What liberal media? The L.A. Times comes out against a tax increase on oil companies to fund alternative energy research, against a one-fifth of one percent increase on the state corporate tax to publicly fund elections, and endorses the reelection of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Each day it becomes more and more like the Wall Street Journal editorial page....

Lipscombing, Part trois:

"MacPherson, a former staff writer for the Washington Post and a past Pulitzer nominee, devoted more than a decade to creating this biography with exceptional rigor, devotion and fairness."

--Joe Conason, reviewing Myra MacPherson's biography of I.F. Stone in Salon. This website seems to imply that she was "nominated" for having written the 1984 book, Long Time Passing, but the Pulitzer website does not indicate she was a nominated finalist in either 1984 or 1985. (See here and here for other examples of this sad form of journalistic resume-padding)

Not All Wars: Mad Max grants Jews absolution for Biafran conflict and the War of Jenkins' Ear.

Air America goes double touthpix.

Kos is right about this. Transfering title in real property between yourself and an LLC you control is routine, and it's hard to decipher what the point of this piece was supposed to be.

For want of an "L"....

A good, if somewhat credulous, look at the GOP GOTV (that's "Get Out the Vote") effort in California. Schwarzenegger's election is in the bag, in large part because he metamorphed into the most liberal governor the state has had since Pat Brown. In reality, it's because after last year's debacle, he has been the weakest governor the state has had since Goodwin Knight, a caretaker celebrity pol who is essentially the sockpuppet of the State Legislature. After a dreadful, stupid four months of campaigning, Angelides seems to be recovering a little at the end, with a good debate performance last Saturday and a nice ad (finally) giving the base a positive reason to vote for him. But he'll lose, and most Democrats won't lose sleep over having a weak lame duck in the governor's mansion for four more years, especially if it means electing Villaraigosa (or Newsom) to a term when redistricting will be on the docket.

The most recent polls show some close races downticket, but no GOTV effort is going to elect Republicans to the other offices without a dramatic change in the political dynamic, and none of the factors that made it so pivotal in Ohio in 2004 are present here. Their one chance is to hope liberals aren't motivated to vote this year, a vain hope that probably vaporized when Mark Foley sent his last I.M.

Between 420,000 and 790,000 655,000 Iraqi dead, according to the Lancet.

The visual effects at the beginning are real disturbing, as you might expect, but here's a classic one shot group from forty years ago:

What is it about Joe Lieberman that turns the lefty blogosphere into the world's most petulant W.A.T.B.'s? Hat's off to Saint Joseph, if he ends up winning this thing; he's turned the anger and rage of his enemies into his greatest strength (although this is a nice ad). It helps, obviously, to be able to campaign against an opponent whose an empty suit. Expect to see more post-primary rematches in the future, especially in solid Blue or Red States.

Our long national nightmare is over.

Little Green Futbols

After a brief exile, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist (and former blogger) Michael Hiltzik is back covering hard news at the LA Times. I still think his future is on the Op-Ed page. [link via Brady Westwater]

The best rundown on Foleybate comes, unexpectedly, from John Podheretz:

THIS column is directed entirely to the sleazy, scuzzy, unprincipled and entirely Machiavellian Democratic political operative who helped design the careful plan resulting in the fingerprint-free leak of Mark Foley e-mails:

Bravo!

This whole Foley business is one of the most dazzling political plays in my or any other lifetime - like watching an unassisted triple play or a running back tossing a 90-yard touchdown pass on a double-reverse.

For reasons having to do almost entirely with funding the war in Iraq, I am profoundly concerned about the consequences of a Democratic takeover of the House of Representatives. But as a close student of American political gamesmanship, I so admire what you've accomplished that I almost have to root for a Democratic landslide in November.

He goes on to list nine reasons why. (link via Scoobie Davis)

Ouch !!! Al Martinez takes on a local nutjob:

In the beginning, there was the word, then there was the newspaper, then television, then e-mail and today, lo, the blog.

When I first heard the term, I thought it defined a loathsome place of brackish water and quicksand where little children and lost drunks were swallowed up in the gooey mess, never to be heard of again.

One suspected that trolls could be seen around blogs, sneaking in and out of the surrounding underbrush, delighting in the agony they were witnessing.

Since then I have learned that, with some notable exceptions, blogs are largely the habitat of unemployed writers, enraged misanthropes, retired teachers, aging journalists and people who normally pass their time doodling or making obscene telephone calls.

(snip)

And then there is my old colleague Ken Reich.

He is proprietor of a blog he calls "Take Back the Times," which has to do with events that relate to journalistic and political issues, including whatever occurs at the newspaper that once employed him. Recently, he e-mailed me and sent along a posting he was planning to use that involved imaginative conversations with me and with filmmaker and antiwar activist Oliver Stone.

Stone doesn't require my representation in Reich's quaint but disquieting effort at satire, so I'll just leave him out of it and concentrate on the proposed blog's attitudes toward me. For instance:

"Q — What would you have done after 9/11?

"Martinez — Complimented Osama bin Laden on a well-planned operation and started trying to win him over by being nice to him."

Another:

"Q — And what would you have done on Dec. 7, 1941, when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor?

"Martinez — Stood down the remaining ships of the U.S. Navy and offered Hirohito Hawaii as a personal possession in hopes the Japanese would be mollified."

And:

"Q — Coming to the present day, what do you think of Saddam Hussein?

"Martinez — I like him personally."

You get the idea.

Generally a pretty good reporter, Reich can be a little flaky sometimes, but this seemed over the top to me. He was implying that I would have applauded a murderer responsible for orchestrating the deaths of 3,000 human beings in the attack on the twin towers and the Pentagon, and of "liking" a man on trial for genocide. I e-mailed Reich to the effect that he was way off base.

Acknowledging my "unhappiness," he altered my responses in the final blog, the first quote changed to say, "I'm not fond of Osama bin Laden, but I wouldn't have confronted him in Iraq. Maybe, he'd be more pleasant if we were nicer to him."

And on Saddam Hussein: "I do not like him, personally. But I'm convinced, as Bob Woodward now apparently is, that the Iraq war was a mistake."

In my "answer" to the Pearl Harbor question, he becomes the narrator and concludes, "as far as the past is concerned, Martinez is not such a pacifist after all."

Although I appreciate Reich's effort to "soften" my fanciful responses, it would be wiser of him to offer his opinions in a form more in keeping with his style of bluster and to avoid satire; in other words, return to the bludgeon and leave the stylus to those more adept at using it.

Requiescat in pace: Buck O'Neil (1911-2006)

A happy 43rd birthday to Elizabeth Shue, who is not my fraternal twin, in spite of what you may think.

In defense of J.D. Drew, by King Kaufman.

As if we needed more reasons why there is an inherent conflict between good journalism and a profitable, publicly-traded corporation, there's this firing at the local paper of record.

Kerning with Boys: Not surprisingly, LGF defends Foley, Roger L. Simon wonders what the big deal is, Hugh Hewitt embraces the morally relativist approach and James Lileks believes hitting on teenage boys became more forgivable after September 11. Leave it to Michelle Malkin to be the Voice of Integrity on the Far Right.

"An important symbolic gesture?" Remember that border fence Congress authorized last week (and signed into law today by the President) amid much to do. Looks like it's going to get built roughly around the time that the Ninth Ward is finally repaired by the feds, or so says one of its prime supporters. It's funny, but last week the fence and the habeus corpus abolition were supposed to be the silver bullets that would sink the Democrats (link via Charles Kuffner), and now they're just commas.

The Trinity: Photographic evidence that Jesus loves me...

Requiem for the Other Man on the Medal Stand:

"His role was to show everyone that it's not a black thing, it's a human thing. It's not about colour, it's not about, you know, wealth or lack of wealth, it's about having an understanding and love for humanity. You know, it's two black guys, but it was three human beings up there, total."

--John Carlos

"...as a humanitarian, one of the greatest men I've ever know. And I think the love of what he stood for will be remembered throughout all time. And Peter certainly should be put on the top of a gold medal stand and not on the bottom...."

--Tommie Smith

"It was like a pebble into the middle of a pond, and the ripples are still traveling."

--Peter Norman (1942-2006)

Every four years Californians are treated to a governor's race featuring some of the most inept campaigning this side of Robert Shrum, and this year is no exception. Since Pete Wilson and Dianne Feinstein battled it out in 1990 in one of the closest races in history, the losing candidates in the Golden State have been Kathleen Brown (1994), who started out the race twenty points ahead of Gov. Wilson, only to somehow run out of money with ten days to go, thereby forcing her to go dark on any last-second media buys, Dan Lundgren (1998), who managed to lose to Gray Davis by an even larger margin than Brown had four years earlier, Bill Simon (2002), who lost to Davis even though the governor was so unpopular that the recall efforts would begin almost the day after, and now Phil Angelides.

Angelides may take the cake as the most inept nominee of a major party ever to seek the governorship; the only campaign that really comes close would be Pat Brown's effort against Ronald Reagan in 1966, and even that has to be seen in the context of his having won twice before. Right now, Schwarzenegger is clobbering him by anywhere from ten to seventeen points, according to whichever poll you believe, but more troubling may be the anemic showing of other Democrats seeking statewide office (see here and here), most of whom are not being challenged by charismatic and/or liberal Republican opponents.

Angelides' ineptitude is of the quality that one begins to wonder how he can be removed from the ballot, if only to save the party from a monumental debacle in five weeks. Schwarzenegger has labeled him a traditional "tax-and-spend" liberal, which isn't shocking; what's shocking is that the only response from the Democrat has been to air ads that replay the governor's endorsement of President Bush two years ago, a strategem that has almost no effect on swing voters. The voters will give liberal candidates some benefit of the doubt if, at the very least, they connect tax increases with tangible governmental results. But if Angelides supports universal health coverage, or rebuilding the levees in the Central Valley, or lowering teacher-student class sizes in public schools, that message hasn't gone out to the voters. He has yet to give anyone a positive reason to vote for him, a rationale for why the voters would benefit by having him assume office in December.

Moreover, he has generated almost no passion at the "netroots" level, which is even more surprising considering how many important bloggers are from this state. The sort of intensity that is endemic when the blogs focus on a particular race has been absent here, even though California is the largest state, and the enthusiasm that the internet can generate is absolutely necessary in mobilization. As a consequence, low voter turnout by California Democrats may very well lead to a disaster on Election Day, both at the state level and in the battle to take control of the House of Representatives.

Mickey Kaus has reason to believe that the GOP may well retain the Foley seat. The most interesting thing about the poll is that 43% of the voters in the district would vote for Foley even before being told that his votes would be transferable to the Republican replacement.

Some interesting ties between Cong. Foley and the Church of Scientology, courtesy of Wonkette.

Ladies and gentlemen, our scandal du jour is Foleygate, not Predatorgate. In order for the "-gate" suffix to properly identify a scandal that will transcend partisan and ideological interest, without first glazing over the eyes of those who aren't politically-obsessed, it has to start with a banality(eg., Water-gate, Monica-gate, Contra-gate, etc.) When you start it with a loaded term, you run the risk of killing the outrage, as liberals did when they began calling the Plame Leak controversy, "Traitorgate". If the word that precedes "-gate" is inherently criminal, there's no point in using the suffix in the first place.

UPDATE: Some particularly sloppy usage, here. "Spitgate"? Donnez moi une break !!

UPDATE [10/3]: But this is a winner--La Cage Aux Foley, courtesy of Little Green Firedogs.

A "No brainer" indeed: So much for the claim that Democratic opposition to Schwarzenegger's reapportionment scheme would backfire...with Angelides cratering and a singularly undistinguished set of statewide candidates indicating that the Golden State may countertrend towards the GOP, Pelosi's gambit last year may be what assures the party of a majority of House seats after November 7.

More Perverts? The Page Scandal has all the makings of the GOP version of the House Bank Scandal, a very simple, easy-to-understand symbol of the corruption at the heart of one-party dominance. If "Republican Congressman" becomes synonymous with "Catholic Priest" in causing a shudder in our collective subconscious, the party may be doomed.

Hagler v. Hearns II? No, it's Kaus v. Alterman at bloggingheads, here.

Confessions of a Moonie Troll: I just had my maiden cite by Wonkette !!! It concerns the allegations contained in these posts, which apparently the author was none too happy about. Yay me !!!

The Loyal Opposition:

So here's a bill that Arlen Specter says "will take our civilization back 900 years." A bill which Patrick Leahy calls "the darkest blot on the conscience of the nation." And yet the Democrats do nothing effective to stop it--when all that would have been required was to move it (as the wiretap bill was moved) past the end of this session.

In The Wild Bunch, Deke Thornton (played by Robert Ryan) says to his band, "You think Pike and old Sykes haven't been watchin' us? They know what this is all about - and what do I have? Nothin' but you egg-suckin', chicken stealing gutter trash with not even sixty rounds between you... The next time you make a mistake, I'm going to ride off and let you die."

That about says it. For fear of being called weak the Democrats sat there and sucked eggs. There was an occasional burst of noble rhetoric, but no concerted effort or real opposition when it would have counted, and no political will to delay the juggernaut. Leahy said, "There is no new national security crisis. There's only a Republican political crisis." And, having said that, voted and lost.

Should we ride off the next time the Democratic Party makes a "mistake" of this magnitude? Or should we ride off right now?

-Howard A. Rodman (Huff Post)

St. Joe's up by ten points in the latest poll, with a comfortable lead among independents, with just over five weeks out. Entrenched incumbents that scare off challengers from the other party can look at Lieberman's post-primary success as a template; if you get beat in the primary, just take a mulligan. Lamont is becoming more and more like the empty suit we all feared.

UPDATE: Lieberman's still a jackass.

Socialism of Shlemiels: Switch the ethnic group here to "Jew", and you have something that might have amused Julius Streicher.

22+ SEATS: It's a long way to November 7, but this looks awfully good for the Democrats.

As if there were any doubt as to what our national sport is, last night's Atlanta-New Orleans game drew the highest ratings for any programming ever on ESPN, and was the most watched show of the evening, network or cable.

On the new TV season: Can I remind people that the first episode of a new TV series typically sucks, no matter how good the show eventually becomes. Both The Office and The Sopranos sucked right out of the gate; the latter show didn't pick up speed until the second episode, and the former took almost a full season before it started to jell. All in the Family, Cheers, and Seinfeld didn't have particularly dazzling debuts, and if Friends was an instant classic right out of the gate, history doesn't record that. Always look at the cast and the concept, give it a few episodes, and don't whine if it isn't Emmy-quality from day one.

The single most idiotic line ever to appear on the Op-Ed pages of the L.A. Times:

My beat is human psychology and the nature of reality and fiction. It's in those realms that at least one key difference between Reagan and Clinton can be found — a difference that sits at the heart of our current divisions.

Reagan was a man who believed in truth. Not your truth or my truth but "the truth," the one that is out there whether you happen to believe in it or not.

"I never thought of myself as a great man," he said, "just a man committed to great ideas." Those ideas — our founders' ideas — were great because they recognized a central truth: the good of individual liberty. And they guaranteed human beings those rights endowed in them by the "big truth" — their creator.

Clinton, on the other hand, is a narcissist who finds it difficult to grasp in any real sense that there is a place where his "inner man" ends and the rest of the world begins. Clinton's stock phrase, "I feel your pain," is really the insistence of a man who does not truly feel anyone else's pain, does not truly understand that there are other inner realities as urgent as his own.

This, from a column this morning by a novelist named Andrew Klavan, who seems to have the same high regard for the Big Dog that Hugh Chavez has for the current incumbent. That Ronald Reagan was a "great" President, or even the "greatest President of the last half of the 20th Century," is an argument for historians. He certainly wasn't the "greatest" President if you were an African-American, or if you lived below the poverty line, but I will admit he accomplished many things that, in retrospect, benefited the country, including his sharp repudiation of neoconservatism at the end of his second term, which in turn led to accomodation with Gorbachev and a relatively bloodless victory in the Cold War.

But to claim that ol' Dutch had some special loyalty to "the truth" is almost psychotic. There has probably never been a President, present company included, who had less interest in what the facts were in any given situation than Ronald Wilson Reagan. Whether it was fictitious "welfare queens" (a racist lie that helped discredit conservative efforts at welfare reform for a generation), or denials that his administration was selling arms to the mullahs in Iran as his principal hostage negotiation strategy, to his frequent juxtoposition of movie plots with reality, Reagan was a man who debased the truth at will.

I would even go so far as to argue that the reason President Clinton was able to ride out the Lewinsky scandal was that the bar for honesty had been set so low by his predecessor. What Clinton's adversaries forgot, but his supporters vividly remembered, was that the public eventually made their peace with Reagan's frequent lies, seeing that trait as an eccentricity gifted upon successful politicians rather than a character flaw. If you could forgive a President for not being honest about sending graft and kickbacks from Iran to the Contras, then what's the big deal about lying about a consensual affair? Reagan's most important legacy may well be the moral relativism that he legitimized in our political system, an attitude towards "the truth" to which both parties have made their accomodation.

The Jesse Ventura of Texas? Try the George Allen....

Atrios is right:

When George Allen told Mike Stark that he'd never used the word "nigger" the absurdity of the claim was obvious. Of course that word had passed his lips at some point in his life. I imagine there are few Americans who haven't used the word in some fashion at some time. For the record I have. I just typed it a few seconds ago. I'm reasonably sure that I've never used it as a direct racial epithet, though I can't be sure I've never used the word in ways my older more enlightened self wouldn't consider to be inappropriate.

Though his denial was absurd that doesn't mean he'd ever used it in a fashion such that he should be harshly judged now. And, frankly, I'd even forgive "stupid awful shit he did as a college student" if there was reason to believe he'd evolved since then.

The Salon article is here, btw.

Apparently Mel Gibson's upcoming film is potentially of Oscar caliber, or so sayeth the New York Times. I guess that means it's long, boring, middlebrow and pretentious.

Lipscombing: I have corrected my post, below, on Max Blumenthal's article on the Washington Times, to note the bogus Pulitzer claim made by his main source, George Archibald.

[UPDATE (9/28)]: According to Mr. Archibald, the Pulitzer "nomination" was actually submitted by his employer, the Washington Times. As I've noted before, it's not a real nomination, any more than an Academy member nominating a buddy is a true "Oscar nomination", but it does add context, both to the claim and to Archibald's perceived importance with his former employer.

[UPDATE (9/29)]: Now Archibald's bio at HuffPost is stating that he "went on to win four Pulitzer Prize nominations from Times editors." I'm not a professional journalist, so what I want to know from those of you who are is whether this sort of thing, which looks like resume padding to the layman, is actually considered to be an honor within your ranks. Do writers at the same newspaper compete with each other for the coveted honor of being nominated by their employer?

Europe 18 1/2, U.S. 9 1/2: Another lame effort by American athletes, matching the worst-ever performance from two years ago. Gagger Vance went 0-4-1 for the weekend, solidifying his well-earned rep as sports' greatest choke artist. Why the hell is Vaughn Taylor on our team? Oh, yeah, Team U.S.A. also lost its Davis Cup match, to Russia !!

Europe 10, U.S. 6: Tiger Woods wins at the Ryder Cup !! Praise Jesus, it's a miracle !!

Well, actually, at 2-2 this weekend, it's his best-ever start in this tournament, justifying U.S. coach Tom Lehman's gutsy decision to roll the dice and play Woods in the afternoon session. The Americans continued their crap play in Ireland, and Europe only needs four points out of twelve matches tomorrow to retain the Ryder Cup. Mickelson lost; in fact, "Mickelson lost" may be the most banal statement since "Bush lied."

Bin-Laden Dead Very Sick Again.

He's back !!!

Europe 7 1/2, U.S. 4 1/2: Tiger Woods moved within three losses of the alltime career Ryder Cup record of Raymond Floyd, in leading his American compatriots to another morning loss. Only the team of Scott Verplank and Zach Johnson (who?) saved the U.S. from complete embarassment, while Sergio Garcia, otherwise known for his inability to win in the clutch at stateside majors, is now an amazing 13-3-2 in Ryder Cup play. Of course, Gagger Vance lost again; together, Woods and Mickelson are the Tampa Bay Devil Rays of international match play.

Did you know I have the power to make something cooler just by observing it? It's true....

Here's something to think about the next time you read an article about civil rights or immigration policy in the Washington Times. Concerning editor-in-chief Wesley Pruden and managing editor Francis Coombs:

But even as it has enjoyed cozy relations with Washington politicos, from its earliest days the Times has been a hothouse for hard-line racialists and neo-Confederates. Pruden, who started at the paper in 1982, was their wizard. His father, the Rev. Wesley Pruden Sr., was a Baptist minister who served as chaplain to the Capital Citizens Council in Little Rock, Arkansas, the leading segregationist group in town. When President Dwight Eisenhower sent Army troops to protect nine black teenagers integrating Little Rock's Central High School in 1957, Pruden Sr. reportedly told an assembled mob, "That's what we've got to fight! Niggers, Communists and cops!"

In 1993 Pruden gave an interview to the now-defunct neo-Confederate magazine Southern Partisan, which routinely published proslavery apologias and attacks on Abraham Lincoln. Pruden boasted, "Every year I make sure that we have a story in the paper about any observance of Robert E. Lee's birthday.... And the fact that it falls around Martin Luther King's birthday."

"Makes it all the better," interjected a Partisan editor.

"I make sure we have a story. Oh, yes," said Pruden.

(snip)

When Coombs joined the Times in 1988, he became a charter member of Pruden's neo-Confederate cabal. Reared by a military family in rural Virginia, Coombs attended a private high school and William and Mary College, where he was known as a hard partyer with a vast collection of rock-and-roll records. After graduating Coombs cut his teeth at several Virginia papers and the States News Service. He pursued journalism as an extension of his family's military tradition. His motto, which he would recite time and again in the Times newsroom: "Journalism is war."

In his 1993 Southern Partisan interview, Pruden proudly recounted Coombs's speech that year at the Capitol hailing Confederate President Jefferson Davis. "I read the speech and it was quite good," Pruden told the Partisan. "I was originally asked to speak, but I was going to be out of town and Fran filled in for me. He was telling me what a thrilling thing it was to stand there and sing 'Dixie' in the statuary hall of the U.S. Capitol. I would have liked to have been there just for that."

While Coombs sympathized with Pruden's Lost Cause nostalgia, his politics were even harsher. "The thing about Wes is, he has other vices," said a Times senior staffer. "He loves a good meal, loves to have his ego stroked, he loves women, the social scene. As for bashing blacks and Hispanics, he shares Fran's views, but he has other preoccupations. Fran is the really hard-core ideological white supremacist."

Coombs believes immigration is "the number-one issue in America today," and he has played an instrumental role in pressing far-right positions into the mainstream. In a move that many sources considered emblematic, on August 22 Coombs splashed a favorable review of Pat Buchanan's book State of Emergency across the paper's front page. Buchanan's book is a diatribe calling for an immediate moratorium on all immigration, to stave off the demise of Western civilization. "There were a lot of other things going on [in the news] that day," a Times senior staffer said. "Any other paper would have reserved that for the book review section, but Coombs had to have Buchanan on the front page." Coombs, the staffer continued, "will literally stand there and scan websites and look for anything that's anti-Hispanic, that's immigrant-bashing, and he will order the editors to go with it." According to Archibald, in 2001 Pruden issued a memo instructing reporters to stop using the term "illegal immigrant" and instead use "illegal alien"--a lead the rest of the conservative media soon followed.

From an excellent piece by Max Blumenthal in the Nation...[UPDATE (9/24): One of the main sources for this article is a writer named George Archibald, who is described as having been "nominated" for four Pulitzer Prizes during his tenure at the Washington Times. In fact, no one by that name has ever been a nominated finalist, and the Times has only one nomination to its credit in its history, a 2003 nomination for photojournalism.]

Fanshen: The more one reads of other lefty bloggers concerning l'affaire Nyhan, the more I can see how comfortable many of us would have been participating in one of those Maoist circlejerks during the Cultural Revolution. Apparently, one of the crosses we must bear in the political wilderness is our obligation to denounce any self-criticism, unless the criticism is that we aren't revolutionary enough.

As usual, Andrew Sullivan is eloquent on the Torture Agreement:

The trouble is: Cheney, Bush, Rumsfeld and Addington are not gentlemen. If we have learned anything these past few years, it is that they are not to be trusted on the torture question, that they have lied repeatedly and knowingly and insistently, that their use of the English language is designed to obfuscate and obscure the reality they are advancing, and the constitutional freedoms they are bent on dismantling. In so far as this bill grants this president discretion in enforcing Geneva, it means that the standards of Geneva will not apply under this president - although they might under a more civilized and competent one.

I should add that it is essential to the integrity of language and law that the word torture not be defined out of existence. Waterboarding, hypothermia, long-time-standing, and various forms of stress positions are torture, have always been torture and always will be torture. What we must do is what Orwell demanded: speak plain English before it evaporates from our discourse, refuse to acquiesce to the corruption of language and decency. In that respect, the press must continue to ask both McCain and all administration representatives whether passing this bill means that waterboarding, hypothermia, sleep deprivation, long-time-standing or stress positions are now illegal and unavailable to the CIA. They must not be allowed to get away with the answer that they will not mention specific techniques. The specifics are everything. And we must not be snowed by abuse of English into saying something is true when it isn't. Until they are completely forthcoming on these critical details, this bill should not be passed. Moreover, something this complex and this grave should not be rushed into law with round-the-clock haste. We need this to be debated and deliberated slowly. Which means leaving it to the next session of Congress.

Amen.

I think one of the things that is proving so uncomfortable about President Chavez' literal demonization of President Bush is that we Americans are finally seeing the rhetorical excesses of our own leaders from the opposite side. Hugo Chavez is most definitely a buffoon, but was his speech at the U.N. really any different from what we have come to expect hearing out of the mouth of George Bush? [link via Altercation]

Europe 5, U.S. 3: This time, Woods returns to past Ryder Cup form, and loses the afternoon four-ball battle. The world's greatest golfer is now 8-12-2 against Europe in his career, including a lame 6-11-1 when paired with a teammate. About the best that can be said right now is that the U.S. started better than it did last time, when it trailed 11/2-61/2 after the first day, or in 1999, when it trailed 2-6 at Brookline before rallying Sunday.

Europe 2 1/2, U.S. 1 1/2: Trying to end a miserable year for American sports, the U.S. started quickly in the 36th Ryder Cup, with Tiger and Furyk thwarting years of futility in this tournament by winning the opener (over Monty, no less !!), but the favored Euros took charge in the subsequent matches of the morning to take the early lead. Lefty, natch, found a way to lose.

On the McCain "compromise":

The deal does next to nothing to stop the president from reinterpreting the Geneva Conventions. While the White House agreed to a list of “grave breaches” of the conventions that could be prosecuted as war crimes, it stipulated that the president could decide on his own what actions might be a lesser breach of the Geneva Conventions and what interrogation techniques he considered permissible. It’s not clear how much the public will ultimately learn about those decisions. They will be contained in an executive order that is supposed to be made public, but Mr. Hadley reiterated that specific interrogation techniques will remain secret.

Even before the compromises began to emerge, the overall bill prepared by the three senators had fatal flaws. It allows the president to declare any foreigner, anywhere, an “illegal enemy combatant” using a dangerously broad definition, and detain him without any trial. It not only fails to deal with the fact that many of the Guantánamo detainees are not terrorists and will never be charged, but it also chokes off any judicial review.

The Democrats have largely stood silent and allowed the trio of Republicans to do the lifting. It’s time for them to either try to fix this bill or delay it until after the election. The American people expect their leaders to clean up this mess without endangering U.S. troops, eviscerating American standards of justice, or further harming the nation’s severely damaged reputation.

--N.Y. Times editorial, 9/22/06

LA Observed notes a disturbing effect of the penny-pinching afflicting the local paper of record: the use of writers from out-of-town newspapers affiliated with Tribune Inc. in the pages of the LA Times. Not only is it occurring in the sports section (in spite of the two local NHL teams, Kings and Ducks away games will not be covered by a beat reporter this season), but it has also occurred with some annoying frequency elsewhere. I suppose it's one thing to farm out writing on NASCAR to writers from areas where the sport is something more than an annual event, but the Times has used Chicago Tribune film critics to review several recent releases, including Gridiron Gang, starring the Rock, the inner-city hoops drama Crossover, and Charles Sturridge's Lassie; I guess it would have been next to impossible to find anyone locally with any interest in movies. It will probably be a matter of time until its national political reporting consists largely of wire service copy.

Jacob Weisburg raises the possibility that maybe the Democrats shouldn't want to capture one or both houses of Congress, before scotching the notion entirely. The view that it's actually a good thing not to win the next election is pretty common, particularly with ideologues, and is usually based on the false premise that once things get worse, as they surely will, the people will hold the party that wins accountable. This mid-term may not be as important as winning the Presidency in 2008, or even winning the mid-term in 2010, but a Democratic win this November would have positive historic implications, even if it lessens our chances of victory two years from now.

Remember when Stephen Colbert was actually...funny?

Actually, it wasn't that long ago. The Colbert Report was still airing episodes with humor and wit as recently as late-August; it's just that his post-Labor Day efforts have been the comedic counterpart to the Oakland Raiders offense.

This is an interesting way for the top law enforcement officer in the country to be spending his weekend: with Ann Coulter and Jerry Falwell, before an organization that shares its mailing list with David Duke.

An interesting summary on the instititutional reasons military lawyers oppose the Bushies' efforts to "clarify" the Geneva Conventions, here.

Even Nixon's doodles seem over-programmed....

One of my favorite liberal bloggers, Brendan Nyhan, gets canned because he refused to kiss enough liberal ass in the blogosphere, less than a week after he attacked the use of an urban legend for anti-Bush purposes at Eschaton. Having someone like Nyhan around calling bullshit can be very frustrating, but it's worth it if it forces you to show greater discipline when blogging, and being more attentive to the facts. It's the easiest thing in the world to find something on the internet that proves conclusively whatever preconceived notions you might have are correct. What's hard is double-checking your link to see if it's true. Mau-mauing Nyhan means Atrios and friends never have to challenge their own preconceptions, or take any care in what they post. They can go back to calling other people "wankers" or "liars", and be content in their own version of reality, freed from the constraints of building a reasoned case in support of their ideals. In fact, it's not unlike a certain occupant of the White House.

"HABEUS CORPUS MATTERS" The "twisted priorities" of Roger Waters.

Dodgers 11, San Diego 10: Unfreakingbelievable.

The always fun-to-observe Rasmussen numbers now have St. Joseph up by only two over Ned Lamont. Rasmussen has consistently had this race closer than other polls, so take this with a grain of salt.

UPDATE [9/20]: An ARG poll has the same margin. Lieberman is losing slightly among independents. The Republican candidate is drawing less than 5%, so any improvement at his end can only help Lamont.

Huh?

Angelenos and news-crits: Before you rush to agree with LAT columnist Tim Rutten's self-satisfiedly righteous denunciation of the evil, greedy absentee-owning Tribune Company: 1) Do you really think Dean Baquet couldn't put out a high-quality Los Angeles newspaper with a mere 800 editorial employees (instead of the current 940)? The Washington Post operates with about 800 editorial employees. It's pretty good! 2) If you are a reporter at the LAT, do you really want to work at a paper owned by Eli Broad, Ron Burkle, or David Geffen--three of the local billionaires you should be covering? They aren't known as people who like bad press. ...

P.S.: The LAT has become a much better paper under Baquet--better than it ever was under the Chandlers--while it's cut back staff. Does that bolster the argument against cutting?

--Mickey Kaus

Wow, where does one start? First, the metropolitan area of Los Angeles has a population of almost 18 million people, making it more than twice the size of the D.C.-Baltimore metropolitan area. Besides the fact that the Post isn't half the newspaper it was in the '70's, a good newspaper in Los Angeles should have quite a bit more editorial employees than one in D.C., especially one whose circulation is almost 20% higher.

Second, having a local billionaire sign your paychecks is going to represent no more of a potential conflict of interest than having a publicly-traded corporation do so, and its interest in the bottom line uber alles. At least having Eli Burke or Ron Burkle running things at Times-Mirror decreases the likelihood of having advertisers trying to censor unfavorable articles, an inevitable result of having a publicly-traded corporation in charge, where everything is constantly and monomaniacally geared towards maximizing profits for the shareholders. If the trade-off is not aggressively investigating your billionaire patron, I'll live with that.

Lastly, that the LA Times is better now than it was in the Chandler Era (and thus, the best that it's ever been; the pre-Otis Chandler Times was a joke) is not only news to those who continue to subscribe to it, and have to read the bare-bones sports and metro sections, but it's also news to regular readers of Mickey Kaus, who has been unsparing in his attacks on the paper the past few years (see here, here, here, here, here, here, and here), both before and after the promotion of Baquet in July, 2005.

In fact, as recently as last May, Kaus approvingly cited this reaction from one of his readers:

Alert and anguished L.A. reader "G"--not me! And not Brady Westwater neither!--writes:

Two more Pulitzers are going on the wall at the L.A. Times, which means the editors at Spring St. can delude themselves, for at least another year, with the belief they are putting out a decent newspaper.

Prizes, which award either prestige or cash, are meant to reward, and thereby encourage, good behavior. ... And, at their best, the Pulitzer Prizes encourage papers to pursue serious journalism. The possibility of a Pulitzer is a good reason for an editor at a small paper with a limited budget to let a reporter spend a lot of time investigating a local scandal. ... But at large papers ... the Pulitzers are reinforcing bad behavior. At the LA Times, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and every other large paper in the country, editors year in and year out mount big projects with Pulitzers in mind ... (Did you make your way through even one of the NYT's Pulitzer-winning Race in America series? I didn't think so.) Typically these projects are snoozes which have their largest readership among Pulitzer judges. ... But at the WSJ and NYT, that's okay. Both papers are excellent despite their Pulitzer pursuits.

But by continuing to hand out prizes to the LAT, the Pulitzer committee is complicit in the journalistic disaster in Los Angeles. This is not to say that it's King/Drew series or Kim Murphy's reporting from Russia weren't excellent. ... Or that the four Pulitzers it brought in last year were undeserved. Under [John] Carroll and [Dean] Baquet, the LAT does national politics and foreign reporting about as well as anyone out there.

But for some reason that high quality journalism seems to stop at the Los Angeles County line. Local coverage (that is the daily stuff that isn't in a prize-bait series) is shoddy. Anyone who actually lives in L.A. and is dependent on the local paper for news and analysis of L.A. will be sorely disappointed.

There's every reason to pop champagne bottles and give self-congratulatory speeches in the newsroom today. But tomorrow, please mull this thought over: winning Pulitzers may be the thing that the LA Times does best. Which is a kinder way of saying, no matter how many Pulitzers go up on the wall each year, from the vantage of your local readers, you still put out a lousy paper. [Emph. added]

I suspect declining circulation numbers and heat from the Chicago boys at Tribune Co. may get the message to Carroll & Baquet through the celebratory haze.

If Kaus' opinion of the Times has changed in the brief period since Baquet took over, it hasn't been evident in his writing. Is a front-page that now includes profiles of the Cannibis Babe Attorney really such an improvement? Since when has he liked the paper?

FWIW: The Encyclopedia Brittanica's entry on Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus of Byzantium, cited last week by Pope Benedict as an authority on the evils of Islam. He doesn't appear to have a particularly important leader; the Byzantine Empire was on its last legs, kept alive only by internal divisions in the Ottoman Empire, and would ultimately disappear from the world stage during the reign of his son. The writings cited by the Pope were likely written for the purpose of fomenting anti-Muslim feelings in the West at the end of the Fourteenth Century, when Manuel's empire was besieged, but he also played his cards well for a time with certain factions among the Turks, and remained in power for well over three decades as a vassal. Why the pope was inspired to cite him as an authority on any theological points staggers the imagination.

Very unusual choreography. And not lip-sync'd !!!

Did Gareth Keenan come up with this?

I guess you can be too thin, even in the fashion industry. Frankly, with all the attention Congress and the media pay to the use of steroids and HGH by athletes, I'm surprised this hasn't gotten more play. People being starved for the sake of commerce, then selling that look as ideal, is not that different from hyping athletes who bulk up to get ahead.

Oriana Fallaci, who went from being an anti-Fascist soldier at the end of WWII to being the Euro version of Louis Farrakhan at the end of her life, has died. I suppose just as college Trotskyites become the intellectual shills for reflexive militarism in their prime, so too is it a short step from fighting Mussolini to adopting his ideals later in life.

"Appear" to receive money? I plan on writing a little more about this over at Condredge's Acolytes, but I can't imagine a less interesting story than how much money Reggie Bush made in college. Strip SC of the '04 Title? Take away his Heisman Trophy? Sorry, can't be done: those honors have already been awarded. This ain't like taking the Tour de France from a juiced champion, where there is a direct link between the cheating and the championship. You can punish USC all you want, but they still kicked Sooners' ass in the '05 Orange Bowl, and they still beat Michigan to win the '04 title. And Reggie Bush was still the best player during the 2005 season. Even if the NCAA was motivated to send a message to the Trojans, the Sooners are still going to trail by five touchdowns.

That's the big problem with enforcing the malum prohibitum regulations of the NCAA; if the crime doesn't directly relate to the essence of the sport, the winning-and-losing on the field, the fans, alums and boosters aren't going to give a rat's ass about whether or not "cheating" takes place. The issue isn't whether SC "cheats" to win; it's why other programs (are you listening, CAL?) aren't trying hard enough to match them.
[link via LA Observed]

It's about time the local newspaper of record showed some sack. There is an inherent contradiction between publishing a quality paper and running a publicly-traded business, and the sooner Tribune Corp. sells the LA Times, the sooner the people there can get back to turning out a good newspaper again.

Dog Bites Man: Kaus Endorses G.O.P. Dominance of Congress.

Bad News for Pessimists: Far from constituting a pro-reconquista fifth column in our midst, only 7% of Latino immigrants have any fluency in Spanish after the second generation, according to a Princeton/UC Irvine study. It won't stop nativists and bigots from demanding we throw up the barricades at the border, unfortunately, but it does provide proof that the melting pot is alive and cooking.

The phrase "some good news for pessimists", as used here, can hardly be construed as racist, as some bloggers have accused (btw, isn't reading comprehension supposed to be one of the areas evaluated by the SAT?) . Clearly, a "pessimist" in this context is someone who fears that our political system can never be truly representative of non-whites, and the fact that whites will continue to wield disproportionate influence and power in California, in spite of being a minority of the population, is a validation of that worldview (and hence, "good news").

Best use of sports by a Democratic politician EVER !!!

Air America's going double touthpicks. Other than Al Franken's show, which airs out here in the morning, I can't say that I listen to the programming that often. Reading between the lines, it sounds more like a bad business plan than anything to do with crummy ratings.

My side of the blogosphere seems to attract assholes, or at least create an environment that allows their Inner Asshole to bloom.

UPDATE: The above reference was originally intended to note the nasty, over-the-top reaction by certain bloggers to the criticism from Brendan Nyhan, and not any sort of reference to the underlying post, which concerned an alleged suicide by an airlines ticket counter who gave Mohammed Atta his boarding pass on 9/11. But it now appears that story is an urban legend as well. Another triumph for the blogosphere.

Chafee wins in Rhode Island, and less narrowly than expected. Still, even with a huge GOTV effort by the national GOP, the total number of votes cast in the Republican primary was less than the vote total achieved by Sheldon Whitehouse, the Democratic nominee, in an uncontested primary. Since Chafee's margin encompassed a large independend and Democratic crossover vote, that bodes well for the Democrats.

Another poll has Lieberman with a comfortable lead in Connecticut. As I've said before, unless Ned Lamont can make a case for why non-Democrats should vote for him, he won't deserve to win. And right now, he clearly hasn't....

The Mark of Quality: Turns out much of that lame 9/11 miniseries was shot in Toronto. Nothing gives a film that touch of realism and versimilitude, or shows a commitment to class, more than location shooting in Canada.

Whatever happened to Bridget Fonda?

Some nice pics of the Seipp Roast yesterday, incl. one of your correspondent's failed attempt to avoid being photographically linked to Luke Ford, here.

UPDATE [10/24]: My own pics, which are late due to my inability to figure how to download photos taken on my cellphone:

Five years ago today, I awoke shortly after the first plane hit, and noticed the scrawl on the AOL screen that a plane had struck the WTC. My initial thought was the same as the President's: that some jackass had misflown a private plane into one of the skyscrapers, and that the damage was minor. So I left the computer, poured myself a bowl of cereal, and prepared to do an appearance in bankruptcy court. When I finished breakfast, I went back to the computer, and saw that the WTC had collapsed, dramatically changing the complexion of the story.

For some reason, I left for court, even though I knew it was highly likely that this was the work of terrorists and that the federal buildings would be closed. The whole day was surreal, lethal events swirling into a miasma of shock. Indeed, the federal courts were closed, with U.S. Marshals blocking entry, and the rest of the morning was spent at my office. In the early afternoon, I just had to get out of there, and I went to my watering hole at the time, Joxer Daly's, for the rest of the day.

The appropriately-named Dick Pound is upset that Marion Jones' backup test turned up negative for performance-enhancing drugs...damn it, someone's gotten away with not cheating.

Box Office Mojo weighs in on the anti-Clinton propaganda film ABC/Disney is airing this weekend, in a column that comes striaght from the Karl Rove playbook. I suppose it is to be expected that grass roots protest and attacks by the minority party are going to be conflated with "fascist jackboots." Seein' as how it's airing against The Manning War Sunday night, and ESPN's MNF doubleheader on Monday, it's ratings might be more akin to prime time ice hockey or men's tennis.

Blur: I can't say which excites me more: that Tony "Yo" Blair will be leaving office in a year, or that the blogmuse of this site, Phoebe Nicholls, will portray his wife in a movie set to air later this year on British television. To paraphrase "legendary record producer" Bruce Dickinson, I got a FEVER. And the only prescription is...MORE PHOEBE !!!

If you don't subscribe to Sports Illustrated, here's the article about Pat Tillman that everyone's talking about. It may be worth subscribing just to read it.

The very intricate dance continues on Capital Hill. There's no reason for Senate Democrats to distance themselves from Joe Lieberman, at least as long as he has a double digit lead in the polls. The expectation that the incumbent would fade after losing the primary has obviously not happened, and whining about his decision to take a mulligan and fight it out again in the general election will not make the problem go away. Party primaries are not, by law, single elimination semi-finals, and treating them as such effectively disenfranchises independents and moderates in the general election. If Lamont wants to earn his position, he must go before the entire electorate in Connecticut(even Republicans), and build his case. Expecting entrenched incumbents in Washington to kowtow to the "netroots" ain't gonna happen unless you first win elections in November.

The King is dead but he's not forgotten:



As iconic a 70's moment as Syd Barrett's performance on the Pat Boone Show was in the '60's.

Some thoughts on SprezzaturaGate, from Slate and Josh Marshall (here and here). Several months ago, after Michael Hiltzik was "reassigned" by the local paper after he was caught sockpuppetting, I posted my displeasure, only to be condemned in no uncertain terms by an anally retentive blowhard on the paper's staff. He didn't have a good explanation as to what Hiltzik did wrong, either; what it comes down to is that posting under a pseudonym (whether it be on your blog or elsewhere), and using it to attack third parties while extolling your courage and wit, is embarassing to the company, not unethical per se. The comments section of a blog is supposed to be for public debate, and even the most self-glorifying sockpuppetry can add to the debate, if only to encourage the readership to respond in kind.

Nevertheless, the LA Times and the New Republic have the right to "reassign" people for the crime of "lame-assery," as Josh Marshall puts it. When you accept a paycheck from someone to write a blog, you can't be surprised when they set limits that would be unacceptable to the rest of us.

Yesterday was the 100th anniversary of the forward pass. I've just finished reading a book that compared the evolution of baseball in the U.S. with soccer everywhere else, and one of the important things that characterizes the sport the rest of the world calls "football"* is that it was developed by committee. Several committees, in fact; the early Football Association basically consisted of a number of gentlemen representing various towns and "public schools", each of which played their own variation of the game, and in the mid-nineteenth century, the two most popular versions included one developed at the Rugby School, which allowed players to carry the ball. The committee ultimately split, with the majority favoring no hands, and that sport became popularly known as association football ("soccer" is a bastardization of the first word), and the sport known as rugby favored by the seceding minority.

In the fullness of time, soccer became less of a "gentleman's game," while rugby continued to have strong ties to English public schools, from which the early American version of the game spread to Ivy League students in the late-19th Century. Since the forward pass is inarguably the most distinctive difference in the rules between American football and rugby, it is interesting (at least to me) how the two sports differed prior to 1906. Both sports feature running with a ball towards the other team's goal, both permit the other side to physically stop the ball carrier via tackling, and both allow for more points if you cross the goal line with the ball as opposed to kicking it through the goal posts.

The impression I have is that prior to 1906, the American version had a great deal more violence, with several college players dying every season. President Theodore Roosevelt, whose son had played the sport at Stanford, threatened to outlaw the game, and a number of schools (including my alma mater, Cal) switched to rugby at around that time. If I had to fathom a guess, I would say the big rules difference before 1906 was that the "scrum" was more open-ended in American football, and was used as the primary means of moving the ball forward, as opposed to rugby, where it seems to be used to resolve possession disputes. Today, of course, no American football fan would even notice a "scrum"; it's the routine battle that takes place during every play at the line of scrimmage. In any event, the sports seem to have evolved quite dramatically in different directions even before the forward pass was legalized in the U.S.

[Cross-posted at Condredge's Acolytes]

*Except the U.S. and Canada, which favor "soccer", and Italy, which inexplicably calls the game "calcio." Since they're the champs, who's to argue?

College football fans call this sort of catfight a "Meteor Bowl" (as in, you hate both teams so much you'd rather see a meteor crash the field than see either win), but "Battle of the Blowhards" will do just as well.

Beating a Dead Horse: It's now been three days since his career came to a fizzling conclusion, and the LA Times is still publishing articles about the "greatness" of Andre Agassi. Jesus, enough already. This isn't Jack Nicklaus we're talking about here. The American people long ago reached a verdict on men's tennis, and pretending it's a major sport tantamount to baseball, football and golf isn't going to cut it, particularly when the Times is slashing its budget for the sports section. If it must insist on publishing articles about the sport, provide more coverage (and pics) of women's tennis, where the top athletes actually possess personalities.

Vice Paying Tribute to Virtue: In spite of making his opponent's alleged "ties" to Hollywood (itself a banal use of code) a major theme in his campaign, George "Macaca" Allen turns out to be one of the leading recipients of contributions from The Industry. I can see why Allen is sucking at the trough, but what do the studios get out of a relationship with the Senate's most unreconstructed racist? Something to think about the next time some exec or agent whines about Mel Gibson....

L'chaim, Tawana? Speaking of sockpuppetry, do the e-mails referenced here read like legit hate mail? As anti-Semites go, the "authors" seem to have all the authenticity of the "hippies" that occasionally appeared on late-60's episodes of Dragnet.

Mystery Solved?

I was tugging his shirt, he said to me 'if you want my shirt so much I'll give it to you afterwards,' I answered that I'd prefer his sister. It's not a particularly nice thing to say, I recognise that. But loads of players say worse things. I didn't even know he had a sister before all this happened.

--Marco Materazzi, on what he said to Zinedine Zidane that got him so riled up.

Proving once again that immigration is the GOP's version of HillaryCare, Congressional leaders conceded today that they do not have the votes to proceed with any action on the issue before the election.

Hopefully, my hometown's 225th birthday will be a bit more sedate than our bicentennial. [link via LAist]