This sounds like good news, even if it means that Democrats once again lost control of some important confidential data.

House ethics investigators have been scrutinizing the activities of more than 30 lawmakers and several aides in inquiries about issues including defense lobbying and corporate influence peddling, according to a confidential House ethics committee report prepared in July.

The report appears to have been inadvertently placed on a publicly accessible computer network, and it was provided to The Washington Post by a source not connected to the congressional investigations. The committee said Thursday night that the document was released by a low-level staffer.

In my opinion everyone on Capitol Hill is far too secure in their jobs. In the Army both scrutiny and punishment for a given offense partially depend on the defendant’s rank. The higher you are, the larger the book they throw at you (at least the system is meant to work that way). I would not suggest that we write a new set of penal codes for Congressional officials, but as it stands the system is structured almost the exact opposite of that populist ideal. These guys have the power, and their misbehavior impacts the nation harder than most quotidian crimes ever will, yet anything short of a Randy “Duke” Cunningham fire sale gets shrugged off as business as usual.

If it has to start with Charlie Rangel and Jack Murtha, fine. Off with their heads. Whatever it takes to put a little fear of the law in Congress’s untouchables is fine with me.

Chunky David Brooks has a piece about Joe Ratzinger’s plan to cherry-pick disaffected wingers from the Anglican church as reinforcements for the coming holy war against Islam:

There are an awful lot of Anglicans, in England and Africa alike, who would prefer a leader who takes Benedict’s approach to the Islamic challenge. Now they can have one, if they want him.

This could be the real significance of last week’s invitation. What’s being interpreted, for now, as an intra-Christian skirmish may eventually be remembered as the first step toward a united Anglican-Catholic front — not against liberalism or atheism, but against Christianity’s most enduring and impressive foe.

I have to admit that I don’t understand in what ways Islam is a foe of Christianity. I guess the idea is that there are people out there would be Christians if they weren’t Muslims? Is it some kind of a recruitment battle? And, if so, how would uniting the Anglican Church and the Catholic church help with this. I thought part of the appeal of Islam is that it is schismatic enough to present ample opportunity for intra-Islamic skirmishes. But even if I’m wrong about that, seriously, what would a united Anglican-Catholic front accomplish in this holy war that the two churches couldn’t accomplish separately?

I’ve seen other pieces criticizing Douthat’s piece for being Crusadesque, but no one seems able to explain what form this Crusade will take and why it requires coordinated action among Christian Churches. What the hell is he talking about?

Seven hours is too long to hold it.

***Update***

It seems like a while since my last photo blog, so meet the new lens. A manual-focus Sigma 50mm f2.8 1:1 macro arrived yesterday from KEH.

The compact lens fits nicely on a little E-P1, even attached with a Hong Kong Nikon-m4/3 adapter from kp_store on eBay (the adapter also works well, although it grabs the lens a little tighter than I like). All-metal construction gives the lens some heft and wonderful focus action. Although lens weight makes the camera a bit front-heavy and the light meter goes Galt whenever I put on a manual lens, sharp close-ups call for a tripod and exposure bracketing no matter what so it is not that big a deal.

Some tests will determine whether this becomes my go-to portrait lens; so far all signs point to yes.

The last time I wrote about the health care bill my post took for granted that any Public Option measure would include provisions to block private insurers from dumping sick and old clients. The reason is simple. If insurers can drop expensive clients for essentially any reason then the existence of a public option will encourage them to commit any skullduggery to keep nobody but the healthiest clients (until they get sick, of course. then they’re screwed) and leave the government to manage everyone else. Caring for the neediest would drive public plan premiums through the roof, it would force public plan managers to make all of the most unpopular decisions and it would probably force public plan managers (and not the cream-skimming private plans) to hit up Congress again and again for cash.

If a bill like that reaches the Senate floor then we might as well spike it. I am not kidding about this. Both the politics and the policy will suck hard for Democrats. A “public plan” with no dumping protection could function worse in practice than if we did nothing at all. A public plan flameout will delegitimize the Democrats and probably kill off any future support progressive health care reform.

Once again we can thank Democratic moderates for crippling a good bill (remember state aid in the stimulus?) for no reason except to put some daylight between themselves and the dirty fucking hippies. It concerns me that nobody in America seems to take policy seriously other than the Democratic left.

***Update***

My rant only makes sense insofar as the final health care bill effectively controls dumping. In the link in this post Ezra suggests that risk sharing will not be as effective as I assumed it would be. If I’m wrong then everything is fine. If I am right then we’re screwed. I guess we will wait to see the reconciled bill.

Something has to be done about this:

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton came face-to-face Friday with simmering Pakistani anger over U.S. aerial drone attacks in their country and drew back slightly from her blunt remarks suggesting Pakistani officials know where terrorists are hiding.

In a series of public appearances on the final day of a three-day visit, Clinton was pressed repeatedly by Pakistani civilians and journalists about the secret U.S. program that uses drones to launch missiles to kill terrorists.

***

During an interview with Clinton broadcast live in Pakistan with several prominent female TV anchors, before a predominantly female audience of several hundred, one member of the audience said the Predator attacks amount to ‘’executions without trial’’ for those killed.

Another asked Clinton how she would define terrorism.

‘’Is it the killing of people in drone attacks?’’ she asked. That woman then asked if Clinton considers drone attacks and bombings like the one that killed more than 100 civilians in the city of Peshawar earlier this week to both be acts of terrorism.

‘’No, I do not,’’ Clinton replied.

Well, Secretary Clinton might not think small unmanned drones firing missiles into villages is terrorism, but it is pretty damned clear a lot of people in Pakistan would disagree with that assessment.

And I’m pretty damned sure if predator drones were flying over American cities firing missiles into populated areas and killing a bunch of innocents, Secretary Clinton and everyone else in the country would pretty quickly label it terrorism. Hell, if someone mails an unnamed white powder to someone, we freak out for a couple months. Let alone blowing up dozens of people every week.

I really do not understand this attitude:

It is an odd, and we’d say regrettable, pattern of this White House that it lets itself get dragged down into fights with specific media outlets.

George W. Bush experienced acrimony with the New York Times, but for the most part, other than general frustrations of a conservative administration, complaining about a liberal media, it was no big deal.

But in addition to Fox News, now The White House is going after highly-respected and influential car site Edmunds.com.

They’re actually using The White House blog to dispute the site’s analysis of Cash-For-Clunkers (via Detroit News).

How. Dare. They! They are disputing an analysis! Don’t they know they’re supposed to just sit there and let their critics say whatever they want! The White House is supposed to be “above it all” and is never supposed to correct or address their critics! For shame!

Don’t they know they are supposed to just sit there and let people babble about death panels and how tax cuts make you go to heaven and that the real problem with Wall Street was too much regulation and that cigarettes cure cancer and so forth. How dare the White House have a position on issues?

I think I’m going to side with Sheila Bair on this one:

WASHINGTON — Senior regulators and some lawmakers clashed once again with the Obama administration on Thursday, finding fault with central elements of the White House’s latest plan to unwind large financial companies when their troubles imperil the financial system.

Describing the details of the legislation to the House Financial Services Committee, Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner emphasized that the plan would give officials the tools to more tightly supervise the largest financial companies. The government would also have the authority to order companies to shed risky assets or limit trading activities if they posed a threat to the companies’ stability.

But after he completed his testimony, significant parts of the plan were challenged by Sheila C. Bair, chairwoman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. She raised numerous objections about the structure of a proposed council of regulators, and said that it would fall short of its goal of protecting the system from the shock of a large failure.

“The oversight council described in the proposal currently lacks sufficient authority to effectively address systemic risks,” Ms. Bair said.

I really have no faith in Geithner at all, and that may be unfair, but right now all I see are half measures that really are not going to put in place a strict regime of tight regulation. Instead, it seems like we’re just setting ourselves up for another disaster and another round of hoocoodanode.

And why have there not been mass arrests at the ratings agencies yet?

Just finished the latest additions to the Lexicon, section I – P. I think we need more quotes being mean to Liberals. Also, I didn’t include Lucky Duckies, or John Stewart’s brilliant Leave It There (We’re Gonna Have to… ), or McNaughton, It’s A … the first because I’m not sure it’s necessary, and the latter two because I don’t have good links for them. Any assistance or opinions greatly appreciated.

Have at it.

Two questions/statements that get tossed around whenever I vent about one of these hot button issues were in a thread from yesterday, and I think they are worth talking about. The first:

OK, don’t have time to read all 289 comments but just wanted to ask why John is so obsessed with what gay people think of Obama? I mean, seriously, lately every third or fourth post is knocking some gay blogger or gays in general for being critical of Obama.

The second:

This post is representative of a weird mindset. As someone who was on the BushCo train, and only ditched out on them when it was obvious to everyone with a brain that they were failing us miserably, it seems that some who then in turn embraced Obama want to apply that kind of hero-worshiping that they did with Bush to Obama. That’s not how any of this stuff (stuff meaning how citizens observe and interact with presidential politics) was ever supposed to work.

I’ll answer them together because I think they are related. In response to the second statement, I think it is a very valid question/assertion to wonder if I am just shilling for Obama the way I did for Bush. I do at times seem to have an odd authoritarian streak, and I was completely and totally uncritical of Bush until I finally couldn’t take it anymore, so I think it is fair to think maybe I am just resorting to type.

The thing is, I don’t think I am just in the tank and think Obama can do no wrong. And this is where the first question/comment comes into play. If I’m obsessed with anything, I’m obsessed with people saying what I think are crazy and irrational and stupid things and then making fun of them. It just seems recently, a lot of that stuff has been coming from gay bloggers over gay rights issues. I also think that there is a certain mindset among some people that if you are not spending every day dramatically freaking out that Obama sucks, you aren’t doing your duty as a citizen and aren’t thinking critically and are “just in the bag” for the President. There honestly seems to be a group of people out there who think that when the President tells them to “make him do something,” they don’t understand that he wants them to apply constructive pressure on him and on Congress, they think it is a license to scream and flail and yell “just words” and adopt Republican messaging frames. They think it is permission to have a hissy fit. And I don’t think it is being “in the bag” for Obama to point out those hissy fits.

Where I have made mistakes on this issue is assuming or seeming to assume that I think certain bloggers speak for all gay people. I’ve also been flippant and given the appearance that I just think all gay people are just whiny drama queens. And, something I thought about while watching Milk the other night was that this has been going on for a long, long time, and I might not truly understand the anger and frustration of a lot of people in the gay community.

Lemme give you some examples. I have no problem with people being mad that Obama has not issued a statement about the marriage equality issue in the state of Maine. I think he could and should do more, and won’t say a peep about people flaming the WH for not doing more.

On the other hand, I think you are an insane crazy person if you flip out like Steve Clemons because Obama’s HRC speech was not up fast enough on the White House web site on a Saturday night. I think you have lost your shit when you insist that the WH house release a list identifying all the gay people who came to a ceremony (maybe the WH can also demand they wear pink triangles on their jackets!). I think you have lost your ability to reason if you spend an entire day hyperventilating because the President did not use the word “gay” at a ceremony for hate crimes legislation that covers EVERYONE. I think you have serious issues if you point to an unsourced anonymous quote from John Harwood and then boldly announce to the world that the WH hates gays. And I don’t think I’m obsessed with gays to point at these things and laugh. And I don’t think it is wrong to note that a good bit of this anger is based on the turf war between certain online gay bloggers and the HRC.

Likewise- you will never see me attack Marci Wheeler or Glenn Greenwald for their accurate chronicling of the administrations backpedaling on certain civil liberties issues, because I think they document their arguments and are right. Hell, as much as I love having flame wars with Armando, I think he is more right than wrong on many of these issues.

I will, on the other hand, mock you repeatedly if you tell the world that Obama is worse than Bush because Gitmo is not closed yet and because he hasn’t completely altered the overall outlook of the national security machinery. I will mock you endlessly if you scream that Obama sucks because Gitmo still has prisoners, when the Senate has repeatedly screwed Obama. Hell- remember the 96 to nothing vote a couple months ago about “freeing terrorists on domestic soil.”

I’m not going to say a peep to folks who argue the administration has not done enough to reign in the banksters or the credit ratings agencies or the insurance boys. I think it is ridiculous we have not started a new regulatory regime by now. I’m kind of shocked we have not broken up the boys who are “too big to fail” and have sat by while they taking bigger and bigger risks and leverage themselves more than they were before they almost killed the country. I think the Goldman Sachs presence in our government is to the point that it is blatantly criminal.

But I am going to mock you if you tell me Obama is the worst president ever because of daily fluctuations in the DOW or the value of a dollar. I am going to give you a rhetorical punch to the neck if you bitch that Obama has not “turned the economy around” when just a few months ago we were on the verge of global armageddon. I am going to point and laugh if you kvetch about the deficit and the national debt when it would still be disastrously out of control from the previous administration if Obama had spent not one penny.

In short, I don’t think I’m in the tank for Obama, I think I’m just applying common sense. Maybe I am too sarcastic and snide, and we all know I can be a real jerk, especially to people I like. And if you disagree with me, or think I am wrong, well, you get to go ahead and call me an asshole in the comments and tell me why I am wrong. Try it. You might find it very liberating, and I know that when enough of you start to point out I am wrong about something, I probably am. I’m hard-headed, but I am capable of learning.

Fuck the fucking Yankees. If they win tonight, I’ll have to re-run “Prince of Darkness”.

P.S. If Steve Gilliard were still blogging, I think he would say Sullivan hates Sarah Palin ‘cuz Levi Johnston never brung Andy a taco…

Sully:

John Cole is upset. The bill does add gender identity to the roster of victims, and I should have noted that as well. But the inference that if you oppose the logic behind this bill, you support violence or discrimination against transgender people is repulsive. Here’s Cole’s moronic gibe:

What does it say that Sullivan only seems to give a shit about the gays. What about the lesbians? What about transexuals? Why do you hate them, Andrew?

Of course I don’t. What conceivable evidence do you have for saying so?

Andrew, I’m just applying your standard. You’re the one who spent the last 36 hours complaining that Obama really doesn’t care about gay rights because he didn’t use the word “gay” at the signing ceremony. Using your standard, what are we supposed to do but assume you do not care about lesbians and transgendered since you failed to mention them all day in your rants.

Additionally, Andrew completely ignores the points brought up by the commenters here about why Obama’s language was appropriate at the ceremonies. Andrew likewise ignores all of the comments from those of you who chimed in about why this was a good and necessary bill and why it should be supported. At least he has now acknowledged that the bill he claimed does nothing actually does something new. That is progress, I guess.

I’m seeing more and more of this meme, from Bobo for example:

The Democrats have their problems too. And if anything, their problems are deeper because they are intellectual, not merely partisan. The Obama administration has sent the country off to the right. The president is creating a counter-realignment.

Voters don’t identify with the G.O.P. but the number of people who call themselves conservative is now near an all-time high.

What could be more than conservative than 60+% approval for a public option, right?

Meanwhile, Rove is pushing the “conservatives win even if they lose in NY-23” thing—the idea being that if the conservative candidate total plus the Republican candidate total exceeds 50%, then it means conservatives really won.

You know what, how about this? The teabaggers form a real third party that runs in all the elections. Their total plus the Republican total will be over 50% in a lot of races, we can all agree this means we’re a conservative country, and Democrats can actually run the country in peace.

There is nothing, nada, zilch, zero, nothing, that is bad news for conservatives. When they win elections, it proves we’re a conservative country. When they lose, it proves it. When we pass health care bills, it proves it. When we lower taxes, it proves it. When we raise taxes, it proves it. Everything proves it always.

Update. I can accept that in this particular universe, the sentence “everything is always good for conservatives” is true. What I’d like to know is if that sentence is true in any model where certain weaker statements about conservatives hold. Here’s what I’m driving at: is there a formal proof of the sentence “everything is always good for conservatives” using only the statement “Reagan is good” along with the usual first-order logical axioms and the “no true Scotsman” fallacy?

Update. Bob Somerby has more on Kristol’s similar claims about the conservative renaissance we are living in.

I guess it makes sense that Evan Bayh is vociferously opposed to the public option:

His wife, Susan Bayh, sits on the board of WellPoint(WLP Quote) in her hometown of Indianapolis. Over the last six years, Susan Bayh has received at least $2 million in compensation from WellPoint alone for serving on its board.

Evan Bayh, bought and paid for in full for the price of two million bucks. What a country.

Thanks to the emailer who sent this in.

Looks like the members of the Iowa GOP are a little dimwitted:

A conservative Iowa group’s effort to lure Sarah Palin to its banquet next month has had an unintended effect: Rather than exciting conservatives about the prospect of a visit from the former Alaska governor, the group’s plan to raise a six-figure sum to bring her to the state has GOP activists recoiling at the thought of paying to land a politician’s speaking appearance.

The Iowa Family Policy Center’s effort to cobble together $100,000 for Palin would represent a striking departure from customary practice in the first-in-the-nation state, these Republicans say, noting that a generation of White House hopefuls has paid their own way to boost their party and presidential ambitions.

Umm, guys? SHE’S. A. GRIFTER. She quit her damned job to go on the wingnut welfare circuit. Seven in ten people think she is unqualified to be President. She’s just in this for the money, and she is currently having a public feud with the father of her teenage daughter’s child who is himself cashing in by posing for Playgirl.

This isn’t a credible politician. It’s a Jerry Springer episode.