Coming Soon To A Controversy Near You

Ken AshfordSex/Morality/Family ValuesLeave a Comment

EastereggWell, now that the War On Christmas is over (By the way, who won?  Will there be a Christmas next year or not?), the next holiday to get all political is going to be Easter:

Gay families plan to attend White House egg roll

NEW YORK (AP) — Three months before the annual Easter egg roll at the White House, the usually festive event is already taking on a divisive edge because of plans by gay- and lesbian-led families to turn out en masse in hopes of raising their public profile.

The Family Pride Coalition and other organizers envision the April 17 action as a celebration that will earn good will and showcase their families engaging in the annual tradition.

"It’s important for our families to be seen participating in all aspects of American life," said Family Pride executive director Jennifer Chrisler.

Naturally, the American Taliban isn’t happy about this.

On conservative chat rooms, some critics of Family Pride suggested the White House could make the egg roll an invitation-only event, as it did in 2003 when attendance was limited to military families. Other critics said conservatives should mobilize to outnumber gay families at the egg roll.

"It’s improper to use the egg roll for political purposes," said Mark Tooley of the conservative Institute on Religion and Democracy. Tooley wrote a critical article this week in the Weekly Standard magazine about the planned event that has circulated widely on conservative Web sites.

It’s "improper to use the egg roll for political purposes"?  Is he serious?  As it is, the White House endorsement of Easter is unconstitutional.  Now personally, I think the violation is de minimis and am happy to let that slide.  But when you start singling out Christians (who happen to be gay) from participating, then you’re going a bit too far.

Maybe Mr. Tooley thinks that gays shouldn’t be allowed to have money (since our currency is emblazoned with "In God We Trust").

The 2006 George W. Bush Dead Kitten Survey

Ken AshfordRight Wing Punditry/IdiocyLeave a Comment

NewscasterCartoonist (see right) and blogger August Pollak wonders how far some conservative bloggers, talk show personalities, and pundits will go in their support of Bush.

So he sent them a questionnaire:

I would like for you to imagine the President of the United States, George W. Bush, killing kittens one-by-one with a hammer. When doing so, please keep in mind the following conditions of this hypothetical scenario:

  1. The kitten will be killed by President George W. Bush. It will not be ordered killed, nor terminated in any way by a subordinate. You are to assume for the whole of this scenario that the reference to the killing implies a scenario in which President Bush will sit at his desk in the Oval Office, place a small kitten on the desk, and kill it by beating it with a hammer until it is dead, and possibly for a short time afterwards. No other means or individuals will be employed in the death of the kitten.
  2. The hammer will be a standard carpenter’s hammer, of steel construction with a rubber handle grip. It is not a sledgehammer or any form of giant hammer that will guarantee the death of the kitten in a single blow.
  3. You are to assume that for every kitten death you accept, you will be willing to watch the actual act performed by the President. It will not be done privately or in any intimate conditions to which the act may be deemed "more humane" or "less graphic." Assume you will watch the full act of the President terminating the life of the kitten by one or possibly a series of blows with a hammer. You may determine the distance at which you are watching depending on your estimate of how messy the act may be and how much you may enjoy kitten parts being sprayed on you, if at all.
  4. You are not to assume the kitten needs to die, is already dying, or has a reason to require being killed with a hammer by the President. In fact, assume that the kitten is perfectly healthy and of normal temperament, and would be perfectly suitable living a full life in any normal American household had it not been selected by the President to die.
  5. Furthermore, no acknowledged benefit shall be suggested by death of the kitten nor any practical use be made of its remains. When the President has declared his satisfaction with his repeated blows to the kitten and a medical advisor concurs it is without question dead, an aide shall squeegee the remains of the kitten off the desk into a bag which shall then be incinerated.
  6. At no point will you be given a reason for the President doing all of this. The only statement that will be offered by the White House regarding the killing of kitten will be that the President was well within his authority. While you may personally surmise a legitimate reason, the President himself will give no reason for killing a kitten with a hammer other than his desire to do so.
  7. For the sake of this experiment, assume the President is not insane, nor of any unsound mind or condition suggesting a rationale for his actions above. Assume the President has decided that it is not only within his authority, but a necessity in his capacity as Commander-In-Chief, that he begin to murder kittens one by one with a hammer on the top of his desk.

Given the terms of the scenario described above, this Survey presents the following three questions:

  1. Were the event detailed above to occur, would you still support the Presidency of George W. Bush?
  2. If the answer to Question #1 is yes, is there a number of kittens President Bush would kill with a hammer that would change your mind?
  3. If the answer to Question #2 is yes, what would that number be?

While acknowledging that his hypothetical is absurd, Pollak’s questions to conservatives were made in all seriousness.

So far, he hasn’t received much response (although, notably, he did get a death threat)

The Unbiased Media

Ken AshfordAbramoff Scandal, Right Wing and Inept MediaLeave a Comment

I’ve been following the WaPo story with some interest, but haven’t commented on it.  And now, when I’m prepared to comment, Legal Fiction steals my thunder.

For those not up on it, it started with the Post’s Ombudsman, Deborah Howell, writing that Jack Abramoff gave money to Republicans and Democrats alike.  This created a howl from the left blogosphere, simply because it parroted Republican talking points that the Abramoff scandal is bi-partisan.  Which is simply, and bluntly, untrue. 

Howell made it worse for herself by making a correction, saying that what she should have said was that Abramoff "directed" money from his Indian tribe clients to Republicans and Democrats.  Again, this is misleading, and still implies that Democrats are involved in the scandal.  Yes, Indian lobby groups often contributed to Democratic candidates, but their contributions went significantly down after Abramoff became their lobbyist.  If anything, Abramoff directed his clients NOT to contribute to Democrats, and for the most part, they complied.

She issued somewhat of a retraction yesterday, writing:

My mistake set off a firestorm. I heard that I was lying, that Democrats never got a penny of Abramoff-tainted money, that I was trying to say it was a bipartisan scandal, as some Republicans claim. I didn’t say that. It’s not a bipartisan scandal; it’s a Republican scandal, and that’s why the Republicans are scurrying around trying to enact lobbying reforms.

But the Howell mini-controversy highlights a problem with the mainstream media today.  They fail for two reasons: (1) laziness; and (2) the bending-over-backwards not to appear biased in favor of liberals.  Legal Fiction explains it all nicely:

The thrust of the post-blogosphere liberal media critique has been focused on the press’s intellectual laziness and, to a lesser extent, its fear of right-wing criticisms.

The laziness comes in many forms. The first is the sometimes-pathological devotion to the balanced “he said/she said” template, even when the facts clearly reveal that the “she said” is factually inaccurate. A second manifestation of laziness is simply relying on intentionally-placed quotes from self-interested sources and treating the quotes as news – rather than what they are, which is “free” propaganda. A final point is the annoying tendency (which I often ridicule David Broder for) to treat both parties as equally bad on any and every controversy. Sometimes, of course, they are. But sometimes they are not. The Abramoff scandal is clearly – by any number of objective criteria – a one-party problem – though it’s easier to just go get a quote from each party representative rather than, say, researching the donation history of the Indian tribes at issue.

The other liberal critique is that the MSM has so thoroughly internalized conservative criticisms of bias that reporters go out of their way (often too far out of their way) to show they are not biased. Personally, I think Judith Miller was permitted to “run amok” largely because of the editors’ fears of appearing biased. See, we’re not baised. We put Miller on the first page. We let her do what she wants. As Josh Marshall explained:

So much of the imbalance and shallowness of press coverage today stems from a simple fact: reporters know they’ll catch hell from the right if they say or write anything that can even remotely be construed as representing ‘liberal bias’.

These two problems – laziness and fear of bias – converged in the Howell statement. It wasn’t just that she (as an ombudsman) wrote a factually inaccurate statement, it was the nature of the inaccuracy that drew the ire of the cyber-lynch mob. First, it represented the scandal as a bipartisan one. Second, it was a manifestation of the Broder “all-are-equally-bad” problem. …Third, and most importantly perhaps, it was literally a cut-and-paste statement from the RNC talking points. Now, I don’t think Howell is biased – I just think she was lazy and was afraid of appearing biased.

Unlike Publius, I think the major problem is fear of appearing biased, with laziness keeping a close second.  It’s time for the media to start providing the facts FIRST, and not what people are saying about the facts.  For example, deep in her clarification/retraction yesterday, Howell wrote this:

The Post also has copies of lists sent to tribes by Abramoff with his personal directions on which members were to receive what amounts.

Why, I wonder, hasn’t this been printed — even now?  After all, this would settle the matter of Abramoff’s personal directions.

Hopefully, when the dust settles, reporters will start to learn that they are going to have to answer for conclusory, unsupported bad reporting.  They will need to understand that reporting talking points as news isn’t news, it’s spin.

50 Most Loathsome People In America

Ken AshfordWeb RecommendationsLeave a Comment

I may quibble about the order, but this list seems pretty good to me: The 50 Most Loathsome People in America, 2005.

No. 33 is Johnny Damon:

Charges: Any baseball player with highlights in his hair should be faced with the same penalty system applied to those using performance-enhancing steroids. It’s ruining the game. And if a ball player is going to grow a beard, it should be a Charlie Manson/Thurman Munson scraggle of bushy whiskers, not a neatly manicured and softly conditioned frame for your pretty face. The only thing that got Damon to step into line and quit hair-farming was a 52 million dollar check from the New York Yankees. Boston prayed for the multi-bladed Gillette that officially made him a Yankee to slip while gliding over his Adam’s apple and spill his lifeblood into the bathroom sink.

Exhibit A: Going from the Red Sox to the Yankees is like fucking the guy that murdered your husband.

Sentence: Killed by barrage of hurled D cell batteries when he takes the field at Fenway next season.

Unfair?  Perhaps.  But then, there’s #4 on the list . . . you.

Charges: Silently enabling and contributing to the irreversible destruction of your planet. Absolving yourself of your responsibility to do anything about it that your immediate neighbors don’t. Assuming that it’s normal behavior to spend several hours each day totally inert and staring into a cathode ray tube. Substituting antidepressants for physical motion. Caring more about the personal relationships of people you will never meet than your own. Shrugging your shoulders at the knowledge that your government is populated by criminal liars intent on fooling you into impoverished, helpless submission. Cheering this process on.

Exhibit A: You don’t even know who your congressman is.

Sentence: Deathbed realization that your entire life was an unending series of stupid mistakes and wasted opportunities, a priceless gift of potential extravagantly squandered, for which you deserve nothing but scorn or, at best, indifference, and a cold, meaningless demise.

Now, that’s unfair, especially since Bill O’Reilly is #10.

Someone Please Send A Copy Of The Constitution To The U.S. Department Of Justice

Ken AshfordConstitution, War on Terrorism/TortureLeave a Comment

From the NYT:

Nor does the N.S.A. program conflict, the Justice Department said, with what many legal analysts had regarded as the exclusive authority for intelligence wiretaps under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, passed by Congress in 1978 in response to Watergate-era political abuses. Some presidential powers, particularly in the area of national security, are simply "beyond Congress’ ability to regulate," it said.

From the United States Constitution (Art. I, Sec 8):

The Congress shall have power…

To declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water;

To raise and support armies, but no appropriation of money to that use shall be for a longer term than two years;

To provide and maintain a navy;

To make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces;

To provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions;

…–And

To make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof.

Especially when you take into account this final paragraph, it’s quite obvious that the Constitution empowers Congress to regulate quite heavily — almost universally — in the area of national security.

Glenn Greenwald has much more to say about the Administration’s "naked theory of limitless presidential power" in times of war.

Dems Looking Better To America

Ken AshfordElection 2006Leave a Comment

The latest poll from the Pew Research Center (PDF) is out, and as always, it provides some interesting information.  Kevin Drum notes that the public is evenly split (at 48%) on the question of whether to keep troops in Iraq until it is stable vs. bringing them home as soon as possible.

I, however, was struck by the advances that Democrats have made in public opinion with regard to their ability to handle a wide range of domestic and foreign problems.  Here’s the chart:

Pewpoll_1

Note that the Dem/Rep gap with regard to Iraq has increased from +5 (in January 2005) to +19 (in January 2006).

More importantly, Republicans — always seen as better capable at handling national security and terrorism issues — are seeing that perceived strength erode.  Last year, they led Dem 58 to 19 (a gap of 39 points).  That gap has been narrowed to mere 18 points (Repubs are still seen as stronger, but only by 52 to 34).

And one year ago, people saw Dems and Repubs just about the same with regard to handling social and domestic matters.  This is no longer so: people favor Dems by 22 points (44% to 22%, to be precise).  We’ll call this the "Katrina effect".

All-in-all, this bodes well for elections later this year.  But that’s a loooong way away, so Dems still have plenty of time to bungle things up.

If The Government Does It, Why Shouldn’t You?

Ken AshfordWeb RecommendationsLeave a Comment

Bored on the Internet? (You must be — you’re reading this blog).  Since peering in on other people’s private lives and conversations is so in vogue these days, maybe you should embrace it and check out these cyberplaces:

(1)  PostSecret: A blog of sorts where anybody can mail in a postcard and share (anonymously, of course) their dark secrets and confessions.  It is, according to Technorati, the third most popular blog on the Internet.  And it’s also a book, and a travelling art exhibit.

Realtor

Qupid

(2)  Overheard in New York:  Another very popular website in which people record and send in snippets of conversations they overhear as they make their way through the Big Apple.  Not family-friendly, sometimes hilarious, sometimes slightly disturbing.  A sample:

Teen Asian boy: So, the spelling bee–

Teen Indian girl: Was one of the kids Indian?

Teen Asian boy: Yeah, there was an Indian kid and a white kid.

Teen Indian girl: So typical. My parents entered me in a spelling bee and I was fucking horrible.

Teen Asian boy: Ha, ha, ha! Anyway, there were those two kids and I just wanted to throw PlayStations at them and yell, "I’m setting you free! I’m setting you free!"

–McDonalds, Union Square

Overheard by: Rachel W.

(3)  Overheard In The Office:  More slices of life just like "Overheard In New York", and otherwise pretty self-explanatory.  Not as popular as its predecessor, but still amusing at times:

Boss: You know what my problem is? I’m too nice a guy. I fired [Lenore] this morning. I should’ve kept her on till the end of the day, but then I would’ve felt like I was using her. I’m an idiot.

Salesperson: That’s two problems.

— Naperville, Illinois

Jill Carroll Letter From Baghdad

Ken AshfordIraqLeave a Comment

160_ap_jill_carroll_060110As you know, today is supposedly the "deadline" set by the captors of Jill Carroll, the American journalist being held hostage in Iraq.  I am not optimistic about the outcome of this unfortunate event.

This is from Carroll’s "Letter From Baghdad" written last year, about why she went there as a freelance journalist in the first place:

Only a story of this enormity, with nothing less than America’s global credibility, the stability of the Middle East and countless lives at stake, could be worth risking personal safety and financial solvency to cover it as a freelancer.

***

The sense that I could do more good in the Middle East than in the U.S. drove me to move to Jordan six months before the war to learn as much about the region as possible before the fighting began. All I ever wanted to be was a foreign correspondent, so when I was laid off from my reporting assistant job at the Wall Street Journal in August 2002, it seemed the right time to try to make it happen. There was bound to be plenty of parachute journalism once the war started, and I didn’t want to be a part of that.

***

It  isn’t easy to fulfill such a lofty mandate when people are out looking for foreigners to behead. The days are long gone when car bombs and attacks on military convoys were so infrequent we could keep track of the date and place of each one.

Iraq became terrifyingly dangerous almost overnight last spring. Everything changed during the U.S. Marines’ siege of Fallujah the first week of April 2004 and the simultaneous Shiite uprising led by firebrand cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. It wasn’t safe for foreigners to walk the streets, and car bombs became an almost daily occurrence.

The anger and violence have only gotten worse since then, and a new terror has been added: kidnapping.

Some 200 foreigners, several freelance journalists among them, have been kidnapped in Iraq since insurgents adopted the tactic last April.

***

But in a place where keeping a low profile is the best way to stay alive, the small operations of a freelancer seem safer than those of big media organizations, which rent houses replete with armed guards and a stream of foreigners coming and going.

Let’s hope we find Ms. Carroll safe back home . . . and soon.

I Hate It When My Myths Are Shattered

Ken AshfordHistory, Science & TechnologyLeave a Comment

H96566k I always liked the story about the etymology of the term "computer bug" (and similar terms, like "debugging".  You may know the tale:

Moth found trapped between points at Relay # 70, Panel F, of the Mark II Aiken Relay Calculator while it was being tested at Harvard University, 9 September 1945. The operators affixed the moth to the computer log, with the entry: "First actual case of bug being found". They put out the word that they had "debugged" the machine, thus introducing the term "debugging a computer program".

A photo of the actual moth — the supposed first computer "bug" — is on the right (click for a larger display).

Cute, huh?

Sadly, this is one of those times where truth is more boring than fiction.  From Byte.com (via Cynical-C), we learn that "the OED records such a meaning of bug (4b; "a defect or fault in a machine, plan, or the like") as early as 1889."  And in 1878, Thomas Edison wrote:

"It has been just so in all my inventions. The first step is an intuition–and comes with a burst, then difficulties arise. This thing gives out and then that–"Bugs"–as such little faults and difficulties are called–show themselves and mo nths of anxious watching, study and labor are requisite before commercial success–or failure–is certainly reached"

Tch, Edison.  He gets credit for everything.

Fish. Barrel. Kapow.

Ken AshfordBush & Co.Leave a Comment

Quote Of The Day:

President Bush on Thursday categorically ruled out a run for office by his wife, Laura Bush.

"She’s not interested in running for office. She’s interested in literacy," Bush said during an appearance at RK Moving & Storage here.

There’s so many ways I can go with this, but sometimes the joke unsaid is the funniest.

The So-Called Liberal Media

Ken AshfordRight Wing and Inept MediaLeave a Comment

FrontpagenytRight-wingers like to blast the New York Times because of its supposed liberal bias.  I never understood that.

Take today’s paper.  The page one headline reads "Inquiry on Clinton Official Ends With Accusations of Cover-up".  The "Clinton official" is Henry Cisneros, who was indicted on 18 felony counts, pled guilty to a misdemeanor, and was eventually pardoned by President Clinton.  The investigation took over ten years and cost tax-payers $21 million.  Moreover, since the investigation didn’t reveal much, this has led the prosecutors to cry "cover-up".

Now, I am happy to concede that the closure of the Cisneros investigation is news.  But is it more important than these other news stories, which didn’t make the front page of the New York Times: (1)  White House refusing to discuss its meetings with Abramoff; (2) Non-partisan Congressional Agency refutes legality of wiretaps; or (3) Iran and North Korea determined to build arsenals of nuclear weapons?

Yeah.  Some liberal media we’ve supposedly got there.

Photo from Mahablog, who has much more to say on this.

NSA Wiretapping: Illegal No Matter How You Splice It

Ken AshfordWiretapping & SurveillanceLeave a Comment

The White House has defended its warrantless-search program with essentially two silly arguments: (1) Congress’ 9/11 resolution ("Authorization to Use Military Force") empowered Bush to do this, and (2) Congress was briefed so oversight requirements had been met.

Two weeks ago, the non-partisan Congressional Research Service rejected the administration’s first argument. Yesterday, the CRS rejected the second:

The Bush administration appears to have violated the National Security Act by limiting its briefings about a warrantless domestic eavesdropping program to congressional leaders, according to a memo from Congress’s research arm released yesterday.

The Congressional Research Service opinion said that the amended 1947 law requires President Bush to keep all members of the House and Senate intelligence committees "fully and currently informed" of such intelligence activities as the domestic surveillance effort. […]

The only exception in the law applies to covert actions, Cumming found, and those programs must be reported to the "Gang of Eight," which includes House and Senate leaders in addition to heads of the intelligence panels. The administration can also withhold some operational details in rare circumstances, but that does not apply to the existence of entire programs, he wrote.

Unless the White House contends the program is a covert action, the memo said, "limiting congressional notification of the NSA program to the Gang of Eight . . . would appear to be inconsistent with the law."

Turnabout Is Fair Play

Ken AshfordRepublicansLeave a Comment

Some of you may have read about UCLA alumni Andrew Jones lately.  If not, here’s the skinny:

A fledgling alumni group headed by a former campus Republican leader is offering students payments of up to $100 per class to provide information on instructors who are "abusive, one-sided or off-topic" in advocating political ideologies.

The year-old Bruin Alumni Assn. says its "Exposing UCLA’s Radical Professors" initiative takes aim at faculty "actively proselytizing their extreme views in the classroom, whether or not the commentary is relevant to the class topic." Although the group says it is concerned about radical professors of any political stripe, it has named an initial "Dirty 30" of teachers it identifies with left-wing or liberal causes.

Some of the instructors mentioned accuse the association of conducting a witch hunt that threatens to harm the teaching atmosphere, and at least one of the group’s advisory board members has resigned because he considers the bounty offers inappropriate. The university said it will warn the association that selling copies of professors’ lectures would violate campus rules and raise copyright issues.

The Bruin Alumni Assn. is headed by Andrew Jones, a 24-year-old who graduated in June 2003 and was chairman of UCLA’s Bruin Republicans student group. He said his organization, which is registered with the state as a nonprofit, does not charge dues and has no official members, but has raised a total of $22,000 from 100 donors. Jones said the biggest contribution to the group, $5,000, came from a foundation endowed by Arthur N. Rupe, 88, a Santa Barbara resident and former Los Angeles record producer.

Chris Bray (also of UCLA) has a proper response to Jones and the BAA:

We’re joining the cause. Because monitoring and thought reform only work if all putatively conservative cadre participate, we’re offering to help Andy keep an eye on his own mind. Surveillance Central is soliciting tapes and notes of everything Andrew Jones says in a public venue. We’ll post transcripts online, and — as Andy is helpfully offering to do for the university that employs UCLA professors — we’ll offer Andy’s future employers and business partners detailed transcripts and briefings of everything Andy says, along with our complete evaluation of his degree of right-thinking and wrong-thinking. It’s all in good faith, of course. We just want to help Andy to receive the same great service he’s offering to provide for others.

The name of the blog?  Surveillance Central: Watching Andrew Jones

Vatican Gets It Right

Ken AshfordEducation, GodstuffLeave a Comment

That’s it.  Sign me up for the Catholic Church.

ROME, Jan. 18 – The official Vatican newspaper published an article this week labeling as "correct" the recent decision by a judge in Pennsylvania that intelligent design should not be taught as a scientific alternative to evolution.

"If the model proposed by Darwin is not considered sufficient, one should search for another," Fiorenzo Facchini, a professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Bologna, wrote in the Jan. 16-17 edition of the paper, L’Osservatore Romano.

"But it is not correct from a methodological point of view to stray from the field of science while pretending to do science," he wrote, calling intelligent design unscientific. "It only creates confusion between the scientific plane and those that are philosophical or religious."

The article was not presented as an official church position. But in the subtle and purposely ambiguous world of the Vatican, the comments seemed notable, given their strength on a delicate question much debated under the new pope, Benedict XVI.

Advocates for teaching evolution hailed the article. "He is emphasizing that there is no need to see a contradiction between Catholic teachings and evolution," said Dr. Francisco J. Ayala, professor of biology at the University of California, Irvine, and a former Dominican priest. "Good for him."

Good for him, indeed.