"Was [Judith] Miller a cheerleader or a reporter? A propagandist or a journalist? How tainted was her work by a demonstrable bias for one set of informers—the former Iraqi exiles, who have their own agenda to push? Did the Times publish inaccurate stories because it failed to police her bias? Never mind her high-handedness: The Times owes its readers a comprehensive review of her recent work."
Those are questions Jack Shafer asked last week in Slate about New York Times reporter Judith Miller. Shafer's been asking questions about Miller's reporting for months. And he's posed some pretty damn good ones -- as has Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post -- largely centering on Miller's biased reporting, extreme partiality to a particular source with an extremely conspicuous agenda, and questionable adherence to several basic canons of journalism.
I'm confused. I thought mau-mauing the Times was all the rage these days. In media criticism terms, this is twenty M80s, half a jerrican of gas, ten packs of sparklers and a six-pack of Pop Rocks -- all waiting for a spark.
But no spark.
What is it exactly that has prevented all this from blowing up other than the fact that most of the people who drummed Howell Raines out of the business have benefited so mightily -- ideologically, that is -- from Miller's excesses?
Don't bother sending me the answer. I think I'm set.
--Josh Marshall
I do wish they'd gotten on it sooner. But The Washington Post has a very good editorial today -- Tuesday -- on the continuing shenanigans of the Texas GOP. Mid-decade redistricting is bad idea -- no matter how many novel excuses party shills come up with. And the Department of Homeland Security's investigation was, as The New Republic recently put it, "a joke." In the words of the Post, "The inspector general's office has deemed off-limits the concerns that prompted calls for an inquiry in the first place, while reporting no wrongdoing in a corner of this weird affair where wrongdoing never seemed likely. If the IG's office is right that the rest of the matter is not its business, then a different investigation must be conducted." Even The New York Times has some good stuff on the story today.
--Josh Marshall
From an article in Tuesday's Haaretz, a leading Israeli daily ...
According to Abbas, immediately thereafter Bush
said: "God told me to strike at al Qaida and I
struck them, and then he instructed me to
strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am
determined to solve the problem in the Middle
East. If you help me I will act, and if not,
the elections will come and I will have to
focus on them."
Maybe Abbas has a problem with liberal bias?
--Josh Marshall
Beside being bogus in constitutional terms, Texas Republicans' argument that they need to redistrict again because redistricting shouldn't be done by judges has always also been deeply disingenuous. Why? Because they were the ones who forced it into the courts. It's not quite the parricide begging sympathy as an orphan. But it's close.
This clip from an overdue piece in tomorrow's Times makes the point with a particularly good source ...
Some Texas Republicans — including Governor Perry and Tom Craddick, who became speaker of the state House in January when the party took control for the first time in 130 years — argue that the state's Congressional delegation, with 17 Democrats and 15 Republicans, does not reflect Texas voting patterns, in which nearly 60 percent of the votes cast for Congress last year were for Republicans.They say the current Congressional map is just an old Democratic gerrymander. And they say that although the Constitution requires the legislature to draw district boundaries, the current map was drawn by a panel of federal judges.
Others note that Republicans chose at the time to let the judges redraw the Congressional districts rather than compromise with Democrats who still held the majority in the state House.
John R. Alford, a professor at Rice University who was an expert witness for Governor Perry in the 2001 redistricting litigation, said the Republican Party knew at the time that the state Legislature, with its own new district map, was about to swing to Republican control in 2002.
"Republicans used the court-drawn plan as a place to park redistricting until they could address the issue when they were in control of the House and obviously better off in the Senate," Professor Alford said. "You give it to the courts knowing that, after 2002, you'll take it back."
He also disputed that the current Congressional map was a Democratic gerrymander, noting that voters in several districts, who choose Republicans for virtually every other office, have split their tickets to re-elect moderate Democrats.
"You can't have a gerrymander where six of the Democratic seats have Republican majorities," Professor Alford said.
Who knew we did congressional seats by proportional representation? Such a big reform. And I keep on politics. I thought I'd have heard ...
--Josh Marshall
The summmary section from today's Nelson Report ...
Summary: U.S. expert warns intel on N. Korea reprocessing indicates possible bomb test for Christmas. Seems to be saying this isn't Cheney/Feith faith-based intel, but the real thing. Puts a point to meetings today, tomorrow in Washington. South Korea has insisted on serious counter-proposal from U.S. to DPRK's Beijing initiative. So State is going through the motions. Still not clear that White House will authorize the real thing. Why is this so difficult, experts ask?Iran…recent meetings with Iranian officials, private experts, highlight concerns. As with N. Korea, U.S. seems focused on containment, not diplomacy, as per pressure on Japan to kill Iran oil deal. But, looks like Shell Oil can't be stopped. So where's the leverage? Iranians recognize everyone furious they've been cheating, and to fear serious sanctions from UNSC. Want U.S. to promise non-interference in internal politics. In return, what about terrorism funding?
Faith-based intelligence analysis. I like that.
--Josh Marshall
Oh please! Andrew Sullivan has a post today on the debate over the administration's bogus or exaggerated intelligence estimates. He notes a recent article by Slate's Fred Kaplan. "Slate's Fred Kaplan," he says, "also argues that the discrepancy between what we believed Saddam possessed and what we have so far found is best explained by the usual vagaries of intelligence assessments, not unlike the 'missile gap' of 1960."
I'm sorry but that's just too misleading a summary of what Kaplan said. What he described is a pattern one sometimes sees in how policy-makers use, or rather misuse, intelligence data. Sometimes politicians or military people believe so deeply that something is true (they just know it) 
that they start ignoring all the evidence that contradicts their belief and glomming on to every bit of data that confirms it.
Sometimes they're just so sure it's true that they'll even start fiddling with the facts a bit just to make sure you don't come away from the presentation with any doubts about how right they are. Zeal can become the hand-maiden of self-deception and even outright deception -- and like that hot place you've heard about the road to get there is paved with good intentions.
Chris Nelson, of The Nelson Report, has come up with the best word for it: faith-based intelligence analysis.
(By all means, do not take my word for it: read Kaplan's piece and make your own call.)
By and large, I think this is what happened. I also think there were at least a few cases where they bulldozed right over the line into simply telling the American public things they flat-out knew weren't true. But I'd say most of it was willful ignorance and in some cases a reckless disregard for the truth.
I've had people write in and say to me: if the administration was really lying about the WMD, why weren't they smart enough to plant some stuff for themselves to find and avoid the current embarrassment? And my answer is that I think they were as surprised as anyone to come up empty-handed. Really surprised. I think they knew the Niger uranium documents were bogus. But they figured there'd at least be plenty of chemicals and biologicals to go around once they got there.
In any case, what I think Kaplan was talking about was something quite different from the "usual vagaries of intelligence assessments."
Just speaking for myself, what I think it really comes down to is this: does it make it okay to have hoodwinked the American people, if you hoodwinked yourself in the process?
--Josh Marshall
Tomorrow, thoughts on Wes Clark and Howard Dean. The Dean fund-raising story is like a thunderclap over the Democratic party. Yesterday, Dean told reporters he had already raised $6.2 million in the quarter ending June 30th; and his campaign manager Joe Trippi says they're going to try to hit $6.5 million by tomorrow night. That will quite possibly end up being more than any of the other Democratic candidates this quarter. I'm no Dean booster. But that news is huge, demonstrating both the improbable strength of Dean and the demonstrable feebleness of the establishment contenders.
--Josh Marshall
From this morning's This Week, comments from Majority Leader Bill Frist ...
"I have this fear that this zone of privacy that we all want protected in our own homes is gradually — or I'm concerned about the potential for it gradually being encroached upon, where criminal activity within the home would in some way be condoned," Frist told ABC's This Week.
Where to start? Does Frist seriously think that the right of privacy, particularly with regard to the sanctity of the home, is going to be used to 'condone' what most people might consider 'criminal activity'? Like robbery, child abuse, drug use or trafficking, counterfeiting, murder, and so forth?
Really?
Or, is it just that he thinks -- and wants to signal that he thinks -- gay sex is or should be criminal?
--Josh Marshall
