Questions for Excitable Andy

Pejman Yousefzadeh has a little fun at Andrew Sullivan's expense

Open Questions For Andrew Sullivan

Man's best friend indeed

They spent $19 billion on technological abilities to sniff out explosives. After six years of trying to make a bomb-detecting gadget, they found their best efforts produced only a 50% detection rate.


The plain old dog had an 80% rate.

Click over and check out the picture.

Good news tarnished by the spin

Osama bin Laden dead: Yes, SEALs were in on the raid, but aides hail Obama's office bravery


According to another one of those White House briefings of reporters designed to suck up all available credit for good news, President Obama's homeland security advisor reveals that it was a really tense time in the air-conditioned White House as unidentified U.S. Navy SEALs closed in on the world's most wanted man after midnight a half a world away.

President Obama displayed courage when he OK'd the raid into Pakistan. It was not the same sort of courage displayed by the SEALs, but it was real.

Clausewitz: "Courage is of two kinds: courage in the face of personal danger, and courage to accept responsibility".

There is something unseemly about the outpouring of lavish praise from his own aides. Are these people public servants or courtiers?

Capital punishment

Jerry Brown Slowly Dismantling Death Penalty Apparatus in California

What gets me is how perverse the arguments can be. The death penalty costs too much, we are told by those who seek to make it as expensive as possible. The death penalty takes too long to administer, we are told by those who drag it out as long as possible. And, increasingly, the response from those who support the death penalty is to accept these arguments, rather than to fight them.

I guess this is the New Age version of freedom fries

Summit Park Slope has had its share of drama. Originally called Perugia Park in honor of Seattle's sister city, the name had to be changed when Perugia sent Seattle sister Amanda Knox to prison for the infamous was-alleged-is-now-convicted murder of her roommate. It got renamed the innocuous 'Summit Park Slope'

Source

Some smart, but sobering thoughts

Courtesy of Frank James:

THE NEXT STEP...

HT: View from the Porch

That's crazy, crazy, Glenn Beck talk

So what's it doing in The Atlantic?

Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood Sticks With Bin Laden

The Islamist political party has made devout moderation a cornerstone of their post-Mubarak strategy, but the group's statement after the death of Osama bin Laden suggests they may not be so moderate

President Barak Antoinette

Gas prices keep rising

Meanwhile, Obama says: 'Let them buy smaller cars.'


But President Barack Obama did tell an American worried about gasoline prices that he should buy a new car: "If you're complaining about the price of gas and you're only getting eight miles a gallon, you might want to think about a trade-in," Mr. Obama joked in response to a questioner at a campaign stop near Philadelphia April 6.


It apparently didn't occur to the president that people for whom it is a hardship to pay a dollar more a gallon for gasoline can't afford to buy a new car.

Ouch

End the White House Press dinners

In light of this annual event, it is difficult to view the White House press corps as anything other than Daily Kos commenters who are well-paid and without the profanity.

Good stuff

Birtherism: Cui bono?

"Obama’s release of birth certificate does little to allay ‘birther’ fears" proclaims this morning’s Washington Post. Not if they can help it anyway! After all, as today’s Guardian announces "Republicans will rue their birther backing." Why wouldn’t The Guardian, as much as The Washington Post, want them to go on ruing it for as long as possible, even after the Democrats’ turkey-shoot of yesterday’s revelation? If the "birther" nonsense is, as The Independent puts it "the rumour that just wouldn’t go away," it is because media organs like these don’t want it to go away. Keeping the rumor alive among a fringe group of conspiracy theorists who could be represented as being one and the same as "Republicans" was always going to serve the media’s own political agenda.

Mrs. Steve Sailer has Rand's number

I’ve never read Rand’s novel about a dystopian near-future in which the unappreciated capitalists who keep the world running go on strike. And from what my wife tells me of her attempt to grind through the book in college, it sounds pretty dire: “Rand lauds the competent, but she herself wasn’t a competent novelist.”

From Taki's Mag's review of Atlas Shrugged.

I miss Sam Kinison

The late great Sam Kinison many years ago totally destroyed Whoopi Goldberg, using only 5 or 6 words.


I believe it was Kinison theorizing on why she had a career despite not being even remotely funny. "Whoopi Goldberg: a nation collectively decides not to hurt someone's feelings."

From the comments over at Ace's joint.

Liberty and democracy take another hit

King & Spalding's craven ethical collapse in withdrawing from a politically controversial representation

The Non-Defense of Marriage


The Left Politicizes the Practice of Law

King & Spalding Drops DOMA Defense; Paul Clement Drops King & Spalding

Did Coca-Cola pressure law firm out of DOMA defense?

"Remember the Alamo! Remember Goliad!"

I like how they do it in Texas:

As significant battles go, the size of the armies involved in the decisive engagement that led to Texas becoming a nation 175 years ago this week was relatively modest.


Even more compelling was the duration of the fighting at San Jacinto -- just 18 minutes.


But in true Texas fashion, the monument that commemorates the battle is 536 feet tall -- the world's tallest war memorial.

Hey, in terms of numbers, the Battle of Britain "was relatively modest." Doesn't mean it wasn't important.


Not even the carping weenies (i guess every state has them) can deny that San Jacinto had consequences for Mexico, Texas, and the United States.

This seems important

Was FBI too quick to judge anthrax suspect the killer?

Scouring the anthrax-laced mail that took five lives and terrorized the East Coast in 2001, laboratory scientists discovered a unique contaminant - a microscopic fingerprint that they hoped would help unmask the killer.


One senior FBI official wrote in March 2007, in a recently declassified memo, that the potential clue "may be the most resolving signature found in the evidence to date."


Yet once FBI agents concluded that the likely culprit was Bruce Ivins - a mentally troubled but highly regarded Army microbiologist - they stopped looking for the contaminant, after testing only a few work spaces of the scores of researchers using the anthrax strain found in the letters. They quit searching, despite finding no traces of the substance in hundreds of environmental samples from Ivins' lab, office, car and home.

HT: Meryl Nass

Rethinking liberal anti-Communism

Just ran across this article

Rethinking Post-World War II Anticommunism

However fiercely historians disagree about the merits of American communism, they almost universally agree that the post-World War II red scare signified a rightward turn in American politics. The consensus is that an exaggerated, irrational fear of communism, bolstered by a few spectacular spy cases, created an atmosphere of persecution and hysteria that was exploited and fanned by conservative opportunists such as Richard Nixon and Joseph McCarthy. This hysteria suppressed rival ideologies and curtailed the New Deal, leading to a resurgence of conservative ideas and corporate influence in government. We may add detail and nuance to this story, but this, basically, is what we tell our students and ourselves about post-World War II anticommunism, also known as McCarthyism.2 It is fundamentally the same story that liberals have told since Whittaker Chambers accused Alger Hiss of being a Communist spy in 1948.


And yet the most famous and effective anticommunist measures were carried out not by conservatives, but by liberals seeking to uphold the New Deal. It was the liberal Truman administration that chased Communists out of government agencies and prosecuted Communist Party leaders under the Smith Act. It was liberal Hollywood executives who adopted the blacklist, effectively forcing Communists out of the movie business. The labor leaders who purged Communists from their unions were, similarly, liberals. Most anticommunism—the anticommunism that mattered—was not hysterical and conservative, but, rather, a methodical and, in the end, successful attempt on the part of New Deal liberals to remove Communists from specific areas of American life, namely, the government, unions, universities and schools, and civil rights organizations. It is true that the FBI and the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) helped carry out these measures, but it is a mistake to assume that J. Edgar Hoover or HUAC could have had much power without the cooperation of liberals who wanted Communists identified and driven out of their organizations.

Delton does a great job explaining why liberals were anti-Communist in the post-war era. Their opposition to Stalin's American minions was not a matter of cowardice or hysteria. Rather, it was a moral response to a serious national security threat and a pragmatic response to political realities.

I especially liked her expert skewering of the anti-anti-Communists like Victor Navasky (formerly of The Nation and now at the Columbia School of Journalism):

Navasky’s characterization of historians like Haynes, Klehr, and Weinstein as “crazed lepidopterists,” who “wildly try to capture every fugitive document that flutters into view” is a bit unfair considering that critics like Navasky himself keep dismissing the evidence these authors have found and then asking them for more evidence.

She is also critical of historians who have not dealt honestly with recent revelations such as the VENONA files:

Most historians now acknowledge the existence of Soviet agents in the government, and even the role of the Communist Party in recruiting such agents, but they have not accordingly revised their understanding of the Truman administration’s response to the situation. They still overemphasize the betrayal of democratic principles rather than helping students understand the need for and rationality of the government’s repression of the Communist Party. In the revised edition of The Age of McCarthyism, for instance, Ellen Schrecker manages to acknowledge that “documents released from the Russian and American archives reveal that as many as two to three hundred men and women in or near the Communist Party did transmit information to Moscow” without actually changing her narrative. She continues to refer to “the alleged threat of internal communism” as an impetus for the Loyalty-Security Program, as if the existence of 200 to 300 Soviet agents in the government were not a serious threat.51 Acknowledging the evidence against Hiss, she still insists that the significant point to be taken from the case is that it—the trial, the guilty verdict, Nixon, the trip to the pumpkin patch—“gave credibility to the issue of Communists-in-government.” What gave credibility to the idea that there were Communist spies in the government was the fact that there were Communist spies in the government.

The real Donald Trump

Donald Trump and Eminent Domain

Donald Trump’s covetous nature is not in dispute, but what many may forget is that he’s no great respecter of the admonition not to steal, either: The man has a track record of using the government as a hired thug to take other people’s property.

Well deserved honor

Joeseph Neff of the News and Observer is one of the winners of the Michael Kelly Award.

The news judgement of the professionals at work

The destruction of a photograph in France is big time news.

This, however, is not seen as a big story.

The arson at St. John Vianney Church is the latest in a string of crimes against Catholic institutions across California. In January, a vandal spray-painted the words “Kill the Cathlics” on the walls of St. Boniface Catholic Church in Anaheim and St. Thomas More Catholic Church in Irvine. Beginning in December 2010, Holy Family Catholic Church in Glendale was forced to tighten security measures after a thief repeatedly broke into collection boxes used by parishioners to donate money to the needy.

On the question of the attack on the photo, I like this reaction.

"Hugh Hefner is one in a long line of preachy perverts"

That's Daniel J. Flynn's verdict.

Pay to Play

Flynn builds on Chesterton's observation that "A man must be something of a moralist if he is to preach, even if he is to preach immorality." (Proving once again that G.K., who died in 1936, remains the more relevant than almost any contempory writer.)

If you want to dominate, call yourself a liberator.

Hefner the control-freak comes through loud and clear in this Daily Mail article

Playboy mansion? More like a squalid prison: Former Playmates tell of 'grubby' world inside Hugh Hefner's empire

Be warned! Here is Munchkin Wrangler's reaction:

This article on life in the Playboy mansion makes me want to scrub myself down with lye.

Ace asked the right question after he read it:

The whole business is sleazy, of course (porn). I always thought it was odd that Hef would cast Playboy as this sort of upper-class-aspirational lifestyle sort of magazine, with a libertarian philosophy, and get treated as if he wasn't just a pornographer like Bob Guccione.


I mean, that's a thin veneer, isn't it? You review some high-end stereo equipment and have articles about nice clothes so you're not sleazy?

I think it will take a book-- a long yet potentially fascinating book-- to make sense of Hefner and his pop icon status.

We certainly are not going to get the story from the MSM. Unlike their scoop hungry English cousins, American journalists just keep toeing the line and regurgitating Playboy PR.

Here's Politico's Roger Simon:

Hef is more ordinary than you think

He is a down-home, likeable and, in a sense, very ordinary person. In a different era, “playboys” were international jet-setters. They dated screen stars, played polo, drove race cars, skied, sailed yachts and were a regular feature at the parties of the rich and famous.


Hef likes to stay home. He has always liked to stay home.

I dunno, maybe we have a lousy press because we have lousy press critics. Howard Kurtz did a respectful, almost fawning, interview with Hefner back in August. He showed no interest in puncturing the PR myths.

Gunwalking scandal keeps growing

New E-Mails Show ATF Gunrunner Denials Are False

Revisiting the Hanssen case

For Vienna man, case of notorious spy Hanssen hit too close to home
Former CIA employee was thought to be guilty of passing information to Russians


After four long years, during which time he spent two years suspended from work and was repeatedly warned he was certainly discovered as the long-sought mole, he was released from a living hell. No longer were his days as a free man numbered. No longer did a possible death sentence for espionage loom over him.

There is a lot to chew on in this article.

The FBI's hunt for the mole inside CIA may be the most egregious counter-intelligence failure since the Soviets set up camp inside the Manhattan Project. It was bad enough that the Bureau let Hanssen rifle through our secrets for 22 years. It compounded the error by conducting a reckless witch hunt inside CIA.

Whole forests have died to produce a library of books denouncing James J. Angleton's “paranoid” molehunt in the 1960s. The press has no similar interest in examining the FBI's futile search for the spy inside CIA. Yet, as Mark Reibling notes in Wedge:

FBI agent Edward J. Curran, chief of the counterespionage group at the CIA Counterintelligence Center, became "The Executioner." ....Eventually he isolated three hundred suspects (an "A to Z list"). By all accounts, the inquiry soon devolved into inquisition. Curran later conceded that his agents treated CIA officers 'like criminals.' One highly decorated station chief was interrogated six hours a day for five days.... It was a vicious and induiscriminate probe...it surpassed by magnitudes of indecency the discreetly focused 'witch-hunt' Abgleton led.

I'm surprised that the MSM has shown so little interest in this destructive investigation.

The Hanssen case deserves further consideration for other reasons as well. Kelly believes that the FBI is still covering up its mistakes. It will not come clean about all the damage Hanssen did. Kelly calls him “a far more damaging spy than most people realize” and “the most devastating traitor in American history.”

The FBI refuses to address why it failed to catch him. They don't seem to think that the investigation went that badly.

Katherine Schweit, supervisory special agent for public affairs in the FBI's Washington Field Office, said none of the IG report's findings "suggest(ed) that the investigation into the CIA employee [Kelley] was unnecessary or improper," and that "given the information it had at the time, the FBI's initial selection of this CIA employee as the lead suspect was understandable."

Here's something else to haunt a patriot's nightmares:

And [Kelly] also suspects that another mole remained undetected

Some of the FBI's failures are classic examples of the Rosenhan trap (see here and here). The investigators got stuck on a single track and shut their mind to other possibilites.

Hanssen was hidden in plain sight, and only repeated failures within the FBI allowed him to escape detection for so long, Kelley said. It was the obsessive pursuit of "a single hypothesis, as opposed to competing or alternative hypotheses," and the FBI focused only on Kelley. He calls it "the case of the foregone conclusion."


"The FBI would take any facts and twist them to fit the conclusion," he says, "and if it wouldn't fit, then it was the 'evil genius' Brian Kelley."

A related-unrelated point: The FBI's hyper focus on Brian Kelly and its determined attempts to make the evidence fit their theory should make reasonable people skeptical of their conclusions about Bruce Ivins and the anthrax letters.


See also:

Robert Hanssen: 9/11's forgotten man

Howie sez Glenn Beck is a bad, bad man

But you have to take his word for it.

What, you don't expect a trained professional journalist to provide facts and details do you?

Glenn Beck's Toxic Legacy

I read his article and I still know very little about Beck's latest gargantuan crime against human decency. Kurtz is miserly with his information. Did Beck go on an extended rant against Planned Parenthood or was it just a quip as part of his goofing on Larry O'Donnell? Howie does not say; he provides no extended quotes or any context.

Gee, isn't that what Beck usually gets ripped for-- taking quotes out of context?

It was more of the same on Sunday's Reliable Sources. Beck, Kurtz insisted, was the worst person on TV and most of his panel agreed. (Beck's total depravity and unique iniquity seems to be the topic du jour for media writers).

Beck trafficked in conspiracy theories which makes him the second coming of Father Coughlin. Yet, trafficking in conspiracy theories does not seem to hurt Seymour Hersh; he is still considered a reliable and respected investigative reporter.

The Unraveling of Seymour Hersh

“That’s the attitude,” Hersh continued. “We’re gonna change mosques into cathedrals. That’s an attitude that pervades, I’m here to say, a large percentage of the Joint Special Operations Command.”

Hersh also alleged that General Stanley McChrystal, who headed Joint Special Operations Command before becoming the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, and his successor, Vice Admiral William McRaven, as well as many within JSOC, “are all members of, or at least supporters of, Knights of Malta.”

“Many of them are members of Opus Dei,” Hersh continued. “They do see what they’re doing — and this is not an atypical attitude among some military — it’s a crusade, literally. They seem themselves as the protectors of the Christians. They’re protecting them from the Muslims [as in] the 13th century. And this is their function.”

Also:

Re: The unraveling of Seymour Hersh

Did Beck ever sound this crazy? If he did, why don't pundits give us the quotes instead the accusation?

Kurtz and his ilk make a point that MSNBC sometimes went over the line, but Glen Beck was far, far worse. I'm still waiting for them to show the facts that support that argument. Where are the Beck quotes as vicious as this?

total mindless, morally bankrupt, knee-jerk, fascistic hatred without which Michelle Malkin would just be a big mashed-up bag of meat with lipstick on it.

Or this?

In short, in Scott Brown we have an irresponsible, homophobic, racist, reactionary, ex-nude model, teabagging supporter of violence against woman and against politicians with whom he disagrees. In any other time in our history, this man would have been laughed off the stage as unqualified and a disaster in the making by the most conservative of conservatives. Instead, the commonwealth of Massachusetts is close to sending this bad joke to the Senate of the United States.

Olbermann was more than willing to traffic in conspiracy theories. Every time Republicans did well in an election, he saw dark forces at work. (See here for one example).

He happily promoted the John Dean thesis that modern conservatives were budding psychopaths and proto-Nazis who had no conscience.

Apparently, left-wingers can do that to the right, but when Beck did it to progressives, it was a crime of historic proportions.

A righteous smackdown done right

The tedium of the provincial, hack critic

How the television sausage gets made

I thought this interview was fascinating.

Terrifying TV: Showrunner Ed Bernero

The end of the Couric era at CBS

The best analysis i've seen:

Buh-Bye Katie, Redux

The Associated Press has confirmed: Katie Couric will leave the anchor chair at CBS when her contract ends in June. As we noted previously, there was no real impetus for the network--or Ms. Couric--to extend the deal. Five years into her run, CBS was stuck with a third-place evening newscast, while paying Couric an annual salary of $15 million.

CBS has finally discovered the wisdom of Branch Rickey: "We finished last with you, we can finish last without you."


Slate's Jack Shafer thinks this is a non-news story about the news:

In the coming weeks, as the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal do backflips trying to figure out who will replace Couric as anchor, do yourself a favor and ignore the noise. The job and the programs no longer matter.

Bill Wyman in the Atlantic argues that the Couric experiment was a mistake from the start-- a desperate gamble by CBS management

Few people want to see a news digest show at 6:30 in the evening anymore, and those that do like Brian Williams and the NBC news team. Bob Shieffer, Couric's predecessor, was mired in third place as well and the network felt it had to do something. So it threw some money at the problem and bought a celebrity.

Wyman asks and answers the more interesting question: “How did Couric hang on for so long at the Evening News? Never underestimate the value of a smart PR campaign”


Couric was definitely the beneficiary of plenty of positive spin from media critics. This went well beyond the usual corralled rebellion school of noncritical criticism. At times, press critics were impassioned defenders of the Perky One. Here is the Baltimore Sun's David Zurawik in 2009:

And I think in Couric and Sawyer we have two really outstanding journalists. And we have the best journalists at their network in those jobs.


KURTZ: You -- you wrote this week...


ZURAWIK: Yes.


KURTZ: ... that Katie Couric and Diane Sawyer are now the two strongest journalistic forces on network TV.


ZURAWIK: Yes....


I mean -- again, as you said in the introduction, that -- what we went through with Katie Couric was just insane. You know? And -- and -- and we should all probably in some ways apologize to Katie Couric, because it took a while for us to all step back and say, "You know what? She's a great journalist. And she's doing a great job in this." A great job at that anchor desk.

Zurawik's take on Couric has shifted wildly over the last few years. On Sunday he was far more critical of the soon-to-be-former anchor:

I believe she failed. I believe, by any standard, you judge this as a failure. But I believe she failed -- and this is going to sound harsh, but she didn't work hard enough. About three months ago, I wrote a piece saying -- when they changed the morning show -- said, they have got to change the evening news. It's dead in the water, it's a step behind everybody.

Look at how Diane Sawyer energized ABC's evening news. She has her star. She brings --


KURTZ: What about the fact that the "CBS Evening News' won numerous awards? Katie Couric is in Iraq this week. Is that really a fear wrap?


ZURAWIK: Yes, it is fair, because when she took the job, she said, I don't want to be traveling just to stand in front of some foreign backdrop, blah, blah, blah. She was a reluctant traveler at first.


She just simply -- you know, I saw a quote about her and I heard this from somebody at CBS, said that Katie Couric works hardest around contract time. That's a harsh thing to say, but that's what they're saying there, Howie.

His recent views echo his opinion from 2008:

But I have to tell you something -- and this is true -- Katie Couric did not work very hard to do that newscast.

One has to ask -- why was Zurawik so protective of Couric in 2009 when he knew that she was flailing and failing in Uncle Walter's big chair?

I wonder if it has something to do with an interview with a certain VP candidate?

The Palin interview was he one “triumph” Couric has in her tenure at CBS. Like Tina Fey and Kathleen Parker, her Palin-bashing earned her tremendous praise from the critics and her MSM brethern.

It seems fair to remember the essential Couric before nostalgia and hype create the next new image. The real Couric comes through loud and clear in her treatment of Richard Jewell. This exchange took place after Jewell was exonerated by the FBI:

That evening a very testy Katie Couric tracked Bryant down at Nadya Light’s apartment, where we had gone to watch the news. "I want you to know that I canceled interviewing Barbra Streisand in L.A. for Richard Jewell. Don’t think he is always going to be a news story. No one will care about him in three days," she said, according to Bryant.

And this is how she reported his death:

Back in 1996, the FBI investigated Richard Jewell, an Atlanta security guard, in connection with the Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta. Richard Jewell died today of complications from diabetes. He was 44. Jewell was never charged with any crime. There is much more CBS… [FADE-OUT]

The budget "debate" in a nutshell

Mickey Kaus

From another perspective, it looks like a tacit conspiracy of Washingtonians not to sacrifice the jobs of any of their friends, or the local economy, by any kind of actual slimming down (of the sort a private company in similar straits would have undertaken years ago). … In effect, the respectable ”pivot to entitlements” position says,”we’re going to cut Social Security checks and Medicare for mid-income old people to save the jobs of $180K equal opportunity officers at the DOT.” … Why not wring the fat out of government first? …

Note to Congress: "Leaders eat last"

A Soldier Speaks Out On The Shutdown - 'Leaders Eat Last.'

Leaders eat last. Its that simple. Our national politicians need to get the message. They aren't the purpose of government, they are there to help make it work.

That's why she's a good fit at Slate

Lithwick's latest, on KSM, is not just silly but pernicious

Dahlia Lithwick is the least reliable legal pundit I've ever run across

RTWT

Hmmm....

Glenn Beck to End Daily Fox News Program

Amanda Knox

Meredith Kercher was young and beautiful. That usually is enough to make a murder victim the centerpiece of a tabloid feeding frenzy. Kercher, however, was British while one of her accused killers was an American girl. That meant that on this side of the pond the British victim would be relegated to the sidelines and almost forgotten. Over here, Amanda Knox took the starring role.


In the usual tabloid narrative an accusation is taken as proof of guilt. Amanda Knox, in contrast, was deemed the innocent victim of a rogue prosecutor. New York Times blogger Timothy Egan described her trial as "a railroad job from hell". Donald Trump called on Americans to boycott Italy and its goods to protest the gross miscarriage of justice. HLN harpies Jane Velez-Mitchell and Nancy Grace gave the Italian justice system the Duke lacrosse treatment.


The only voice that broke away from the media pack was Barbie Latza Nadeau. Unlike most of those weighing in the case, she was a reporter who lived in Italy and actually attended the trial. Her book, Angel Face, gives Americans their first detailed and balanced look at the story.


Nadeau demolishes the the idea that the Italian authorities had no evidence against Knox and Sollecito. The case against the two young students was at least as strong as the one which put Scott Peterson on California's death row. Like the Peterson trial, the paucity of physical evidence was offset by a wealth of circumstantial evidence and the string of lies told by the accused.


The book is fair to Amanda Knox, deeply sympathetic to her parents, and honest about the mistakes made by investigators, prosecutors, and defense lawyers.


Nadeau is rightly critical of the American media, especially television. Their coverage of the Knox case was distorted and incomplete. In part, this was due to penny-pinching and laziness:



Times blogger Timothy Egan was one of those who fell into this trap.

TV news was further compromised by the need to get the Knox family on camera. The competition for "the big get" shaped and twisted the coverage:



and

Of the handful of American journalists in Perugia in late 2007 and early 2008, none got access to the Knox family without certain guarantees about positive coverage.... Most of the print press was shut out. And the TV producers learned to be very cautious about being seen with people like me, lest the Knox family should cut tem off.

Marriott tried desperately to control the message by meting out access according to which networks painted Amanda in the best light. To a large extent he was successful.

Most U.S. papers covered the trial from afar, and it was much simpler to quote the family and pipe information from Marriott [the Knox family PR adviser] than to wade through volumes of Italian court documents.

"The only thing that gets you shunned in New York society is poverty."

Jeffrey Epstein's Society Friends Close Ranks

On the evening of December 2nd, 2010, a handful of America's media and entertainment elite—including TV anchors Katie Couric and George Stephanopoulos, comedienne Chelsea Handler, and director Woody Allen—convened around the dinner table of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. It wasn't just any dining room, but part of a sprawling nine-story townhouse that once housed an entire preparatory school. And it wasn't just any sex offender, but an enigmatic billionaire who had once flown the likes of former President Bill Clinton and former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak around the world on his own Boeing 727. Last spring, Epstein completed a 13-month sentence for soliciting prostitution from a minor in Palm Beach.

Mark your calenders

Remember: Saturday Morning, Attila on the Radio with Robert Stacy McCain by Little Miss Attila on March 30, 2011

We’ll be on Da Techguy‘s radio show in Massachusetts, which can apparently be heard over the actual airwaves throughout much of New England (and is consequently a great advertising bargain for Northeast-based businesses), this Saturday morning.

The ever quotable Steve Sailer

Heinlein in Hindsight: The Moses of Nerds

Andy Warhol is still famous for saying 43 years ago that in the future everyone will be famous for 15 minutes. It’s more likely that in the future everyone will be famous to 15 people.

When baseball was America's game

Baseball: The game that helped America become America

A brewing scandal

Project Gunrunner: Obama’s Stimulus-Funded Border Nightmare

Project Gunrunner: How Did the ATF Get Gun Dealers to Agree to Sell Guns to Criminals?

Should the ATF Have Prevented the Sale of the Gun that Killed ICE Agent Jaime Zapata?

How Big Was Operation Gunrunner? And Did One of the Gunrunner Guns Kill an ICE Agent?

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy"

The 5 Creepiest Unsolved Crimes Nobody Can Explain

MSNBC: Not the place for breaking news

Viewers Want News On Weekends, But Will MSNBC Ever Give Up On Lockup?



Sure enough, the prison documentary series Lockup ran on MSNBC Saturday and again Sunday night as cable news rivals CNN and Fox News swarmed to cover the American missiles raining down on Libya. MSNBC has long faced criticism for choosing taped programming over live news coverage on weekends. Back in 2009, Scott Collins wrote about the network’s failure to cover breaking news in Iran in a Los Angeles Times story headlined “At MSNBC, Weekends Aren’t Newsworthy.” Collins quoted an MSNBC spokesman saying episodes of Lockup “generate higher viewership for us on weekends.”

Can we now agree that the Rosenberg's were guilty?

It's kind of funny. We are supposed to recoil in horror from the conspiracy theorists who think Pres. Obama is a Muslim or that he was born in Kenya. Yet, for sixty years, leading lights in journalism and the academy spun ever more convoluted and inane theories to justify, explain, and defend traitors like the Rosenbergs and Alger Hiss. Yet, year after year, the evidence of their guilt grows stronger.

Should we demand that Victor Navasky, Athan Theorharis, The Nation, et al. publicly repudiate their former positions? If they do not, should all thinking people publicly denounce them and their wacky conspiracy theories and their attempts to defend the indefensible?

The Sobell Confession

[Morton] Sobell’s recent second confession finally clears up some of the few remaining points of contention about the Rosenberg case—what exactly Sobell contributed, whether he and his comrades gave the Soviets valuable information, and whether it is appropriate to dismiss their actions as youthful indiscretions in aid of a wartime ally. By confirming that he was one of the group who photographed material filched by Perl, Sobell demolished the lie that the Rosenberg ring stole only inconsequential data and engaged in mere “industrial espionage.” He also revealed that, while there is no evidence he engaged in atomic espionage—with which he is associated in the public mind because of his coconspirators—he was guilty of giving the Soviet Union secret data that advanced the capabilities of the Soviet military machine. He has thus put the last nail in the coffin of the arguments of the Rosenbergs’ apologists, who continue to insist that the couple were framed and executed by the U.S. government for their political ideas.

The New York Times ran the story on page A19. I guess this revelation just did not fit the narrative. Ahh, for the glory days when the "news" on the commie spy beat was all about FBI misdeeds and new scholarly tomes proving the innocence of poor premature anti-fascists.

Jason Whitlock doesn't care who he ticks off

This question is right on point:

Let me get this right. When black men call each other “Uncle Toms” and “bitches” for no good reason and the financial benefit of ESPN, it’s admirable candor? When Don Imus calls black women “nappy-headed hos” for no good reason and the financial benefit of a radio station, it’s a crime against humanity and a fireable offense?

Good point

Deadspin points to a telling conflict of interest at ESPN in the matter of Jalen Rose v. Grant Hill:

ESPN, Jalen Rose, And The Manufactured "Uncle Tom" Controversy

This is where ESPN's tricky dual roles as journalism outfit and producer of sports entertainment collide, and the results aren't always pretty. ESPN, not to mention Jalen Rose, only stood to benefit from a controversy over Rose's remarks. Among other things, it allowed the network to promote the doc without explicitly promoting it. It was news now, not just another piece of entertainment programming.

One, two, many George Baileys

Something Greater Than Yourself

But if the self-serving, banal fame of the Snookies and the Kardashians, whose names are distressingly to the forefront of our awareness for no discernable reason, matters, it may be in measures more cautionary than lasting. Their influence cannot—should not—have a deeper influence on the world than the example of one ordinary, not-famous man flipping his 400th pancake while reassuring a young scout who has spilled maple syrup all over himself, or one ordinary, not-famous 15 year-old handing a pair of cheap sunglasses to a shy kid who wants to belong.

RTWT

Scandalize his name

Funny, i haven't heard this part of the story from the tabloid TV shows.

Is Mel Gibson guilty of domestic violence? Before you say yes, check the facts

Good riddance

Judith Coplon Socolov, one of those Americans who happily spied for Stalin, died earlier this month.

Judith Coplon, Haunted by Espionage Case, Dies at 89

Like Alger Hiss and the Rosenberg's, she went to her grave denying her treachery.


The Times's story is a fair presentation of the basic facts. They give her daughter a lot of space to justify her actions which amounts to the current party line:

“If you feel that what you’re doing answers to a higher ideal, it’s not treason.”

Ronald Radosh and Daniel Flynn have useful correctives to this sort of balderdash:

Another American Spy for the Soviets Dies … and the Left Regards Her as a Hero


Spies Like Us

The FBI's pursuit of Coplon is told by the FBI man who was at the heart of the investigation. It's a great read and illustrates the problems that prosecutors face when dealing with spies and terrorists.

Stale buzz: Tina Brown and Newsweek

Maybe it's time to rename it 'Lastweek'

News you might have missed

Katie Couric, George Stephanopoulos Party at Home of Convicted Pedophile, Pimp

Playing the McCarthyism card (badly)

UPDATED

Now days, "McCarthyism" has been drained of meaning. It gets tossed around by people who have no idea what the Senator did. They simply "know" that he was bad and did bad things.

This puts plenty of fish in the barrel for those who know history. Neo-neocon gives us a lesson in how it is done:

Peter King McCarthy

UPDATE:

Neo links to this Ron Radosh article which is well worth a look:

A New View of the McCarthy Era Could Shake up the Academy

I especially liked this:

This conventional narrative of the left has been told over and over for so many years that it has all but become the established truth to most Americans. It was exemplified in a best-selling book of the late 1970's, David Caute’s The Great Fear, and from the most quoted one from the recent past, Ellen Schrecker’s Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America. My favorite title is one written by the late Cedric Belfrage, The American Inquisition 1945-1960: A Profile of the “McCarthy Era.” In his book, Belfrage told the story of how he, an independent journalist who founded the fellow-traveling weekly The National Guardian, was hounded by the authorities and finally deported home to Britain. American concerns about Soviet espionage, he argued, were simply paranoia.
The problem with Belfrage’s account was that once the Venona files began to be released in 1995–the once top secret Soviet decrypts of communications between Moscow Center and its US agents—they revealed that Belfrage was a paid KGB operative, just as the anti-Communist liberal Sidney Hook had openly charged decades ago, and as turned KGB spy Elizabeth Bentley had privately informed the FBI in 1945. The Venona cables revealed that Belfrage had given the KGB an OSS report received by British intelligence concerning the anti-Communist Yugoslav resistance in the 1940's as well as documents about the British government’s position during the war on opening a second front in Europe. It showed that Belfrage had offered the Soviets to establish secret contact with them if he was stationed in London.

The last thirty years have been full of revelations like that.

One of my favorites is earnest liberal (his family owned The New Republic) Michael Straight who wrote a book on the Army- McCarthy hearings (Trial by Television). Naturally, he was appalled by the senator from Wisconsin. But then, he had something of a rooting interest: his brother-in-law (Gustavo Duran) was one of the names that McCarthy named.

Decades after McCarthy's self-destruction, we found out that Straight was a member of the Cambridge spy-ring (Kim Philby, et. al.) Not only that, but another brother-in-law was one of Stalin's minions in Spain during the civil war there.


1

Bombshell?

Anthrax report casts doubt on scientific evidence in FBI case against Bruce Ivins

According to the National Academy of Science panel:

"The scientific link between the letter material and flask number RMR-1029 is not as conclusive as stated in the DOJ Investigative Summary,''

The FBI and DOJ stand by their verdict. And well they should. Unlike Steven Hatfill or Richard Jewell, Bruce Ivins is not around to fight back.

If the science the FBI used was shaky, then their whole case is toddering. They argue that the science was only a small part of their total investigation.

"The FBI has long maintained that while science played a significant role, it was the totality of the investigative process that determined the outcome of the anthrax case,'' the FBI and Justice Department said in a joint statement. "Although there have been great strides in forensic science over the years, rarely does science alone solve an investigation.''

The "totality of the investigative process" includes the sustained, wrong-headed pursuit of Richard Hatfill. Not the stuff to build confidence in the final conclusion if the science is shaky.

It's worth remembering that the investigation also hinges on one big assumption that is open to question:

Actually, the 96 page FBI report is predicated on the assumption that the anthrax letters attack was carried out by a "lone nut." The FBI report fails to entertain the possibility that the letters attack could have involved more than one actor. The FBI admits that about 400 people may have had access to Ivins' RMR-1029 anthrax preparation, but asserts all were "ruled out" as lone perpetrators. FBI never tried to rule any out as part of a conspiracy, however.

There is also a tidbit at the end of the story that hints that the FBI's investigation into foreign sources was not quite up to snuff.

# 43: One of the good guys

Dale Lolley has the story.

"To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women."

Winning a play-off game is always good. Beating the Ravens is as good as it gets for a Steelers fan.* Especially when you can listen to Baltimore radio the day after the Ravens lose to Pittsburgh.

Let the whining begin!


BTW: The curse of the Terrible Towel seems to last a very long time.



* Beating the Patriots might be better, but since it never happens no comparison can be made.

Speaking of the Patriots, any one else notice that their play-off performance has really dropped offsince they got caught cheating and had to play honest?

Time for an old idea?

Jerry Pournelle has an interesting discussion (if not quite an endorsement) of Distributism:

Spreading the Wealth

Merry Christmas

And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.

And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid.

And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.

For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.

And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.

And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying,

Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.

Luke 2:8-14

Have to admit it: Paul Krugman has a point

When Zombies Win

When historians look back at 2008-10, what will puzzle them most, I believe, is the strange triumph of failed ideas. Free-market fundamentalists have been wrong about everything yet they now dominate the political scene more thoroughly than ever.

How did that happen? How, after runaway banks brought the economy to its knees, did we end up with Ron Paul, who says “I don’t think we need regulators,” about to take over a key House panel overseeing the Fed?

He’s right about nearly every thing he said about “free-market fundamentalists”. (In fact, I think he could go farther in his indictment.) On the other hand, Krugman lets the Obama administration off too easy. Nor does he address those zombie ideas that enjoy bi-partisan support.

Krugman argues that President Obama was too cautious on policy, too quick to compromise with his political opponents, and too passive in defense of his principles.

There is some truth in this assessment. I would also argue that the administration stumbled because it was too cynical, too insular, too high-handed, and too partisan.

If ever there was a president with the opportunity to become a second FDR, it was Barack Obama in January, 2009.

Yet the administration rejected Roosevelt’s focus of his first 100 days: relief, recovery, reform. Nor did it follow his example and rally broad national support for his programs. Instead, the tone and direction were set by the hyper-partisan Rahm Emmanuel: “never let a crisis go to waste.”

The administration was almost eager to move the economic crisis to the back burner while they and the liberal Congress pushed forward with long-standing items on their wish list (cap and trade, health care reform, immigration reform, etc.). Inside Washington, it might seem smart to see a crisis as an opportunity to pass progressive legislation. To the people who are bearing the brunt of the recession, it seems like an abdication of leadership or a heartless betrayal of trust.

No surprise, then, that the stubborn economic weakness has been a drag on Obama’s approval numbers. It is not just that the public is impatient; many voters rightly sense that the White House felt little urgency to fix what was obviously broken.

If I am right about this, then what Krugman sees as inexplicable passivity, is really the result of a cynical calculation to play down the economic debate. In effect, the White House surrendered the field to the “zombie ideas” of the GOP so that it could concentrate its efforts on pushing through its other agenda items.

Even when the White House tackled critical economic problems, we see the same interplay of passivity, cynicism, and partisanship.

As Krugman notes, the US is still paying a grievous price for the excesses and mistakes of Wall Street and the big banks. Yet, the Obama administration was happy to outsource the crafting of the financial services reform bill to the Democrats in Congress. Instead of a vigorous public debate and quick passage of a law that brings about positive reform, we got Dodd-Frank: a bill that passed quietly two years after the financial meltdown. (See here for the maneuvering behind this “reform”.)


Dodd-Frank is a perverse caricature of reform. How could it be otherwise when its two authors are hopelessly entangled in the policy missteps and legal corruption that produced the economic catastrophe?

It is almost shameful that the Obama administration acquiesced to this betrayal of real and necessary reform. “Hope and change” proved to be less important than partisan solidarity and Congressional politics.

Trouble in the charmed circle

A criminal probe complicates realtions among Democrats at the intersection of Wall Street and politics

A story in which the mistress of disaster makes an appearance.

Great article in the New York Times on Andrew Cuomo's investigation into car czar Steven Rattner.

Cuomo Pension Inquiry on Financier Grows Nasty

This doesn't build confidence in the FBI's Anthrax investigation

FBI interferes with release of NAS report on the scientific aspects of the Amerithrax case

For the sake of history

Cliff May recounts the inconvenient facts that "Fair Game" ignores.

Vanity Fair Game

I'm not surprised that Hollywood fictionalized the story. They are more interested in drama than truth.

It is much more troubling that the Washington Post and other news outlets keep pushing an outdated and largely discredited narrative.

When Irish bankers went Galt

It sounds like a recipe for a new Dark Ages. Instead, the Irish survived quite nicely.

The Irish Banking Crisis: A Parable

Score:

Chesterton 1
Ayn Rand 0

Is this the best Christmas commercial ever?

I think it might be.

Are you Santa?

Interesting book

Interview with the author at The Daily Caller.

You can see a talk by the author at the Heritage Foundation here.

Caldwell on Remnick on Obama

Well worth a look.

Black Like Me

The Times is still proving Irving Kristol's point

Black and White and Red All Over

The ‘New York Times’ can’t handle the truth.

The New York Times may be the paper of record, but its record leaves much to be desired when the issue is Soviet espionage in the United States. Where the Times is not obscuring the historical record, it is willfully obtuse.

Irving Kristol:

For there is one thing that the American people know about Senator McCarthy: he, like them, is unequivocally anti-Communist. About the spokesmen for American liberalism, they feel they know no such thing. And with some justification.

"Civil Liberties 1952—A Study in Confusion"

Like a bad case of athlete's foot

We just can't get rid of David Frum.

Like his old buddy Excitable Andy, he is often wrong but Rarely in doubt. And he never doubts that the public needs the brilliance of David Frum.

Now he wants to be the arbiter of acceptable political rhetoric.

Apparently, calling some one a socialist is out of bounds, but it is just fine to label people "unpatriotic" if they disagree with the foreign adventures promoted by David Frum.

Stanley Kurtz treats Frum with more respect than he deserves.

David Frum, Speech Policeman

Frum desperately wants to be seen as a serious conservative leader. Yet his stock-in-trade are strident attacks on other conservatives. His treatment of Kurtz's book is bizarre even by Frum's standards.

The announcement made it clear that my book was the result of more than two years of empirical and historical research into Barack Obama’s political past, and would marshal “a wide array of never-before-seen evidence to establish that the president of the United States is indeed a socialist.” Frum, however, didn’t wait to consider my evidence or argument, or even bother to read my book. Instead, he invited a self-described Democratic activist who writes under the pseudonym “Eugene Victor Debs” to attack the very idea of my book — before either had read it.

Frum's actions stand as stellar examples of the hypocrisy and feline thuggishness of the Obamacons.

Is there a better example of "epistemic closure" than attacking a book before you read it?

UPDATE: Kurtz and Jonah Goldberg continue the discussion:

David Frum’s Wrong Direction


Politics Without Labels? What a Silly Concept

The still open questions about the anthrax mailings

Just in case you thought the FBI answered all the questions about the guilt of Dr. Bruce Ivins:

THE FBI’S ANTHRAX LETTERS INVESTIGATION: POINTS TO CONSIDER

If you read nothing else today

Read this from Ace:

Meghan McCain: Sarah Palin Is Anti-Intellectual and Anti-Education For Using The Term "Blue Bloods"
PS: By The Way, I Had To Google The Meaning of "Blue Bloods" Because I Had Never Read This Extremely Common Term Before

They hate to say 'i told you so'

Well, actually, the gang at Cold Hard Football Facts love to say it when the topic is Brett Favre.

Childress the latest victim of Old Yeller Fever

The Vikings, from our perspective, have nobody to blame but themselves for the disaster of 2010. We told everybody, including the Vikings and their fans before the 2009 season, not to get consumed by Old Yeller Fever.

Sad but true

From a comment at the Post-Gazette:

The quarterback needs to adjust his style of play to match the circumstances. I used to blame Arians for poor play calling but it was fine when Rothlisberger was out. We won games. The running game worked. But now its back to all about Ben. Stand in the pocket for an eternity with a patchwork offensive line. Constantly looking for a highlight reel play dowin the field instead of first downs. Brady gave a clinic on how to lead a young, inexperienced team to a win. Another example of why he is an elite quarterback and Rothlisberger is not. Watch the film Ben, even you might learn something.

Roethlisberger has had a lot of great games in his career. but he has turned in a surprising number of bad games. As the commenter noted, he seems to lack situational awareness. He goes for big plays when cold efficiency is the better choice. Against New England, the offense sputtered when the game was close. BR seemed unable or unwilling to take what the defense gave him and threw a slew of deep incompletions.

It was even worse against the Bengals. The Steelers had a double-digit lead in the fourth quarter. The only way Cinncinnati can make a comeback is if Pittsburgh gave them a turnover and a short-field. Roethlisberger promptly threw an unnecessary interception and the Bengals stormed back into the game. (In fairness, the head coach helped the Bengals out by trying for a long-field goal with a struggling kicker.)

I have to say that the Steelers were also out-coached. The team was missing quality starters on both sides of the ball. Yet, i saw very little creativity in the play selection or formations. The coaches just seemed content to use their basic game plan and hope that the substitutes could play as well as the starters they replaced.

Behind the subprime crash

Outstanding article on the sequence of of bad decisions that led to Merrill Lynch's near-destruction:

The Blundering Herd

For nearly a century of solid profitability, Merrill Lynch was the company that brought Wall Street to Main Street, turning tens of millions of Americans into investors. But by the early 2000s, under C.E.O. Stanley O'Neal, it had developed a raging case of Goldman Sachs envy and began a blind stampede into unprecedented risk. In an excerpt from their new book, Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera chart the evisceration of the “Mother Merrill” culture as the firm crashed head-on with the mortgage meltdown.

The author's (Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera) are outstanding financial journalists.

You can see McLean on CSPAN's Q&A here.

Fair game and the Libby case

Stan Crock fights the good fight against Hollywood's false history:

'Fair Game' Glamorizes Distortions and Perpetuates Myths

The movie conforms to a pure and simple Hollywood story line complete with hero (Wilson), villain (Libby), and innocent, distressed damsel (Plame). That story line is gospel for the Left. A corollary story line is gospel for the Right: that Libby took the fall for Cheney.

Both are wrong. The fundamental problem is that Hollywood’s narrative needs and political leanings often conflict with reality. Hollywood needs a straightforward story line. Washington is more complicated. The usual explanation for bad outcomes inside the Beltway is not evil or corruption but incompetence or poor judgment. And there are rarely heroes.

The essence of "Mad Men"

I think Michael Prescott nails it:

Why I'm not mad about Mad Men

And that gets us to the heart of my objections. Mad Men is a show written by young people about an era they never knew, and their attitude seems to include a large element of mockery and derision. In almost every scene, I can hear some smug twentysomething or thirtysomething scriptwriter whispering, "Look at these idiots. They didn't know smoking was bad for you. They didn't know liquor can cause health problems. They didn't think women had minds of their own. They didn't know there were gay people in the world. They were so stupid!"

Followed by: "See how much smarter, more worldly-wise, and enlightened we are?"

Remembering David Frum

I probably should have saved the Leo Amery quote for a "how's that crow taste" smackdown of David Frum. Sort of like this one:

Sliding Further Down the Path of Irrelevance

They all predicted that the GOP was headed towards extinction unless it embraced a more moderate agenda. For the most part the opposite happened, and the result is an electoral “bloodbath” the likes of which none of us has ever seen in our lifetime – just not the one anticipated by Frum and his ilk.

Christine O'Donnell in a nutshell

UPDATED:

And let’s remember that many of O’Donnell’s problems had nothing to do with her political beliefs, and had everything to do with her personal shortcomings. The fact is years ago O’Donnell decided she wanted to be a celebrity conservative. So she went on MTV and on Bill Maher, and behaved in ways that drew attention to herself. And a lot of what she did came back to bite her in the hindquarters. Not to mention her resume problems, consisting of 1) not very much political or practical experience, and 2) she lied at least once (that we know of) about her resume. Eventually her reputation for flakiness got so bad that when she correctly stated something about the constitution, half the world laughed at her before the truth got its boots on.

RTWT at Patterico's place.

UPDATE: Ace has run out of patience:

O'Donnell, Who Lost By 17 Points, Still Sending Out Press Releases Attacking People

In the immortal word of Leo Amery:

This is what Cromwell said to the Long Parliament when he thought it was no longer fit to conduct the affairs of the nation: "You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go"

Barone on Juan Williams and the NPR audience

NPR’s intolerant firing of Juan Williams

Reading between the lines of Juan’s statement and those of NPR officials, it’s apparent that NPR was moved to fire Juan because he irritates so many people in its audience. An interesting contrast: while many NPR listeners apparently could not stomach that Williams also appeared on Fox News. But it doesn’t seem that any perceptible number of Fox News viewers had any complaints that Williams also worked for NPR. The Fox audience seems to be more tolerant of diversity than the NPR audience.

Barney Frank: The Man in Full

Fannie, Freddie, Frank, and fiction

BARNEY FRANK can be ruthless in debate, especially when laying into opponents who try to evade the historical record. But as he pursues a 16th term in the US House, Frank seems to be attempting a little evasion of his own.


Dude, show some respect

Frank belittles members of Congress. He berates Capitol Hill staffers. It’s not that he doesn’t suffer fools; he doesn’t really suffer anyone.

Now that he’s in his first competitive reelection campaign in 28 years, fending off justifiable questions over his role in the collapse of the housing market and a candidate good at asking them, Frank has toned down his act.

Is Barney Frank?

You would be hard pressed to find a politician who is less frank than Congressman Barney Frank. Even in an occupation where truth and candor are often lacking, Congressman Frank is in a class by himself when it comes to rewriting history in creative ways. Moreover, he has a lot of history to rewrite in his re-election campaign this year.

No one contributed more to the policies behind the housing boom and bust, which led to the economic disaster we are now in, than Congressman Barney Frank.



Is Barney Frank?: Part II

Among long-time politicians who are being seriously challenged for the first time this election year, Congressman Barney Frank of Massachusetts best epitomizes the cynical ruthlessness which hides behind their lofty rhetoric.

Having been a key figure in promoting the risky mortgage lending practices imposed by the federal government on lenders, and on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to buy these risky mortgages from the lenders, Barney Frank blamed the resulting collapse of financial markets and the economy on everybody except Barney Frank.

This one is a two-fer: Frank as greenhouse gas hypocrite and Frank the "financial reformer" cadging rides on the private jet of a hedge fund plutocrat:

THE BARNEY FRANK PRIVATE JET STORY

That's just the new stuff. There is plenty more in these older posts and their links:

Barney Frank

An unsurprising headline that should shock us all

Frank has been a walking disaster for some time and not just on the financial system. He also managed to hinder out anti-terror efforts:

From Gerald Posner's Why America Slept

"[In March 1987], the ABCC [Alien Border Control Committee] had its first notable success. The CIA tipped off the FBI to a group of suspected Palestinian terrorists in Los Angeles. The Bureau arrested eight men. But instead of being lauded, the Bureau and the Agency came under harsh attack from civil liberties groups who argued that the ABCC should be banned from using any information the CIA gained from the government's routine processing of visa requests. Congressman Barney Frank, the Massachusetts Democrat who was a strong advocate of protecting civil liberties, led a successful effort to amend the Immigration and Nationality Acts so that membership in a terrorist group was no longer sufficient to deny a visa. Under Frank's amendment, which seems unthinkable post-9/11, a visa could only bedenied if the government could prove that the applicant had committed an act of terrorism. Rendered toothless by the Frank amendment, the Reagan administration had virtually no way to block entry visas even when there was information linking the individuals to terrorist groups."

And let's note this gem from the always astute (he is, really, just ask him) David Frum:

I say "aye" to the proposed national debt bailout - and a big shout out to Rep. Barney Frank, one of its early authors, who has been a prescient early voice on the need for a big solution to a big problem.

Why libertarians fail

Two posts on the problem. The first raises honest questions:

Why Does Liberty Lose?

There is a good discussion going in the comments.

But maybe the real problem is not the ideas or ideals but the people espousing them. Say for example, the bozo who kicked of this little discussion at CopBlock.org:

disagreeing with the guys at CopBlock.org

HT:View From The Porch (Read her comments too).

Sometimes it seems to me that what passes for libertarian activism is often little more than a snotty juvenile sense of entitlement.

This also probably explains part of the problem as well:

From the outset the eminence of this new creature, the intellectual, who was to play such a tremendous role in the history of the twentieth century, was inseparable from his necessary indignation. It was his indignation that elevated him to a plateau of moral superiority. Once up there, he was in a position to look down on the rest of humanity. And it did not cost him any effort, intellectual or otherwise. As Marshall McLuhan would put it years later: 'Moral indignation is a technique used to endow the idiot with dignity.'

Tom Wolfe, Hooking Up

My favorite political story of the year

I'm a big Velvet Underground fan so this is impossible to resist:

Interview: Moe Tucker of the Velvet Underground Sets the Record Straight

Did Joe McCarthy ever sink this low?

Leaning Forward ... To Insanity: Rachel Maddow Claims GOP Congressman Had Advance Notice of Oklahoma City Bombing

New job, same old Howie

Ace of Spades has a couple of posts on that barely critical press critic Howard Kurtz:

As Usual, Howard Kurtz Very Nearly Says Something Interesting, Then Restrains Himself From Making So Great An Error

Howard Kurtz occasionally writes media bias pieces, but in the end, he can't bring himself to actually criticize the MFM. Here, though, he goes right up to the line of being interesting and accurate before once again shying away.

And Howard Kurtz Misses The Point, Besides


First of all, note how that is put: the overheated hyperbole did him no favors. It's interesting that Kurtz lapses into this sort of Freudian slip where he laments the press' having done Obama a bad turn -- that is, he proceeds (unknown even to himself, I'd bet) from the premise that the press was supposed to prop up Obama, but, by claiming he could walk on water, overpromised, which now leaves their Precious in a bad spot.

Related posts:

What is the true function of a public editor

Media criticism and corralled rebellion

Straws in the wind

The cornerstone of the dynasty

Steelers' Greene to receive Dapper Dan Lifetime Achievement Award

Greene is in the discussion for greatest defensive tackle in history. But what made him the greatest Steeler was his selfless commitment to winning. He was a superstar but not a diva.

This is from an old post:

The clincher, to my mind, is that Greene was the acknowledged leader on that team. As Rocky Blier puts it: "If Joe didn't like something, none of us liked it. If Joe says we should do this, we all did it." It was Greene who kept the Bradshaw/Gilliam controversy from becoming a black-white issue in the locker room. Greene's ferocious desire to win helped Chuck Noll change the culture of losing that surrounded the franchise. Joe's influence kept the team together when the WFL started raiding players.

The selection of Joe Greene in 1969 changed the fortunes of the franchise. Other great players followed, but Joe was first then, and he is first-among-almost-equals today.

How good is the Giants's ace?

Will Tim Lincecum Be the 21st Century Bob Gibson? Time Will Tell

Cause for concern?

Toby Harnden thinks so:

10 reasons to be worried as Tom Donilon, Afghan war sceptic & desk-bound foe of US military, gets top foreign policy job

I find number 9 especially interesting:

9. Donilon is a former lobbyist. Remember how Obama was going to change how Washington worked and rid the city of lobbyists? Well now his top foreign policy adviser is a former lobbyist for Fannie Mae who consulted for Goldman Sachs.

Is it something in Pittsburgh's water?

The Pirates added to their record for losing seasons by losing a hundred games this year. Not surprisingly, they just fired their manager. Maybe John Russell was the only thing standing between the Pirates and winning.

Somehow i doubt that. The guy they fired before they hired JR ended up in Colorado and somehow managed to get them into the playoffs last year. Even with an epic September collapse, the Rockies finished with a winning record this season. Pirates fans would die if we finished above .500 and chased a wild card spot into the fall.

Ron Cook suspects that Russell was not entirely blame.


Joe Guzzardi touches on another aspect of the Pirates futility. How come some of the bad players we trade away, turn out to be good players at their new clubs?

Baseball’s Most Fortunate Player: Matt Capps