Briefly noted
The Poor Man: Stanley Kurtz Wins the Wankathalon

“Harper’s Magazine frightens me” is not something many grown men would admit in print, let alone in the very first sentence, and I suppose it takes a certain kind of courage to admit that, yes, you really are the world’s most pathetic pussy.

Daniel Radosh: Coincidentally, that's the exact difference between Dowd and Brooks
... title to a post citing this New York Times article:

"Unlike other Lophocebus mangabeys, which communicate with a 'whoop gobble,' the new species has an unusual 'honk bark,' the researchers said."

I do so read him for the articles.

Paperwight: [Ichthus]

[Dog-Whistle Politics] refers to a campaign message that will not cause general offence, but which contains a coded message to which sympathetic voters will respond, in the same way that a dog will hear an ultrasonic whistle inaudible to the humans around it.

The best-known example of this, also courtesy of Paperwight, was Bush's non-non sequitur reference to the Dred Scott decision in a 2004 presidential debate.

Roy Edroso, "alicublog" : Twisting in the wind

The Ole Perfesser calls Andrew Sullivan an "excitable" "emoter-in-chief" who should write "a bit less about gay marriage." To his credit, the Perfesser did not just up and call him a faggot, but when you have such command of schoolyard code, you don't have to get crude.

More on the same falling out of the somewhat titanic:

Matt Welch: Does Being "Hard" on War Mean Never Having to Say You're Sorry?

Follow this excerpted exchange between Andrew Sullivan and Glenn Reynolds, and tell me who's right about the issue under dispute [...]

Seems a no-brainer to me; and an illustrative one at that.

Matt got fairly few direct responses to his "who's right" question, and fairly few correct ones (Sullivan -- who had not equated being wrapped in an Israeli flag with torture, as Reynolds had claimed, but had listed it as one of the things that made Koran-flushing unsurprising to him). posted by Thomas Nephew at 10:40:00 PM -- |    

 
Dear Senator

I am writing to urge you to NOT TO support President Bush’s nominees to the nation’s federal courts during the 109th Congress. President Bush has RARELY nominated qualified jurists who will uphold the laws of the land and not legislate from the bench. HIS LATEST nominees DON'T deserve your support EITHER.

IN ADDITION, I urge you to do THE RIGHT THING FOR OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE and DENY THESE TROGLODYTES a vote. During 2003 and 2004, some U.S. Senators took the PRECEDENTED step of filibustering President Bush’s judicial nominees, BECAUSE THEY COULDN'T BLUE-SLIP THEM. In fact, 20% of President Bush’s circuit court nominees did not even get an up or down vote. THOSE WERE GREAT DAYS FOR AMERICA, SENATOR MIKULSKI!

Our courts are the backbone of our judicial system. Without judges on the bench, our judicial system cannot operate effectively. (IN FACT, IT COULDN'T OPERATE AT ALL!) As a result of EXTREMIST APPOINTMENTS TO our federal courts AND REPUBLICAN BULLIES RIDING ROUGHSHOD OVER OUR COUNTRY'S OLDEST DEMOCRATIC TRADITIONS, our system of democracy is being jeopardized. You can do something to correct this problem by ensuring that the President’s nominees DON'T get a vote on the floor of the U.S. Senate.

It is in that spirit that I urge you to FIGHT TOOTH AND NAIL FOR THE FILIBUSTER, SO YOU CAN OPPOSE the President’s judicial nominees and DENY them the vote they DON'T deserve ANYWAY.

Thank you for your consideration.

Adapted from message suggestion by UpOrDownVote.com. posted by Thomas Nephew at 9:39:00 PM -- |    

 
Ehrlich expected to veto Fair Share Health Care today
Maryland Governor Rob Ehrlich plans to veto the Fair Share Health Care bill today, the Baltimore Sun's Andrew Green reported yesterday. The bill requires large (10,000+ employees) Maryland companies to spend 8% of payroll on health care, or make up the difference to a state Medicaid fund. The company most likely to be affected is Wal-Mart, which is notorious for having employees on state-supported health care rolls.

Ehrlich will veto the bill in Maryland's Somerset County, supposedly highlighting the risk that Wal-Mart will halt plans to build a distribution center there. The problem is, his own administration is contradicting that:

But state officials now say they expect the retail giant to build a distribution center in Somerset County - even if the legislature overrides the veto - because of the incentives Maryland has provided and the market opportunity Maryland presents.

So rather than costing Somerset County jobs, Fair Share Health Care would merely lower Wal-Mart profits and increase state health care funding. Still, that's plenty good enough reason to veto the bill -- if Wal-Mart's your sugar daddy.


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UPDATE, 5/20: Washington Post, 5/20: "Ehrlich Vetoes Health Care Bill Aimed at Wal-Mart." Ehrlich's corporate master attended in the form of Eduardo Castro-Wright, the second-ranking executive at Wal-Mart's U.S. division. A nice touch by the powers that be: About two dozen protesters turned out, but were forbidden from displaying signs. WTF?! No mention who forbade the signs, or why. posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:30:00 PM -- |    

 
Drug warlord wants you
He's not some Afghan tribal leader or Colombian narcoguerilla, either, but Representative James Sensenbrenner, R-WI. Sensenbrenner wants to force you to join up in the war on drugs with his "Safe Access to Drug Treatment and Child Protection Act" (H.R. 1528). Ethan Nadelmann, writing for the Huffington Post, sounds the alert:

Under the legislation, any American who witnesses or learns of certain drug offenses taking place would be required to report the offenses to law enforcement within 24 hours and provide "full assistance" in the investigation, apprehension, and prosecution of the people involved. Failure to do so would be a crime punishable by a mandatory two year prison sentence and a maximum of ten years.

(Via Southknoxbubba) Nadelmann directs readers to the Drug Policy Alliance (DPA), where you can register your opposition to this offensive law. Information at the DPA site describes other provisions:

--Expands what is considered to be a “drug-free” school zone to include almost any place in an urban area, and increases penalties for selling or distributing drugs in that area. (The result will be enhanced penalties for people in inner cities, while people in rural and suburban areas get less time for the same offense).

--Mandates a 5-year minimum sentence for any person that commits a drug trafficking offense near the presence of a person under 18 or in a place where such person resides for any period of time. The sentence is 10 years if they are parent. (I.e. a mother that sells her neighbor a joint will get a 10-year minimum sentence, even if her kids were at school at the time).

I've boldly argued from time to time that there are good reasons for laws criminalizing the sales of some drugs. I still think that's true, but these proposed statutes are well over the line of good sense, common decency, or respect for civil liberties -- par for the course with their author. posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:40:00 AM -- |    

 
Smoking gun memo?
What kind of 'smoking gun' is the July 23, 2002 Downing Street memo* exactly? The memo, authored by one Matthew Rycroft, a Downing Street foreign policy aide, was leaked to the London Sunday Times and published on May 1. It describes a discussion at Downing Street following a report by "C", identified in other reports as Richard Dearlove of the British MI-6 intelligence agency, about his impressions of what the Bush administration was planning, based on a recent trip to Washington, DC:

C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record.

There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action.

CDS said that military planners would brief CENTCOM on 1-2 August, Rumsfeld on 3 August and Bush on 4 August.

The two broad US options were:
(a) Generated Start. A slow build-up of 250,000 US troops, a short (72 hour) air campaign, then a move up to Baghdad from the south. Lead time of 90 days (30 days preparation plus 60 days deployment to Kuwait).
(b) Running Start. Use forces already in theatre (3 x 6,000), continuous air campaign, initiated by an Iraqi casus belli. Total lead time of 60 days with the air campaign beginning even earlier. A hazardous option. [...]

The Defence Secretary said that the US had already begun "spikes of activity" to put pressure on the regime. No decisions had been taken, but he thought the most likely timing in US minds for military action to begin was January, with the timeline beginning 30 days before the US Congressional elections.
(emphases added)

While I believe the memo is genuine, and that "C"'s estimate of US intentions at the time was accurate, that's just my belief about (Rycroft's description of) his belief. Pace Greg Palast and others, but this isn't a smoking gun so much as it is a road map for finding one, were it possible to exert that kind of pressure.

The memo is, however, a very detailed road map, and extremely damning if it can be shown to be true. Barring minutes of "C"s DC meetings, the memo suggests other items to look for. Specifically, if plans to how to manufacture an Iraqi casus belli can be uncovered, especially if they were connected to a specific war plan or TPFDL, you'd have some corroboration of intent -- although not of execution. Alternatively, some kind of strategy memo out of Rove's or Rumsfeld's office, signed off on by Bush, that put the Iraq war on a timeline with US Congressional elections would also be very damning.

Such evidence would at least be politically devastating, and perhaps even impeachable (or prosecutable once the Bush administration is out of office). But getting such evidence is unlikely at best. That LBJ PDB business is looking more and more significant to me.

While she disagrees with him, eRobin ("Fact-esque") linked yesterday to Dan Froomkin's Tuesday column in the Post, where he also says this isn't a "smoking gun" exactly:

The liberal blogosphere has been insisting that the memo comprises a "smoking gun" -- which, of course, it doesn't. It's basically hearsay, albeit high-level hearsay.

But while that's not enough to convict, it's certainly enough to cause the press to revisit the issue.

I agree with Froomkin; the memo isn't a smoking gun, it just suggests where to keep looking. Alternatively, of course, I'm so turned around I don't know a perfectly good smoking gun when I see one.


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* Alternative site: Antiwar.com (via Jim Henley)
EDIT, 5/18: Second sentence rearranged, London Times May 1 publication date added. posted by Thomas Nephew at 1:20:00 AM -- |    

 
Right wing raves, Newsweek caves
Newsweek editor Mark Whitaker has retracted the "Koran flushing" story -- actually the "Pentagon source says Koran flushing expected to be confirmed in report" story. The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz reports:

Newsweek issued a formal retraction yesterday of the flawed story that sparked deadly riots in Afghanistan and other countries, after the magazine came under increasingly sharp criticism from White House, State Department and Pentagon officials.

As is my habit, I'll retell a familiar story briefly, mainly so I have the links together in one spot. A May 9 Newsweek "Periscope" report by Michael Isikoff and John Roberts ("SouthCom Showdown") claimed that

Investigators probing interrogation abuses at the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay have confirmed some infractions alleged in internal FBI e-mails that surfaced late last year. Among the previously unreported cases, sources tell NEWSWEEK: interrogators, in an attempt to rattle suspects, flushed a Qur'an down a toilet [...]

These findings, expected in an upcoming report by the U.S. Southern Command in Miami, could put former Gitmo commander Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller in the hot seat. ...

A number of other humiliations were listed as well, but some protesters and Islamic clerics were particularly incensed by Koran-flushing revelation during a recent violent protests in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Despite that, Joint Chiefs Chairman General Richard Myers specifically denied the the violence was necessarily connected to the Newsweek report:

...it's a judgment of our commander in Afghanistan, General Eikenberry, that in fact the violence that we saw in Jalalabad was not necessarily the result of the allegations about disrespect for the Koran -- and I'll get to that in just a minute -- but more tied up in the political process and the reconciliation process that President Karzai and his Cabinet is conducting in Afghanistan. So that's -- that was his judgment today in an after- action of that violence. He didn't -- he thought it was not at all tied to the article in the magazine.

As Aziz Poonawalla points out with his all too uncommon sense, the Qur'an-flushing news could never have been the sufficient trigger: prisoners released from Guantanamo have made the same well-publicized allegations numerous times in the past, yet violent outbreaks did not result.

The Newsweek report was no doubt useful to protest organizers and important to many protesters, but it was replaceable with any of dozens of other tactics American soldiers and officials employ these days that are at least as despicable. Who knows why the news of beating deaths in Bagram or Gardez didn't get them out with Molotov cocktails on the streets of Kabul or Quetta? Or why stories of tormenting Iraqi children at Abu Ghraib to get their parents to talk didn't cause Baghdad to erupt in rage?

As the violence spread last week, Pentagon officials denied the technical assertion that the particular Southcom report involved alluded to Koran-flushing. And in a remarkable turn of events, Isikoff returned to his source, who promptly recanted the claim that he had read about the Koran-flushing event in the particular Southcom report. From Newsweek editor Whitaker's first "Editor's Desk" post-mortem (May 23 issue):

Our original source later said he couldn't be certain about reading of the alleged Qur'an incident in the report we cited, and said it might have been in other investigative documents or drafts.

Perhaps more damaging, Whitaker also wrote that Pentagon officials claimed to have investigated Koran-flushing allegations and had found them "not credible."

The machinery of state and wingnut-o-sphere immediately whirred into life to capitalize on the development. Perhaps the most disingenuous finger-wagging came from truth-challenged, on-again off-again torturer Donald Rumsfeld, who warned:

People need to be very careful about what they say, just as they need to be careful about what they do. (via Slate)

Not to be outdone, rabid right wing commentator Michelle "Intern 'em all" Malkin started the most useful attack of all -- "Newsweek lied, people died" -- before eventually admitting in a footnote that the slogan was itself a conscious lie:

Didn't think I needed to s-p-e-l-l i-t o-u-t, but some readers asked for clarification. Newsweek was reckless and sloppy and wrong. But I do not think the magazine "lied." Just thought it a very appropriate moment to do a boomerang on the moonbats' most dishonest and annoying meme.

"Alas," the l-i-a-r-'s admission came "too late." Next, "Ole Perfessor" Glenn Reynolds amplified the deceitful slogan on his site. And in what has come to be the customary final stage of the process, Reynolds approvingly linked to the ever useful Jeff Jarvis, who provided "moderate" cover for the whole distasteful operation. Jarvis had certainly earned his cookie link, going well beyond a critique of the journalistic standards involved to questioning whether any journalism -- even accurate journalism -- was necessary about the story:

If the report had come from a source who had the balls to stand by what he said, if the alleged event had been witnessed, if it had been confirmed by independent authorities, I'm not sure what the imperative to report would have been: Why did we need to urgently know this? What public good is served? If it were absolutely true, that might be one matter but...

Given that none of those if's was true -- the informant did not have the balls, the event was not witnessed by a source, the event was not confirmed independently -- and given the knowledge that such a report could only be incendiary, then why report it except to play one of two games:

Show-off -- in which the journalist delights in knowing something no one else knows and wants to tell the world before everyone else does, even if it's not assuredly true.

Gotcha -- in which the reporter think he has exposed something somebody wanted to hide. (emphases added)

Like Malkin, Jarvis then adds, "I'm not saying that Newsweek lied." Just that they did a very bad thing -- i.e., single sourced one element of a story that came back to bite them. Notice that Jarvis doesn't notice, or write like he does, that the Koran-flushing story itself remains viable and that just one particular official recognition of it is called into question.

I've long thought a very welcome side benefit (from Bush and Rove's point of view) of our extended national emergency wars is as much the opportunity to reshape our own country as it is to reshape Afghanistan or Iraq; with Iraq, it may have even been the point. As we've seen above, that impulse is not even concealed by so-called "moderates" any more. As Arthur Silber reminds us, Glenn Reynolds is on the record with this reflection:

Freedom of the press, as it exists today (and didn't exist, really, until the 1960s) is unlikely to survive if a majority -- or even a large and angry minority -- of Americans comes to conclude that the press is untrustworthy and unpatriotic. How far are we from that point?

As close as he can push us, apparently. "Nice 1st amendment you've got there... it'd be a shame if anything happened to it." It's no isolated sentiment either; Reynolds escalated his weaselly warning yesterday:

As I've warned before, if Americans conclude that the press is, basically, on the side of the enemy, the consequences are likely to be dire.

While Isikoff's involvement raises red flags for some -- he's relied on poorly sourced material before when pursuing various "Clinton scandals" in the 1990s -- a question that remains for me is just how sensible it is to strictly adhere to multiple source guidelines when trying to report about an extremely secretive environment like Guantanamo. Prisoners had repeatedly claimed Koran-flushing. An apparently respected, reliable Pentagon source said he'd read about it in an official report. While not directly corroborating the official endorsement of the allegation, two more Pentagon sources, given specific opportunity to find fault with the report, failed to raise any objections. It seems to me like the source arguably was a second source for "Koran flushing" per se, and a pretty decent bet for "findings expected in a report."

You can call it "gotcha." I call it "reporting." Jeff, Glenn, and the rest of them don't ever seem to want to know what's actually going on, and never seem to really object to what little they can't avoid knowing. Fine. It's a free country, and heaven knows Jeff, at least, is doing the Lord's work defending the Janet Jackson nipple exposure and Howard Stern's antics on the air.

But they should back off their stupid journalism witchhunt, because I do want to know what's going on. Regardless of whether it's immediately "good for the troops" or not. Regardless of whether it's triple-sourced, Good Housekeeping approved, or "incendiary" by the lights of a People Magazine "critic."

Because what's good for this country -- or at least for the country I wish I lived in -- is to tell the truth, regardless: that way, everyone might start to act as if the truth will get out. And for that to happen, you need people trying to find out what's true, as opposed to writing about how not to, or about how exquisitely sensitive to be to the possible repercussions of their story.

Given the source's sudden uncertainty, Newsweek had to retract its story -- once they let themselves be mau-maued into returning to the source for a second opinion, and he or she went south on them. (Meanwhile: presto! Allegation deleted from the report!) But they have nothing at all to regret, much less apologize for. I wish especially Whitaker wouldn't feed the fires with ill-advised statements like this one (Washington Post, May 16):

I suppose you could say we should have foreseen the consequences of the report, but we didn't.

No. That's not your job, and what happened wasn't the consequence of your report. Instead, thanks for at least trying to get the story. Keep up the good work.

What we should all be angry about is how freaking little we, the people of the United States, know about any of what's going on in our name at Guantanamo and places like it, and about what the tiny benefits and immense costs of that are. Instead, we're asked by people like Malkin, Reynolds, and Jarvis to get angry about Newsweek looking for "incendiary" news, and putting out a poorly sourced story that (1) may still be true, and (2) is nowhere near the half of it, regardless.



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NOTE: For alternative, able discussions of this mess, see also allspinzone , hullabaloo (twice), Ken Layne, Juan Cole, Matt Welch, Moon of Alabama, Sadly, No, TalkLeft, The Poor Man (twice) and also the Silber and Poonawalla posts linked within the text. posted by Thomas Nephew at 11:10:00 PM -- |    

 
Its time!

Its time to wake up! Its time to gete dressde. Its time to wace (walk) to school. No run! cwik its time! Be on time! No!!!!! Were late! Relly late! Time to go bake home! Kids are waking (walking) out of school! Were too late to learne today! To bad! I can't learne math my:, fevorit! To bad says a boy making fun of me! He was a 5th Grader being mine (mean). Ugwel. (Usual.) Normel. To bad for me!

-- from "Poems/sas", (essays... and/or short fiction) written and read to me with gales of laughter by Maddie, age 7 posted by Thomas Nephew at 8:45:00 AM -- |