Question Of The Day
(October 13, 2007 -- 8:25 AM EDT // link // )

What will Maureen Dowd, who's repeatedly mocked Al Gore over the years as a pedantic bore and even called him "Ozone Man" on occasion, say about his Nobel Prize for environmental activism in her column tomorrow?

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CBS Snarks At Hillary For Not Cackling
(October 13, 2007 -- 8:11 AM EDT // link // )

The anti-Hillary inanity is really out in force these days. Take a look at this headline, courtesy of CBS News:

Cackle-Free Clinton Faces Olbermann

The piece is about Hillary's appearance on Olbermann the other night. Please tell me CBS didn't say this about it:

During the twelve-minute interview, the former first lady chuckled in response to Olbermann. But she never unleashed the highly-scrutinized, overly-analyzed belly laugh known as "the cackle" that has been the focus of national media over the past few weeks. Which raises the question: Has the tightly-managed Clinton campaign put the kibosh on the cackle?

I really don't care if this is meant as a joke. It's self-parody. We've come full circle: Damned if you do cackle; damned if you don't.

Do Hillary's advisers really tell her how and when to laugh? Here's another explanation: Sometimes people laugh. Sometimes they don't. It generally turns on whether they think something is funny or not or on what kind of mood they're in. Could that possibly be what happened here, too?

Naah. Impossible.

On a separate note, Slate's John Dickerson has a very good analysis of yesterday's Hillary flip-flop that wasn't. His conclusion: No flip-flop.

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Associated Press Is Outdone In Accuracy By...Fox News!
(October 12, 2007 -- 12:49 PM EDT // link // )

Updated below.

It's a very sad day for a reputable news organization when it finds itself badly outdone on accuracy by Fox News, but that's exactly what happened to the Associated Press today.

The AP is running with a story right now that strains as hard as Sisyphus did with his bolder to paint Hillary as a flip-flopper. The story claims that she has now reversed herself from her earlier criticism of Barack Obama's debate assertion that he'd meet with the leaders of Iran without precondition. The only problem is that the story completely butchers the facts to do so:

CANTERBURY, N.H. (AP) -- Hillary Rodham Clinton called Barack Obama naive when he said he'd meet with the leaders of Iran without precondition. Now she says she'd do the same thing, too.

This characterization has now become an issue in the campaign, with Obama and John Edwards faulting her over it today. Unfortunately, however, Hillary didn't say this at all. What she did say, as Ben says, was this:

''I would engage in negotiations with Iran, with no conditions, because we don't really understand how Iran works. We think we do, from the outside, but I think that is misleading,'' she said at an apple orchard.

Hillary is saying here that her administration would negotiate with Iran the country unconditionally -- something she's said in various forms repeatedly in the past. She is not saying -- as Barack Obama did -- that she'd personally meet with Iranian leaders without preconditions. Their dispute centered around whether to engage in unconditional personal diplomacy. Whichever side you take, and whatever you think of this distinction, there's just no meaningful flip-flop here.

Just a few moments ago, Fox News ran a segment on this very same thing -- and glory be, Fox actually got it right. After discussing Hillary's quotes, the Fox reporter criticized the AP as follows:

But the Associated press and the Obama campaign have seized on that, and characterized it as something of a flip flop, because Hillary Clinton criticized Barack Obama earlier this year when in a debate he said that he would meet in the first year of his presidency with a whole host of foreign despots, including Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro, and Ahmadinejad of Iran, and that he'd do so without conditions.

Well, they claimed that Hillary Clinton suddenly embraced that position, but in truth she did not. Where Mr. Obama was talking about meeting with leaders in the first year of his administration, Hillary Clinton yesterday was talking about negotiations with Iran the country.

Yikes. When you find yourself getting fact-checked accurately by Fox News on the subject of Hillary Clinton, you know you're in a pretty bad place.

Update: Ben Smith says there's no flip-flop here, and Pat Healy suggests the same, only not as directly. And the Associated Press is now running a more accurate story with the old false lede rewritten.

Update II: Taylor Marsh has a good dissection of the whole back and forth between all the candidates here.

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Hillary Wins Charles Krauthammer Primary
(October 12, 2007 -- 9:53 AM EDT // link // )

This is a fun one. Conservative Washington Post writer Charles Krauthammer uses his column today to give Hillary his much-coveted Dem primary endorsement, suggesting that she'd be the best of all the Dem candidates.

Intriguingly, Krauthammer suggests this in a column that also throws an astonishing range of epithets at her. He accuses her of "opportunism," "slipperiness," "cynicism," of having "no principles," etc., etc. To Krauthammer, these are virtues because they mean she'd be less likely to adhere to the liberal principles that would imprison her fellow Dems. Far better, Krauthammer says, to have a President with no principles at all than a President with liberal ones.

He also writes with perfect sincerity that she's to be admired because of her obvious (he claims) willingness to torture, concluding: "I (and others of my ideological ilk) could live with her."

Whether it's real or imagined, the hawks are clearly hearing a dog whistle in Hillary's rhetoric. Something tells me that Camp Hillary won't be touting this column on her campaign web site.

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Washington Post Reporter: We Will Scrutinize Rudy's Exaggerations -- Some Other Time
(October 11, 2007 -- 4:00 PM EDT // link // )

The other day I wrote about the fact that Rudy Giuliani keeps employing an amusingly transparent distortion of something Hillary said more than ten years ago in order to make the case that she's a closet Marxist. He's able to keep doing because the media keeps not calling him on it.

Today Washington Post reporter Lois Romano was asked directly about this particular distortion in a chat with readers by a questioner who used strikingly similar language to my post (and no, it wasn't me, swear):

New York: Hi, Lois. In the GOP debate earlier this week, Rudy Giuliani said: "The leading Democratic candidate once said that the unfettered free market is the most destructive force in modern America. I mean, just get an idea of where that philosophy comes from." Rudy uses this line on Hillary frequently. But as has been conclusively proven, it's an almost comically dishonest distortion of what Hillary actually said in a 1996 interview with Brian Lamb. In that interview, Hillary quoted another author saying that the unfettered free market had been radically disruptive, not destructive, and actually went on to praise free markets.

My question, though, is this. If Al Gore can be painted as a serial liar and exaggerator by the media for things he didn't actually say, why has Giuliani so far gotten a pass on the lies he's actually spouting publicly?

Lois Romano: He hasn't been really challenged on every word yet. That will come. Right now, there are so many people in the race trying to get footing, and the media is trying to illuminate facts about all of them. As the field starts to winnow, you will see more and more scrutiny of what candidates say and do, and what they have done or said in the past....

It's good to hear this reporter acknowledging that Rudy "hasn't really been challenged" on all his falsehoods. So...what the heck are ya waiting for, anyway? Rudy's been telling this one unchallenged for months and months. He really is a serial exaggerator, even though the pundits won't say so. And all it takes to tell readers the real deal is one extra sentence in the copy.

Something like this: "In fact, in the 1996 interview, Clinton quoted someone else saying that the unfettered free market was the most radically "disruptive" force, not "destructive," and she went on to praise free markets in the same interview." It's generally the work of 10 seconds.

Romano promises that aggressive coverage of Rudy "will come." We'll see about that. Recent history isn't exactly reassuring. And incidentally, this is kind of important. The guy is trying to make himself commander-in-chief of the most formidable military in human history. You know, finger on the nuke button, and all that. So maybe we should get on this, already?

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What Are The Dem Candidates' Positions On Torture?
(October 11, 2007 -- 12:15 PM EDT // link // )

Yesterday we brought you the full transcript of Hillary's torture remarks to The Washington Post. The paper quoted Hillary being vague about the question of how she would treat specific harsh interrogation techniques, such as waterboarding, but it left out her assertion that we need to "abide by the Geneva Conventions."

The additional context, however, is doing little to mollify Hillary's critics. Several of them continued to chastise Hillary, saying that the core issue is whether Hillary would explicitly rule out the use of specific techniques such as waterboarding and whether she viewed such techniques as torture.

I think that the additional quotes from Hillary that were left out of the WaPo article are relevant, because they show that she wasn't being evasive in the way WaPo made her appear. But the question of whether candidates will rule out the use of the specific techniques is a legit one. So where are Barack Obama and Edwards on this?

This discussion was largely set in motion by that recent New York Times piece saying that the Justice Department had secretly authorized harsh CIA interrogation techniques. The article went into the specific techniques. Here's a statement that Barack Obama's campaign says it put out in response to the piece:

"We have a legal definition of torture -- it is the Federal Anti-Torture Statute. The techniques outlined in the New York Times article are inhumane and unlawful. This is the finding of the Judge Advocates General of the Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marines. When I am President, we will reject torture without exception or equivocation. It is illegal, immoral, and it does not protect America."

Here's Edwards' statement the same day:

Chapel Hill, North Carolina -- Today, Senator John Edwards made the following statement regarding President Bush’s claim that his administration has not tortured terrorism suspects, despite the revelation of secret Justice Department memos authorizing the CIA’s harshest interrogation techniques including waterboarding and the use of frigid temperatures:

“George Bush has a long record of trampling on the Constitution and failing to be straight with the American people. Yesterday we learned that -- even after the Justice Department abandoned its defense of torture -- it continued to write memos endorsing the harshest interrogation techniques ever used by the CIA. Today, the president asserted that ‘we don’t torture.’ Pardon me, but I have my doubts that George Bush is finally being straight with us.

“As president, I will work to restore America’s moral authority in the world by upholding the rule of law and safeguarding our civil liberties. I reject the Bush Administration’s twisted logic justifying torture. I will release the legal opinions justifying it, and end the abuse of classification and legal privilege to hide un-American legal judgments. Saying no to torture will protect our troops and our values by upholding the Geneva Conventions anywhere American security forces, military or civilian, are engaged.”

In other words, they both appear to be directly criticizing these techniques, Edwards directly and Obama by saying that he rejects torture "without exception." Hillary didn't release a statement in response to the Times piece.

Separately, I see that Andrew Sullivan is now acknowledging that his criticism of Hillary yesterday over the torture comments is "unfair" in light of the transcript we posted. He says he now thinks that "she was unfairly misquoted" by the paper.

More on this in a bit.

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What Did Hillary Really Say To The Washington Post About Torture?
(October 10, 2007 -- 2:59 PM EDT // link // )

Hillary is taking a pounding in the blogosphere over this passage from today's Washington Post front-page interview with her, in which she appears not to take a firm stand against torture:

Clinton was similarly vague about how she would handle special interrogation methods used by the CIA. She said that while she does not condone torture, so much has been kept secret that she would not know unless elected what other extreme measures interrogators are using, and therefore could not say whether she would change or continue existing policies.

"It is not clear yet exactly what this administration is or isn't doing. We're getting all kinds of mixed messages," Clinton said. "I don't think we'll know the truth until we have a new president. I think [until] you can get in there and actually bore into what's been going on, you're not going to know."

Kevin Drum slammed Hillary over those two grafs for a "nauseating piece of evasion." Andrew Sullivan was similarly dismayed, writing: "You knew this was coming." And Open Left's Matt Stoller also slammed Hillary, saying that "these two paragraphs get to the heart of the Clinton-era political model."

Turns out that there may be more to the story, however. The Clinton campaign has just sent over a transcript of the full question and answer that those two above WaPo paragraphs are based on. Here it is:

Q: Can I ask you a follow up? You mentioned Blackwater, you’ve said that at the beginning of your administration you’d ask the Pentagon to report. When it comes to special interrogation methods, obviously you’ve said you’re against torture, but the types of methods that are now used that aren’t technically torture but are still permitted, would you do something in your first couple days to address that, suspend some of the special interrogation methods immediately or ask for some kind of review?

HRC: Well I think I’ve been very clear about that too, we should not conduct or condone torture and it is not clear yet exactly what this administration is or isn’t doing, we’re getting all kinds of mixed messages. I don’t think we’ll know the truth until we have a new President. I think once you can get in there and actually bore into what’s been going on, you’re not going to know. I was very touched by the story you guys had on the front page the other day about the WWII interrogators. I mean it's not the same situation but it was a very clear rejection of what we think we know about what is going on right now but I want to know everything, and so I think we have to draw a bright line and say ‘No torture – abide by the Geneva conventions, abide by the laws we have passed,' and then try to make sure we implement that.

I've bolded both the passage from the quote that WaPo used and the passage that didn't make it into the paper. As you can see, Hillary also said that we "have to draw a bright line" against torture, and "abide by the Geneva conventions." She also said we have to "try to make sure we implement that." That's clearly more specific on Hillary's part than her earlier discussion of current policies, which was included in the article.

Should that have been included, too? Should this change our conclusion about what Hillary was really saying here about torture? Discuss.

Update: A ton of reaction in the blogosphere to this transcript. Andrew Sullivan is not convinced. And neither is Mark Kleiman. Kevin Drum seems at least grateful to hear that Hillary used the phrase "bright line." Taylor Marsh says this exonerates her.

My take: There's no clear reason why WaPo shouldn't have included the extra sentence. Err on the side of more inclusion, not less, especially in a situation as sensitive as this one. Post full transcripts. There's plenty of space for this on the internets. No reason not to do it.

Update II: The Left Coaster calls this one clearly in Hillary's favor.

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Charlie Cook: GOP's Core Value Is "Competence"
(October 10, 2007 -- 12:00 PM EDT // link // )

One of the more bizarre facets of a lot of our political analysis today is how arbitrary it often is. The basic assumptions underlying much of it often seem like they were invented out of nothing, or were settled on in some sort of Secret Society of Punditry mountaintop meeting.

Here, for instance, is Charlie Cook, one of the most respected of nonpartisan analysists, weighing in with a piece arguing that the GOP is now seen by voters as incompetent and thus faces an uphill struggle in 2008. That's all fine. But then he hits us with this:

If one was to say what the core value is for each party, it might be compassion for Democrats and competence for Republicans. Democrats are expected to really care about people, and Republicans are supposed to be able to manage things well. When a party strays from its core value, it is in trouble. Republicans learned this from Hurricane Katrina, the war in Iraq, federal budget deficits and runaway spending.

I'm going to politely disagree with this. Where does this idea that the "core value" of the Democratic Party is "compassion" while that of the GOP is "competence" come from, exactly? What is it based on? Do voters generally see the parties this way? Polling has consistently shown for awhile now that the electorate trusts Dems more than Republicans to handle a range of issues. Not all issues, but a lot of them. Is this idea based on the actual performance of the parties? Hardly.

Do Democrats and Republicans themselves see things this way? Plenty of Democrats think of themselves as emphasizing competence; plenty of Republicans will sincerely argue that lots of their party's policies are rooted in compassion. This generalization is just too enormous to have any value at all. Voters expect both parties to be competent. When one of them flops on this score, the voters get pissed off, as they are at the GOP right now. Indeed, the public is pretty ticked at the Dems, too, for not showing the competence to end this stinking war.

The reason this matters is that this really is the sort of key assumption that underlies and informs much of our political analysis. In this case, the assumption is best described as the "soft-hard" dichotomy. The idea here is that the Dems' emphasis on the "soft" quality of compassion -- i.e., the idea that government should try to make people's lives better -- is somehow incompatible with more "hard-headed" qualities possessed by the GOP that better suit them to "competent" governance.

This dichotomy is a false one -- compassion and competence are not mutually exclusive in any way. Yet as arbitrary as constructs like these are, they really drive much of our political analysis today. No idea how to change that.

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Rudy Keeps Telling Same Fib About Hillary -- Because Media Won't Call Him On It
(October 9, 2007 -- 6:04 PM EDT // link // )

During the GOP debate this afternoon, Rudy Giuliani attacked Hillary as a Marxist over a quote she gave in an interview back in 1996. Take a look:

Rudy said:

"The leading Democratic candidate once said that the unfettered free market is the most destructive force in modern America. I mean, just get an idea of where that philosophy comes from."

Rudy uses this line on Hillary frequently. But as has been conclusively proven, it's an almost comically dishonest distortion of what Hillary actually said in a 1996 interview with Brian Lamb.

In that interview, Hillary quoted another author saying that the unfettered free market had been radically disruptive, not destructive, and actually went on to praise free markets, saying "that the market is the driving force behind our prosperity ... but that it cannot be permitted just to run roughshod over people's lives as well."

Yet Rudy continues to use this distortion with abandon. He's hauled it out again, and again, and again -- and again today. Why? Simple: He knows he can count on the media not to call him on it.

As a public service, I've compiled a list of instances in the past few months in which reporters or commentators gave Rudy a platform to say this without letting their poor readers or viewers know just how comedically grotesque a distortion it is.

Continue reading "Rudy Keeps Telling Same Fib About Hillary -- Because Media Won't Call Him On It"

Pundits Lower Expectations For Thompson: If He "Doesn't Drool" At Debate, He'll Have Done Well
(October 9, 2007 -- 10:22 AM EDT // link // )

One of the things that never ceases to astonish this blog about your pundits is their constant assertion that underperforming politicians are actually doing well because they are facing "low expectations" -- expectations, that is, that the pundits themselves arbitrarily set in the first place.

Here, for instance, is NBC political director Chuck Todd on Hardball, discussing the low expectations for Fred Thompson at tonight's GOP debate in the wake of a "Saturday Night Live" skit painting him as lazy (via Nexis):

CHUCK TODD, NBC POLITICAL DIRECTOR: No, I`ll say this. Here`s the good thing that "SNL" did...

MATTHEWS: Right.

TODD: ... for Thompson is that the expectation bar is below the floor for him. I mean, if he just shows up and doesn`t drool, we`re going to say, Well, you know, that`s a better performance than I thought.

MATTHEWS: You really think we`re going to do that? That`ll be the day!

TODD: No, but I think...

MATTHEWS: You think standards are going to drop because the PR has dropped?

TODD: Look, I think -- this happens every time. Bush did it with Gore. Remember? Bush said, Oh, Gore`s going to clobber me. He`s -- you know, he`s the best debater that there`s been in a generation. And Bush won...

MATTHEWS: OK.

TODD: ... won the spin war.

The pundits are already agreeing in advance that as long as Fred Thompson doesn't fall asleep next to his podium or vomit on his audience, they'll cheerfully say he did pretty well, because they have decided that they...shouldn't expect him to do well.

But look, these "expectations" of Thompson were not etched into stone tablets by Moses. They are being created by the pundits themselves, based on almost entirely arbitrary decisions about what does and doesn't constitute a "gaffe" and about what storyline should or shouldn't be damaging. Should one SNL skit really be what determines our expectations of Thompson?

The pundits already know they're going to do this, because, as Todd confesses here, "this happens every time." You'd think this doesn't have to happen every time -- pundits could simply choose to not do it -- but we've now been told that they're helplessly doomed to repeating this pattern.

In the case of Bush-Gore, we're told, the pundits agreed that expectations should be low for Bush -- and as a result, he "won the spin war." But Bush was declared the winner of the spin war by pundits who said he'd defied expectations -- expectations that were predetermined to be low by those same pundits, even though they knew that Bush was deliberately trying to lower them for himself. As always, your pundits and commentators just won't acknowledge their own role in shaping public perceptions of public figures.

Meanwhile, here's The Politico's Roger Simon, playing the same game with Thompson: "All he has to do is not fall asleep. All he has to do is not throw up. All he has to do is not drool." Todd and Simon are so locked into the same narrative here that both of them actually use the same formulation -- that all Thompson has to do is not "drool" for them to say he defied expectations.

Will this happen again tonight? Well, since we now know that this "happens every time," I'd say our expectations for the punditry should be pretty low this time around, too.

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Joe Wilson: "Chronic Liar" Robert Novak Is "Going Straight To Hell"
(October 8, 2007 -- 4:19 PM EDT // link // )

I just got off the phone with former Ambassador Joe Wilson, and in our conversation he angrily disputed Robert Novak's latest assertion about the outing of his CIA operative wife, adding that if the columnist isn't going to confession, "he's going straight to Hell."

Wilson's angry over a story today in The Hill which quoted Novak saying that Wilson did not forcefully object when Novak spoke to him before publishing his now infamous column naming his wife, Valerie Plame, prompting a Federal investigation and getting Scooter Libby carted off to jail.

According to The Hill, Novak made the assertion on Saturday at a seminar on the CIA leak case at the 2007 Society of Professional Journalists Convention. The paper reported that Novak characterized Wilson's attitude towards the forthcoming column set to name his wife this way: “He was not terribly exercised about it."

Instead, Novak claimed, Wilson was primarily focused on not being named in Novak's article solely as an opponent of the Iraq war.

"He's lying," Wilson responded a few moments ago when I reached him on his cell phone.

In fact, Wilson claims, the two men were talking because he had called Novak explicitly to complain that the columnist had been naming his wife in private conversations throughout Washington. He hadn't even called to talk about what Novak was writing, he claims.

"When I talked to him it was not about what he was writing," Wilson tells me. "The purpose of my phone call to him was to tell him that it was not appropriate for him to be telling strangers in Washington that my wife works for the CIA."

Wilson also countered that Novak's claim that he hadn't forcefully objected to the naming of his wife was a severe distortion, based on the fact that Wilson couldn't say anything direct about it to Novak without confirming it.

"After I told him this, he asked if I would confirm whether my wife did work for the CIA," Wilson says. "I said, `I am not going to say anything about my wife. You need to talk to the CIA about it.'"

"How could I confirm or deny this without acknowledging something?" continued Wilson, who's frequently duked it out publicly with Novak over Plamegate. "I hope Novak is going to confession because otherwise he's going straight to Hell. Because he's a chronic liar."

Apparently The Hill didn't contact Wilson to get his side of the story. So I did. And now you have it.

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Top New Yorker Writer: Washington Post Editorial Page Is "Pathetic" And "Pitiful"
(October 8, 2007 -- 1:20 PM EDT // link // )

Radar Online has just posted a fantastic new interview with New Yorker writer Hendrik Hertzberg, whose voice is the gold standard for political writing. And I'm not saying this because Hertzberg said some very kind things about TPM.

Hertzberg makes some key observations about the state of insider D.C. opinion-making today -- one of the more trenchant ones being that The Washington Post's editorial page serves its readers a pile of steaming horse-crap on a daily basis. Hertzberg tells his interviewer that he gets much of his political news from blogs, prompting the following exchange:

That's a sea change, isn't it?

Yeah. But when I don't have access to the Times on paper I always go to the Times website. I wouldn't miss Krugman for the world. And I wouldn't miss Frank Rich. Or E.J. Dionne and Harold Meyerson in the Washington Post. The Post's op-ed page has a few pearls amidst the shit.

Certainly the New York Times editorial page has done a lot better on the main issues of the day for the past five years.

There's just absolutely no comparison. The Post's editorial page has been pathetic. Really pathetic. There are still a few twitches left in it—every once in a while it takes on some egregious violation of civil liberties—but for the most part it's just pitiful.

"Pitiful." "Pathetic." "Shit." One surmises that Hertzberg doesn't think much of Fred Hiatt's work.

This argument, obviously, will come as no surprise to the readers of liberal blogs, who fire spitballs daily at the ramparts surrounding Hiatt's palace. But it's gratifying indeed to see it given voice by someone with Hertzberg's journalistic authority -- someone, that is, who has the power to influence the thinking of Hiatt's social peers and hence whose opinion matters.

What makes this really important, though, is what Hertzberg says later in the interview, about the larger context operating here:

You've spent roughly half your career in Washington and half in New York. Do D.C. journalists have an inside-the-Beltway problem?

Of course there's an inside-the-Beltway problem. There's also an outside-the-Beltway problem.

Which one is worse?

The one that one happens to be discussing at the moment. The inside-the-Beltway problem is a type of tunnel vision and a sense of narrow possibilities. It's also a fear of not being Serious with a capital S.

I would say Serious/Masculine.

Yes, right. In other words, it's much harder to damage your career by consistently supporting war and cruelty than by consistently supporting peace and love. The default position is "bombs away." The problem with the outside-the-Beltway mentality is an ignorance of what the actual human pressures and incentives are inside the Beltway, why politicians and pundits behave the way they do, and why that is not necessarily entirely attributable to their moral depravity.

It's nice to see an established journalist employ the "Serious" meme without mocking it -- and it's even nicer to see one tell the simple, unvarnished truth about the career advantages that attend "consistently supporting war and cruelty," as Hertzberg so aptly puts it.

He doesn't say so, but Hertzberg's clearly talking again about Hiatt and his ilk, and I think it's worth adding that there's actually a connection between the different phenomena he's observing here. Being wrong about war, with hugely catastrophic consequences, is not damaging to one's career precisely because Hiatt and his fellow D.C. townies have succeeded in defining Seriousness as little more than an instinct towards dropping bombs, whatever the consequences, rather than an instinct away from it.

It's also worth noting that what Hertzberg defines here as an "outside the Beltway" problem -- the inability to view politicians as, you know, human beings -- is actually an inside-Beltway-journalism problem, too. One thing that constantly mars political coverage is this bizarre idea -- most frequently applied to Dems -- that politicians only have one motive for doing things. If a politician does something that carries perceived political benefits, he or she can't possibly also be doing it because he or she thinks it's a good idea, too.

One final point. The next time Hertzberg spies something "pathetic" or "pitiful" on WaPo's editorial page, it would be awesome to hear him say so, just as forcefully, on his blog over at The New Yorker. Perhaps he's done this in the past and I've missed it, but really, you can never have enough of this -- particularly from someone like Hertzberg, whose opinion, again, will actually matter to Hiatt and the other townies.

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One Of Petraeus' Own Advisers Says General's Testimony On Iraq Was Misleading
(October 8, 2007 -- 11:46 AM EDT // link // )

New York Times public editor Clark Hoyt has now weighed in with a new column analyzing a key topic -- the constant conflicts between the different ways civilian casualties are counted in Iraq. Hoyt interviewed a number of experts about the topic, and towards the end of the piece he mentions in passing what appears to be a significant piece of news.

Specifically, Hoyt reports that he spoke to one of Petraeus' own advisers, and despite having advised Petraeus he still says that the General's recent testimony to Congress about Iraq may have been misleading in key ways:

Stephen Biddle, a scholar at the nonpartisan Council on Foreign Relations, said Petraeus's December number was "very high" but was likely the result of "statistical noise" — the tendency of Iraq numbers to jump all over the place. Biddle was an adviser to Petraeus last spring but believes the general's testimony was "potentially misleading" because it didn't discuss all the reasons why the numbers might have improved.

He said the best way to analyze statistics from Iraq is to gather all the numbers from all sources and look for broad trends instead of picking isolated points, as Petraeus did. Biddle examined data from nine sources on Iraqi civilian deaths, including the U.S. military, independent organizations like Brookings and Iraq Body Count and four news organizations. Although the specific monthly numbers varied widely, he said they all showed declines since late 2006.

Did we know that even one of Petraeus' own advisers thinks the General's methodology was suspect? I didn't know it. Spencer Ackerman, TPM's resident casualty count guru, says he thinks this is significant, and if Ackerman says this is important, well, it is. Yet as best as I can determine Biddle's view of the matter hasn't received any real attention.

Seems like a subject that deserves some further inquiry. After all, a member of Petraeus' informal brain-trust has now said publicly that the General's testimony was "potentially misleading." And he suggested that it could have been misleading in not one, but two ways. First, because it didn't delve into all the reasons for the shifting security picture in Iraq, thus giving more credit to the surge than it might have deserved. And second, because Petraeus selected December 2006, when civilian casualties spiked, as the basis for comparison to this summer's numbers, thus inflating the alleged decline. Those seem like serious critiques.

Is it okay to question Mighty Scholar-Warrior Petraeus' credibility yet?

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Wingers Defending Rush Keep Refusing To Tell Their Audience What He Actually Said -- Jonah Goldberg The Latest
(October 7, 2007 -- 1:26 PM EDT // link // )

I've noticed a funny coincidence when it comes to the right-wingers who are defending Rush Limbaugh over his "phony soldiers" comment. Those wingers who are most vehement in their defense of Rush -- and most aggressive in their denunciations of Rush's critics -- always seem to fail to share with their readers the sum total of what Rush actually said, so that they can make up their own minds.

Today, for instance, Jonah Goldberg published a very long piece attacking Media Matters, primarily pegged to the group's alleged smear of Rush. If you go searching through the article for a discussion of the actual words Rush uttered, here's the total of what you find:

The press didn't care much about the Limbaugh “phony soldiers" story in which Limbaugh was referring to one anti-war activist who pretended to be a military veteran. Journalists for the most part saw it for what it was: a phony story.

What's amusing about this is that Jonah isn't merely informing readers of Rush's "out of context" pushback, which came long after the controversy erupted. Rather, he's adopting Rush's explanation as outright fact. In so doing, Jonah actually writes (with a straight face) a single sentence that contains both the plural word "soldiers" and the idea that this was a reference to "one" anti-war activist. Pretty impressive, that.

As you already know, if you look at the full exchange between Rush and his caller, there's simply no doubt whatsoever about what he said -- and even better, it's also obvious that even Rush's own caller took his remarks as a general reference to antiwar troops. A sidebar tacked onto Jonah's piece gives a bit more context, but not remotely enough for readers to evaluate Rush's pushback in any substantive way.

As I noted the other day, right-wing talk show host Melanie Morgan also is exhibiting the same bizarre aversion to telling her readers what Rush actually said as she seeks to defend the poor, persecuted talk show host. Intriguing coincidence, isn't it?

Incidentally, Jonah's assertion that "most" journalists see this as a "phony story" is pretty hard to square against the actual coverage that the story received. The New York Times's Carl Hulse, for instance, aggressively fact-checked Rush's remarks in a long piece about the flap (of course, we already know that The Times is conspiring with Congressional Dems and MoveOn to destroy Rush, so this doesn't count). A look at the rest of the coverage shows that multiple other news orgs took the story seriously, too. Seriously enough, in fact, that they saw fit to tell their readers what the man said. Imagine that.

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