Fisking with faint praise: Blogger Roger Simon, in defending a typically-discredited Matt Drudge scoop, states that the "...quotes Drudge uses are not that Dowdified in the end." (emphasis mine)

UPDATE: It appears that what Drudge actually did stretches journalistic ethics beyond what is allowable, even on the internet. The term used above, dowdified, was coined by bloggers after columnist Maureen Dowd was found to have excised, through the use of magic ellipses (...), a segment of a speech by the President that would have made him sound less foolish than usual if it had been quoted. What Drudge did was even worse: he removed a sentence from General Clark's testimony, used ellipses, then inserted a passage from later in the testimony, thereby changing the meaning of what he said. The kindest way to view this is that Drudge failed to perform due diligence before he quoted the above segment, which he probably got from a third party; if Drudge's actions were knowing and deliberate, he should be treated with the utmost contempt by anyone with a sense of ethics. The failure of conservative bloggers to take steps to repudiate this practice gives lie to the pretense that we are "fact-checking our asses".

Who said it?: "I'm really [expletive deleted] good at my job, and people who are interesting and good know that and that's all that matters." [First correct answer gets a night's portion of drinks paid for, compliments of me]

Just had my first listen to Fought Down, the latest Ken Layne & the Corvids album, which contains all-new material. I admit I hear less of a Velvet Underground-influence than I did before; I would now suggest that they are more of a hybrid combination of Merle Haggard, Exile on Main Street-era Stones, and the Chocolate Watch Band. Not a waste of money; see them live when they begin their West Coast swing in late-February.

I knew Lauren Reed was up to no good !!

Today my nephew gets baptized, the Angels sign Vlad Guerrero (wow!) and the second half of Prime Suspect 6 airs on CBC, which some U.S. satellites can pick up. Anyone with a dish and a VCR who lives in SoCal can become my best friend tonight.

Idiot Son Update: Sending a message to sports leagues and athletes the world over (are you listening, Bud Selig?), the governing authority for Italy's Serie A has suspended Saadi Ghadafi for three months for failing a drug test. Perhaps chastened by the fall of Saddam, Ghadafi admitted taking the banned substance norandrosterone, but claimed it was for treatment of a "back injury", no doubt incurred while sitting on the bench for every single game this season.

Our Shameless Governor: Less than 24 hours after claiming that the budget shortfall in Sacramento was a spending problem, not a taxing problem, and after having vowed not to raise taxes, Gov. Ziffel has proposed to boost public college fees for students up to 40% for the fall, and at the same time limit eligibility for student loans. Substantively, there is no difference between those "fees" and the car license "tax" he campaigned so actively against last fall; both effect only the users of the service involved, not the entire population. Well, there is one difference: the car "tax" disproportionately impacts drivers of more expensive cars (ie., the rich), while the people most likely to be hurt by the college fee increase are the poor and middle class.

As a life-long Dodger fan, I don't really have a dog in the fight over whether Pete Rose should be in the Baseball Hall of Fame; now that he's admitted to having bet on his own team, the entire issue of whether the Dowd Report was fair to him is moot. It is interesting that the nation's sportswriters, so many of whom were insisting that all Charlie Hustle needed to do was admit he gambled on the sport, have now turned against him after he did precisely that. In any event, Eric Alterman has the best take: "If only Pete Rose had claimed he bet on baseball games and then lied about it because he suspected other teams of harboring ties to Al Qaida and building weapons of mass destruction, then the Washington Post editors would have called him a patriot and supported him down the line, even without that lame apology."

The Idiotarian's Manifesto: One of the depressing things about the blogosphere is that you can receive just about any insult and not take it personally. In the real world, being called a "racist", an "anti-Semite", a "fifth columnist", an "objective pro-fascist", or a liar would be considered fighting words; there are even some terms that have no meaning outside the internet, like "idiotarian", "the Pissy Brigade", "media whore" and "fisking", that at one time were meant to be devastating takedowns of your adversary, but are now worn like battlefield scars, with a certain amount of pride and machismo. If you run a blog, and/or if you actively troll in another blogger's comments section, such slurs become par for the course.

Blogs seem to have a special connection to a very angry sort of person, not necessarily an extremist, but someone who has a certain comfort level at disparaging others from the safety of a computer monitor. Bouncing from site to site, it amazes me what sort of rhetoric passes for political insight (and by no means am I excusing myself). People who disagree with you aren't simply mistaken, they are selfish, despicable people who hate America. Be nasty enough, throw in enough shabby and low accusations against the other side, and your unique visitors will multiply geometrically this month !! Never mind that you convince no one of the righteousness of your cause.

The heated rhetoric is in direct contrast to what I know about other bloggers on a personal level. I have probably met, at least on a social level, close to fifty people who have their own blogs, and to date the only person who rubbed me the wrong way was a blogger whose politics I share and whose writing I admire. At some point, I begin to feel like a hypocrite; how many of the people I've called "dixiecrats", "disingenuous", or an "Uncle Tom Democrat" on this site am I going to meet that turn out to be really sweet, decent people? Isn't there someone out there that I can attack who also happens to be a complete a**hole?

Keeping in mind the fervent hope that Lenny Bruce once had, that if the word "n*****" became such a ubiquitous part of our daily conversation that it would cease to have any impact as a derogatory term, I think something is being lost. Some words shouldn't lose their impact. I've been called "anti-Semitic" or a "racist" a couple of times in my life, but before I started this site, I always took it as the type of slam that required some soul-searching on my part (I'm the type of person who subconsciously believes that any time I'm attacked, it must be justified, no matter how baseless). Now, it just means that I oppose Sharon, or that I disagree with Paul Wolfowitz. When I wear my civilian clothes, and especially in the context of my job as an attorney, being called a "liar" is tantamount to being challenged to a dual; it is really the only time I get angry. In the blogosphere, it's just shorthand for saying that I'm factually mistaken about a point.

Unfortunately, this has become a standard part of the political rhetoric in this country. Blogs are just another form of talk radio, for those who are shy and insecure. So I propose the following: never use a word to describe someone (or someone's opinion) that you could not easily repeat to his face. If you disagree with someone else's analysis of an issue, assume it's because he doesn't understand the issue with the same clarity you do, and respond accordingly, rather than assume he's deliberately presenting false arguments. And try to remember that what you read on this blog and elsewhere is just a microscopic part of the whole person who is authoring it. The internet is no substitute for therapy.

One of my booze buddies makes sure I always get the latest column from reactionary pundit Dennis Prager, but this one takes the cake. Humor is like nitroglycerin; it should be handled with care, and never by complete idiots. Also, it should at least be funny. Prager's schtick, of course, is to pen columns that accuse liberals, atheists and A-Rabs of being in league with Satan, sort of a poor man's Charles Krauthammer. During the 2000 Presidential campaign, he was among the pundits who argued that Joseph Lieberman wasn't a real Jew because he supported abortion rights for women questioned the sincerity of Al Gore's religious views, among other things.

In 2004, the candidate who has become the target of religious bigots is Howard Dean, who has come under attack for having married a Jewish woman, thereby permitting her to raise his children in that faith. Some have even gone so far as to question the sincerity of his religious beliefs, a dark moment in recent American politics that brings to mind the attacks against Al Smith and JFK over Roman Catholicism. The scary thing is, the sort of hatred that Howard Dean has engendered from the wingnut right is exactly the thing that has pulled him within the margin of error against George Bush.

UPDATE: I corrected the error about Prager and Lieberman, above, thanks to the resolute fact-checking of Booze Buddy (he also wanted me to announce that he, and he alone, predicted USC's national title before the season). And I'm the one who's always talking about the need for due dilligence amongst bloggers. Physician, heal thyself !!

Yesterday was a special day for me, having grown up an SC fan. Like most fans of college teams, the subject of my loyalties has nothing to do with the college I attended. I went to law school there, but had I gotten my J.D. in Westwood, I would still be a Bruin-hater. Most of the people who follow the Trojans have never set foot on the campus other than to walk through it en route to the Coliseum, and have had even less contact with the school. I liked the Trojans as a kid, even though no one in my family (save my dad, for one semester) ever attended the school, developed an even more passionate attachment as a teenager (around the time I discovered the, er, talent on the sidelines), and remained so after I went off to college in Berkeley. USC is not now the school to which I have the greatest allegiance (that would be dear alma mater CAL), or the school that I follow with most interest (Michigan, their oppenent yesterday, but that's a long story), but it's the team that I always come back to in the end.

Since 1978, there has been little in the way of good news for Trojan fans. The hoops team occasionally tantalizes its fans with a brief run at national prominence, but this is still a UCLA town, from January to the end of March. No team has won more track, swimming and baseball titles than USC, but scholarship limitations put an end to that dominance in the first two sports, and the baseball team, aside from the national title it won a few years back, is now known more for its post-season underachievement (how does a team with Mark McGuire and Randy Johnson not win a title?) than anything else.

The football team had hardly been better. Its recent history was marked by trips to the NCAA doghouse for recruiting and academic violations in the '80's, and by uninspired mediocrity during the '90's. USC lost eleven straight games at one point to their principal rival, Notre Dame, and eight straight to another, UCLA. After Pete Carroll was hired after the 2000 season, things hardly looked up; the Trojans started 2-5 in 2001, and didn't seem appreciably better than they were in the Paul Hackett era. In the thirty or so games since then, USC has looked bad only twice, against Utah in the 2001 Las Vegas Bowl, and against CAL in the first half this year. Most of the time, the games haven't even been competitive, and the Trojans typically look like a team playing an offense ten years ahead of everyone else.

For someone who had seen his team hit rock bottom only three years before, to suddenly mute his cheers at the game yesterday so as not to embarrass his host, a Michigan fan, and to actually feel sorry for the outclassed opponent is quite a switch. Even scarier, USC returns most of their stars, and will play a schedule that looks even easier than the one they played this season, when it cost them a spot in the BCS "championship", a game that is now anti-climactic. They will doubtlessly be the prohibitive favorite going into 2004.

But just as I can savor this new-found dominance, I must also remember that glory such as this is fleeting; after the Trojans won the title in '78 (the real title, too, since it shared the honor with a team it had beaten on the road earlier in the season, Alabama), its third title in six years, I couldn't help but think that was the permanent state of things, the way things naturally were. USC competing for the national title was a matter of birthright. It didn't turn out that way. The next year, an even better team suffered a tie midway through the season, and lost out when their rivals, coasting on a cupcake schedule, went perfect. The Trojans were on probation for much of the next five years, rallied briefly under Larry Smith, then collapsed. It can happen again.

But right now, by whatever right I have to use the pronoun, WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS !!

English journalism isn't simply tabloids and the fabricated stories that run in the Daily Telegraph. It's also hilariously highbrow sportswriting, as this take on the BCS controversy shows. The piece manages to discuss college football in a manner that no fan of the sport ever would (including a reference to a split national title in 1990 between Colorado and "The Georgia Institute of Technology"), while being completely oblivious to what pisses fans off about the BCS (the fact that computers are incapable of picking the correct teams for the national championship).

Speaking of which, I will be at the Rose Bowl tomorrow, so if anyone wishes to hook up, tailgate, etc., let me know sometime before 7:00 a.m. on the morrow. My source in local government tells me that the President is going to make his first campaign appearance of the year at the Game, so if you have any words of wisdom, I'll be glad to pass them on.

UPDATE: The official story is still that the President will be with family and friends tomorrow at his "ranch". More stuff on the games over at my college football blog, Condredge's Acolytes.

I haven't decided whom to support yet in 2004, but Howard Dean sure pisses off the right people, don't he? Dean is the principal example that truth-tellers tend to be a very unpopular sort, at least at first. He's not even close to being as liberal as McGovern was in 1972 (he's not even close to Gore in 2000), he's much closer to the center on most issues than the incumbent President, but he has incurred a level of irrational hatred not seen in American politics since, well, Bill Clinton. The statements that have gotten him into trouble recently (that even Osama is entitled to the presumption of innocence, that the capture of Hussein hasn't made America more safe from terrorism, etc.) are attacked not because they are false (I mean, we're still in an Orange terror alert, and now we're supposed to be paranoid of men with almanacs) but because, regrettably, they are true.

It would feel great to capture OBL alive, then whack him; after all, he has admitted to planning 9/11. But Dean, ironically for someone who is the first major Presidential frontrunner since Reagan to be neither an attorney nor a businessman, knows that false confessions are a dime a dozen in our legal system, and that a fair trial is the only way to establish an accurate historical record of the most grievous injury suffered by our nation in decades. And even supporters of the Iraqi adventure now concede that it had only an incidental relationship to the "war" on terrorism; the justifications we now hear have to do with what a bad actor Saddam Hussein was, which wasn't the argument we were using when trying to bully our allies into this war.

Increasingly, political correctness (or to use the term popular with chickenbloggers, "anti-idiotarianism") has become a weapon used by the right to marginalize dissenting voices. As it did when that same weapon was utilized against conservative student groups and newspapers, though, it has not silenced those voices but given them strength, a feeling that blunt, unpopular truths carry enormous power.

As I said, I don't know if I will vote for Dean in the California primary, which is only about ten weeks away. The anger he has used so effectively to rally the ideologues behind his banner will not help him in the general election (just as it didn't help Barry Goldwater in 1964), but it may well be what the Party needs in the long run. Since 1980, the Democrats have acted in much the same way the Los Angeles Dodgers have the last 25 years, not taking risks and attempting to muzzle anything that sounds remotely unpopular. As with the Dodgers, their occasional successes on the field obscure the fact that the world has changed; the Republicans control politics at every level, from the government to the judiciary to the media, and the old way of doing things doesn't work. In that sense, Tom DeLay is the Billy Beane of politics, someone who has an edge on the rest of us because he knows a new way of doing things that works, and who also knows that the other side hasn't caught on yet.

Clinton, G-- bless him, used a very effective strategy in uniting the base while picking off centrist, and even some right-leaning, voters, but it all but killed the Democrats down-ticket. Dean is popular with Democrats precisely because he understands that attempting to compromise with a foe that wants to fight an all-out war isn't moderation, it's appeasement. Win or lose come November, 2004, he may be the person to start the rebuilding process that has been delayed for too long.

For those of who enjoy the hathos of Andrew Sullivan's vanity site (does the Harvard Crimson follow an affirmative action program to employ idiots?), please take note that he is on "vacation" this week, and his blogging is being done instead by Daniel Drezner, a conservative who actually thinks before he posts.

Those of you who own the paperback version of Fast Food Nation might like to re-read the portion starting at page 271, before you become complacent about government "safeguards" concerning Mad Cow Disease.

The circumstances behind the execution-style slaying of former big league outfielder Ivan Calderon get stranger and stranger.

The Supreme Court's decision earlier this month to uphold the McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance law was one of the few bright spots for progressive politics this year, and as such drew a very hostile reaction from the Right. The gist of the decision was that it halted in its tracks the opinion that the expenditure of money was in and of itself protected "speech" under the First Amendment. The majority opinion was attacked by one pundit as being comparable to Plessy v. Ferguson in its violation of the "clear meaning" of the Constitution, an odious comparison when you realize that the Plessy decision legalized apartheid in much of the country, and ensured that the most-despised and least-powerful segments of our society stayed that way, whereas the Court's decision three weeks ago infringes on the "rights" of the most affluent and powerful groups in America.

That the expenditure of money is even thought to be protected under the First Amendment in the first place shows how ideas that would have been considered extreme thirty years ago now have acquired a mainstream legitimacy, thanks to the conservative dominance of the media. Casual readers of the Bill of Rights might find some difficulty with the notion that campaign contributions are part of what is considered "free speech". The First Amendment does not mention the spending of money, or even the words "money" or "spend"; it mainly deals with restrictions on the power of Congress to infringe on speech, religion, and the press. Laws against bribery were on the books at the time the Constitution was drafted, and do not appear to have been questioned or challenged by the Framers.

Back when I was in law school (1985-8), the high court's 1976 decision in Buckley v. Valeo was considered to be a turning point in the history of the judicial branch, away from the liberalism of the Warren Court and towards a jurisprudence that was friendlier to the wealthy and powerful. In that case, the court struck down provisions of the post-Watergate campaign reform act that restricted expenditures by political candidates themselves, while upholding contribution limits by third parties. In the intervening years, those same third parties were able to create entities that were, at least on paper, independent of actual campaigns, but could spend unlimited amounts to ensure the election of a candidate. The McCain-Feingold Act was drafted to specifically address this loophole, while people like George Will and Senator Mitch McConnell believe the Court didn't go far enough in Buckley.

The difference between campaign "contributions" and bribery is a subtle one. If I were to announce that I had given George Bush's reelection campaign a million dollars in exchange for his veto of any bankruptcy law that I happen to oppose, I would be prosecuted (at least in California; I doubt John Ashcroft would bother). Yet there is no question that my offer to the President has specific free speech implications, in much the same way that the manufacture of child pornography has; if we use the standard of George Will, I'm using wealth to openly propound an opinion on an issue of public policy, an activity clearly protected by the First Amendment.

In reality, though, what the Right views as "free speech" is really a claim to an entitlement, a property right, to control government. It is a cornerstone of conservative thought that government should not interfere with the individual's (or corporation's) right to do what it pleases with its property. Modern liberalism, on the other hand, believes that there is a governmental responsibility to draw some boundaries as to what people can do with their property. Restrictions (or even outright bans) on campaign spending should be no more considered a violation of free speech than the employment of children in factories at sub-minimum wages.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS !!

For those few who visit, I haven't been taking the holiday season off, I just haven't felt the need to post much the last couple of weeks. Quite often, bloggers will feel frustrated that they don't have something new to add to their site, something to maintain a healthy level of unique visitors. People who somehow think they're going to make a living out of this will often announce ahead of time that "blogging will be light" while they are on vacation, or during the holidays, or whenever. Since this site is my plaything, not my resume or headshot, it is liberating to know that I can pretty much speak out whenever I'm inspired, with no feeling of guilt when I go days on end without posting.

Like most of you, I'm just kicking back with my family today, preparing for the afternoon festivities and erecting the Festivus Pole (I know it's two days late, but it's hard for people to get vacation time off for that holiday). Then later, we all get together, have the traditional Airing of Grievances, and play "How to Host a Murder" to get into the holiday spirit.

Saw Return of the King last night, and admittedly, I thought the fourth ending was the best. Snark aside, Peter Jackson has set the bar so high on what I can expect when I pay 10 bucks to see a movie that any other film is almost certain to be a disappointment. Unlike 90% of what Hollywood releases into the nation's multiplexes, this was an experience that could not be captured on DVD.

Any discussion of the so-called liberal media should be prefaced by the admission that it's way more profitable to be a conservative. Last month, it was the revelation that the website Tech Central Station was funded by right wing lobbyists for the purpose of propagating favorable coverage of their issues over the internet. Now, in the wake of the collapse of the Conrad Black publishing empire (Daily Telegraph, Chicago Sun-Times, New York Sun) comes the not-so-surprising revelation that many of the more "distinguished" pundits on the right were generously supported by his lordship, including George Will, Richard Perle, and William F. Buckley. As George Will said, when trying to justify why he didn't tell his readers about the truckload of money he got from the subject of one of his more positive columns, "My business is my business. Got it?"

UPDATE: Krugman adds his take. OUCH !!!

I think the significance of this has nothing to do with Khadafi being threatened by an assertive U.S. presence in the Mid-East as it does his willingness to make it seem like it did. The things he has promised to do are no different than what Saddam was ostensibly promising, and even if he fully "disarms", he will still have WMD "capability", or whatever his shills now call the rationale Bush is using to justify our adventure in Baghdad. The Libyan strongman has been trying to make peace with the west since 1990; his limited cooperation with the international court trying the Lockerbie killers and the intelligence provided on Al Qaeda after September 11 all pre-date the attack on Iraq. If Khadafi a) normalizes relations with Israel; b) personally apologizes for the murders he has backed in the past (the '72 Munich terrorists were financed and given asylum by the Colonel); c) pursues real democratic reforms, and d) informs the Libyan football federation that they no longer have to play his idiot son (see July 26 post), then I'll know something has changed.