I missed this yesterday and it’s fascinating. Via Think Progress, here’s Michael Isikoff yesterday:
ISIKOFF: As a general rule, if you’re the president … you don’t like pictures out there of you with convicted felons. It sounds like … there’s at least one picture of him with at least one convicted felon and another indicted, so it’s probably not a picture the White House is eager to have out there. The other interesting aspect of this is, while the White House hasn’t put these out, Jack Abramoff has clearly shown them to people. I don’t know anything about Time sources, but I do know that he showed them to Washingtonian magazine, which suggests he may be playing a little bit of a game here. He has, of course, pled guilty already to the Justice Department. But it does raise a question in my mind at least as to whether Abramoff is maybe sort of sending some sort of signal out here: “Hey, I’ve got this stuff.” Maybe he wants something from somebody at the White House, or he wants someone at the White House not to do something, and just sort of subtly playing with people here.
It seems to me that might qualify as obstruction of justice. But what do I know? My recent exposure to that crime was when Clinton allegedly betrayed the republic by wearing a certain tie to signal Monica Lewinsky to … well, we were never sure just what he was signalling her, now that I think about it.
Felon Jack Abramoff sending signals to the White House that he has embarrassing photos certainly doesn’t rise to that level. That must be why this time we aren’t seeing the heads of every graduate of the Barbizon School of Blond Former Prosecutors spin around on their shoulders while they spew green bile and speak in Aramaic on all the cable news shows. It just isn’t as important, I understand that.
For those of a certain age, Bush’s contention that he has the constitutional right to ignore the law sounds strangely familiar. That’s because you have heard it somewhere before — and when you heard it you were appalled but not surprised, considering the source.
Take a trip down Memory lane over at Crooks and Liars:
Responding to all the Claud Rainsing on the right yesterday about manipulation of Amazon reviews I wrote a post about their own long standing manipulation of Amazon reviews.
How serendipitous, then, that one of the most notorious of Amazon manipulators in history should show up on the pages of the NY Times today. John Lott was long ago discredited as a social scientist. Indeed, economists at the University of Chicago use his work to illustrate shoddy scholorship. But naturally, even though he is held in almost universal opprobrium by every expert in his field, because he is a right wing academic he was granted a cushy sinecure at AEI and a lucrative speaking schedule. That he has now landed on the most valuable journalistic real estate on the planet, however, is nothing short of shocking.
But as I mentioned, Lott is even more interesting than just being a lousy (dishonest) scientist. In one of the blogosphere’s earliest triumphs, Lott was exposed as being slightly nuts:
Mary Rosh thinks the world of John R. Lott Jr., the controversial American Enterprise Institute scholar whose book “More Guns, Less Crime” caused such a stir a few years ago.
In postings on Web sites in this country and abroad, Rosh has tirelessly defended Lott against his harshest critics. He is a meticulous researcher, she’s repeatedly told those who say otherwise. He’s not driven by the ideology of the left or the right. Rosh has even summoned memories of the classes she took from Lott a decade ago to illustrate Lott’s probity and academic gifts.
“I have to say that he was the best professor I ever had,” Rosh gushed in one Internet posting.
Indeed, Mary Rosh and John Lott agree about nearly everything.
Well they should, because Mary Rosh is John Lott — or at least that’s the pseudonym he’s used for three years to defend himself against his critics in online debates, Lott acknowledged this week.
“I probably shouldn’t have done it — I know I shouldn’t have done it — but it’s hard to think of any big advantage I got except to be able to comment fictitiously,” said Lott, an economist who has held senior research positions at the University of Chicago and Yale.
[…]
Julian Sanchez, a Cato Institute staffer, is the cybersleuth who tracked Mary Rosh back to John Lott.
Sanchez is a blogger — someone who maintains a Web site where they report and comment on the news — who had been tracking the debate between Lott and critics of his gun research. He became suspicious about Rosh after he noticed that several of Rosh’s online defenses of Lott seemed to track closely with arguments the scholar himself had made in private e-mails to Sanchez and other bloggers. He tracked Mary Rosh’s IP address (the computer code translation of the standard e-mail address) to Pennsylvania.
“I compared that IP with the header of an email Dr. Lott had sent me from his home address. And by yet another astonishing coincidence, it had originated at the very same IP address. Now, what are the odds of that?” he wrote in a posting on his Web site. “Sarcasm aside, we’re a little old to be playing dress up, aren’t we Dr. Lott?”
I hear that South Korean stem cell researcher is out of work. Maybe The Times can get him to come on board as their science editor. Credibility is certainly not a requirement.
Those of us on the left of center aren’t going to sit back and take it anymore. I’m sorry if that’s hurt people’s feelings but they’ve left us no choice. We are half of this country and yet our views are consistently marginalized, often by fake Democrats like Chris Matthews. Samela, a regular reader of mine heard Matthews speak sometime back and he was quite upfront about his agenda. He said “they like it when I beat up on the liberals.” He is the definition of a media whore. He whores for ratings and he whores for access.
Update: I always find it interesting when Chris Matthews and Rush Limbaugh use the same talking points, don’t you? How do you suppose that happens?
Boy that Washington Post chat with bloggers sure was fun, huh kids? It’s really cool when guys like Glenn Reynolds cojmpletely misrepresent themselves in a national forum. It shows once again how out of control the left is.
Here’s Glenn:
My own sense is that it’s very hard to preserve civility — or even a good ratio of interestingness to flaming — on sites that have high traffic without a fair degree moderation. There’s some sort of a threshold after which things tend to break down into USENET-style flamewars, which some people like, but which I’m tired of. I find the comments on Atrios, Kos, or for that matter Little Green Footballs, to be tiresome.
[…]
I love open comments, just as I love free beer, free pizza, and other giveaway goods. But I’m not entitled to them. And those who partake, I think, owe a certain degree of civility to their hosts.
Yes, and one certainly shouldn’t celebrate such incivility and encourage your readers to participate, right?
THE NYC TRANSIT WORKERS’ UNION has an unofficial blog, and it’s getting an earful in the comments. Here are some excerpts:
[S]econdly, if i could meet the masterminds behind this strike, i’d personally spit in each of their faces. I know fifty people at my campus who now cannot return to their families for the holiday season, and are being forced to spend their break in a hotel off campus until the transit system is running again. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves doing something this stupid this time of the year. Every single worker participating in the strike is extremely selfish and short sighted.
—–
You guys really have a lot of balls. All you do is drive around in circles. Your job isn’t hard at all. You get paid as much as cops and firemen, while much more as teachers. Something is wrong. You’re asking for way too much here.
—–
I am thoroughly disgusted with the TWU. Who are you to think you’re above the law? Who are you to take well-paying jobs (for your education levels) serving millions of people and then hold us hostage by striking?
I have a 16 month old son who will be taken to day care today in his STROLLER. In 20 degree weather. I am paid hourly and will lose today’s salary.
But they’re standing up for working people!
Meanwhile, Bloomberg has to be asking himself, “What would Rudy do?”
UPDATE: Apparently someone woke up long enough to remove the comments. [LATER: CraigsList removed the link, which was to an item featuring pictures of transit workers asleep at their posts.]
Glenn Reynolds knew exactly what he was doing when he linked to that blog and sent his massive readership over there to flame them. That’s within the rules of engagement. But it’s chickenshit when you don’t have comments yourself. And it’s dishonest in the extreme to pretend that you don’t engage that way when you do.
Jeff Jarvis: Glenn: I agree with your assessment of those particular sites. I wonder whether that is a function of size or topic or host’s tone.
I hate it when the host’s tone creates a tiresome atmosphere that promotes flaming ,don’t you? For instance, how about this for tone?
Instapundit: There was a time when the Left opposed fascism and supported democracy, when it wasn’t a seething-yet-shrinking mass of self-hatred and idiocy. That day is long past, and the moral and intellectual decay of the Left is far gone.
Reynolds doesn’t have comments. Fair enough. He prefers to play hit and run. Which is also fair enough. But he is in no position to be lecturing about civility. He’s a rabid partisan who knows exactly how the game is played.
It appears to me that this chat today was structured as a combat between Jane Hamsher and Jim Brady, with Jarvis and Rosen there as filler — and Reynolds there to promote hte idea that lefty blogs are uncivilized in contrast to the upslifting atmostphere of the right wing (oddly similar to Brady’s interview with Hugh Hewitt.)
But let’s review the history of civility in our recent public discourse, shall we? Let’s take a look at some of the words of people who are brought on the highest rated television shows to give political commentary, who are paid hundreds of millions of dollars to pontificate freely on radio day after day, who are welcomed into the homes of major establishment players in Washington:
I mean, if there is a party that’s soulless, it’s the Democratic Party. If there are people by definition who are soulless, it is liberals — by definition. You know, souls come from God. You know?
I said at the conclusion of previous hours — part of me that likes this. And some of you might say, “Rush, that’s horrible. Peace activists taken hostage.” Well, here’s why I like it. I like any time a bunch of leftist feel-good hand-wringers are shown reality.
Liberals have a preternatural gift for striking a position on the side of treason. You could be talking about Scrabble and they would instantly leap to the anti-American position. Everyone says liberals love American, too. No they don’t. Whenever the nation is under attack, from within or without, liberals side with the enemy. This is their essence.
O’REILLY: It’s a good question, Juan. And I don’t see it as a threat. I mean, I think you have to say to people, as we do with all our guests here, this is what’s likely to happen. And if they continue, those people continue to attack people personally, as Frank Rich does almost every week, and Keller allows it, then we’ll just have to get into their lives.
O’REILLY: All right, and that brings us to the other group. And you know, certainly ABC News is a responsible organization. They made a decision. And the folks can decide for themselves whether — who they agree with. The ACLU, I think, is a grossly irresponsible, irresponsible organization that is going out of its way to help Al Qaeda, that I don’t think ABC News is in that category at all. I mean, I think they’re doing what they think is best for the country. The ACLU is doing what they think is best for the country they envision, not the country we have now, but certainly is aiding and abetting the enemy.
The radical Democratic left is an army of soulless ghouls. Being of the living dead, they live in a world of death and try to impose it on we the living. Witness who led the charge: a radical homosexual, Barney Frank. A radical abortion Mafiosa, Barbara Boxer. What is difficult for we the living to comprehend is the reason they can engage in such anti-life abominations is because they have no souls.
That’s the tip of the ice berg. These are people who are feted by the president of the United States, who appear on the cover of TIME magazine and are profiled as merry jokesters, people who mainstream journalists refer to as “wonderful.” The Washington Post and NBC news referred to at least one of these people as “mainstream.”
Please, please spare me the crocodile tears about leftist incivility. We are living in a political world formed by rightwing commentators who have made a fetish of harsh eliminationist rhetoric hammered over and over again into the ether until it sounds like normal discourse. And we’ve been waiting for more than a decade for the mainstream media to notice that rightwing celebrity pundits, who reach millions upon millions of listeners and viewers a day, routinely accuse liberals of treason and celebrate our deaths. It’s made us a little bit testy. When important news outlets like the Washington Post see “leftist incivility” as a topic worthy of the rending of garments and gnashing of teeth it makes us wonder if they are even living in the same universe we do.
Famous and wealthy toxic political commentators like Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly are routinely lauded as normal mainstream partisans while ordinary readers of the Washington Post are excoriated for incivility when they complain about inaccurate coverage that benefits Republicans. This is bizarro world. It is insane. It is a sign of a very sick political culture.
This New York Times article on Internet privacy inspired the thought that one good way to protest at least some of the behavior of an American government acting like a third rate Stalinist satellite is to make anonymous websurfing the standard.
You don’t like George Bush having the opportunity to spy on you? Make yourself invisible, even when you surf for groceries. That way, simply using anonymity software will not be considered suspicious in itself – hey, I forgot to turn it off! And obviously, the more people who use anonymity software, the less suspicious its use by any one person.
So, here are a few Mac OSX programs to get started (the Times article has links to some PC programs). It’s probably a good idea even if you don’t want to use them now to download them anyway. Given this administration’s proclivities, there’s no telling how long anonymity software will be available.
You might ask: How good is this stuff? Does George Bush have a backdoor into these programs or their techniques, rendering them useless against a malicious US administration? Are they difficult to set up and use? Do they slow down web surfing and emailing?I don’t know. I’ve been told that PGP is exactly what it says it is: pretty good privacy, meaning it takes a very sophisticated computer program a considerable amount of time to decrpyt. The others are new to me so if anyone has any info please drop a note in the comments.
[Update: Link added to TOR. Link added to clarify the law at the center of the issue. Fallacious accusation #1 was corrected and changed in response to reader comments.]
Atrios links to the Bob Casey/Ed Rendell endorsement of Alito and it is pretty hard to take. I happened to see Rendell on Fox earlier today (Bill Hemmer’s show) and he didn’t just endorse Alito. He went out of his way to bash Democrats for being so partisan and failing to recognise that Alito is superbly qualified. Oh, and Bush won the election so he is out King.
He was good little Fox Democrat. I hope they gave him nice chew bone and a scratch behind the ears when he was done.
Talk Left has an interesting post up about a proposed expansion of the uniformed secret service which is being called a “federal police force.”
I guess the FBI, DEA and ATF aren’t getting the job done.
But why should they be given the power to “make arrests without warrant for any offense against the United States committed in their presence” … “or for any felony cognizable under the laws of the United States if they have reasonable grounds to believe that the person to be arrested has committed or is committing such felony.”
The last I heard police had to have probable cause to arrest someone. Apparently, the Republicans are trying to change the plain meaning of the fourth amendment.
I hate to get all Godwin, but come on. Update: Here is what the above link says about reasonable suspicion and probable cause:
Definition of Probable Cause
Many factors contribute to a police officer’s level of authority in a given situation. Understanding the what, when, why, and how of police conduct during a stop is confusing for most people. Varying standards of proof exist to justify varying levels of police authority during citizen contacts. While FyR maintains that it is never a good idea to consent to a search or answer incriminating questions, an understanding of these standards will help the citizen understand when police can surpass constitutional protections.
Reasonable suspicion Facts or circumstances which would lead a reasonable person to suspect that a crime has been, is being, or will be committed
At this stage, police may detain the suspect for a brief period and perform a frisk. In some cases, drug-sniffing dogs may be called to the scene, although officers must cite a reason for suspecting the presence of drug evidence in particular. Refusing a search does not create reasonable suspicion, although acting nervous and answering questions inconsistently can. For this reason, it is best not to answer questions if you have to lie in order to do so. Police authority increases if they catch you in a lie, but not if you refuse to answer questions. As a general rule, reasonable suspicion applies to situation in which police have reason to believe you’re up to something, but they don’t know what it is. Probable cause Facts or evidence that would lead a reasonable person to believe that a crime has been, is being, or will be committed and the person arrested is responsible
At this stage, police may perform a search, and often an arrest. Probable cause generally means police know what crime they suspect you of and have discovered evidence to support that belief. Common examples include seeing or smelling evidence which is in plain view, or receiving an admission of guilt for a specific crime.
For the conscientious citizen, the best advice regarding police authority is to stick to your guns and not waive your constitutional rights under any circumstances. Police officers will often give misleading descriptions of what their authority is, but you have nothing to gain by submitting to coercive police tactics. Police must make ad hoc decisions in the streets regarding their authority level in a given situation and these decisions are subject to review in court. Asserting your rights properly is good way to avoid arrest, but it is an even better way to avoid a conviction.
Here is what Law.com says: probable cause
n. sufficient reason based upon known facts to believe a crime has been committed or that certain property is connected with a crime. Probable cause must exist for a law enforcement officer to make an arrest without a warrant, search without a warrant, or seize property in the belief the items were evidence of a crime. While some cases are easy (pistols and illicit drugs in plain sight, gunshots, a suspect running from a liquor store with a clerk screaming “help”), actions “typical” of drug dealers, burglars, prostitutes, thieves, or people with guilt “written across their faces,” are more difficult to categorize. “Probable cause” is often subjective, but if the police officer’s belief or even hunch was correct, finding stolen goods, the hidden weapon or drugs may be claimed as self-fulfilling proof of probable cause. Technically, probable cause has to exist prior to arrest, search or seizure.
Speaking of writing your own epitaph: It’s not the same James A. Baker.
This is particularly galling because I was aware of the earlier flap about James A Baker,even wrote about it, so I checked. When I saw the Wikipedia entry I made the assumption that it was the “real” James Baker this time, “serving quietly” in an oversight position (which I assumed to be kind of like the defense policy board or something.) Wrong, wrong, wrong. Wiki was wrong and I was wrong to have believed it.
Played For A Fool
by digby
I’m sure that most of you have already read Glenn Greenwald’s blockbuster catch today in which it’s shown that Mike DeWine submitted legislation in 2002 that would have reduced the standard for FISA wiretaps from “probable” to “reasonable” cause, but the administration’s own Office of Intelligence Policy argued against it. Needless to say, this blows General Hayden’s explanation yesterday out of the water.
One little tid-bit I don’t think people may get right away about this is that the man who issued the statement arguing against changing the law is none other than major league heavyweight, James A. Baker III.
Since 2001 he has quietly served as head of the Office of Intelligence Policy and Review. This government agency handles all Justice Department requests for surveillance authorizations under the terms of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, advises the Attorney General and all major intelligence-gathering agencies on legal issues relating to national security and surveillance, and, according to the agency website, “coordinates” the views of the intelligence community regarding intelligence legislation. Baker has often testified before Congress on behalf of Bush administration intelligence policies, and most recently has defended the USA PATRIOT Act before the House Judiciary Committee.
You. Do. Not. Fuck. With. Jim. Baker. Not even Rove would dare try it.
I think Jimbo needs to be added to the witness list as well. Maybe we can “devaaaahn the will of the administration” from him.
In June of 2002, James Baker didn’t even believe it was constitutional, necessary or practical to use this “reasonable” standard to wiretap non US citizens. It’s very hard to believe that he’s changed his mind so much that he now thinks it was fine for the administration to wiretap US citizens without any kind of warrant at all.
He’s a very slippery operator. I’m sure he’ll come up with something creative to square what the administration was already doing when he made that public judgment. But it’s going to have to be mighty creative or he’s going to look like an idiot. I don’t think James A Baker III likes looking like an idiot.
I am really loving the wingnut magnolia wilting over us rude leftist vulgarians. I am tempted to get out my bulging folder filled with examples of right wing cretinism (which I’ve been collecting for over 15 years) but it’s a waste of time. The newsmedia is feeling beseiged by the left and that is an unadultered good thing. Being nice is beside the point.
But it’s a pleasure to reprint this e-mail from Rick Perlstein to this little naif over at CBS who seems to think that the left invented swarming the Amazon reviews section:
Cher colleague, you know nothing about Amazon.com and have fallen for a right-wing propaganda campaign. People have been driving down the ratings of books for ideological reasons since there have been reviews on Amazon, with conservatives in the lead by about half a decade.
I append an article I wrote on the subject in 2000, in which I observed “most conservative books” garner “80 percent five-star ratings and 20 percent one-star, as opposed to pro-Clinton books, which receive 20 percent five-star, 80 percent one-star.”
I humbly suggest a correction.
Rick Perlstein
That article was written in 2000.
To those of us not living in a cave for the last decade, the manipulation of book reviews on Amazon by freepers of one ilk or another is not a surprise any more than is right wing manipulation of book sales. I’ve always kind of admired them for it. For decades the right has had book clubs and book stores and now online book clubs and book stores to promote their own thinkers and writers. They support their idea people explicitly and compensate them well. I think that’s a good idea if your job is to persuade people that your idea is better than the other guys’ which is what politics is all about.
They also learned very early on to game the system in both the media and in places like Amazon by placing fake “liberals” on TV and radio and creating a false impression in the public’s consciousness that conservatism is a much more powerful force than it actually is. They have been using mischief to manipulate the Amazon rating system for years.
This is simply another illustration of the whiny-ass bedwetting that characterizes so much of the right wing. They benefit for years from gaming the system and then faint with the vapors when subjected to their own tactics.