Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Party Of Hacks

by digby

I think it’s awfully nice of Jane to offer her hand in friendship to conservative writer Ramesh Ponnuru, don’t you? Clearly this upcoming book tour is going to be very difficult for him, what with all the questions about his sleazy rightwing publisher and the 24 year old plagiarist editor they assigned him. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.

There is no word on whether Lil’ Benji Domenech is still editing away over at Regnery publishing, but it won’t make much difference. He’s just one of many GOP operatives given sinecures in the myriad conservative front groups out there. There’s always more where that came from.

But there’s no doubt that Regnery holds a special place in the organization. From Nicholas Confessore’s great article in TAP:

Regnery Publishing’s right-leaning corporate philosophy actually goes back to 1947, when the late Henry Regnery, Sr., set out to publish “good books,” as he wrote in the company’s first catalogue, “wherever we find them.” Works by Regnery’s friends among the nascent conservative intelligentsia soon followed, including Russell Kirk’s The Conservative Mind, William F. Buckley, Jr.’s God and Man at Yale, Whittaker Chambers’s Witness, and Barry Goldwater’s Conscience of a Conservative. Henry Regnery’s son, Alfred Regnery, who took over in 1986 and moved the company to Washington, D.C., has likewise been both a friend to and publisher of conservative authors. After stints in law school (where he roomed with American Conservative Union Chairman David Keene) and as college director of Young Americans for Freedom, Alfred Regnery was appointed head of the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention by Ronald Reagan in 1983. While there, as reported by Murray Waas in The New Republic, he helped run Edwin Meese’s ill-fated President’s Commission on Pornography; disbursed generous grants to Jerry Falwell’s Liberty College, Meese pal George Nicholson, and professional antifeminist Phyllis Schlafly; authored, with then-Assistant Secretary of Education Gary Bauer, a much-ridiculed report called “Chaos in the Public Schools”; and in general cultivated an updated version of his father’s network of friends.

But by the time Alfred Regnery took over the family business, the firm had slipped into semi-dormancy. Regnery Publishing’s 1993 purchase by newsletter magnate Tom Phillips woke it up. Phillips, one of the Republican National Committee’s “Team 100” and a board member of the Claremont Institute, lavished both money and attention on his new acquisition. Leaving Alfred Regnery at the helm, Phillips folded the company into his Eagle Publishing division, an overtly political enterprise with a distinguished stable of conservative media: Human Events, a 56-year-old,ultra-right weekly newspaper; the Evans-Novak Political Report; the 75,000-member Conservative Book Club (founded in 1964 as “America was walking down Lyndon Johnson’s path to a socialist ‘Great Society'”); and a similar operation called the Christian Family Book Club. But perhaps most significant–given the central role direct mail has played in the conservative resurgence of recent decades–is Eagle’s list brokerage operation, which rents out Eagle’s own customer lists and those of organizations like Newt Gingrich’s GOPAC, Empower America, the Western Journalism Center, and the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation, not to mention Pat Buchanan’s American Cause and the Steve Forbes for President campaign.

By the time Phillips Publishing spun off Eagle last July, an entirely new entity had emerged: a company that treats publishing less as a media enterprise than as a form of political activism. With a new, almost Gingrichian sensibility, Regnery’s titles have begun to reflect the particular ideological and policy concerns of foundation-funded, third-wave conservative thinkers. Believe that the American family is in its death throes? Read Maggie Gallagher’s The Abolition of Marriage: How We Destroy Lasting Love. Worried that American higher education is overrun by radical feminists and licentious left-wingers? Pick up the late George Roche’s The Fall of the Ivory Tower: Government Funding, Corruption, and the Bankrupting of American Higher Education, or David Horowitz’s The Heterodoxy Handbook: How to Survive the PC Campus. Believe that corrupt teachers’ unions are the bane of the American education system? Read G. Gregory Moo’s Power Grab: How the National Education Association is Betraying Our Children. If you suspect that the Walt Disney Corporation is out to lead children astray with Miramax films and “Gay Day” at Disney World, have a look at Disney: The Mouse Betrayed, by Peter and Rochelle Schweizer. And if you wonder whether more assault rifles equals less crime, imbibe the pithy wisdom of Wayne LaPierre’s Guns, Crime, and Freedom.

[…]

Since 1996, Regnery has published no less than eight presidential exposés: Roger Morris’s Partners in Power: The Clintons and Their America, Bill Gertz’s Betrayal: How the Clinton Administration Undermined American Security, Edward Timperlake and William C. Triplett’s Year of the Rat: How Bill Clinton Compromised U.S. Security for Chinese Cash, Ann Coulter’s High Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Case Against Bill Clinton, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard’s The Secret Life of Bill Clinton: The Unreported Stories, Gary Aldrich’s Unlimited Access: An FBI Agent Inside the Clinton White House, and R. Emmett Tyrrell’s The Impeachment of William Jefferson Clinton: A Political Docu-Drama and Boy Clinton: The Political Biography. To date, five of these books have made various best-seller lists.

For all intents and purposes, the eight are interchangeable–with each other and, stylistically, with most of the other political books in Regnery’s catalogue. Each posits a nebulous conspiracy centered around the Clinton White House, a murky stew that typically blends one or more of the following ingredients: shady banking and land deals loosely grouped under the “Whitewater” rubric; the murder–or induced suicide–of Vince Foster; Filegate and Travelgate; dalliances with prostitutes and nymphets; rampant drug use; treason via Chinese spies; and an Arkansas-based, Clinton-masterminded drug-smuggling outfit.

And yet these character assassins are considered mainstream and legitimate by the political establishment. I think we can we all see now why Lil’ Benji Domenech’s “credentials” as an “editor” are so absurd and why so many of us immediately understood him to be a cheap ideological shill for the Republican Party. Believe me, he didn’t get the job at the WaPo because he was a founder of Redstate. He got it because he worked for John Cornyn, National Review and Regnery publishing — all jobs that would have led someone with any sense of how modern politics operates to look, very, very, …. very carefully at his past work. These are not jobs that should have given anyone in mainstream journalism confidence in his abilities. It should have made them suspicious.

But I digress. Regnery is publishing Ramesh Ponnuru’s new book “The Party of Death” this next month. Check out what Amazon has to say about it. I’m sure you’ll find it compelling. Here’s a little taste:

Ponnuru’s shocking expose shows just how extreme the Party of Death has become as they seek to destroy every inconvenient life, demand fealty to their radical agenda, and punish anyone who defies them. But he also shows how the tide is turning, how the Party of Death can be defeated, and why its last victim might be the Democratic Party itself.

Ponnuru’s editor Lil’ Benji wrote similarly (there’s a surprise) on RedState not long ago:

Some still hope, legitimately or not: “There must be some common ground.” But there is none. No one can make that case any more, not with a straight face. We are past that point. The Party of Death won’t accept compromise, and neither will those who oppose the taking of innocent life.

That post entitled “Do not Mourn” is quite the diatribe. If I were Ramesh Ponnuru, I’d check it thoroughly. With Lil’ Benji’s proven proclivity for lifting others’ work, I might be concerned that while he was “editing” my book he may have “inadvertantly” absorbed some of my writings.

It would seem that both Domenech and Ponnuru are ardent believers in the sanctity of “life” however. (One wonders if they spent time together watching “the greatest pro-gun movie ever” where “they actually show the jackbooted communist thugs prying the guns from cold dead hands.“)

Now Ramesh, ever the “reasonable” conservative, claims that he never meant “The Party of Death” to apply to the Democratic party. He wrote on NRO recently:

Franke-Ruta mentions my forthcoming book The Party of Death, which she describes as a “book on Democrats.” The book does have quite a bit to say about the Democrats, and it’s tough on them. But the book is about more than that, and the title isn’t meant as a pejorative term for the Democrats. I explain, mostly in the introduction, what I mean and don’t mean by the phrase. I’m not saying this to complain about Franke-Ruta. It was nice of her to mention the book, and her assumption was an easy one to make, partly because the Amazon page on the book is a bit misleading. (I’ve tried to get Amazon to change it a few times.)

Thank goodness it isn’t a pejorative term for Democrats. That would be quite ugly. But it’s odd then that the cover that’s shown at the Regnery web site shows a book called: “The Party of Death: The Democrats, the Media, the Courts, and the Disregard for Human Life.” Is he describing some sort of social gathering where judges, Democrats and media all get together and “party?” Or does the phrase more logically describe The Democratic Party? Interestingly, there is an alternate book cover that shows “The Party of Death: The Assault on The Sanctity of Life.” Odd, don’t you think? Has Ponnuru had second thoughts about spending every day for months defending that slanderous, scurrilous title?

Of course, the one thing that hasn’t changed about the title is “The Party of Death” part and I think we can be fairly confident that he isn’t talking about a fun afternoon with balloons and a pony. Let’s hope he doesn’t persist with this line that it isn’t about the Democrats because he is insulting the intelligence of anyone over the age of ten. Even some mainstream pundits might find that hard to swallow.

And anyway, it takes some nerve calling the Democrats The Party Of Death when you support a party led by a man who said this:

From: “Devil May Care” by Tucker Carlson, Talk Magazine, September 1999, p. 106

“Bush’s brand of forthright tough-guy populism can be appealing, and it has played well in Texas. Yet occasionally there are flashes of meanness visible beneath it.

While driving back from the speech later that day, Bush mentions Karla Faye Tucker, a double murderer who was executed in Texas last year. In the weeks before the execution, Bush says, Bianca Jagger and a number of other protesters came to Austin to demand clemency for Tucker. ‘Did you meet with any of them?’ I ask.

Bush whips around and stares at me. ‘No, I didn’t meet with any of them,’ he snaps, as though I’ve just asked the dumbest, most offensive question ever posed. ‘I didn’t meet with Larry King either when he came down for it. I watched his interview with [Tucker], though. He asked her real difficult questions, like ‘What would you say to Governor Bush?’ ‘What was her answer?’ I wonder.

‘Please,’ Bush whimpers, his lips pursed in mock desperation, ‘don’t kill me.’

I must look shocked — ridiculing the pleas of a condemned prisoner who has since been executed seems odd and cruel, even for someone as militantly anticrime as Bush — because he immediately stops smirking.

Call me crazy but it seems to me that the man who personally (and casually) signed 157 death warrants and sent the nation to an unnecessary, bloody war of choice might just have a greater claim to lead a Party Of Death. Somehow all this fretting about blastocysts and spilled sperm just doesn’t have much resonance when you look at this:

I’ll be looking forward to many more posts about Ramesh Ponnuru and his sleazy publisher Regnery as he goes about his book tour over the next few months. I’m tired of this nonsense.

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I Wonder Why Bush Didn’t Attack Zarqawi When He Had The Chance?

by tristero

Peter Daou catches an NBC news story that somehow seems to have fallen through the cracks. Apparently, Bush ignored several chances to take out or capture Zarqawi:

C News has learned that long before the war the Bush administration had several chances to wipe out his terrorist operation and perhaps kill Zarqawi himself — but never pulled the trigger.

In June 2002, U.S. officials say intelligence had revealed that Zarqawi and members of al-Qaida had set up a weapons lab at Kirma, in northern Iraq, producing deadly ricin and cyanide.

The Pentagon quickly drafted plans to attack the camp with cruise missiles and airstrikes and sent it to the White House, where, according to U.S. government sources, the plan was debated to death in the National Security Council.

“Here we had targets, we had opportunities, we had a country willing to support casualties, or risk casualties after 9/11 and we still didn’t do it,” said Michael O’Hanlon, military analyst with the Brookings Institution.

Four months later, intelligence showed Zarqawi was planning to use ricin in terrorist attacks in Europe.

The Pentagon drew up a second strike plan, and the White House again killed it. By then the administration had set its course for war with Iraq.

“People were more obsessed with developing the coalition to overthrow Saddam than to execute the president’s policy of preemption against terrorists,” according to terrorism expert and former National Security Council member Roger Cressey.

In January 2003, the threat turned real. Police in London arrested six terror suspects and discovered a ricin lab connected to the camp in Iraq.

The Pentagon drew up still another attack plan, and for the third time, the National Security Council killed it.

Military officials insist their case for attacking Zarqawi’s operation was airtight, but the administration feared destroying the terrorist camp in Iraq could undercut its case for war against Saddam.

The United States did attack the camp at Kirma at the beginning of the war, but it was too late — Zarqawi and many of his followers were gone. “Here’s a case where they waited, they waited too long and now we’re suffering as a result inside Iraq,” Cressey added.

I just can’t wait to hear the excuses for this screwup. Funny, this plus all those memos about fixing the intelligence and concocting fake incidents makes me downright suspicious that maybe, just maybe, Bush intended to go to war no matter what. Now what’s OIL so special about OIL Iraq that OIL would so obsess OIL an American president that OIL he would risk thousands of OIL soldiers’ lives OIL rather than do whatever OIL he could to prevent OIL OIL OIL it?

Stanislaw Lem

by tristero

Stanislaw Lem has died. I have to confess that I’ve never been a big reader of sci-fi. But I always loved Lem’s novels. Time to read some more of him. Try this or this or, of course, this.

Bad Precedent

by digby

I can’t help but feel a tiny bit confused by all this righteous rightwing aversion to “rewarding lawbreaking” with an amnesty program for immigrants. The argument seems to be that it sends a bad message to allow people to get away with unlawful behavior by legalizing it after the fact. What’ll they tell the children?

Of course, it all depends on who’s doing the breaking, doesn’t it?

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Bush’s Busboy Goes Bye-Bye

by digby

“Go get me Andy Card,” Bush said to one of the Secret Service agents. Card, the designee as chief of staff, entered from an adjoining room . . . Bush looked impatiently at Card, hard-eyed. “You’re the chief of staff. You think you’re up to getting us some cheeseburgers?”

Card nodded. No one laughed. He all but raced out of the room.

I’m sure he’ll be missed. Perhaps we should all send Josh Bolton some McDonald’s menus. He’s going to need them.

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I just know there are a few of you who would love to take some action today to show the powers that be that the grassroots have a sense of humor. Christy at FDL has the next phase of the “rubber stamp” action plan ready to roll. Think of it as a way of bonding with our representatives — and telling the other side that we are on to them…

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Intervention

by digby

A couple of months ago when Deborah Howell was “deluged” with “uncivilized” comments about her failure to correct a blatant misrepresentation, the Washington Post ombudsman and others had a shrieking fit of the vapors and spent days on the fainting couch mumbling incoherently about the rude insults they had to endure. I thought Howell would have to take a leave of absense and get herself to a nunnery for a few weeks just to regain her belief in the goodness of mankind after such an assault.

As was amply demonstrated, the vast majority of the comments were not, in fact, crude or filthy. They condemned the Post for uncritically recycling RNC talking points and failing to provide proof of their assertions. And they used aggressive language to do it.

But as Busy, Busy Busy’s Elton Beard noticed, Howell only seems to be truly stunned, angry and upset by certain kinds of criticism. Others, not so much. Here’s Howell this past Sunday:

One critic of the coverage is John Dowd, a Washington lawyer: “I can’t subscribe to your newspaper anymore because you have lost all sense of balance and perspective in your coverage of the war in Iraq and against the terrorists. It is clear to those of us who have our sons and daughters who are in harm’s way that you support the terrorists and you are opposed to the efforts of our Marines, all who are sacrificing so that you are free to publish without interference.”

Dowd’s son Dan is a Marine captain, just back from his second tour as a helicopter pilot in Iraq. Dowd sees his son and other U.S. and Iraqi soldiers “as the most selfless people I’ve known in my life.” I found his letter haunting; it pains me that he would think Post journalists support terrorists.

Beard says:

Think about that.

A reader accuses Washington Post journalists of siding with Goldstein – er, terrorists – and Deborah Howell doesn’t think, this man is either demented or trying to manipulate me. She doesn’t crumple up and toss the letter and she doesn’t add it to her loony folder, already overflowing with missives from crazed liberals. She does not take offense at the slur on her colleagues. Quite the opposite. She takes the complaint seriously

It pains her to think this fine man believes that the Washington Post supports terrorists. She’s “haunted” by that criticism. But those of us who would like the Post to correct their errors are uncivilized beasts from the fever swamp who are dragging down the discourse. That’s very revealing, I think. Deborah Howell, like so many of her brethren, has so internalized rightwing criticism that it doesn’t even seem unreasonable anymore. She “understands” it. This man called her a traitor to her face and all it does is make her feel sad. She doesn’t even know that she has completely absorbed the right’s criticisms.

And when liberals point out that she has become subsumed by a radical Republican establishment, when they bring attention to the fact that she no longer even knows when she is being manipulated and abused — she gets angry and tries to kill the messenger.

The truth is that we are not trying to destroy the media with our barbaric uncouth ways and unflattering criticisms. We are trying to save it. It’s not surprising that they have become self-loathing, addicted to RNC spin and dependent on the approbation of the Republican establishment. We can all see why they would no longer be able to tell the difference between rational conservative discourse and RNC propaganda. They’ve been under sustained attack for years.

That’s why we’ve decided we need to stage an intervention. The first step is to wake them up and make them realize that when a reader calls them a terrorist sympathizer the proper response is not to “feel pained” or be “haunted.” It’s to recognize that the person who is saying it is a deluded rightwing nutcase — and then get righteously pissed. That is not a benign charge — they are fighting words.

And conversely, when someone calls them on an error, the proper response is to admit it and correct it, not become freaked out by the passion of those who demand it. These two kinds of feedback from readers are not equivalent and the second is certainly not more deserving of anger and shock than the first. Being called a traitor to your country is a deeply offensive insult. Being told you are not doing your job correctly may be insulting, but it’s hardly in the same league. The fact that Deborah Howell cannot see that — and takes the first one more seriously than the second — is the very essence of the problem with the mainstream press.

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Cheating By Reflex

by digby

If they aren’t plagiarising, they’re lying. If they aren’t lying they’re cooking the record. If they can’t win, they cheat.

And anyone who ever believes a word of anything coming out of the mouth of that unctuous phony Huckleberry Graham is just looking to get punked. Get a load of this, from Anonymous Liberal:

Today the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in the case of Hamdan v. Rumsfeld. The Court will be called upon to determine–among other things–whether a provision in last year’s Detainee Treatment Act (“DTA”) effectively strips the Court of jurisdiction to hear Hamdan’s case. The Government contends that it does and in support of this position, Republican Senators Lindsey Graham and John Kyl have filed an amicus brief with the Court.

This amicus brief argues that the legislative history of the DTA supports the Government’s position. Specifically, the brief cites a lengthy colloquy between Senators Kyl and Graham themselves which purportly took place during a Senate floor debate just prior to passage of the bill. In the exchange, both Kyl and Graham suggest that the bill will strip the courts of jurisdiction over pending detainee cases such as Hamdan. But here’s where the story gets interesting.

Apparently this entire 8 page colloquy–which is scripted to read as if it were delivered live on the floor of the Senate, complete with random interruptions from other Senators–never took place. It was inserted into the Congressional Record in written form just prior to passage of the bill.

They even went to the trouble of making it appear to be a “real” debate with conversational asides and colloquial language. The very, very pious and godly Sam Brownback lied outright and said he’d participated in the debate when it never actually happened. (He’s got a bit part in the script.) This article in Slate leads me to believe that there may have been some collusion between the Justice Department and Graham.

They knew that the entire Senate did not intend that the court be stripped of jurisdiction in pending cases. It probably wouldn’t have passed if that had been the case. So they cheated. This has been the story over and over and over again with this rubber stamp Eunuch Caucus. If they can’t deliver for their Dear Leader by following the rules — even with a majority — they ignore them. They are the outlaw party.

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The Iraq Document Dump

by tristero

Shorter Peter Bergen: There is no credible evidence in the Iraqi document dump of a Saddam/Qaeda link beyond the most desultory of contacts, as the 9/11 Commission, et al. has already concluded.

And before taking a quick squint, finding something ambiguous and shrieking, “Smoking gun, smoking gun!” I’d like to remind our rabid friends on the right that, as the introduction to the documents clearly states: “The US Government has made no determination regarding the authenticity of the documents, validity or factual accuracy of the information contained therein, or the quality of any translations, when available.” That should be taken as a very strong hint to be very skeptical about what you think you’ve found.

Of course, it would be outrageous to accuse the Bush administration of salting the document dump with deliberate forgeries. Completely outrageous.

It would also be outrageous to accuse the Bush administration of witholding documents that would tend to make their justifications for the war look even more specious than they already do. Completely outrageous.

I urge everyone on the right to drop everything they are doing for the next few years and carefully, carefully study this archive. And be sure to triple-check what you find. Studying this material with the detail it deserves will require your full, undivided attention.

Take your time, boys and girls, as much as you need. I can wait.

More Pretexts

by digby

In reference to my post below about Bush and Blair casually throwing around possible pretexts for the war, Jonathan at A Tiny Revolution pointed me to a post he wrote almost a year ago in which he showed that this was openly discussed at the time by none other than the likes of liberal hawk hero, Kenneth Pollack:

…The Threatening Storm by Kenneth Pollack was the book all good liberal hawks claimed had convinced them we just HAD to invade Iraq. And Pollack spoke about this strategy quite openly.

And yet as far as I can tell not a single member of the media pointed out how weird this was. (Of course, it’s likely most of the people touting The Threatening Storm never bothered to read it.)

Specifically, Pollack writes about this in the “Case for an Invasion” chapter. He explains we have to invade Iraq because of Saddam’s relentless pursuit of nuclear weapons. Unfortunately, other countries refuse to recognize this grave, grave danger. So in order to build as large a coalition as possible, we need some help from Iraq:

Click the link to see Pollacks explicit advice that the government use covert action provoke Saddam into retaliation so that we might invent a cassus belli. Pollack patiently explains,however, that even if we are unable to manufacture a proper pretext, we must invade anyway.

This was the reasonable liberal position, you’ll recall. Those of us who were against the war because it made no sense were so beyond the pale that we didn’t even merit a mention. Those who argued that invasion was unnecessary to contain the threat were relegated to obscure foreign policy journals. Those who said that it was counterproductive were called appeasers. Kenneth Pollack represented the “respectable” liberal position — and he argued quite openly that the government should invent a pretext to invade Iraq — and if that proved impossible we had to invade anyway.

And nobody said a word. Of course, his book was nearly hysterical in its threat assessment, so the idea of having to create a pretext to invade another nation seemed a small thing to some, I suppose. (The NYRB didn’t mention it.) But why did no one note that the fact the US could not make its case straightforwardly may just have meant that it didn’t actually … have a case?

After excerpting Pollack’s blithe list of potential phony pretexts, Jonathan concludes with this observation — one that really takes the cake and shows how intellectually bankrupt the liberal hawks were:

The best part is that later ON THE SAME PAGE Pollack piously explains “the administration needs to do an honest job explaining to the American people… why the United States needs to undertake this effort.”

So, there you have it: we’re going to invade no matter what, but we should try to come up with some pretext, all the while being honest about why we’re invading. If you’re capable of believing that makes any sense whatsoever, you’ll be a welcome member of the US foreign policy establishment.

9/11 changed everything. It made people stupid.

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