facing this country. And as a result, the task of criticizing the President's plans for Iraq has been left to internationalist Republicans and nervous European and Middle Eastern leaders.

But politics isn't the only or the most fundamental reason for the Democrats' silence. As Peter Beinart pointed out recently in The New Republic, the Dems can't articulate a serious critique of President Bush's plans to invade Iraq because they don't have an overarching theory of how America should deal with the new threats to our security...

It's time for Democrats to think big. Really big. What we need is a muscular new internationalist doctrine that addresses post-September 11 threats in Iraq and around the world -- something along the lines laid out by Michael Hirsh in the September-October issue of Foreign Affairs.

Under such a doctrine, territorial sovereignty would become somewhat less sacrosanct: If a rogue state violates international law or norms by harboring terrorists or seeking to develop weapons of mass destruction, the international community -- led by the US -- would have a range of options culminating in the possibility of military action. These options would be pursued forcefully, but Bush-style preemption would be ruled out because it undermines the system and could lead to globally destabilizing aggressions (for example, an Indian attack against Pakistan).

But writing on the Guardian Online, Brendan O'Neill criticizes me and other TAP writers for supporting an interventionist approach to foreign policy:

The notion that Bush's interventionist policies did not go far enough was a recurring theme in American Prospect's coverage of Iraq in 2002 and 2003. In August 2002, contributor Brendan Nyhan responded to a suggestion in New Republic magazine that America should adopt a policy of "pre-emption plus", where war in Iraq would be followed by a "political intervention - ie nation-building", by arguing that "even this vision is too narrow".

"It's time for Democrats to think big. Really big," said Nyhan. "What we need is a muscular new internationalist doctrine that address post-September 11 threats in Iraq and around the world ... Under such a doctrine, territorial sovereignty would become somewhat less sacrosanct: if a rogue state violates international law or norms by harbouring terrorists or seeking to develop weapons of mass destruction, the international community - led by the US - would have a range of options culminating in the possibility of military action."

We might call this "pre-emption plus plus", where America would effectively head up a global police force which would threaten or actually pursue military action against any country found to be a "rogue state" - that favoured phrase of all American interventionists. Nyhan was critical of the idea that America should go ahead and bomb Iraq unilaterally; instead, he said, it "should build a new consensus for action grounded in the international system". So, not so much an anti-war position as a pro-better-wars-than-the-ones-Bush-is-proposing position.

...It is worth recalling that some liberal commentators were even more gung-ho than the Bush administration back then. Very often they demanded a more systematic form of interventionism that would spread the liberal worldview and gallantly "liberate" the oppressed and toiling masses of the Third World.

Often, their main criticism of Bush and Co was that their war in Iraq was in pursuit of narrow "national interests" - such as security for America - rather than pursuing global values of justice and liberty. This shows that there is nothing more dangerous than a liberal imperialist. Where Bush's war moves are at least, in some part, anchored by the national interest, liberal interventionism can be more sweeping, more unforgiving, more all-encompassing.

Looking back at 2002 and 2003, we can see that some liberal commentators not only gave the green light to war in Iraq but also proposed a new framework for western liberal imperialism which would have been even worse, if you can imagine it, than what the Bushies have pursued.

If you're interested, I actually wrote ten freelance articles for TAP Online back in 2001-2002. [Disclosure: I criticized the Prospect after resigning from my guest blogger position in 2006.]

Frank Gaffney suggests dissent is treasonous

Glenn Greenwald, who is now blogging at Salon, has exposed the latest conservative pundit to suggest that dissent is treasonus.

In a Washington Times column, national security commentator Frank Gaffney begins by citing a quote calling for the arrest, exile or hanging of dissenting members of Congress, which he attributes to Abraham Lincoln:

Congressmen who willfully take actions during wartime that damage morale and undermine the military are saboteurs and should be arrested, exiled, or hanged.
— President Abraham Lincoln

But as Greenwald points out, the quotation has been debunked as false. Lincoln never said it.

Gaffney continues by suggesting we should reconsider whether dissent should be a "hanging offense:

It is, of course, unimaginable that the penalties proposed by one of our most admired presidents for the crime of dividing America in the face of the enemy would be contemplated — let alone applied — today.

Still, as the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate engage in interminable debate about resolutions whose effects can only be to "damage morale and undermine the military" while emboldening our enemies, it is time to reflect on what constitutes inappropriate behavior in time of war.

Scarcely anyone seems to consider the conduct of the Congress inappropriate, to say nothing of a hanging offense. As various sitting members, whose day jobs increasingly are those of presidential candidates, jockey to outbid one another in their defeatism, the talk is not about whether such behavior is appropriate in time of war — or consistent with the national interest.

After denouncing various allegations of intelligence politicization, which he warns will have a "chilling effect," Gaffney concludes that such allegations "really should be a hanging offense":

The Journal has properly warned that Senator Ahab's [Senator Carl Levin, D-MI] misbehavior is likely to have implications far beyond the immediate disservice it does to Mr. Feith and those who labored so ably under him. It will likely also have a severely chilling effect on the willingness of policymakers rigorously to challenge, and thereby to improve, the quality of the intelligence they are getting about tomorrow's threats.

If there's one thing that really should be a hanging offense, it is behavior that results in our being even less equipped to deal with such threats than we were before this phase of the War for the Free World began on September 11, 2001

Add this to the long list of attacks on dissent since 9/11...

[Disclosure: Spinsanity was featured on Salon in 2002.]

Dana Milbank on House GOP talking points

Via Michael Crowley at TNR's The Plank, Dana Milbank mocks the incoherence of GOP talking points on the Democrats' anti-"surge" resolution:

There was good reason for this anxiety. As head of the House Republican Conference, the 32-year-old redhead [Rep. Adam Putnam, R-FL] is leading his caucus into a public-opinion meat grinder: supporting President Bush's increase of U.S. troops in Iraq, against the wishes of more than 60 percent of Americans. Worse, he is leading them with a pair of somewhat contradictory arguments: (a) that the Democrats' resolution opposing Bush's Iraq buildup is a meaningless gesture, and (b) that the Democrats' resolution will cause the end of civilization as we know it.

"This is a rather toothless 97 words," Putnam began in his floor speech, calling the proposal "a narrow nonbinding resolution that misses the bigger picture." Minutes later, he changed his view. "The majority would have us consider a resolution that puts us one day closer to handing militant Islamists a safe haven the size of California."

So which one is it: toothless or catastrophic?

Minority Leader John Boehner (Ohio) wasn't sure. In his floor speech, he called the resolution "nonbinding" six times, labeling the resolution "a political charade lacking both the seriousness and the gravity of the issue that it's meant to represent." And yet, he also thought the resolution "is the first step toward abandoning Iraq by cutting off funding for our troops that are in harm's way."

Neither had Minority Whip Roy Blunt (Mo.) found harmony between the competing talking points. "This resolution just says enough not to say anything at all," he judged. In another breath, however, he called it a "first step to cutting off funding for the dangerous mission our troops face" and a debate that "bolsters those radical terrorists whose sole goal is to destroy America."

The Republican complaints brought to mind the Woody Allen joke about two old ladies at a Catskills resort. "One of 'em says, 'Boy, the food at this place is really terrible.' The other one says, 'Yeah, I know, and such small portions.' "

Coinsurance for vaccines?

With all the anti-vaccine hysteria, you'd think that health care providers would be doing everything possible to maximize compliance rates. But no! I was shocked to discover that our family's insurance provider charged us coinsurance for vaccinating our son. Not only is that bad for society, but it doesn't even make sense from a cost-benefit perspective. Will those few dollars make up for the costs to the insurance company if we don't vaccinate him and he gets sick?

The deliberative dystopia of Hardball

I can't stand to watch it, but Bob Somerby routinely suffers through the inanity of MSNBC's "Hardball with Chris Matthews." Check out the five questions Matthews recently asked New Mexico governor Bill Richardson, who is running for president, during an interview:

QUESTION 1: Welcome back to Hardball. Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico is a Democratic candidate for president. Governor Richardson, how do you break into top ranks of the guys and the woman, Hillary, fighting for the Democratic nomination?

QUESTION 2: Why are you better than Hillary?...OK—here is your chance. Why are you better than Hillary?

QUESTION 3: Hillary said a couple of days ago, a week or two ago, that she is equipped to deal with bad and evil men because of her dealings as first lady. What do you make of that assessment and that claim?

QUESTION 4: You mean—you really think that she was talking about Republicans on the other side of the health care debate, not her husband? I mean, that wasn't a joke, it wouldn't be a joke—there's nothing funny about saying you had to go up against Republicans. There's something funny about having to deal with a husband who has caused you pain. And I thought that's what she was joking about. Otherwise, it wouldn't have been funny among all those women, would it have been? Would that have been a joke, to say "I had to fight with Tom DeLay?" That's not funny!

QUESTION 5: OK. How do we—then I'll let you go positive, Governor. How do we get out of Iraq?

It's good to see Matthews is still focused on what's really important!

More reasons to like Barack Obama

He can't stand listening to a fellow senator who has to be Joe Biden:

Listening to a bloviating colleague at his first meeting of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Obama slipped a three-word note to a member of his staff: "Shoot. Me. Now."

I feel the same way.

"Obama Bin Laden" trademark denied

Today's sign of the apocalypse -- someone tried to trademark "Obama bin Laden". Luckily, they were turned down:

Government officials have rejected a Florida man's bid to trademark the term "Obama bin Laden," ruling that the conflation of the names of a U.S. Senator and the world's leading terrorist was "scandalous" and wrongly suggested a connection between the politician and the mass murderer.

The Smoking Gun has posted their decision online, as well as this charming image that the applicant, Alexandre Batlle, planned to use on a shirt:

Accusing D'Souza of treason

Andrew Sullivan, who warned that "[t]he decadent Left ... may well mount what amounts to a fifth column" after 9/11, approvingly quotes Bruce Bawer in The Stranger calling Dinesh D'Souza's new book treasonous:

For those who cherish freedom, 9/11 was intensely clarifying. Presumably it, and its aftermath, have been just as clarifying for D'Souza, whose book leaves no doubt whatsoever that he now unequivocally despises freedom—that open homosexuality and female "immodesty" are, in his estimation, so disgusting as to warrant throwing one's lot in with religious totalitarians. Shortly after The Enemy at Home came out, a blogger recalled that in 2003, commenting in the National Review on the fact that "influential figures" in America's conservative movement felt "that America has become so decadent that we are 'slouching towards Gomorrah,'" D'Souza wrote: "If these critics are right, then America should be destroyed." Well, D'Souza has now made it perfectly clear that he's one of those critics; and the book he's written is nothing less than a call for America's destruction. He is the enemy at home. Treason is the only word for it.

By almost all accounts, D'Souza's book is loathsome (I haven't read it), but free speech is not treasonous.

The strange Libby defense

Scooter Libby's defense strategy is, um, unusual:

Lawyers for I. Lewis Libby Jr. opened their case Monday with a parade of prominent Washington reporters who testified that Mr. Libby never mentioned the identity of a Central Intelligence Agency operative when they interviewed him during the period the officer’s identity was leaked to the news media.

One by one, the reporters from The Washington Post, The New York Times and Newsweek took the stand and recounted their conversations with Mr. Libby in the summer of 2003 about unconventional weapons and Iraq. They briskly and unhesitatingly said Mr. Libby, then the chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, did not speak about the C.I.A. employee, Valerie Wilson.

But Libby isn't accused of leaking to those reporters or lying about his conversations with them. It's like calling all the people who weren't killed to the stand in a murder trial.

NYT says VP has "awesome authority"

Before it was known Vice President Cheney wouldn't testify in the Scooter Libby trial, the New York Times made a bizarre reference to "the awesome authority of his office":

If he testifies, Mr. Cheney will bring to the jurors the awesome authority of his office and could attest to Mr. Libby’s character as policy adviser and family man, and to his crushing workload and dedication to keeping the country safe.

Somewhere, Dan Quayle is laughing. As the Times surely knows, the vice president actually has very little constitutional power; Cheney's "awesome authority" comes from the influence he has in the Bush administration.

Frontline's "News War" series

Tonight PBS will be airing the first of a four-part series on the state of the news media titled "Newswar" -- here's the New York Times review:

It’s fair to say that the relationship between the press and the Bush White House has often been one of mutual suspicion and sometimes outright hostility. And the administration and its allies have at times been outspoken in their belief that the mainstream press was biased against it. But as evidenced by the "Frontline" four-part series "News War," whose first episode appears tonight on PBS, government skepticism toward the press is just one of the trials faced by today’s news organizations. Those challenges include everything from declining audiences, to the warp speed of the 24/7 news cycle, to the Internet’s undercutting the press’s monopoly on information, to news operations beholden to conglomerates that sometimes view news as another entertainment portal.

Definitely sounds like it's worth watching...

The barbarity of prison rape

If you asked me what issue Americans will see in retrospect as the greatest unacknowledged barbarity of our time, I would nominate prison rape, which is not only tolerated but frequently encouraged within our prisons and is still the subject of jokes in popular culture and politics. Ezra Klein has more here, here, and here. Warning: These posts contain graphic first-person descriptions of the attacks which go on every day within the prisons that our government controls. More than almost any other crime, prison rape is our responsibility. What will we do about it?

Eric Alterman's David Duke reference

Eric Alterman opened his Media Matters column with this passage, which takes a cheap shot at Time magazine:

William E. Odom, a retired Army lieutenant general, was head of Army intelligence and director of the National Security Agency under Ronald Reagan, has the best short explanation of where we stand in Iraq today, read it here, then just for fun, read in our Self-Parody Department: William Kristol said Barack Obama wants to appease terrorists like pro-slavery politician Stephen Douglas tried to appease slave-owners. Kristol said, "Obama's speech is a 'can't we get along' speech -- sort of the opposite of Lincoln. He would have been with Stephen Douglas in 1858." Here. Shouldn't all of Kristol's comments come with a warning: "Notice: This man's predictions have helped cause the death of hundreds of thousands of people, the wasting of a trillion dollars, torture, the inspiration of who knows how many terrorists and the hatred of the United States the world over, and yet he continues to attack the intelligence, integrity and patriotism of those who were correct."

(And shouldn't David Duke have a column in Time as well, just to give the magazine some intellectual consistency?)

Alterman has repeatedly slammed Time for its lineup of columnists (including Kristol), which he correctly says skews conservative. But what does David Duke have to do with Time or Kristol? This certainly looks like an ugly smear. Is Alterman likening Kristol to Duke? All conservatives?

Joe Lieberman is a cheeseball

I don't know what's more embarrassing about this passage from Jeffrey Goldberg's New Yorker article -- the fact that Goldberg and Lieberman independently paid to see Behind Enemy Lines or the fact that Lieberman actually cheers during crappy Hollywood blockbusters:

Lieberman likes expressions of American power. A few years ago, I was in a movie theatre in Washington when I noticed Lieberman and his wife, Hadassah, a few seats down. The film was "Behind Enemy Lines," in which Owen Wilson plays a U.S. pilot shot down in Bosnia. Whenever the American military scored an onscreen hit, Lieberman pumped his first and said, "Yeah!" and "All right!"

PS: Goldberg shares Lieberman's hawkish tendencies, but he does get one particularly nice shot in at the sanctimonious posturing of the "independent Democrat":

Three days after the hearing, I went to see Lieberman in his office. He was cheerful and easygoing and more convinced than usual of the essential rightness of his vision" (my italics).

White House press challenges Snow

Chris Mooney and Brad DeLong report that the White House press corps is finally challenging Tony Snow aggressively on the administration's dissembling about global warming and the revenue effects of tax cuts, respectively. It's amazing what a 33% approval rating will do for their backbone. (Compare and contrast, for instance, to all the cases documented in All the President's Spin.)

William Kristol smears Barack Obama

Isaac Chotiner flags a disturbing statement by William Kristol from Fox News Sunday in which he suggests that Barack Obama would have backed Stephen Douglas over Abraham Lincoln:

We're electing a war president in 2008. If I can go back to Obama and Lincoln for just one second, Lincoln's "house divided" speech in 1858 was a speech saying we cannot live as a house divided on slavery. And he implicitly says we'll have to fight a civil war if necessary on this.

Obama's speech is a "can't we get along" speech--sort of the opposite of Lincoln. He would have been with Stephen Douglas in 1858.[Italics Mine]

Note the inflammatory implications of this attack. Kristol suggests that Obama -- a black man who is not African American -- would have supported Douglas, who supported allowing settlers to choose whether to have slavery, over Lincoln, who opposed the expansion of slavery.

Conservatives question the Reagan myth

The near-godlike status of Ronald Reagan among conservatives is contradicted by his rarely acknowledged inconsistencies (including multiple tax increases), as Josh Green argued in the Washington Monthly. But it's rare to see conservatives admitting this.

That's why it's surprising to see one of the Bush devotees at Power Line pointing out the truth about Reagan:

Beyond that, when, exactly, has this country ever elected the sort of pure conservative that this group, as depicted by the Times, yearns for? These Reagan alumni have perhaps forgotten how disappointed conservatives were through most of Reagan's administration. (Remember "Let Reagan be Reagan"?) And who, if we put Reagan to one side, is the conservative paragon that the current candidates don't live up to? William McKinley, maybe? I can't think of anyone else in the last century.

Mitt Romney is even telling a joke about Reagan's inconsistency:

Mr. Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, has tried to explain his conversion on abortion rights, from support to opposition, with a made-for-television story: As he listened to a Harvard researcher discussing stem-cell science, and the destruction of embryos, he saw the antiabortion cause in a new light.

At some recent conferences for social conservatives, Mr. Romney has used a line that some conservatives find credible: "On abortion I was not always a Ronald Reagan conservative. Neither was Ronald Reagan."

What will the Reagan hagiographers do?