Setting the Record Straight on "Off the Record"

It's been more than a few years since I was a wire-service reporter and, before that, a newspaper reporter, but I still remember enough to know that Katharine Seelye got it frighteningly wrong in the New York Times this week.

And it's frightening because, especially after years of one journalistic embarrassment after another, you'd think the Times would have mastered the basics.

Seelye led her story by declaring: "The journalistic phrase "off the record" seemed to lose all meaning last week at an event featuring Justice Antonin Scalia of the Supreme Court."

Why did the phrase lose "all meaning?" Because two newspapers -- the New York Daily News and the New York Post -- had the balls and brains to report on the event. The News did so in cutesy fashion, but in greater detail than did the Post.

They were right to do so, and Seelye is wrong to suggest otherwise. Why? Because "off the record" is not a magic phrase -- it's not something you can demand of journalists. It's a phrase sources and journalists use, by mutual consent, to determine how particular quotations or facts will be sourced and attributed.

In other words, if I ask President Bush, "how's it going?" and he says, "off the record, I could use a vacation," there's no rule that says I have to honor his declaration that he was going off the record. Why? Because it's not his record. The same principle applies if someone says, "don't photograph me." Well, if they're in public, you're allowed to photograph them. It's, like, the law and stuff. That whole "freedom" deal.

The one thing that would have put the News and Post in the wrong would have been if attendance at the event was contingent upon acceptance of ground rules such as declaration of all remarks as off the record. According to Seelye, and Lloyd Grove of the News, that wasn't the case. In fact, Grove makes a good point to Seelye, that the event was declared off the record ex post facto. A journalist with integrity should probably interrupt and object when a source starts off with a unilateral declaration of off-the-recordness, but there's definitely no power to an after-the-fact unilateral declaration.

Even in these post-adversarial-journalism days, you'd think they'd know that. At the paper of record.

Read more...

Morning Sedition

So, Danny Goldberg is killing Morning Sedition.

Sedition, if you haven't heard of it, is Air America Radio's morning-drive program, hosted by comedian Marc Maron and co-host Mark Riley. As its first producer, I helped create and launch the show in April 2004 and produced it for its first year. If you've seen the HBO documentary, Left of the Dial, you know that this was an extremely trying process.

When Goldberg started as Air America Radio CEO this year, he made it clear almost immediately that he didn't like (or get, depending on your view) Sedition and that he wanted, at the very least, to make substantive changes. Landing in Goldberg's crosshairs strained the previously volatile, but also rewarding, relationship between myself and Maron and, especially after the network asked me to help Rachel Maddow create and launch her new 5 a.m. show, I ended up reducing my involvement in Sedition, handing over most of the responsibility to the hyper-capable Brendan McDonald and focusing my efforts more on the long-term planning required for the summer's slate of live remote broadcasts.

Eventually, it became clear to me that this set-up wasn't infinitely tenable. I told the network I wanted to stay on in some other capacity. My superiors there felt the same way and sought other ways to utilize me. Goldberg, however, had no interest in keeping me, so I was laid off in September.

All of which is not the point of my story, but a good-faith effort to disclose that, yes, I have a number of axes that could use grinding if I were so inclined.

I don't feel so inclined (okay, I do, but not so much any more and, in any case, I'm trying not to indulge). Maron is pretty damn close to a national treasure. His level of emotional intelligence is off the charts and he applies it to issues of politics and society in ways that make his work the comedic equivalent of "Freakonomics" or "Tipping Point," his synthesis of insights (his own and others) into how people work individually and societally is just about that revolutionary.

And it's piss-your-pants funny. The New Haven Advocate came pretty close, I think, to nailing what made Sedition good and valuable to AAR, and in general. When Goldberg arrived at Air America, everyone -- including him -- acknowledged that Morning Sedition had been neglected by the network.

Al Franken and, to a lesser extent, Randi Rhodes, had received most of the promotional push (including the scant paid advertising AAR purchased as well as the free media). Sedition had a couple strikes against it -- it started off with a mismatched team and only really took off once one of the three initial hosts left the program. Also, Maron had never done radio before and Riley had only done local radio. Maron was the lead host and needed a few months to find his groove -- which he did in preternaturally quick time.

The biggest strike against us, though, was that we were operating in the most competitive daypart -- morning drive. And no one knew we existed. Despite that, however, and despite Goldberg's public rationales, Sedition usually did relatively okay in the ratings. When it stumbled, there was usually some clear reason for it or it was part of a larger pattern (affecting AAR or talk-radio overall). So, we needed to let people know our show existed. And this wasn't another case of a show feeling neglected and making excuses; all the executives agreed, and said, in essence, that it wasn't possible to put a show on in the nation's number-one market, in the most competitive daypart and expect it to succeed without spending a single dollar to let people know it existed. To his credit, Goldberg brought in people to remedy that. Unfortunately, for reasons beyond my ken, the additional staff didn't yield any additional attention for or promotion of the show. We were, in fact, told to wait. First a new logo had to be developed. Then an overall network-marketing plan would have to be developed. Only then, finally, would the network be able to market Morning Sedition properly. If that was true, why cancel the show before allowing the still-unseen marketing to debut? If it wasn't true, why should we believe what we're being told now?

Goldberg's claim that he's dividing the morning-drive slot into two shows of radically different sensibilities rather than retain a sharp, critically acclaimed comedian at a time when fans of Howard Stern (some of whom had already discovered us and joined the ranks of our listeners) would be looking at alternatives, in order to boost ratings, is both laughable and transparently false. The reality is he dislikes Air America's comedic elements. Rather than more of Sedition's comedy, Goldberg wanted the show to interview former NYC mayoral candidate Mark Green.

After I was gone, Green started showing up on Sedition with such frequency that it led the consistently-favorable magazine TimeOut NY to make its first negative comments about the show, with a dig about Green's frequency as a guest.

I'm glad that my friend Rachel is going to get more exposure. She's enough of a star that it's probably only a matter of time until Air America somehow fumbles and lets her slip away. But it's a huge disappointment that Goldberg is rejecting the advice of virtually everyone who's weighed in on this issue in order to kill a show that's been provocative, unique, smart, brave, personal, vulnerable, honest and as funny as gallows humor can be.

I hope Goldberg isn't full of shit when he says they're trying to find a way to keep Maron on the air at Air America. I'd be interested to see how Maron evolved as a solo act on the air. And Maron's is a perspective (that should be plural, actually) you just don't get from any of the other lefty-ish, progressive hosts. No slur against them, they all say important things and expose important truths, but Maron does more than that, he does so with a singular voice.

And silencing that voice just because he doesn't hear it would make Goldberg just as bad as the people he claims to oppose.

Read more...

Translation: No Flamers

The Washington Post reports that the local shaman thinks the Vatican has left some, um, wiggle room in the "No Gays" sign they posted on the door of their top-secret, boys-only clubhouse.

Me, I find it interesting that in their quest for celibate priests, they bar men who know they're gay, while admitting men who aren't, but still have practiced gay sex. Wouldn't CHOOSING to commit an act the Bible calls an abomination be worse than simply having a biologically programmed inclination to be gay?

But then, I guess that's about as meaningful as debating D&D's rules on hit points or something.

Read more...

Fuck Morale

The news that a new poll suggests most Americans agree with Bush and Cheney that criticizing the war and its prosecution damages troop morale got a lot of play, much of it along the lines found in this Washington Post writeup. Unfortunately, most of the coverage I saw misses, as the poll itself seems to have, the bigger point. (At this writing, the poll had not been posted online yet).

According to the coverage, 70% of Americans believe that criticism of the war by Democratic senators hurts troop morale. Why the pollsters chose to ask anyone other than the owners of said morale, I'm not quite sure. Nevertheless, let's assess what lies behind the poll: Namely, the implication that if something hurts troop morale, good Americans ought not do it.

Let's even stipulate the truth of what the poll found most Americans believe: That war criticism hurts troop morale. Our next question ought to be: So the fuck what?

I don't mean that as synonymous with, "Who gives a shit?" I mean, seriously, what are we supposed to do with the stipulated reality that dissent hurts morale? Let's break it down. There are two possibilities about the dissent:

It's accurate.
It's not accurate.

In other words, the complaining about the war is either merited or not merited. If it's merited, we shouldn't waste time worrying about whether VALID complaints about the war are hurting morale. It's like worrying that an accurate cancer diagnosis may lead to depression. Kinda misses the big picture.

So that leaves us with the scenario of inaccurate (or, at least, not wholly accurate) war criticism. Dissenters are either disingenuous, in which case I think we can agree they're not defensible, or they're sincere in their criticism. The reason -- well, one reason -- it's still not just appropriate, but imperative, for war critics to speak out, even at the risk of hurting morale, is that dissent is not merely about present conflicts, it's also about future conflicts.

Dissent is something war planners should know to anticipate. They should know that it can hurt morale. Both of these facts are supposed to compel responsible political, civilian leaders not to stifle dissent, but to render it moot by obtaining civic consensus before going to war.

The problem is not that dissent causes low morale. The problem is that poor leadership and/or planning causes dissent AND low morale. If the dissenters are, in effect, saying, "fuck morale," then so are the leaders who engendered the dissent. If the fact that dissent can have negative consequences causes us to stifle dissent, then we've removed a crucial motive future political leaders have to ensure that they only go to war with broad-based civilian support. President Bush failed to win broad-based support; much of the support he did get came through defrauding the populace. That's why dissent is so important now -- not so much to bring about change in this obstinate, unresponsive administration, but to serve as a warning to future politicians that they damn well better win Americans' WITTING support before they wage war in our name again. If we fail to voice our dissent now, we're writing a blank check for tomorrow's politicians to wage war without fear of reprisal, let alone criticism. And that will really hurt troop morale.

Read more...

AP Prays for Guidance. And Gets It.

The Associated Press has a writeup out there -- linked, most notably, by Huffington Post -- on the latest in a gazillion allegedly "unexplained" crying-statue "miracles."

The AP does its usual minimum of dropping in the obligatory "some say"s before most of the supernatural claims. But, I thought I'd give them a hand on this one and show them how their story might appear if the traditional wire-service standards (I used to work for UPI) were applied to claims of magic that happen to emanate from populous religions. My edits are in italics.

By JULIET WILLIAMS
The Associated Press

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - Carrying rosary beads and cameras, the faithful have been coming in a steady stream to a church on the outskirts of Sacramento for a glimpse of what some observers, who have neither evidence nor relevant expertise, are calling a miracle: A statue of the Virgin Mary they say has begun crying a substance that looks like blood in that it is red.

It was first noticed more than a week ago, when a priest at the Vietnamese Catholic Martyrs Church says he spotted a stain on the statue's face and wiped it away. Before Mass on Nov. 20, people again noticed a reddish substance near the eyes of the white concrete statue outside the small church, said Ky Truong, 56, a parishioner.

Since then, Truong said he has been at the church day and night, so emotional he can't even work, although he remains capable of discussions with reporters. He believes the tears are a sign but is unable to produce supporting evidence.

"There's a big event in the future earthquake, flood, a disease," Truong said. "We're very sad." The Associated Press has learned that earthquakes, floods and diseases have all occurred in the past and that their recurrence has already been predicted by several established scientific institutions.

On Saturday, tables in front of the fenced-in statue were jammed with potted plants, bouquets of roses and candles, in part because local organizers were sufficiently canny not to arrange for tables so large that the displays would appear small in comparison. Some people prayed silently, while others sang hymns and hugged their children. An elderly woman in a wheelchair wept near the front of the crowd. It was not immediately clear whether the hugging and weeping were routine phenomena.

A red trail could be seen from the side of the statue's left eye to about halfway down the robe of concrete.

"I think that it's incredible. It's a miracle. Why is she doing it? Is it something bothering her?" asked Maria Vasquez, 35, who drove with her parents and three children from Stockton, about 50 miles south of Sacramento. The Associated Press has since learned that the statute is, in fact, a block of concrete and, as such, possesses neither a gender nor the capacity to be bothered.

Thousands of such incidents are reported around the world each year, though many turn out to be hoaxes or natural phenomena. The other incidents, therefore, must be magic, in which case, this reporter ought to have led this story with the sentence: "The Associated Press has confirmed the existence of magic." The Associated Press regrets the error.

The Diocese of Sacramento has so far not commented on the statue, and the two priests affiliated with the church did not return a telephone message Saturday. The Associated Press had planned to grill the local shamans with such hard-hitting questions as: "How about that statue deal? Pretty freaky, right?"

The Rev. James Murphy, deacon of the diocese's mother church, the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament, said church leaders are always skeptical at first, a claim the Associated Press was unable to verify after a review of historical records indicating that church leaders have, in fact, eschewed skepticism in favor of accepting on faith the notion that there's a magic man in the sky.

"For people individually seeing things through the eyes of faith, something like this can be meaningful. As for whether it is supernatural or a miracle, normally these incidences are not. Miracles are possible, of course," Murphy said without being able to cite a single confirmed incident in the history of humanity. "The bishop is just waiting and seeing what happens. They will be moving very slowly."

But seeing the statue in person left no doubt for Martin Operario, 60 and therefore susceptible to believing anything that might ease his encroaching dread of mortality, who drove about 100 miles from Hayward. He took photos to show to family and friends, who were unavailable for comment.

"I don't know how to express what I'm feeling," Operario said. "Since religion is the mother of believing, then I believe." Operario added that since necessity is the mother of invention, then he invents.

Nuns Anna Bui and Rosa Hoang, members of the Salesian Sisters of San Francisco, also made the trek Saturday. Whether the weeping statue is declared a miracle or not, they said, it is already doing good by awakening people to the faith and reminding them to pray. The Associated Press has confirmed that it is also doing bad by seducing people to the faith and discouraging them from doing things other than pray that might prove more fruitful due to their closer ties to causality.

"It's a call for us to change ourselves, to love one another," Hoang said. Hoang was unable to provide evidence for his claims and the Associated Press has learned that Hoang's plans to change himself will be short-lived and that, in fact, he does not love you.

Copyright 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed unless Jesus says it's okay.

Read more...

Journalists and Jehovah

Tomorrow's issue of The New Yorker will win a new round of headlines for Seymour Hersh, but if American journalism runs true to form, it'll focus on two things -- military strategy in Iraq, and Bush's detachment from execution of policy -- and stay well clear of a third.

Hersh's piece -- as summarized in the magazine's PR e-mail notice -- includes quotes from several Pentagon sources, and concludes that Bush is, in fact, looking at pulling out ground troops from Iraq. There is, however, a disturbing trend that Hersh outlines regarding the air war. The details will, I'm sure, be all over the place Monday.

But I suspect we won't see much of the corporate media focus on another aspect of Hersh's piece -- that Bush's obstinance on Iraq has its roots in his religious certitude. Here's a taste of it from that PR e-mail:

Hersh speaks with several senior officials who confirm that President Bush “remains convinced that it is his personal mission to bring democracy to Iraq.” One senior official, who served in President Bush’s first term, tells Hersh that, after September 11th, he was told that the President felt that “God put me here” to deal with the war on terror, and a former defense official says that the President has grown detached, leaving more to Karl Rove and Vice-President Dick Cheney. “They keep him in the gray world of religious idealism, where he wants to be anyway,” he says.

That gray world is safe for Bush for several reasons. The one that concerns me most right now, however, is that the media have declared it a DMZ. The media are simply too ill-informed, too cowardly and too simplistic to address basic issues of how politicians' religious beliefs shape their political beliefs and guide their actions.

It's insane that any politician vying for federal office, or even statewide office, doesn't as a matter of course, end up addressing questions about what supernatural forces they believe in, what system they believe guides those supernatural forces, how those supernatural forces affect their own actions, etc., etc.

Part of the problem, I think, is condescension. Much of the northeastern-based, well-educated media can't imagine that most Americans (and most American politicians) actually believe in a "personal" god that has sentience and intentionality. So they feel dumb or patronizing or just plain weird asking about it.

Which is too bad. Because people are dying as a result.

Read more...

When Should I Become Anti-Catholic?

Americans have a choice. We can be tolerant of everything (which must include intolerance). Or we can be intolerant of some things (which might, but need not, be limited to intolerance).

I happen to be a big fan of intolerance. I think America, and specifically the left, could benefit from a healthy helping of it. And let's be open about it. If some group out there proudly identifies itself as anti-somethingwevalue, why shouldn't we respond with a declaration of proud anti-whateverisantisomethingwevalue-ism?

Which brings me to the Catholic church. The Vatican, Pope Benedict's secret hideout, is about to issue a new hiring policy, the details of which have been leaked: No fags allowed. In fact, the Catholic church is now not only a proud discriminator against fags, queers, dykes, sword swallowers and presumably other carny folk, Papa Benedict is going so far as to prohibit from its seminaries and its, um, "sacred orders" (By The Power of Greyskull!) "those who...support so-called gay culture."

That's right, while the corporate media goes bat-shit on the no-shit anti-gay angle, it turns out the Vatican is also implementing job discrimination against, well, male fag hags, I guess. Metrosexuals, perhaps. Straight men who enjoy Broadway musicals. Writers. Me, maybe. I've supported the so-called gay culture, which I take to include, well, all culture. So, no priesthood for me: The Vatican is anti-me. Shouldn't it be okay, then, for me to be anti-them?

I don't mean to suggest that I think all Catholics are bad people, or that we should discriminate against them. But when an institution advertises and defends hateful policies of employment discrimination, doesn't that put a burden on those who identify themselves as members of that institution either to disavow it, disavow its policies, or accept the logic that, otherwise, we must assume they embrace the policies of the organization with which they willingly, publicly identify?

At what point does an organization, an ideology, a religion, slip from being one that enjoys the assumption of beneficence to become one that is seen, and treated, as an advocate and propagator of hate?

Back in college, for the April Fools issue of The Tufts Daily, our lead story was that Kurt Waldheim (then the UN Secretary General), was going to give Tufts' commencement speech. The point was to lampoon Tufts' decision to hold commencement on a Jewish holiday. But one of the lines we included in the story was a defense of the fictional Waldheim booking, in which Waldheim (or a surrogate) protested: "You never hear about the nice Nazis, the ones who care."

Today, I have to wonder, what will it mean to be a good Catholic, if Catholicism itself goes bad?

Read more...

Rape Responsibility

A new survey commissioned by the UK branch of Amnesty International has drawn a lot of attention to societal attitudes about rape, but not necessarily in a good way.

The survey (and you should read it for yourself, it ain't exactly heavy lifting) found that British men and women, generally, hold similar views and misconceptions about rape. And it suggested -- or, at least, it seemed to suggest -- that a startlingly high percentage of Britons hold rape victims at least partially responsible for the crime. I'll explain why the survey was fatally flawed in its conception, but first, a breakdown of the most notorious findings:

...please indicate whether you believe a woman is totally responsible, partially responsible or not at all responsible for being raped if…

The woman is drunk (4% totally responsible; 26% partially)
The woman has behaved in a flirtatious manner (6% totally responsible; 28% partially)
The woman has failed to say ‘no’ clearly to the man (8% totally responsible; 29% partially)
A woman is wearing sexy or revealing clothes (6% totally responsible; 20% partially)
It is known that the woman has many sexual partners (8% totally responsible; 14% partially)
The woman is alone and walking in a dangerous or deserted area (5% totally responsible; 18% partially)

Disappointingly, but not surprisingly, some of the most feeble journalistic writeups used provocative and unsubstantiated headline phrases such as "deserve it" and "ask for it." But the poor coverage of the poll isn't what I want to address. The poll itself is poorly constructed, but the outrage in response to it is misguided.

The poll is poorly constructed because the term "responsible" is vague and open to misinterpretation. It's quite possible, as the bad coverage demonstrates, to interpret "responsible" in this case to mean "morally at fault." If everyone polled interpreted it that way, this would be a tremendously troubling poll.

However, "responsible" could also be interpreted as meaning "causal." This conflation between moral and causal responsibiltiy has, I think, made it impossible for otherwise smart and rational people to have frank and open discussions about rape. Too often, discussions about causality are misperceived as discussions about morality; an unfortunate result, I think, of our truly warped notions about sex and the mistaken thinking that sex inherently has moral dimensions.

Every rape victim does something to make their rape possible. They leave the house. They go on dates. They get jobs. These decisions and actions put them in situations that increase their odds of being raped. That is, I think, a fairly innocuous observation.

It's only when people start to consider not whether a woman's behavior, but a woman's sexual behavior, increases the odds of her being raped, that we start to encounter problems. The reason so many people have trouble even considering whether rapists are motivated by a woman's sexual behavior is, I think, the fear that this knowledge will then be used to limit women's freedom to act as they choose or, conversely, to validate or excuse rape itself. These fears are valid. But shouldn't we also be afraid of missing an opportunity to learn something about why rape happens? Wouldn't the ideal solution be to learn more about why rape happens and simultaneously take steps to ensure that rapists are still held fully accountable for their crimes?

What if a woman's sexual behavior can affect the odds she'll be targeted by a rapist? Shouldn't we know that? Shouldn't SHE know that? When I'm told that pickpockets will be more tempted to try for my wallet when I carry it in my back pocket, I don't resent that information as an assault on my autonomy, or as an attempt to condemn my choice of wallet storage. Nor do I somehow become more willing to find back-pocket pickpockets less guilty than front-pocket pickpockets. I'm appreciative of information that I can use to increase the odds I'll keep my money. And, in fact, I do carry my wallet in my front pocket. I could, if I so chose, withdraw all my money from the bank in cash, and then tape hundred dollar bills (okay, maybe twenties) all over my body and go for a stroll through Times Square. I'd be within my moral rights to do so. But no one would be surprised if I came back a few bills light. And some people might go so far as to say I had been an idiot not to know the risks I took on.

And if anyone had told me my behavior wouldn't make me more of a target, wouldn't we condemn that person for misleading me?

Drunk, promiscuous, flirtatious, scantily clad women who are raped in darkened alleyways at midnight deserve our sympathies and support just as much as do sober, chaste, dour, parka-wearing women who are raped in Disneyland at noon. And both rapists deserve equally long stretches in prison. But are we really helping women when we tell them that the ODDS of each rape are identical?

It's not politically correct to suggest that anything but power dynamics motivates rape. In one of his books (Blank Slate, or How the Mind Works), Steven Pinker makes (or passes on) the argument that men use every tactic known to men in order to get sex, and that they've also been known to use violence to attain virtually every goal known to men, so why should it surprise us, then, to learn that at least some men are at least partially motivated by sex when they use violence to get sex?

We do know that rapists target women more than they target men. If woman-ness is a factor, shouldn't we also consider whether behavior that accentuates woman-ness might also be a factor? Because if it is, we might learn something that can help us both reduce how often rapists strike, and inform women about how better to guard against rapists. And if anyone is stupid enough to suggest that understanding more about why rapists rape whom they rape somehow absolves them even partially of culpability, maybe that will force us into a long-overdue dialogue about our underlying hypocrisies and double standards about sex and sexual behavior, and the mistaken notion that questions about sex are questions about morality.

Read more...

"The Media Stink" Game

Below is part of an article from today's New York Times. Let's count a) how many statements are merely misleading and b) how many are false. In each category, determine how many are in the administration's favor, and how many are against it.

"More than two years ago, Mr. McClellan did what press secretaries are paid to do: He vigorously defended the president's men - specifically, Mr. Libby, Mr. Rove and Elliott Abrams, a national security aide who was never implicated in the case - against speculation that they had a hand in the disclosure of the identity of a Central Intelligence Agency officer.

'They're good individuals, they're important members of our White House team, and that's why I spoke with them, so that I could come back to you and say that they were not involved,' Mr. McClellan said at his televised briefing on Oct. 7, 2003, one of several instances in which he denied that Mr. Rove and Mr. Libby were responsible for the leak.

As events have unfolded and the grand jury has heard testimony that both Mr. Libby and Mr. Rove had conversations with journalists that touched on the identity of the C.I.A. officer, Valerie Wilson, Mr. McClellan's reputation has been left dangling in the glare of the television lights.

Though Mr. Libby has not been convicted of charges that he lied in the investigation and was not accused of leaking the agent's identity, and Mr. Rove has not been charged with any wrongdoing, Mr. McClellan's broad assurance that they were 'not involved' now seems, based on what is known publicly about the case, to have been misleading if not downright false."

a) "Mr. McClellan did what press secretaries are paid to do."

He made false statements to the media, statements known to be false by members of the administration, e.g., Rove. Is this really not beyond what he is paid to do?

"Mr. Libby and Mr. Rove had conversations with journalists that touched on the identity of the C.I.A. officer."

This makes it sound like there was some conversation about a CIA officer, and perhaps they let slip that it was Wilson's wife. Nope. And they didn't "touch on the identity", they completely identified her.

"Mr. McClellan's reputation has been left dangling in the glare of the television lights."

Why the passive voice? Who has left it dangling? Perhaps McClellan?

b) "Mr. Libby ... was not accused of leaking the agent's identity"

Yes, he was, read the damn indictment. He wasn't charged with the crime of leaking, but he certainly is accused of leaking her identity. That's what he's charged with lying about, idiot.

And, the liberal New York Times' crap all benefited the administration.

The full story

Read more...

Craziness

I feel a little self-important even posting this, but a few people have posted that they check out the site regularly, so I wanted to let them (however few or many their number) know that the political craziness of the past week or so has, unfortunately for me, coincided with some craziness in my own life. The likely effect is that I won't be posting much (if at all) for the next couple of weeks. Please do check back every once in a while, however, as I expect the insanity to be temporary!

Read more...