Override Fails

Well the vote to override the veto failed as all expected. The purpose of the vote was only to put Republicans on the record on this issue. I was hardly going to comment on the vote, however one sentence in the WaPo article stood out for me.

The bill he refused to sign yesterday would have required the administration to begin the "phased redeployment" of U.S. troops out of Iraq no later than Oct. 1, with a goal of removing all combat forces by April 1, 2008, except those carrying out security, training and counterterrorism missions.

The highlighted part of the paragraph is what struck me. Now this has nothing to do with the appropriations bill itself, or Democratic strategy or the Iraq War. For that read Kos, or Digby or MyDD. The thing about that highlighted part is what it says about ability of today's press to actually report anything. A journalist reporting on the fate of a bill passed by the United States Congress ought to have at least a basic understanding of the American legislative process. The issue was not that Bush refused to sign it. If he had only refused to sign it, it would have become law on May 8. The President's signature is not needed for a bill to become law. It just isn't. The President did not refuse to sign the bill, he vetoed it. He sent it back to the Chamber in which it originated with his objections to the bill for it to be debated again and voted on again. That is different from refusing to sign. It may seem a minor point, but we should expect that reporters for the major daily newspaper of the nation's capital will at least get the minor points right. What I am describing is not a new feature of the Constitution. Our reporters should be familiar with the document.

What Liberal Media?

This tells us something about the state of the so called "liberal" media. Now Michael Kinsley is well known as a "liberal" pundit, yet it seems that he illustrates all too well how poorly progressive and liberal ideas are being represented in the major media outlets. Too often his views are more like Republican talking points than the views of a thoughtful liberal. Today he wrote this piece in reference to the growing scandal over the firing of the United States Attorneys. Mr. Kinsley's thesis is that the scandal is overblown and much ado about nothing. To make his point he links to an earlier Washington Post editorial here explaining the scandal in order to critique the editorial and show the slender basis for the scandal. The Internet being what it is, however, I went to the trouble of reading both Mr. Kinsley's piece and the Washington Post editorial to see how well Mr. Kinsley's critique held up. The answer was not very well.

To quote Michael Kinsley at length, here is his criticism of the Washington Post editorial:

An editorial in the Washington Post last Thursday, for example, avoids disingenuousness—but only at the price of utter confusion. It dismisses the Clinton administration precedent as “a red herring, not a useful comparison,” but fails to explain why. The editorial scrupulously points out that one of the US attorneys fired by Clinton was weeks away from indicting a powerful Democratic congressman—a closer connection to a more important investigation than anything now at stake. The Post concedes that Clinton’s mass firing was “unprecedented,” and “unprecedented” is the toughest adjective the Post can bring itself to apply to the recent Bush firings, too. Then it says, “But unprecedented doesn’t equal wrong.” It acknowledges that a “president…is entitled to have..prosecutors committed to his law enforcement priorities,” and is honest enough to include concerns over issues like immigration and obscenity cases as falling in this permissible-motive category. Then it runs out of steam, notes accurately that the Bushies have been lying up a storm, says this is another reason that the Clinton episode is a bad comparison, and stops.

But the editorial actually says

The Reno precedent is a red herring, not a useful comparison. The summary way she announced the move was, indeed, unusual if not unprecedented. But a turnover in the top prosecutorial jobs with a new administration taking power -- especially one of a different party -- was not.

Which most certainly consists of an explanation as to why the comparison was a red herring, contrary to Michael Kinsley's claim. Yes, as Kinsley states, the editorial points out that one of the US Attorneys fired by Clinton was weeks from indicting a major Democratic Congressional leader, but the editorial states in full about the Reno removal of this attorney is

...consider that when he was ousted by Reno, the U.S. attorney in the District, Jay Stephens, was just weeks away from deciding whether to indict House Ways and Means Chairman Daniel Rostenkowski (D-Ill.). Inconveniently for these conspiracy theorists, Mr. Rostenkowski was in fact indicted and convicted...

Not quite what Kinsley would have you believe. Kinsley, likewise, makes much of the use of the word "unprecedented" used by the Washington Post for both the Reno and Bush firings. But the Post editorial of this week describes the manner in which Janet Reno fired US attorneys to be unprecedented, not the act (she was, apparently, rather abrupt and curt). On the other hand, the Post editorial describes the Bush firings, not the manner but the act itself, as unprecedented

The question, then, is what to make of the president's move to fire several of the prosecutors. This recent group firing, in the midst of a presidential term, is unprecedented; Mr. Bush was simply incorrect yesterday when he described it as "a customary practice by presidents."

Finally, Mr. Kinsley protests that the Post editorial did not adequately explain the growing obstruction of justice charge related to the recent firings (from Kinsley)

Cohen cuts through all this, and offers several grounds for at least suspecting that the firings were part of an illegal obstruction of justice. Read it for yourself and see if you buy it. And try to be honest: would you buy the argument if it was being applied against a Democratic president? I’m afraid I wouldn’t, absent more evidence than I believe is there.

But the limitations of an editorial format, length primarily, hardly make it possible to outline the differences between the Reno and Bush firings (at which, as I've shown above, the editorial does a fine job) and give a full and detailed account of the reasons to suspect obstruction of justice charges as well. The conclusion of the Post editorial does a decent job though of laying out the basics and giving reason to believe that there are legitimate concerns (for more detail see Talking Points Memo). Specifically

(The potential for misusing the newly bestowed interim appointment authority to evade Senate confirmation is a separate, and troubling, concern.)

Internal administration e-mails released Tuesday offer some indications of those sorts of policy-related issues, from references to "woodshedding" the U.S. attorney in San Diego, Carol C. Lam, over immigration cases to complaints about whether Paul K. Charlton in Arizona and Daniel G. Bogden in Nevada were balking at obscenity prosecutions. But there are also ample grounds for suspicion about improper motives, including the involvement of White House political aides and telephone calls from lawmakers to prosecutors about politically sensitive cases. The dishonest conduct of the Justice Department has only served to deepen suspicions, to underscore the importance of figuring out exactly what transpired here and to distinguish this situation from the Reno precedent.

In short, once again, one of our foremost "liberal" pundits demonstrates himself willing to plainly mislead and distort the writings of someone else, in order to advance Republican talking points. Do folks in the press really wonder at the growth of daily Kos, TPM and the rest.

Our Press Corps

A beautiful indication of where our press corps is today can be read in this article by Howard Fineman in Newsweek Fineman writes:

Presidential elections are high school writ large, of course, and that is especially true when, as now, much of the early nomination race is based in the U.S. Capitol.

Read the whole article, but this quote is priceless, because it is really awful, and because he really means it. For most of the country the choice of elected officials is a matter of some importance, especially with our armed forces in the line of danger. But I have come to believe that folks like Fineman, the leaders of our discourse, actually feel that it is no more that "high school writ large". That is sad, truly sad.

I can't resist one more comment. From the end of his article

Sometimes they are cheered. Sometimes they are booed. Sometimes—and this is the worst fate—they get laughed at silently.

Yes Howard, sometimes they do get laughed at silently. I am quite sure that is true.

On The CT Primary

The Ham Hock of Liberty: Attention Pundits

The link takes you to an excellent post to some blogger NIM, which has also gotten a lot of attention at Kos and Eschaton. NIM is responding to the kind of vituperative media commentary from the likes of Chait, Klein, Siegel and Cohen toward the liberal net/grass roots effort to replace Joe Lieberman with Ned Lamont. These pundits are of the opinion that it is a kind of growing fascism that there exists the popular movement to replace Sen. Lieberman.

However, all that is happening is that a lot of people, including a large number from the state of Connecticut, are expressing their opinion by letter, newspaper article and yes the Internet, that Joe Liberman is a poor choice for Democratic Senator from the state of Connecticut. To those of us in the net/grass roots, this is simply freedom of speech and democracy in action. This is not remotely fascism. Now on the other hand we believe that things like stripping voter roles of people who are likely to vote for your opponent, arranging that there be few voting machines in districts that support your opponent, failing to register people in the opposition party on a technicality involving the weight of card stock used for the registration request, sending workers to the polls to challenge every voter in districts where your opponent has strong support, these things (things which have provoked much milder reactions in the above mentioned pundits) resemble fascism.

So to sum up:
pundits believe that

1. Wishing to not reelect your Senator is fascism
2. Stripping people of their right to vote to win an election is a minor error

liberal bloggers believe that

1. Wishing to not reelect your Senator is democracy in action
2. Stripping people of their right to vote is an intolerable assault on democracy

Guess which group I think is sane and which is nuts.

The Media are Loosing it

If this report concerning David Brooks' next column is at all true then the media truely are loosing it. Anyone remotely familiar with Daily Kos knows that no one is blindly following Kos. Open criticism and disagreement is the hallmark of Kos, throughout the communinty. Brooks is nuts.

Daily Kos: Updated: David Brooks calls out "kingpin" Kos

Response to the State of the Union

At Eschaton a few days ago, Atrios noted the probably media responses to the State of the Union, pointing out that whatever happens with the Alito confirmation the media story line will be bad for Democrats. This is no doubt true, but I think that there is a far more important issue, namely what will be the response of the Democratic base.

After all, the fact that the Republicans will portray the Democrats as unreasonable is only to be expected. It is rather like the prosecution at a trial portraying the defendant as guilty, it's just what they do.

The fact that the media will portray the Democrats as unreasonable is a problem to the large extent that the public sees the media as neutral or , god knows, liberal already.

Both of these can be overcome, I believe, However, will the Democratic base portray the Democrats as

A) strong minded opponents taking a firm stand against Alito's policies of corporatism and dictatorship whether the Democrats filibuster or not, and whether they win or not,

or will the message from us be

B) the Democrats are spineless wusses and craven failures.

See I think that message B, especially coming from us, will do a poor job of winning over moderates. I urge the Democratic base to work on providing message A, no matter what the outcome.

Somerby on Science

Now this is a very good post on the nature of science and the 'simple' stories that the press likes to tell. Bob has been a long time critic of the way the press dumbs down important stories. Too much of the news is broken into simple he said/she said type of presentation. Also, the press seems to be determined to present some simple narrative to every story that is brought up. The press has an absurd aversion to uncertainty and ambiguity. Bob links to this article by Harvard Physics Professor Linda Randall in which she discusses the uncertainty that is inherent in any new scientific research. She goes on to lament the extent to which descriptions of recent results so often fail to present any ambiguity and uncertainty. Results are too often presented as some kind of clear certainty. This is a grave disservice to the public who see some conclusion presented as a positive result only to have that overturned a few months or years later. Place your favorite food related warning here. It is an excellent read, both the original article and Bob's commentary.

One thing I take exception to, however, is the claim that the public won't accept the ambiguity. I don't believe that is the case. I think the public, by and large, will accept the uncertainty, it is the pundits and commentators that do not.

Comment on Somerby

Bob Somerby is again deep into exposing the absurdities of todays press corps. One of his recent rants has raised a bit of notice beyond The Daily Howler. The subject of this particular rant has to do with how much news coverage was actually given to the New Orleans convention center and when was the coverage given. Bob discusses the issue here at The Daily Howler. Now a lot of folks have a recollection of the events more in keeping with the standard story line and some of that is covered by Kevin Drum here.

Now strictly speaking, Bob is correct. The coverage had only just started maybe 18 hours, not 24, prior to the Paula Zahn interview and it did not get heavy until Thursday morning, not on Wednesday night. However, even though the coverage was light Wednesday night a goodly number of people had heard of what was going on by that time. Ted Kopple's claim that "we" have been reporting it for more than just today would also seem to be false if "we" indicates ABC news. In short, in the strictest sense Bob is right. And it is good to get even minor facts correct. This is the sort of thing that should be set right and to that extent his commentary is right on target. Bob correctly calls upon all commentators to meet the highest standards of accuracy.

However, Bob also seems to raise this error to the level of the claims during the Clinton/Gore period such as Whitewater and Love Story and the like. But this is ridiculous. The error in this case is almost entirely superficial. The substance of the issue with regard to the Convention Center is that for some 12-24 hours prior to Mike Brown's interview many reporters were aware of conditions at the Convention Center. Additionally these conditions had been on national news for some 6-18 hours at least. And yet FEMA, the agency which is supposed to be on top of what is going on, is only just learning these things, long after the news media did. The implication that Mike Brown could have learned about the Convention Center just by watching the news is indeed somewhat exaggerated. However, given that the information about the Convention Center was being discovered by reporters does suggest that FEMA ought to have been learning of it too.

I think that Bob is making a serious error in the way that he equates nearly all errors made being equally serious. He does not seem to be making any distinctions as to degree of error. This tendency to equate all errors as being the same is a fundamental failure of reasoning. To go off on what might seem a tangent, I must say that this failure of reasoning was something Galileo had to deal with to get modern science underway. Galileo needed to deal with this because if you were to actually drop two objects, one twice the weight of the other, from the top of some tower (in Pisa or elsewhere) the two objects will almost certainly not hit the ground at the same time, in spite of Galileo's claims. The reason we know now is that air resistance will affect the result and generally can be expected to slow down the smaller object more. So given that both his claims and Aristotle's are wrong, the simple conclusion is that they are both the same in being in error so the choice is between the illustrious Aristotle know for his brilliance over the ages or this upstart Italian of no known name. Galileo's argument, however, was that yes I'm wrong but the distance that I'm off by is less than the width of a man's hand. Aristotle's claim is off by more than the height of a man. Given that Aristotle is off by such a large margin, he's out to lunch. Given Galileo's claims being much closer to what actually happens, he is on to something. Thus modern physics and modern science is born. I think that this same reasoning as to who is being more inaccurate is also important in assessing these news media questions.

I also think that Bob's position is an extremely ironic one. He seems to be chastising liberal commentators for every error, however small, in exactly the same terms that he criticizes far more flagrant errors in the past. His reason for doing this is understandable, he doesn't want liberal commentators falling into the despicable behaviors so prevalent in the Clinton/Gore years. This is admirable. To explain the irony I must first say that I've never seen a compelling explanation as to why the liberal NYT and WaPo turned into the antithesis of journalism when dealing with Clinton. My recollection of the time (early '90's) makes me think that one motivation was to not let a liberal get away with the sorts of things that destroyed the conservative Nixon and that they would take a thoroughly hard nosed approach to Clinton for that reason. Not unlike what Bob is doing with liberals now. I must immediately say that I see no sigh of Bob becoming anything like the NYT and WaPo today. The transformation of those papers was also driven by an overwhelming arrogance that is absent in Bob. But I do think that the harshness of Bob's criticisms of liberals is often eerily reminiscent of the attitudes that brought about the "journalism" that his is so passionately fighting against.

Freedom of the Press

Well stories have gone back and forth regarding press freedom in New Orleans these days. There have been claims of a general press blackout that turned out to be exaggerated. It would appear that the press is pretty free to roam about, although there have been some instances of harassment. CNN had to sue to get the right to photograph the collection of bodies, but that too is now being allowed.

We get a lot of 'feel good' and patriotism reasons for supporting a free press, but I wanted to write something about the practical benefits of a free press and civil liberties in general.

Accomplishing some task like securing the boarders against terrorist attack is an extremely difficult thing to do. The boarders are long and so many people are coming through that providing complete security is nearly impossible. Now if we grant the public officials in charge of providing this security with broad powers to silence the press and arbitrarily arrest anyone then the task of providing security does become moderately easier but not all that much. It will remain a nearly impossible task. However, what will become very easy is to silence anyone who points out that the officials are failing to do the job. Under these conditions the officials will then be free to do a truly inept job of providing security with no fear of accountability and will typically over time do a worse and worse job of actually providing security. This is the model that has been followed through all of history. Granting officials these powers, restricting civil liberties and freedom of the press will eventually lead to far worse security than we have with these freedoms. That is why we need to insure that they stay in place.

Golgafrinchans

Golgafrinchans. That is how I see our current national leadership. That would include our pundit class as well the politicians, at least at the national level, who run our government. For those who are fans of Douglass Adams, no more need be said. If not, read the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy serries, or at least, "So Long and Thanks for All the Fish."

What Liberal Media

Just a link to the latest Atrios summary of the illiberal media.