Friday, April 15

This Day In History

• 1817   The first American school for the deaf opened, in Hartford, Conn.
• 1850   The city of San Francisco was incorporated.
• 1861   President Abraham Lincoln declared a state of insurrection and called out Union troops, three days after the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter in South Carolina.
• 1865   Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the United States of America, died at 7:22 a.m. Lincoln had been shot in the back of the head the previous evening while attending a performance of "Our American Cousin" at Ford?s Theatre in Washington, D.C. The assassin, John Wilkes Booth, escaped, only to be hunted down and shot to death. Lincoln was carried to a boarding house across the street from the theatre. He never regained consciousness.
• 1865   Andrew Johnson became the 17th president of the United States after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.
• 1912   The "unsinkable" luxury liner, "Titanic", sank at 2:27a.m. The largest passenger vessel in the world went under off the coast of Newfoundland two and one-half hours after striking an iceberg on its maiden voyage from Southampton, England to New York City. A young David Sarnoff, later of RCA and NBC, relayed telegraph messages to advise relatives on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean of the 700+ survivors. 1,517 lives were lost at sea. Many movies and documentaries about the monumental disaster have been filmed over the years. However, none had the exacting data gleaned by scientists from the 1986 expedition aboard "Atlantis II". Dr. Robert Ballard headed a crew and a robot named Jason in a descent to the deck of the "Titanic" aboard "Alvin", a submersible craft. They returned with information and photos that challenged and verified stories from the past. After years of studying the facts, the 1997 Academy Award-winning film, "Titanic", recreated the ship to the tiniest detail including the design on the elegant china. Although the film?s love story is fictitious, the true tragedy of the Titanic can now be seen by the world some eight decades later.
• 1923   Insulin became available for general use on this day. It was first discovered in 1922. Today, insulin is used daily in the treatment of diabetes. It is extracted from the pancreas of sheep, oxen and by other means, including synthesization in the laboratory. Insulin, a natural and vital hormone for carbohydrate metabolism in the body, is manufactured by the pancreas. An overabundance of insulin causes insulin shock and leads to a variety of symptoms, including coma.
• 1945   British and Canadian troops liberated the Nazi concentration camp Bergen-Belsen.
• 1947   Jackie Robinson became baseball's first black major-league player when he debuted with the Brooklyn Dodgers.
• 1955   This is the anniversary of McDonald's. Ray Kroc opened the first McDonald's -- in Des Plaines, IL.
• 1959   Cuban leader Fidel Castro arrived in Washington, D.C., to begin a goodwill tour of the United States.
• 1980   Existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre died in Paris at age 74.
• 1986   The United States launched an air raid against Libya in response to the bombing of a discotheque in Berlin on April 5; Libya said 37 people, mostly civilians, were killed.
• 1989   Students in Beijing launched a series of pro-democracy protests upon the death of former Communist Party leader Hu Yaobang.
• 1990   Actress Greta Garbo died at age 84.
• 1997   Jackie Robinson's No. 42 was retired 50 years after he became the first black player in major league baseball.
• 1998   Pol Pot, leader of the Khmer Rouge regime that killed an estimated 1.7 million Cambodians in the 1970s, died at age 73.
• 1999   NATO acknowledged mistakenly bombing a convoy of ethnic Albanian refugees under Serb escort in Kosovo. Yugoslav officials said 75 people died and more than two dozen were injured.
• 2000   Cal Ripken Jr. of the Baltimore Orioles became the 24th major league player to reach 3,000 hits.
• 2001   Punk rock musician Joey Ramone died in New York at age 49.
• 2002   Retired Supreme Court Justice Byron R. White died at age 84.
• 2003   Looters and arsonists ransacked and gutted Iraq's National Library, as well as Iraq's principal Islamic library.
• 2003   Umpire Laz Diaz was attacked by a fan during a baseball game between the Kansas City Royals and Chicago White Sox; the fan was later sentenced to six months in jail.

Happy Birthday To

• 1452   Leonardo da Vinci (artist: Mona Lisa, The Last Supper, The Virgin of the Rocks, The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne; died May 2, 1519)
• 1933   Elizabeth Montgomery (actress: Bewitched, Robert Montgomery Presents; died May 18, 1995)
• 1933   Roy Clark (musician: guitar, banjo; CMA Entertainer of the Year [1973], Comedian of the Year [1970, 1971, 1972], co-host: Hee Haw; country singer: Tips of My Fingers, Through the Eyes of a Fool, Yesterday, When I Was Young, Come and Live with Me, Somewhere Between Love and Tomorrow, Thank God and Greyhound [You?re Gone])
• 1937   Bob Luman (singer: Let?s Think About Living, Every Day I Have to Cry Some, The Pay Phone, Proud of You Baby; died Dec 27, 1978)

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What a way to go

Guardian reported
How will it all end? Some say we are likely to go with a bang, others predict a slow lingering end, while the optimists suggest we will overcome our difficulties by evolving into a different species. Kate Ravilious asks 10 scientists to name the biggest danger to Earth and assesses the chances of it happening

1. Climate Change - Chance of temperatures rising more than 2C (the level considered to be dangerous by the European Union) in the next 70 years: High. - Danger score: 6
2. Telomere erosion - Chances of a human population crash due to telomere erosion during the next 70 years: Low - Danger score: 8
3. Viral Pandemic - Chance of a viral pandemic in the next 70 years: Very high - Danger score: 3
4. Terrorism - Chances of a major terrorist attack in the next 70 years: Very high - Danger score: 2
5. Nuclear war - Chance of a global nuclear war in the next 70 years: Low - Danger score: 8
6. Meteorite impact - Chance of the Earth being hit by a large asteroid in the next 70 years: Medium - Danger score: 5
7. Robots taking over - Chance of super-intelligent robots in the next 70 years: High - Danger score: 8
8. Cosmic ray blast from exploding star - Chance of encountering a supernova in the next 70 years: Low - Danger score: 4
9. Super-volcanos - Chance of a super-volcano in the next 70 years: Very high - Danger score: 7
10. Earth swallowed by a black hole - Chance of Earth being gobbled up by a black hole in the next 70 years: Exceedingly low - Danger score: 10

blogged

McQ blogged These seem, at least to me, to be more of the grist for Sci-Fi disaster flix than anything to really worry about but then stranger things have happened. And you should note that according to these "experts" (I can't help the scare quotes, they seem more like frustrated screen writers)and the folks at the Guardian, it could be robots run amok or super volcanoes which have the greatest chance of doing mankind in. Me? I'm still holding out for an alien invasion from the planet Moktar, but hell, what do I know.

Scott Burgess blogged Several things concerning prevention are clear, however, and will be of interest to those setting the policy agenda for the coming decades - one of which is that, according to the Guardian, we should expend more effort and money on fighting terrorism than on climate change.

And Subjugation by Hostile Robots is even of more concern, accourding to the Guardian

Glenn Reynolds blogged Robot Rebellions And Telomere Erosion: Oh, my. Scott Burgess, meanwhile, wonders who will fund the fight against our robot overlords?

I, on the other hand, join with Kent Brockman in welcoming them. Embrace the machine!

I don't know whether it will happen in the next 70 years but we already have been told how it will end.

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U.N. Votes To Outlaw Nuclear Terrorism

WaPo reported The 191-member U.N. General Assembly on Wednesday unanimously approved a treaty outlawing the use of nuclear weapons by terrorists and their supporters. The treaty, which governments will begin signing at the General Assembly session in September, criminalizes the possession or use of radioactive material or a nuclear device "to cause death or serious bodily injury." It also makes it a crime to use a nuclear device to damage property or the environment or to attack a nuclear facility.

It requires governments that ratify the treaty to amend national laws to prevent terrorists and their supporters from financing, planning or participating in nuclear terrorism. It also calls on governments to share information, ease extradition proceedings and pursue criminal prosecutions of suspects linked to such terrorist acts. The nuclear treaty, which places no new restrictions on the use of nuclear weapons by states, will become law after it is ratified by 22 states.

Hugh Hewitt blogged Bin Laden must really be worried now.

Ace blogged The resolution was almost derailed when someone attempted to add a "Puppies are really adorable" amendment

Dr. Steven Taylor blogged Well, I Certainly Feel Safer Now

Dale Franks blogged The Department of Homeland Security can now stop worrying about nuclear terrorism. The United Nations has made it illegal. Now that we know the UN is on the job, all of our problems are solved. Terrorists would never use nuclear terrorism now, because now they know it's wrong. I can't tell you how relieved I am.

I agree with the sarcastic comments of the above blogs, but on a more serious note, this a good reason why we need someone like Bolton in the UN, to try to redirect it from passing meaningless motions like this to obscure all of Oil for Food money they are stealing, and all of the people it's peacekeepers are raping.

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Loudly, With a Big Stick

David Brooks editorialized in the NYT I don't like John Bolton's management style. Nor am I a big fan of his foreign policy views.

Although I agree with most of this article, I disagree here. I like his kick ass management style. I might not want to work under him, but I certainly want someone like that representing us at the UN

He doesn't really believe in using U.S. power to end genocide or promote democracy.

As long as he can kick the UN into shape, I really don't care.

But it is ridiculous to say he doesn't believe in the United Nations. This is a canard spread by journalists who haven't bothered to read his stuff and by crafty politicians who aren't willing to say what the Bolton debate is really about. The Bolton controversy isn't about whether we believe in the U.N. mission. It's about which U.N. mission we believe in.

Absolutely!!!

From the start, the U.N. has had two rival missions. Some people saw it as a place where sovereign nations could work together to solve problems. But other people saw it as the beginnings of a world government.

The former is a good idea; the latter absolutely is not.

This world government dream crashed on the rocks of reality, but as Jeremy Rabkin of Cornell has observed, the federalist idea has been replaced by a squishier but equally pervasive concept: the dream of "global governance." The people who talk about global governance begin with the same premises as the world government types: the belief that a world of separate nations, living by the law of the jungle, will inevitably be a violent world. Instead, these people believe, some supranational authority should be set up to settle international disputes by rule of law. They know we're not close to a global version of the European superstate. So they are content to champion creeping institutions like the International Criminal Court. They treat U.N. General Assembly resolutions as an emerging body of international law. They seek to foment a social atmosphere in which positions taken by multilateral organizations are deemed to have more "legitimacy" than positions taken by democratic nations.

They are idiots.

John Bolton is just the guy to explain why this vaporous global-governance notion is a dangerous illusion, and that we Americans, like most other peoples, will never accept it.

I agree completely

We'll never accept it, first, because it is undemocratic. It is impossible to set up legitimate global authorities because there is no global democracy, no sense of common peoplehood and trust. So multilateral organizations can never look like legislatures, with open debate, up or down votes and the losers accepting majority decisions. Instead, they look like meetings of unelected elites, of technocrats who make decisions in secret and who rely upon intentionally impenetrable language, who settle differences through arcane fudges. Americans, like most peoples, will never surrender even a bit of their national democracy for the sake of multilateral technocracy.

Which is one good argument for closing the UN down and setting up a Union of Democratic Nations.

Second, we will never accept global governance because it inevitably devolves into corruption. The panoply of U.N. scandals flows from a single source: the lack of democratic accountability. These supranational organizations exist in their own insular, self-indulgent aerie.

The current problems at the UN certainly prove this.

We will never accept global governance, third, because we love our Constitution and will never grant any other law supremacy over it. Like most peoples (Europeans are the exception), we will never allow transnational organizations to overrule our own laws, regulations and precedents. We think our Constitution is superior to the sloppy authority granted to, say, the International Criminal Court.

Absolutely. As I understand it, some European countries are finding it difficult to persuade their voters to accept the EU constitution.

Fourth, we understand that these mushy international organizations liberate the barbaric and handcuff the civilized. Bodies like the U.N. can toss hapless resolutions at the Milosevics, the Saddams or the butchers of Darfur, but they can do nothing to restrain them. Meanwhile, the forces of decency can be paralyzed as they wait for "the international community." Fifth, we know that when push comes to shove, all the grand talk about international norms is often just a cover for opposing the global elite's bêtes noires of the moment - usually the U.S. or Israel. We will never grant legitimacy to forums that are so often manipulated for partisan ends.

I agree

John Bolton is in a good position to make these and other points. He helped reverse the U.N.'s Zionism-is-racism resolution. He led the U.S. rejection of the International Criminal Court. Time and time again, he has pointed out that the U.N. can be an effective forum where nations can go to work together, but it can never be a legitimate supranational authority in its own right. Sometimes it takes sharp elbows to assert independence. But this is certain: We will never be so seduced by vapid pieties about global cooperation that we'll join a system that is both unworkable and undemocratic.

Barbara O'Brien blogged As near as I can determine, the "wrong" mission is the one that attempts to promote international peace and security. The "right" mission is the one that relieves the United States from all responsibility for international peace and security.

You need to take off your rose colored glasses and reread it. He said that the "right" mission is one where the UN is a place where sovereign nations could work together to solve problems. The "wrong" mission is one where it is the begin of a world government, where we have to yield our sovernity to an undemocratic organization.

Betsy Newmark blogged And that is why JOhn Bolton should go to the U. N. so that he can articulate why we do

Matthew Yglesias blogged As usual, there are various things one could take issue with in the latest David Brooks column, but I'll just pick the assertion that Americans "will never allow transnational organizations to overrule our own laws, regulations and precedents." Now since treaties have the force of law, in a sense all international agreements overrule our own laws, regulations, and precedents. Less tendentiously, trade agreements like NAFTA and the WTO have set up transnational arbitration mechanisms that are empowered, on certain issues, to overrule our own laws, regulations and precedents. In other words, this thing that we'll allegedly "never allow" is something we have, in fact, already allowed. NATO's Article V guarantee that we will regard on attack on, say, Denmark as an attack on the United States also de facto overrides Congress' power to declare war, though the document uses some ambiguous wording to get around the constitutional problems here.

Gee, is the Left suggesting we are TOO Multilateral?

Treaties do have the force of law, but they must be ratified (approved). What Bolton was talking about is allowing other countries to decide how we should do something, without our review. That is why we withdrew from the International Court, and never ratified it.

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Thursday, April 14

This Day In History

• 1759   Composer George Frideric Handel died in London.
• 1775   The first American society for the abolition of slavery was organized by Benjamin Franklin and Benjamin Rush.
• 1828   The first edition of Noah Webster's ''American Dictionary of the English Language'' was published.
• 1902   J.C. Penney opened his first store, in Kemmerer, Wyo.
• 1912   The British liner Titanic collided with an iceberg in the North Atlantic and began to sink.
• 1931   King Alfonso XIII of Spain went into exile and the Spanish Republic was proclaimed.
• 1939   ''The Grapes of Wrath'' by John Steinbeck was published.
• 1956   Ampex Corp. demonstrated its first commercial videotape recorder.
• 1981   America's first operational space shuttle, Columbia, landed at Edwards Air Force Base in California after its first test flight.
• 1997   Whitewater figure James McDougal drew a three-year prison sentence for 18 felony fraud and conspiracy counts.
• 1999   NATO mistakenly bombed a convoy of ethnic Albanian refugees; Yugoslav officials said 75 people were killed.
• 2002   Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez returned to office two days after being ousted and arrested by his country's military.
• 2002   Tiger Woods became only the third player to win back-to-back Masters titles.
• 2003   Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit fell with unexpectedly light resistance, the last Iraqi city to succumb to overpowering U.S.-led ground and air forces.
• 2003   U.S. commandos in Baghdad captured Abul Abbas, leader of the Palestinian group that killed an American on the hijacked cruise liner "Achille Lauro" in 1985.

Happy Birthday To

• 1866   Anne Sullivan (Macy) ("The Miracle Worker": famous for teaching the blind and deaf Helen Keller to read, write and speak; died Oct 20, 1936)

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Design A Stamp

Blogs for Bush is running a Design A Stamp contest, to design a stamp that is pro-Bush, pro-America, or pro-troops (they are as upset as I am about the "art" exhibit featuring mock stamps depicting George W. Bush with a gun to his head labelled "Patriot Act."

To participate, download one of these templates (photoshop or jpg), and create a stamp design. If you are a blogger, you can post your design on your blog and trackback to this link, and/or you can send your design in JPG format to contest@blogsforbush.com. You can submit as many designs as you like. We will post all submissions here as they come in. When submit please give them the following information:

Your Full Name
Your Blog Name and URL (if applicable)
Your Home State

They will be accepting submission for at least a week. I am sure you all will want some time to create you design.

Here are my submissions
Don Singleton
http://donsingleton.blogspot.com/
Oklahoma

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Cafe Press

LGF blogged An update to yesterday’s report on a sick “Kill Bush” t-shirt available for sale at Cafe Press; they’ve pulled the product from their site, and the link is now being redirected to a Pro-Bush page. But you can still see an image of the shirt here.

And they still have Kill Bush buttons and other products. Also see Power Line and Michelle Malkin with other examples of assassination rhetoric from the unhinged left.

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Rigged Calculator

FackCheck.org reported Democrats have been using a web-based "calculator" to generate individualized answers to the question, "How much will you lose under Bush privatization plan?" In fact, the calculator is rigged. We find it is based on a number of false assumptions and deceptive comparisons. For one thing, it assumes that stocks will yield average returns of only 3 percent per year above inflation. The historical average is close to 7 percent. The calculator's authors claim that they use the same assumption used by the Congressional Budget Office. Actually, CBO projects a 6.8 percent gain.

See their website for a detailed analysis

Matt blogged Check out the latest fact sheet (PDF file) from Strengthening Social Security. Amongst other pieces of useful information, it tells us that the Social Security tax rate woudl have to be increased to 14.32 to "restore 75-year solvency" and a to whopping 15.9 percent to "restore infinite solvency." Of course, any increase in the payroll tax rate would be a burden for American workers and be devastating to our economic strength.

Andrew Roth blogged FackCheck.org pulls no punches when it exposes the Democrats’ faulty Social Security reform calculator.

Right Side of the Rainbow blogged The Democrats' Social Security calculator is rigged. Imagine that....

There are other much more accurate calculators to use, such as this or this

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40% Read Political Blogs

WSJ reported Two-fifths of Americans who are online have read a political blog, and more than a quarter read them once a month or more, according to a recent Harris Interactive poll. Still, 56% of the public has never read a political blog and only 7% of online adults have posted a comment, according to the poll. Of online adults who have posted comments on a political blog, 21% have posted 10 times or more in the past year. Half have posted between two and five times and 20% have posted only once. People who identify themselves as Liberals are mostly likely to post comments to political blogs (28%); Moderates (17%) and Republicans (17%) were least likely.

Joe Gandelman blogged The bottom line is what we've politely hinted at before: blogging is a new frontier. It has great potential. But the majority of Americans are not sitting at their computers reading political blogs. Many of us would certainly wish this was the case: in case you haven't figured it out, the people who write these blogs on the left, in the center and on the right basically don't make money on them, although the bigger ones do make some Big Bux on blog ads. Bloggs are a new form of citizen journalism so bloggers shouldn't be discouraged because of what this poll shows. Nor should they fall into the old pattern of now saying this poll is flawed, etc. People tend to embrace polls they agree with and try to discredit those they don't. The bottom line is that blogging is indeed "hot stuff" in journalism schools, to the media — and it's growing in readership and influence. This poll adds a little bit of humility to us all. (Of course, TMV is always humble as angry readers on the right and left vow never to return every time he takes a side they don't like). Blogs are today highly influential with a good, solid-starting base of readership but what you read here (and elsewhere) is unlikely to change the world. Yet.

Michelle Malkin blogged If there are 120 million Americans adults online, this survey suggests that 31 million Americans read a political blog at least once a month and 6 million Americans read a political blog at least once a day. This would mean that Instapundit is read by less than 3% of those who read political blogs on a daily basis. I don't believe it. I suspect the survey results would be quite different if respondents were informed that the Drudge Report, Slate, Free Republic, Democratic Underground, rushlimbaugh.com, and lucianne.com are not blogs. More: Sitemeter explains why tracking services often overstate the number of blog readers:

Taylor W. Buley blogged I think this is a positive trend toward transparency in government. Readers usually add blogs as a source of information instead of replacing msm all together, so that means that two fifths of Americans are today more politically savvy than they were before. It also tells me why this blog has relatively less comments than soem others of similar traffic and caliber. Any ideas about why conservatives are less likely to post comments?

Scott @PowerLine blogged What is the breakdown of left-wing moonbats versus right-wing nuts who obscenely project their fantasies of homosexual conduct on bloggers they wish to abuse? Based on our experience with the beating heart of the left, I bet that the answer to that question tilts astronomically toward the left-wing moonbats who hold themselves out as the guardians of civil liberties from the similarly imaginary depredations of George Bush and John Ashcroft. Unfortunately, however, that's the missing question from the Wall Street Journal's poll report: "Two fifths of Americans online have read political blogs."

Well Scott, I don't necessarilly agree with your characterization of bloggers on either side, but the poll shows Republican 45%, Democrat 47%, and Independent 43%; Conservative 48%, Moderate 46%, Liberal 52%.

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Let's make a deal

The Hill reports Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), who is working on a bipartisan compromise to end the filibuster of judicial nominees, said he believes that his party’s practice of blocking confirmation votes on controversial nominees has put him and fellow Democratic centrists in politically difficult positions. Nelson, who accepts recent comparisons between himself and former Sen. John Breaux (D-La.), a centrist Democratic dealmaker, suggested that a few Democrats in so-called red states might be relieved should the prospect of filibustering the president’s nominees be eliminated. “I think that some of my colleagues have had some discomfort in voting against cloture but have felt that the nominees were sufficiently unwise choices to feel that was justified,” he said. “I’ve sensed some concern.” Nelson said that one such colleague is Sen. Ken Salazar (D), who represents Colorado, a state that President Bush carried twice. Senator Salazar has been supportive of moving forward” on allowing confirmation votes on even Bush’s controversial nominees, said Nelson. “Senator [Mark] Pryor [D-Ark.] voted to move forward on Judge [Bill] Pryor, and Sen. [Blanche] Lincoln [D-Ark.] has on a couple of occasions voted for cloture on other judges,” Nelson added. Judge Pryor is a nominee to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.

All good targets if something is not done about the 10 judges being held up.

Nelson is negotiating with Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.), chairman of the Rules Committee, to reach a bipartisan compromise to end the impasse between Republicans and Democrats over the judicial filibuster. Nelson has suggested to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) and his own party’s leadership a proposal that would automatically discharge judicial nominees from the Judiciary Committee after a certain amount of time if the panel failed to vote on them. Under Nelson’s proposal, after another set period any senator could then call nominees discharged from committee to the floor for a confirmation vote. The proposal would be implemented as a permanent change to Senate rules. Lott said yesterday that he would have no problem supporting such a compromise but that it’s unlikely that Democratic leader Harry Reid (Nev.) would.

This proposal clearly would block what the Republicans did under Clinton, and not let controversial judges out of committee, but assuming Nelson's compromise would make the vote on the floor of the Senate not subject to a filibuster, then I would support that compromise. I believe that the committee has a right to hold hearings and establish facts it wants to bring up when the nomination is debated on the floor of the Senate, and that debate should take place, but I think any President (D or R) is entitled to having his nominations receive an up or down vote.

Nelson’s proposed compromise — or a similar proposal — could attract the support of other Democratic centrists who find supporting judicial filibusters politically risky, or those who do not want to be blamed for obstruction if prominent legislative items are imperiled by Republican use of the so-called nuclear option and Democratic retaliation. Sen. Kent Conrad (D), who represents North Dakota, where Bush enjoyed a double-digit margin of victory last year, said that he would “prefer not to have these battles” over nominees, adding that for red-state Democrats the issue is “certainly more sensitive than for people from other states.”

Let the compromise move forward, and then vote on the nominees.

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Failure Buster

Matthew Yglesias editorialized in American Prospect The filibuster helps conservatives more than liberals. It’s time to get rid of it.

Washington is abuzz with talk that the Senate Republicans will deploy the so-called "nuclear option" -- in essence, violating the rules of the Senate to eliminate the possibility of mounting a filibuster against a presidential nominee -- in order to obtain the confirmation of a handful of President George W. Bush's appointments to the federal judiciary.

The Republicans are not talking about violating the rules of the Senate; they are talking about changing the rules, and Senate rules have a procedure for changing the rules.

Senate Democrats, naturally enough, are plotting a second strike: Through various manipulations of the Senate rules, they will bring the entire legislative process to a grinding halt. And rightly so. There's no particular reason why filibusters should be banned just for nomination votes, and there's certainly no justification for doing so in a way that violates the Senate's rules.

Other than perhaps the fact that no Presidential nominee has ever been denied an up or down vote because of a fillibuster, prior to the election of George W. Bush

The politics of the fight that would ensue are uncertain but probably winnable for the Democrats. The substantive outcome -- no passage of any bills of any sort -- is the best liberals can hope for, given the current correlation of political forces inside the Beltway.

And Democrats being blamed for the obstruction, as the Republicans were when Newt lead a shutdown of the Government by blocking budget legislation in the House

There is, however, a better way. Democrats should counter loose talk of going nuclear with a proposal of their own: The Senate as a whole could vote, through proper procedures, to end filibusters on votes of all kind, allowing passage of any bill (or nominee) that can secure a majority vote. Republicans may reject the offer, of course. But if they do so, that will only strengthen the Democrats' hand politically in combating the nuclear option -- by demonstrating a fair-minded commitment to principle over short-term partisan advantage.

Alternatively, the GOP might agree. In the short term, this would produce bad results: confirmation for some bad judges. In the long run, however, eliminating the filibuster will be good for liberals, and Republicans will rue the day they decided to sacrifice a major prop of conservatism in order to put a handful of under-qualified nominees on the bench.

Bring it on

.... The liberal difficulty is what it always has been -- getting new stuff passed into law. The public's instinctive skepticism toward novelty is re-enforced by the fact that the American political system puts into place an uncommonly large number of veto points at which legislation may be blocked. New bills must pass two separate legislative houses, each representing different sorts of constituencies; acquire a presidential signature; and pass muster with the Supreme Court. The filibuster merely enhances this tendency, already an outlier in the democratic world. It's no coincidence that the United States is also an outlier in terms of having a relatively underdeveloped welfare state. The many sticking points in the legislative process were deliberately designed by the Founders to bias the political system in favor of conservatism. Speaking ill of the Founders is, of course, not something done in polite American political discourse, but such biases are nothing liberals should embrace.

A filibuster-free U.S. Senate will give the Republicans only minor advantages.

Yeah, just the ability to get new conservative stuff passed into law.

The Democratic talking points arguing that they've only filibustered a tiny minority of Bush's judicial nominees are perfectly accurate. This, however, is the problem. Preventing the courts from being packed with bad judges is important. But it's happening anyway.

Actually it has already happened, with so many liberal judges legislating from the bench. And that is why we want more conservative judges, especially at the appellate level.

The handful of judges actually being blocked by the filibuster aren't notably worse in substantive terms than the huge quantity that have gone through already; they're just a bit easier to mount a public argument against.

I am happy to see a Democrate finally admit that.

Beyond that, the main things conservatives have been successful at passing during their moments of ascendancy are huge tax cuts. But tax cuts -- thanks to the arcane-but-important budget reconciliation rules -- can't be stopped with filibusters. Indeed, it's very hard to think of any major conservative legislation that's ever been stopped by a filibuster.

Remove the filibuster for legislation, and I bet the Left will see a lot of legislation they would like to filibuster

It is, by contrast, very easy to think of liberal initiatives that filibusters have blocked. Indeed, as conservative activist Jim Boulet Jr. has wisely argued in a memo to his comrades, the filibuster is crucial to conservatism. By his account, without it, majorities would exist to raise the minimum wage; reform labor law to make new union organizing easier; ban discrimination against gays and lesbians in employment; reduce greenhouse-gas emissions; and close the "gun-show loophole." I'm not a gun-control fan myself, but everything else on the list is a key priority. In the past, of course, the filibuster is most famous for its role in delaying the dawn of civil rights. Less well known is that it was integral to the defeat of Bill Clinton's health care plan in 1993. If liberals ever get another chance to go for comprehensible health-care reform, the filibuster will once again rear its ugly head.

At any given moment, the filibuster rule helps the minority party. Right now, that's Democrats. But taking the long view, the filibuster is bad for Democrats. Ideally, you'd want to get rid of it at just the ideal moment. But, realistically, that can't be done; only minority-party acquiescence will let it happen. Now's a good time for Democrats to show some rare appreciation for the importance of long-term thinking and let the right shoot itself in the foot -- rather than giving them yet another tool with which to rile up their base.

Matthew Yglesias blogged The column also scare-quotes "gun show loophole" in the conservative style. Did you know that this loophole -- which is a real loophole -- has nothing to do with gun shows? Conservatives seem to think that labeling it "gun show loophole" is part of a massive liberal scam. I've never understood what the scam is supposed to be, exactly. Nevertheless, gun shows have nothing to do with it.

Actually it has a lot to do with gun shows. It relates to delay before you can buy a gun, and if that delay is longer than the time the gun show would be in town, one could not buy guns at a gun show. This is why Instant Check is the answer

Orrin Judd blogged It would, of course, be a change in the rules, not a violation of them. But Mr. Yglesias is too conservative: the best America can hope for is that the Democrats shut down the Congress.

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Wednesday, April 13

This Day In History

• 1598   King Henry IV of France signed the Edict of Nantes, granting rights to the Protestant Huguenots.
• 1742   George Frideric Handel's ''Messiah'' was first performed publicly, in Dublin, Ireland.
• 1743   Thomas Jefferson, statesman and third president of the United States, was born in Virginia.
• 1870   The Metropolitan Museum of Art was founded in New York City.
• 1943   President Franklin D. Roosevelt dedicated the Jefferson Memorial.
• 1963   Pete Rose got his first major-league hit for the Cincinnati Reds. Twenty one years later to this day, ?Charlie Hustle? collected his 4,000th hit. Rose was playing for Montreal when he achieved the feat. (See 1984.)
• 1964   Sidney Poitier became the first black performer in a leading role to win an Academy Award, for ''Lilies of the Field.''
• 1972   The first strike in the history of major-league baseball ended. Players had walked off the field 13 days earlier.
• 1981   Washington Post reporter Janet Cooke received a Pulitzer Prize for her feature about an 8-year-old heroin addict named ''Jimmy.'' Cooke relinquished the prize two days later, admitting she had fabricated the story.
• 1986   Pope John Paul II visited a Rome synagogue in the first recorded papal visit of its kind.
• 1990   The Soviet Union accepted responsibility for the World War II murders of thousands of imprisoned Polish officers in the Katyn Forest, a massacre the Soviets had previously blamed on the Nazis.
• 1997   Tiger Woods, 21, became the youngest person to win the Masters Tournament and the first person of African heritage to claim a major golf title.
• 1998   NationsBank and BankAmerica announced a $62.5 billion merger.
• 1999   Jack Kervorkian was sentenced in Pontiac, Mich., to 10 to 25 years in prison for the second-degree murder of a man whose assisted suicide in 1998 was videotaped and shown on ''60 Minutes.''
• 2002   Venezuela's interim president, Pedro Carmona, resigned a day after taking office in the face of protests by thousands of supporters of the ousted president, Hugo Chavez.

Happy Birthday To

• 1743   Thomas Jefferson (3rd U.S. President [1801-1809]; married to Martha Skelton [one son, five daughters]; nickname: Man of the People; died July 4, 1826)
• 1852   F.W. (Frank Winfield) Woolworth (merchant: created the five and ten cent store [1879 in Lancaster, PA]: headed F.W. Woolworth & Co. with over 1,000 stores, funded NY?s Woolworth Building; died Apr 8, 1919)
• 1866   Butch Cassidy (Old West outlaw: leader of The Wild Bunch gang; legend has it that he was killed [w/Sundance Kid: Harry Longabaugh] in a Bolivian shootout Nov 3, 1908; other legend has it that he and Sundance faked their deaths [that another pair of outlaws was actually killed] and lived happily ever after, under aliases, in the U.S.)
• 1899   Alfred M. Butts (architect, inventor: game of Scrabble; died Apr 4, 1993)
• 1906   Samuel Beckett (author, critic, playwright: Waiting for Godot, The Unnameable, Eleutheria, Malone Dies, Malloy, Endgame; died Dec 22, 1989)
• 1906   Bud (Lawrence) Freeman (jazz musician: tenor sax: China Boy, Easy to Get, I?ve Found a New Baby, The Eel, Mr. Toad; died Mar 15, 1991)
• 1919   Madalyn Murray O?Hair (author: Why I Am an Atheist; murdered: missing since Aug 1995, her body was found near Camp Wood TX Jan 28, 2001)
• 1923   Don Adams (Donald James Yarmy) (Emmy Award-winning actor: Get Smart [1966-1967, 1967-1968]; Back to the Beach, The Nude Bomb)
• 1939   Paul Sorvino (actor: Law and Order, Reds, Oh! God, The Day of the Dolphin, Dick Tracy, Goodfellas, A Touch of Class)
• 1945   Tony Dow (actor: Leave It to Beaver, Back to the Beach, High School U.S.A., Death Scream)
• 1970   Rick Schroder (actor: NYPD Blue, Crimson Tide, Texas, Lonesome Dove, Hansel and Gretel, Earthling, The Champ, Silver Spoons)

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The Smart Money

NYT reported Do not be fooled by the talking heads in Rome. The journalists handicapping the papal election may sound as confident as ever, authoritatively quoting anonymous cardinals and exclusive sources deep in Opus Dei. But our profession is in trouble. A specter is haunting the punditocracy - the specter of Intrade.

That's an online futures market, based in Dublin and used by more than 50,000 speculators worldwide who put their money where our mouths are. They're expected to spend at least $1 million on futures contracts tied to the election of the pope. And if recent history is any guide, their collective wisdom could be a lot more valuable than ours.

If you listened to journalists during last year's presidential campaign, you heard about a tight race with oscillating polls and shifting momentum. The weekend before the election, we painstakingly analyzed the battleground states and bravely proclaimed them too close to call.

But if you watched the Intrade market throughout the campaign, you saw the traders serenely betting on a Bush victory. Most remarkably, the weekend before the election, the traders correctly called the winner in every one of the 50 states.

Of course, it's much easier to call Ohio than a conclave of cardinals who have never been polled and would be excommunicated for joining an MSNBC focus group. But given the news media's track record, any system more scientific than scrutinizing the entrails of a sacrificial chicken could be an improvement.

Steve Bainbridge blogged The most interesting column I've seen in the NY Times for a while praised the power of prediction markets. Why do prediction markets work? For the same reason that any other efficient market works: they attract smart money that can make a viable return off fleecing the sheep and, especially, because they may attract those with inside information. PS: One more thing I learned from Tierney's column; it turns out there is "a 1591 papal bull forbidding Catholics from betting on a conclave." What a bummer good thing.

Dale Franks blogged The New York Daily News has an interactive flash presentation to help handicap the selection of the next pope, as well as an in-depth profile of Dionigi Cardinal Tettamanzi, Archbishop of Milan, who is currently considered to be the front-runner for the papacy.

Meanwhile at Tradesports, the futures market contract prices look like this:

• Tettamanzi: 20.0
• Arinze: 14.0
• Rodriguez-Maradiaga: 9.1
• Ratzinger: 8.0
• Hummes: 7.1

To compare those numbers with Intrade we have

• Tettamanzi: 19.1
• Arinze: 14.0
• Rodriguez-Maradiaga: 11.0
• Ratzinger: 8.0
• Hummes: 7.1
• Field (anyone else): 19.9

Betfair lists the odds at

• Tettamanzi: 4.8/$25
• Arinze: 6.4/$29
• Hummes: 9/$19
• Rodriguez-Maradiaga: 9.8/$75
• Maradiaga 9.8/$75
• Ratzinger: 12.5/$3

Pinnacle Sports lists the odds at

• Tettamanzi: +384
• Arinze: +541
• Rodriguez-Maradiaga: +748
• Ratzinger: +508
• Hummes: +711

Tom Maguire: blogged This site (Tradesports) has the current betting (look under the tab for "Current Events"). They have a perma-link feature, and I would welcome assistance with that.

I did not see a perma-link, but the trade number is 226549

James Joyner blogged I agree with Tierney that watching Intrade is at least as likely to give insights as listening to talking heads on television. Of course, reading Rob Tagorda's background summaries on the papabile wouldn't hurt, either.

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Cat Hunting

ABC reported Cat lovers might be outraged by the idea of allowing hunters to stalk their furry friends, but some naturalists say pet owners ought to take the proposal as a wake-up call to be more responsible.

The issue of whether to make feral cats an unprotected species, meaning they could be hunted and killed, was put before the Wisconsin Conservation Congress, an independent organization created by the state 70 years ago to take public input on conservation issues, last night. Representatives from 72 counties listened to residents' concerns about the issue.

The proposal, which was raised five years ago and voted down by the congress, was revived after a 2004 University of Wisconsin study that found non-native feral cats were a threat to native animals such as lovebirds.

Estimates of the number of songbirds killed each year by feral cats in Wisconsin alone range from 8 million to 217 million, though the number is actually believed to be around 39 million, said Steven Oestreicher, the chairman of the congress.

"When you're talking about millions and millions of songbirds in state, you've got take a harder look at this," he said.

Joe Gandelman blogged It is a fact that there is feral cat problem nationally. But we also know there are some people who'd just love to be able to feel alive and powerful by going out there and shooting some cats, just as some people jump through intellectual hoops to justify battering wide-eyed baby seals who never had a chance to live bloody and senseless. And we're sure in their minds they have the intellectual justification for doing so. We wish them a happy life (well, almost..) But there are other ways...but these folks would rather take the easy (and apparently for them FUN) way out. Sorry. I love the birds (and as a teenager really loved the birds and the bees) but I'll be one of those crazy ones signing petitions and writing letters on this one.

• Feral Cat Coalition (San Diego)
• Alley Cat Allies
• Feral Cat Info Page
• Feral Cat Coaltion of Oregon
• Aggie Feral Cat Alliance of Texas

QD blogged Thinnin' the Cats: Who says Yankees never come up with any good ideas?

As long as they don't do it to dogs. <grin>

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Paris Hilton Tax Cut

E. J. Dionne editorialized on the WaPo The same people who insist that critics of Social Security privatization should offer reform proposals of their own are working feverishly to eliminate alternatives that might reduce the need for benefit cuts or payroll tax increases.

It is unrelated. Social Security benefits are paid from Social Security Revenues. The estate tax goes to general revenues, not the social security tax fund.

I refer to the fact that House Republican leaders have scheduled a vote this week to abolish the estate tax permanently. With so many other taxes around, it's hard to understand why this is the one Congress would repeal. It falls, in effect, on the heirs to the wealthiest Americans. Fewer than 1 percent of the people who died in 2004 paid an estate tax, and half the revenue from the tax came from estates valued at $10 million or more.

And it forced the liquidation of a lot of family farms and small businesses to pay the tax.

blogged

Ezra Klein blogged Dionne argues for explicitly tying the tax to the Social Security shortfall. According to the CBO, even a reduced estate tax would cover fully 1/2 of the program's deficit, which means Republicans are going to have to decide between protecting Paris Hilton's inheritance and paying Grandma Millie's Social Security check. Democrats should be all over that choice, making sure it's made as publicly as possible.

Yes, let the Democrats admit that the Oonzi scheme cannot support itself without having the additional revenue source from the liquidation of a lot of family farms and small businesses. If Grandma Millie owns a farm or a small business she hoped to leave to her grandchildren she should be very happy

Tully @Centerfield blogged You know that someone is playing defense when they rely on emotional arguments and volume, instead of realities. The Washington Post weighs in with two editorials this morning, one from the editorial board and one from the ever-petulant E.J. Dionne, both of them notable for their histrionic use of psuedo-factoids and class envy arguments. So what are the facts about the "death tax?" What are its real purposes, how well does it work at achieving those goals, and how much of the smoke and mirrors is based in reality rather than rhetoric?

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Insane Left

Michelle Malkin blogged There are plenty of other hate-filled, liberal knick-knacks and apparel items still on sale. Like this "Kill Bush" magnet depicting the president holding a gun to his head with the caption "End Terrorism Now" Or this bright yellow "Kill Bush" t-shirt splattered with blood. Or this handy "Kill Bush" messenger bag with a macho pic of John Kerry. And before the "everybody does it" apologists pooh-pooh this lunatic anti-Bush merchandise: There's tasteless political paraphernalia on both sides of the aisle, but I've already searched and there are currently no "Kill Kerry" products, blood-spattered or otherwise, being sold at Cafe Press.

That is true, but they do have a Kill Everybody shirt, but I don't recommend it.

"Where's your sense of humor?" the libs will ask. Where's their decency? Their sanity? Welcome to the sick world of the pro-assassination Left.

They lost the election, and they just can't get over that fact

Scared Monkeys blogged Its just another example of that liberal tolerance. Its probably also another example why the Democrats will not win another election any time soon. Or possibly the reason why hate acts have become a common occurrence on college campuses?

ance commented They've come undone the frightening left

Mark blogged Back in during the Clinton administration, supporters of President Clinton would call anybody who disagreed with their hero a "Hater."
Typically they would chant the word like a mantra, getting louder and louder, in order to drown out the sound of anybody who would disagree with them. I was certainly not a Clinton fan (although I'd take Bill any day of the week over HRC), and saw some pretty nasty stuff said about former President Clinton. None of it was of the level of raw hatred that democrats routinely sink to whenever they reference President Bush.

Pageman blogged take note of the Pro-Assasination Left's dreams of Killing Bill. If they find that FUNNY, then they should find this VERY VERY FUNNY! I wonder if they will blog about the FBI's visit to their houses?

Nathan blogged So why isn’t the Secret Service investigating this, and jailing the people responsible for it? My understanding has always been that even joking about assassinating a sitting president is grounds to be invited to the local cop shop for a sit-down. I’m all for free speech, but not irresponsible, childish, and dangerous speech. I don’t think that’s what the Founders had in mind.

Rob commented One day maybe the ‘tards who do this sort of thing will realize that this sort of thing does more harm to their political movement than good.

Linda blogged
Just how disgusting can they get? I have no words that would be sufficient to express my disgust with how anti-democratic (small d) this is. In a democracy, we don't threaten to kill our political enemies. Or, I should say, we dare not. To encourage violence against political opponents is to move a giant step closer to anarchy. There's a reason that our government imprisoned anarchists - no democracy can survive violent assaults by immoral lunatics. Michelle failed to show some of the more disgusting items for sale, including

Jason blogged Democrats are the "party of peace" like radical Islam is the "religion of peace"

Brian blogged The liberal left is hawking all sort of anti-Bush junk, but I'm left to ponder, where is the Secret Service on this? It's illegal to make threats against a President (current or former). I would sincerely hope there is at least an investigation going on here...

BlogCarnival blogged Unhinged Liberal Products For Sale

Lockjaw blogged Hate is a Liberal Value?

Jeff blogged It seems to me that the hard-core Left is so despairing of ever seeing their socialist, anti-democratic beliefs ever enacted that they have just gone insane.

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Settlements

Xinhua reported Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei on Tuesday denounced US President George W. Bush's comment on Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Speaking to reporters, Qurei said the US administration speaks about a Palestinian state but has failed to define what a state means exactly. "Doesn't a state mean security, border, stability and non-existence of settlements?" Qurei said. "President Bush's remarks about Israel's right to maintain Jewish settlements do not serve the peace process or lead to a just settlement," he said.

Yes but there currently is NOT a Palestinian state. You want one, and the roadmap is expected to lead to you having one (if you can control the violence in the mean time). The question is what the boundaries of that state will be. I doubt Israel will want to maintain Jewish settlements in a Palestinian state, although some Jews may choose to live there, just as some Arabs currently live in Israel.

Al Jazeera reported He [Sharon] said Israel would keep large settlement blocs such as Maale Adumim. "The blocs will be part of Israel, with everything that that entails," Sharon said, indicating the construction that will link Maale Adumim to Jerusalem would continue. The latest dispute stems from differing interpretations of a statement made by Bush last year and reaffirmed on Monday, where he recognised Israel's need to keep large settlement blocs in the West Bank, citing "new realities on the ground".

Zaman reported Adviser of the Palestinian administration, Nabil Abu Rudeyba criticized Bush's remarks that "It is not realistic to return to the borders between Palestinian and Israel of 1949." This means legalizing the Jewish settlement in the West Bank according to Rudeyba.

I agree with Nabil Abu Rudeyba it means legalizing the Jewish settlement in the West Bank, at least the largest ones. They should become a part of Israel.

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John Bolton, Multilateralist

Rich Lowry editorialized Almost everyone agrees that the Democrats are viewed as too soft on national security. How is the party addressing this deficiency? By making its rallying cry, "Please, don't be mean to the United Nations."

This is the gravamen of its attack on President Bush's nominee to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton. Bolton's chief offense is having been harshly critical of the U.N. through the years. The toughest Bolton quote is that the U.N. headquarters could lose ten stories and no one would notice. The notable thing about this statement is that it is indisputably true. A ten-story subtraction would still leave 29 stories to house the planet's most hellishly impenetrable and inefficient bureaucracy.

The outraged-at-Bolton caucus has a problem, which is that anything Bolton has said about the U.N. appears mild given recent U.N. malfeasance. He never said that U.N. peacekeepers would rape children in the Congo. He never said the U.N. would engage in insider dealing to rip off its own Oil-for-Food program in Iraq. He never said the U.N. would institute what appears to be a cover-up of its Oil-for-Food wrongdoing. But this all happened, which is why even Kofi Annan says the U.N. needs a thorough overhaul.

Democrats who oppose Bolton are in effect more deliriously pro-U.N. than even the secretary general. Bolton has always said that the U.N. needs strong U.S. leadership in order to work as an institution.

We need someone like Bolton to represent us in the UN

LA Times reported "The U.N. needs reform — lots of it," said Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.). "But we don't need a voice people are not inclined to listen to."

We are not going to get any reform if we have a meek person who just says what people want to hear.

Fred Kaplan editorialized He looked and sounded like a man at best uninterested in, and often contemptuous of, the United Nations as an institution. In short, John Bolton came off as strikingly lacking in the credibility, values, and basic commitment that, especially these days, the job of U.N. ambassador requires. He's animated, passionate, livid. He clearly believes what he's saying and wants to make the most of it, wants to engage and provoke.

An animated, passionate John Bolton is exactly what the job of U.N. ambassador requires

S.Z. blogged Everybody who has had a boss like Bolton knows how much damage they can do just by being jerks -- and doesn't the UN have enough problems already without inflicting Bolton on them?

Bolton is exactly what the UN needs

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Tuesday, April 12

This Day In History

• 1606   England adopted the original version of the Union Jack as its flag.
• 1861   The Civil War began as Confederate forces fired on Fort Sumter in South Carolina.
• 1877   The catcher's mask was first used in a baseball game.
• 1955   The Salk vaccine against polio was declared safe and effective.
• 1961   Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man to fly in space, orbiting the Earth once before making a safe landing.
• 1969   Lucy and Snoopy of the comic strip "Peanuts" made the cover of "Saturday Review".
• 1981   The space shuttle Columbia blasted off from Cape Canaveral, Fla., on its first test flight.
• 1983   Harold Washington was elected Chicago's first black mayor.
• 1984   Challenger astronauts made the first satellite repair in orbit by returning a healthy Solar Max satellite to space. The orbiting sun watcher had been circling the Earth for three years with all circuits dead before repairs were made.
• 1985   Sen. Jake Garn of Utah became the first senator to fly in space as the shuttle Discovery lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Fla.
• 1989   Radical activist Abbie Hoffman was found dead in his home at age 52.
• 1989   Former middleweight boxing champion Sugar Ray Robinson died at age 67.
• 1992   Euro Disneyland, a $4 billion theme park, opened in Marne-La-Vallee, France.
• 1999   U.S. District Judge Susan Webber Wright found President Clinton in contempt of court for giving ''intentionally false'' testimony in a lawsuit filed by Paula Jones about his relationship with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky.
• 2001   Cincinnati Mayor Charles Luken declared a state of emergency amid the worst outbreak of racial violence in the city since 1968.
• 2002   Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez resigned under pressure from the country's divided military. (He was returned to office two days later).
• 2003   Rescued POW Jessica Lynch returned to the United States after treatment at a U.S. military hospital in Germany.

Happy Birthday To

• 1947   David Letterman (TV host & comedian: Late Night with David Letterman)
• 1950   David Cassidy (actor: The Partridge Family, Spirit of ?76, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat; singer: Cherish, I Think I Love You; son of actors: Jack Cassidy, Evelyn Ward)
• 1971   Shannen Doherty (actress: Beverly Hills 90210, Our House, Little House on the Prairie, Night Shift, Heathers)

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It’s Okay to Lie

NYMetro reports on Sy Hersh's Loose Relationship With the Literal Truth

Sy Hersh Says It’s Okay to Lie
(Just Not in Print)

Since the Abu Ghraib story broke eleven months ago, The New Yorker’s national-security correspondent, Seymour Hersh, has followed it up with a series of spectacular scoops. Videotape of young boys being raped at Abu Ghraib. Evidence that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi may be a “composite figure” and a propaganda creation of either Iraq’s Baathist insurgency or the U.S. government. The active involvement of Karl Rove and the president in “prisoner-interrogation issues.” The mysterious disappearance of $1 billion, in cash, in Iraq. A threat by the administration to a TV network to cut off access to briefings in retaliation for asking Laura Bush “a very tough question about abortion.” The Iraqi insurgency’s access to short-range FROG missiles that “can do grievous damage to American troops.” The murder, by an American platoon, of 36 Iraqi guards.

Not one of these exclusives appeared in the pages of The New Yorker, however. Instead, Hersh delivered them in speeches on college campuses and in front of organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union and on public-radio shows like “Democracy Now!” In most cases, Hersh attaches a caveat—such as “I’m just talking now, I’m not writing”—before unloading one of his blockbusters, which can send bloggers and reporters scurrying for confirmation.

Every writer understands that there is a gap between the print persona and the actual self, but Hersh subscribes to a bright-line test, a wider chasm than is usually acknowledged, particularly in today’s multimedia age.

There are two Hershes, really. Seymour M. is the byline. He navigates readers through the byzantine world of America’s overlapping national-security bureaucracies, and his stories form what Hersh has taken to calling an “alternative history” of the Bush administration since September 11, 2001.

Then there’s Sy. He’s the public speaker, the pundit. On the podium, Sy is willing to tell a story that’s not quite right, in order to convey a Larger Truth. “Sometimes I change events, dates, and places in a certain way to protect people,” Hersh told me. “I can’t fudge what I write. But I can certainly fudge what I say.”

Everyone should remember this the next time they hear about Sy Hersh making some rediculous claim

Joe Gandelman commented Then WHY should anyone believe Sy Hersh anymore? If he wanted to protect his sources he could simply say he has to leave some details out. Mr. Hersh: TMV is not one iota as famous as you are, nor has he won any awards (and probably won't) but he knows journalistic ethics. If you had said this in a journalism class the professor would have jumped down your throat.

And what about those who invited you to speak or hired you? Did they think for one second that you were going to fudge the truth — or that you thought you had a right to do so? I suspect they believed every word you said. Who can do that in the future?

pennywit commented When a crusading journalist lies on the one hand, but insists that he is telling the truth elsewhere, he demonstrates that he has no capacity to transmit truth to his audience. In other words, he demonstrates that he has no credibility.

And without his credibility, the crusading journalist is a mere partisan hack, worthy of no more attention than one would ordinarily give the village lunatic standing on the street corner, a shiny hat on his head, and his lunacy displayed on sign after incomprehensible sign and in his voluminous rantings as he shakes his fist at the sky.

In other words, trust nothing that Seymour Hersh says unless he produces the pictures and documentation that support his words, for he has admitted his betrayal of the public trust.

John Hawkins commented Seymour Hersh regularly engages in sloppy, Enquirer-style journalism that's impossible to be independently verifiable, yet he's a mainstream media rock star. If you're looking for reasons not to trust the MSM, Hersh is as good as any...

John Cole commented I propose we call this Eason Jordan Syndrome- when a titled figure shows a willingness to informally pass off as fact things he/she would never consider stating officially or on record, because, of course, they aren't facts at all. Just vicious lies.

Pejman Yousefzadeh commented I'm sorry, but can we really take seriously a person who makes so frank a confession? Amazingly, at the end of the article, the lies are rationalized. I suppose one should envy those who have the talent to make gold out of the disreputable practice of lying for effect. But readers will forgive me if I somehow can't bring myself to envy anyone who would defend Seymour Hersh's rhetorical flights of fancy. And ask yourself: How long before Hershe begins to think that "little white lies" can be told in print too?

Jonah Goldberg commented Maybe Al Franken should reissue his book with a new foreward?

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