Josh Marshall's TPM Cafe is now open for business, and unsurprisingly enough, it's first-rate, a Huffington Post for smart people Democratic policy wonks (though I have to say that the ocean of civil, moderate opinion you'll find over there begins to make your rightly humble correspondent feel a tad superfluous, particularly when he considers it alongside the similarly outstanding commentary that Kevin Drum already provides each and every day at WM -- more on that issue, and The O'Toole File's half-baked plan to address it, later). Nice work, folks -- congrats to all involved.

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Okay, I promised (threatened?) puppy blogging, and here it is. Say hello to Molly O'Toole.

POSTSCRIPT: No, I don't plan to make a habit of this. Unless, of course, you consider once a week a habit. . . .

I'm at home today babysitting the newest member of the O'Toole family, a six week old chocolate Lab named Molly. Look for fresh blog posts (and pictures, of course) some time this weekend.

UPDATE: Okay, make that Tuesday. See you then.

One of the interesting disconnects between the left and right sides of the blogosphere is the often (well, sometimes anyway) genuine bewilderment that our conservative friends express as they contemplate the anger that pours so, well, liberally from any number of lefty keyboards. After all, they say, President Bush and the Republicans have done some pretty "progressive" things over the last four years, from pushing through a huge new prescription drug entitlement to engineering what amounts to a federal takeover of public education. What's so right-wing about that stuff? And, in a sense, they're right. President Bush and the GOP leaders in Congress have been anything but doctrinaire conservatives.

That said, politics isn't just a bloodless tally of position papers and issue scorecards. And if our conservative compatriots were to read Jim VandeHei's piece in today's WaPo -- and I mean really read it, as opposed to simply scouring the text for errors and errata that might be useful in trying to knock it down -- on the ways in which Republicans have fundamentally "changed how the business of government gets done" in DC in recent years, they might be a little less puzzled by all the lefty vituperation. Fact is, when you find yourself on the losing end of one battle after another because the other guy keeps changing the rules, you don't just feel disappointed. You feel cheated. And, frankly, you have a right to.

One of these days -- and perhaps sooner rather than later -- the GOP is going to be in the minority again. And if they've managed to turn virtually every Democrat in this country into a Delay or a Frist or a Dobson by that point, the reckoning for all this nonsense is going to be unpleasant, indeed -- and they'll have no one but themselves to blame when there aren't any moderate Dems left to stop the new gang in town from choosing justice over mercy.

Though I actually agree in a roundabout way with some of what John Leo has to say here -- the paucity of military experience among this generation of journalists is problematic (just as it is for CEOs and congressmen and teachers and salesmen and bloggers, as a matter of fact) -- this graf doesn't pass the giggle test:

In all my years in journalism, I don't think I have met more than one or two reporters who have ever served in the military or who even had a friend in the armed forces. Most media hiring today is from universities, where a military career is regarded as bizarre and almost any exercise of American power is considered wrongheaded or evil. [Emph added]

Really, now. An entire generation of journalists was under arms in World War II, and John Leo, who isn't exactly a cub reporter, has only met "one or two" with military experience? Hell, I've met more than that -- and it seems pretty safe to assume that Mr. Leo enjoys a wider journalistic acquaintanceship than yours truly.

So, what gives? Why would a respected conservative columnist tell what appears to be such a transparent untruth? I dunno. But I sure hope Chatterbox is paying attention.

In today's WaPo, former Clinton and Bush 41 Mideast envoy Dennis Ross lays out the backbreaking problems currently facing Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas -- joblessness, widespread frustration with his inability to deliver freedom of movement for the Palestinian people, a resurgent Hamas -- and notes with dismay that the international community, including the US, isn't doing much to help.

All this should be an alarm bell for the Bush administration and the world. Abbas believes in secular governance, the rule of law, nonviolence and coexistence with Israel. If he cannot make it, if he cannot demonstrate that his way offers a future for the Palestinian people, what message does that send? Who do we think will take his place? The possibility of Hamas's winning elections, tying his hands and eventually supplanting him is not a fantasy.

Photo opportunities will not provide him much help. And while Abbas must press harder against those resisting change, including in the security area, he needs more than rhetorical encouragement -- he needs real help from the outside. Material assistance must be provided -- not just pledged. Last December, donor nations pledged $1.2 billion to the Palestinians. Six months later, less than 10 percent of the money has materialized. And the money that has been provided -- as important as it is -- is not going to meet the urgent needs created by unemployment. Per capita income in the West Bank and Gaza was $1,800 a year in 2000 and is down to $1,000. Jobs are urgently needed; labor-intensive projects must be financed and launched now.

The international community acts as if a business-as-usual approach will suffice in providing the assistance that has been pledged. That could mean that by the time the money begins to appear, it will be Hamas, not the Palestinian Authority, making the calls on how it is spent. It's time for the Bush administration to make a major push to get donors to deliver. The Abbas visit should provide the catalyst for such an initiative.

Yep, it should. The Bush administration's policy of not-so-benign neglect toward the PA probably made sense at the tail-end of the Arafat era. Today, it's just crazy; you don't let the man who represents the best chance for peace we're likely to see in our lifetimes slowly twist in the wind. Abbas' government needs substantial and sustained assistance. And it's past time for President Bush to assemble a real coalition of the willing to provide it.

Economics, medicine, a brilliant young scientist, and a hundred million missing women. Some stories just have it all.

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Jeff Thigpen is compiling a master list of elected officials in the US and abroad who blog. If you know of any in your area (or elsewhere), he'd appreciate your assistance.

[Via Ed Cone.]

I remember being genuinely shocked the first time I read about the almost biblical nature of the catastrophe that would befall New Orleans in the event of a direct strike by a Category Five hurricane. (We Charlestonians pay attention to these things, particularly post-Hugo.) Today, over at the Prospect, Chris Mooney takes a look at the issue, and tells us what the government could -- and should -- be doing about it.

Nick Kristof says that, after more than half a century, the Chinese Communist Party has finally met its match -- bloggers.

For some reason, Howard Dean's smart, sensible, moderate statement on abortion during his Sunday sit-down with Tim Russert isn't getting the attention it deserves. Here's an excerpt:

I'm not advocating we change our position. I believe that a woman has a right to make up her own mind about what kind of health care she gets, and I think Democrats believe that in general. Here's the problem--and we were outmanipulated by the Republicans; there's no question about it. We have been forced into the idea of "We're going to defend abortion." I don't know anybody who thinks abortion is a good thing. I don't know anybody in either party who is pro-abortion. The issue is not whether we think abortion is a good thing. The issue is whether a woman has a right to make up her own mind about her health care, or a family has a right to make up their own mind about how their loved ones leave this world. I think the Republicans are intrusive and they invade people's personal privacy, and they don't have a right to do that.

Let me tell you why I think we ought to--why I want to strike the words "abortion" and "choice." When I campaigned for this job, I talked to lots of Democrats. And there are significant numbers of pro-life Democrats in the South. And one lady said to me, you know, "I'm pro-life. I don't like abortion. I would never have one. I would hope my daughter would never have one. But, you know, if the lady next door got herself in a fix, I'm not sure I should be the one to tell her what to do." Now, we call that woman pro-choice, but she thinks of herself as pro-life. The minute we start with the "pro-choice, pro- choice, pro-choice," she says, "Well, that's not me."

But when you talk about framing this debate the way it ought to be framed, which is "Do you want Tom DeLay and the boys to make up your mind about this, or does a woman have a right to make up her own mind about what kind of health care she gets," then that pro-life woman says "Well, now, you know, I've had people try to make up my mind for me and I don't think that's right." This is an issue about who gets to make up their minds: the politicians or the individual. Democrats are for the individual. We believe in individual rights. We believe in personal freedom and personal responsibility. And that debate is one that we didn't win, because we kept being forced into the idea of defending the idea of abortion.

Dean's right. There's a huge difference between taking the principled position that this difficult, often painful choice should ultimately rest with the woman involved, and trying to make the utterly fatuous argument that giving birth and getting an abortion are, in the main, morally equivalent actions that demand equal respect from the public at large. They aren't and they don't. And the only way that we Dems are going to be able to successfully defend the first proposition -- the Constitutional Option, if you will -- is by explicitly rejecting the second.

That's going to be an unpleasant rhetorical shift for some of our most committed supporters, particularly those who somehow, somewhere got it into their heads that we have an duty as Americans to celebrate people's choices rather than simply to tolerate them. But shift we must. And Dean deserves a great deal of credit for looking the base of our party in the eye and saying so.

The Senate's centrists struck a deal tonight to table the nuclear option, and it looks like a pretty good one. In essence, the president gets up or down votes on three of his nominees, and then the Senate returns to its regular programming. Under the circumstances, everybody should be relieved, though I suspect the activists on both sides will be screaming sellout in the morning.

More tomorrow.

Here's a brief exchange between Tim Russert and Howard Dean, from yesterday's Meet the Press:

[Mr. Russert:] Do you really hate Republicans? Do you consider them evil?

DR. DEAN: I don't--well, actually that was a little out of context. But I don't hate Republicans as individuals. But I hate what the Republicans are doing to this country. I really do. I hate deficits, as you know. When I was governor, I really was very tough on fiscal responsibility. Deficits in the long run aren't good for the country, and they do lower our standard of living. Every American family knows that you have to pay your bills. I hate the dishonesty, you know, the idea that you'd put a program through Congress without telling people what it costs, I think that's wrong. Some of the things that the president said on our way into Iraq, they just weren't true, and I don't think that's right. So...

MR. RUSSERT: Such as?

DR. DEAN: Such as the weapons of mass destruction, which we have all known about, but the...

MR. RUSSERT: Well, you said there were weapons of mass destruction.

DR. DEAN: I said I wasn't sure, but I said I thought there probably were. But the thing that really bothered me the most, which the 9-11 Commission said also wasn't true, is the insinuation that the president continues to make to this day that Osama bin Laden had something to do with supporting terrorists that attacked the United States. That is false. The 9-11 Commission, chaired by a Republican, said it was false. Is it wrong to send people to war without telling them the truth. And the truth was Osama bin Laden was a very bad person who was doing terrible things, but that Iraq was never a threat to the United States. That was the truth. It was underlined by the 9-11 Commission, headed, again, by a Republican, a well-respected group of people. I don't think you send American men and women to war, first of all without properly equipping them, and secondly without telling the truth to their parents about why it is we're asking them to make that sacrifice. So those are the kinds of things that I think are very bad about the Republicans.

Now, the second that Dean misspoke -- the very instant he opened his mouth to say "Saddam," and "Osama" fell out -- I thought about firing up the browser and offering a prize of some kind to the first O'Toole File reader who caught a conservative blogger ripping that exchange out of context in a puerile effort to score a few cheap points at the good doctor's expense. But then I thought: Nah, the right side of the blogosphere isn't that childish.

Oh, well. Another illusion shattered.

[Via Instapundit, who didn't exactly distinguish himself with his post on this subject, either.]

Over at TNR, Joel Kotkin makes a pretty compelling case that most of what we think we know about the so-called urban renaissance of recent years is wrong.

In some respects, of course, the last ten or so years have been a good time for American cities. Most urban areas, particularly New York, became safer and cleaner than they were in the '80s. And, certainly, we are no longer living in the dark days of the '70s--an era symbolized by the 1981 cult classic Escape from New York. These trends have made urban life more attractive to some and thereby stimulated residential construction as well as slowed--and in some cases reversed--the flight from cities of jobs.

But these developments notwithstanding, the renaissance of American cities has been greatly overstated--and this unwarranted optimism is doing a disservice to cities themselves. Urban politics has become self-satisfied and triumphalist, content to see cities promote the appearance of thriving while failing to serve the very people--families, immigrants, often minorities--who most need cities to be decent, livable places. The myths that have grown up surrounding the urban renaissance are now often treated as fact. As an urban historian who lives in a major city, I believe that recognizing these myths for what they are is a critical first step towards the redemption of urban America.

What myths? Kotkin identifies three:

• Cities are again gaining people. Urban boosters say yes, but the numbers tell a different story. In fact, relative to suburban, exurban and rural areas, most major American cities are still losing population at a fairly alarming rate.
• Cities are where the successful people are. Not really. According to Kotkin, "Sixteen of the country's top twenty counties in terms of percentage of college educated people are now suburban; only three, Manhattan (New York County), San Francisco, and Washington, D.C., are cities."
• Cool cities attract the best jobs; uncool cities don't. Again, no. "The areas that have experienced growth in new-economy jobs--such as business and financial services--have not been the pillars of cool," writes Kotkin. "In fact, since 2000 these jobs have been leaving the likes of Boston and San Francisco, while accumulating in church-going, conservative areas like Boise, Phoenix, Reno, Salt Lake City, and southwest Florida."

So, assuming one thinks that all this is a problem (a debatable point for some, I would guess), what to do? Honestly, I dunno. Kotkin talks about the need to begin with an urban reality check, which would at least force city officials to recognize the true nature and scope of their problems -- "lost jobs, dysfunctional schools, and crumbling infrastructure." But I'm afraid his Big Idea -- an "urban New Deal" that would shift city resources away from high-profile "bread and circuses" projects aimed at hipsters and the well-off, and toward basic services for the middle class -- sounds a bit fanciful in the current political climate, particularly given the fact that the middle class seems pretty enamored of the bread and circuses in question (stadiums, shopping districts, and the like).

Anyway, I hope Kotkin's right and I'm wrong. And to give his argument the full and fair hearing it deserves, read the rest here.

What's the latest tactic that large corporations are using to deal with skyrocketing health insurance prices? They're shifting a higher percentage of the costs onto their employees by moving them into high deductible plans -- a trend that could, according to the LA Times, "reshape the medical insurance landscape and sharply redistribute costs, risks and responsibilities for many of the 160 million Americans with private coverage."

With the high-deductible plan, workers pay lower monthly premiums and their employers commonly help them build up a special savings account to cushion the impact of a larger annual deductible. The accounts are controlled by the employees, which has led insurers and employers to label the plans "consumer-directed."

Even if high-deductible plans offer immediate relief for many workers, and big cost savings to employers, the allure may not last. And the plans may do little or nothing to solve the basic problem of soaring health costs.

"You're beginning to see a lot of growth in these plans, not because they're going to solve America's healthcare challenge, but because it's a way for employers to cut their out-of-control benefit costs," said Robert Laszewski, a consultant to health insurance companies. "Any time an employer can raise deductibles from $200 to $1,000, it is going to reduce their costs. But will it reduce U.S. health costs generally? The jury is still really out on that."

The reason, he said, is that 10% of the people — the sickest Americans — account for 70% of total healthcare costs. "Once the sick people have gone through their deductible, they're back to a regular health plan — the incentives for them don't really change," Laszewski said.

"This is a cost shift device, and not a means to fundamentally control healthcare costs."

Moreover, the willingness of workers to sign up for less generous plans may change over time, as workers and their families get older and more likely to encounter serious medical costs.

"To make these plans truly work, they have to work for the sickest population — it can't be a plan that only works for the healthy," said Joe Walshe, a principal with the consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers. "It's very difficult, but that's where the challenge is."

In the meantime, the short-term appeal of high-deductible plans is easy to see. Employees get a bit more take-home pay. Employers get some relief from higher healthcare costs.

High deductibles, minimal coverage, and no real cost savings? Clearly, our nation's best HR minds are just fresh out of good ideas when it comes to protecting their employees from the depredations of a hopelessly dysfunctional healthcare system. Nice to see they haven't lost their touch with the soothing corporate euphemism, though.

Consumer. Directed. Plans.

Take that, Jacques!

MORE: Via Tapped, physician and author Robin Cook explains why human genome research will speed "the inevitable movement to universal health care" here in the US.

"McCain hates me."

--Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist, on why he's "getting dragged into" the Senate investigation of Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff

In this morning's WaPo, VA Sen. George Allen tells us all about the supposed deficiencies of the No Child Left Behind Act, but almost nothing about the legislation he's introduced to address those problems. Why? Because he's understandably hesitant to have you know that his bill would essentially gut the original act, and leave us with a whole new federal education policy here in the United States: Only Minorities and Special Needs Kids Left Behind. And that's just a terrible idea, despite the fact that many of my fellow Democrats (and, sadly, a growing number of Republicans) would support it.

Frankly, President Bush is right on this, and he has been from day one. Every child in this country has a right to a decent education, and the rest of us have a right to know they're getting it. That means testing, and it means reporting the results of those tests in a way that doesn't mask failure. Despite its shortcomings, NCLB delivered those things. We'd be foolish to let anyone take them away now.

POSTSCRIPT: For the record, I'm not saying that NCLB can't be improved. Like just about anything else, it can be. But Sen. Allen's legislation doesn't represent progress in that direction. And we Dems shouldn't pretend otherwise just because it gives us a chance to stroke our political allies and to bash the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

I'm afraid this site is starting to read like one long mash note to conservative blogger John Cole, but what to do? Pretend he's not producing some of the most serious, incisive commentary in all of Blogdom (and beyond, frankly) on the prisoner abuse scandal? I can't very well do that because, you know, he is. And I can't simply ignore it, either; that wouldn't be fair to you. (Though it's interesting to note how few of John's fellow conservatives seem to share that concern for their readers.) So I guess that's a risk I'll just have to take, huh?

Anyway, enough with the vamping already. Here's John.

Charles Colson is right. We should never allow an entertaining fiction like Inherit the Wind to so overshadow real life that we forget what its historical counterpart, the Scopes Monkey Trial, was really all about. So, as a service to O'Toole File readers, here's a quick reminder:

PUBLIC ACTS

OF THE

STATE OF TENNESSEE

PASSED BY THE

SIXTY - FOURTH GENERAL ASSEMBLY

1925

________

CHAPTER NO. 27

House Bill No. 185

(By Mr. Butler)

AN ACT prohibiting the teaching of the Evolution Theory in all the Universities, Normals and all other public schools of Tennessee, which are supported in whole or in part by the public school funds of the State, and to provide penalties for the violations thereof.

Section 1. Be it enacted by the General Assembly of the State of Tennessee, That it shall be unlawful for any teacher in any of the Universities, Normals and all other public schools of the State which are supported in whole or in part by the public school funds of the State, to teach any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals.

Section 2. Be it further enacted, That any teacher found guilty of the violation of this Act, Shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and upon conviction, shall be fined not less than One Hundred $ (100.00) Dollars nor more than Five Hundred ($ 500.00) Dollars for each offense.

Section 3. Be it further enacted, That this Act take effect from and after its passage, the public welfare requiring it.

Passed March 13, 1925

W. F. Barry,

Speaker of the House of Representatives

L. D. Hill,

Speaker of the Senate

Approved March 21, 1925.

Austin Peay,

Governor.

That, friends, is what the real Scopes trial was all about. And we should be grateful to Mr. Colson for insisting that we remember.

[Colson link via CCC.]

Earlier this week, the Washington Monthly's Kevin Drum took his share of guff (and then some) from our side of the ’Sphere for calling the New York Times "the best newspaper in the world, bar none." Today, the Gray Lady rather eloquently rises to Mr. Drum's (and her own) defense with eight powerful, affecting, meticulously-reported pages on the mistreatment of detainees in Afghanistan.

Even as the young Afghan man was dying before them, his American jailers continued to torment him.

The prisoner, a slight, 22-year-old taxi driver known only as Dilawar, was hauled from his cell at the detention center in Bagram, Afghanistan, at around 2 a.m. to answer questions about a rocket attack on an American base. When he arrived in the interrogation room, an interpreter who was present said, his legs were bouncing uncontrollably in the plastic chair and his hands were numb. He had been chained by the wrists to the top of his cell for much of the previous four days.

Mr. Dilawar asked for a drink of water, and one of the two interrogators, Specialist Joshua R. Claus, 21, picked up a large plastic bottle. But first he punched a hole in the bottom, the interpreter said, so as the prisoner fumbled weakly with the cap, the water poured out over his orange prison scrubs. The soldier then grabbed the bottle back and began squirting the water forcefully into Mr. Dilawar's face.

"Come on, drink!" the interpreter said Specialist Claus had shouted, as the prisoner gagged on the spray. "Drink!"

At the interrogators' behest, a guard tried to force the young man to his knees. But his legs, which had been pummeled by guards for several days, could no longer bend. An interrogator told Mr. Dilawar that he could see a doctor after they finished with him. When he was finally sent back to his cell, though, the guards were instructed only to chain the prisoner back to the ceiling.

"Leave him up," one of the guards quoted Specialist Claus as saying.

Several hours passed before an emergency room doctor finally saw Mr. Dilawar. By then he was dead, his body beginning to stiffen. It would be many months before Army investigators learned a final horrific detail: Most of the interrogators had believed Mr. Dilawar was an innocent man who simply drove his taxi past the American base at the wrong time.

I know I've linked to it before, but John Cole's pointed question to the bury-the-bad-news crowd bears repeating here: "Which would be worse in the war on terror in the long run -- suspicions of abuse and sacrilege running rampant for years, or said abuses acknowledged, apologized for, and punished?”

Folks, the answer to that question is so clear, so unambiguous, so self-evident at this point that I'm truly beginning to wonder whether those who can't or won't acknowledge it even realize that there's a war on. And that our side really needs to win it.

POSTSCRIPT: I can think of more enjoyable ways of having spent the first twenty minutes or so of my 39th birthday, but few more valuable ones. Seriously, set aside a little time and read the whole thing.

UPDATE: Joe Gandelman gets it just right. "[A]llegations of this kind of behavior must be investigated and if proven true prosecuted to the absolute fullest extent of the law - including up the chain of command if necessary. Those who try to defend it or dismiss it as soldiers blowing off steam or minimize the gravity of it deserve nothing but contempt from those from both parties who militantly believe in and cherish long-held American ideals."

Hear, hear.

In today's NYT, several military leaders, including theater commander Gen. John P. Abizaid, offer their rather sober assessments of the situation in Iraq (“I think that this could still fail," says one. "It's much more likely to succeed, but it could still fail."). And, thus far, at least, the right side of the blogosphere has chosen neither to question their patriotism, nor to worry openly about the possible need to abridge their constitutional rights.

As the president would say, we're making progress!

As Ronald Reagan said in 1988, I have no desire to improperly raise the always-sensitive issue of mental health (actually, Mr. Reagan put it a bit more colorfully, as I recall), but really, now, this just isn't sane:

Big media’s melting down. Movies are in a slump. Why? The media’s losing money because contemporary secular liberalism is really a kind of religion. Liberals don’t want to make money. They’re out to win souls. Oh sure, within the acceptable parameters of their secular religion, liberals are pleased to make a profit. No doubt Hollywood and MSM do plenty of market research and such. But it’s obvious that the media would rather “make a difference” (i.e. gain converts to secular liberalism) than make money. It wouldn’t be hard for the big newspapers and magazines to attract reporters and writers from all sides of the political-cultural spectrum. In fact, a news magazine that truly covered stories from both the left and the right would excite interest, buzz, loyalty–and make money. Readers would also be more disposed to forgive mistakes. But big media doesn’t do this because, for secular journalists, making the culture more liberal is the mission that gives meaning to life.

I guess John Edwards was right. There really are two Americas -- one that gets up in the morning and quietly goes about its business in what we might be so bold as to call the real world, and another that's consumed with wacky conspiracy theories about the dark intrigues ("Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous," crows a rudely stamped Bill Keller, rubbing his ink-stained hands together with evil glee. . . .) being hatched every day by the MSM against ordinary people of faith like me and (perhaps) thee. Which would actually be okay, I suppose -- to each his own, you know -- if the latter bunch weren't pretty much running the show in Washington these days. But they are. And that, my friends, is a worrisome state of affairs, indeed.

Via Jim Romenesko, here's the normally interesting Russ Smith using 1209 words -- seriously, 1209 words -- to make the blindingly original observation that earnest liberal wonkery, such as that regularly found in Slate, is less entertaining than the kind of rabid, right-wing, f-you-and-the-PC-horse-you-rode-in-on folderol that made Mark Steyn every conservative blogboy's favorite pin-up. Gadzooks! What a penetrating insight. Why, next thing you know, Mr. Smith will be telling us that the first Star Wars trilogy was superior to the current one. Or that a good big man beats a good little man every time. Or that music was just, well, better when he was young. Or . . .

The NYT's David Brooks -- whose column is scheduled to take up life behind a subscription wall in September -- examines the torrent of Internet bile that has spewed forth in response to Newsweek's Koran-flush blunder, and observes, "Maybe it won't be so bad being cut off from the blogosphere."

Hard to argue with that.

POSTSCRIPT: Yes, Brooks tries a bit too hard to make his piece an even-handed indictment of both right and left, when, clearly, his beef is primarily with the former. (Let's see, now. On one side, Brooks condemns the behavior of the Bush administration, large chunks of the conservative commentariat, and virtually the entire right side of Blogdom; on the other, he wags his finger at . . . The Nation. Oh, and some number of unidentified but scary-sounding "leftish web sites." Equipoise, indeed.) Still, it's worth a read.

Barry Ritholtz calls Council of Economic Advisers Chairman Harvey S. Rosen's op-ed in today's Wall Street Journal "either appalling or amusing, depending upon whether you are a 'glass half-full or half-empty' type of person." Which, as you'll realize after reading Barry's comprehensive takedown, is actually a rather kind assessment.

Alright then, thinly-sourced anonymous stories are now verboten. And good riddance, I say. But, uh, what about this guy? I mean, unless you happen to be one of those left-wing crazies who just insists on believing that our friends on the right aren't being completely sincere in their denunciations of Newsweek's journalistic practices in this case, you have to expect the man whose name is synonymous with irresponsible Internet gossip to come in for all sorts of conservative criticism now, right?

Right?

UPDATE: Just to be clear: I'm not trying to let Newsweek off the hook here. They screwed up. Period. Still, all that Newsweek lied, people died stuff is more than a little hard to take when so much of it is coming from folks who penned not a word about the deaths in question until the precise moment that they became politically useful. Cynical stuff, that. And we shouldn't allow ourselves to be bullied or browbeaten into pretending otherwise.

ANOTHER UPDATE: John Cole rebukes the would-be censors, and asks an important question. "The media was wrong for reporting a false story, but had the story been accurate, they were well within their rights and, IMHO, obligated to report this sort of thing. Which would be worse in the war on terror in the long run- suspicions of abuse and sacrilege running rampant for years, or said abuses acknowledged, aplogized for, and punished?"

PoliticsOnline: "By Election Day it was apparent that the internet hype would have little to do with the outcome. Quite simply the internet failed to be an effective tool for gathering support and getting votes. In retrospect the internet flop wasn't necessarily because UK campaigners failed to use proper tools in the online arsenal, it's more likely that they just failed to have a candidate like Howard Dean."

Via Ed Cone, here's Carolina Christian Conservative raising an interesting question:

In recent years, Christian conservatives have firmly aligned themselves in large numbers with the Republican Party. As a former registered Democrat, I know I have. But is that necessarily a good thing?

Click over and give the post a read. As Ed rightly says, "There are all kinds of opportunities for the Dems to open dialogue with people they sometimes write off. That means listening as well as talking."

Just about everyone in Washington agrees that the Alternative Minimum Tax needs reform. The hard part is finding the money. So where does President Bush intend to look for it? Well, where he always does, of course -- in the pockets of the middle class.

Eliminating the increasingly unpopular alternative minimum tax could require even more unpleasant tax changes, such as reducing deductions for mortgage interest, charitable contributions and health care costs, the leaders of President Bush's tax panel warned Tuesday.

Lovely.

With the Ds and Rs practically at each others' throats in DC these days, Dana Milbank finds an emerging bipartisan consensus on one issue at least: with regard to matters budgetary, the United States is turning into Argentina.

Wrote lim'ricks 'bout judges quite bad,
Their radical views,
I hear on the news,
Suggest an impaler named Vlad.

POSTSCRIPT: Yes, like being president, dashing off a limerick link at 5:30 in the morning is hard work. . . .

In the spirit of blog civility, let me just note for the record that Instapundit's Glenn Reynolds is a thoroughly decent guy who has done more for this medium than any other twenty bloggers combined. Nonetheless, he's tragically, dangerously, mind-bogglingly wrong here:

When you go out of your way to report the bad news, and bury the good news, when you're credulous toward critics (remember the Boston Globe porn photos?) and treat all positive news as presumptive lies, and when it's clear that the enemy relies on press behavior in planning its campaigns, then you've got a problem. Huffing and puffing in response isn't constructive. . . .

Despite Matt's implication, I don't get up in the morning trying to figure out how to destroy freedom of the press in America. Instead, I keep trying to persuade the folks at Newsweek, CBS, etc. not to flush free expression down the toilet through their irresponsibility and bias. [Note: Reason link added]

Well, of course the enemy "relies" on our freedoms in planning his campaigns. He always has, from Lexington to Pearl Harbor to the dark and sometimes dangerous alleys of East Berlin. And while I understand that some conservatives choose to believe that this strategy was successful on one occasion -- that the war in Vietnam was lost due to the free and fearless exercise of American liberty -- all the right-wing revisionism in the world can't alter the simple truth that our policy in Southeast Asia was a noble mistake; nor can it obscure the fact that today, America stands as the world's only superpower, while Vietnam slowly and painfully struggles to find its way. Truth be told, the ash heap of history is littered with the mouldering remains of despots who believed that America couldn't be both free and strong, and I can't for the life of me imagine why Glenn would want to associate himself with that strange and oft-discredited notion.

As to Glenn's second point, I certainly accept his sincerity. None of us wants to see liberty flushed down the toilet. But I'm confused and more than a little disheartened by his seeming unwillingness to stand up for the American experiment. It's been quite a success, I hear, allowing an industrious and talented mix of mutts and castoffs to tame a continent and remake a world. That's not a bad record, friends. And it's more than deserving of our heartfelt and enduring devotion.

E. J. Dionne has found a rare pol, indeed: one who's genuinely committed to making abortion safe, legal, and rare.

Nothing is more hopeless or courageous in politics than seeking an authentic middle ground on the abortion issue. That makes Thomas R. Suozzi a hopeless case or, as I would insist, one brave politician -- and especially so as the United States Senate tears itself apart over judicial nomination battles in which discord about abortion has played such a central role.

The 42-year-old Nassau County executive is a churchgoing Catholic who believes that abortion should remain legal. He is also a Democrat who thinks that government should take concrete steps to make it easier for women to choose against abortion. He's proposing that his suburban jurisdiction on Long Island spend some serious money to make that happen. . . .

"As a Democrat, I do not often find it easy to talk with other Democrats about our need to affirm our commitment to the respect for life and how we need to emphasize our party's firm belief in the worth of every human being," he said. "As a Catholic, I do not often find it easy to talk with other Catholics about my feeling that abortion should and will remain safe and legal, and that we should instead focus our efforts on creating a better world where there are fewer unplanned pregnancies and where women who face unplanned pregnancies receive greater support and where men take more responsibility for their actions."

Dionne calls that kind of talk "brave," which is both accurate and deeply weird. In a properly functioning republic, forthrightly articulating the majority position on an issue like abortion shouldn't put you in the running for a Profile in Courage Award. But that's precisely where we find ourselves these days. And until we can figure out a fair but effective way to make our political system a little less hyper-responsive to the folks with the mailing lists and the megaphones, it's going to continue to be frustratingly unresponsive to the needs and values of the rest of us.

WorldNetDaily avers that the United States, despite its overwhelmingly Christian population, "is becoming increasingly un-Christian and even anti-Christian with every passing year." And Ed Cone explains why they're wrong.

The conservative blogosphere appears to be quite taken today with Austin Bay's description of Newsweek's maybe-maybe-not Koran-flush screwup as "the press’ Abu Ghraib," which must be real relief to the magazine's editors and senior staff. No resignations or firings required. Whew!

At the risk of appearing to bite the hand that's been kind enough to feed me not once, but twice recently, I'd like to take issue with John Cole a bit here. An administration that can be plausibly presented as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Big Oil just can't conduct official business with industry reps in an off-the-record setting. It's bad public policy and, frankly, bad politics, as well, for just as most Republicans would never take a Democratic president's crime proposals seriously if they knew he'd secretly hammered them out in a back room with Barbra Streisand and a gaggle of lawyers from the ACLU, we Dems can't be reasonably expected to give President Bush's energy initiatives a fair hearing when they appear to have been presented to the veep on stone tablets at the top of Mount Exxon.

As I'm sure this president knows better than most (since it's an area of special interest to him), any successful effort to change the tone in Washington will require a veritable boatload of the kind of trust that can only be built on a foundation of real transparency. Which is why a little more of it would be so greatly appreciated by those of us who share his concerns about both the nation's energy woes and the angry partisan divide in Washington.

According to USA TODAY, beer makers are going for an image makeover in an attempt to lure upscale young professionals away from the competition's trendier wares -- which at least sounds a little more sensible than Miller's recent marketing efforts aimed at the other end of the suds spectrum.

Right from the start, President Bush has loudly and proudly made the case that, due to certain demographic realities, African Americans would benefit disproportionately from his Social Security proposals.

According to the WaPo's Terry Neal, African Americans aren't buying it.

Today's LA Times is reporting that the LA mayor's race is ending on a sour note for most voters.

Marc Cooper would seem to agree.

I rather studiously ignored Newsweek's Koran-flushing story all last week -- all week, dammit! -- and, finally, on Sunday, I used a Sullivan post on the subject to make a larger point about the Bush administration and the man who leads it. And what do I wake up to this morning? This.

Thanks, Newsweek.

UPDATE: Hmmm. . . . Perhaps I spoke too soon.

In a recent speech at the Stanford University Institute for International Studies, State Department Counselor Phil Zelikow gave us a name for President Bush's foreign policy: Practical Idealism.

Now, why does that phrase sound so familiar?

[Via Think Progress]

Why isn't the VA's fully developed and apparently first-rate electronic medical information system being adopted as the national standard? Mark Kleiman has a theory.

I've been a pretty consistent, if grumpy, supporter of the country's legal response to 9/11, but TalkLeft's report on White House foot-dragging in regard to the creation of a congressionally-mandated Civil Liberties Oversight Board is disturbing. C'mon, guys, just cut the BS and get it done.

One of the reasons I've always been so fond of James Carville is that he knows the difference between reaching out to the other side and pandering to its worst instincts. Sadly, his fellow Southern Democratic political consultant, Dave "Mudcat" Saunders, seems to be far less sure-footed in that area.

Before getting into this, I should probably note for the record that I am, despite a measure of personal squeamishness, implacably committed to protecting the fundamental right of every woman to make her own choice on the question of abortion. Period. Full stop. And, now, with that rather craven, ass-covering disclaimer out of the way, let me just say that I think the normally spot-on Scott Lemieux (via Pandagon) is mistaken here. We pro-choicers simply seem unable (as a group, anyway) to take seriously the notion that, for some, each and every abortion involves the murder of an unborn child, and, further, to recognize that this relatively widespread, sincerely-held belief in an ongoing and constitutionally sanctioned holocaust has certain rather inevitable consequences. (Frankly, if I truly believed what the other side does on this issue, I'd be out in front of an abortion clinic this morning with a picture of a bloody fetus myself.)

Fact is, the relentless mobilization of anti-abortion activists has been central to the rise -- though, as Scott rightly notes, not the existence -- of movement conservatism here in the US, and no amount of learned analysis of the available data (which, at times, seems to be our real political forte, as opposed to, say, winning elections) by those of us on the left is going to obscure that elemental electoral truth.

Like many others who've been around the blogosphere a while, I remember all too well the days when Andrew Sullivan would have called himself a fifth columnist for penning words like these (scroll to Quote of the Day II); still, they're tough and smart and true, so I'm passing them along.

We are in a critical war for world opinion. A critical part of our message is that this is not a war against Islam as such, but against Islamo-fascism and terror. And yet we see the religious right co-opting air force academies, and we hear of incidents like the alleged toilet-flush of the Koran. Since no one is ever held responsible for anything in the Bush administration, we can be sure this incident will be lied about, covered up or blamed on some poor military grunt who can be easily scapegoated. But at some point, we will have to confront the severe damage this administration has done to American prestige and credibility in a critical global battle of ideas because of its interrogation policies. These are self-inflicted wounds.

Yes, they are. And, for the life of me, I can't understand why President Bush doesn't grasp this. He is not, as so many would have it, an ignoramus. Far from it, in fact. He's just . . . unwilling to know certain things. And the dreadfully dear price that we as a nation are ultimately going to have to pay for that character defect (for make no mistake, that's what it is) will have one, and only one, upside. It will finally force us all, Democrat and Republican, Reform and Independent, to see the very messy, very human failings of Mr. Bush's predecessor for precisely what they were -- small beer, indeed. And then, perhaps, when all the spurious partisan energies have at last expended themselves, we can set this strange and angry period aside, and get back to what we as Americans do best: conducting our nation's business at home and abroad with that curious mix of rapaciousness and fundamental decency which amuses our friends and confounds our enemies.

UPDATE: Here.

NRO's Jonah Goldberg watched the Social Security hearings on C-Span last night, and then had this to say:

The only outspoken witness in favor [of private accounts] was my old friend Derrick Max. I thought Derrick did a great job, especially given the odds. But I have to say that I thought the liberals made some very strong arguments, including [Brad] DeLong (who, to date, has never had a kind word for yours truly). I'm still in favor of reforming the system and I'm still in favor of private accounts, but I thought the arguments were pretty persuasive that there are serious downsides to the idea too.

I'm not ready to engage in any stick-a-fork-in-it talk yet, but if that's Jonah Goldberg's (!) gut reaction to an honest discussion of private accounts, this president's plan is in deep, deep doo-doo, indeed.

TNR's Michelle Cottle is skeptical of God's Politics author Jim Wallis's claim that the "religious non-right" has now taken its place in the American evangelical firmament, or, as Wallis puts it, that "the monologue of the religious right is now over."

Maybe. But probably not. While Wallis is correct that the right's dominance of the values debate has been aided by the left's policy of disengagement (not to mention Democratic pols' distaste for, as a certain 2004 presidential candidate sniffed, "wear[ing] my religion on my sleeve"), the connection between evangelical religion and conservative politics in this country has deep and tangled roots. For reasons as much theological as political, white evangelicals (which is what people invariably mean when they talk about American evangelicalism) turned against systemic attempts to combat poverty and other societal ills long before anyone had ever heard of Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, or Ronald Reagan. More specifically, the right's fixation on personal piety, while arguably unbiblically narrow, nonetheless draws its resonance from a powerful combination of factors--evangelicalism's emphasis on personal redemption, the political realities of how to galvanize and sustain a mass movement, and the basic human fascination with sex--that aren't as easily applied to issues like tax policy and Social Security reform. As a result, although American evangelicals personally may be broadening their policy interests, the community's political activism, particularly on the domestic front, is unlikely to budge much beyond the same old "core issues" involving sex and school prayer. So, while it's tempting for those unnerved by the right's politicking to latch onto the idea that the moral high ground can be reclaimed--that poverty and pollution can be turned into the defining values issues of 2008--Democrats would be wise not to bet their political future on any divine, or even divinely inspired, intervention.

That's all true. The political side of the evangelical movement is going to be dominated by conservatives for a long time to come. But there's a reason why Republicans insist that the media always balance, say, a liberal African American voice with a conservative one, and it has nothing to do with suddenly trying to compete for the 90% of the African American vote they regularly cede. It's about (a) appearing to be interested in the concerns of African American voters in order to seem friendly and inclusive to the country at large, and (b) making sure that their views are represented anytime and anyplace that somebody decides to stare into a TV screen. We Dems haven't done a very good job of that kind of thing over the years vis-à-vis the evangelical community, and movements like Jim Wallis's could be enormously helpful in turning that around.

Via Brad Plummer.

UPDATE: Avedon has some related thoughts here, and they're well worth reading.

Via James Joyner, here's Slate's Phillip Carter on yesterday's base closings announcement:

There are several clear trends in the BRAC list: the elimination of many bases in the Northeast, the shutting of myriad civilian defense agencies' offices, and the elimination of reserve armories in towns across America. The Pentagon says the closings will save $48 billion over 20 years. But they will also have one dramatic negative effect. BRAC will separate America's military even further from America's citizenry by consolidating military bases and removing the presence of the military from hundreds of towns across the country. . . .

Today's civil-military divide is greater than at any time in American history, and these cuts will widen it. The burden of voluntary military service today is heavy, but it is being borne narrowly. And as Eliot Cohen points out in Friday's Wall Street Journal, the chasm between society and the military is widening in the area of higher education today, thanks to the scuttling of some professional military education programs and the absence of ROTC from many elite campuses. Such a gap is not healthy for a democracy which vests the ultimate decisions over whether to go to war in its political branches of government. [Emph added]

No, it isn't. In fact, over the long term, it's damned dangerous -- and one more very good reason to start taking Glastris and Carter's 21st-century draft proposal seriously.

Darth Tater? Darth Tater???

Sheesh.

After his disappointing debut as Maureen Dowd's stand-in earlier this week, Matt Miller redeems himself a bit with today's effort -- the shooting script for a GOP infomercial titled The Republican Guide to Wartime Tax Cuts. Here's a taste:

[Testimonial]

THIRTY-SOMETHING MALE: I never felt strong enough to utterly ignore Judeo-Christian ethics, even though I suspected that could get me the life I dreamed of. That's why "The Republican Guide" is so inspiring.

Believe it or not, there was actually a time when it was considered offensive to fight wars and cut taxes at the same time. In those days, conservatives were ostracized for wanting to scrap estate taxes for wealthy heirs while soldiers died in distant lands and their families scraped by on food stamps. I know - it seems so far away!

That's when I had to ask myself: if Republicans could find the courage to put these inhibitions behind them, imagine what I could do to reach for the brass ring in my own life. Now, though I'd rather not go into the details, I make more money, pay less taxes and have a beautiful wife and child.

Hey, I know that guy. . . .

In an rather spooky post, Kudzu Files channels the editors of the Wall Street Journal op-ed page.

Dan Froomkin thinks the president's current difficulties with Social Security, judicial nominations, and John Bolton could be part of a larger problem -- the White House political machine may finally be burning out.

“Injecting olive oil or any liquid into penises is extremely risky.”

--Chatri Banchuin, chief of Thailand’s Department of Medical Services, after his office issued a public health warning advising men to avoid the practice

The Decembrist has made a rather fascinating discovery about Virginia Sen. George Allen -- the man doesn't speak English.

I mean that almost literally, in that he does not construct sentences made up of commonplace English words. Rather, he speaks entirely in a patois constructed of football metaphors. Absolutely everything is second down or third down, or five yards or ten yards or a Hail Mary. If you were unfamiliar with the basic jargon of American football (as many people are), his every word would be incomprehensible. His official photo on his web site has him holding a football. Try going through a day using a football (or baseball or basketball) metaphor for every conversation, and you get a sense of what it would be like to be George Allen.

Scary thought. And the rest is here.

The Washington Post's David Ignatius says that "the continuing legal squeeze on Time magazine's Matthew Cooper and the New York Times's Judith Miller to reveal their sources" in the Valerie Plame leak investigation is curious, indeed -- unless, of course, the underlying issue is now possible perjury by a senior administration official:

Fitzgerald's legal quest makes little sense to me as a leak investigation. The law is fuzzy, the evidence is ambiguous, and the case would be hard to prove. But every good prosecutor hates perjury above all. And on its face, this case raises the possibility that one of the senior administration officials who talked with Cooper or Miller has denied doing so, under oath. Otherwise, Fitzgerald would have been finished months ago.

For journalists, the case raises agonizing issues: Where is the dividing line between journalistic ethics, which demand that reporters protect their sources, and ordinary ethics, which say people should cooperate with law enforcement if they know about possible criminal activity? Do journalists have a special status that exempts them, in certain cases, from the normal responsibilities of citizenship? But this case should worry most of all any White House insider who may have talked with reporters about Valerie Plame and then lied about it under oath.

Honestly, I haven't followed the Plame case closely enough to have a real opinion Ignatius' theory. But it is interesting, and it would certainly seem to explain the facts. So, with the aforementioned caveat, and in the spirit of open and honest inquiry, I'm passing it along for your consideration.

Ted Barlow catches the -- ahem -- liberal media once again treating the current administration quite differently than it did the previous one.

Here's former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, putting the long-term Social Security shortfall into perspective:

For example, if the tax cuts for those earning above $200,000 were repealed and the inheritance tax as reformed were continued rather than eliminated, the 10-year projected deficit would be reduced by roughly $1.1 trillion, or almost 25 percent, and the 75-year fiscal reduction would be roughly $3.9 trillion, or approximately equal to the Social Security shortfall.

As Brad DeLong noted yesterday, this administration really needs to get its fiscal priorities straight.

UPDATE: Almost half of all Americans now believe that President Bush is trying to dismantle Social Security.

A couple of years back, in the course of seconding a Kevin Drum post that's still very much worth reading, I suggested that we left-of-center types might do well to quit acting like such legalistic bluenoses every time religious folks try to show a little ankle in the public square. Today, Matthew Yglesias makes the same suggestion, though, not surprisingly, in a considerably more thoughtful and substantive way:

I wouldn't say posting ten commandments on public buildings is a good idea. It strikes me as slightly silly, mildly wasteful, and vaguely offensive. But it's honestly not a big deal. Abortion and reproductive rights matter. A lot. So does trying to maintain forward motion on the gay rights front. So do the basic economic issues, so does foreign policy. Ten commandments? "Under God" in the pledge of allegiance? Taxpayer dollars financing Christmas displays in the town square? That stuff doesn't really matter. I'd be happier were it otherwise, but if that kind of token gesture toward the concept that this is a Christian (or, as they say, "Judeo-Christian," whatever that means) country is what it takes to get support for a progressive political agenda, then sign me up. And I think most liberals will agree with me on that. The location of stone slabs is, like the precise number of bullets you can put in your ammo clip, not something that's worth losing elections over.

Hear, hear.

MORE: Fontana Labs is, well, less taken, with this line of argument: "There's something deeply creepy about this, not to mention dumb," he says.

UPDATE: So far (with some notable exceptions), the primary response to Matt's post from the liberal side of the blogosphere seems to boil down to, Well, sure, the Ten Commandments aren't really a big deal, but since we can never win the votes of the Christian right anyway, why sell out our principles? Which seems to me like a complete misreading of Matt's argument. As far as I can tell, he's not talking about winning over the far right; he's talking about about not appearing to be out of step with the vast majority of the American people on a relatively small-bore issue that really gets under their skin. That's not selling out, or anything of the kind. In fact, it's just good sense.

I'm always a little hesitant to criticize the administration with regard to stuff like yesterday's Beltway fire drill, if only because I suspect that much of what we think we know is wrong. Still, somebody has to ask the tough questions.

Here's Richard Lessner, executive director of the American Conservative Union, on the $250-per-head gala he's throwing tonight in honor of Tom DeLay: "The dinner's a sellout and it's already accomplished what it needs to accomplish: that we publicly embrace Tom DeLay and stand with him against these baseless allegations."

I don't know about you, but if I were a DeLay supporter, I don't think I'd be using the word "sellout" in any context whatsoever these days.

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Now, this should be interesting:

British MP George Galloway has been challenged to appear before US senators to answer allegations that he received oil allocations from Saddam Hussein.

Mr Galloway denies claims by a Senate committee that he and a French minister were given the right to sell Iraqi oil to reward their support for the regime.

The committee said it would be "pleased" for Mr Galloway to appear at a hearing in Washington on 17 May.

The MP intends to accept the invitation, his spokesman said.

POSTSCRIPT: Background on the controversial Mr. Galloway here.

UPDATE: And speaking of the BBC, Jeff Jarvis seems to be quite taken with the potential of their new developer network, Backstage. [Full disclosure: I've been tangentially -- and I mean very, very tangentially -- involved in the planning and/or development of some of the Beeb's web stuff over the last few years.]

Look, John Bolton has no more business being our next ambassador to the United Nations than I do. But this kind of crap was sleazy and wrong in the ’90s, and it's sleazy and wrong now.

UPDATE: Kevin Drum doesn't appear to think much of the story, either.

So I'm watching Chris Matthews last night, and he prefaces a question to Tim Russert with something like, "Now, Tim, this is a popular president. . ."

Ruy Teixeira clears up that commonly held misconception here.

NOTE: The Matthews transcript doesn't appear to be available online yet. When it pops up, I'll add the link.

UPDATE: Ed Kilgore has more polling data, and it doesn't look like great news for the current crop of Southern GOP governors.

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Here's everything you need to know about President Bush's new Medicaid advisory panel:

The commission will have up to 15 voting members and 18 nonvoting members. The voting members will all be appointed by Michael O. Leavitt, the secretary of health and human services. Mr. Leavitt rejected bipartisan Congressional pleas for an independent commission under the auspices of the National Academy of Sciences. [Emph added]

You know, at a certain point, all the "changing the tone" humor just stops being funny -- and all your left with is the growing suspicion that cleaning up this administration's mess may well end up being the life's work of an entire generation of Americans.

Dave Pell: "There's almost no unembarrassing reason for an NFL runningback to be caught trying to sneak a dildo through an airport. . . ."

As one of my blogging betters would say, Indeed.

"Any Republican who thinks she will be easy to beat has total amnesia about the Clintons."

--Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, on the presidential prospects of his new partner in health care reform, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton

Former television writer Tom Johnson explains why the just-launched Huffington Post is getting such bad reviews: pilots always suck.

MORE: Boy, talk about thin-skinned . . . .

You probably viewed yesterday's Financial Times report on falling wages here in the US as an indictment of this president's failed economic policies.

Nathan Newman explains why it actually represents yet another one of his many economic successes.

From today's WaPo:

An Agriculture Department agency paid a freelance writer at least $7,500 to write articles touting federal conservation programs and place them in outdoors magazines, according to agency records and interviews.

The Natural Resources Conservation Service hired freelancer Dave Smith in September 2003 to "research and write articles for hunting and fishing magazines describing the benefits of NRCS Farm Bill programs to wildlife habitat and the environment," according to agency procurement documents obtained by The Washington Post through a Freedom of Information Act request.

Smith, contracted to craft five stories for $1,875 each, also was to "contact and work magazine editors to place the articles in targeted publications," the records show. . . .

Smith said he told magazine editors of his government contract, and he received no fee from the publications. One of the Outdoor Oklahoma articles was accompanied by a note identifying Smith as a freelance writer who works as a biologist for the agency. None of the articles appear to disclose his federal contract.

Look, I'm not going to pretend that this story is the biggest deal in the world. It isn't. But it is indicative of this administration's mindset. They just don't see a meaningful distinction between public communications and public relations -- and the national debate gets a little cheaper and a little more corrupt every day as a result.

I like Matt Miller as much as the next guy, but Sam Rosenfeld is right; if this is typical of what we're going to get while he sits in for Maureen Dowd for the next month, we're looking at "four dreary weeks."

UPDATE: Jesse Taylor has more -- much, much more, in fact -- on Miller's debut effort, and it's well worth reading.

God, who's that old fart standing between the two attractive blond women at last month's Jefferson-Jackson Dinner? Hmmm. . . .

POSTSCRIPT: I didn't even realize that that picture existed until it showed up in my email a few minutes ago. Thanks to good folks at the SC Democratic Party for sending it along.

FACT: "Also, even by mid-century, when Social Security is likely to have depleted its trust fund of Treasury bonds, it would still be able to pay 73 percent of promised benefits out of the payroll taxes. Bush asserts the system will then be 'bankrupt,' but opponents question that terminology, since a 27 percent benefit cut would still leave the average payment above today's level, even after adjusting for inflation." -- The Washington Post, January 2, 2005 [Emph. added]

2003 SPIN: "Make no mistake about it. Social Security as we know it is simply not sustainable without either significant benefit cuts or significant tax increases." -- Donald Luskin, December 12, 2003 [Emph. added]

2005 SPIN: "Krugman also lied when he portrayed progressive indexing as 'a plan to slash middle-class benefits.' It’s not a plan to 'slash' benefits at all, or even reduce them. Under progressive indexing, everyone’s Social Security benefits will be greater than they are today, by the rate of inflation or more." -- Donald Luskin, May 10, 2005 [Emph. added]

Well, which is it, Mr. Luskin? Would the 27% reductions you alluded to in 2003 represent "significant benefit cuts"? Or would they not, since "Social Security benefits will be greater than they are today, by the rate of inflation or more"?

I mean, I understand that a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds and all. But still. . . .

Mark Schmitt has examined President Bush's proposed Social Security cuts, and agrees with the Republican argument that they can't really be called "means testing." Arbitrary reductions would be more accurate, he says.

Though we come at the issue from different perspectives, John Cole is right: National health care is inevitable because corporate America needs it.

Via David Greenberg, here's . . . David Greenberg, giving the president of the United States an apparently much-needed history lesson.

Marshall Wittman tells the folks who are terrified of a right-wing onslaught if Hillary Clinton is the Democratic nominee in '08 to get real: "The ugly truth is that if Jesus of Nazareth himself returned and dared to run on the Democratic line the righteous right would tar him as a bleeding heart vagabond who couldn't hold a job and . . . needed a shave."

The man for whom I cast my first vote is blogging today over at Huffington Post:

IRAQ: Exit or Empire? Whether the U.S. does or does not intend to establish a permanent military presence in Iraq is a factual question.

The Bush administration has repeatedly stated that it intends to withdraw American military forces as the new Iraqi government develops the means, with our help, to defend itself and provide its own security. To my knowledge, the Administration has not positively stated, nor has it been definitively asked by the press or Congress, whether it intends to withdraw ALL troops.

There is one way to find out. Are we, or are we not, building permanent military bases in Iraq? Yes or no? If we are withdrawing ALL troops, we do not need permanent bases. If we are building military bases, we do not intend to withdraw all our troops. Simple as that.

Yep.

Jeanne d’Arc is putting together a new website on torture, and she'd appreciate your help.

UPDATE: For the record -- and isn't the fact that I feel the need to add this a disturbing commentary on the way that torture has been minimized and occasionally even excused in recent days -- she's agin' it.

My first thought when I saw this La Shawn Barber post (via Glenn Reynolds) on the threat that hate crime laws pose to the very foundations of the Republic was something like, Hey, wouldn't that argument apply to anti-terrorism laws as well. So I did a quick Google search to see if there might be a post in that idea, and quickly made two happy discoveries: (1) there is, indeed, a powerful argument to be made along those lines, and (2) a better, smarter blogger than I had already made it. So, take it away, Mr. Neiwert.

"There's a hole in the logic behind the idea. Generally, people with little or no income have no money. Of course, crime is an option.''

--The Concord Monitor, on New Hampshire Health and Human Services Commissioner John Stephen's proposal to start making the poorest of the poor -- families with no income at all -- pay for their Medicaid coverage

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The outpouring of international support after last year's devastating tsunami was genuinely moving. Unfortunately, good wishes and money aren't a plan.

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I remember being a bit skeptical last November when Newsweek's campaign tick-tock claimed that Al Gore had simply hung up on John Kerry (and refused to answer the phone again) when the senator called during the primary season to ask why he'd endorsed Howard Dean. Perhaps I should have had more faith in the newsmag's reportage.

Well, Arianna Huffington's new web project is certainly getting off to a big, Drudgey start:

According to a new book exclusively obtained by the Huffington Post, Saudi Arabia has crafted a plan to protect itself from a possible invasion or internal attack. It includes the use of a series of explosives, including radioactive “dirty bombs,” that would cripple Saudi Arabian oil production and distribution systems for decades.

Bestselling author Gerald Posner lays out this “doomsday scenario” in his forthcoming “Secrets of the Kingdom: The Inside Story of the Saudi-US Connection” (Random House).

According to the book, which will be released to the public on May 17, based on National Security Agency electronic intercepts, the Saudi Arabian government has in place a nationwide, self-destruction explosive system composed of conventional explosives and dirty bombs strategically placed at the Kingdom’s key oil ports, pipelines, pumping stations, storage tanks, offshore platforms, and backup facilities. If activated, the bombs would destroy the infrastructure of the world’s largest oil supplier, and leave the country a contaminated nuclear wasteland ensuring that the Kingdom’s oil would be unusable to anyone. The NSA file is dubbed internally Petro SE, for petroleum scorched earth.

Via Jeff Jarvis.

I was getting all ready to pick a nit or two with this Stephen Green post when I suddenly decided not to. Read it all, and I think you'll see why.

As a group, we bloggers tend to be awfully critical of professional journalists -- so it's kinda, well, refreshing to see a member of the Fourth Estate congratulated for getting something right.

UPDATE: For more on the traditional press and its place in the new media environment, see Joe Gandelman's typically thoughtful post on the New York Times' latest efforts to figure all this stuff out.

Over at DanielDrezner.com, guest blogger David Greenberg addresses What's the Matter with Kansas author Tom Frank's seductive contention that Democrats just need to embrace their inner economic populist in order to start winning presidential elections again:

The only problem with this argument is that the Democrats haven’t abandoned their economic populism. This charge has been leveled from the left at every losing Democratic candidate since the 1980s, and it’s just wrong. Economic populism was a key ingredient in the campaigns of Dems from Walter Mondale onward -- incluing John Kerry, scourge of outsourcing. The reality is that economic populism is a necessary but not sufficient element for a Democratic victory.

He's right. Though bread and butter issues are, without question, the Democrats' bread and butter, they're not enough in and of themselves to convince the American people to ignore foreign and national security policy when selecting a commander in chief -- as Matt Yglesias persuasively argued in the March 5 edition of The American Prospect.

There's little doubt that MyDD's Jerome Armstrong has forgotten more about the ins and outs of this year's Social Security debate than I'll ever know, but I'm afraid he's a tad off base here:

Clinton will be dead and gone before Social Security needs to be changed, but he's decided that he's had enough of seeing Bush get his ass kicked by Democrats over the issue of Social Security. Did the Republicans come up with a plan when the Clintons tried to reform Healthcare? No, and that's why Bill Clinton got the Democratic Congressional leadership's head handed to him after the '94 midterm election. [Emph. added.]

Actually, there were several Republican health care proposals in 1994, including, perhaps most famously, Bob Dole's and John Chafee's. And while each of the GOP plans had real shortcomings, their existence allowed the Republicans to successfully argue that they weren't just obstructionists; they were in favor of health care reform, just not Hillary Clinton's big government version of it. (Which was bunk, of course, but that's a post for another day. . . .)

I'm not trying to make the case here that we should take a similar approach with Social Security today -- I'm still agnostic on that question, actually -- just explaining why folks like President Clinton and James Carville may be suggesting it. It has the rather notable distinction of having worked before.

In a perhaps vain effort to stanch the flow of Internet bilge that's been pouring in for the past week or so, I'm going to update the software that powers this site some time late this afternoon or tonight. All manner of strangeness is almost certain to follow (the templates aren't fully compatible, I'm afraid), so please accept my apologies in advance for any and all broken pages, missing feeds, dumped comments, and/or just plain surreal moments you may experience here at The O'Toole File between now and, say, Monday morning.

So, um . . . Onward, ho!

UPDATE (8:03 pm ET): So far, so good, I guess. More later. . . .

FINAL UPDATE (2:11 am ET): Okay, everything seems to be working on my end. Please let me know if you have any problems on yours.

Thanks . . . and good night.

I realize that the situation is a bit more complicated than it seems at first blush (apparently, there was some foul language used at one point), but still . . . don't school districts have PR people to tell them how very much they don't want to end up on the wrong end of a story like this?

A high school student was suspended for 10 days for refusing to end a mobile phone call with his mother, a soldier serving in Iraq, school officials said.

The 10-day suspension was issued because Kevin Francois was "defiant and disorderly" and was imposed in lieu of an arrest, Spencer High School assistant principal Alfred Parham said.

The confrontation Wednesday began after the 17-year-old junior got a call at lunchtime from his mother, Sgt. 1st Class Monique Bates, who left in January for a one-year tour with the 203rd Forward Support Battalion.

Mobile phones are allowed on campus but may not be used during school hours. When a teacher told him to hang up, he refused. He said he told the teacher, "This is my mom in Iraq. I'm not about to hang up on my mom."

Hmmm. Maybe for his next trick, the principal could find a cuddlesome, doe-eyed Labrador retriever puppy to kick. . . .

After rightly skewering the unwholesome interplay of arrogance, greed, and corruption that ultimately led to the passage of The World's Worst Prescription Drug Benefit™, Paul Krugman closes his column today with a modest proposal:

According to the Medicare trustees, the fiscal gap over the next 75 years created by the 2003 [prescription drug] law - not the financing gap for Medicare as a whole, just the additional gap created by legislation passed 18 months ago - will be $8.7 trillion.

That's about three times the amount President Bush proposes to save by cutting middle-class Social Security benefits.

In fact, I have a suggestion for Mr. Bush. One way to prove that he's really sincere about addressing long-run fiscal problems, that his calls for benefit cuts aren't just part of an ideological agenda, would be to put Social Security aside for a while and fix his own Medicare program.

Sincerity? From the House that Rove Built? As my wise old father used to point out on occasion, it's just silly to ask people for what they don't have to give.

These two Atrios posts put me in mind of a passage I've been meaning to pass along from David Remnick's "The Masochism Campaign" in this week's New Yorker (sorry about the missing link; I can't seem to find the piece online):

It's really remarkable how unwilling Blair's antagonists -- whether Tory or Labour -- are to give him credit for what's gone right in the past eight years: the lowest rate of inflation since the nineteen-fifties; a sharp decline in unemployment; sustained economic growth for every year in office; a historic breakthrough in the Northern Ireland dispute, leading to the 1998 Good Friday agreement and a near cessation of violence on both sides; the establishment of a parliament in Scotland, an assembly in Wales, and a mayoralty in London; an improvement in, or, at least, an end to the deterioration of, public services; an increase in the number of doctors, nurses, and dentists . . . and a reduction in the waiting period for surgery.

And people have a problem with that record?

Geez, talk about a tough crowd.

UPDATE: Fellow blogger Mike Kasper was kind enough to pass along the link in the comments. Thanks, Mike!

I don't mean to pick nits, but this graf from Reuters is just goofy:

Gary Schroen and his six-member CIA team arrived in Afghanistan's Panjshir Valley two weeks after bin Laden's al Qaeda network orchestrated the attacks on Washington and New York that killed 3,000 people, prompting the Bush administration's war on terrorism.

Don't they mean America's war on terrorism? I mean, yeah, we're pretty divided these days. But not that divided. . . .

My God. Glenn Reynolds has escaped, and at least temporarily retaken control of his blog.

Slate's Jacob Weisberg calls the GOP's current governing philosophy by its right name: interest group conservatism.

Is today's Christian conservative movement a right-wing analogue of the radical multiculturalism of the 1990s? Well, yes, as a matter of fact, it is, says Ian Reifowitz:

Today, the appeal of radical multiculturalism has faded, and a new challenge to American pluralism has arisen: the political philosophy of the Christian right. On the surface an analogy between the two movements seems imperfect; after all, radical multiculturalism never exercised even half the political power during the 1990s that the Christian right exercises today. And yet the two movements share one crucial attribute: Both reject the need to build a common national identity with which Americans of different backgrounds and belief systems can identify. In other words, like the radical multiculturalists of ten years ago, today's Christian conservatives reject the central project of American pluralism. They merely come to that rejection from the opposite direction. . . .

And so, in order to defeat the Christian right, liberals will have to reach out to conservatives who care deeply about pluralism. This may sound trite, or all too obvious, but the lesson of radical multiculturalism's demise is that such outreach is essential. We are starting to see signs of dissent among Republicans and conservatives, most notably in recent comments by Christie Todd Whitman, Christopher Shays, and John Danforth. (Andrew Sullivan did his part in last week's TNR cover story.) Whitman, a moderate former governor and EPA chief, called her book It's My Party Too. Shays, a member of the House since 1987, commented on March 25 that "this Republican party of Lincoln has become a party of theocracy." Danforth, in an eloquent New York Times op-ed on March 30, argued that religious conservatives have "hijacked" the GOP. "Republicans," he wrote, "have transformed our party into the political arm of conservative Christians. ... [I]t has become the political extension of a religious movement." Whitman, Shays, and Danforth should receive support from liberals in these efforts. Democrats, after all, cannot fight Christian anti-pluralism alone. It will take a unified and determined effort by pluralists of all political stripes to ensure that in 2015, James Dobson is as forgotten and laughable a figure as Leonard Jeffries is in 2005.

From your lips to God's ears, Mr. Reifowitz. The rest is here.

MORE: Via Ed Cone, Sally Greene exposes yet another group of fundamentalist wolves masquerading as pedagogic sheep.

AND MORE: Marshall Wittman argues that the profoundly loony opinions held by some on the radical right, such as "Pat Robertson's bizarre view that liberal judges are a more serious threat to America than Al Qaeda," provide an opening for Democrats "to reach out to the religious faithful." He's right.

Okay, this one's good for a laugh, anyway. Here's John Tierney -- yes, that John Tierney, of Yale and the New York Times -- mocking the Democratic party for not paying due deference to the virtues and verities of Red State America:

For the mainly Democratic audience - this was a crowd of Washington journalists and luminaries from Hollywood and Manhattan - it was an evening of cognitive dissonance. How to reconcile this charming image on stage with the Bush they love to bash?...

The coverage of Mrs. Bush's comic debut may change some minds, but for devout Bush-bashers, it's much easier to stay the course. If you live in a blue-state stronghold, a coastal city where you can go 24 hours without meeting any Republicans, it's consoling to think of the red staters as an alien bunch of strait-laced Bible thumpers.

Otherwise, how do you explain why they're Republican? Or answer the question Democrats asked in astonishment when they saw Mr. Bush's vote totals: Who are these people?

Two points: First, he's right about one thing. Many people were astonished by Mr. Bush's vote totals -- by how low they were, that is. How in God's name did the hero of 9-11 wind up eking out a two-and-a-half point win against a TV-challenged stiff like John Kerry? That's an important, and rather puzzling, question -- and one that the GOP would do well to consider carefully between now and 2008.

Second, I really have to say that I might start taking all this "flyover country" stuff a little more seriously if Mr. Tierney -- or any of the other prominent, Ivy League, Blue State conservative types, for that matter -- packed up his family, moved down to my part of the world, took a job at the Wal Mart, and started sending his kids to the local public school. (Oops. There goes the legacy. Bummer, huh? But don't worry, Mr. Tierney -- we have any number of solid tech schools where the little'uns could learn a trade.) Until then, though, I'm afraid I'm going to have to assume that all these conservative paeans to the good life out here in Red America are precisely what they always sound like: unctuous, cynical, condescending horse manure.

Over at Functional Ambivalent, Tom Johnson argues that by refusing to condemn some of its more radical members, today's Republican party is empowering totalitarianism. Sadly enough, he has a point.

Mark Kleiman rightly mocks the uproarious claim that President Bush's Social (In)Security proposal is a good deal for the poor and the middle class.

Communications theorist Marshall McLuhan* once quipped that television is known as a medium because it's neither rare nor well done. And the partisan Republican who's running PBS these days appears to be doing his level best to keep it that way:

Without the knowledge of his board, the chairman, Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, contracted last year with an outside consultant to keep track of the guests' political leanings on one program, "Now With Bill Moyers."

In late March, on the recommendation of administration officials, Mr. Tomlinson hired the director of the White House Office of Global Communications as a senior staff member, corporation officials said. While she was still on the White House staff, she helped draft guidelines governing the work of two ombudsmen whom the corporation recently appointed to review the content of public radio and television broadcasts.

Mr. Tomlinson also encouraged corporation and public broadcasting officials to broadcast "The Journal Editorial Report," whose host, Paul Gigot, is editor of the conservative editorial page of The Wall Street Journal. And while a search firm has been retained to find a successor for Kathleen A. Cox, the corporation's president and chief executive, whose contract was not renewed last month, Mr. Tomlinson has made clear to the board that his choice is Patricia Harrison, a former co-chairwoman of the Republican National Committee who is now an assistant secretary of state. . . .

Mr. Tomlinson said he understood the need to reassure liberals that the traditions of public broadcasting, including public affairs programs, were not changing, "that we're not trying to put a wet blanket on this type of programming."

But his efforts to sow goodwill have shown that what he says he tries to project is sometimes read in a different way. Last November, members of the Association of Public Television Stations met in Baltimore along with officials from the corporation and PBS. Mr. Tomlinson told them they should make sure their programming better reflected the Republican mandate.

Mr. Tomlinson said that his comment was in jest and that he couldn't imagine how remarks at "a fun occasion" were taken the wrong way. Others, though, were not amused.

No, they probably weren't. But you know those Democrats -- no sense of humor at all. Fortunately, the reeducation camps should take care of that. . . .

POSTSCRIPT: Mr. O'Toole said that his comment about reeducation camps was in jest and that he couldn't imagine how remarks on a "fun weblog" were taken the wrong way. Others, though, were not amused.

*CORRECTION: Tom Johnson, who has a much better memory than your (appropriately) humble correspondent, emails with a correction: The "neither rare nor well done" crack is actually from Ernie Kovacs, not McLuhan.

Perhaps I should quit punning on the term "educational television" and actually, well, you know . . . watch a little.