I'm going to a gun show this weekend. I'll write about it on Monday.

TNR is weighing in on the revelations about September 11. Jonathan Chait is making sense.

And so is Peter Beinart.

In late September, the House Intelligence Committee called for just that--a blue-ribbon commission to investigate the "preparedness and performance" of the CIA and its related agencies. That investigation, the committee hoped, would produce "a cultural revolution within the intelligence community as well as significant structural changes."

But the Bush administration didn't support that either. And, just days later, congressional Republican leaders emasculated the committee's proposal, stripping the proposed commission of its right to issue subpoenas and grant immunity, and shifting its mandate from what went wrong. The commission, said Porter Goss, the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, would "focus on the future" and "get away from the blame game." In November, with the administration's support, congressional leaders put off all investigations until 2002....

The CIA, in other words, says it didn't do anything wrong. That's not surprising--it's what Republicans would expect a bureaucracy to say. What is surprising is that this administration-- in violation of everything it supposedly knows about bureaucracies--trusts the CIA to reform itself anyway. The Bushies imply that the CIA's work is too important to be hampered by pesky outsiders asking difficult questions. But it is precisely because it is so important that someone has to make sure the Agency learns from its mistakes. The administration also seems worried about hurting Agency morale. But, judging by its reaction to September 11, the problem is less low Agency morale than enduring Agency arrogance. A cynic might wonder whether all that talk about strict accountability and dramatic reform only applies to the parts of government the Bush administration doesn't like. When it comes to the agencies the White House prizes, it seems, the "responsibility era" can wait.

I liked this letter in the May 13 New Yorker so much that I'm typing it up (it's not online). It's a real 'clip 'n' save' for Andrew Sullivan and his ilk.

Lewis Libby, Vice-President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, suggested to Nicholas Lemann that the Clinton Administration's counterterrorism policy made it "easier for someone like Osama bin Ladin to rise up" ("The Next World Order," April 1st). As a former special adviser to President Clinton on national security, I must object. Libby cites the "lack of a serious response" to a laundry list of Clinton-era terrorist incidents, beginning in 1993. Why start there? Why not include the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, which killed seventeen Americans; the 1983 bombing of the Marine compound in Beirut, which killed two hundred and forty-one Americans; the 1986 Berlin disco bombing, which killed an American soldier; and, of course, the 1988 sabotage of Pan Am Flight 103, which killed two hundred and seventy people? Except for the very limited action against Libya, the Reagan Administration did not respond militarily to any of these attacks.

Under Clinton, spending on counterterrorism more than doubled; the 1993 World Trade Center bombers were caught; and the largest counterterrorism operation in U.S. history thwarted planned millennium attacks. After the 1998 attack on our embassies in Africa, President Clinton authorized Tomahawk missile strikes against bin Ladin. It is also worth noting reports that the current Bush administration backed away from some of the more aggressive measures for dealing with Al Qaeda which Clinton had passed on. President Bush has wisely asked that we all work together to strengthen our counterterrorism policy. Playing the blame game doesn't help anyone.

William Danvers
Arlington, Va.

Sigh...

You can make a reasonable case that this is all water under the bridge. Quite possibly, we couldn't have prevented September 11th. But that's not the end of the discussion- we have the duty to learn from this tragedy and the oversights that made it possible. Jeff Jarvis says it well:

But blame is beside the point now. What happened happened. What matters is that we cannot let it happen again. We cannot repeat these fatal errors. And the only way to prevent them is to thoroughly investigate who knew what when and what dots were not connected so the next time, we can connect them.

Exactly right. We can't change the past, but we can learn from it. History will harshly judge the people who stand in the way of a thorough, public investigation. I think I'm going to call Rep. Porter Goss at (202) 225-2536 and politely explain that to one of his staffers.

UPDATE: And another thing- Goss said that Democrats are giving aid and comfort to the enemy. Is there some scenario in Goss's pea-brain in which Terrorist A is turning to Terrorist B and saying "Praise Allah! They're asking for an independent commission to investigate the failure of intelligence agencies to connect the information they had before September 11th! They're trying to make their system better to improve their chances of preventing future terrorist actions! Victory is ours!"

Or is he just a goddamn lying hack? Enquiring minds want to know.

Bartcop can get pretty hysterical, but I can't argue with this:

"Never in anybody's thought process...about how to protect America did we ever think that the evildoers would fly not one, but four commercial aircraft into precious US targets - never."
-- Governor Bush, Sept 16, 2001, from USA Today, 5/17 Page 2A

Rep Ray LaHood (R-Illinois) called the first paragraph the the FBI agent's memo "heart-stopping." A month after the memo was written, Zaccarias Moussouai was detained by federal authorities. The arrest came ten days after Bush's briefing and prompted an FBI agent to speculate in case notes that Moussouai might be training for a suicide hijacking mission at the World Trade Center.
-- from USA Today, 5/17 Page 2A

Nobody had a clue, George?

The FBI assumed Moussouai planned a suicide hijacking attack on the WTC. The agent put it in his report - in the FIRST PARAGRAPH, and before the right-wing spinners like Fox News, Rush, Laura, Hannity, Matthews and CNN say, "There's no way to know or read every report from every field agent," remember that Moussouai was the ONLY American arrest of an Al Qaeda member. If they didn't read that memo, what the hell were they reading?

From CNN:

Rep. Porter Goss, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said there was no need for any new congressional inquiry because intelligence panels have already been reviewing the events leading up to the attacks. To date, he said, nothing has emerged to suggest that anyone in the government could have predicted them.

"There is no smoking gun that says with any specificity at all about time, date, place, or method that is known," said Goss, a Republican from Florida. "If there is such a smoking gun, we will find it and share it with the American people. There is no such now, and the White House does not have one."

Goss suggested the controversy is hurting U.S. security. "The only thing that this uproar does is give aid and comfort to the enemy and I don't think there's anybody who wants to give aid and comfort to the terrorists," he said.

Commentary to follow.

Tapped has their heads screwed on straight:

So what should happen now? The first thing is that the administration's critics need to consider their response very carefully. Cynthia McKinney is still wrong. (Buzzflashers, take it away!) Can any reasonable person doubt that, if George W. Bush could have foreseen that on September 10th that planes would crash into the Pentagon and the World Trade Center during the next 24 hours, he would have tried to do something about it? No.

But that doesn't get the Bush Administration off the hook. It's now pretty clear why the White House has been resisting an investigation into the intelligence failures that led 9/11: Although responsibility for the systemic failure is widespread, a couple of the specific failures happened on Bush's watch. What's damning is not the fact of those failures -- which we think probably would have happened on Al Gore's watch, too -- but the fact that the administration was willing to stall an investigation into the systemic failures so as to avoid being embarrassed over the specific failures. The White House's mania for secrecy led Bush and his advisers to put the administration's day-by-day political fortunes over the national interest. Instead of admitting the failure and moving on, they took the easy route: Blame Bill. And that's unconscionable. What the Democrats should be asking now -- because the American people deserve to know -- is why the Bush Administration sat on this information for so long.

Hear hear. I hope the press is watching like a hawk to ensure that the Bush administration breaks character and makes an earnest effort to get to the bottom of the failures in intelligence. It's the cover-up, stupid!

Via Atrios: David Corn brings up a good point.

Rice, up against the White House reporters, repeatedly depicted the CIA briefing as an unexceptional act during which Bush was merely told that bin Laden could be interested in hijacking. It's common sense that a terrorist might be considering a hijacking, she added. But CIA daily briefings are supposed to include noteworthy material for the President, not obvious, generalized information. Let's hope the CIA is not wasting the President's time by reminding him terrorists sometimes hijack airplanes.

Anyone reading this site knows that there's a firestorm of criticism about the facts that:

-our national security forces didn't even try to act on a variety of warnings about Bin Ladin associates training in flight schools and planning to hijack planes
-our intelligence agencies are still insisting that they couldn't have imagined hijackings that would use planes as weapons
-Ashcroft heard the warnings and thought they were serious enough to save his own ass by moving to chartered flights, but not serious enough to tell anyone else
-Ari Fleicher continually lied when he said that there had been no warnings
-that the White House sat on this information for eight months until CBS forced its hand, all while asking Daschle to limit any Sept.11 probe

68 percent of Americans believe that the Bush administration should have disclosed its information about a forewarning. The airwaves are full of angry terror widows, parents and children. Pundits can talk of little else.

But don't worry- partisanship can save us!

Bush Suggests Politics Behind Sept. 11 Questions

Cheney 'Deeply' Disturbed by Dem Attacks

Well, it's nice to see that the White House has its fucking priorities straight.

If we had leadership worthy of the name, our president would make improving our national security agencies a more important goal than protecting the institutional egos of the CIA and FBI. Heads would roll. Our vice-president would be "deeply" disturbed at the failure of the national security forces to protect its citizens. He would be "deeply" disturbed that the the Administration held back facts and lied for eight months. The two of them would wait a day or two to play the conservative victimization card. John Ashcroft, at the very least, would have to answer some hard questions. Ari Fleicher would resign.

But we don't. I can't stand it.

One more thing: merry Andrew Sullivan gives us links today to Lego recreations for "narcissists. And here's one for sadists. And here's one for heterosexual sodomites. I think that covers most of my readers." He doesn't include masochists, which includes me for reading his site every day. I don't know where to start attacking his assertion that he wouldn't be tearing up Clinton in the same situation.

The end of the day has come, and I haven't responded to a long, thoughtful email about from loyal reader and all-around good guy Mark Poyser. It's been a busy day, Mark; I'll get to it soon. But it's an interesting argument, and I'd like to post it.

Free trade, even unregulated free trade, is fine when:

- There are many potential sellers.
- The product is not time-critical (e.g. look at how the mob was able to extort players in the fresh fish markets of New York).
- The commodity is not a basic need (like water)

But electricity fails to meet all of those criteria. As such, it should be regulated, or at least when markets become abnormal (whether by accident or because of "gaming").

In 2001 the markets were not delivering an essential commodity: electricity, at "just and reasonable" prices. It doesn't matter if there was criminal or unethical behavior responsible for this condition (which is what the administration is now using as an excuse for their inaction: "at the time we didn't know"). The law provides for intervention, via the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), when markets are distorted. But Bush opposed regulating the energy market. As a result, for several months, Californians and the state of California was forced to pay substantial sums over "reasonable" rates.

What's distressing about Bush's (in)action is that it didn't involve a trade off between taxation and government services - where there might be a plausible conservative case to be made. A call by Bush to have FERC crack-down wouldn't have cost the Feds a dime. Instead, he let the condition persist, ultimately costing the state of California billions (estimates vary from 6 to 9 to 20 billion). As a result, California now faces a serious budget deficit, one that will result in cutbacks in social services - most notably in healthcare for the poor. With the governor's new budget proposal out, it looks like public health facilities will have to be closed, along with a substantial reduction in services.

Bush allowed companies selling an essential commodity, in an out-of-control market, to gouge a (state) government. You can't have a more basic attack-on-the-people than that. And of course, the poor will suffer the most. Not to put too fine a point on it, but people will die as a result.

THIS JUST IN: Bush is not a compassionate conservative. That claim has always been a lie.

Another allegation is that the Bush administration knew that the markets were being manipulated. But that's hard to prove, since that's an assertion about what people were thinking. But Cheney was in the energy business. And a key member of the administration, Secretary of the Army Thomas White, was former head of Enron's Energy Services division - the division that was manipulating the markets(!). So it's reasonable to assume they did know the market was distorted, and used that crisis to further their own agenda. But to repeat: it's very hard to prove that.

So forget about the "who knew what about market manipulation". Stick to the basic fact that Bush declined to regulate a vital market that was out of control, to the detriment of many millions.

It's worth pointing out that Glenn Reynolds and others are completely right to raise hell about the hideous anti-Jewish mob at SFSU. If they're going to have a "hate speech" code, it would have to include chanting for your opponents' deaths and screaming "Hitler didn't finish the job." It was shameful, and the lack of response from administrators is an outrage.

Atrios has an unbelievable bit of news. You've probably heard about the FBI memo from mid-2001 which warned about a possible plan involving associates of Bin Laden hijacking planes.

"At an internal FBI meeting last August, one agent actually speculated that Zacarias Moussaoui was planning to fly a plane into the World Trade Center.) Here's the latest: Last July, an FBI agent in Phoenix had sent a memo to headquarters urging the bureau to investigate Middle Eastern men enrolled in American flight schools; the agent mentioned Osama bin Laden by name and suggested that bin Laden's followers could be using the flight schools to train for terror operations. The memorandum, says the Times, has existed for months, but until now the Bush Administration hadn't let anyone in Congress see it. And it's not hard to see why. This happened on the Bush Administration's watch, albeit before FBI director Robert Mueller's confirmation last summer."

I knew that no one had taken these threats seriously enough to investigate flight schools, look at visas, or tighten airline security. I just assumed that it was another piece of intelligence that was, tragically, lost in the shuffle. I'm sure that so many tips come in that it's impossible to react to all of them.

What I didn't know is that John Ashcroft apparently took it seriously enough to personally stop flying on commercial airlines at about the same time this memo was released.

In response to inquiries from CBS News over why Ashcroft was traveling exclusively by leased jet aircraft instead of commercial airlines, the Justice Department cited what it called a "threat assessment" by the FBI, and said Ashcroft has been advised to travel only by private jet for the remainder of his term.

I'm fighting to keep my inner tin-hat suppressed. Suffice it to say: I deeply wish that Ashcroft had had the wisdom to use this information in a way that would have benefitted someone other than himself. It's sorta his job.

UPDATE: Instapundit and I are thinking along similar lines:

I'd feel better about adopting a "wait until all the facts are in" approach if I didn't have the strong impression that the past few months have been an orgy of bureaucratic ass-covering that will make it hard for the facts to come in. I have no confidence, at this point, that the intelligence system is being given the shakeup it needs to do the job it faces. I'd very much like to be wrong in this, and it's possible that behind the wall of secrecy everything is being done right. It's also possible that we have the same "top men" working on this as were featured at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. And I'm sorry to say that I know which way to bet.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Atrios also has this:

U.S. and Israeli intelligence agencies received warning signals at least three months ago that Middle Eastern terrorists were planning to hijack commercial aircraft to use as weapons to attack important symbols of American and Israeli culture, according to a story in Germany's daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ).

The FAZ, quoting unnamed German intelligence sources, said that the Echelon spy network was being used to collect information about the terrorist threats, and that U.K. intelligence services apparently also had advance warning. The FAZ, one of Germany's most respected dailies, said that even as far back as six months ago western and near-east press services were receiving information that such attacks were being planned.

Wow, that's funny. Courtesy of Irene Adler, the International House of Incredible Hulks.

Could I call this a Fisking? Check out Naked Writing's dissection of a National Review article. The author, Dr. William Pierce, argues that gays should not be allowed to adopt or be foster parents. The author even seems to shake his head sadly that the state won't intervene to take away the biological children that gay couples. Jody gives the author a hell of a beating. I've held you here far too long- go now and read!

Actually, I've got to quote this:

Folks, do you know what irks me the most about all this? Conservatives love to rant and rave about how gay men and women are destroying civilization. Our efforts to adopt children, to marry, to teach, to serve in the military --- all cornerstones of this society --- aren’t seen as stemming from a profound love of country, city and civilization, but out of some insidious desire to wreck everything it stands for.

Even with all the scorn heaped on us, consistently we return to pick up the pieces of the shattered lives when the traditional family fractures and breaks apart. When our great civilization, ever striving, leaves behind those who are hurt and alone, we are there. We are the social workers, the therapists, the doctors, the priests and the voluntary parents who do our damndest to ensure that everyone has a place, everyone is cared for and everyone is wanted. What's more, we choose to do this. Again and again and again and again.

If you haven't seen it, check out Me-zine. It lets you construct a display of the first 100 words of six of your favorite blogs so you don't have to click around so much. Bloggers can sign up to get their blog in the options, and readers can select their favorite blogs. It's a neat idea. Right now, most of the options are left-wing blogs, but anyone can sign up.

Wow. Via Grim Amusements: Did you know that Pim Fortuyn was in favor of sex with children? No joke. He wrote an article about it.

"After the invention of the Pill came sexual liberation. Gay sex became accepted, and why then should paedo sex not be allowed – under the strict condition that the child is willing and that there is no coercion? This enlightened point of view has meanwhile been abandoned, and under the influence of the ologists, the child is defined as totally devoid of sexual desires, at least where adults are concerned."

Iain writes, "I cannot imagine a serious candidate for American or British national office publicly making such statements, let alone in print. And if they had made such statements in print, their opponents would be hammering them into the ground with those views; every speech, every campaign statement would have in it somewhere 'Oh, and Fortuyn is in favor of kiddie sex.'"

COULD JOHN ASHCROFT'S JUSTICE DEPARTMENT HAVE STOPPED 9/11? This Tapped post deserves some attention.

Have you read Scientific American's criticisms of The Skeptical Environmentalist? They're long and detailed, but well worth reading.

In one handy place, here's Bjorn Lomborg's rebuttal, and the scientists' counter-rebuttals. Great stuff.

Dr. Frank's comment yesterday about PETA got me thinking- weren't these the people who issued a press release right after September 11th telling people not to forget about the abandoned pets of lower Manhattan? And the ones who released a press release scolding Clinton after Buddy died for letting it out? And the ones with the posters of Pam Anderson et al. in the nude, saying they'd rather wear nothing at all than wear fur? They sure get a lot of press, eh?

So I poked around their site a bit. Whatever else you have to say about the kooky guys 'n' gals of PETA, they've raised the publicity stunt to an art form. Just from their press releases, they seem less like Earth First! and more like Tom Green. Here's a sample:

FUR-WEARERS CAGED OUTSIDE CHICAGO SHOP

Fur-clad members of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA)—crammed into small wire cages—will protest in Chicago on Friday to let consumers know how animals on fur farms suffer and die from exposure to extremes of weather, overcrowding, and lack of veterinary care.

PETA'S NEW "DUMP DAIRY" CAMPAIGN TARGETS MIDDLE SCHOOLS

Milk-mustache ads may encourage kids to guzzle down gallons of the white stuff, but young people may find milk a little hard to swallow after seeing PETA's new "Milk Sucker" trading cards. The group's Vegetarian Campaign coordinator Sean Gifford, joined by a giant "cow," will hand the cards out to kids as they leave school. The eye-catching-and stomach-turning-Milk Suckers trading cards feature "Pimply Patty," "Windy Wanda," "Chubby Charlie," and "Loogie Louie," all suffering from ill-health effects associated with drinking milk, eating ice cream, and piling on the cheese.

PETA URGES AFGHAN LEADER TO "BE A LAMB" AND REPLACE FETUS HAT WITH FAUX

While peacemakers may be taking their hats off to Afghan interim Prime Minister Hamid Karzai, PETA is hoping that the new leader will take his own hat off—or at least replace it. Karzai’s trademark karacul hat is made from aborted lamb fetuses, so PETA has enlisted skin-free designer Marc Bouwer to make him a top-of-the-line fake that will be virtually indistinguishable from the original.

PETA’S MOTHER’S DAY CARD SPOOF IS A MILK SPOILER

Members will be handing out free Mother’s Day cards to last-minute shoppers on Sunday, May 12, outside Especially for You, Inc., card shop at 1318 Main St. from 2 to 3 p.m. PETA’s quirky card is based on a beloved turn-of-the-century tune that spells out the dangers of dairy product consumption and is also available to e-mail, in jest or to make a point:

M is for the cow’s milk that you gave me
O is for the obesity it brought
T is for the tummy cramps that plagued me
H is for the heart disease I’ve got
E is for the earaches that I suffered
R is for my runny nose of snot
Put them all together, they spell "MOTHER"
The milk you fed me sure gave me a lot!

"Happy Mother’s Day! Would it have killed you to breast-feed?" is the greeting delivered by an overgrown, overwrought milk-drinker inside the card. PETA wants moms to get the message that cow’s milk-based formulas are bad for babies.

"DOMINATRICES" ARRIVE TO WHIP UP SUPPORT FOR FAKE LEATHER

Dressed in sexy "sinthetic" outfits and carrying signs reading, "Latex—In, Leather—Out," demonstrators from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) will "expose" Seattle residents to the gruesome facts about how animals suffer to be made into leather coats, pants, and shoes.

PETA PALLBEARERS TO VANCOUVER FUR-WEARERS: "BRING OUT YOUR DEAD"

Carrying a banner reading, "Bring Out Your Dead," PETA members, dressed in black and wearing skeletal death masks, will carry a coffin filled with furs through the streets of Vancouver, asking people to mourn the loss of animals slaughtered for their skins. Vancouver residents are encouraged to step up and donate unwanted furs to be used in giveaways to homeless people in Canada in the autumn. Windsor-based animal protection group Animal Rights Kollective (Ark II) has partnered with PETA to accept fur donations from Canadians, just as PETA has done in the U.S. for years.

PETA ASKS FTC TO CENSOR CHEESE COMMERCIALS

Backed up with proof of dairy cows wallowing knee-deep in their own manure in barren, treeless "dry lots," PETA is filing a formal complaint with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) tomorrow morning, requesting that the agency take action against the San Francisco-based California Milk Advisory Board (CMAB) for improperly portraying idyllic conditions for dairy cows in its "Happy Cows" commercials. PETA contends that the CMAB ads mislead animal-friendly consumers and are unlawfully deceptive; PETA is asking the FTC for an injunction to stop the ads from being shown.

PETA GIVES MARCH OF DIMES AN EARFUL

A PETA member dressed up as a 10-foot-tall styrofoam ear will greet participants in the March of Dimes fundraising event WalkAmerica and hand out stickers asking that all contributions be earmarked for programs that will help babies instead of hurting animals.

PETA HAS A COW OVER NEW YORK’S MEATY EARTH DAY FIASCO

After failing to convince Earth Day New York (EDNY) to scrap plans to serve meat at its Earth Day celebrations, PETA is planning to attend the main event—with protest signs. Members of PETA will pass out free BK Veggie™ burgers to make the point that even a giant corporation like Burger King knows an eco-thing or two about the environment and is now serving Earth-friendly vegetarian options rather than just talking about it.

PETA PULLS "ROTTEN" STUNT TO GET CATTLEMEN’S GOAT

No one will be able to miss People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals’ (PETA’s) latest billboard reading, "Beef: It’s What’s Rotting in Your Colon." The billboard, which spoofs a popular beef industry campaign slogan, can currently be seen in Denver, hometown of the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association. The billboard is located on Colfax Avenue, west of York Street, facing east.

PETA’S "LETTUCE LADIES" GET IT THEIR WAY AT BURGER KING

Wearing nothing but strategically placed lettuce leaves and waving signs that read, "Try the BK Veggie™. GoVeg.com" and "Pruebe el BK Veggie Burger™. SeaVegetariano.com," PETA’s sexy vegetarian "Lettuce Ladies" are headed to San Diego to hand out free Burger King Veggie™ burgers to the hungry lunchtime crowd.

PETA TO BUTCHER A "COW" ON BROADWAY

As part of its burgeoning campaign to enlist retailers to join a boycott of Indian leather products, a member of PETA, dressed as a butcher, will "slaughter" and "skin" a "cow," leaving the activist naked but for her blood-red painted body outside the DoubleTree Suites Guest Hotel to protest the India Leather Fair being held inside.

PETA’S "EROTIC EDIBLES" BILLBOARD "TOO SUGGESTIVE" FOR MINNEAPOLIS

"To be able to run this ad, the asparagus needs to look less provocative." That was the reason given by Clear Channel Outdoor Advertising when PETA, seeking to get a rise out of passing motorists with its new Valentine’s billboard, was rejected by the first of the Twin Cities’ two outdoor advertisers. The billboard ad features a dripping asparagus and the tag line, "Get Passionate About Food! Vegetarians Live Longer and Love Longer." Infinity Outdoor Advertising found the dangling delight "too suggestive."

PETA ACTIVISTS STORM PARIS FASHION SHOW

A British and an American activist were both manhandled from the Versace show this evening after jumping on the runway and disrupting the invitation-only event, part of Paris’ haute couture fashion week. Attendees gasped when Kayla Worden from the United States and Penny Dawson from the United Kingdom unfurled banners reading, "Fur Kills," and chanted "End fashion bloodshed!" A third activist, a French woman, is believed to be in police custody.

PETA’S "MOTHER OF GOD" BILLBOARD BANNED IN MISSISSIPPI

Is there any question that Mother Mary breast-fed? PETA’s new billboard campaign shows Mother Mary in the maternal act of nourishing her infant and reads, "If It Was Good Enough for Jesus …," followed by, "The Breast Is Best—DumpDairy.com." Targeted at the state with the poorest record for breast-fed babies and the highest incidence of infant mortality, PETA’s latest effort to inform America that breast-feeding is essential to an infant’s well-being (and that cow’s milk is harmful) was rejected by advertisers in Mississippi. A sales representative from Lamar Outdoor gave the following reason: "It would cause too much of an uproar. Here in the South, the Baptists just don’t like these kinds of controversial boards, and we will get tons of calls on this one."

PETA ASKS AMERICANS TO PROTECT THEIR ‘BUDDIES’ FROM OUTDOOR DANGERS

As People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) joins other Americans extending their condolences to the Clinton family for the loss of their chocolate Labrador retriever, Buddy, PETA is hoping that his tragic death will remind everyone to never allow their dogs outdoors unsupervised. Buddy was struck and killed by a car last Wednesday after he followed a contractor out of the yard and into the street.

PETA TO GIVE AWAY FUR COATS TO WASHINGTON’S HOMELESS

Fur coats never warm the cold hearts of people who choose to buy them, but PETA believes that they will help Washington’s newest fur-wearers: the homeless. Under a banner reading, "Free Fur Coats," PETA will hand out dozens of fur coats—donated by those who have moved on to kinder, gentler garments—to some of the city’s neediest people, near several local homeless shelters.

Geoffrey Nunberg does a good job defending his thesis, in my humble opinion, that there's no particular bias towards labelling conservatives or liberals in the press. My two favorite points:

There are some general points worth making. First, all these studies clearly refute the original claim made by Bernard Goldberg and other conservative media critics that conservatives are labeled much more often than liberals are. If you accept Boyd's figures uncritically, they show a slight preference for labeling conservatives; if you accept mine, the discrepancy goes the other way. But none of these studies have shown what anyone would call an overwhelming disproportion one way or the other.

Nor for that matter does the variation in labeling from one paper to the next seem to have anything to do with a paper's alleged bias. In fact, if you were going to rank the papers using Boyd's own figures according to the ratio with which they label liberals and conservatives, you'd wind up saying that The Washington Post (1.24) is a lot more conservative than The Chicago Tribune (0.76). Was Goldberg on to something, or is this just a lousy way to measure point of view?

And:

One other point about those alternative labels: I keep seeing conservative bloggers trumpeting studies that show that the phrase "right wing" and "far right" are used more frequently than "left wing" and "far left" are. Andrew Sullivan is the most recent blogger to pull out this chestnut, citing a study that shows that the former are used more than twice as frequently as the latter in The New York Times. But that observation is utterly meaningless. It's a good example of what happens when you turn people with only a dim understanding of statistics and method loose on these press databases.

Some simple points about method, then. Rule one: Check the hits you get. When you look at the occurrences of "right wing," "far right" and the like in the press, it turns out that the majority of their occurrences have nothing to do with American politics. Of the 9,700 instances of "right wing" or "left wing" in the Los Angeles Times, for example, 2,900 occur in articles that mention hockey, and another 4,400 occur in articles that mention nations like Israel, Japan, Germany, Italy, France, and so on, the vast majority of them dealing with foreign politics. Similarly, the 3,300 occurrences of "far right" and "far left" include 1,400 that occur within seven words of "photo" or "photograph," and 1,600 that contain the names of foreign countries. And with no way of knowing whether the left- and right-hand versions of these are balanced, what you're getting when you search on these terms is mostly noise.

Atrios links to a Joe Conason column that reminds us of some of the commentators and politicians who incorrectly gave us their full-throated assurance that the California power crisis had nothing to do with market manipulation.

At the time, there were widespread stories of power plants shutting down or reducing capacity inexplicably in the middle of a power draught. This kind of irrational behavior should have made economically literate pundits raise an eyebrow. So what made them so sure? Most economists will tell you that you won't find $20 bills on the sidewalk for long, because they would have been snatched up by other rational passers-by. Enron, Reliant, and (others to follow) saw a stack of $20 bills to be made by reducing capacity, laundering electricity out of state, and re-selling (or failing to resell) the power to California. What was supposed to be stopping them? Their consciences?

If we're going to have a freely traded market in utilities, which I support, it's got to be transparent and it's got to be regulated. Government regulatory policies that rely on the voluntary good faith and public spirit of corporations are bound to fail. Corporations exist to maximize profits; that's how it should be and that's how it's gonna be. It's the job of companies to protect the interests of their shareholders, just as it's the job of the government to protect the interests of the public. Yet Bush pushes for ineffective voluntary regulations over and over and over and over again.

Anyway, here's Joe Conason.

Aside from the nation’s conservative editorial pages—which is to say, most of them—the defenders of the energy traders rampaged across the op-ed columns and magazine pages. Texas Monthly reassured the home folks that Enron and Reliant Energy were innocent, deriding California as "whine country." Oil & Gas Daily agreed that the Californians themselves were "the real culprits in the energy drama."

In the Washington Post, Charles Krauthammer assured readers that only "silly" Californians "think that the rolling blackouts are a conspiracy by the power companies to raise rates." And William Safire, in an almost incomprehensible column that termed the rise and fall of prices "as natural as breathing," warned that "populist interference with the [electricity] market’s self-correction would lead to worse shortages and rationing, to inflation and wage control." That was a scary prediction from the sage of The New York Times—and also utterly, totally, ridiculously wrong.

On Capitol Hill, the Republican politicians rose up, always quick to protect a generous donor. Among the most outspoken was Senator Larry Craig of Idaho, who attacked California’s elected officials as "conspiracy theorists" for alleging manipulation by the power suppliers. "They are either unconscionably ignorant, or they are unconscionably and deliberately lying," he said.

And from the White House came the pronouncements of Mr. Energy himself, Vice President Dick Cheney, who sternly lectured the California Democrats as they pleaded for relief from the federal government. "We get politicians who want to go out and blame somebody and allege there is some kind of conspiracy, whether it’s the oil companies or whoever it might be, instead of dealing with the real issues," he groused. (To Mr. Cheney the "real issues" were not Enron’s market-rigging, of course, but the industry’s demands for more tax breaks, further deregulation and permission to drill wherever they please.)

Gary Farber has a link to an article about the physics of Spider-Man. If you're interested, science fiction author Larry Niven wrote an entertaining article about the incredible labors that would be required for Superman and Lois Lane to have a baby, called "Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex". Lots of fun.

Dr. Frank is a fantastic songwriter- have I mentioned how awesome his band, the Mr T. Experience, is, lately? So buy an album or two. Here's another dose of Dr. Frank's witty lyrics, from the marvelous "Love is Dead" album:

Now we've established something precious, but chances are it could go awry
when we find how weak the flesh is, shattered, scattered, hung out to dry
It'll all come out when it's discovered, clearer than the teardrop in my eye
but I don't want to get screwed over by just anyone-
you're the only one I want to get screwed over by.

He's right on about PETA's dumb-ass proposal to change the same of a high school team from the Packers to the Pickers. Says Frank:

It's bound to be ridiculed everywhere, just like that cow thing. I suppose that could be the goal, in fact. If your press release is silly enough to become enough of a joke in mainstream pop culture, you can get a PETA spokesman on O'Reilly and the opportunity to talk about the organization on national TV. And no harm done, really. Just don't go assassinating anyone, OK?

Stories like this pop up every once in a while. I'm thinking of the time that a parents group saw a picture of Mighty Mouse sniffing flowers, complained that it was "really" cocaine, and actually got the show pulled off the air. I don't get it- they're just some assholes who figured out how to use a fax machine. I figured out how to use Blogger- can I get "Married With Children" pulled from reruns?

You've probably heard of the Berkeley professor who's teaching the class called "The Politics and Poetics of Palestinian Resistance" who warned in the course catalog "Conservative thinkers are encouraged to seek other sections." Impossibly dumb, right? That was my first reaction, and the reaction of Roger Kimball. But Eve Tushnet makes the entirely sane point that while this professor did the wrong thing, education cannot be de-politicized, and it's not necessarily inappropriate to limit the range of dissent in a classroom. Go read it.

May 14: Saudi officials silent as anti-U.S. boycott spreads

May 15: United States brought to knees by awesome financial devastation wrought by Saudi boycott

May 16: Saudi flag raised over White House, President forced to kiss ring of Saudi prince Al-Zod. "Superman, where are you?" pleads distressed Bush


I don't understand some people.

Ann Coulter, one of America's most thoughtful and balanced pundits, is publishing a book in late June about liberal media bias called "SCREEEECH! SCREEEECH! SCREEEECH!" (All right, it's called "Slander: Liberal Lies about the American Right".) I think I'd rather spend July in a parked Yugo full of crazed weasels than read some of the wackier conservative blogs immediately after it comes out. Luckily, I'll be going to my brother's wedding about then, so maybe some of the crazy will be worked out by the time I get back.

Oldie but a goodie:

You've got to give J.C. Watts one thing - he's a pretty funny guy. Who else would have the cahones to support the new aviation security bill and then proceed to violate security measures at an airport? And boy, when J.C. violates airport security, he sure does the job right. Here's the story: Rep. Watts showed up at Will Rogers World Airport a few weeks ago, and proceeded to leave his car in an unattended loading zone out front. Uh-oh... since September 11, this sort of thing has been severely frowned upon. So what did J.C. do when he came back to his car to discover Sergeant Edward Stupka writing him a $15 ticket? Why, he flew into a rage of course. Watts took the ticket and stuffed it under Stupka's badge, telling him to "take care of it." Yikes! Watts then continued to rant about airport security, and at one point allegedly used the word "bomb" (incidentally, people have been arrested and charged before 9/11 for using the word "bomb" at an airport) before Officer Stupka, who was not amused, threw the ticket onto the back seat of J.C.'s car. Watts then drove away. After discovering that the Oklahoman was going to run a story about the incident, J.C. desperately tried to get in touch with Officer Stupka to apologize. Stupka was, unfortunately, not particularly interested. Which leaves us with this: presumably J.C. Watts was thinking that since he's a) a congressman, and b) an ex-football hero, he can pretty much bend the law however he pleases. Perhaps rather than being pissed off that his position doesn't allow him to break the law, he should be thanking his lucky stars instead - because let's face it, if he wasn't a congressman and ex-football hero, he would have had his ass thrown in jail (or possibly shot off) before he even had the chance to drive away.

And another one:

"A number of my Republican colleagues are not likely to rush Clinton's lifetime judicial nominees through the confirmation process when they think there is a chance another party could occupy the White House in January."
-- Sen Rick Santorum (R-Bastard) August 18, 2000

"The delays are the result of rank partisanship by Tom Daschle."
-- same bastard, other side of the coin, November 11, 2001

Gary Farber is right on about the $190 billion Free Money for Red States Act of 2002. I especially liked this part:

"When we bring some fiscal discipline to Washington," Mr. Bush assured the audience, the revived federal budget deficits will come down.

This will happen in the year 2300, when the name of our country will be changed to "never-never land." At risk of being partisan, wasn't there some President in recent history who actually brought down the federal budget deficit until it was a large surplus? Not that he deserves any credit, of course; it was all just dumb luck. Same for that booming economy being unrelated; thank goodness we now instead have a huge tax cut that mostly goes to the extremely wealthy: that's far more important than silly deficits.

I've been picking on Instapundit a bit this morning (and it's crushing him! He can't take it!) but he's entirely in the right here:

ACTIVISTS FOR FOOD POISONING: Nader group Public Citizen is unhappy with a provision in the Farm bill that allows irradiated food to be labeled as "pasteurized." Never mind that food irradiation is well established as harmless, while salmonella and other foodborne pathogens kill surprisingly large numbers of people every year. Yeah, these guys care about consumers.

Good call. Hostility to actual evidence knows no political boundaries.

In the spirit of bipartisanship, let me point out that the reduction in nuclear arms that Bush and Putin achieved is a wonderful, wonderful thing. Now let's make sure that the Russian warheads are disposed of safely, 'K?

UPDATE: Of course, I could be wrong...

I've got to get a few things off of my chest.

1. Andrew Sullivan, my humble opinion, disgraced himself on Friday when he wrote this:

I ignored Geoffrey Nunberg's piece in the American Prospect in April, debunking the notion of liberal media bias by numbers, because it so flew in the face of what I knew that I figured something had to be wrong. (And I was too lazy to do all the enormously laborious number-crunching to refute it. So sue me.) I figured someone would correct it at some point. And so they have. Check out this blog, Zonitics from Arizona and scroll down to May 7. Let me say again for the umpteenth time: I have no problem with good old bias. If Howell Raines wants to run a newspaper tilted left, that's fine by me. But there needs to be honesty about this or you lose credibility. By the way, a reader sends in the following tally from the Times in the last month: use of "far-left" - 16 times; "far right" - 38 times; use of "left-wing" - 26; "right-wing" - 63.

As Tapped points out, the Zonitics post does not debunk Nunberg, and doesn't claim to. Tapped adds, "As opposed to Sullivan's anonymous correspondent, who can't think of a reason why the Times would have used the terms "far right" and "right-wing" a lot in the past month. Here's a hint, guy: There was this election in France. Maybe you heard about it?"

All true. But I found his premise pretty offensive to the spirit of rational debate. A professor had gathered actual, hard evidence to verify or falsify the theory that conservative politicians are more often labeled than liberal ones. This is how rational people are supposed to work- you test hypotheses, rather than just assuming them. When evidence comes in that contradicts your hypothesis, you're not allowed to blithely dismiss it "because it so flew in the face of what I knew that I figured something had to be wrong." I can't think of a better way to ensure a fruitless, insular political debate than this kind of BS intellectual circling of the wagons. And that's what we have, despite what some absoludicrous conservatives say about their magnanimous incredible fairness to the opposing side. (I'll hopefully have more about this ridiculous piece, which Instapundit approvingly linked to, later. Yeah, if you can't trust the guy who wrote an article called "Clueless Liberals" to rationally weigh liberal arguments, who can you trust?)

His next thought, "I figured someone would correct it at some point," is just as bad. These are not the words of an analyst. Sullivan just had to wait a little while, and sure enough, someone came up with a study that "proved" he had been right all along! He didn't even seem to read it, since he got the key points about it wrong, but no matter- it supported his hypothesis, so it had to be right. How many times have you seen this game played? Both parties have competing studies. It doesn't matter who's right; political hacks will defend anything, no matter how thinly argued or factually incorrect, if it seems to support their position. The press maintains a resolute "on the one hand, on the other hand" posture, even when one side is clearly, provably wrong. No wonder people hate politics; I sure hate it sometimes.

As a result, I just can't believe a word that Sullivan says about The Skeptical Environmentalist. Sullivan doesn't know math and he doesn't know science, but he does know partisanship and he does know how to sneer at actual scientists who try to question the book on its specifics. Instapundit got in this game when he spent a few days dissing Scientific American for its liberal bias for the crime of printing articles critical of the "Skeptical Environmentalist". In this worldview, when scientists criticize the book for being a factually inaccurate mishmash of subjects that the author doesn't understand, they must be liberals (and therefore wrong). What else could it be?

I've often disagreed with Sullivan in the past, but I've always read him with respect. I'm not sure that he actually deserves it. I've been finding his blog more and more dispiriting recently. Sullivan is one of the leading lights of conservative bloggers. This is just not good enough.

2. Charles Dodgson has got it exactly right: When conservatives were pushing Bush's tax cut as a small-government initiative, small-government types argued that starving the government of funds would inevitably mean that the government would shrink. "The grown-ups are back in charge", etc. But this was nonsense. Dodgson carefully details that since Reagan, Republicans have become the Pennies From Heaven party, spending money they don't have with splendid abandon. Jonathan Chait wrote an excellent column about how this. Go read the whole thing.

Perhaps most important, the commitment to setting aside the Social Security surplus, while a clumsy mechanism for enforcing fiscal discipline, had the benefit of curtailing the natural gluttonous urges of both parties. Now that Bush has broken down all the bulwarks of fiscal responsibility, nothing prevents Congress from reverting to its natural wasteful ways. And so, it has. In recent months both parties have eagerly endorsed a "stimulus bill"--several years' worth of pork for the business lobby designed to cure a slowdown that has already ended--huge grants for already coddled farmers, an energy bill with tens of billions in industry subsidies, and more. Both parties in Congress, with the White House's consent, have waved these bills through as though they had limitless resources. The irony, of course, is that the administration's argument for the tax cut was that it was supposed to squeeze out wasteful spending. But when the White House exercises no restraint on its own budget-busting priorities, it's in no position to stop Congress from doing the same.

I really, really like Through the Looking Glass, and I've got to quote him again. His first post today is a deconstruction of a nonsensical post by Orrin Judd. He follows it with this:

Glenn Reynolds thought Judd's argument was worth citing. That should give pause to folks touting the new wonders of the blogosphere; even though it collectively delights in debunkings of community enemies like Fisk and Chomsky, it is all too often an echo chamber for its own brand of comfortable nonsense. But that's a topic for another day.

I couldn't agree more.

3. Joshua Marshall has a link to a fine blog which I hadn't seen, Max Speaks. I love this dissection on Joe Klein's bogus Slate piece:

(Klein) suggests punitive damages for the harm inflected on people by deep-pocketed corporations raises prices “for all the rest of us.” In the very next graph, he criticizes populists for thinking in zero-sum mode, which he has just done himself. In fact a damage settlement would likely be born by the owners of a business, not its customers, since in a competitive market the firm has no control over prices. But if the market is not competitive . . . well in Joe Klein’s economy that just can’t be! That would be exploitation, and all serious journalists understand that sort of thing disappeared long ago. All you have to do is look at computer operating systems to see competition in action.