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Month: October 2007

Science Teaching

by tristero

PZ Myers heartily recc’ds this paper by Massimo Pigliucci entitled, “The Evolution-Creation Wars: Why Teaching More Science Just Is Not Enough,” and it really is worthwhile. PZ goes over much of it but two specific points struck me as especially worth discussing here.

In one section, Pigliucci quantifies the notion that more education – even better education with better explanations of, say, evolution – will not necessarily convince anyone of anything. This kind of insight is nothing new among us humanities types but – to be as obnoxiously condescending as I can be about it – it’s simply charming to find it expressed by Pigliucci in language science people can grok (grin).*

Before you can teach something genuinely new, you first need to have students who know how to think critically about ideas, concepts, facts, and even things as seemingly unambiguous as visible, normal, everyday, physical reality. Pigliucci has some surprising data about how science majors are not necessarily any more critical thinkers than non-science majors. But once he informs you that science majors are not taught the basics of critical thinking, it’s not that surprising.

However, it is one thing to recognize that critical thinking must be taught, it’s quite another to figure out when and how. College is way too late. Of course, critical skills “should” be taught from the getgo, but formally, I think middle school is around right, as kids are beginning to put together a sense of themselves. That is the earliest time that I think it is vitally important that they receive good, organized instruction in how to go about evaluating all the complex messages – both good and bad – this culture is hellbent on sending their way.

At the college level, Pigliucci’s data, while preliminary, strongly suggests to me the notion that advanced critical thinking may be, to some extent, aided and abetted by the kind of education the study of humanities can provide. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying the humanities should be taught for utilitarian reasons – that is, for many reasons too long to go into here, sheer nonsense. However, it does so happen that when you carefully study a novel like, say, Pale Fire, you can easily end up casting a very critical eye, or at least a sardonic one, on rhetorical devices that are employed to assert a bogus authority. And that is precisely the kind of skeptical attitude you will not get from the kind of “here are the facts” science teaching Pigliucci rightly deplores.

Another point, one that PZ doesn’t mention, but which I was really struck by, is Pigliucci’s call to establish in this country university chairs similar to the one Dawkins holds in England, namely a position in “The Public Understanding of Science.” What a fantastic idea! And it’s precisely the kind of idea that wealthy graduates might be willing to privately fund.

Dawkins has been an important voice for many years now in popularizing science. But recently, by deliberately courting world-class controversy, he has made “public understanding of science” a topic of wide interest and concern to a huge public. That is exactly the right thing to do, and the more knowledgeable and articulate people who do that, the better. It’s not that Dawkins is right or wrong (although on many things, I think he is absolutely right). It’s that the way Dawkins – dare I say it? – frames things that makes people discuss the issues, and maybe even, every once in a while, think about them, even to vehemently disagree with him.

That is quite an achievement. We need an American Dawkins. We need many of them. And if they disagree about what a “public understanding of science” should be, let us hope they disagree LOUDLY. Why? Well, for one thing, when really smart, knowledgeable people argue with passion, it is truly a wonderful sight to behold.

For another, it’s worth it. The public’s need to understand science – and scientists’ need to understand what the public knows – is a critically vital topic, one that directly impacts the political and cultural issues that are creating so many problems right now.

*On the web, one has to be careful about indulging in affectionate tweaks of another cat’s whiskers, but sometimes I can’t resist. I certainly hope that the enormous respect I hold for science and scientists is obvious in all my posts about the Other of the The Two Cultures. And part of that respect entails being amused when what is patently obvious and important to me and others in the arts is suddenly found to be of surprising importance to my intellectual betters.

It’s Official

by tristero

The New York Times itself called Paul Krugman shrill, going so far as to compare him to Limbaugh:

Like the rants of Rush Limbaugh or the films of Michael Moore, Krugman’s shrill polemic may hearten the faithful, but it will do little to persuade the unconvinced or to advance the national discussion of the important issues it addresses.

And the reviewer complains Krugman’s book is “factually shaky.” These are the only two shaky facts the reviewer deemed important enough to mention:

(Kansas, whatever its other crimes and misdemeanors, is not customarily regarded as the birthplace of Prohibition; the Voting Rights Act passed in 1965, not 1964.)

True enough, The Voting Rights Act passed in 1965. As for Kansas being the birthplace of Prohibition or not, that is an opinion, not a fact. It may be a shaky opinion, but the fact is that:

In 1881, Kansas became the first state to outlaw alcoholic beverages in its Constitution, with Carrie Nation gaining notoriety for enforcing the provision herself by walking into saloons, scolding customers, and using her hatchet to destroy bottles of liquor. Other activists enforced the cause by entering saloons, singing, praying, and urging saloon keepers to stop selling alcohol.[4] Many other states, especially in the South, also enacted prohibition, along with many individual counties.

I think you know what to do.

Buy Krugman’s book.

[Update: I am very happy to have an opportunity to let you know that there’s a bit of a mutual admiration society going on around here. I don’t think Digby’s noted this comment publicly so in case you missed it, from Krugman’s blog :

The blogger Digby – who is, by the way, one of the best writers you’ll ever encounter, on or off the Internet…

I think the most appropriate comment to that is to answer in blogspeak:

What Krugman says. ]

They All Do It

by digby

Howie Kurtz published a lengthy excerpt of my post of yesterday in which I indicted the press corps for being susceptible to the particular types of nasty little smears and tidbits the Republicans specialize in and those end up setting the agenda for coverage. The excerpt ended with this from my post:

“The press, therefore, will go to great lengths to protect the people who give them what they crave, most of whom happen to be Republicans since character smears are their very special talent. There was a reason why Rove and Libby used ‘the wife sent him on a boondoggle’ line. Stories about Edwards and his hair and Hillary and her cold, calculating cleavage are the coin of the realm.Why we see so little of the same kind of feeding frenzies on the other side isn’t hard to fathom. Nobody is spoon-feeding them to the press with just the kind of cutesy meanness they prefer.”

His comment, in its entirety, was this:

I agree that leakers often get to set the story line, but I also know that Democrats are not unfamiliar with the practice. (Remember the Bush DUI leak just before the 2000 election?) And those who leaked information about domestic surveillance, Abu Ghraib and secret CIA prisons also had an impact.

Can everyone see what’s wrong with that picture? I knew that you could.

It’s hard to believe but Kurtz seems to be implying that those who leaked the illegal wiretapping, Abu Ghraib and secret CIA prisons stories were Democratic operatives who were feeding the press a deliciously, gossipy storyline for political gain. Maybe he knows something I don’t know, but to compare the whistleblowers who blew the lid off of Abu Ghraib and the others with those smarmy little staffers in Mitch McConnel’s office who trafficked in smears against the Frosts says a lot about how the Village views “leaks.”

And the one example he cites that might prove that Democrats do the same sort of thing is wrong. There is no evidence that the DUI story was a Democratic dirty trick. I’m not saying they weren’t happy when it hit, but if they did it, it was the most bizarrely (and unnecessarily) roundabout deliberate leak anyone’s ever done:

It took little more than 24 hours for George W. Bush’s drunken-driving arrest in Kennebunkport to make national headlines after getting a start in an unusual place: a chiropractor’s office.

The news that Bush was arrested and pleaded guilty in 1976 snowballed after a chiropractor learned about the episode from a patient who mentioned he was in court at the same time as Bush, said lawyer Tom Connolly.

The chiropractor passed the tip along Wednesday to a lawyer who directed the information to Connolly, a former Democratic gubernatorial candidate and delegate to the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles.

Republicans immediately expressed alarm over Democratic “dirty tricks” because the source of the story was Connolly, a Democratic activist.

The lawyer who tipped Connolly was later identified in news reports as William Childs, a Democrat who is Cumberland County’s elected register of probate. Childs did not return messages left at his law office.

Connolly never identified Childs, but he said a “public figure” passed the information to him because of his role as an activist.

From there, Connolly was overheard discussing the arrest and two TV reporters who were in the courthouse picked up on the chatter Thursday.

The American Journalism Review did a post mortem and it showed that the story had been knocking around Maine for a few months prior to the revelation and could have come out at any time:

ON FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 3, Andrew Russell of the Portland Press Herald in Maine walked into his boss’ office to make a confession. “I think I made a terrible mistake,” the regional editor told Managing Editor Curt Hazlett. And Hazlett agreed completely. Russell had let “the big one” slip away.

In July, Press Herald reporter Ted Cohen, 49, discovered George W. Bush’s 1976 drunk driving arrest in Kennebunkport, Maine–a story that mysteriously eluded the national media, which claimed to have combed through every inch of Bush’s background.
Cohen discussed the arrest with Russell, and the two agreed that it was old news and that Bush’s past drinking problem was no secret. Russell, says Hazlett, put it out of his mind. (Cohen, however, didn’t.)

The Press Herald staffers didn’t hear of the arrest again until Portland’s WPXT-TV Fox 51 reported the story at 7 p.m. on November 2, just before the start of “The Drew Carey Show.” Fox News Channel had sent the story ping-ponging around the nation about 45 minutes earlier, courtesy of WPXT. Fox News went with the story the minute a Bush spokesman confirmed it.

Russell had never mentioned a word about Bush’s 24-year-old arrest to any other Press Herald editors. Nor had Cohen. (Russell declined to comment.) “He’s a very good editor, a young guy,” says Hazlett of Russell. “I certainly feel bad for him. There was nothing I could say to him that would make him feel better or worse. There’s no one who hasn’t made a big mistake. It’s made bigger by the fact that there are national implications to the story. I feel terrible that we had this story. Had he taken just a little more time and gotten another opinion, it would have changed how the whole thing was reported.”

Instead of the story breaking in July, it broke five days before the election, obscuring the issue of responsibility and drunk driving. The focus became criticism of the media for publicizing the arrest so close to Election Day.

All the Gore campaign had to do, if they had this information, was slip it to Howie Kurtz himself, or any other national reporter and point them in the right direction, just like the Republicans do. The locals all got it confirmed by the police and others, there was no reason the Washington Post couldn’t have as well. There was no need to go through a patient to his chiropractor who would “pass it on” to his lawyer who would then tell a “local activist” who would set it up to be “overheard” at the courthouse at just the right moment to be broadcast on a local station the week-end before the election. (I only wish the Democrats were that good.)

I realize that nearly everything that passes through the Village grapevine is Republican spin and lies, so it’s difficult to know what is and isn’t real. The Bush campaign did shriek like howler monkeys that that DUI thing was a dirty trick (although why it would be when it was true and Bush admitted it, I’ve never understood.) But knowing the truth about that story before saying it was a Democratic hit is a media reporter’s job, I would think.

I am sure that Democrats send out all kinds of tips to the media about their rivals. Nobody disputes that. My point was that the Republicans were the ones who knew how to hit the press corps’ sweet spot — their lazy, gossipy side. Kurtz’s reply only backs up that claim.

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More Me and More

by digby

I have another post up at The Big Con speculating about the religious right’s possible strategy with their third party caterwauling.

And Perlstein has posted an astonishing expose by Danny Postel about neocon ties to an Iranian terrorist group that boasts Marxist, jihadist, and ba’athist ties. No lie.

Battered Spouses

by digby

Yesterday I said I felt a hissy coming on and today it’s blown in with all the sincerity and gravitas of Tom DeLay speaking at a Martin Luther King day luncheon.

The Situation Room just led the half hour with this:

BLITZER: I’m Wolf Blitzer and you’re in the Situation Room. One congressman is defending some words his critics are calling stupid. It involves an outburst from Democrat Pete Stark, made in the heat of a debate over health care for many of the nation’s children.

Let’s go straight to our congressional correspondent Dana Bash who’s watching this story for us. They want him to resign…excuse me to apologize for his comments. They’re condemning his comments. Tell our viewers, Dana, what’s going on.

BASH: What’s going Wolf is we have for the first time a comment from a member of the Demcoratic leadership on this. Majority leader Steny Hoyer, who is calling Stark’s remarks unfortunate and totally inappropriate. Hoyer’s also saying he’s hopeful that Stark will express his regrets because he says that these comments have been a distraction and CNN is told that several Democratic lawmakers have called Stark today and made it clear that what Stark said on the House floor yesterday was hurting their cause.

Video VO

Democrats worked for months to hone their message on Children’s Health, but when it came to the climactic debate, the most memorable Democratic moment was decidedly off-message;

Stark: You don’t have money to fund the war or children, but you’re gonna spend it blow up innocent people if we can get enough kids to grow old enough for you to send to Iraq to get their head blown off for the president’s amusement.

Republicans jumped on the tirade, issuing statement after statement calling on congressman Pete Stark to apologize. But the California Democrat refuses. In an interview with KGO radio in San Francisco, Stark would only say “do I wish that I could have kept the focus more on health care? Asolutely.” Repeated answers like that prompted this from the host “Don’t be Cintonesque. It’s just stupid and it just gives the other side ammunition.”

But Stark’s Northern California district is one of the most Democratic in the nation. He says his constituents do not want him to apologize. Stark Even logged on tot he liberal blog Daily Kos where his remarks are a hit. Stark wrote, “wanted to stop by, say hello and thank you for your support.”

This outburst is not Stark’s first. Not even close.

The 34 year House veteran is known for having perhaps the most explosive mouth in congress. During a committee hearing two years ago, Stark called Republican Scott McGinnis “a little wimp” and “a fruitcake.” And Stark has also accused Connecticut Republican Nancy Johnson of being a “whore for the insurance industry.”

BASH: Now Democratic sources tell CNN that there had been talk all day long behind the scenes about just how much they do believe in Democratic leadership circles that this is hurting them and also we are told this morning that there was some hope, perhaps, that Pete Stark would come out and apologize in a more forceful way than he already has but it also became clear just in listening to Pete Stark there on the radio in San Francisco also in private conversations we’re told about, that is not going to happen any time soon Wolf.

JC Watts later called Stark a “small person with a withered soul.”

The Dainty Republican Fainting Couch and Circle Jerk Society is in full effect and the press is running with it as fast as their dimpled little legs can carry them. The context that would show what is really going on is right in the story, but you won’t hear about it:

Republicans jumped on the tirade, issuing statement after statement calling on congressman Pete Stark to apologize.

Now why do you suppose they did this? Are these macho tough guys really offended that some congressman made these comments in a debate? Are their feelings hurt on behalf of the president? Does CNN really believe that’s what’s going on? Does anyone think that what Pete Stark said on the floor yesterday truly upset the Republicans? Of course not. These are the same people who spent month after month calling president Clinton a rapist and worse, for crying out loud. They are not shrinking violets who believe that there are limits to acceptable rhetoric about the president. They don’t believe there are limits to any rhetoric.

Everyone knows exactly why the Republicans sent out “statement after statement” about this obscure congressman’s words yesterday — distraction. Does anyone point that out? No. In fact, the damned Democrats go right along with this nonsense and “hold meetings” and leak to the press about how they agree with the Republicans agreeing that Stark caused the distraction, and basically showing themselves to be a bunch of pathetic fumblers falling for this nonsense over and over again.

Surely, they don’t think they will ever be able to stop the Republicans from finding some silly comment somewhere that they can get the vapors over do they? Are they really battered spouses trying desperately not to say or do anything that will make their vicious, bullying batterer angry?

Somebody call Dr. Phil for gawds sake. I have said it before but until the Democrats figure out how to deal with this, the Republicans are going to keep doing it. Why shouldn’t they?

Update: Echidne has found another example of rudeness during the floor debate on SCHIP. I’m feeling very faint…

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Five Card Dud

by digby

It is nearly incomprehensible to me, but after months and months of haranguing the Democratic leadership to force the Republicans to stage a real filibuster and stand on the floor of the Senate reading the phone book and re-enacting Miss Mellie’s death scene from “Gone With The Wind”, they have finally decided to take our advice. Except for one teensy detail: they have decided to force Chris Dodd, Democratic presidential candidate, senior member of the Senate and Democrat to stage a real filibuster because he has the temerity to defend the constitution.

Dodd is willing to do it if he has to:

Are you willing to go to the mat to restore the Constitution?

Just last night, we heard there are plans to disregard Senator Dodd’s intention to place a hold on a FISA bill that includes amnesty for telecommunications companies.

That would be a pretty extraordinary move, but Chris Dodd has pledged to stop this horrible bill any way he can.

So if the hold is not honored, he is prepared to go to the Senate floor and filibuster.

Rolling back the Bush Administration assault on the rule of law has been a major focus of Chris Dodd’s work in the Senate — and it’s also a centerpiece in his campaign for President.

Jane Hamsher quotes a knowledgeable insider who says:

“I can’t think of one time when Harry Reid went around his own. It’s just not normal for a leader to do that to his own side. Sometimes you’ll go around Republicans, sometimes they’ll use holds to be “spoilers,” but that happens to the other guy. You just don’t do it to one of your own.”

And it’s also just a little bit abnormal for the Democratic leader to allow the Republicans to defeat bill after bill with simple cloture votes rather than making them take to the floor and defend their unpopular positions before the American people. They allowed the Republicans to neatly scuttle bills like the Webb Amendment which would have given the troops more time at home and shown the public just who supports the troops and who doesn’t. And because Democrats are apparently devoted to comity, they even graciously took the hit when the mainstream media portrayed a 57-43 majority vote for that legislation as a sign that the Democrats can’t get anything done rather than that the Republicans were obstructing popular legislation.

This is simply outrageous. Senators place holds all the time and our majority leader hasn’t said he’d force them to filibuster rather than honor the hold. Chris Dodd is a senior member of the judiciary committee who has the standing and the respect to be taken seriously on this issue. It’s not about some moneybags constituent who will be affected by the bill. It’s not about a frivolous or symbolic issue. It is very real and Dodd represents a large constituency of Americans who do not want to give the executive branch the power to wiretap Americans without a warrant and who do not think certain Telcom companies, with their high-priced, thoroughbred legal teams, need to be granted liability because they happily went along with the administration’s lawbreaking. They could have refused. Others did.

The bill is a terrible bill. It’s falling apart. It can be changed. There’s no good reason for the Democratic leadership not to at least publicly support Dodd right now. I would think it actually helps their negotiating posture to have a Senator who is willing to place a hold on the bad bill and a leadership which insists it has to follow tradition and senate rules in allowing him to do it.

Harry Reid is from Nevada for Gawd’s sake. Doesn’t he know how to play poker?

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Why Now?

by digby

I have a new post up at The Big Con speculating about why the right wingers are ratcheting up the nastiness lately. Let’s just say they aren’t exactly rebelling against the establishment.

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Again?

by digby

These people
are going to overdose on smelling salts and phony sanctimony if they don’t watch out. It’s about once a week now, isn’t it?

House Republicans objected today to comments made by outspoken liberal Democratic Rep. Pete Stark of California on the Iraq war during debate on the override of President Bush’s veto of the children’s health program.

Speaking on the House floor, Stark said, “Under the Republican plan, by
2017, we probably will have killed 20,000 soldiers in Iraq, spending
$200 billion.”

Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) rose to protest the remark and asked that Stark’s words be taken down, a formal procedure to punish a member of Congress for breaching the House’s standards of decorum.

The chair later ruled that Stark’s comment did not refer to any specific House member and thus were appropriate.

Earlier in the SCHIP debate, Stark had made other spirited remarks.

“You don’t have money to fund the war or children,” he said. “But you’re going to spend it to blow up innocent people if we can get enough kids to grow old enough for you to send to Iraq to get their heads blown off for the president’s amusement.”

(Well, he did say “bring it on.”)

CNN is all over it, tiresomely pressing every passing person as to whether they will repudiate or condemn this even though it’s clearly another coordinated hissy kabuki designed to distract from the fact that they just upheld their 24% president’s veto of a popular program to help sick children. The know it. We know it. And the republicans know it. It doesn’t matter.

The press, undoubtedly feeling terribly vulnerable after reluctantly reporting on the Stalkin’ Malkin atrocity, are anxious to appease the wolfpack. Come one, come all, to the latest rightwing freak show and ritual humiliation pageant! News at 11.

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No More

by digby

Dodd Mania!

“Later today Senator Dodd will be sending a letter to Majority Leader Reid informing him that he plans to put a ‘hold’ on a bill that would provide for retroactive amnesty for telecom giants that were complicit in the Bush Administration’s assault on the United States Constitution,” Dodd spokesman Hari Sevugan told Election Central. “Senator Dodd said that he would do what he could do to stop this bill, and with this announcement he has again shown that he delivers results.”

Dodd has a petition for all of us to sign and I urge you to do it. As I outlined in my post below, it isn’t easy for any Senator to do this in our current political environment, even when the polls are with them and the cause is just. The Village will not be pleased.

But Dodd has made the preservation of our constitution the centerpiece of his run for the presidency and he’s putting himself on the line in the Senate on this one. For that he deserves our gratitude.


Get his back:

The Military Commissions Act. Warrantless wiretapping. Shredding of Habeas Corpus. Torture. Extraordinary Rendition. Secret Prisons.

No more.

I have decided to place a “hold” on the latest FISA bill that would have included amnesty for telecommunications companies that enabled the President’s assault on the Constitution by illegally providing personal information on their customers without judicial authorization.

I said that I would do everything I could to stop this bill from passing, and I have.

It’s about delivering results — and as I’ve said before, the FIRST thing I will do after being sworn into office is restore the Constitution. But we shouldn’t have to wait until then to prevent the further erosion of our country’s most treasured document. That’s why I am stopping this bill today.

Indicate your support for my hold as well as your thoughts on this issue in the comment section below.

Sign Up!

Update: Kagro has a nice post up about “holds” and the possible consequences for Dodd of doing this.

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You’ve Gotta Know When To Hold It

by digby

So I see that Dodd Mania is sweeping the blogosphere today in the hopes that he will put a “hold” on the FISA legislation. I’m for it, and if Dodd will agree to do it, I’d be very inclined to become a very serious Dodd fan. Actually, I already am. With few exceptions he’s my kind of Senator.

I understand how difficult it is for a Democrat to get out front on one of these boogeyman votes. The rightwing vultures slaver over the opportunity to blame everything from terrorism to male pattern balding on Democrats anyway, and the prospect of another terrorist attack and the inevitable cacophony of shrieking castigation that would follow has to keep many a lawmaker up at night.

But that’s the problem for Democrats, right there, as we’ve all been saying ad nauseam for years now. Every time they capitulate on a matter of principle they prove the Republicans’ central thesis, which is that the Democrats won’t fight. (Josh Marshall used to call it the “bitch slap theory.”) And even worse, when they support the Republicans with their draconian undemocratic actions, they get no credit and will be blamed anyway. There is no upside to it.

Of course, that’s just one moving piece of this puzzle. The big money issue in the FISA bill is the telecom retroactive immunity for committing crimes on behalf of this lawless admnistration. Evidently, some staffers went up to the hill yesterday to look at some cherry-picked documents that show that the big Telcoms were just babes in the woods who didn’t know nothin’ bout birthin’ no wiretaps:

The draft Senate bill has the support of the intelligence committee’s chairman, John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), and Bush’s director of national intelligence, Mike McConnell. It will include full immunity for those companies that can demonstrate to a court that they acted pursuant to a legal directive in helping the government with surveillance in the United States.

Such a demonstration, which the bill says could be made in secret, would wipe out a series of pending lawsuits alleging violations of privacy rights by telecommunications companies that provided telephone records, summaries of e-mail traffic and other information to the government after Sept. 11, 2001, without receiving court warrants. Bush had repeatedly threatened to veto any legislation that lacked this provision.

Spencer Ackerman sums it up nicely:

The first question this raises: This “legal directive” is surely part of the pile of documents the Senate intelligence committee had access to about the legal foundations for the warrantless surveillance program. But its legal validity is unknown — indeed, Jack Goldsmith, the former head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, called the legal basis for the program up until 2004 the “biggest mess” he’d ever encountered. Will the Court’s “secret” review of telecom compliance with the directive include an assessment of the soundness of that directive? We’ll see what the text of the bill says.

I don’t actually know if it’s even true that these senate staffers had access to this particular “legal directive.” From what I understood, it was the Judiciary Committee who were going to be allowed to see the legal findings, not intelligence. As far as I can tell, the staffers who have now certified the absolute necessity for the telcoms to receive immunity have done so because they were convinced that the telcoms had received assurance from the government that their actions were legal. But, as Ackerman points out, we still don’t know if the “directive” itself was legal and it seems somewhat unlikely given that 30 or so members of the Justice department were willing to resign over at least some aspects of the program as a whole. Of course, we can’t know any of this because the administration believes it has the right to make laws in secret and execute them and the congress now believes it needs to immunize powerful corporations which were involved in these secret programs, the details of which they nothing about, after the fact.

What seems to have happened is that the Bush administration told the mighty telcom corporate lawyers that they needn’t worry their little heads about all that nasty legal business, they’d take care of it. And the sleepy lil’ corporate lawyers stuck their thumbs in their mouths and burrowed into Daddy’s lap for a nice bedtime story, like the good little political contributers they are.

I have no idea if Chris Dodd or any of the other senators running for president (or others, for that matter) have the nerve to wage this fight. The Republicans have managed to seamlessly continue their patented red-baiting campaign by creating a pavlovian response among Democrats whenever they utter the words “terrorist attack.” Sadly that probably means they are going to control the foreign policy agenda for the foreseeable future unless we figure out a way to change this dynamic.

One obvious way is to do as Atrios suggests today:

One thing I think Democrats have lost is the ability to get out in front of an issue and try to persuade people that their position is the correct one, and then use their position in Congress to make it happen.

sigh.

Update: Oh, and not that it matters, of course, in the world’s oldest democracy, but the polling actually doesn’t support the Republicans on this.

From The Hotline:

MELLMAN GROUP (D): Give Us Liberty Or Give Us Death
© National Journal Group, Inc.

A Mellman Group (D) poll; conducted 10/11-14 for the ACLU; surveyed 1000 LVs; margin of error +/- 3.1% (release, 10/15).

Should The U.S. Gov’t Have To Get A Warrant From A Court Before Wiretapping The Conversations That U.S. Citizens Have With People In Other Countries?

Yes 61%
No 35 %

How Important Is It For Congress To Take Action Now To Require The Gov’t To Get A Warrant Before Wiretapping Int’l Phone Calls And Emails Of U.S. Citizens?

All Dem GOP Ind
Very/smwht impt. 75% 88% 57% 78%
Not too/not impt. 22 9 39 12

Bush Handling Terrorism

Excellent/good 41%
Fair/poor 56%

Bush Handling Warrantless Wiretaps

Fair/poor 50%
Excellent/good 35%

Traditionally, The Law Has Required A Warrant From A Court For Each Person The Gov’t Wants To Wiretap. Some People Want To Permanently Change This Law To Allow Courts To Issue Blanket Warrants For Wire-Tapping U.S. Citizens That Would Not Have To Name Any Specific Person.

Do You Favor Or Oppose Allowing Courts To Issue Blanket Warrants?

All Dem GOP Ind

Favor 31% 23% 39% 34%

Oppose 61 72 52 59

Which Of The Following Statements Do You Support?

Congress Should Give The Phone Companies Amnesty From Legal Action Against Those Companies For Selling Customers’ Records To The Gov’t. 31%

Citizens Who Believe Their Rights Have Been Violated Should Be Free To Take Legal Action Against Those Phone Companies And Let The
Courts Decide The Outcome. 59%

Are Each Of The Following Statements A Very Convincing Reason To
Vote Against A Member Of Congress?

The MoC voted to cut education funding 51%

The MoC voted to cut healthcare for kids 48%

The MoC voted to give retroactive amnesty to telecoms
for laws they have broken by selling private phone
records of U.S. citizens to the gov’t 35%

The MoC voted to keep the U.S. troops in Iraq 34%

The MoC voted to make it harder to stop terrorism by
requiring the gov’t to get a warrant every time
they wanted to wiretap the phone of an American
they thought might be helping the terrorists 28%