Josh Marshall discovers that Michael Skube doesn’t read his blog and just tossed his name in their because an editor suggested he needed more examples and, apparently, nobody minded too much whether or not the examples were accurate.
I believe the relevant joke has to do with a blogger ethics panel. . . .
I haven’t been able to actually read this week’s New York Times Magazine cover story. Right there in big test it says: “We in the West find it incomprehensible that theological ideas still stir up messianic passions, leaving societies in ruin. We had assumed this was no longer possible, that human beings had learned to separate religious questions from political ones, that fanaticism was dead. We were wrong. It’s we who are the fragile separation.” Meanwhile, Isaac Chotiner observes:
In an otherwise uneventful forum this morning on ABC, the Democratic presidential candidates were asked whether prayer could have prevented the Minnesota bridge collapse.
John Edwards actually had a very good answer to this question (observing that he prayed before his son died and prayed before his wife got cancer so, no, he doesn’t think praying hard enough stops bad things from happening; rather, he prays for guidance in how to deal with the things that arise in life), but it still makes it pretty hard to credit that “we” thought the religification of politics was a thing of the past. It all depends on whether or not “we” were paying attention.
Of course, Michael O’Hanlon spent a week in Iraq and says these guys are wrong:
Viewed from Iraq at the tail end of a 15-month deployment, the political debate in Washington is indeed surreal. Counterinsurgency is, by definition, a competition between insurgents and counterinsurgents for the control and support of a population. To believe that Americans, with an occupying force that long ago outlived its reluctant welcome, can win over a recalcitrant local population and win this counterinsurgency is far-fetched. As responsible infantrymen and noncommissioned officers with the 82nd Airborne Division soon heading back home, we are skeptical of recent press coverage portraying the conflict as increasingly manageable and feel it has neglected the mounting civil, political and social unrest we see every day. (Obviously, these are our personal views and should not be seen as official within our chain of command.)
Obviously, the other side of this debate is going to be able to produce its own group of soldiers to back them up, but the basic claim these guys are making is more logical than factual: “Counterinsurgency is, by definition, a competition between insurgents and counterinsurgents for the control and support of a population.” As they say, it’s simply implausible on its face to think that better tactics and an increase in the level of troops from way, way, way fewer than history deems necessary for this sort of thing to way, way fewer than history deems necessary for this sort of thing could reverse the fact that the US troop presence lost the support of the population years before the surge began.
During his tour of the Sunday shows this morning, Karl Rove attempted to downplay and dismiss his role in the CIA leak scandal, telling Fox News’ Chris Wallace that he acted benignly in his conversations with reporters about Valerie Plame’s identity:
What I did say to one reporter was, I’ve heard that, too. And what I said to another reporter, off the record, was, in essence, I don’t think you ought to be writing about this.
Appearing on Meet The Press today, Matthew Cooper, one of the reporters to whom Rove spoke about Plame, said Rove’s version of the story was hard to believe. “I think he was dissembling to put it charitably,” said Cooper. “To imply that he didn’t know about [Plame's identity], or that he heard it in some rumor out in the hallways, is nonsense.”
Cooper also contradicted Rove’s characterization of their conversation, describing the “essence” of it as much more than just an attempt to wave him off the story:
Look, Karl Rove told me about Valerie Plame’s identity on July 11, 2003. I called him because Ambassador Wilson [Plame's husband] was in the news that week. I didn’t know Ambassador Wilson even had a wife until I talked to Karl Rove and he said that she worked at the agency and she worked on WMD.
Watch it:
Cooper’s right. Rove is peddling “non-sense” with his brushed off description of his role in the leak scandal. On Meet The Press, Rove also declared, “if a journalist had said to me, ‘I’d like you to confirm this,’ my answer would have been ‘I can’t, I don’t know, I’ve heard that too,’”
But as Cooper notes, Rove not only confirmed to him that Plame worked at the CIA, but he willingly pushed the information to him without it even being solicited, telling him that she “works at the agency on wmd [weapons of mass destruction] issues.”
When pressed by Wallace about his conversation with Cooper, however, Rove resorted to the administration’s standard line when asked about inconvenient facts: “I don’t recall.”
UPDATE: Crooks and Liars has more on Rove’s Meet the Press appearance here and here.
UPDATE II: Marcy Wheeler, who wrote a book about the Plame scandal, debunks Rove’s Meet the Press claims here.
Ann Friedman recommends a “great idea” from Eleanor Clift, “Stop asking the Republican candidates where they stand on abortion, and start asking specifically about birth control access.” It is a good idea. Clift’s specific questions:
Instead of hammering away at the candidates about abortion, Keenan suggests a set of questions far more revealing: do you think it’s OK for a pharmacy to refuse to fill a woman’s prescription for birth-control pills based on the personal views of the pharmacist? Should hospital emergency rooms be allowed to withhold information from a rape victim about the morning-after pill, which can prevent a pregnancy if it’s taken soon enough after the assault? Do you support age-appropriate sex education (with “age-appropriate” the key phrase as to when it’s time to shelve the stork)?
I’m also always curious as to where the opponents of stem cell research stand on issues related to in-vitro fertilization.
Michael Skube stands up for good old-fashioned reporting:
And to think most bloggers are doing all this on the side. “No man but a blockhead,” the stubbornly sensible Samuel Johnson said, “ever wrote but for money.” Yet here are people, whole brigades of them, happy to write for free. And not just write. Many of the most active bloggers — Andrew Sullivan, Matthew Yglesias, Joshua Micah Marshall and the contributors to the Huffington Post — are insistent partisans in political debate. Some reject the label “journalist,” associating it with what they contemptuously call MSM (mainstream media); just as many, if not more, consider themselves a new kind of “citizen journalist” dedicated to broader democratization.
I’m fairly certain that Andrew and I both have full time jobs as employees of the Atlantic Media Company. I even have a 401(k). Josh is a small businessman and entrepreneur, I’ve seen the office in New York where he and his employees and their interns all work. This kind of sloppy error aside, I’m actually more upset by this:
In our time, the Washington Post’s reporting, in late 2005, of the CIA’s secret overseas prisons and its painstaking reports this year on problems at Walter Reed Army Medical Center — both of which won Pulitzer Prizes — were not exercises in armchair commentary. The disgrace at Walter Reed, true enough, was first mentioned in a blog, but the full scope of that story could not have been undertaken by a blogger or, for that matter, an Op-Ed columnist, whose interest is in expressing an opinion quickly and pungently. Such a story demanded time, thorough fact-checking and verification and, most of all, perseverance. It’s not something one does as a hobby.
Now, look. I’d be fascinated to see if Skube has an example of progressive bloggers linking to the Post‘s reporting on either of these subjects and deriding the work in question as hackwork by obsolete dinosaurs. What I recall is that these stories were widely linked to, praised, promoted, circulated, and disseminated. Obviously, Dana Priest’s reporting on the “black sites” would have been a big deal no matter what, but what progressive bloggers did was amplify and disseminate that story to a wider audience than The Washington Post ever could have reached.
Some bloggers, meanwhile, are also lawyers who were able to (yes, from their armchair) provide some expert commentary and analysis on the issues raised by the facts the Post brought to light. And other bloggers were able to combine links or references to the reporting with links to the analysis done by specialist people. As Kevin Drum says there was no crowding out here where what Marty Lederman or Duncan Black or Andrew or I were doing somehow made it more difficult for newspapers to do investigative reporting. If anything, the reverse is true. The widespread availability of a vast sea of armchair analysis and commentary on the internet will, over time, force large, professionalized news organizations to focus on their core, hard-to-duplicate competencies — and spend less time on the sort of fact-averse punditry Skube’s doing right here.
A group of infantrymen and officers of the 82nd Airborne Division write in the New York Times today that they are “skeptical of recent press coverage portraying the conflict as increasingly manageable.” Reports of progress, they say, have “neglected the mounting civil, political and social unrest we see every day.” They write:
The claim that we are increasingly in control of the battlefields in Iraq is an assessment arrived at through a flawed, American-centered framework. [...]
In the end, we need to recognize that our presence may have released Iraqis from the grip of a tyrant, but that it has also robbed them of their self-respect. They will soon realize that the best way to regain dignity is to call us what we are — an army of occupation — and force our withdrawal.
Until that happens, it would be prudent for us to increasingly let Iraqis take center stage in all matters, to come up with a nuanced policy in which we assist them from the margins but let them resolve their differences as they see fit. This suggestion is not meant to be defeatist, but rather to highlight our pursuit of incompatible policies to absurd ends without recognizing the incongruities.
Unstoppable government agents with a talent for killing all seem to have the initials J.B. But do they care about global warming? Jack does.
Fox TV has announced that the seventh season of 24, which starts in 2008, “will incorporate environmentally-friendly messages into episodes.” I’m thinking Bauer will torture the bad guys with electricity from wind power or run over someone in a Prius.
Also “executives have taken several steps toward reducing carbon emissions on the set with the goal of a fully ‘carbon-neutral’ season finale.” Yes, I suppose that means Fox will be buying offsets (hopefully not trees). What other steps will they be taking?
On the Sunday shows this morning, Karl Rove was treated largely with kid gloves by the hosts and was not forced to confront many difficult questions about his ethical improprieties while serving in the White House.
In three Sunday show appearances, he was not asked once about his efforts to politicize the federal government, despite the fact that a front-page article appeared on that very subject this morning in the Washington Post. Rove was also not asked about his role in selling the war prior to the invasion. Nor was he asked about his connections to Jack Abramoff, his use of non-White House email accounts, or his stewardship over the Katrina reconstruction efforts.
On Fox News Sunday, host Chris Wallace attempted to press Rove on two troubling aspects of Rove’s record: his outing of Valerie Plame and his efforts to dismiss U.S. attorneys who refused to comply with the White House’s political orders. When Wallace tried to press for answers on these issues, Rove repeatedly answered, “Nice try”:
WALLACE: Why did you push to fire some U.S. attorneys in the president’s second term?
ROVE: Nice try.
[...]
WALLACE: What do you think of Joe Wilson?
ROVE: I’m not going to comment. Nice try.
[...]
WALLACE: When was the first time you told the president [about leaking Plame's identity]?
ROVE: I’m not going to — again, nice try.
Watch a compilation:
Unable to generate substantive answers to legitimate questions, Wallace backed off and moved to other questions.
At the conclusion of the interview, Rove acknowledged that his unwillingness to be candid would intensify congressional pressure on him. “Let’s face it. I mean, I’m a myth, and they’re — you know, I’m Beowulf. You know, I’m Grendel. I don’t know who I am. But they’re after me,” Rove said.
Transcript: Read more
Brookings’ dynamic duo says the surge should be continued “at least into 2008,” while Greg Djerejian discovers Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno in Baghdad saying “we all know” the surge forces will start leaving “in the beginning of 2008.”
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