Posted without comment.

While I disagree with Amy Argetsinger’s response to the Gannon question- they should have made it a bigger story and made it easier for people to understand, because cronies in the press corps throwing softballs is far more of a threat to the way our country runs than two idiots who make it into a WH dinner- I don’t really think it is fair to pile on her (not that DougJ was) or single her out for criticism. After all, Amy Argetsinger is not an investigative journalist- she is a writer for the Style section and co-author of the Reliable Source column, which is a gossip/around-the-town/politicians as celebrity kind of thing.

Not that DougJ’s spoof questions weren’t funny in their own right, because they were, but the problem is not that Amy Argetsinger is talking about the dinner crashers, because that is what she is PAID to do- that is her beat. Mocking Amy for covering the Salahi stuff is like mocking Robin Givhan for discussing the Michelle Obama’s arms. At any rate, the real problem is not Amy Argetsinger and Roxanne Roberts, but that we have so many other alleged “journalists” stepping all over Amy and Roxanne’s turf. If I were them, I’d be pissed.

Full disclosure- I’ve had several email conversations with Amy, and she is a pleasant person as far as I can tell.

Politico editor John Harris responds to Greg Sargent about the fact that the Politico now serves primarily as an unquestioning conduit for Dick Cheney’s crazed ramblings:

1. I thought the Cheney comments were newsworthy, which is why they drew such notice by other news organizations and columnists. In fact, it seemed to me that the people who found Cheney’s comments most objectionable were the ones who found them most newsworthy.

2. If you look at the other stories we ran at the same time as the Cheney quote there was a Josh Gerstein piece leading the site comparing Obama’s response to Bush’s after the 2001 shoe bomber and debunking the notion that Obama’s response was more sluggish. We also had a piece looking at GOP politicization of national security.

3. Trying to get newsworthy people to say interesting things is part of what we do. Also in December we had a long Q and A with the other prominent former vice president Al Gore. That story might also have looked to some like providing an uncritical platform if you viewed it only isolation.

Sargent says:

It’s simply a fact that it does good big picture stories that change the conversation, and that it breaks news useful to both sides. But it’s unclear why Cheney’s continuing attacks on Obama as weak should continue to be deemed news, or why scrutiny of GOP strategy in other cases (or the Gore interview) should make it okay that Cheney is constantly given a free pass. My bet is even some at Politico see the constant elevation of Cheney as too cozy by half.

Here’s what I would like to know: was Spiro Agnew given this much airtime to blast the Ford and Carter administrations? I realize Agnew was actually forced to resign while Cheney wasn’t, but they are fairly similar figures in many ways.

Update. Maybe Agnew’s not the best comparison, given that that was too close to Watergate. Maybe Aaron Burr?

Remember when the WH asked folks to send them information of people lying about HCR so they could correct the record. Do you remember the freakout? At any rate, here was Big Government/Big Hollywood’s Andrew Breitbart on Glenn Beck theorizing what was going on:

Breitbart: Well, what people need to understand here is that they’re being community organized. And the White House absolutely understands how the Internet works, and understands that there are countless blogs, Media Matters, the Daily Kos, which are collecting information and putting out the disinformation.

What the White House wants to do is create a hierarchy of who its enemies are. Every week, or periodically, they meet with the netroots. And the netroots acts as an action gang that can go out there and attack the enemies of the president and attack the enemies—the, the, the people who would attack his plan.

So it is vital for this White House to find out who its enemies are, and then to sic its gang of netroots people on the American people.

Now here is Big Government/Big Hollywood’s Andrew Breitbart last night:

Since we have no information on how to hunt down the “other” Bertha Lewis — Ms. Psaki wouldn’t reveal who she is, citing “privacy concerns” — Big Government will err on the side of prudence and grant the White House its side of the story. I did ask Smith to find out biographical details on the other Wright, Ayers and Shabazz, but apparently privacy concerns apply to them, as well.

I end with this question: What is the point of the White House issuing visitor logs if those named can’t be identified and verified? “Transparency” would seem to call for nothing less, especially when those innocent people could easily be confused with the head of an organization recently defunded by Congress, a controversial preacher who shouted “God Damn America,” and an unrepentant domestic terrorist.

To review- having citizens email the White House when someone is lying so they can correct the record = unleashing the thugs. Providing names and addresses of private citzens who visit the White House so Breitbart’s morans can, in his words, “hunt [them] down” = no big deal.

Big clown.

I just slipped this question into a WaPo chat—can’t tell if the guy knows I’m kidding or not:

Cape Cod, Mass.: Does al Qaeda represent the same kind of existential threat to our way of life that the Salahis do? Imagine if the Salahis had been packing suitcase nukes or if they knew kung fu? We could have been looking at something far worse than 9/11, don’t you think?

Ed O’Keefe: The Secret Service at least has said that they take all threats—no matter who they come from or how they happen—equally seriously. And any mistake is detrimental to the agency’s mission and VERY embarrassing.

There’s also an ENTIRE CHAT devoted to the Salahis on WaPo at noon. I’m objectively pro-reporter-chat so I don’t mean that as a criticism.

But the last few weeks of SalahiGate coverage has been giving me flashbacks to Socksgate, Travelgate, and all the other very important scandals of the early ‘90s. Maybe I’m overreacting.

Update. He took this one too:

Re: Brit Hume: Have you seen any polling data on how the public would feel about waterboarding Tiger Woods? It seems to me it’s the only way to find out what he really did and didn’t do.

Thanks—I’ll be impressed if you take this one.

Ed O’Keefe: Nothing on waterboarding, but I think it’s noteworthy that several national polls—Post/ABC and Gallup—did poll Americans on their opinions of the Woods scandal. It’s like the polls had a BIG impact on AT&T and others that have dropped Woods as a spokesperson.

Imagine if national polls did this all the time! Would CBS cancel Charlie Sheen’s “Two and a Half Men”?

Update. I realize this is self-indulgent of me, but one more question I got into the second chat:

How big a scandal?: On a scale of 1 to 10 of Washington scandals, with 10 being the most important (say, Travelgate or Lewinskygate) and 1 the least important (say, torture, politicization of the DOJ, and all the bogus intel leading up to the Iraq war), where does Salahigate fall? I’m thinking about an 8.

Amy Argetsinger: Hmmmm…

Update. One more:

Baltmore, Md.: How come these kinds of made-up scandals afflict Democratic presidents so much more than Republicans? It’s really difficult for me to see how this is any worse than the saga of Jeff Gannon?

Why the weird double standard?

Amy Argetsinger: A guy of dubious credentials getting into the press corps is a story—and it WAS a story, just not as big a story as the Salahis, which I’d argue is both in proportion to their proximity to the president (the Salahis got a whole lot closer)... and also reflective of the fact that the Salahi story has a visceral appeal to a lot of readers. The Gannon thing is a little inside-baseball (most beyond-the-Beltway Americans don’t really know or care who gets to be in the press corps), while the idea of crashing a state dinner—which is supposed to be both exclusive and secure—has a significance easier to comprehend.

I’m pretty sure a lot of the other questions are from you guys, but I’m not sure, so let me know in the comments.

Have at it.

I’m not linking but Kaplan has a big Sally Quinn piece calling for the head of Desiree Rogers. It’s pretty fucking comical:

Obama has had some real successes this fall. He did a masterful job of bringing together incredibly disparate positions to craft a strategy for Afghanistan. He put himself on the line and will probably come up with a reasonable health-care plan. He left Copenhagen with at least promises of cooperation from other world powers regarding climate change. But he is not getting credit that he deserves because he is being ill served by those around him who will not step up as needed and take the fall for him.

The president needs to start making that happen. The first step would be to accept the resignations of Sullivan and Rogers today.

That’s right, folks—global warming, health care reform, and a couple of nuts crashing a state party dinner are all equally important issues.

But take heart, none is as important as a president getting a blow job from an intern.

I can’t do this justice, but Digby and Bob Somerby probably can.

You may have heard that Erick Ericskon is on Colbert tonight. I assume there will be some clips available tomorrow morning, but here’s an early report:

Colbert just called out EE for calling Souter a “goat-fucking child molester” and saying Obama’s Nobel win was an affirmative action hire, among other things. Wow.

And commenter C writes in to say that

Republican operative, John Feehery, on CNN just now, said (I’m paraphrasing) that Erick Erickson should STFU.

He said that “it is appropriate Erick Erickson is appearing on Comedy Central (Daily Show) in a few hours because his is a joker”, and that “Erick Erickson gets all his publicity from attacking Republicans”.

This probably just goes to prove that I’m a lily-livered liberal, but I feel genuinely sorry for Republicans that they have to deal with Erick Erickson. Imagine devoting your life to a political party and then finding out all your candidates were kow-towing to such an idiot.

There’s a pretty good New Yorker profile of the nut who runs Whole Foods, John Mackey (via Steve Benen). He’s a vegan who doesn’t believe in global warming, opposes health care reform, and loves Ayn Rand. The article describes him as a “right-wing hippie”, which seems fairly accurate to me. I liked this part:

The health-care op-ed’s headline, “THE WHOLE FOODS ALTERNATIVE TO OBAMACARE,” was the Journal’s, Mackey says, but the sentiments were his. Mackey’s prescriptions ranged from the obvious (people need to eat better) to the market-minded (promote interstate competition among insurers) to the dreamy (the corporations will take care of us). The gist was that, together, they’d obviate the need for a federal plan, and that the course being pursued by the White House and the Democrats would have disastrous consequences. He led with an epigram attributed to Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.”

Before submitting the op-ed, he showed it to Lanny Davis, the former Clinton White House special counsel, who represented Whole Foods in its antitrust battle. Davis told me that he “prodded John a little to think like a liberal,” and he reckons that the Thatcher quote was ill-advised. Still, he blames “left-wing McCarthyism” for the outrage that greeted the piece.

I don’t shop at Whole Foods, because we have Wegmans in western New York. There’s all kinds of stories about the Wegman family’s political leanings (they’re pro-life and anti-union), too, but I don’t particularly care, because the stores are excellent and, by all accounts, the employees are treated very well. And, by the same token, I don’t boycott Whole Foods just because the CEO is a weirdo and an asshole, though I probably wouldn’t shop there even if I didn’t have Wegmans near by because Whole Foods seems like a rip-off to me whenever I go in.

But I think we’d all be better off if the “There Will Be Blood” vision of business titans prevailed over the “Atlas Shrugged” one in the public consciousness. It’s simplistic to say this, but a real world Galt’s Gulch would likely be an insane asylum or a prison.

Not to pile on Politico, which I don’t hate as much as a lot of other people do, but it’s worth noting that John’s last two posts were about how one of Politico’s star junior political reporters spends half his day tracking down Breitbart rumors while the other takes dictation from Dick Cheney.

Nothing against Ben Smith or Jon Martin, who seem like nice enough guys. But, again, it’s hard to see how this bodes well for our political system.

Andrew Breitbart takes a break from doctoring video tapes, giving drunken inspirational speeches, and flipping off activists marching to protest child abduction to issue a correction:

: According to Politico’s Ben Smith, the Bertha Lewis who went to the White House is not ACORN’s CEO but another woman named “Bertha Lewis.” I contacted Smith to tell him that Big Government would offer a correction if the “administration official” who offered the information went on record and told us who the “other” Bertha Lewis is and got the unnamed administration source to come out from behind the veil of anonymity and use his/her name. So far, according to unnamed White House sources, “different” people with the familiar names of Malik Shabazz, Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers were discovered on White House visitors logs. As I skeptically asked on my Twitter account, “What are the odds?”

First thing Monday morning, Smith contacted the White House and White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki came from behind her anonymous veil and confirmed for Smith, “it was a different Bertha Lewis, though she declined to share details about that visitor, citing privacy reasons.”

But, since Breitbart is a wingnut, he can not be to blame for this buffoonery, because right-wingers are never wrong. Fortunately, Andrew explains who is at fault:

I end with this question: What is the point of the White House issuing visitor logs if those named can’t be identified and verified? “Transparency” would seem to call for nothing less, especially when those innocent people could easily be confused with the head of an organization recently defunded by Congress, a controversial preacher who shouted “God Damn America,” and an unrepentant domestic terrorist.

Here’s an idea- you could have picked up the phone (which, considering these drunken rantings you left on someone’s voice mail, we know you know how to use) and called ACORN and asked. You could have even asked one of your buddies at Fox News to do it for you.

I’m really laughing at the idea that Breitbart and the teabag contingent think the WH is to blame for not giving out the names, addresses, and personal information of WH visitors to random wingnuts and unhinged loser conspiracy theorists so they can do drive-by inspections of their counters. That would be an awesome idea, wouldn’t it? Nothing could go wrong with a policy like that:

John Loftus, Fox News Contributor, carelessly gave the address of an unsuspecting family because he thought a terrorist lived at their address. He was wrong and the family has been tortured and terrorized since his irresponsible statement. Chrish reported this story and at that time the family was waiting for an apology from Fox News. This morning 8/27/05, CNN reported that Fox had fired Loftus and issued a written apology to the family who have gone through hell.

Oh. Nevermind. Maybe the White House is on to something after all with those silly “privacy” concerns.

Jonathan Martin can barely keep a straight face as Matthews nailed him tonight:

While watching that, I was reminded of all the times that Pat Buchanan knows he is full of shit and giggles and runs with the company line anyway, because that is what JMart looked like tonight. We don’t need to know ask the VP why he goes to the Politico, Jonathan. He goes there because he knows your boss will act like a stenographer and simply reprint whatever he says, and there is no chance in hell you guys will fact check it or rebut it, because that would get in the way of all the Drudge and wingnut links. Cheney knows an effective PR firm when he sees one- you’re simply his new Office of Special Plans.

The funny thing is that when Allen and company act as useful idiots, serving the same role that Facebook does for Palin, they probably pride themselves on their “scoops.” Or maybe instead of funny, it’s just sad.

(via the Allegedly Awesome Bob Cesca)

This is kind of a big deal:

Last fall, the American Law Institute, which created the intellectual framework for the modern capital justice system almost 50 years ago, pronounced its project a failure and walked away from it.

***

“The A.L.I. is important on a lot of topics,” said Franklin E. Zimring, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley. “They were absolutely singular on this topic” — capital punishment — “because they were the only intellectually respectable support for the death penalty system in the United States.”

***

A study commissioned by the institute said that decades of experience had proved that the system could not reconcile the twin goals of individualized decisions about who should be executed and systemic fairness. It added that capital punishment was plagued by racial disparities; was enormously expensive even as many defense lawyers were underpaid and some were incompetent; risked executing innocent people; and was undermined by the politics that come with judicial elections.

They had to compromise to come to an agreement, so don’t expect them to be working to undo the damage they have done. In fact, I’d almost bet the recalcitrant death penalty supporters in the group are probably busy trying to make sure torture is legitimized and codified.

My sister has a dog that she got off the streets of Pittsburgh and needs to find a home for because her current dog is pouting and upset. Here is the background:

She is really sweet and loving. She curls up in a tiny ball in bed and will wake up in the middle of the night look at you, wag her tail and give you a kiss before she falls back to sleep.

Basically she was a stray in a bad section of Pittsburgh and this rescue was trying to catch her. They asked the police for help and they told them that if they caught her they were going to euthanize her. A feral cat rescue finally caught her. She is about 5 months old. She barks at men when she first meets them, but will warm up very quickly and be kissing you in no time. She loves women. Is affectionate, but can hold her own with other dogs. She is about 18-20 lbs, is teeny, with a thick head, but a sweet little baby seal expression. I am already getting really attached to her.

Here is a pic:

If you are interested, shoot me an email. The dog is a pit bull, and I was informed I am a “dog racist” for voicing concerns. I’ll try to get some better pictures.

Steve Benen links to this quote from up and coming wingnut wannabe Allen Quist, a Republican candidate for the House:

“It’s because I, like you, have seen that our country is being destroyed. I mean, this is—every generation has had to fight the fight for freedom. This is our fight. And this is our time. This is it. Terrorism, yes—but that’s not the big battle. The big battle is in D.C., with the radicals. They aren’t liberals, they’re radicals. Obama, Pelosi, Walz—they’re not liberals, they’re radicals. They are destroying our country. And people all over are figuring that out.”

The thing is, I agree with him. Maybe I’ve just gotten soft on terror, but I really do not see Al Qaeda as an existential threat. I’m just not afraid of terrorism anymore- I’m more likely to choke to death on an apple or get hit crossing the street or to wreck my car than I am to get killed in a terrorist attack. If we’ve learned anything the last couple of years, it is that no matter who is in office, the National Security State is going to reign supreme- because everyone is terrified of having an attack on their watch and of being called soft on terror.

In short, what terrorists do has very little impact on my life. On the other hand, the Republicans in congress have an enormous impact on my life. The banksters and the FIRE crowd have an enormous impact on my life. The insurance lobby has a big impact on my life. The gun lobby has a big impact on my life.

If the Republicans get their way, they’ll be privatizing social security, deregulating more, and my retirement fund and my social security will get looted. If Republicans keep their way, every time I eat a hamburger from a fast food joint, I’m sucking up ammonia. And on and on and on.

So while everyone wants to pile on Quist, they should realize he is exactly right. What the radicals in Washington and in your state house do is far more threatening than anything the terrorists can do. Quist just can’t figure out who the radicals are.