Hey, I'm Just Bragging Because We're Doing It
While many Democrats are complaining about Ralph Nader--if you want chapter and verse, this Eric Altermann post is a good place to start--my partners and I are actually doing something about it. My law firm is suing Nader to knock him off the ballot in Arizona. There are a number of interesting legal questions in the case, and one really interesting political question--who are the Republicans going to pay to represent Nader to try to keep him on the ballot here? I'm not kidding. Nader may be under the total delusion that he'll take votes from Bush, but the Republicans sure don't think so.
Here's my partner Andy Gordon in today's ABC News The Note:
Yesterday two Arizona voters -- with the support of the Arizona Democratic Party -- filed a legal challenge to independent Ralph Nader's bid to get on a state's Nov. 2 presidential ballot. The suit states more than 70 percent of the 21,512 signatures Nader's campaign filed June 9 were defective. Nader needed 14,694 valid signatures to qualify him for the ballot. According to the suit only 6,045 are valid. Further, it alleges all the petitions should be thrown out because Nader named a "placeholder" as his vice presidential candidate and required paperwork was not filed with the nominating petitions. LINK and LINK
The Washington Post's Dan Balz and Hamil Harris point out that after largely ignoring Nader in 2000, Democrats have adopted a different strategy: taking him on. LINK
Andy Gordon, the attorney who headed up the pro-bono legal effort to file the Arizona suit, tells ABC News, when word of his project began to spread "calls came pouring in" to help. LINK
But Nader spokesguy Zeese says he and the campaign are not worried.
*****
Watch this space for more news about Schultz v. Nader.
(Revised with additional links after initial posting.)
Since January 8, 2011, this is a personal blog only. Comments? Email the author, Sam Coppersmith, at SCoppersmith at Charlie Bravo Lima Alpha Whiskey Yankee Echo Romeo Sierra dot com.
Thursday, June 24, 2004
Monday, June 14, 2004
A Government of Laws, Not Men: Another Outdated Concept
It's time for "outrage about the outrage" on the right. You can hear them already, complaining that there's certainly been way too much attention paid to the fact that the Bush administration developed policies to minimize the definition of torture, and to expand its use, and that the administration believes that the president can do what he likes, regardless of statutes or treaties, because he says so. It's crowding out what's really important, you know. Why, the coverage is so over-the-top, and so taking attention away from what really matters, you might not have realized that Ronald Reagan died.
Newspaper version available here for a month or so.
BUSH TORTURE RULES EQUATE U.S. WITH N. VIETNAM
East Valley Tribune, June 13, 2004
Thanks to the Bush administration and its lawyers, the North Vietnamese no longer have anything for which to apologize to Sen. John McCain. Sure, he suffered severe pain and outrageous abuse while a prisoner of war. But the Bush administration now says none of it constituted “torture.”
The Bush lawyers say that interrogators can inflict severe pain on a detainee, so long as there’s no clear intent to harm the prisoner on a long-term basis. But the Bush administration’s theory that “it isn’t torture if you really meant something else” (thereby creating a new category, “accidental” torture) apparently wasn’t disgusting enough. Their lawyers went further, claiming that interrogators can inflict severe pain with impunity unless they know for certain they’ve caused “prolonged” physical or mental effects. Maybe those broken bones heal soon enough that to Bush’s lawyers, it’s not actually torture.
But if those loopholes were still considered too restrictive, the Bush administration also claims that the Constitution doesn’t apply to the commander in chief in wartime. Never mind that there’s no declaration of war, or that this “war on terror” probably never ends; the Bush administration believes that a “war president” has an “inherent” power to ignore federal law and treaties. If George W. Bush says so, the United States can use torture.
Without any apparent irony, the Bush administration says that the president could instruct interrogators to torture suspects, and that in any prosecution, the torturers could beat the rap by claiming that they had to follow orders -- the “Nuremberg defense.” Who needs Michael Moore when the Bush administration cites the Nazis as justification?
Isn’t it nice we’re no longer ruled by moral relativists? Unfortunately, the key word there is “ruled.” The Bush administration believes that because we’re at war, Bush may be called president, but he’s really an emperor. I’m glad all you libertarians and “small government conservatives” (ha!) are comfortable with the Bush administration’s view of treaties, statutes, and the Constitution. Loss of our nation’s moral standing is but a small price to pay for getting rid of that terribly inconvenient “government of laws, and not men” folderol.
The legal memos make it clear that what we’ve seen in the Abu Ghraib prison photos wasn’t the work of a few “bad apples.” Instead, the top legal guns in the administration strained to create justifications for acts that, in the words of the Houston Chronicle, “are clearly beyond the bounds of a civilized nation.” The use of nudity and sexual humiliation; the use of personal medical records; psychological threats; the attack dogs -- all of it was approved and authorized by the Bush administration to “soften up” prisoners for interrogations.
The administration’s novel “intent” requirement also means that if we use amateur torturers, who conveniently don’t know what they’re doing, their ignorance gives them legal immunity unavailable to an “expert.” Maybe there’s a command-and-control reason the pictures we’ve seen involved an ill-trained Reserve unit. Under the Bush doctrine, amateurs have more leeway to torture than do pros. Their lawyers told them so.
Putting POW’s in cages, breaking bones, depriving them of food and medical care -- our government says what happened in Vietnam then is O.K. in Iraq and Guantanamo today, and our government’s lawyers will tell you how to get away with it. And if you’re caught, the Bush administration says the president can suspend the laws if he, and he alone, says the ends justify the means.
If the North Vietnamese had lawyers as “accommodating” as the Bush administration’s, who knows if John McCain would have had a future in politics? And in our next war, now our enemies know where to get their legal advice.
It's time for "outrage about the outrage" on the right. You can hear them already, complaining that there's certainly been way too much attention paid to the fact that the Bush administration developed policies to minimize the definition of torture, and to expand its use, and that the administration believes that the president can do what he likes, regardless of statutes or treaties, because he says so. It's crowding out what's really important, you know. Why, the coverage is so over-the-top, and so taking attention away from what really matters, you might not have realized that Ronald Reagan died.
Newspaper version available here for a month or so.
BUSH TORTURE RULES EQUATE U.S. WITH N. VIETNAM
East Valley Tribune, June 13, 2004
Thanks to the Bush administration and its lawyers, the North Vietnamese no longer have anything for which to apologize to Sen. John McCain. Sure, he suffered severe pain and outrageous abuse while a prisoner of war. But the Bush administration now says none of it constituted “torture.”
The Bush lawyers say that interrogators can inflict severe pain on a detainee, so long as there’s no clear intent to harm the prisoner on a long-term basis. But the Bush administration’s theory that “it isn’t torture if you really meant something else” (thereby creating a new category, “accidental” torture) apparently wasn’t disgusting enough. Their lawyers went further, claiming that interrogators can inflict severe pain with impunity unless they know for certain they’ve caused “prolonged” physical or mental effects. Maybe those broken bones heal soon enough that to Bush’s lawyers, it’s not actually torture.
But if those loopholes were still considered too restrictive, the Bush administration also claims that the Constitution doesn’t apply to the commander in chief in wartime. Never mind that there’s no declaration of war, or that this “war on terror” probably never ends; the Bush administration believes that a “war president” has an “inherent” power to ignore federal law and treaties. If George W. Bush says so, the United States can use torture.
Without any apparent irony, the Bush administration says that the president could instruct interrogators to torture suspects, and that in any prosecution, the torturers could beat the rap by claiming that they had to follow orders -- the “Nuremberg defense.” Who needs Michael Moore when the Bush administration cites the Nazis as justification?
Isn’t it nice we’re no longer ruled by moral relativists? Unfortunately, the key word there is “ruled.” The Bush administration believes that because we’re at war, Bush may be called president, but he’s really an emperor. I’m glad all you libertarians and “small government conservatives” (ha!) are comfortable with the Bush administration’s view of treaties, statutes, and the Constitution. Loss of our nation’s moral standing is but a small price to pay for getting rid of that terribly inconvenient “government of laws, and not men” folderol.
The legal memos make it clear that what we’ve seen in the Abu Ghraib prison photos wasn’t the work of a few “bad apples.” Instead, the top legal guns in the administration strained to create justifications for acts that, in the words of the Houston Chronicle, “are clearly beyond the bounds of a civilized nation.” The use of nudity and sexual humiliation; the use of personal medical records; psychological threats; the attack dogs -- all of it was approved and authorized by the Bush administration to “soften up” prisoners for interrogations.
The administration’s novel “intent” requirement also means that if we use amateur torturers, who conveniently don’t know what they’re doing, their ignorance gives them legal immunity unavailable to an “expert.” Maybe there’s a command-and-control reason the pictures we’ve seen involved an ill-trained Reserve unit. Under the Bush doctrine, amateurs have more leeway to torture than do pros. Their lawyers told them so.
Putting POW’s in cages, breaking bones, depriving them of food and medical care -- our government says what happened in Vietnam then is O.K. in Iraq and Guantanamo today, and our government’s lawyers will tell you how to get away with it. And if you’re caught, the Bush administration says the president can suspend the laws if he, and he alone, says the ends justify the means.
If the North Vietnamese had lawyers as “accommodating” as the Bush administration’s, who knows if John McCain would have had a future in politics? And in our next war, now our enemies know where to get their legal advice.
Friday, June 11, 2004
Selective Disclosure
My weekly column ran Thursday instead of Sunday, due to getting bumped for a debate on state trust lands on Sunday and then needing a couple days to tweak about 6 words to satisfy my editor. He's now calling for disclosure and a Congressional investigation of the Bush administration's "torture memos" (the subject of this Sunday's forthcoming column from me) so at least the Tribune is being consistent about disclosure. In a remarkable show of bitter partisan unity, Bob Robb at the Republic wrote today that the state grand jury report should not be released, so there's at least one principled small government conservative out there. But that's been about it.
The third paragraph in the column is my editor's; he rejected the contention that the paper was being inconsistent because it called for release of the state grand jury report but hasn't said anything about the federal investigations of the Bush administration. He said that I was attacking a straw man--until I noted that earlier this year, they'd run an editorial attacking all Democrats for not denouncing some remarks on the dailykos.com website. So I got the criticism back in, although not exactly how I would have phrased it.
Anyway, the newspaper version is available here, for about 30 days. Columns older than that are always available at http://liberaldesert.blogspot.com (note: it works better without the "www").
GOP SELECTIVE IN DEMANDS FOR DISCLOSURE
East Valley Tribune, Jun. 10, 2004
If Republicans want grand jury testimony released in Arizona, what reason could Republicans have for not wanting to release grand jury testimony in Washington, DC?
With the hubbub over Rick Romley’s appointee turning a criminal grand jury into his own private investigation of the Lewis Prison hostage crisis, you could forget that a federal grand jury is investigating the Bush administration’s leak of a deep-cover CIA agent’s identity. If the public’s right to know means that grand jury testimony isn’t secret in hopes that it embarrasses a Democratic governor, why can’t we Democrats get to pore over secret grand jury testimony in hopes that it might embarrass a Republican president?
(And while the Tribune has editorialized for release of the state grand jury findings on the prison standoff, why has it been silent on the federal grand jury issue?)
Of course, Republicans will labor mightily to find a way to distinguish between “grand jury testimony” and “grand jury testimony.” You can hear the arguments: Grand jury testimony is secret, and contains only one side of the story; targets and witnesses can’t question other witnesses, but only can answer the prosecution’s questions. Therefore, it would be wrong to release grand jury testimony investigating actual crimes committed by members of the Bush administration. But where the grand jury has concluded that no crimes should be prosecuted here in Arizona, the secrecy and one-sidedness of the testimony doesn’t matter if release might be useful -- for Republicans, anyway.
Yes, the Arizona grand jury voted unanimously to release their report. Let’s give the federal grand jurors the same opportunity to vote that their state compatriots got. Do you think the grand jurors just spontaneously and magically came up with the idea of voting to release their report, without any suggestion from a Romley appointee? If you do, then you really shouldn’t watch “reality TV” without professional supervision.
It’ll be interesting to hear the hair-splitting necessary to release the “useful” parts but not anything that will show exactly how Romley’s office turned a criminal grand jury into a substitute for a GOP legislative committee investigation. It’ll also be interesting to see how people who argue that Bush wasn’t in office long enough to do anything to prevent 9/11 and how it’s all Clinton’s fault will argue that conditions in state prisons were totally Napolitano’s responsibility and the previous director of Arizona Department of Corrections, Terry Stewart -- a consultant to the grand jury -- had absolutely no responsibility for anything.
If the 9/11 Commission had hired Clinton’s anti-terrorism coordinator (you remember Richard Clarke, don't you?) as its sole consultant, we might have some partisan parity here. And maybe that analogy gives you an idea of how badly, and baldly, these GOP grand jury shenanigans stink.
The way these things inevitably work, the grand jury report will become public, one way or another. All I ask in return is that when DC grand jury testimony looking into these Bush administration scandals -- the “outing” of the CIA agent, the blabbing of the secret information about breaking the Iranian codes to Ahmad Chalabi, and the Boeing tanker deal, for starters -- begins leaking, we are spared the pious lectures about the absolutely vital need for keeping all grand jury testimony secret.
But using the grand jury raises an interesting point about Arizona legislative oversight. The GOP legislative leadership apparently didn’t consider their members up to the job of investigating the prisons. Instead, leadership preferred an investigation by people picked randomly from the driver’s license rolls.
Wags sometimes jest that we could improve the Arizona Legislature by picking names blindly from the phone book. When it came to investigating the prison crisis, that’s exactly what Speaker Jake Flake and Senate President Ken Bennett did. Some jokes aren’t quite as funny when they turn out to be true.
My weekly column ran Thursday instead of Sunday, due to getting bumped for a debate on state trust lands on Sunday and then needing a couple days to tweak about 6 words to satisfy my editor. He's now calling for disclosure and a Congressional investigation of the Bush administration's "torture memos" (the subject of this Sunday's forthcoming column from me) so at least the Tribune is being consistent about disclosure. In a remarkable show of bitter partisan unity, Bob Robb at the Republic wrote today that the state grand jury report should not be released, so there's at least one principled small government conservative out there. But that's been about it.
The third paragraph in the column is my editor's; he rejected the contention that the paper was being inconsistent because it called for release of the state grand jury report but hasn't said anything about the federal investigations of the Bush administration. He said that I was attacking a straw man--until I noted that earlier this year, they'd run an editorial attacking all Democrats for not denouncing some remarks on the dailykos.com website. So I got the criticism back in, although not exactly how I would have phrased it.
Anyway, the newspaper version is available here, for about 30 days. Columns older than that are always available at http://liberaldesert.blogspot.com (note: it works better without the "www").
GOP SELECTIVE IN DEMANDS FOR DISCLOSURE
East Valley Tribune, Jun. 10, 2004
If Republicans want grand jury testimony released in Arizona, what reason could Republicans have for not wanting to release grand jury testimony in Washington, DC?
With the hubbub over Rick Romley’s appointee turning a criminal grand jury into his own private investigation of the Lewis Prison hostage crisis, you could forget that a federal grand jury is investigating the Bush administration’s leak of a deep-cover CIA agent’s identity. If the public’s right to know means that grand jury testimony isn’t secret in hopes that it embarrasses a Democratic governor, why can’t we Democrats get to pore over secret grand jury testimony in hopes that it might embarrass a Republican president?
(And while the Tribune has editorialized for release of the state grand jury findings on the prison standoff, why has it been silent on the federal grand jury issue?)
Of course, Republicans will labor mightily to find a way to distinguish between “grand jury testimony” and “grand jury testimony.” You can hear the arguments: Grand jury testimony is secret, and contains only one side of the story; targets and witnesses can’t question other witnesses, but only can answer the prosecution’s questions. Therefore, it would be wrong to release grand jury testimony investigating actual crimes committed by members of the Bush administration. But where the grand jury has concluded that no crimes should be prosecuted here in Arizona, the secrecy and one-sidedness of the testimony doesn’t matter if release might be useful -- for Republicans, anyway.
Yes, the Arizona grand jury voted unanimously to release their report. Let’s give the federal grand jurors the same opportunity to vote that their state compatriots got. Do you think the grand jurors just spontaneously and magically came up with the idea of voting to release their report, without any suggestion from a Romley appointee? If you do, then you really shouldn’t watch “reality TV” without professional supervision.
It’ll be interesting to hear the hair-splitting necessary to release the “useful” parts but not anything that will show exactly how Romley’s office turned a criminal grand jury into a substitute for a GOP legislative committee investigation. It’ll also be interesting to see how people who argue that Bush wasn’t in office long enough to do anything to prevent 9/11 and how it’s all Clinton’s fault will argue that conditions in state prisons were totally Napolitano’s responsibility and the previous director of Arizona Department of Corrections, Terry Stewart -- a consultant to the grand jury -- had absolutely no responsibility for anything.
If the 9/11 Commission had hired Clinton’s anti-terrorism coordinator (you remember Richard Clarke, don't you?) as its sole consultant, we might have some partisan parity here. And maybe that analogy gives you an idea of how badly, and baldly, these GOP grand jury shenanigans stink.
The way these things inevitably work, the grand jury report will become public, one way or another. All I ask in return is that when DC grand jury testimony looking into these Bush administration scandals -- the “outing” of the CIA agent, the blabbing of the secret information about breaking the Iranian codes to Ahmad Chalabi, and the Boeing tanker deal, for starters -- begins leaking, we are spared the pious lectures about the absolutely vital need for keeping all grand jury testimony secret.
But using the grand jury raises an interesting point about Arizona legislative oversight. The GOP legislative leadership apparently didn’t consider their members up to the job of investigating the prisons. Instead, leadership preferred an investigation by people picked randomly from the driver’s license rolls.
Wags sometimes jest that we could improve the Arizona Legislature by picking names blindly from the phone book. When it came to investigating the prison crisis, that’s exactly what Speaker Jake Flake and Senate President Ken Bennett did. Some jokes aren’t quite as funny when they turn out to be true.
Monday, May 31, 2004
You Don't Work the Ref When a Bad Call Goes Your Way
You've probably read about a minor tempest working its way around the Internet, where the warbloggers are claiming that the media is exaggerating problems in Iraq and ignoring the good news, and that people may turn against the media and First Amendment because the media will be responsible for our "defeat" by not supporting the war sufficiently. We have the mightiest military in the world, but it's no match for CNN, or something.
The right-wingers are trumpeting a picture of a New York Times newspaper vending machine with "LIES" spray painted on it. But how do they know that the spray painter was someone who supports the war who's upset by what they think is The Times' bias against it? What if it was painted by someone who opposed the war who is convinced that the WMD stories gave the Bush administration crucial cover in the march to war? The word "LIES" could mean either opinion, why theirs--other than because they say so?
Newspaper version available here (for about 30 days).
CONSERVATIVES IGNORE N.Y. TIMES' MEA CULPA
East Valley Tribune, May 30, 2004
We got more proof last week that the “media bias” debate is simply each ideological side trying to “work the ref.” The New York Times published an “editor’s note” reviewing its overly credulous, and overstated, pre-war reporting of claims about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. The Times admitted it overemphasized evidence of a threat, and undervalued skeptical analysis and contrary reports.
Key stories about Iraqi weapons -- the aluminum tubes, the chemical weapons facilities, the terrorist training camps, the Iraqi “Dr. Germ” -- can’t be verified. In the note, The Times essentially apologized for its reporting, which helped provide a major, and inaccurate, justification for war.
Liberals probably read about The Times note, but conservatives might have missed it, which is strange indeed. Conservatives have made Times-bashing part of a daily unbalanced ideological diet. Any error, no matter how minor, in the nation’s leading newspaper is proof of liberal bias and moral rot.
When reporter Jayson Blair invented stories and plagiarized others and his editors didn’t catch him fast enough, conservatives said that wasn’t just one reporter failing. It was an institutional failure, and not only showed that The Times was corrupt -- but so were affirmative action and all liberals. The top two editors resigned; right-wingers chortled gleefully.
All that bloviating over Blair must have exhausted the right-wingers, because a couple weeks later, when reporter Jack Kelley of USA Today was unmasked as a bigger liar, there wasn’t nearly as much outrage. Kelley caught a break; it’s not that was he older, whiter, and more Christian than Blair, but rather his misdeeds were discovered second, and our collective attention span couldn’t handle it.
So conservatives have had it in for The Times for years. But when the newspaper gets Iraqi WMD wrong, and admits that its reporters and editors let its readers down, people who have built entire careers screaming about bias and error have absolutely nothing to say. To these critics, any mistakes The Times made in running dozen of stories helpful to the Bush administration’s desire to topple Saddam Hussein weren’t evidence of bias or institutional error. Conservatives can easily forgive mistakes -- when they’re useful mistakes.
Similarly, one boring staple of Arizona Democratic politics is counterproductive griping about ideological bias in the local newspapers (pointless, because it’s not like voters read anymore). But when critics, on both sides, talk about “bias,” what they really mean is “articles that we don’t like.” Conservatives enjoyed The Times articles that said Iraq had WMD, so the fact that the articles weren’t true isn’t evidence of bias. You don’t “work the ref” when a bad call goes in your favor.
If there’s bias in most of the media, it isn’t ideological; it’s a bias toward power, toward accepting the official view and not taking as seriously view of those lacking power or money. That’s how The Times got the Wen Ho Lee and Iraqi WMD stories so wrong -- reporters got exclusive “inside” information from key sources, and never evaluated whether the sources might be wrong, or, more perniciously, were using the reporters for the sources’ own ends.
Reporters are paid to “get” stories, and the usual “get” is reporting (preferably exclusively) what someone in power thinks. Arizona Republicans used to enjoy those stories, because most everyone in power was a Republican. But now an active Democratic governor can create news that Republicans just don’t like nearly as much. So GOP partisans also claim “bias,” because they’re seeing stories they don’t like.
Conservatives didn’t bash The Times over its WMD stories. Sure, those stories were wrong -- institutionally wrong. But those stories agreed with conservatives’ own biases, so they couldn’t be biased.
You've probably read about a minor tempest working its way around the Internet, where the warbloggers are claiming that the media is exaggerating problems in Iraq and ignoring the good news, and that people may turn against the media and First Amendment because the media will be responsible for our "defeat" by not supporting the war sufficiently. We have the mightiest military in the world, but it's no match for CNN, or something.
The right-wingers are trumpeting a picture of a New York Times newspaper vending machine with "LIES" spray painted on it. But how do they know that the spray painter was someone who supports the war who's upset by what they think is The Times' bias against it? What if it was painted by someone who opposed the war who is convinced that the WMD stories gave the Bush administration crucial cover in the march to war? The word "LIES" could mean either opinion, why theirs--other than because they say so?
Newspaper version available here (for about 30 days).
CONSERVATIVES IGNORE N.Y. TIMES' MEA CULPA
East Valley Tribune, May 30, 2004
We got more proof last week that the “media bias” debate is simply each ideological side trying to “work the ref.” The New York Times published an “editor’s note” reviewing its overly credulous, and overstated, pre-war reporting of claims about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. The Times admitted it overemphasized evidence of a threat, and undervalued skeptical analysis and contrary reports.
Key stories about Iraqi weapons -- the aluminum tubes, the chemical weapons facilities, the terrorist training camps, the Iraqi “Dr. Germ” -- can’t be verified. In the note, The Times essentially apologized for its reporting, which helped provide a major, and inaccurate, justification for war.
Liberals probably read about The Times note, but conservatives might have missed it, which is strange indeed. Conservatives have made Times-bashing part of a daily unbalanced ideological diet. Any error, no matter how minor, in the nation’s leading newspaper is proof of liberal bias and moral rot.
When reporter Jayson Blair invented stories and plagiarized others and his editors didn’t catch him fast enough, conservatives said that wasn’t just one reporter failing. It was an institutional failure, and not only showed that The Times was corrupt -- but so were affirmative action and all liberals. The top two editors resigned; right-wingers chortled gleefully.
All that bloviating over Blair must have exhausted the right-wingers, because a couple weeks later, when reporter Jack Kelley of USA Today was unmasked as a bigger liar, there wasn’t nearly as much outrage. Kelley caught a break; it’s not that was he older, whiter, and more Christian than Blair, but rather his misdeeds were discovered second, and our collective attention span couldn’t handle it.
So conservatives have had it in for The Times for years. But when the newspaper gets Iraqi WMD wrong, and admits that its reporters and editors let its readers down, people who have built entire careers screaming about bias and error have absolutely nothing to say. To these critics, any mistakes The Times made in running dozen of stories helpful to the Bush administration’s desire to topple Saddam Hussein weren’t evidence of bias or institutional error. Conservatives can easily forgive mistakes -- when they’re useful mistakes.
Similarly, one boring staple of Arizona Democratic politics is counterproductive griping about ideological bias in the local newspapers (pointless, because it’s not like voters read anymore). But when critics, on both sides, talk about “bias,” what they really mean is “articles that we don’t like.” Conservatives enjoyed The Times articles that said Iraq had WMD, so the fact that the articles weren’t true isn’t evidence of bias. You don’t “work the ref” when a bad call goes in your favor.
If there’s bias in most of the media, it isn’t ideological; it’s a bias toward power, toward accepting the official view and not taking as seriously view of those lacking power or money. That’s how The Times got the Wen Ho Lee and Iraqi WMD stories so wrong -- reporters got exclusive “inside” information from key sources, and never evaluated whether the sources might be wrong, or, more perniciously, were using the reporters for the sources’ own ends.
Reporters are paid to “get” stories, and the usual “get” is reporting (preferably exclusively) what someone in power thinks. Arizona Republicans used to enjoy those stories, because most everyone in power was a Republican. But now an active Democratic governor can create news that Republicans just don’t like nearly as much. So GOP partisans also claim “bias,” because they’re seeing stories they don’t like.
Conservatives didn’t bash The Times over its WMD stories. Sure, those stories were wrong -- institutionally wrong. But those stories agreed with conservatives’ own biases, so they couldn’t be biased.
Monday, May 24, 2004
The Moderates Win One, For a Change
My column ran, for some reason, on Monday instead of Sunday. I was supposed to be paired with Tom Patterson and the Goldwater Institute view of the world, but I guess they couldn't ghost-write it for him in time. The newspaper version is available here for the next 30 days or so.
Battle of the Budget
A COSTLY STUBBORNNESS
Right-wing exclusion of GOP moderates drove them into an alliance with Dems
East Valley Tribune, May 24, 2004
The good guys finally won at the state Legislature. The House GOP leadership, always rather detached from reality, lost control of the process, and when last Wednesday’s session ended, they’d accomplished something even the Diamondbacks bullpen hasn’t managed: Blow an 18-run lead.
The House has a 39-21 GOP majority, but a coalition of moderate Republicans and Democrats assembled a moderate majority to pass the 15 budget bills over the ineffectual protests of House Speaker Jake Flake, Majority Leader “Not So Fast Eddie” Farnsworth, and the rest of the Far Right-East Valley crowd.
The budget passed with support of some 15 Republicans and 20 Democrats, so naturally conservatives are upset about (gasp!) bipartisanship. Every time Rep. Carole Hubbs voted for the budget, Rep. Linda Gray took her picture, for use against Hubbs in the upcoming GOP primary. See, when Republicans complain about “partisanship,” what they really mean is “insufficiently Republican.”
Yes, that Rep. Gray -- who heads the House Education Committee, who led the fight against all-day kindergarten. Only in Arizona would the chair of the Education Committee oppose more education.
The moderate "R's" didn’t let the conservatives down. It was the conservative leadership, hamstrung by their own ideology and bullheadedness. Two weeks ago, the moderates proposed a budget $40 million under the Senate version, but leadership wouldn’t even talk. By refusing to negotiate, leadership instead got a budget $33 million higher than the Senate’s. Playing hardball badly cost the ideologues $73 million -- and their authority.
Flake and Farnsworth don’t negotiate; they’re both so convinced they’re right, they don’t understand why they should bother. Now they’re both lame ducks; Flake’s term-limited, so crossing him carried little risk. Farnsworth lacks the votes to return as Majority Leader, and might not run again just to be a backbencher next year.
Essentially, Flake and Farnsworth got deposed by Acting Speaker Tom O’Halloran and De Facto Majority Leader Pete Hershberger. Flake had stripped them of their committee chairs earlier in the session for the mortal sin of working with a Democratic governor. Flake and Farnsworth keep their titles, but by mistreating much of their own caucus, lost their power.
These wackos don’t learn, either. Last year, a few moderate "R’s" forced leadership into a budget compromise with Gov. Janet Napolitano. This year, instead of talking to the moderates constantly and making them key players -- in politics, you keep your friends close, and your enemies closer -- House leadership excluded the moderates and Democrats from everything. So the mods and "D's" used all that free time to work out their budget plan and tactics.
And their plan worked perfectly; they didn’t just run over leadership, they left tire tracks on their shirts. House rules required having a session Wednesday, which leadership kept delaying to start because they lacked the votes. But the mods and "D's" got their 31 votes on the floor -- and under the rules, the session had to start.
Flake holed up in his office with Stan Turley, Jeff Groscost, and Ken Bennett, but even those ostensible luminaries couldn’t put Flake back on this horse. It took until 3 a.m. to pass the 15 bills, because each time the acting chair (Rep. Tom Boone, a Flake guy) would rule against the majority, forcing a vote by division, and then a roll call, before anything could happen. But all the mods -- except for Rep. Philip Hanson and Rep. John Nelson (a real disappointment; John Nelson didn’t used to be a wimp) -- hung tough, and by 3 a.m., the bipartisan moderate budget had passed.
Congratulations to the moderate "R’s". Maybe at the legislature we’ll start seeing the real majority start getting its way more often.
My column ran, for some reason, on Monday instead of Sunday. I was supposed to be paired with Tom Patterson and the Goldwater Institute view of the world, but I guess they couldn't ghost-write it for him in time. The newspaper version is available here for the next 30 days or so.
Battle of the Budget
A COSTLY STUBBORNNESS
Right-wing exclusion of GOP moderates drove them into an alliance with Dems
East Valley Tribune, May 24, 2004
The good guys finally won at the state Legislature. The House GOP leadership, always rather detached from reality, lost control of the process, and when last Wednesday’s session ended, they’d accomplished something even the Diamondbacks bullpen hasn’t managed: Blow an 18-run lead.
The House has a 39-21 GOP majority, but a coalition of moderate Republicans and Democrats assembled a moderate majority to pass the 15 budget bills over the ineffectual protests of House Speaker Jake Flake, Majority Leader “Not So Fast Eddie” Farnsworth, and the rest of the Far Right-East Valley crowd.
The budget passed with support of some 15 Republicans and 20 Democrats, so naturally conservatives are upset about (gasp!) bipartisanship. Every time Rep. Carole Hubbs voted for the budget, Rep. Linda Gray took her picture, for use against Hubbs in the upcoming GOP primary. See, when Republicans complain about “partisanship,” what they really mean is “insufficiently Republican.”
Yes, that Rep. Gray -- who heads the House Education Committee, who led the fight against all-day kindergarten. Only in Arizona would the chair of the Education Committee oppose more education.
The moderate "R's" didn’t let the conservatives down. It was the conservative leadership, hamstrung by their own ideology and bullheadedness. Two weeks ago, the moderates proposed a budget $40 million under the Senate version, but leadership wouldn’t even talk. By refusing to negotiate, leadership instead got a budget $33 million higher than the Senate’s. Playing hardball badly cost the ideologues $73 million -- and their authority.
Flake and Farnsworth don’t negotiate; they’re both so convinced they’re right, they don’t understand why they should bother. Now they’re both lame ducks; Flake’s term-limited, so crossing him carried little risk. Farnsworth lacks the votes to return as Majority Leader, and might not run again just to be a backbencher next year.
Essentially, Flake and Farnsworth got deposed by Acting Speaker Tom O’Halloran and De Facto Majority Leader Pete Hershberger. Flake had stripped them of their committee chairs earlier in the session for the mortal sin of working with a Democratic governor. Flake and Farnsworth keep their titles, but by mistreating much of their own caucus, lost their power.
These wackos don’t learn, either. Last year, a few moderate "R’s" forced leadership into a budget compromise with Gov. Janet Napolitano. This year, instead of talking to the moderates constantly and making them key players -- in politics, you keep your friends close, and your enemies closer -- House leadership excluded the moderates and Democrats from everything. So the mods and "D's" used all that free time to work out their budget plan and tactics.
And their plan worked perfectly; they didn’t just run over leadership, they left tire tracks on their shirts. House rules required having a session Wednesday, which leadership kept delaying to start because they lacked the votes. But the mods and "D's" got their 31 votes on the floor -- and under the rules, the session had to start.
Flake holed up in his office with Stan Turley, Jeff Groscost, and Ken Bennett, but even those ostensible luminaries couldn’t put Flake back on this horse. It took until 3 a.m. to pass the 15 bills, because each time the acting chair (Rep. Tom Boone, a Flake guy) would rule against the majority, forcing a vote by division, and then a roll call, before anything could happen. But all the mods -- except for Rep. Philip Hanson and Rep. John Nelson (a real disappointment; John Nelson didn’t used to be a wimp) -- hung tough, and by 3 a.m., the bipartisan moderate budget had passed.
Congratulations to the moderate "R’s". Maybe at the legislature we’ll start seeing the real majority start getting its way more often.
Tuesday, May 18, 2004
Clinton vs. Bush: Which Lies Matter More?
My column ran this week on Tuesday, not Sunday. You think the headline might raise some hackles? (Newspaper version available here.)
CLINTON STAINED A DRESS; BUSH STAINS OUR HONOR
East Valley Tribune, May 18, 2004
Liberals never had to work as hard as conservatives did this past week. We only had to excuse a tawdry affair with an intern. Conservatives have had to excuse abuse, torture, and complete mismanagement of the Iraq war.
Sure, Clinton besmirched the Oval Office, but not nearly as badly as Bush has screwed up Iraq, our standing in the world, and our military. Conservatives were absolutely outraged about stains on a dress, but they’re accepting calmly stains on our national honor.
Donald Rumsfeld tried to distinguish between “mistreatment” and “abuse” and “torture,” and how the Bush administration always follows the Geneva Conventions -- except when it doesn’t. Rumsfeld did something I didn’t think possible. He was more pathetic than when Bill Clinton distinguished between what was “sex” and what wasn’t.
The nation has recovered from Clinton’s infidelities. Older married men, Democrats and Republicans alike, had tawdry affairs with younger women before, and will continue having them -- even so far in the future, that if the guy tries to blame Bill Clinton, of course the ingénue will say, “You mean President Clinton’s husband?”
But it’s not clear how we’ll recover from Bush’s terrible policy choices -- to fight a “war of choice” on borrowed money, and with too few resources, personnel, and allies to accomplish anything worth a mere fraction of the cost.
It’s no justification to say that whatever our faults, our enemies are worse. Somebody always is. Last week, Sen. Jon Kyl -- he of the two Vietnam War draft deferments -- said that while abusing Iraqi prisoners was wrong, at least we weren’t beheading them. Yes, let’s certainly keep that prisoner abuse “in perspective,” while hoping that our enemies don’t start justifying their own brutality by noting that unlike those really terrible terrorists in Papau New Guinea, at least they’re not cannibals.
Of course it’s an outrage. But if a brutal murder shows that some Iraqis, or all Iraqis, or all Arabs, or all Muslims deserve exactly whatever they’ve got coming to them, why did we decide to spend billions and sacrifice our military to liberate them? Maybe war supporters should stop changing the subject and explain exactly what we’re trying to accomplish, for whom, and why.
The people who should be absolutely outraged aren’t liberals; we never expected much from this administration (but we’re still flabbergasted by how bad they’ve been). It’s you libertarians. You used to mistrust the government, and now you’re slavishly accepting whatever they tell you.
The Bush administration refuses to allow any oversight of its actions, by either the courts or the Red Cross -- because we’re at war! The Deputy Solicitor General tells the Supreme Court that the executive would never torture anyone -- the same week CBS airs the first prisoner-abuse pictures.
Sen. Kyl says people shouldn’t call for Rumsfeld’s resignation because they’ll give comfort to our enemies. Never mind that the military screwed up and Rumsfeld is in charge, you can’t hold him accountable -- because we’re at war!
Republicans now claim any criticism of the government is unpatriotic -- because we’re at war! That’s their tactic now, because it’s not like they have any answers to the criticism.
Conservatives once knew that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The Bush administration is occupying Iraq without oversight and outside of both military regulations and international law, and gave poorly-trained and poorly-supervised amateurs absolute power over enemy prisoners. But instead of being outraged, conservatives complain only that Bush wasn’t “manly” enough to brag about how powerful we are.
You right-wingers thought we liberals sold our principles too cheaply in supporting Clinton? You guys make us look like Warren Buffett.
My column ran this week on Tuesday, not Sunday. You think the headline might raise some hackles? (Newspaper version available here.)
CLINTON STAINED A DRESS; BUSH STAINS OUR HONOR
East Valley Tribune, May 18, 2004
Liberals never had to work as hard as conservatives did this past week. We only had to excuse a tawdry affair with an intern. Conservatives have had to excuse abuse, torture, and complete mismanagement of the Iraq war.
Sure, Clinton besmirched the Oval Office, but not nearly as badly as Bush has screwed up Iraq, our standing in the world, and our military. Conservatives were absolutely outraged about stains on a dress, but they’re accepting calmly stains on our national honor.
Donald Rumsfeld tried to distinguish between “mistreatment” and “abuse” and “torture,” and how the Bush administration always follows the Geneva Conventions -- except when it doesn’t. Rumsfeld did something I didn’t think possible. He was more pathetic than when Bill Clinton distinguished between what was “sex” and what wasn’t.
The nation has recovered from Clinton’s infidelities. Older married men, Democrats and Republicans alike, had tawdry affairs with younger women before, and will continue having them -- even so far in the future, that if the guy tries to blame Bill Clinton, of course the ingénue will say, “You mean President Clinton’s husband?”
But it’s not clear how we’ll recover from Bush’s terrible policy choices -- to fight a “war of choice” on borrowed money, and with too few resources, personnel, and allies to accomplish anything worth a mere fraction of the cost.
It’s no justification to say that whatever our faults, our enemies are worse. Somebody always is. Last week, Sen. Jon Kyl -- he of the two Vietnam War draft deferments -- said that while abusing Iraqi prisoners was wrong, at least we weren’t beheading them. Yes, let’s certainly keep that prisoner abuse “in perspective,” while hoping that our enemies don’t start justifying their own brutality by noting that unlike those really terrible terrorists in Papau New Guinea, at least they’re not cannibals.
Of course it’s an outrage. But if a brutal murder shows that some Iraqis, or all Iraqis, or all Arabs, or all Muslims deserve exactly whatever they’ve got coming to them, why did we decide to spend billions and sacrifice our military to liberate them? Maybe war supporters should stop changing the subject and explain exactly what we’re trying to accomplish, for whom, and why.
The people who should be absolutely outraged aren’t liberals; we never expected much from this administration (but we’re still flabbergasted by how bad they’ve been). It’s you libertarians. You used to mistrust the government, and now you’re slavishly accepting whatever they tell you.
The Bush administration refuses to allow any oversight of its actions, by either the courts or the Red Cross -- because we’re at war! The Deputy Solicitor General tells the Supreme Court that the executive would never torture anyone -- the same week CBS airs the first prisoner-abuse pictures.
Sen. Kyl says people shouldn’t call for Rumsfeld’s resignation because they’ll give comfort to our enemies. Never mind that the military screwed up and Rumsfeld is in charge, you can’t hold him accountable -- because we’re at war!
Republicans now claim any criticism of the government is unpatriotic -- because we’re at war! That’s their tactic now, because it’s not like they have any answers to the criticism.
Conservatives once knew that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The Bush administration is occupying Iraq without oversight and outside of both military regulations and international law, and gave poorly-trained and poorly-supervised amateurs absolute power over enemy prisoners. But instead of being outraged, conservatives complain only that Bush wasn’t “manly” enough to brag about how powerful we are.
You right-wingers thought we liberals sold our principles too cheaply in supporting Clinton? You guys make us look like Warren Buffett.
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