Month: April 2006

True Romance

by digby

Via Tristram Shandy I see that TIME’s in-house faux liberal is at it again, this time giving Hugh Hewitt a private lap dance instead of dancing around the pole for everyone to see:

HH: I just have never seen them on PBS. But nevertheless, Joe, what I want to talk about is reverse Turnip Days, moments where candidates were not candid, and I think it hurt them. I want to start with an episode I find odd not finding it here in Politics Lost, which is the Florida recount, and the disastrous attempt by Gore and Lieberman to throw out the ballots of the military. Was that not the sort of authentic moment where we saw the soul of the modern Democratic Party on display?

JK: I think that the Florida recount in general…well, first of all, you’re right about that. I mean, too often, the default position, especially in the left wing of the Democratic Party, is to not respect the military sufficiently, and to assume that anytime the United States would use force overseas, we would be wrong

.

And people wonder why liberals are popularly perceived as being cowards.

Here we have alleged liberal Joe Klein being confronted by alleged human Hugh Hewitt with a comment that the Democratic Party’s [black]”soul” was on display when it argued that illegal ballots cast after election day shouldn’t be counted (for good reason, as it turned out.) Does Joe Klein argue that the the Republicans staged fake uprisings and attempted to get the Cuban community to rise up (among many other things) thus showing that using the Florida debacle as an illustration of the “soul” of a party wasn’t really a smart thing to do? No. Does he point out that the Republican party has a funny way of showing its “soul” when it supports torture? No. Does he laugh in Hugh Hewitt’s supercilious face? Of course not.

He agrees with Hewitt. Indeed, this line is his foremost Scotty McClellanesque robotic talking point lately, called into use no matter what the question about the Democrats, whether it’s about “soul” or nuclear war. Is there anyone in DC who can deprogram this guy? Or, at least officially relabel him a conservative so he an no longer be used as a liberal or “left of center” counterbalance on talking heads shows? Then he’ll be able to officially join the right wing noise machine and he can take Hewie to the Conservative Prom.

Here are some highlights of Joe’s bumps and grinds. It’s true that he teases poor Hewie with some feints toward Democrats by saying the Swift boaters were wrong and a few other things, but he always comes back with a big gyrating bounce right where it counts:

JK: No, no. Hugh, in the past year, I’ve stood for the following things. I’ve taken the following positions. I agreed with the President on social security reform. I supported his two Supreme Court nominees, and I support, even though I opposed this war, I support staying the course in Iraq, and doing whatever we have to do in order to stabilize the region.

HH: All right. There are two critical aspects…

JK: So where do you put me on the spectrum?

HH: I’m going to put you as an old liberal with some hope of coming around.

JK: You know, I keep on getting hammered by the left.

HH: Oh, I know, but they’re crazy now, Joe, as you write in this book. That’s what’s so wonderful about it. Your descriptions of the Democratic Party made me chuckle. It’s lost. It’s off the cliff.

JK: It made me cry.

[…]

JK: Well, you know, I also run in the kind of faith based circle. In fact, one of Bush’s nicknames for me is Mr. Faith Based.

HH: Well, that’s good.

JK: And at the very end of the book, I acknowledge Bill Bennett as giving the best advice on how to judge a presidential candidate.

HH: At a Christian Coalition meeting. Yeah, it’s a great anecdote.

JK: And Bill’s a good friend of mine. But I’ve kind of got to give these guys cover. You don’t want to be praised by what you call a traditional liberal, do you?

[…]

JK: But can I just say this about the President? You were saying this before the break. Let me say that of all the major politicians I’ve covered in presidential politics in the last two or three times around, he is the most likely to stick with an issue, even if the polls are bad, and to govern from the gut as you said. I don’t always agree with the decisions that he makes, but I think he is an honorable man, and when I’ve criticized him, I’ve tried to criticize him on the substance, and certainly not on his personality, because I really like the guy.

[…]

HH: When Michael Moore shows up in Jimmy Carter’s box, the presidential box…

JK: Disgraceful!

HH: Disgraceful?

JK: Utterly disgraceful. I mean, one of the problems that I have with being called a liberal by someone like you is that there are all these people on the left in the Democratic Party who are claiming to be liberals, and I don’t want to be associated with them.

HH: And Michael Moore is one of them?

JK: Oh, yeah. I mean, Michael Moore is reprehensible.

HH: How about when Al Gore shouted he betrayed us, he betrayed us? Was that reverse turnip time?

JK: Yeah, I thought that was pretty terrible. I mean, I think that Democrats have gotten so frustrated by their inability to win elections, that they’re beginning to get pretty harsh and stupid.

HH: What’s going on at the Daily Kos, and at Atrios, and these left wing bloggers? Do you read them?

JK: Only when they attack me, which is just about every day.

HH: Yes, they do. So what’s happened…

JK: You know, last Sunday on Stephanopoulos, I said that we can’t keep…that we have to keep the nuclear option on the table when dealing with Iran, if for no other reason than to make them worry a little bit, that we might be so crazy as to use it. That gets translated the next day by a number of left wing bloggers into me supporting a nuclear attack on Iran.

HH: Well, doesn’t the Democratic Party have to distance itself from this fever swamp?

JK: Well, I think the Democratic Party has to, and I think the Republican Party has to distance itself from Creationists, and extremists on their side. You know, I was up with Newt Gingrich in New Hampshire last week, and someone asked him about intelligent design. And he said I think it’s a perfectly fine philosophy, it just shouldn’t be taught in science classes, because it has nothing to do with science. And those are the kind of politicians…I’ve always really respected Newt, because he’s a man of honor, and he is a real policy wonk, and he really cares about stuff.

HH: We’re out of time. Joe, will you come back when you’re done with the hectic of the book tour?

JK: Sure.

HH: Because I would love to continue this on. In fact, as often as you want, you’ve got the open invitation to be our responsible Democrat on the show, because they’re hard to find.

Joe loves you too big guy. You know just what to say to guy like him.

For the record, I can’t speak for everyone in the left blogosphere, but I can say that I criticized Klein’s comment about leaving nuclear war on the table as being insane because you don’t want pre-emptive war (especially nuclear)on the table, not because I thought he actually wanted nuclear war. I think the first is stupid and insane, and the second is stupid, insane and evil. Klein wants it known that he is only stupid and insane and I’m happy to grant him that. Evil would require some actual substance.

Update: And, btw, he goes out of his way to support, of all things, gun control, which has pretty much been jettisoned by the Democratic Party. I’m beginning to think he’s a paid agent of Richard Mellon Scaife. Everything he says, whether in “favor” of Democrats or against them is Karl Rove’s dream.

.

Another Traitor Speaks

by digby

Former National Security Agency Director Lt. General William Odom dissected the strategic folly of the Iraq invasion and Bush Administration policies in a major policy speech at Brown University for the Watson Institute- America’s Strategic Paralysis . “The Iraq War may turn out to be the greatest strategic disaster in American history. In a mere 18 months we went from unprecedented levels of support after 9-11..to being one of the most hated countries…Turkey used to be one of strongest pro-US regimes, now we’re so unpopular, there’s a movie playing there- Metal Storm, about a war between US and Turkey. In addition to producing faulty intel and ties to Al Qaida, Bush made preposterous claim that toppling Saddam would open the way for liberal democracy in a very short time… Misunderstanding the character of American power, he dismissed the allies as a nuisance and failed to get the UN Security Council’s sanction… We must reinforce international law, not reject and ridicule it.”

Odom, now a Yale professor and Hudson Institute senior fellow, was director of the sprawling NSA (which monitors all communications) from 1985-88 under Reagan, and previously was Zbigniew Brzezinski’s assistant under Carter. His latest 2004 book is America’s Inadvertent Empire.

Even if the invasion had gone well, Odom says it wouldn’t have mattered: “The invasion wasn’t in our interests, it was in Iran’s interest, Al Qaida’s interest. Seeing America invade must have made Iranian leaders ecstatic. Iran’s hostility to Saddam was hard to exaggerate.. Iraq is now open to Al Qaida, which it never was before – it’s easier for terrorists to kill Americans there than in the US.. Neither our leaders or the mainstream media recognize the perversity of key US policies now begetting outcomes they were designed to prevent… 3 years later the US is bogged down in Iraq, pretending a Constitution has been put in place, while the civil war rages, Iran meddles, and Al Qaida swells its ranks with new recruits.. We have lost our capacity to lead and are in a state of crisis – diplomatic and military.”

That’s harsh. Maybe they can charge him with a federal crime, like that woman who exercised her free speech in front of important people yesterday.

Via Carolyn Kay

.

The Actor

by digby

Kevin Drum links to this post by Mark Schmitt today in which Schmitt artfully deconstructs the McCain myth.

The most important point is this:

[The] whole analysis is based on the cult of authenticity of which McCain, and to a lesser extent Bush, have been the greatest beneficiaries….But as McCain demonstrates, authenticity is itself a pose, one he adopted and has now discarded.

I think it’s cute that so many political journalists don’t understand this. They so want to believe that the glamorous flyboy manly man is the real deal. But, he just originated the stage role that the second rate George Bush played in the TV series. Like all actors, some are better than others.

And that’s the way to get McCain. As Schmitt says:

I assume that McCain’s gamble is that he has so strongly established the “straight-talk express” brand with the general electorate that he can perform the ritual obsequies of the Republican nominating process and still emerge with his reputation intact. But he can’t. [There are] too many Republican activists who simply aren’t going to stomach his nomination, and he can’t spend two years in his current mode and expect the independent moderate voters in New Hampshire and elsewhere to remember what they kind of liked about him for a period in 2000.

.

The Key To Her “Heart”

by digby

You folks are going to love this. More from World O Crap on the Daddy’s Lil’ Virgin movement. Apparently there is some special chastity jewelry available for man and girl to exhange in the covenant ceremony:

The Heart to Heart™ program, created by jeweler Joe Costello, differs from other abstinence programs in some important, unique ways. […]

First, the “key to her heart.” This beautiful heart has a smaller heart in the front. Behind that heart is a keyhole. When making the covenant with your daughter, you explain that the covenant is between her, you and God. Since God has placed her in your care as a parent, you and only you can hold the “key to her heart.”

God not trusting her enough to let her be responsible for her own heart.

You then explain to the child that you will hold the key to her precious heart until the day of her wedding. On that day, you will give her away like at all weddings, BUT in doing so you will also “give away” the key to her heart to her now husband. The key and lock are actually functional and your son-in-law will place the key in the heart to open it.

Nothing at all Freudian going on here!

Inside will be a small note that had been placed in the heart on the day you made the covenant. That note can say something like, “I do not know your name or what you even look like, but this is my promise to save myself for you this day. Love, Melanie.”

Or, the note could say something like, “I’ve been saving myself for you for many horny years, so the sex tonight had really better be worth it!. Oh, and make sure my Dad gives you the key to my chastity belt too. Love, Melanie.”

Read it all.Doctor assassination advocate Randall Terry, of all people, is peripherally involved in this scam, proving once again the the forced birth movement has less to do with fetuses than with vaginas.

Thanks Julia.

The Goldberg Variation

by digby

Jane had a great post up today about GOP nepotism and the inevitable decline in quality that always results from second and third generation copies.

This is exactly the kind of second-generation junk thinking being produced on the right by people like Ben Domenech, Jonah Goldberg and George W. Bush — people who vault into to highly paid, influential positions despite a complete and utter lack of talent or skill purely because of who their parents are and their willingness to say just about anything. Badly. A group who have tragically confused the wingnut welfare system for some kind of meritocracy, who think their megaphone comes as the result of skill and don’t acknowledge that both privilege and think tank underwriting are largely responsible for the opportunity to appear on the stage in the first place.

I always like the articles these pissy rich kids write about the welfare state and how it doesn’t encourage people to refine themselves and their ideas by engaging in competition. One need look no further than this article and those by people like Herbert Spencer scholar Jonah Goldberg (oh and let us not forget his work on Upton Sinclair) to see the utter hypocricy involved in this argument by those who are usually making it: nobody would pay for their crap if it wasn’t being underwritten by someone with a political agenda, and there is no need for their work to rise to anything above sub-mediocrity in order to keep getting subsidized.

It turns out that it isn’t only those of us in the fever swamps who’ve noticed. Kevin Drum excerpts a review of “The Making of the Conservative Mind” written by one of the old guard writers from the halcyon days of National Review:

Hart is clearly uneasy about the rise of the younger generation, which, under the editorship of Richard Lowry, has been generally enthusiastic about the Bush administration. “Perhaps surprisingly, none of these now prominent figures at the magazine had been known for books or even important articles on politics or political thought,” he sniffs. “Where they stood on the spectrum of conservative thought — traditionalist, individualist, libertarian, skeptical, Straussian, Burkean, Voegelinian — was completely unknown.”

I don’t think Jonah and K-Lo will want to have a beer with this guy.

.

Common Goodness

by digby

There is much to recommend Michael Tomasky’s essay today in The American Prospect. I agree with Atrios that it is important that the Democratic party give people something to believe in. Politics without heart is nothing more than crass deal making.

Tomasky prescribes a Democratic philosophy of the common good and posits that this is the basis of liberalism — sacrifice for larger universalist principles. What’s not to like? Certainly on a rhetorical level it’s a positive philosophical message that serves as an umbrella for Democratic policies. The rub, of course, is in determining what the common good is in the first place.

Perhaps I’m a cynic, but I suspect that for most people, the common good is really the idea that what will be good for me will also be good for others. Very few people knowingly vote against their own self-interests. Tomasky admits this himself, in a way, with his argument (and I think it’s a logical one) that policies are more easily sold when they benefit all rather than a few. FDR made sure that social security was universal for just that reason. He knew very well that while people may believe in the common good, altruistic self-sacrifice is rarely really on the menu. (I’m not talking about fancypants Tragedy of the Commons, Prisoner’s Dilemma stuff here, although it’s quite relevant.) I’m just saying that policies that benefit the most people always go down easier. That’s why Republicans lie about their tax policies, after all.

The problem is that a political party cannot be all things to all people. And here’s where the politics of the common good becomes complicated.

Tomasky charts the history of the New Deal through its dissolution in the late 60’s, which he characterizes as a golden age of liberalism except for all those problems with, well, equality and civil liberties. He praises those who broke down those barriers but throughout the piece betrays a subtle distaste for those who still labor on behalf of civil rights and civil liberties. Like most liberal intellectuals of a certain age (although he’s younger than most) he clearly believes that the New Left pretty much destroyed the party and by 1980 had left a legacy of rapacious, singleminded, special interest groups that have made it impossible for real liberalism to reassert itself.

Yet, without coming out and saying it, he is quite obviously aware of the polarizing racial and cultural politics that were at work in the 1980’s when the realignment truly kicked in:

By 1980, Reagan had seized the idea of the common good. To be sure, it was a harshly conservative variant that quite actively depended on white middle-class resentment. But to its intended audience, his narrative was powerful, a clean punch landed squarely on the Democratic glass jaw. The liberals had come to ask too much of regular people: You, he said to the middle-class (and probably white) American, have to work hard and pay high taxes while welfare cheats lie around the house all day, getting the checks liberal politicians make sure they get; you follow the rules while the criminals go on their sprees and then get sprung by shifty liberal lawyers. For a lot of (white) people, it was powerful. And, let’s face it, manipulative as it was, it wasn’t entirely untrue, either!

Can you have a “common good” comprised of only the interests of resentful “regular” racists? I sure hope not.

I’ve always wondered what the Democrats are supposed to have done differently in light of this? Accede to this racist vision of the common good? Lower the boom on welfare and crime instantly to show how much we resented black people too? Tell Jesse Jackson to STFU?

Considering the huge sociological changes that came about in the post war world, (crescendoing in the 60’s) wasn’t it entirely predictable that there would be a backlash? Democratic special interests are responsible for all that, to be sure. But the alternative would have been to not pursue those goals in the first place. The forces that were pushing for equality were being pulled just as strongly from the other side. There wasn’t just a New Left; there was the New Right too. As Thomas Mann, writing on a different subject today spells out:

The seeds of this partisan era were intially planted in the 1960s, with the counter culture, the war in Vietnam, the rise of conservative activists in the 1964 Goldwater campaign, the Voting Rights Act, and the beginning of the economic development of the South. Roe v. Wade set the stage for the political mobilization of religious conservatives within the Republican party. The tax-limiting Proposition 13 in California and the Reagan presidency lent the Republican party a more distinctive economic and national security platform.

Party realignment in the South, fueled by these developments associted with race, religion, economic development and patriotism, radically altered the ideological and regional composition of the two parties. That process was extended to the rest of the country by the increasingly distinctive positions taken by the national parties and their presidential candidates on a number of salient social and economic issues. As these developments played out over time, party platforms became more distinctive, those recruited to Congress were more ideologically in tune with their fellow partisans, congressional leaders worked aggressively to promote their party’s agenda and message, and voters sorted themselves into the two parties based on their ideological views.

Action, reaction.

But Tomasky’s view that the “special interests” overreached is not an uncommon view and it isn’t new; it’s partly what spawned the DLC. And that’s why in some ways, I feel a sense of deja vu. If I didn’t have this herniated disc and an aversion to tequila I’d think I was still in my 20’s and I was reading the New Republic. Or pieces of it anyway. Tomasky admits as much and condemns the DLC’s failure to follow through with its “responsibility” agenda by settling for welfare reform and failing to go after the corporate big spenders. (I don’t remember that last part of the DLC agenda, to be perfectly honest, but then again, I hadn’t given up tequila, so maybe I forgot.) In any case, he sees the DLC’s failure as one of too much faith in markets and not enough in government, which I think it quite right. But from where I sit, the DLC’s failure also stems from its insistence that instead of working with the embarrassing coalition that forms the heart of the Democratic party, they needed to marginalize them. It didn’t work then, and I don’t think it’s going to work now.

Tomasky admiringly mentions “Crashing the Gate” in this context and I too like Markos and Jerome’s book very much. I think it’s one of the most important books in the last decade about Democratic politics. But I think the weakest part is its condemnation of the special interest groups and not because I have any particular affinity for them as institutions. It’s just that I’ve heard it all before. Democratic “special interests” have been the bête noire of every Democratic strategist since 1980. The Republicans have made a fetish of them, and the Democrats have seen them as being stubbornly unwilling to “sacrifice.” (This is not to say that I don’t endorse pressuring them to stop with the outdated “bipartisan” tactics, as with the Sierra Club and Naral endorsing Chaffee. They might as well be wearing a mullet and singing “Power of Love” with that nonsense.)

But it’s very easy to say you believe in the common good until you are told that your particular needs must be sacrificed, postponed, deferred to benefit everyone else. Promises to pick them up later are not very compelling — as two great thinkers (John Maynard Keynes and George W. Bush) have both observed, “in the long run we’ll all be dead.” These are the contentious issues that make people uncomfortable and are therefore the most likely to be shunted aside by timid politicians if given half a chance. It’s a lot to ask.

Tomasky asks:

So where does this leave today’s Democrats? A more precise way to ask the question is this: What principle or principles unites them all, from Max Baucus to Maxine Waters and everyone in between, and what do they demand that citizens believe?

As I’ve said, they no longer ask them to believe in the moral basis of liberal governance, in demanding that citizens look beyond their own self-interest. They, or many of them, don’t really ask citizens to believe in government anymore. Or taxes, or regulation — oh, sort of on regulation, but only some of them, and only occasionally, when something happens like the mining disasters in my home state earlier this year. They do ask Americans to believe that middle-income people should get a fair shake, but they lack the courage to take that demand to the places it should logically go, like universal health coverage. And, of course, on many issues the party is ideologically all over the place; if you were asked to paint the party’s belief system, the result would resemble a Pollock.

At bottom, today’s Democrats from Baucus to Waters are united in only two beliefs, and they demand that American citizens believe in only two things: diversity and rights.

I’m not sure that Baucus and Waters actually agree on those things, but whatever. Let’s suppose that Waters and Baucus simply agree that the common good is good government. They both sign on to universal health care. They agree on taxes and regulation. They agree to get the money out of politics. They agree that the future of the country depends upon all children getting good educations and they commit to devoting the time and energy to doing that. They go to the people and say, “this is the common good, and it’s what we both believe we should fight for.” Huzzah.

But then somebody (a Republican, no doubt) says, what about affirmative action? What about abortion? What about the ten commandments? What about wiretapping? Immigration? The war? And lets assume that Waters and Baucus, being from different regions with very different constituencies, have different views on those things? Who is asked to look behyond his or her special interests on those things? Who decides what is the common good?

Tomasky has an answer for that. He says that the special interest groups must justify their goals in universalist terms or not be taken seriously by anyone. He uses the example of an affirmative action argument, saying that it is a good thing that even corporate America embraces. I suppose one can make a similar argument about immigration. I’m not sure these arguments have much salience, but you can make them, saying that in a globalized economy we are all in this together and we need to be able to compete. (Or something like that — Clinton used to say “we don’t have a person to waste.”) If that’s all it takes, then I guess most special interest groups shouldn’t have any problems complying. It’s “framing” in service of an argument that lends itself very well to economic issues.

But how do you frame abortion as being for the common good? Or religion? How do you parse the fourth amendment? The war? These are huge issues — represented I might add, by special interest groups that can’t easily trust Max or Maxine to do whatever they think is right for “the common good.” How do we construct arguments that will quell these contentious controversies with appeals to a common good when people can’t find common ground? (And at what point are we talking about the common good of the party vs the common good of the country?)

Tomasky offers no compelling examples of “common good” rhetoric pertaining to these questions, so I think it’s fair to assume that this is where the sacrifice comes in.

I don’t mean to be dismissive. I think it’s important to embrace big ideas and big philosophy and reach for some inspiration. The Democrats have been issuing stultifying laundry lists for as long as I can remember and I couldn’t be happier that people are thinking in these terms. But I can’t help but feel that we always end up back at the same spot somehow. The unions, the womens groups, the civil rights groups, trial lawyers, consumer advocates — the whole array of narrow special interests being held responsible for the fact that half of this country really resents the hell out of minorities, women and working people getting a fair shake. And the Democrats continue to pay the political price for that resentment.

I’m all for finding our way out of it. Tomasky’s message has real resonance; I like it very much. But I think that if the party stopped trying to figure out ways to get the “special interests” to shut up and started giving them some respectful assurances that they aren’t going to be the sacrificial lambs in whatever the new paradigm turns out to be, they might find a little bit more cooperation.

I believe in the common good and I agree that it expresses the essence of the liberal philosophy. But the heart and soul of the Democratic party lies in its committment to freedom and equality for all Americans. I think we need to find a way to convince a majority of Americans that the common good is best served by not compromising those principles.

.

On The Reservation

by digby

I noticed yesterday that the “military analysts” employed by the networks were not only helping the administration spin on Rumsfeld, but actually admitted on the air that they were giving the pentagon advice on how to handle the problem.

This post at TPM by Larry Johnson fills in the details of an ongoing propaganda effort that must be well known among the networks. Johnson prints a letter from his friend Pat Lang, who had been part of the arrangement for a while:

Over several months (this was in ’04) I attended meetings in the Pentagon and participated in conference calls with very senior officials (both military and civilian). The Pentagon meetings were well attended by a variety of retired generals, colonels, Navy captains and a few retired NCOs, all of whom were familiar faces from TV news. Most of them were cable people, and there was a disproportionate representation from Fox News as well as people who were both TV commentators and think tankers, mostly from AEI and Heritage. There were several retired four star generals present whom I had never seen on the tube, but who may have been off camera consultants.

The Defense staff always made their case for the correctness of the policies followed by the administration and handed out “talking points” as suggestions. The retired officers listened politely with clear skepticism on the part of quite a few. There was always an opportunity for Q&A and a lot of the questions were both polite and very pointed. Some of the questions were not well answered. This was the period of the emerging Abu Ghraib mess, and many of the officers attending were bitter and unhappy over what had been happening in that matter.

[…]

My impression was that the media consultant officers at these events wanted and needed the access provided in order to be secure in their retirement employment. The media companies obviously valued that. After all, most of them are commercial enterprises and cannot afford to have their rival companies granted such access if they are not. This creates a certain pressure on the retired military people involved to stay “on the reservation.”

Lang concludes that on the whole these retired officers try to do the right thing. Perhaps. But after the performance of General Shepperd on CNN yesterday, I think it’s pretty clear that some of them, at least, believe they are full members of the administration’s tribe — and if they were critical it was because they were having a rough time making Rummy’s case for him.

It would be very helpful if the public knew about these special briefings and knew especially that the pentagon was sponsoring these military analysts’ “fact-finding” trips to Iraq. Why isn’t this disclosed?

.

Better Ask Jonah Goldberg

by digby

Here’s a bunch of egghead know-nothings trying to tell the decider what he should decide. Fat chance.

.

Innocent Schminnocent

by digby

In recent years many states and cities have moved to overhaul lineups, as DNA evidence has exposed nearly 200 wrongful convictions, three-quarters of them resulting primarily from bad eyewitness identification.

In the new method, the police show witnesses one person at a time, instead of several at once, and the lineup is overseen by someone not connected to the case, to avoid anything that could steer the witness to the suspect the police believe is guilty.

But now, the long-awaited results of an experiment in Illinois have raised serious questions about the changes. The study, the first to do a real-life comparison of the old and new methods, found that the new lineups made witnesses less likely to choose anyone. When they did pick a suspect, they were more likely to choose an innocent person.

Witnesses in traditional lineups, by contrast, were more likely to identify a suspect and less likely to choose a face put in the lineup as filler.

Advocates of the new method said the Illinois study, conducted by the Chicago Police Department, was flawed, because officers supervised the traditional lineups and could have swayed witnesses.

But the results have empowered many critics who had worried that states and cities were caving in to advocacy groups in adopting the new lineups without solid evidence that they improved on the old ones.

“There are people who’d say it’s better to let 10 guilty persons free to protect against one innocent person being wrongfully convicted,” said Roy S. Malpass, a professor at the University of Texas at El Paso and an analyst for the Illinois study, who served on a research group on eyewitness identification for the National Institute of Justice in 1999.

“I’m fine with that when we’re dealing with juvenile shoplifters,” Dr. Malpass said. “I’m not fine with that for terrorists. We haven’t figured out the risk there.”

Setting aside the efficacy or non-efficacy of the ID method being discussed, which I cannot assess, I can’t help but be struck at how confident this Doctor is that he’s not going to be that one innocent person. How I wish people like him would be wrongfully accused so they could see how it might feel. Like so many law and order types it’s apparently too abstract for him to understand otherwise so he needs to personally experience it.

Blackstone’s ratio is not some silly bleeding heart notion — it’s a recognition that while the system cannot be perfect, you must make a moral decision as to which side it will err on. For crying out loud, terrorism is not some magic word that changes every tenet of western civilization.

But maybe we aren’t really about western civilization at all anymore. Maybe we are becoming more like Singapore, the wingnut dream:

If, in the event of effective crime prevention, a few innocent people are punished or a few guilty ones are over-punished, that would be a price worth paying.

And it’s so nice and clean, too. With good prices.

Nobody wants to let the guilty go free. But the state imprisoning innocent people belongs in a special circle of hell and it taints us all. Terrorism certainly does not excuse it. When a state gives up that principle and simply accepts that a certain percentage of innocent people will be imprisoned because it’s too difficult to sort them out from the guilty ones, it has lost its civilized moorings. Guantanamo says it all about where the US is on that.

.

Asking The Generals

by digby

In case anyone ever had the mistaken impression that the network “military analysts,” are any more neutral or non-partisan than the retired generals who have stepped forward to ask for Rumsefeld’s resignation, think again:

BLITZER: And this is just coming in to CNN right now. The Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has just wrapped up his meeting with retired U.S. generals who now serve as military analysts for the news media. Our own military analyst, retired U.S. Air Force Major General Don Shepperd, is fresh out of the meeting. He’s joining us now live from the Pentagon.

General Shepperd, thanks very much. How did it go? Tell our viewers how the defense secretary specifically responded to all these suggestions from other retired military generals that he stepped down?

MAJ. GEN. DON SHEPPERD, U.S. AIR FORCE (RET.): Yes, very little, Wolf. Everybody expected the headlines out of this to be that the secretary says the following things and the focus of the meeting was very little on that. It came up from time to time, mainly from our own questions, but basically the focus was on how the war in Iraq is going, how it would have been different in the past if, and that type of thing. It was not about the retired generals’ controversy although the secretary is clearly distracted by and it worried about and it concerned about it. And he listened to a lot of things from the group.

BLITZER: Well, did anyone — any of the retired generals and admirals who were there, did any of them step up and offer criticism of the secretary of defense?

SHEPPERD: No, it wasn’t criticism of the secretary of defense. We basically offered our ideas about the fact of, look, the message is not getting out. If you say that we’re doing well in the war, what is the message for the American people? What is the next thing the American people are going to see in the way of an event they can see some progress?

And the answer was unanimous from both the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and also the secretary. It’s the formation of the Iraqi government. That’s the next important event and from there, the continuing training of the Iraqi forces. That’s the message, Wolf.

BLITZER: When you say that it was clear these calls from these retired generals for him to step down, including the commander of — the former commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, former commander of the First Infantry Division, both of whom served in Iraq, it’s weighing heavily on him, what does that mean? How could you tell?

SHEPPERD: Look, he has got to be concerned about this. His words — evidence concern, no question about that. But, basically, General Pace kind of picked up the ball on this and said, look, I don’t know where these guys are coming from. We had regular sessions.

The big generals, the combatant commanders, General Franks and the others, two chiefs of staff of the Air Force, two commandants of the Marine Corps, two chiefs of staff of the Army, two chairmen of the Joint Chiefs — all of these people made their inputs, voiced their concerns, we talked it out.

Then we all agreed on General Franks plan, that it was a good one. We all had a hand in this. The fact that people say they weren’t consulted was simply not true. They may not have had their own ideas accepted but they definitely were consulted and a lot of people had a voice on this.

BLITZER: How many general did he invite to this session today?

SHEPPERD: They weren’t all generals by any means. It’s the normal — the usual suspects you see on TV as analysts and read in the print media, as well, and hear on radio. There were 15 of us there. I think probably a group of 30 or 40 was invited. Just about the same size group we usually had. It’s been as low as 15 and as high as 30.

BLITZER: Was there any moment that really was a poignant or dramatic moment that stands out in your mind, General Shepherd? A moment of some tension or some humor, if you will?

SHEPPERD: Well, you know the secretary was really in a good mood, so was the chairman. These people are not troubled people. They are concerned people and they are concerned about what is going on. But our message to them as analysts was, look, you have got to get the importance of this war out to the American people.

The importance message is that this is a forward strategy. It’s better to fight the war in Iraq than it is the war on American soil. And further, the message needs to be imagine an Iraq, imagine Iraq under the control of Zarqawi with another conveyor belt combined for tourists, combined with oil, water and land and resources, imagine the effect of that. That’s a message that has to get out to the American people because the American people do not feel they are at war.

Both General Pace and also Secretary Rumsfeld basically said we have got to improve our message and improve our communication. We want to do that. This is a tough war. It’s going to be a long war in many places. It’s not going to be something that’s going to come out with a bow in the next year or two years.

I’m awfully glad the network “analysts” told the Secretary what he needs to do to “get the message out.” He certainly needs some professional advice. It just seems kind of funny that the analysts were retired Generals — who we are told ad nauseeum are not supposed to have opinions.

I’m actually surprised CNN was invited. Usually this administration just checks in with Roger Ailes and he passes the word to the relevant people.

.