A few days ago Matt Yglesias noted how a refusal to believe that Global Warming exists has become something like an article of faith within what passes today as conservatism, even though there's no logical reason why that should be the case other than the Republican party's current reliance on oil companies for campaign money and how much conservatives have invested in demonizing Al Gore. And I'm reminded how right Matt was by this 'review' of the Gore movie by Kyle Smith in the New York Post. Much of it is predictable snark and trash talk. But some of the argumentation deserves to be preserved in the annals of nonsense.
Consider this passage encouraging a thoughtful reconsideration of whether 'pollution' causes Global Warming ...
Global warming hasn't noticed that we got the lead out of our gasoline or that Stage One smog days in Los Angeles fell from 121 in 1977 to zero in 2004. All regulations and taxes to date have done nothing. Does this hint that pollution isn't the cause?
Priceless.
--Josh Marshall
Did Brian Bilbray get his race-baiting card to run on to replace Duke Cunningham?
--Josh Marshall
It's a sign of where the story is going. You know that Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA), Chairman of the House Appropriations committee, is now under criminal investigation as part of the expanded Duke Cunningham probe. Tomorrow's Times has a lengthy piece on one of Lewis' key staffers-turned-lobbyists, Letitia White.
She's the next big thing.
White too has become a focus of investigators. She left Lewis' employ to go work for Congressman-turned-lobbyist Bill Lowery, who's deep into the Brent Wilkes-Duke Cunningham-nogoodnik network.
And as long as we're on the subject I want to make sure everyone saw and sees this crackerjack reporting TPMmuckraker's Justin Rood did on White ten days ago.
--Josh Marshall
Bad news for Scooter Libby: his trial will not be about Joe Wilson, Valerie Plame, the war in Iraq, etc. It will be about whether he lied or not.
--Paul Kiel
David Safavian has just finished the direct examination portion of his testimony. Here's our report.
--Paul Kiel
Paul Kiel has now posted his detailed reply to the AP's response to TPMmuckraker's critique of John Solomon's reporting on Harry Reid.
--Josh Marshall
Hmmm. I hear that folks at the Associated Press are starting ask some uncomfortable questions about John Solomon's reporting on Harry Reid and his weirdly non-factual defense of it. This may not be over.
--Josh Marshall
Former Bush administration official and Abramoff pal David Safavian will take the stand today at his trial.
--Paul Kiel
I think we're about through with our coverage of the AP/Solomon bamboozlement -- unless Solomon comes out with yet more of the same. But I wanted to address this issue of, 'Even if the AP wrote deceptive pieces, shouldn't Reid still not have taken the tickets?'
I've knocked this around with a few readers. And I exchanged a couple emails about it this morning with TPM Reader GE. Had I written this originally for publication, I would have made it more polished and comprehensive. But I think it actually gives a candid and unrehearsed sense of where I am on this. So I'll reprint the last round of our exchange in toto, as originally written ...
TPM Reader GE ...
Hey, I appreciate your taking the time to respond. I guess I'd have to say, though, that the issue is a tad more than just "Sen. Reid got to sit ringside to watch a big prizefight because he's a U.S. Senator." That, I think you'd have to admit, doesn't quite capture the fact that he was a U.S Senator pushing major legislation affecting the prizefighting industry and the agency that gave him those seats.I really don't think that the issue is just that Senators get perks that you and I don't get, as you state in that link. It will be ever thus. But I do expect a Senator to avoid getting special perks from the industry he's seeking to directly affect, or, at least, I think that's the highest ethical road to take.
But, look, maybe you don't agree, or maybe you still feel you've got it covered already. That's fine, I'm not accusing you of any kind of malfeasance, really. It's your blog, and like I said, I appreciate
that you even took time to respond. I always enjoy reading the TPM family and I suspect I always will. Take care.
And I respond ...
I think in this case I'm ambivalent about whether there's even an appearance issue. He went to events run by an agency he was involved in legislating on. But there's little evidence he was influenced by it and in fact he stuck with a position they opposed. It's not quite like Verizon giving someone seats to a Knicks game, in as much as he is seeing the sport at issue, how it's run, etc. That said, it's still a freebie. So I don't disagree. I guess this instance seems close to de minimis to me. A very small matter. And in the context of the AP publishing really deceptive articles trying to inflate it into something it's just not, I feel comfortable with the tone of our reporting.
That pretty much covers it for me.
Paul will be running down the stuff AP made up in response to our reporting a bit later today.
Late Update: TPM Reader LM adds his thoughts "I think one point missed is that it is not like Reid never took tickets/seats before this recent event. It seems he was a pretty avid fan prior to this and had accepted tickets, which he paid for, for a number of events when nothing was apparently pending. To him, and to the commission, this might have been just a continuation of that relationship with neither thinking twice about it (although Reid probaby should have thought of it and turned the seats down due to the then currently pending legislation). I would think worse of Reid had he never accepted and paid for any tickets from them prior to this, as then it would really stink of some sort of attempt at "influence peddling" which the Senator should have identified immediately. But what we have here appears to be nothing that nefarious."
--Josh Marshall
If I'm understanding this correctly, both New York City and Washington, DC had their federal homeland security grant funding cut this year in large part because their grant applications were either imcorrectly filed or poorly prepared. Doesn't that seem like quite a coincidence? Especially since there appears to be affirmative evidence that the claim of improper filing about New York City is false.
--Josh Marshall
By busting House Speaker Hastert over the Abramoff scandal, ABC's investigative unit may have hurt parent company Disney's chances at winning tax breaks. . . If the Safavian trial was a round of golf, they would be on the 10th hole by now. . . Editor & Publisher makes note of the brewing brouhaha between bloggers and the AP over John Solomon's coverage of Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid's (D-NV) attendance at boxing matches. This and more in today's Daily Muck.
--Justin Rood
Uh-oh ... Sounds like it's 
subpoena time for House Appropriations Committee Chairman Jerry Lewis (R-CA).
Off the AP wire: "San Bernardino County, Calif., has been subpoenaed by a federal grand jury for records connected to House Appropriations Committee Chairman Jerry Lewis and a lobbying firm with strong ties to Lewis, a county official said. The subpoena asked for all records of the county's correspondence with Lewis, R-Calif., and his staff and with the lobbying firm, Copeland, Lowery, Jacquez, Denton, & White, which employs former California Republican Congressman Bill Lowery, said San Bernardino County's chief deputy counsel, Daniel B. Haueter."
Never a dull moment in our new gilded age.
--Josh Marshall
Wow. Bizarre and sad as it is, this is almost kind of fun.
The AP sent out a detailed response to our reporting and that of Media Matters on John Solomon's piece on Harry Reid. Paul Kiel, over at TPMmuckraker, had intended to respond to it today. But he got so bogged down with the new distortions and bamboozlement in Solomon's follow-up reporting that he didn't get to it.
Now, I just noticed that Media Matters has their response to the AP, along with the AP's original defense of its reporting, posted at their site.
So this gave me a chance to glance over some of the AP's claims about TPMmuckraker's reporting. And most of the assertions are so demonstrably false that it's hard for me even to figure what sort of meltdown is going on over there.
Again, Paul's going to address the AP's rejoinder to TPMmuckraker tomorrow in some systematic sort of fashion. But let me just hit on some points that jumped out at me.
Here's one example from the AP ...
TPM Muckraker stated mistakenly that AP failed to report that there is an absolute exemption allowing lawmakers to take gifts from federal, state and local officials. AP, in fact, accurately reported that there is a general exemption for such gifts but that the Congressional ethics manual clearly warns members of Congress against accepting such normally permitted gifts if they are connected to efforts to influence their position on legislation.
All I can think is to be generous and assume the author of this response actually hadn't read what Paul Kiel -- who's been covering this at TPMm -- wrote.
Paul was very clear. What he said was that Solomon buried these details down in the piece in order to create a lead that made the whole ticket issue seem like a much bigger deal than it was.
Was Paul not clear enough about this?
Look at his words. In the post in question, Paul reprinted Solomon's one sentence lead, then explained the details which significantly deflate Solomon's story. And then he says this ...
Now, Solomon puts all these facts in his piece. So he's not covering up a key piece of information like he did last time. He seems to realize that he doesn't have any real story. So Solomon argues that Reid, out of an abundance of caution, should have paid for the tickets to avoid the appearance of impropriety.
(ed.note: The reference to 'last time' is back in February when we caught Solomon bamboozling on the Reid beat the first time.)
So AP: "TPMMuckraker stated mistakenly that AP failed to report ..." and TPMmuckraker: "Solomon puts all these facts in his piece. So he's not covering up a key piece of information ..."
What am I missing? If you have any question that the antecedents of 'these facts' includes reference to the exemption issue, I encourage you to read the post.
At another point in the AP rebuttal they write, "Contrary to TPM Muckraker assertions, Senator Reid did not vote against the legislation the Nevada commission supported. Senators Reid and McCain sponsored legislation the commission wanted to change."
Again, bizarre. The AP says we said something we never said and then 'rebuts' our nonexistent-statement with what we actually said. And if you look at the point that's actually at issue -- whether Reid came down for or against the commission's position -- the distinction he's alleging is basically a distinction without a difference.
What Kiel wrote was that Reid voted for legislation the commission opposed. I tried scanning through Kiel's posts to see if there were any instances where he bollixed up the sentence and said Reid voted against legislation they supported (as the AP claims) as opposed to voting for legislation they opposed. But, as far as I can tell, he didn't even do that.
(ed.note: Again, if you have any questions about what I'm asserting about our coverage, you can find every post we've published on this topic collected together here.)
Who says the commission opposed the legislation? Well, among others, John Solomon. As Paul quotes Solomon saying, Reid supported creating a "commission that Nevada's agency feared might usurp its authority."
After this response came out, Solomon tried to imply that Reid changed the legislation to be more to the commission's liking. But late this afternoon Kiel exposed this one as yet another howler.
I mean, I think I'd be within my rights to say they're just making it up. Like they can't help it: 'Stop me before I bamboozle again!' But, again, I figure they just didn't bother to read what we wrote before issuing their rebuttal.
What do you make of it?
--Josh Marshall
Can one man catalog all John Solomon's Reid bamboozles? Paul Kiel's trying. And he's found yet another.
Actually, in all seriousness, keep Paul in your thoughts. Chronicling this much recidivist bamboozlement is like drinking from a burst water main. But he's holding up pretty well so far.
--Josh Marshall
The bamboozling past of the "yellow badge" bamboozler -- who's also now advising President Bush on Iraq.
--Josh Marshall
Have we been wrong about frogs all along?
Yesterday I did a post with
the oft-mentioned story of how a frog will sit still for his cooking when put in water that is slowly brought to a boil.
But TPM Reader EG wrote in yesterday to tell me that about a year ago he ran this story past a respected frogologist (actually, the word is apparently 'herpetologist' but that sounded more like a doctor they might have on call at the local Planned Parenthood clinic) and the frogologist said this simply isn't true.
As the water heats up, the frog starts to wig out. And if he can bail before the boil, he will.
Can anyone confirm this? Is the frog anecdote wrong? And if this story isn't true, how much more must we be in the dark about?
Late Update: Power of the web. Seems Fast Company reported out the details of the frog hoax ten years ago. We've all been deceived.
Later Update: Another debunking of the frog hoax.
Even Later Update: Yet another research-based refutation of the frog canard, along with bonus frog heating research.
--Josh Marshall
The Solomon Bamboozlement geyser continues to blow! And we've got the latest example.
--Josh Marshall
Seems the AP's John Solomon maybe got some flack for the particularly misleading follow-up piece he wrote last night about Sen. Reid. He's now retooled the lede to make it a bit less tendentious.
--Josh Marshall
The bigger they come: Government prosecutors move to wrap up their case against Abramoff pal David Safavian; Bush "pioneer" Tom Noe pleads guilty to funnelling illegal cash to the Bush-Cheney '04 campaign; Kentucky Gov. Ernie Fletcher, under indictment, loses his running mate. This in more in today's Daily Muck.
--Justin Rood
The last couple days we've been going back and forth with AP writer John Solomon's reporting about Harry Reid and these boxing tickets. He's back tonight with another piece which is written in such a way that it's hard to come to any other conclusion but that the composition of the piece is meant mislead readers. I know that's a tough claim. But I think it's merited. Paul Kiel is going to have a run-down on it shortly over at TPMmuckraker.
As long as we're on the subject, let me share a few thoughts with you.
What's this story all about and why won't we let go of it?
At the end of the day, Sen. Reid got to sit ringside to watch a big prize fight because he's a US senator. I didn't get to go and neither did you. I think those facts speak for themselves. If that's Solomon's point, put us down as a big thumbs-up.
But in writing about it, Solomon buried or omitted key facts about what happened with the unmistakable intention of pumping the incident up into something it just clearly wasn't. Did Reid vote in favor of the agency that gave him the credentials? Did taking them actually violate any ethics rules? And in his follow-up reporting, Paul Kiel has found additional factual errors in Solomon's original report. There's a pattern of selective use of information and misleading omissions that, candidly, I find surprising, maddening and offensive.
Why the effort to pump up this one story? Because Harry Reid's a Democrat and you really want to get the Senate minority leader on an ethics rap. Bill Jefferson and Alan Mollohan aren't good enough. Not high enough on the totem pole. There's just no other way to understand the reporting on this story. And in this case, the method of distortion is very similar to the one Solomon used in his last piece about Reid. It's becoming an identifiable MO.
If you're going to take a berm on the mountain range of congressional ethics and cut corners, omit key facts and get other facts wrong to manufacture a false appearance of balance, we think it's right to call you on every single distortion and error. And we're going to keep on doing just that.
--Josh Marshall
Then again, word from Missouri ...
I was holding back, but dude?!?"The vast majority of Democrats totally understand that Dems running in reddish states can't have stereotypically liberal positions on hot-button social and cultural issues. I think everybody gets that."
No, no, no. THEY DON'T GET THAT AT ALL.
"Reddish"? Dems don't get that notion even when it comes to blood red states.
Come on. If Dems got it, the party would have never nominated Kerry, and Hillary would be consigned to the oblivion of a Senate committee chairmanship, at best.
In fact, I'm trying to conjure up any factual basis for thinking that the majority of Dems get that, let alone a "vast majority."
I lived in Louisiana when Dukakis ran. I lived in Missouri when Kerry (his fricking lt. gov.!) ran. They were jokes. Not just unelectable. Jokes. Howard Dean? Another joke. Hillary? God help us.
Do you have any idea how demoralizing it is having these folks wrecking the top of the ballot again and again? It not just that those of us in red states have to endure GOP presidencies, just like you blue staters. But we get the shit kicked out of us up and down the ballot. It's a disaster.
You tell me how it is that Dems managed to nominate two Massachusetts liberals for president during the greatest conservative movement in this country since--I don't know--prohibition? It sure ain't because a vast majority decided to accommodate the mood of the country.
With those two nominations as bookends to the last 18 years, I don't think the problem is that reporters like Goldberg keep repeating the same old tired cliches. So long as the Dems keep living those tired old cliches, you'd have to become a novelist to write a different storyline. Don't shoot the messenger.
I guess my rejoinder would be that it was a wooden and unoriginal version of the message.
But I'll let TPM Reader ZR speak for me ...
Josh -Since you ask for other people's responses to the Goldberg NYer story:
I was really glad to read your post, as i had exactly the same response to the story when I read it. It's not that any of the stuff Goldberg talked about was untrue, or unimportant exactly, or even unfair to Democrats. (The concern, for instance, that moderate red-state candidates may be harmed by a more outspoken, anti-Bush party leadership strikes me as legitimate, and who knows how it'll play out?) It's just that, if you follow this stuff, the issues Goldberg focused on have been so completely hashed out already. It would be generous to call them conventional wisdom. What they are is something like a basic backdrop to the much more dynamic trends and "cross-cutting alliances", as you say, which are actually taking place and might be worthy of attention.
The other thing is -- and this goes beyond the shortcomings of this particular lame story --
I understand the NYer isn't writing for a political-junkie, DC crowd.But even so, the NYer consistently includes better journalism, across just about every other subject, than anyone else out there. So you'd like to think they'd have something to say about Washington that actually advances the ball conceptually, and helps readers understand politics in a fresh way. And I don't think they've figured out how to do that.
Enjoying your site as always.
ZK
More soon.
--Josh Marshall
Word from Kansas ...
Josh,In spite of being a far left progressive whose views of the media narrative, well-skewered by your parody, is best explained by the Daily Howler, here in the midwest there is something to be said of former liberals, such as Claire McCaskill in Missouri, trying to portray themselves as centrists -- whatever that means -- in an effort to dodge the guns-gays-and-god bullets that are so potent here. Look at Democratic Governor Kathleen Sebelius in Kansas. Just today she picked as her Lt. Gov. running mate candidate the head of the GOP in Kansas who just switched his registration to Democratic....in Kansas!
That is on the heals of Paul Morrison, a law-and-order Republican prosecutor, becoming a Democrat a few months ago to run for Kansas Attorney General. And there are others doing the same.
What is going on? In a bright red states such as Kansas, the guns/gays/god crowd have pushed the moderates out of the Republican party and the Democrats are conscious of the need to capture the center to create a long-lasting political realignment. Various candidates approach that task in different ways. The fact that some Democratic governors, such as Schweitzer in Montana, are anti-gun control and not afraid of the "leftist base", shows the strength of the Democratic party west of the Mississippi and east of the Sierras. The mountain west, surely, and the northern plains, possibly, are where the Democratic party will find its future leaders. Even if a few of us out here would prefer Russ Feingold, he is not going to be on the 2008 ticket. Kathleen Sebelius has a better chance of being on the national ticket than he does.
AB
AB makes a point the inattention to which was, I think, one of the biggest problems with Goldberg's piece. The vast majority of Democrats totally understand that Dems running in reddish states can't have stereotypically liberal positions on hot-button social and cultural issues. I think everybody gets that. I don't deny that there are arguments on where to draw the line. There are. Everybody, to one degree or another thinks that their issue is a little less compromisable than the trest. But, in general, no kidding. And AB's reference to Schweitzer is a good example of that recognition. Look who his supporters are, in terms of activists and online types around the country. This is why, despite the fact that he's often portrayed as the embodiment of the whacked-out, Bush-bashing, run-on-universal-abortion-in-Utah online left, Kos as often as not is supporting candidates who, by Goldberg's standards, are centrists or moderates and probably disagree with Kos on several key issues.
--Josh Marshall
TPM Reader CC says ARGH ...
Josh,My response to the Goldberg article: "ARGH!!!!" Not again. I'm with you on the cliches and rehash of "what's wrong" with the Democratic Party. I don't even know where to start. I live in Virginia. There will never be a Democratic candidate as liberal as I am to win in this state. I accept that. Democrats need to be the Democrat that they are, wherever they find themselves, and know their voters. Basically, what all the articles in this vein basically say is, if Democrats don't reject Hillary and John and Ted and Barbara, and start becoming more like the Republicans, they are doomed. The thread of the Republican noise machine runs throughout these stories and has basically been adopted as the starting point for what ails the Democrats, including how Democrats speak about themselves. I never ceased to be amazed by it.
As for not running on Bush-bashing, give me a break. Democrats can do both. You can have legitimate policy agendas and trash the guy. He deserves it. The Republicans made Democratic/Clinton/Gore/Kerry/and now Gore again-bashing a cottage industry since 1992. So cry me a river about the Bush-bashing.
I hope those Democrats who are seriously thinking of running for office, whether in '06 or '08, use their heads and don't take these types of articles seriously. All they do is create the sense that you have to be all things to all people. Whack A Mole candidates. Impossible. Run on what you know and what you think you can do for America. And forget the rest.
Cheers!
CC
There's a lot to say on this whole subject of Goldberg's piece. But I think CC actually speaks for the great majority of fired-up Democrats on the web when it comes to evaluating candidates to standards of ideological litmus tests. Relatedly, I think people frequently mistake the intensity of the Dem online political world with how far to the left people may or may not be.
More on this whole topic later.
--Josh Marshall
Another TPM Reader with a semi-positive reaction to the Goldberg piece ...
Josh,
I, too, found his article less nuanced than his past work covering the Middle East. Perhaps he just needs more time to get up to speed.
However, there is truth to Goldberg's essential thesis, especially about Hillary. Nobody is enthusiastic about Hillary running for president except the Clintons, her staff and crack-smoking New York Liberals. Everybody Democrat who can fog up a mirror knows that a Hillary candidacy would energize and unite a demoralized GOP and do the exact opposite for the Dems.
As I'm sure you know, it's not easy to volunteer for a political candidate. You need to really believe in him/her in order to donate your precious time and do grunt work like going door-to-door or cold-calling registered voters. This article and others like it should serve as a warning for Hillary, Al and other hard-core Liberals like Russ Feingold: You're going to have a very difficult time drumming up enthusiasm in middle America. It wouldn't surprise me if Hillary's campaign imploded in the mid-West because true enthusiasm for her is so low that her network of volunteers could break down.IAA
At least on the point of the Hillary candidacy, no arguments from me. It's always struck me as a totally crazy idea.
--Josh Marshall
A Bush Pioneer docket?
TPM Reader BK points out that Ohio Coingate heavy Tom Noe's guilty plea makes him the second Bush Pioneer to plead guilty to a politics related crime. Jack Abramoff being the first.
Brent Wilkes seems pretty certain to the be third, though he may actually take the thing to trial.
(Ken Lay, of course, just got a flat out guilty verdict. But we'll keep the standards high and limit contestants to crimes narrowly connected to politics.)
Anyone else pleading out who we're forgetting?
--Josh Marshall
A TPM Reader responds ...
Josh,While I understand some of your points, I read the Goldberg piece recently and thought it contained a lot of good things.
I live in Minnesota and find some of the sentiments expressed by Midwesterners in the piece reflective of what Goldberg is getting at. There is a feeling of pragmatism that needs to come through on many issues in the middle states if the Dems want to take charge. If the Dems are doing some of the things you indicate, they need to build it into a message for MN and other areas that comes across clearly and not just as Bush-bashing. I am a media savvy person – more so than most around me (after all, I read TPM) – and I think the party can do a better job with moderates and “Regan Democrates” here. It is not so much what they are doing as how they are sounding and what’s getting across to voters.
-RLS
Most of the other responses have been more in line with my thoughts. But I'll try to run a few other representative responses.
--Josh Marshall
I had some tough things to say about Jeffrey Goldberg's piece on the Dems in last week's New Yorker. I didn't link to it because as near as I could tell it wasn't linked on the site. But now a reader has sent me the link. So here it is. I'd be curious to hear other people's reactions.
--Josh Marshall
I know this isn't something we don't already know. But it occurred to me again or rather the grievous wounding of CBS News reporter Kimberly Dozier a few days ago brought it home to me with new force.
As far as I can remember, I don't think a prominent US journalist has been killed in Iraq since Michael Kelly and David Bloom died at the very beginning of the conflict. (I know many lesser-known and/or non-US journalists have been killed, not to mention thousands of civilians; my point is not to set deaths of the prominent up as more consequential, only to use it as a point of illustration. So bear with me.)
So if we were to use the metric we usually go by in evaluating the human cost of the war for the US, you would say, no deaths in Iraq for name US journalists.
Yet, in the case of journalists -- because we know them and their injuries get a lot of individual play -- we can see that this gives a highly distorted impression of the underlying reality. Just off the top of my head I think I can think of something like a half a dozen 'name' journalists who've received horrible, life-changing injuries -- Dozier, ABC News anchor Bob Woodruff, Time's Michael Weiskopf, who had his hand blown off by a grenade and others I'm probably just not remembering.
Again, I know it's no revelation that a war's cost is counted in the crippled and the maimed as well as the dead. But this little window into the war shows how much that number of the dead leaves unsaid, especially in this war in which, thankfully, medical technology is allowing many to survive who would surely have died in earlier conflicts.
--Josh Marshall
Another very significant detail missing from yesterday's AP piece on Harry Reid: it would have been illegal for Reid to have reimbursed the Nevada Athletic Commission for his seats to the boxing matches.
--Paul Kiel
Department of Can't Make It Up, Or ...
Iran 'Yellow Badge' Bamboozler Taheri invited to the White House to advise President Bush on Iraq.
--Josh Marshall
Ivo Daalder: "In yet another sign that sanity may be returning to US foreign policy, Secretary Rice is set to announce teh administration's readiness to join in talks with Iran over its nuclear program. This is a good -- if long overdue -- step in the right direction. But unless a willingness to talk is accompanied by a willingness to engage in real negotiations, it may not be enough to end the crisis."
--Josh Marshall
Feeling hungry? Try Sen. Conrad Burns' $500-a-plate lobbyist breakfast! Why the cost? We hear it's heavy on grade-A pork. Also, a former Abramoff associate takes the stand in the trial of White House official David Safavian. This and more in today's Daily Muck.
--Justin Rood
Good Times article about Harold Ford's race for Senate in Tennessee. This'll be an exciting race.
--Josh Marshall
I don't know whether Democrats will ever come up wtih those 'new ideas' for public policy that so many of the wise people are always clawing for. But I think we can say definitively that the more literary run of magazine journalists will never come up with any new ideas for articles about Democrats to pitch to their editors. I've been falling in love again with the New Yorker recently. So Lord knows I don't want to be critical. But this evening I picked up the copy of the magazine that came out while I was out of the country. And I started reading Jeffrey Goldberg's piece on the Democrats. And I was just astounded -- transfixed, I might almost say -- by the sheer dense packing of cliches and the just plain unoriginality of the whole thing.
I think I've read this article one hundred times -- both in its pre-2006 versions and the new-and-improved 2006 editions.
It goes something like this.
President Bush is very unpopular these days and Democrats think they may win back the Congress because of it. But is hating President Bush enough? Or do Democrats need a positive agenda as an alternative to the Republicans? It is thought by some that it might not be enough. Those somes are right to be worried because there aren't as many liberals in the US as conservatives. So trying to frame the election around torture and warrantless wiretaps may not be a good idea. Another reason to be worried is that the white working class, farmers, suburbanites and deeply religious are no longer all reliable Democratic constituencies. But there are some candidates trying to reach out to these ignored constituencies. But will those centrists be forced to cater to the party base and its philosophy of pessimism? It is feared by some that they may be forced to cater.
I won't bore you with any more of my weak parody. But that's actually not that far from the substance of the article.
What struck me most about this article was how little grasp Goldberg seemed to have of the divisions and cross-cutting alliances that exist in the Democratic party today. Politicians that are darlings of the Democratic blogosphere appear in the piece as its critics and sworn enemies -- in most cases, seemingly, based on their willingness to provide a quote taking down one of the author's straw men.
The online activism world is just one part of the Democratic party equation. But having a little familiarity with it, I think that what stands out about its impulses is its relatively non-ideological nature. If you look at the candidates blogs have gotten behind aggressively, they're very frequently candidates who don't meet key liberal litmus tests. This seems lost on Goldberg.
I know I've been somewhat harsh in this post and asserted more than I've explained or demonstrated. I'll try to expand on these points and overcome this shortcoming in some follow-up posts. But there are actually some significant and timely issues churning up out of the Democratic party's struggles today. It would be interesting to talk about them.
--Josh Marshall
Uglier and uglier. The FBI is now saying that during their earlier raid on his house, Rep. Jefferson (D-LA) was on the premises during the raid and tried to hide documents from FBI agents as they were conducting the search. That's not proven. But it's the sworn testimony of one of the FBI agents.
--Josh Marshall
This is impressive. CNN took John Solomon's AP piece on Sen. Reid and actually made it even more misleading. More in a moment.
Here's the run-down of how they managed it.
Update: MSNBC did the same thing.
Later Update: It looks like this was a change that came from the AP.
--Josh Marshall
All those pieces you missed over the long weekend on Cheney's crusade for secrecy and the continuing fallout over the FBI's raid of Jefferson's Congressional office in today's Daily Muck.
--Paul Kiel
AP's Solomon: Sen. Reid (D-NV) voted against state boxing commission after accepting the commission's boxing tickets which Senate rules say he was allowed to accept.
(All joshing aside, if I didn't know better I might think that Solomon was developing something of an Ahab complex with that Great White Whale of the Senate, Harry Reid. Back in February, Solomon produced a lengthy expose on Team Abramoff's alleged efforts to sway Reid to support their Marianas sweatshop clients, without ever mentioning that Reid consistently voted against the Marianas sweatshop owners. That's a rather salient fact. And once you knew it, the whole piece pretty much collapsed, leaving Solomon with a quid in search of a quo. And perhaps not even a quid. The whole thing was a genuine embarassment. Now, Solomon's back reporting that Reid accepted boxing tickets he was allowed to accept from his home state's boxing commission and in exchange voted against the people who gave him the tickets. ( He voted for more federal boxing regs.) When will the corruption end? Paul Kiel has the details.)
--Josh Marshall
Here are a few places to look for further discussion of possible constitutional issues raised by the search of Rep. William Jefferson's (D-LA) Capitol Hill office. First there are these posts by Bob Bauer (one, two and three). Here's Marty Lederman laying out some of the key potential issues. And here's Jack Balkin, who is not impressed with the arguments of Hastert and Pelosi.
In general, I stick by my earlier stated belief that there no separation of powers issues raised by the FBI executing a search warrant on a congressman's office in the conduct of a bribery investigation. Especially, as in this case, when the target was refusing to turn over subpoenaed documents. However, Bauer does point to a development, which has gone largely unremarked, that I think does raise tangible separation of powers issues: the Justice Department's decision to start conducting 'interviews' with members of Congress to ferret out who was involved in the leaks of the NSA wire-tapping program.
I'll leave the textual analysis to the law profs. But this kind of scrutiny of Congress is very much the sort of thing the constitution means to prohibit. Go back and read your English history and colonial history, the stuff the constitution writers had as their point of reference.
--Josh Marshall
With all the debate about the warrant executed on Rep. Jefferson's office, let's not forget the context in which this stink arose.
Earlier this month, we found out that the Duke Cunningham case was expanding and that the Duke case investigators were requesting documents from Congress as part of their probe into the roles of other members of Congress. The response from the Hill was, in so many words, 'No, You're asking for too much stuff.'
That response came with Denny Hastert's seal of approval.
As the Times described the back and forth on May 16th ...
Justice Department investigators and lawyers for the House of Representatives are wrangling over a request by the department for Congressional committee documents related to its expanding inquiry into the bribery scheme that involved former Representative Randy Cunningham, a Republican Congressional official said Monday.The United States attorney's office in San Diego has asked for copies of ''tens of thousands'' of documents from the House Appropriations and Intelligence Committees, the official said, as part of its inquiry into whether Mr. Cunningham illegally influenced the process the committees use to designate money for military projects.
But lawyers for the Republican-controlled House rebuffed the request as unreasonably broad, the official said, and asked the United States attorney's office for a shorter list.
And who's in the crosshairs in this expanded Cunningham investigation? "Several members" of the House Appropriations Committee reported the Times back on May 12th. And, in particular, Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA), Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee.
Denny Hastert knows what's coming down the pike. He's taking the opportunity of the Jefferson search warrant to float this specious constitutional argument and clip the investigators' wings on the most politically favorable terms.
--Josh Marshall
TPM Reader RP was kind enough to send along this floor speech from Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) on the FBI's warrant to search Rep. Jefferson's (D-LA) office ...
Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Madam Speaker, I disagree with the bipartisan House leadership criticism of the FBI's search of a Member's office. I know nothing specifically about the case, except that the uncontroverted public evidence did seem to justify the issuance of a warrant.What we now have is a Congressional leadership, the Republican part of which has said it is okay for law enforcement to engage in warrantless searches of the average citizen, now objecting when a search, pursuant to a validly issued warrant, is conducted of a Member of Congress.
I understand that the speech and debate clause is in the Constitution. It is there because Queen Elizabeth I and King James I were disrespectful of Parliament. It ought to be, in my judgment, construed narrowly. It should not be in any way interpreted as meaning that we as Members of Congress have legal protections superior to those of the average citizen.
So I think it was a grave error to have criticized the FBI. I think what they did, they ought to be able to do in every case where they can get a warrant from a judge. I think, in particular, for the leadership of this House, which has stood idly by while this administration has ignored the rights of citizens, to then say we have special rights as Members of Congress is wholly inappropriate.
Sounds exactly right to me.
--Josh Marshall
A number of readers have written in taking umbrage or exception at my suggestion that there really are no constitutional issues raised by the FBI raid on the office of Rep. Bill Jefferson (D-LA).
A number of those emails, candidly, have been a lot of rhetoric and huffing and puffing without much solid argument.
Others make a different argument. We shouldn't see this incident in isolation but rather in the broader context of the White House's disregard for the role of law and repeated assertions of constitutionally dobious executive power. This strikes me as a stronger argument. But it's not clear to me that the decision to mount this raid or seek the court approval for it came out of the White House, let alone from the president. (Since I've been away for a week, I'm at a bit of a disadvantage. Did I miss some evidence or reporting that pointed in that direction.) At least from a distance, the impetus for this appears to come out of the much more aggressive tactics of the Public Integrity section of the Justice Department -- something that's caused the White House a lot of grief. And all that aside, this still leaves unaddressed what specific constitutional impediment there is to executing a search warrant.
Yet another argument is the novelty of the case. In almost 220 years of American history there's never been a law enforcement raid on a congressional office. That certainly raises some questions. But I think part of the answer may come from looking at how many bribery investigations and/or indictments there have been of sitting members of Congress. If anyone has an exact or even a rough number I'd be obliged if you could send it along. But I suspect it's quite small. And a good part of the reason may be the degree to which Jefferson has resisted cooperating with the investigation. On this last point I'd like to hear more. But I remain unconvinced.
So again, any good arguments on this one? And is anyone prepared to make a specific and serious argument that this raid may have been unconstitutional on separation of powers grounds?
--Josh Marshall
Sad.
Prime Minister Tony Blair caved in to White House pressure by sharpening language on Iran and softening it on global warming in a speech he delivered Friday at Georgetown University, according to a British press report Sunday that Blair's office immediately denied.
But we're past that, right?
--Josh Marshall
Another question: over the course of the week I was away, quite a number of people appear to have accepted it as a given that at a minimum grave constitutional issues were raised by the Justice Department executing a search warrant to search a congressional office.
But why exactly?
It's really not clear to me that there's any constitutional issue raised at all.
Many parliamentary democracies have laws that grant legal immunity to lawmakers -- the generous rationale being that the government could abuse its law enforcement powers to intimidate or punish the parliament. But US lawmakers have never enjoyed such an immunity.
If the Feds can raid a congressman's house, it's not clear to me why they can't raid his office. Sure, there's some room for prudential restraint and a respect for comity. But if the DOJ can't search a congressman's office, then the power to investigate and prosecute close to falls apart since that creates a safe harbor for incriminating information. Any serious claim that the functioning of Congress falls outside the bounds of the DOJ would apply to acts as well as work product. And that means that any bribery prosecution is impossible since official acts are an element of the crime.
The constitutional peg for all this speculation comes in Article I, Section 6, which states that Senators and Reps ...
shall in all cases, except treason, felony and breach of the peace, be privileged from arrest during their attendance at the session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same; and for any speech or debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other place.
A textual and historical analysis points to a clear meaning and intent behind this passage. The executive is not permitted to arrest or imprison members of Congress to manipulate or prevent Congress from functioning. President Bush can't put Sen. Feingold in the slammer to shut him up. They also can't held to account for what things they saw on the floor. But the text clearly spells out the exception of serious crimes, i.e., "felonies."
All this analysis aside, the real issue is what's coming down the pike. There are probably a dozen or more members of Congress under federal criminal investigation of one sort of another. (Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA), who a lot of have long suspected was tied up in Duke's wrongdoing, is apparently the latest.) And most all of them are Republicans. Denny Hastert says that he wants "to develop reasonable protocols and procedures that will make it possible for the FBI to go into congressional offices to constitutionally execute a search warrant." I'm sure he does. But he shouldn't be able to use bogus constitutional arguments to keep covering for the corrupt practices which have blossomed on his watch.
--Josh Marshall
Many thanks to Matt Yglesias for filling in for me while I was away. If you've become an addict, you can find Matt's regular blog at TPMCafe.
Now, when I was away, I kept a bit abreast of the news. And the story that really caught my attention was the quickly-debunked story claiming that Iran was about to institute a mandatory dress code for Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians. As you probably already know, the story was false. And the origin of it, from what I can tell, all stems from Amir Taheri, NY Post columnist and member of the Benador Associates stable.
Reading over the various dissections of what happened, I'm still unclear about the relationship between Taheri's column in the Post and the article in Canada's National Post which fronted the story. This article in Jewish Week explaining the hoax, calls that Benador Associates, the PR firm-cum-speakers bureau which reps Taheri and most of the rest of the name neocons, "the public relations agency that placed the story with The National Post." But I'm not clear whether that is supposed to mean that Benador attempted to place Taheri's column with the Post or that they pitched the story to them. The National Post's news story, since retracted, appeared on May 19th while Taheri's Post column appeared on the 20th.
Another question, which reporters floated the story in questions to the Canadian and Australian Prime Ministers?
In any case, murkiness about the origins of the canard is another tell-tale sign of what this very much appears to be: part of an orchestrated disinformation campaign, launched by persons or parties unknown but not too hard to guess.
You can see Taheri's game effort to sorta-kinda walk the story back here. It's really a study in mendacity. Taheri says news outlets that picked up his claim "jumped the gun." Presumably, jumped the gun in assuming there was any factual basis for what he alleged. Taheri then tries to suggest that his report of a Nazi-reminiscent dress code for Jews was just a secondary part of the story, not certain to come to pass, etc. And yet he "stands by" the story in as much as he has secret sources who say that people in Iran somewhere were thinking about it.
Then he adds this confection: "I raised the issue not as a news story, because news of the new law was already several days old, but as an opinion column to alert the outside world to this most disturbing development."
So he didn't really report it as news because it was already news even though he was the first to report it.
Let's face it. As we gear up for the mix of agitprop and disinformation aimed to lay the groundwork for war with Iran, few claims could be more incendiary than alleging that Iran was recapitulating one of Nazi Germany's steps as it built toward the Final Solution. For the war party, such a development would be so good that, as the phrase goes, if it hadn't existed it would have to have been invented. And since it didn't exist, it was.
There's a tale here that's yet to be told.
--Josh Marshall
