The Village Strikes Back

The Cook Political Report, based on no polling, no gauging of public sentiment, nothing, just up and moved Alan Grayson's seat to a toss-up based on his comments the other day. Keep in mind that Grayson currently has no opponent yet. Doesn't matter - a Democrat said something mean, surely this will hurt him.

Here's how this works. Charlie Cook is seen as a big pooh-bah inside the Village. If he divines that a seat is in trouble, that becomes the conventional wisdom. It can hurt fundraising for an incumbent and help it for a challenger. Especially in this case, where the assessment cannot possibly be based on any data, you can conclude that Charlie Cook doesn't really appreciate outspoken Democrats, so he manufactured his ratings to downgrade Grayson, not just to hurt him, but as a warning to his colleagues not to step out of line.

Only thing is, Alan Grayson keeps taking in lots of money online. He's now raised over $100,000 in a little over a day, as much as $150,000 according to his campaign staff. Charlie Cook may have gone to the fainting couch and did his part to try and get Grayson thrown out of office, but the people don't seem to be buying it.

This is the kind of pressure a Democratic who doesn't follow the Village-approved rules for discourse is under. You can get Alan Grayson's back and let everyone know that the rules of the Village don't apply in the real world, where we actually like people with guts willing to say what they believe.

The Moore Standard

I happened to fall into this trap the other day, criticizing Michael Moore for attacking Chris Dodd. But I want you to name one other documentary filmmaker, on the left or right or center, whose films are routinely subjected to fact-checks by major news organizations. If the DC media spent as much time fact-checking everything thrown out as "news" as they did Moore's movies, they would not have enough time to do anything else. And yet this is seen as perfectly normal, as if anyone else gets this kind of scrutiny. Glenn Beck? Sean Hannity? The ACORN dynamic duo? No. Michael Moore needs a point-by-point rebuttal, down to whether the best boy in the credits is really a good boy.

Five Hundred Twenty Five Thousand Six Hundred Soldiers

According to Tom Andrews, the McChrystal strategy in Afghanistan would need just under that many to carry out the mission:

Embedded in General Stanley McChrystal's classified assessment of the war in Afghanistan is his conclusion that a successful counterinsurgency strategy will require 500,000 troops over five years.

This bombshell was dropped by NBC reporter Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC's Morning Joe on Wednesday:

The numbers are really pretty horrifying. What they say, embedded in this report by McChrystal, is they would need 500,000 troops - boots on the ground - and five years to do the job. No one expects that the Afghan Army could step up to that. Are we gonna put even half that of U.S. troops there, and NATO forces? No way. [Morning Joe, September 23, 2009]

Spencer Ackerman cautions against reading too much into the numbers, saying that they would include Afghan Army and police boots on the ground, which in McChrystal's ultimate vision reaches 400,000. So we're talking about 100,000 coalition troops for five years, which roughly correlates to current levels. However, the Afghan security forces that make up 4/5 of this commitment, which is aspirational and not concrete at the moment, are 90% illiterate, frequently desert their posts and simply cannot be relied upon as a fighting force.

What is there to show for all this remarkably expensive training? Although in Washington they may talk about the 90,000 soldiers in the Afghan National Army, no one has reported actually seeing such an army anywhere in Afghanistan. When 4,000 U.S. Marines were sent into Helmand Province in July to take on the Taliban in what is considered one of its strongholds, accompanying them were only about 600 Afghan security forces, some of whom were police. Why, you might ask, didn't the ANA, 90,000 strong after eight years of training and mentoring, handle Helmand on its own? No explanation has been offered. American and NATO officers often complain that Afghan army units are simply not ready to "operate independently," but no one ever speaks to the simple question: Where are they?

My educated guess is that such an army simply does not exist. It may well be true that Afghan men have gone through some version of "Basic Warrior Training" 90,000 times or more. When I was teaching in Afghanistan from 2002 to 2006, I knew men who repeatedly went through ANA training to get the promised Kalashnikov and the pay. Then they went home for a while and often returned some weeks later to enlist again under a different name.

In a country where 40 percent of men are unemployed, joining the ANA for 10 weeks is the best game in town. It relieves the poverty of many families every time the man of the family goes back to basic training, but it's a needlessly complicated way to unintentionally deliver such minimal humanitarian aid. Some of these circulating soldiers are aging former mujahidin -- the Islamist fundamentalists the U.S. once paid to fight the Soviets -- and many are undoubtedly Taliban.

In addition, maintaining a 400,000-strong security force would probably take three times the gross national product of the country at a minimum. It's naive to the extreme to assume that the Afghans will live up to the 400,000 end of the bargain, and similarly to assume that McChrystal would not seek reinforcements from American troops should the Afghan security forces falter. Putting the number 400,000 Afghan security forces on a piece of paper and expecting them to deliver in any meaningful way is as silly as expecting that they have a legitimate government to defend.

Which means that US military might and treasure will get dragged in once again to another futile war, with an escalation bringing mostly destruction to Afghanistan instead of development. It is for this reason - and maybe others - that the President may be rethinking such a commitment. Dan Froomkin has a superb post about how the President could actually lead on this issue by changing his mind.

Should Obama actually change his mind about Afghanistan, our elite journalists -- obsessed as they are with how the game is played -- will almost inevitably characterize this as vacillation and declare it a sign of political weakness. But that really misses the point.

The most important thing to keep in mind here is that over the last several months, what's emerged when it comes to Afghan policy is a sort of consensus of the realists -- from across the political spectrum. The consensus: That our national interests in Afghanistan are pretty limited and that the harder we try to change things over there, the more resistance we face; that Afghanistan, after eight years of U.S. occupation, has become a Vietnam-like quagmire where escalation only leads to more escalation, not victory; and that what little we could possibly accomplish there is not worth more American blood [...]

Another important thing that could happen here is that, by fully explaining his decision, Obama could go a long way toward restoring a balanced and rational sense of what it means to "support the troops." Former president George W. Bush and his political henchmen used that phrase as a bludgeon to beat Democrats into submission on any issue even vaguely related to national security -- even when it actually resulted in putting the troops in greater danger. Most notably, Bush insisted that once troops had been committed to Iraq, he bore the responsibility to make sure they had not died in vain -- and that anything short of victory would be a betrayal of those soldiers who had already made the ultimate sacrifice. Democrats were way too terrified to demand a pullout from Iraq, even when they controlled Congress, for fear of being accused of undercutting our brave fighting men and women.

It would be a sign of strength and not weakness to base strategy on the available evidence, and change it when the evidence points in that direction. It may not get you far in the Washington commentariat and foreign policy establishment, where only bombing countries to smithereens and sending in every able-bodied man and woman in America halfway around the world are seen as serious and acceptable options. But it would reflect strength, nonetheless.

The McChrystal troop request should reach the Pentagon within days. So we'll see if the President bends to the will of the neocon-establishment complex, or makes his own assessment. The shitstorm that would ensue if he nixes the counter-insurgency strategy would make the health care town halls look like (actual) tea parties. So Froomkin's take provides a response that will need to be echoed.

Rotten To The Core

So Senate Democrats on the Finance Committee offered an amendment that would enable the federal government to bargain for lower drug prices for their bulk purchasing, a direct assault on the White House/Big Pharma deal from a few months back. Basically it would shift poor seniors back onto Medicaid for their drug purchasing, where the government can negotiate discounts. This would save the government over $80 billion dollars.

And Tom Carper of Delaware defended the secret deal in the most amazing of ways:

I was not involved in negotiations with PhRMA but I believe that the administration was, obviously PhRMA was, and I presume this committee was involved in some way in those negotiations.

And what PhRMA agreed to do through those negotiations is to pay about
80 billion dollars over 10 years to help fill up half the donut hole. That's my understanding. And they are prepared to go forward and to honor that commitment. As I understand it, the commitment from our colleague Senator Nelson would basically double what was negotiated with PhRMA.

And whether you like PhRMA or not -- remember I talked earlier today in our opening statements, I talked about four core values, and one of those is the golden rule, treat other people the way I want to be treated?

I'll tell you -- if someone negotiated a deal with me and I agreed to put up say, 80 dollars or 80 million dollars or 80 billion dollars and then you came back and said to me a couple of weeks later -- no no, I know you agreed to do 80 billion and I know you were willing to help support through an advertising campaign this particular -- not even this particular bill, just the idea of generic health care reform? No, we're going to double -- we're going to double what you agreed in those negotiations to do. That's not the way -- that's not what I consider treating people the way I'd want to be treated.

That just doesn't seem right to me.

This is incredible. The deal is transparently one to protect drug industry profits. There's just no doubt about this. Carper is saying that it's more important to get a few generic ads in support of health care reform than to save the US taxpayers $80 billion dollars. Backroom deals must be honored even if they hurt people. That's the "golden rule" in Washington.

Did Carper not know that cameras were rolling when he said this?

Stumbling Into Annihilation

Bob Woodward comes out of the mothballs today and produces a timely leak of an internal document designed to raise the spectre of "defeat" in Afghanistan and get all the serious types behind escalation.

The top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan warns in an urgent, confidential assessment of the war that he needs more forces within the next year and bluntly states that without them, the eight-year conflict "will likely result in failure," according to a copy of the 66-page document obtained by The Washington Post.

Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal says emphatically: "Failure to gain the initiative and reverse insurgent momentum in the near-term (next 12 months) -- while Afghan security capacity matures -- risks an outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible." [...]

But he repeatedly warns that without more forces and the rapid implementation of a genuine counterinsurgency strategy, defeat is likely. McChrystal describes an Afghan government riddled with corruption and an international force undermined by tactics that alienate civilians.

He provides extensive new details about the Taliban insurgency, which he calls a muscular and sophisticated enemy that uses modern propaganda and systematically reaches into Afghanistan's prisons to recruit members and even plan operations.

We've heard this argument, or a variation of it, from military commanders for every war in my lifetime, and even before that. We cannot risk defeat, we need ever-increasing numbers of troops, the enemy is always more sophisticated and powerful than anyone ever expects but clearly inferior to us if we only don't "beat ourselves," etc. Gen. Westmoreland could have written this assessment. McChrystal also habitually confuses Al Qaeda and the Taliban, for good measure.

Spencer Ackerman makes the clearest connection and the most obvious: the strategy document was leaked by those who desire escalation and a broad counter-insurgency strategy:

The Washington Post’s headline — “McChrystal: More Forces Or ‘Mission Failure’” — does what the persons who leaked Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s Afghanistan strategy review evidently wanted to do: box President Obama in to a static request for more U.S. troops and dare him to refuse his chosen commander’s recommendations. The moves to separate the strategy review, conducted for McChrystal by a group of (mostly) Beltway think tank security experts, from the request for resources and the expectation that the resource request will feature more than just that more-troops request may have been designed to keep the ends and means questions distinct, but they also had the effect of preserving Obama’s freedom of action. There’s going to be pressure on Obama to simply accede to any request for more troops, and the media will frame the request, and Obama’s decision, through that prism. So it’s worth remembering that while we’re reading about the strategy review’s details now, Obama read it weeks ago, and still told David Gregory that he refuses to add troops until he’s convinced that the strategy is correct. His advisers surely figured that it would only be a matter of time before the document leaked.

I would add that this article was mainly for Village consumption. Those who want more war - including that cadre of discredited neocons who still lurk behind every rock in Washington - need to create momentum for an inevitable escalation, such that any contrary action by Obama would produce shock and give an opening to the warmongers to call it a betrayal.

So far, Obama isn't biting, as Ackerman's link above shows. On virtually every Sunday talk show, the President was asked about Afghanistan, and he unilaterally pronounced himself a skeptic on more troops and noted that he didn't want a mission shift but one focused on the fundamental national security goals:

The question that I’m asking right now is to our military, to General McChrystal, to General Petraeus, to all our national security apparatus, is– whether it’s troops who are already there, or any troop request in the future, how does this advance America’s national security interests? How does it make sure that al Qaeda and its extremist allies cannot attack the United States homeland, our allies, our troops who are based in Europe?

And I think that McChrystal, at least, wants to offer a bank shot, claiming that a "Taliban" in power in Afghanistan (I put it in quotes because this iteration of the Taliban is not the same as the one which came to power in 1996, and most of the home-grown fighters just want revenge instead of an Islamic caliphate) would necessarily invite Al Qaeda back to plot world terror attacks. As a result, McChrystal shifts the strategy from disabling Al Qaeda to building a nation durable enough to withstand Taliban pressue, and his strategy seeks practically a one-to-one relationship between military forces and members of the local population. To achieve his ends practically every able man between 19-24 in the United States would need to be conscripted.

The President has good reason for skepticism.

Although Obama endorsed a strategy document in March that called for "executing and resourcing an integrated civilian-military counterinsurgency strategy," there have been significant changes in Afghanistan and Washington since then. A disputed presidential election, an erosion in support for the war effort among Democrats in Congress and the American public, and a sharp increase in U.S. casualties have prompted the president and his top advisers to reexamine their assumptions about the U.S. role in defeating the Taliban insurgency [...]

In his 66-page assessment, McChrystal does not address other approaches to combating the Taliban. A senior U.S. military official in Kabul said the general was operating under the assumption that the earlier White House endorsement of a counterinsurgency approach "was a settled issue." ... The implicit recommendation is that the United States and its NATO partners need to do more nation-building, and they need to do it quickly [...]

But senior U.S. officials in Washington contend that much about Afghanistan has changed since March, when Obama stood before a row of flags, flanked by his secretaries of state and defense, and announced the new strategy. The dynamics have even shifted since McChrystal arrived in mid-June and began his assessment.

The principal game-changer, in the view of White House officials, was Afghanistan's presidential election last month, which was compromised by fraud, much of it in support of President Hamid Karzai. Although the results have not been certified, he almost certainly will remain in office, but under a cloud of illegitimacy that could complicate U.S. efforts to promote good governance.

Congressional Democrats have also expressed new doubts about sending more forces to Afghanistan. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) said last week that she does not "think there's a great deal of support for sending more troops to Afghanistan in the country or the Congress." Senate Armed Services Chairman Carl M. Levin (Mich.), an influential voice on military matters, said the administration should not send additional forces until more Afghan soldiers have been trained.

The American public, which had broadly supported Obama's determination to focus on Afghanistan instead of Iraq, has begun to question the wisdom of the continued U.S. commitment. The Afghan war was deemed "not worth fighting" by 51 percent of respondents in a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll.

The military is becoming impatient; the last line of the above article quotes one Pentagon staffer as saying "there is a frustration. A significant frustration. A serious frustration." I think they expected that, one the President signed off on the COIN strategy, he would listen to their every word and resource accordingly. They figured it was a Democratic President and he would want to look tough and obey the commanders and he would comply with their wishes. And that may be the case. But at this point, Obama looks reachable on the argument that it's unadvisable to engage in a mission creep and escalation in a country without a functioning government to build from or a desire to have Americans build it.

That may upset the military. It would also be, combined with a law enforcement and intelligence strategy to continue to protect from extremist attacks, completely rational and sound.

The Not-About-Torture Torture Investigation

I hope that the self-serving call from past CIA Directors that members of the organization for which they served shouldn't be investigated for murder isn't the motivating factor for this odd article from anonymous DoJ sources assuring everyone that their investigation into CIA interrogation practices are limited:

The Justice Department's review of detainee abuse by the CIA will focus on a very small number of cases, including at least one in which an Afghan prisoner died at a secret facility, according to two sources briefed on the matter. . . .

Among the cases under review will be the death seven years ago of a young Afghan man, who was beaten and chained to a concrete floor without blankets, according to the sources. The man died in the cold night at a secret CIA facility north of Kabul, known as the Salt Pit. . . .

Although earlier reports indicated that [prosecutor John] Durham would look into 10 cases, a source said recently the number is much smaller. . . . A senior official who took part in the review confirmed that of two dozen referrals, the Salt Pit episode was one of two or three cases close to being considered for criminal indictment. . . .

Two other detainee cases were among those that drew significant law enforcement attention: the death by suffocation of Iraqi Gen. Abed Hamed Mowhoush in November 2003, after which an Army officer was convicted; and the death the same month of Manadel al-Jamadi at Abu Ghraib prison, in the custody of the CIA, where he was placed after being beaten by Navy SEALs.

While I agree that murder is a serious offense, the investigation was sold as a torture investigation, looking into serious violations of international conventions and federal statute. This is apparently even too much for these CIA Directors or many others in the establishment. But it doesn't keep with the mandate of an Attorney General whose country is a signatory to a convention that demands investigation and prosecution of torture. If true, this would be disturbing.

Of course, nobody should be prosecuted for torture or anything else because they've had it too tough already:

Of course, when all is said and done, there is little doubt that some CIA detainees were tortured. This is a stain on our nation's honor that should never be repeated. But the responsibility was so widely diffused, across such a large number of honorably motivated officials who tried (and sometimes failed) to stay within the law, that it makes no sense to seek to atone for the nation's sins by singling out individuals for bar discipline or other punishment.

This is especially true when those individuals have already suffered greatly from being trashed as "war criminals," picketed at public appearances, stalked by grandstanding Spanish judges, and otherwise harassed across the country and around the globe.

True, being picketed and called names is a heavy burden tantamount to imprisonment. I don't know how John Yoo and Jay Bybee go on in their lifetime-tenured positions.

What's more, these CIA Directors are actually asking for the President to illegally involve himself in the independent work of the Justice Department, a la Richard Nixon and the Saturday Night Massacre.

But what's most notable about this letter is that it is not addressed to the individual charged with making decisions about whether an individual should be prosecuted: namely, the Attorney General of the U.S. Instead, it is addressed to the President himself, and they "urge [him] to exercise [his] authority to reverse Attorney General's August 24 decision to re-open the criminal investigation of CIA interrogations." What so-called "authority" are they talking about?

We've now reached a point where former officials of the American government think the President of the United States should squelch murder investigations. Which probably means that they advised this to Presidents during their tenure.

Wait, look! ACORN!

If this Justice Department doesn't look into this, eventually someone else will. When you torture, main and murder people from all over the world, eventually the repercussions will trickle out. Putting a lid on it would be like putting one on boiling water.

An Affront

NBC's First Read, which has replaced The Note as a Village weathervane, is just awful depressed about the whole Joe Wilson saga coming up in the House today.

A Democratic House leadership aide confirmed to First Read that a resolution reprimanding South Carolina GOP Rep. Joe Wilson -- who shouted, “You lie” at President Obama during last week’s joint address to Congress -- will likely come this afternoon. NBC’s Kelly O’Donnell adds the official language of the resolution is expected to be "short, direct, non-partisan," and it will address the "breach of decorum." Yet after House GOP leaders reportedly urged Wilson to apologize on the House floor, Minority Leader John Boehner said he would oppose the resolution, the New York Times says, adding: “Democrats are likely to paint the [GOP] stance as evidence of a lack of Republican respect for the House as an institution and an outgrowth of the unruly and uncivil atmosphere that marked town hall meetings in August.” Folks, it could be a very ugly day on Capitol Hill -- one of those days that explains why Americans, no matter their ideology, have a negative view of Congress.

I don't remember this rending of garments when MoveOn.org was censured in Congress for using the words "General Betray-Us." There were probably some high fives among the Village elders for putting the hippies in their place. But now, when a Republican breaks a House rule and Democrats try to mildly take note of that fact, not with censure but a "resolution of disapproval," it's just sad and shows why all Americans should hate Congress.

Seems like a double standard at work.

Ya Gotta Admit, They're Good

From the people who built the Overton Window from hand-crafted glass, we have the sensible moderate conservative alternative.

On Fox News Sunday this morning, host Chris Wallace asked former House Speaker Newt Gingrich about the controversy, noting that in 1991 Gingrich defended a similar speech by then-President George H.W. Bush by saying, “Why is it political for the president of the United States to discuss education?” Gingrich replied that if it’s “a totally positive speech” that parents can see “in advance” (which they can), then “it is good to have”:

GINGRICH: My daughter Jackie Cushman just wrote a column in which she said, “if the president gives a speech as a parent to students to encourage them to learn and stay in school, it is a great thing for him to do.” It was a good thing for Ronald Reagan to do. It was a good thing for George H. W. Bush to do. And I’ve been communicating with Arne Duncan and the team at the Department of Education. I believe this is going to be posted, people are going to be able to see it in advance, it’s going to be a totally positive speech, and if that’s what it is, then it is good to have the president of the United States say to young people across America: Stay in school, study and do your homework. It’s good for you and it’s good for America.

First of all, Newt Gingrich's daughter writes columns. Maybe she should do a pundit road show with Bill Kristol, Meghan McCain, John Podhoretz, Jonah Goldberg, Liz Cheney and Jenna Hager Bush about the dangers of affirmative action.

Second, here comes the sensible Newt Gingrich, riding in to denounce the hysteria and position himself as a serious, brave conservative who only concerns himself with real-world issues like the threat of an electromagnetic pulse attack and using lasers to wipe out North Korean missiles. Now we can make way for the parade of liberal DC columnists like Joke Line and Richard Cohen lauding the bravery of conservative heroes like Gingrich, boldly going against the attacks of his own party supporters. (Hey wait, here they are!) Maybe this will kick off his Presidential campaign in 2012, although he'll have to get past early adopter of the "Obama's education speech is fine" gambit, Joe Scarborough.

Being able to assert that it's OK for the President of the United States to give a "stay in school" speech to children is about the lowest bar anyone in politics will ever have to surmount. If that's evidence of conservative sanity, then whoever said "the soft bigotry of low expectations" was a genius. Now Gingrich and Scarborough and whoever else can get on with their attacks on Obama's government takeover of health care and efforts to make America vulnerable to Evil Terrorists. At least they aren't too crazy.

I'm reminded of the Chris Rock routine:

Niggas always want credit for some shit they supposed to do. A nigga will brag about some shit a normal man just does. A nigga will say some shit like, "I take care of my kids." You're supposed to, you dumb motherfucker! What kind of ignorant shit is that? "I ain't never been to jail!" What do you want, a cookie?! You're not supposed to go to jail, you low-expectation-having motherfucker!

A Lesson In What Not To Do

George Steph on how to properly punch hippies:

Here are the five key sets of questions they have to confront, both in the Roosevelt Room and in their consultations with Congress:

1. What is "death with dignity" for the public option? Is it better for the president to sacrifice it himself? Or convince Democratic leaders behind closed doors to come to him? Some will argue for taking the public option issue to the floor, passing it through the House and sacrificing it in conference -- but once you've gone that far, it may be impossible for House Democrats to back down. So, giving it up on the front end in some fashion is likely the preferred option.

2. How do you get the price tag down, likely to about $700 billion? At that cost the most unpopular tax increases will not be necessary. And moderates in both the House and Senate have already signaled that they can live with it at that level. Which leads to question 3:

3. Can you still make a convincing case that the country is on a path to universal coverage? What mix of phase-ins and triggers are necessary to make that case?

I can't take it. (If you're interested, 4 asks if any Republican votes other than Olympia Snowe can be gathered - even the White House knows that answer is no - and 5 queries how to do the speech, possibly with a joint session to Congress.)

Stephanopoulos is very plugged in, and so this could very well be the discussion at the White House. Who apparently have yet to figure out that forcing millions of Americans into buying crappy insurance that can only come from private industry will be so massively unpopular that, if Republicans don't repeal it, Democrats will be forced to themselves. That would be the quickest and easiest way to squander the majority possible, which at times I think is the Washington Democratic establishment's metier.

Number two is arguably scarier. Practically all of the money spent in this health care bill goes to two things - expanding Medicaid and subsidies for individuals to buy insurance. That's it. Reducing the cost of the bill either keeps more people off Medicaid or reduces the subsidies, making forced insurance under an individual mandate unaffordable. There's this notion that bloggers and progressive groups don't care about the poor, but we're not writing the bill, and kowtowing to the lunatic moderates who put a price tag above morality except when talking about war. I have understood that the coverage expansion elements of the bill were crucially important, and the same thinking that artificially lowered the stimulus cost to the detriment of state budgets and public investment would doom the coverage expansion elements.

And after all that, after assuring us that the wise course would be to ditch a public insurance option that would only exist to cut costs, and reducing the coverage expansion funds and subsequently putting the burden of universal coverage on the backs of poor people, Stephanopoulos asks, basically, "How can we lie about this to the public?"

I find it hard to believe that the White House would be so stupid as to think that making the least popular choices to the majority of Americans making under $50,000/year would be just the ticket to increase the President's popularity. Actually, just kidding, I don't find it so hard.

You've Never Talked Nicely About The Moon, Why Do You Hate Nature

Joke Line went way over the edge yesterday, using language that would make Joe McCarthy proud to savage Glenn Greenwald, with additional slurs thrown in for good measure.

Twice in the past month, my private communications have been splashed about the internet. That such a thing would happen is unfortunate, and dishonorable, but sadly inevitable, I suppose. I ignored the first case, in which a rather pathetic woman acolyte of Greenwald's published a hyperbolic account of a conversation I had with her at a beach picnic on Cape Cod.

Stop it right there. That "pathetic woman acolyte" is aimai, I.F. Stone's grand-daughter, who had a conversation with Klein recently and wrote about it. Classy of Joke Line, who got famous by writing up other people's private conversations under an anonymous byline, to call the progeny of an actual journalist lineage a "pathetic acolyte". You know that author you like to read? Why are you such an acolyte? Pathetic! Aimai takes care of that one easily.

Joke then moves on to Greenwald. This is how he proves that the Salon writer "cares not a whit for America's national security."

For the past several years, Greenwald has conducted a persistent, malicious campaign to distort who I am and where I stand. He is a mean-spirited, graceless bully. During that time, I have never seen him write a positive sentence about the US military, which has transformed itself dramatically for the better since Rumsfeld's departure (indeed, he ridiculed me when I reported that the situation in Anbar Province was turning around in 2007). I have never seen him acknowledge that the work of the clandestine service—performed disgracefully by the CIA during the early Bush years—is an absolute necessity in a world where terrorists have the capability to attack us at any time, in almost any place. Nor have I seen [him] acknowledge that such a threat exists, nor make a single positive suggestion about how to confront that threat in ways that might conform to his views. Therefore, I have seen no evidence that he cares one whit about the national security of the United States. It is not hyperbole, it is a fact.

There's a backstory to this. Greenwald made Joke Line into a fool during the FISA debate, when he admitted that he had no idea what he was talking about but still bothered to pontificate about FISA as if an expert, claiming that Democrats wanted to give terrorists "the same rights as Americans". Joke was exposed as an idiot and a knave, and he's mad. He's carried this grudge for two years because Greenwald de-pantsed him in front of the whole Village.

So, he has decided to make the "I've never seen Glenn Greenwald thank his mailman - how dare he claim to support the postal service and other government programs!" argument. Putting aside the irrelevant fact that Greenwald has written favorably of the military, this is really about as low as a so-called "liberal" columnist can get, demanding the journalistic version of a national loyalty oath before being let into the club. This idea that Americans cannot criticize certain hallowed elements of our national security apparatus without first gravely intoning the deep respect and admiration we all have for them is about the silliest and also the most dangerous sentiment I've seen expressed in a long time. Joke Line has been called "the liberal media" for so long he longer has to think about reflxively slobbering all over the institutions of authority, like a Pavlovian dog he does it by nature. And thus it becomes natural to slam opponents in the terms of whether or not they sufficiently meet the same standard of creepy hero worship. Jim Henley takes this where it appears to be going.

You may think that we already live in a country where everything is “Veterans Memorial” This or “American Legion” that, but we have not begun to express adequate appreciation for our armed forces, clandestine services and military contractors. I think we should start by renaming Joe Klein as Armed Forces Triple Canopy Memorial Oh Dark Thirty Klein. Glenn Greenwald will be Flag Day COIN Enhanced Interrogation Greenwald. It is a little-known fact that IOZ’s real name is Ronald Forward Operating Base Reagan Military Roethlisberger, so that’s one. This blog’s name shall immediately and henceforth be “Pentagon Yay!”

To Klein this is simply an expression of rage against someone who got the better of him two years ago. He fell in the punchbowl and now he wants to beat up the guy who laughed the loudest. Moreover, Klein wants to shut the velvet rope of the private DC club he and his pals have enjoyed for so long, so he figures he'll marginalize Glenn Greenwald by painting him as an America-hating extremist (the true colors really come out in times like these) so he can nibble on cocktail weenies in peace.

Greenwald's response is restrained, given the circumstances.

Membership Has Its Privileges

I've seen three of these articles in the last 24 hours.

"Many of the pundits attacking government health insurance rely on government health insurance for their own families."

That includes all the older pundits who are eligible for Medicare, the former lawmakers like FreedomWorks' Dick Armey who have government pensions, academics at public universities, etc.

" Subprime Lenders Getting U.S. Subsidies"

The lenders who fueled the bubble by giving away loans with almost no standards for payback are reaping billions from the government's foreclosure prevention program, getting subsidies to lower loan terms for their borrowers.

"The CIA's post-torture profits"

I'll just blockquote this one:

Adding insult to injury, some of those responsible have been rewarded with lucrative careers in the private sector. (George) Tenet, for example, is making millions of dollars in the intelligence business, including as a board member for defence contractor QinetiQ. And Jose Rodriguez, the former director of the CIA's National Clandestine Service who ordered the destruction of CIA interrogation videotapes, works with former CIA director Mike Hayden at the oddly named National Interest Security Company, an intelligence contractor. It's shameful that people responsible for one of America's darkest chapters are so richly rewarded.

It's a very familiar pattern, as you can see. DC takes care of DC.

The Value Of My Bad Offline Reading Habits

I was browsing Twitter and I saw him reference Jonathan Alter talking about how "the left" was off-kilter and had "lost their moral core" because of their demands for a public option in health care.

I have bad offline reading habits. I drop books and magazines and leave them sitting around the house all the time. In fact, right by my bed is a copy of Newsweek from June, opened to an article by Jonathan Alter which included this:

That takes us back to a public option, which would force insurers to redraw their business models and accept lower profits. The House bill will include it, but the Senate's almost certainly won't. Instead, moderates there are pushing health-care "cooperatives." Nobody has a clue what that means. Would the co-ops be like utilities? Farm cooperatives? Starting fresh with a quasi-public/quasi-private organization might bring some much-needed creativity to health-care financing. But without a federal charter and some seed money to help them enroll millions, co-ops will get swamped by the private-insurance lobby, which has become expert at marginalizing state-run experiments.

When it comes time to hammer out the final plan in the House-Senate conference committee, Obama and Rahm Emanuel will likely make the House accept a reduction in the deductibility of employer-based plans and make the Senate accept some kind of public option or co-op with teeth. Anything less means the president didn't get the sucker.

So I tweeted that back to Atrios, and he made everyone else in the world aware.

It's quite hilarious to see the DC establishment completely turn on the hippies en masse in the name of being "serious."

What Obama Wants

Robert Gibbs sez Obama "wants" a bipartisan bill. I want a recording session with Styx. (That's right, Styx) It's not going to happen, however. So he can "want" something all he wants, even say it publicly, but if he wants a bill, he's going to have to go it alone. And I think Obama recognizes that.

The President has also said that he "wants" a public option in the bill. It's funny how it's given as Beltway conventional wisdom that reality is intruding on the ability to get a public option, but not on bipartisanship. Especially when you look at the numbers, with no Democrat committing to filibuster health care reform, but 64 Democrats in the House vowing to vote against any bill without a public option. Beltway types aren't really good at math.

Maybe they can read a poll.

Just 34% of voters nationwide support the health care reform plan proposed by President Obama and congressional Democrats if the so-called "public option" is removed. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 57% oppose the plan if it doesn't include a government-run health insurance plan to compete with private insurers.

There are multiple positive elements to be gained from a health care reform bill as set out by Congress - Families USA lists ten of them very succinctly right here - but the lack of messaging from the White House created a vacuum, and the public plan slid into that space. It cannot be bargained away at this point, as it's become synonymous with reform. Clamping down on insurers is great (though who, exactly, will do that?), and I want to see Medicaid expanded and subsidies for those who can't afford coverage and real competition through an exchange. And modernizing health care delivery and Medicare spending, cutting waste from the system and securing give-backs from providers is all awesome. But the politics of the situation are such that the public option can no longer be decoupled from the bill. Indeed, the intensity and energy around the public option is the only thing sustaining the bill, as it completely changed the conversation from right-wing tea partiers and gun-toting loonies to policy considerations. Even with supporters outnumbering the opposition, the town hall meetings gambit was a losing bet and it would have threatened reform severely. Obama has a chance to deliver on what he says he "wants" now, which would burnish his credentials among the base and create the energy needed to drag legislation over the finish line.

I guess it all depends on what he wants: bipartisanship, or a public option.

Spitting Out The Mouthpiece

Where oh where will I get my weekly dose of horrendously bad comedy now?

The Washington Post has brought down the curtain on "Mouthpiece Theater."

Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli killed the satirical video series Wednesday after harsh criticism of a joke about Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, which had prompted him to pull the latest episode from the paper's Web site Friday night. The Post staffers who appeared in the videos, Dana Milbank and Chris Cillizza, agreed with the decision and apologized in separate interviews.

"I don't think the series worked as they intended," Brauchli said. "It was meant to be funny and insightful and translate the superb journalism Chris and Dana do in print and online into a new format."

"Mouthpiece Theater" was designed as a sendup of pompous punditry, with Milbank, the paper's Washington Sketch columnist, and Cillizza, a White House correspondent who writes The Fix blog, appearing with oversized pipes and smoking jackets.

Um, it wasn't a sendup of anything. It was exactly what it looked like - bitchy, self-regarding gossip from two inside-the-Beltway Villagers who accurately translated their feelings of entitlement into video form. They weren't sending up pompous punditry, they were EXHIBITING it.

By the way, you'll be excited to know that Brauchli praised Milbank and Cillizza effusively and welcomed them back to work on their regular assignments of spouting conventional wisdom and producing Mean Girl low-rent Maureen Dowd ripoffs (which is quite a feat).

Winners Of The Village Open Mike Comedy Award For "Outstanding Spirit!"

Chris Cillizza and Dana Milbank, after practicing in their basement for days, have a HIGH-larious response to criticism over their comedy gold of calling Hillary Clinton a bitch.

The proper lesson to have inferred would have been this: IF the Washington Post's website has a feature that only receives substantial attention for how bad it is, and that no one pays any mind to were it not for an awful, mean-spirited joke, THEN perhaps it is a feature that the website can do without. Or, alternately, they can ride the traffic generated by the world's outrage, which is what I gather Fred Hiatt does, on the op-ed page, where people just make stuff up.

Don't worry though! Nobody's learned a gollydarned thing! Today, Mouthpiece Theatre returns with a "response video," in which Cillizza and Milbank basically whine about having been criticized by the blogosphere.

Of course, the two never make any apology, or, indeed, any overt mention of the brouhaha to which they are referring, so if you weren't paying attention last week, you have no clue what they are even doing today. But that's all beside the important point that they are making: HOW DARE the blogosphere notice when two grown men act like jackasses, on web videos! Leave Britney alone!

The worst thing about this video, which isn't worth the effort to embed, is the Marriott hotels ad placed right before it. Is Marriott endorsing the naming of Hillary Clinton as a bitch? Is the hotel chain endorsing the most unfunny comedy since "East German Economist Night O' Yuks" back in the '80s?

Here's some actual humor, and I guess the best thing that can be said about Mouthpiece Theater is that without them, this biting satire wouldn't exist:

The Return Of Fighting Franken

T. Boone Pickens has no business being at Democratic policy luncheons, and while the rest of the caucus just sits there politely, proud of their elite brothers and sisters, the newest member takes a look around and sees nothing but madness.

Five years after he put his money behind the Swift Boat ads that helped tank John Kerry’s presidential campaign, Senate Democrats gave T. Boone Pickens a warm welcome at their weekly policy lunch Thursday.

Or at least most of them did [...]

According to a source, the wealthy oil and gas magnate and author of “The First Billion Is the Hardest” stepped up to introduce himself to (Sen. Al) Franken in a room just off the Senate Floor after the lunch ended.

Franken, who was seated talking to someone else, did not stand when Pickens said hello. Instead, Franken began to berate him about the billionaire’s financing of the Swift Boat ads in 2004.

According to a source, the confrontation grew heated.

Said Franken spokeswoman Jess McIntosh: “It was a lively conversation.”

Good. Maybe Pickens will get pissed off and never come back again.

The saddest part of this is how Franken's the only Senator to even find a luncheon between Democrats and T. Boone Pickens to be weird.

Up With Chuck

Earlier this week, Chuck Todd made a tiresome argument about how investigations into lawbreaking in the Bush Administration would be politicized and therefore shouldn't be done because it would distract the nation from the important business of whittling health care down to nothing. Todd decided to respond to Glenn Greenwald's criticism of his opinions on this matter, and the result was a fairly remarkable conversation that offers a window into the mind of the typical Villager, unable to divorce anything from political day-to-day combat, unable to view anything through something other than a partisan lens, unable to determine right from wrong. The one question that Todd fails to answer throughout the interview is why believers in the rule of law are supposed to care about how investigations and/or prosecutions of members of the Bush Administration make certain people inside the Beltway feel. Here's just a sample, but the whole thing goes like this, so give it a read:

GG: Let me ask you this question: The United States is a party to a treaty - I don't know if you ever read it or not, it's called the Convention Against Torture - and one of the things it does is it obligates all signatories to the treaty to prosecute any acts of torture. And it was signed by Ronald Reagan in 1988, and when he transmitted that treaty to the Senate, explaining what that treaty does, he wrote, quote, "Each state party is required either to prosecute torturers who are found in its territory, or to extradite them to other countries for prosecution."

Do you think the U.S. should be bound, is bound by that treaty? And, I want to ask you: with regard to the question of whether or not we follow that treaty, why do you describe that as nothing more than, quote "cable catnip".

CT: Alright. The "cable catnip" comment was this. This issue, whenever you see the words Cheney and intelligence pop up, and when I use the phrase 'cable catnip', it is when something becomes, whether the two polarized parts of our political society, are very entrenched in their views on this, and believe the other side is completely irrational on it. And so, that's, whenever you have an issue like that, that's what I describe as 'cable catnip'. Because it becomes something that is easy to put on television, because you can find a left versus right, which is something that cable embraces to a fault, and I'm in this business but I'm, I work my butt off trying to stay out of the left versus right fights and try to stay analytical and stay on the reporting end of things.

And so, that's when I describe an issue as cable catnip. I am not sitting here and saying - and I respect the passion on this, and I don't want to somehow sit here saying that on the right I've been accused of somehow just assuming that our national security is nothing more than cable catnip, or that torture of detainees is somehow relegated to cable catnip. That is not what I'm describing when I say cable catnip, but I want to put that aside.

To go back to your question, of course, any treaty we sign, the United States government is obligated to stand by it. Now, the controversy has been, and what we're trying to figure out - and what I think where the Justice Department is trying to figure out, and where this whole debate has been about - is whether they found a legal way to somehow abide by this treaty or not.

GG: And isn't that--

CT: ...abiding by the treaty--

GG: And isn't the best thing to do to immunize that question from political considerations is to say to a prosecutor, the way that we do with every other accusation of crime: take a look at the pure legal issues here, ask: "were crimes committed; is this the kind of case that indictments are appropriate for, where people should be put on trial," and then just have this be treated like every other accusation of crime, which is the prosecutor taking a look?

CT: I agree, in a perfect world - Glenn, in a perfect world, yes. And if you could also guarantee me, that this wouldn't become a show trial, and wouldn't be put, and created so that we had nightly debates about it, that is the ideal way to handle this.

GG: Why not? What's wrong with nightly debate about whether our government committed crimes?

CT: Because then it becomes, then you do politicize the issue, to the point of where you won't - the fact is, public opinion was on the opposite side of the argument as you. That doesn't mean public opinion should...

Mr. Todd "respects the passion" but cannot divorce the plain fact of law, in the Convention Against Torture, from the media back and forth. Then there's the idea that the Bush Administration "found a legal way" to somehow abide by the treaty. In other words, as long as they find a functionary - every Administration has their own John Yoo - to bless their actions, they can break the law in virtually any way they want. A permission slip from the Office of Legal Counsel, no matter how flawed the reasoning, can enable violations of the spirit, color and the plain fact of the law.

Todd talks about a perfect world as if those who demand accountability and justice are just wild-eyed idealists who don't understand the hard-bitten truth of how the world works. On the contrary, we know how it works, and we find it to be a problem. We understand that the Administration would be reluctant to wade into the actions of their predecessor. We get that the media will try to block holding top officials accountable by bemoaning the partisanship that they put on display every night. We get that the right would have a screaming hissy fit against whoever dared to investigate or prosecute one of their own. We understand that the entire dynamic in Washington is wired to prevent holding any member of any Administration to the same standard as someone in Poughkeepsie who committed a crime.

We just have a problem with it.

If Todd has his way, we will hear more stories - like the tale of a CIA Supervisor bragging about using fire ants on a detainee - of perfidy, that scar us around the world, and we will just move along.

Digby has more thoughts

"Whatever the merits are..."

For the second day in a row, Chris Matthews ranted about the prospect of a potential public health insurance option covering abortion services, and his lineup of talking heads agreed that this was "the last thing Obama needed" and that Obama was a hypocrite because he met the Pope last week.

MATTHEWS: What do you make of the 19 House Democrats who said there can't be any abortion funding in this bill? There can't be any national health insurance payments for abortion. What do you make of that choice? And by the way, Bob Casey of Pennsylvania today voted, yesterday voted with the Republicans to ban any money from this bill that's supposed to be for national health to go for abortions?

NAVARETTE: It's the last thing Obama needs. The issue's complicated and divisive and controversial enough without bringing abortion into it. The American people are giving mixed signals. They say they don't want to pay for the program but they do want to cut costs, and they want to pay for some kind of reform, but don't get in the way of my doctor and the tests he might order. So they're all over the map. Clearly, politicians are trying to be responsive to that. It's a tough enough issue without trying to bring abortion into it. Obama's in a tough spot, I don't think he gets this through.

MATTHEWS: Well, I think he did, I think he will, but he's gonna deal with this thing. What do you think, Roger, because this could be the straw that breaks the camel's back. Because when I see it coming, it came from nowhere. I started reading about it this weekend in the Weekly Standard, and I watched Hatch last night on this show stating that he pushed to ban it. The law says, it has said since the 70s, under a Democratic Congress, no federal money pays for abortions. It has been the law of the land, and now they're trying to change it.

SIMON: Whatever the merits are, as Ruben said, as you are saying just now, this is just a fight that President Obama does not need. There are other problems with the health care bill. First of all, what is it going to look like, are you going to have a true public option, how are you going to pay for this trillion dollar program. You don't need to add in a hot-button issue like abortion. To most Americans, abortion is a settled issue.

MATTHEWS: You mean the right to an abortion. But not payment for it.

SIMON: That's right. Safe, legal and rare, and don't bother us about it.

MATTHEWS: By the way, the night he tells the Pope, he goes over to see the Pope and says they're going to reduce the number of abortions, and then that same week he pushes to subsidize abortion? You can't do that!

SIMON: I think last week is a week the White House would like to have back.

I wonder if Tweety came up with that phrase, "subsidize abortions," himself, or whether he read it in his beloved Weekly Standard. I expect we'll hear it a lot in the weeks to come.

And I also want to looks at Roger Simon's "Whatever the merits are," which is a classic pundit phrase, where they don't want to deal with the reality of a situation, so they burrow into the politics. Let me tell you what the "merits" are of including a legal medical service like abortion into a public insurance plan. Actually, let Dana Goldstein tell you.

So when opponents of abortion rights say they'd like to "maintain current policy," what they likely mean is that Hyde should also apply to any potential public health insurance plan, thus maintaining the federal government's ban on abortion funding. This would make a public plan much less attractive to women of reproductive age. A full 90 percent of current private health plans cover abortion services, and 89 percent cover contraception. According to a poll by the Mellman Group on behalf of the National Women's Law Center, 71 percent of Americans support coverage for reproductive health, including contraception, under a public plan. Sixty-six percent support coverage for abortion in a public plan. Americans hope that a public plan will provide services comparable to what they can purchase on the private market. They don't see health reform as grounds for a culture war.

Let's go further than this. 17 states cover abortion under Medicaid by using their portion of state funding to pay for it (another reason why letting the federal government fully fund Medicaid might be a problem). The Matthews/conservative version of a public plan would be worse than Medicaid in those 17 states. In addition, the entire premise of Matthews' critique, ripped from the pages of The Weekly Standard, is just wrong. As the just-released House Tri-Committee bill describes, the public insurance option is completely self-sustaining and pays for everything out of its own premiums. There's public money involved in the sense that the Health and Human Services Secretary would have to hire administrators, but basically this is a self-funded insurance program.

SELF-SUFFICIENCY
Public option must be financially self-sustaining, as private plans are.

Public option will need to build start-up costs and contingency funds into its rates and adjust premiums annually in order to assure its financial viability, as private plans do.

As Goldstein notes, the Hyde Amendment, that law from the 70s that Tweety cites, "is not under threat from any of the proposed House or Senate health reform bills." Meaning that Medicaid and other public health programs will continue to deny legal abortion services as part of their coverage. It's sad that Democrats are already conceding that, but Republicans want more. Not only do they want reproductive choice banned from a self-sustaining public option, they want it banned from any private insurance company that offers coverage inside these "insurance exchanges" designed to provide small businesses and individuals more choice and greater purchasing power to receive health insurance. As said before, 90% of all private insurers include abortion services in their coverage. Anti-choice Republicans don't just want to follow existing law, they want to create new policy that says anyone the federal government does business with cannot offer abortion services as part of their coverage to consumers. The Hyde Amendment already discriminates against poor women who cannot afford health insurance; the anti-choicers would extend that.

Under Tweety Bird's construction, Obama walked into a minefield by trying to "subsidize abortion." That's absurd. And the merits of the policy, contra Roger Simon, are important and shouldn't be set aside because old men consider them icky:

If the public plan does not cover reproductive health services, it will be a weak public plan. And a weak public plan, by failing to attract a constituency, is bad for the overall goals of progressive health reform; it will mean that our employer-based system is not fundamentally transformed. Could this be the true goal of most Congressional Republicans? Hmm....

And since we have a religion-industrial complex telling Democrats constantly to give ground on this issue, and a leadership willing to oblige them, they now have to choose between making their reform bill demonstrably worse and making Chris Matthews uncomfortable. Sadly, I fear they'll opt for the latter. I'm very sorry that the continuing discrimination against women's rights to their own medical choices is a tough policy under which to find middle ground, but that's no reason to disable health care reform by hamstringing it.

By the way, you know who I didn't see in that Hardball discussion? A woman. Funny how that is...

Health Care, Lobbyists, and Journalism

Happy to be on the opposing side of a lobbyist/access scandal rather than in the middle of it, today the Washington Post writes about the hundreds of former politicians and staffers-turned-lobbyists for the health care industry, fighting tooth and nail against systemic reform.

The nation's largest insurers, hospitals and medical groups have hired more than 350 former government staff members and retired members of Congress in hopes of influencing their old bosses and colleagues, according to an analysis of lobbying disclosures and other records.

The tactic is so widespread that three of every four major health-care firms have at least one former insider on their lobbying payrolls, according to The Washington Post's analysis.

Did that analysis come from the newsroom or the guest list for one of Katherine Weymouth's salons?

Nearly half of the insiders previously worked for the key committees and lawmakers, including Sens. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), debating whether to adopt a public insurance option opposed by major industry groups. At least 10 others have been members of Congress, such as former House majority leaders Richard K. Armey (R-Tex.) and Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.), both of whom represent a New Jersey pharmaceutical firm.

The hirings are part of a record-breaking influence campaign by the health-care industry, which is spending more than $1.4 million a day on lobbying in the current fight, according to disclosure records. And even in a city where lobbying is a part of life, the scale of the effort has drawn attention. For example, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) doubled its spending to nearly $7 million in the first quarter of 2009, followed by Pfizer, with more than $6 million.

This has turned lobbying sessions in the major committees into office reunions, where former staffer get together with the politicians for whom they once worked. It begs the question about those pay-to-play sessions: why would any health care company want to pay up to $250,000 for access to the lawmakers making the biggest decisions on health care, when they all have people on their lobbying staff who already know how that lawmaker takes their coffee, and can surely use the knowledge gained through work experience on Capitol Hill to further their employer's agenda? Aside from the unseemliness of it all, the "salon" idea seems like another bad business model.

The use of insiders who move from politics to K Street has a damaging effect on the whole debate, using the journalist/source model as an interesting parallel:

Suppressing your instinct to trust a former chief of staff and legislative director is a hard thing to do. Refusing to return the calls of favored staffers and colleagues goes against every social grain in our bodies. It should be easy to separate professional responsibilities and personal feelings. But it isn't.

Journalists consistently use this to our advantage: When you hear that someone is well-sourced, it generally means they have good personal relationships that make it more likely that insiders will tell them things. A big part of the job is leveraging social pressures to gain access to protected information. And, somewhat amazingly, it works. But the relationship between a journalist and a longtime source is nothing compared to the relationship between a senator and a longtime staffer. One of the secrets about lobbying in Washington is that money doesn't buy access. It buys people who already have access. And that makes it much more insidious.

Relating this to the pay-for-play scheme, I think we can surmise why corporate insiders would use the media as a pass-through for access, whether it's The Washington Post or The Atlantic (that's quite a good article from Zachary Roth about their long history of corporate-sponsored "salons"). The question lies with who is being bought - the politicians, the lobbyists, or the media itself. I would argue the latter. By facilitating the relationship, they become compromised within it. They start to hedge a bit. They adopt a worldview that aligns pretty perfectly with the forces of the status quo on which they are supposed to report. They interweave themselves into the system and become partners within it. And the establishment thus speaks with one voice.

The Village Is Very Sorry For Being The Village

In the Apology of the Week (all respect to Harry Shearer), Katherine Weymouth requests a mea culpa for trying to profit off of connecting insiders in government to the lobby community.

So what happened? Like other media companies, The Post hosts conferences and live events that bring together journalists, government officials and other leaders for discussions of important topics. These events make news and inform their audiences. We had planned to extend this business to include smaller gatherings, a practice that has become common at other media companies.

From the outset, we laid down firm parameters to ensure that these events would be consistent with The Post's values. If the events were to be sponsored by other companies, everything would be at arm's length -- sponsors would have no control over the content of the discussions, and no special access to our journalists.

If our reporters were to participate, there would be no limits on what they could ask. They would have full access to participants and be able to use any information or ideas to further their knowledge and understanding of any issues under discussion. They would not be asked to invite other participants and would serve only as moderators.

When the flier promoting our first planned event to potential sponsors was released, it overstepped all these lines. Neither I nor anyone in our news department would have approved any event such as the flier described.

The shorter version of this pretty much tracks with my assessment at the time the scandal broke and Weymouth cancelled the dinner: "Now the Post can go back to being influenced by lobbyists and setting conventional wisdom in Washington without all that dirty money changing hands."

The only difference between this proposed salon and the other "conferences and live events that bring together journalists, government officials and other leaders for discussions of important topics" is that the proceeds went more directly into the pockets of the Post in this case. As Marcy Wheeler notes, Weymouth never disavows the actual content of the salons or the even the exchange of money (as long as it's indirect) to set up meetings between lobbyists and politicians - just the fact that this particular salon would be off-the-record.

I don't suspect for a second that lobbyists have much trouble finding their way into the upper echelons of Washington to speak their peace, anyway. The Washington Post simply wanted to charge for drinks to this particular cocktail party. Other than that, they cannot imagine how any of this could be a problem.

One can hardly blame a struggling newspaper wanting to open up another revenue stream. The problem lies in the barely-discernible difference between essentially a pay-to-play scheme and the normal social and political transactions in Washington.