Let’s See the “Libertarian” Righties Defend This One

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Leslie Cauley writes in USA Today:

The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, people with direct knowledge of the arrangement told USA TODAY.

The NSA program reaches into homes and businesses across the nation by amassing information about the calls of ordinary Americans — most of whom aren’t suspected of any crime. This program does not involve the NSA listening to or recording conversations. But the spy agency is using the data to analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity, sources said in separate interviews.

Sure they are.

“It’s the largest database ever assembled in the world,” said one person, who, like the others who agreed to talk about the NSA’s activities, declined to be identified by name or affiliation. The agency’s goal is “to create a database of every call ever made” within the nation’s borders, this person added.

For the customers of these companies, it means that the government has detailed records of calls they made — across town or across the country — to family members, co-workers, business contacts and others.

Cauley reminds us that

In defending the previously disclosed program, Bush insisted that the NSA was focused exclusively on international calls. “In other words,” Bush explained, “one end of the communication must be outside the United States.”

As a result, domestic call records — those of calls that originate and terminate within U.S. borders — were believed to be private.

In a related note, the Associated Press reports —

The government has abruptly ended an inquiry into the warrantless eavesdropping program because the National Security Agency refused to grant Justice Department lawyers the necessary security clearance to probe the matter.

The inquiry headed by the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility, or OPR, sent a fax to Rep. Maurice Hinchey, D-N.Y., on Wednesday saying they were closing their inquiry because without clearance their lawyers cannot examine Justice lawyers’ role in the program.

Jane H. asks, “Can we call it a dictatorship yet?”

Pretty close, I’d say.

Later in the day there will be more reaction from the Kool-Aiders, but so far we’ve got the NSA story must be a lie. This is coupled with “I bet a little research into the political leanings of the people who are making these claims will ferret out a motive.” Protecting the Fourth Amendment has become subversive.

Stephen Spruiell at NRO assures us that “this is not an eavesdropping program,” so what are we worried about? And cleverly anticipating objections from us liberals, Spruiell adds, “Data mining programs like this one might or might not be effective tools in the war on jihadists, but one thing we know for sure is that the left will not be joining us in a rational debate.” Be advised that any objection we lefties raise will be, by definition, irrational. On the other hand, it is perfectly rational to accept whatever the government tells us without question. They wouldn’t lie to us, right? Those righties are always so logical.

Another excuse — “this data is already available. The NSA could previously get it from the phone companies. The new program just cuts out the constant step of asking for updates.” Oh, and warrants. (We don’t need no steenking warrants!)

As for the other story on the NSA refusing clearance for the Justice Department — well, obviously the NSA must be free of legal oversight. If the Justice guys find violations of the Constitution, they’re just going to blab about it. I mean, duh.

What we’re observing is a textbook example of how people who have a choice allow themselves to become subject to dictatorship. We’re like one big social science demonstration of How Good Democracies Go Bad. I hope other nations are taking notes.

Update: Here’s a heartwarming story about a rightie who calls the leak of the phone call database “treasonous” and is rewarded with a biscuit and pat on the head by Laura Ingraham herself.

Noting that Qwest has so far refused to take part in the NSA program (unlike AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth), rightie blogger Sister Toldjah asks, “Thanks to this whistleblown leaked story, if you’re a terrorist and you don’t want to worry about your call being datamined, what telecommunications company are you going to turn to? Hmmmm … I wonder.” The Sister totalitarian toady links to other rightie blogs, so I don’t have to.

Update update: Glenn Greenwald discusses the legal issues.

Update update update: Jack Cafferty rocks.

Is It Dead Yet?

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The Bush Administration, that is. Today Dan Froomkin asks, “Where’s the Base?”

In case there was any doubt, today’s New York Times/CBS Poll makes it clear: Even a substantial number of Republicans and conservatives are turning against the president.

Adam Nagourney and Megan Thee write in the New York Times: “Americans have a bleaker view of the country’s direction than at any time in more than two decades, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll. Sharp disapproval of President Bush’s handling of gasoline prices has combined with intensified unhappiness about Iraq to create a grim political environment for the White House and Congressional Republicans. . . .

… “Mr. Bush is even losing support from what has been his base: 51 percent of conservatives and 69 percent of Republicans approve of the way Mr. Bush is handling his job. In both cases, those figures are a substantial drop in support from four months ago.”

A number of pundits say that, more than any other issue, Bush’s immigration policies have cost him support within his base. Power Tool John Hinderaker suggests that Bush could enjoy a rebound if he would do something he has never been willing to do before —

The time has come, though, to go on national television and say you were wrong, and you’ve changed your mind. About immigration.

Give a major speech in prime time. Say that you still think that a long-term solution to the immigration issue should include a guest worker program. Acknowledge, however, that many Americans disagree and there is currently no consensus on a long-range policy. Say that, more fundamentally, you’re now convinced that our first priority has to be getting control over our borders. Until we control our borders, and know who is coming and going, any immigration policy we may announce will be meaningless anyway….

… If you really want to get the conservative base back in your corner, go and meet with the Minutemen–on camera–and tell them you appreciate what they’re doing.

That’s not going to help him outside the base, but the Tool Man thinks it would energize Republican voters in the upcoming midterm elections. Hot Air seconds this, but says it might not be a bad for the White House if the GOP lost one of the Houses of Congress in November. Why? Because it would give the Bushies someone else to blame for all the bad stuff that’s happening.

The Tool understands his own people better than I do, so I’m going to assume he’s right — if Bush would reverse himself on the immigration issue, he would gain back much of his losses among the base. I’m sure many of the newly disillusioned would like to re-enter the collective. Of course, I can’t imagine Bush ever saying the words “I was wrong” without his lips falling off. But his usual course-changing maneuver is to suddenly issue an entirely new policy and pretend that was his plan all along. The evil libruhl media usually can be counted on not to notice the President just flip flopped. So we’ll see.

I can’t imagine Bush winning back independent voters outside his base, however. Too many scales have fallen from too many eyes. I think the majority has had it with a cult leader who can’t govern. Froomkin published an email he received from a reader discussing Bush’s slide in popularity:

“… September 11th changed the way that the American people saw President Bush and the office of the president in general. They gave him much more credit than usual for small successes and refused to hit him hard for the many big mistakes of his first term.

“So many reports now are focusing on why his poll numbers are so low today (Iraq, gas prices, Katrina) but no one has examined the psychology of the American public and press that elevated the man to such high ratings not for what he had done but for what had been done to us.”

Finally the wind has gone out of Bush’s 9/11 sails. He’s stalled by his own incompetence, going nowhere. And I think most Americans now realize this.

Next question — will Bush’s swan dive into unpopularity and irrelevance hurt the Republican Party, both in the November elections and long term? Can the VRWC still use fears and smears to stampede the electorate into voting conservative?

Remember that Republicans, not Democrats, are out of the mainstream on issues. For example, as Will Bunch explains, a majority of voters support Roe v. Wade, think the Iraq War is a mistake, and are opposed to a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. “The Democrat’s positions are very much in the majority — a new kind of “silent majority” that leans to center-left as opposed to Nixon’s center-right grouping,” says Mr. Bunch.

Yet this has been true for a while, but Dems haven’t been able to translate their support for majority positions into enough votes to win enough elections. That’s mostly because the Dems have been too timid and badly advised to exploit the fact that they support majority positions. But the GOP seems to be running out of exploitable issues.

Yesterday Billmon suggested that the White House might have miscalculated the Hayden nomination. Apparently Karl and Co. are counting on Dems to grill Hayden on the the NSA spy program. They plan on slapping Dems with the charge that they’re operating with a pre-9/11 mindset. But says Billmon:

I think Turdblossom’s problem is that he’s operating with a pre-31% mindset.

He may also be making the same mistake the Democrats usually make (how’s that for irony?) which is looking at the polls and thinking that because a majority says they agree with you on a particular issue, that means the voters are basically on your side.

Which is why John Kerry is president today.

The truth is, except for the Pavlovian dogs of the ideological right — gay marriage — and, to a lesser degree, the left — ditto — most issues aren’t worth the byproducts of Dick Cheney’s last rectal exam when it comes to actually influencing how people vote. Or rather, it has to be an enormously big issue (i.e. the size of Dick Cheney’s prostate) before elections are won and lost based on where you or your party stand on it. The war in Iraq is one such issue; illegal wiretapping, sad to say, isn’t — and to the extent there is any kind of partisan shove to be had from it, it’s on the left.

Rove is smoking from the same crack pipe as his boss if he thinks there is some huge silent majority out there frothing at the mouth because the insolent libs have dared to challenge the Divine One’s right to violate any law he sees fit. At worst, the public seems evenly divided on the issue — which is usually a sign that a.) they’re not paying particularly close attention or b.) they see strong arguments on both sides. (Of course, as one cynic has already pointed out, an even split on shredding the 4th Amendment is a hell of a lot better than the regime is doing on any other issue.)

This is just a hunch, but I think much of the electorate is feeling more than buyer’s remorse. I ‘spect a lot of them are feeling used. Those who supported the war and now think it’s a mistake; those who bought Bush’s initial “compassionate conservative” line and then watched him climb into bed with the hard-core Right; those who have been affected by Bush’s incompetence, like Medicare recipients (and their children) — I think at least some of these voters have become immune to VRWC attack, smear, and scare tactics. To anyone who is not living in Bush Cultie alternate reality — where the Iraq War is a victory-in-the-making, Gulf Coast rebuilding is zipping along fine, and the Medicare prescription drug program is a huge success — the ol’ talking points must seem more and more absurd.

Harold Meyerson wrote today,

Karl Rove and his minions have plumb run out of issues to campaign on. They can’t run on the war. They can’t run on the economy, where the positive numbers on growth are offset by the largely stagnant numbers on median incomes and the public’s growing dread of outsourcing. Immigration may play in various congressional districts, but it’s too dicey an issue to nationalize. Even social conservatives may be growing weary of outlawing gay marriage every other November. Nobody’s buying the ownership society. Competence? Ethics? You kidding?

The so-called “party of ideas” is out of ideas. The only strategy Karl has left is to frighten voters into preventing Dems from re-taking Congress.

Unspecified horrors lurk behind every corner if the Democrats take control and hold hearings about the administration’s relations with the oil and pharmaceutical industries. A sea of partisan vendetta, Republicans prophesy, stretches to the horizon if the Democrats are allowed to win.

As a strategy, this has its shortcomings. It’s not clear how many independents, or even conservatives, will warm to a campaign that focuses on forestalling congressional oversight — not with gas prices soaring and the American military bogged down in a war with an increasingly undefinable mission. Moreover, the Democrats are now, finally, having some success at defining themselves.

What if Karl says boo and voters don’t blink? And if they don’t, will the Republican Party find there is life after Karl?

At Least We Beat Latvia

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Or, on the road to becoming a Third World shithole …

Jeff Green reports at CNN that the U.S. has the second worst newborn death rate in the developed world, according to a Save the Children/World Health Organization report.

American babies are three times more likely to die in their first month as children born in Japan, and newborn mortality is 2.5 times higher in the United States than in Finland, Iceland or Norway, Save the Children researchers found.

Only Latvia, with six deaths per 1,000 live births, has a higher death rate for newborns than the United States, which is tied near the bottom of industrialized nations with Hungary, Malta, Poland and Slovakia with five deaths per 1,000 births.

In developed nations, most newborn mortality is a result of babies being born too small or too early. Prematurity and low birth weight correlate to poor prenatal care. Lack of prenatal care is associated with a 40% increase in the risk of neonatal death.

Japan was among a number of nations highly ranked mainly because they offer free health services for pregnant women and babies, while the United States suffers from disparities in access to health care.

Disparities. A delicate way to put it. Even though our hospitals generally are as well equipped as any to handle neonatal intensive care — better than most nations, possibly — a higher percentage of our babies are at risk when they are born because of those disparities. Tom Tomorrow:

Because of some unholy confluence of conservatism, free-marketism, and general head-up-ass-ism, this country has never made health care for all a national priority. Things like this are the result, and it infuriates me. Next time some right wing asshole starts talking about the scary, scary dangers of socialized medicine, just remember: among industrialized nations, only Latvia has a higher death rate for newborns than the United Fucking States of America.

For a nation as advanced and wealthy as we are alleged to be, that’s unspeakably obscene.

I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for the right wingers to acknowledge this problem. Early last year Nick Kristof wrote a column about the shockingly high infant mortality rate in the U.S., and the righties attacked him for being unpatriotic and even “morally bankrupt.” I kid you not.

In the U.S. infants born to African American and poor, less well-educated mothers are disproportionately at risk. Which takes us to this Christian Science Monitor story from last week …

In 2001, US women living below the federal poverty line were four times as likely to have an unplanned pregnancy, five times as likely to have an unplanned birth, and more than three times as likely to have an abortion as women with income at least double the poverty line ($9,800). And these disparities are growing …

The article also notes that “the federal Title X program, which subsidizes women’s health clinics across the country, has experienced an annual decline in funding during the Bush years, when the figures are adjusted for inflation.” Title X clinics provide family planning services. Or, they used to. Three years ago the Missouri state legislature stopped funding birth control education and contraception in the clinics. From the Kansas City Star (April 10, 2006):

Missouri’s federally funded Title X clinics each year help about 30,000 low-income women, yet it’s estimated that more than 600,000 women in the state need contraceptive services. About half of these are low-income. State funding would help.

Lawmakers haven’t approved state money for birth control education and contraception for low-income women for three years. About $3.5 million was cut out of the budget in 2003. Last year legislators cut thousands of women off Medicaid, which had helped them pay for contraceptive services.

Some House members recently attempted to allow county health clinics to use state funds for contraceptive services. But most lawmakers didn’t go along. Instead they approved an amendment by Rep. Susan Phillips, a Kansas City Republican, that denied spending for contraceptives or any treatment not spelled out in the state budget. Phillips says contraceptives are not an appropriate use of tax dollars.

The editorial points out that “every dollar spent to prevent unwanted pregnancies saves taxpayers $3 in health-care costs.” But of course it’s not about cost, or even health care. It’s about wingnut morality. Bonnie Erbe writes in today’s Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

It’s no secret to those who follow Washington politics that birth control has been “next on the list” of anti-abortion, religious conservatives. Following the enthronement of President Bush’s Victorian coterie in 2001, their top priority — an imposition of “everything but” a ban on abortion — has been accomplished in five short years. Now there’s undeniable proof that abortion was not the home run they longed for, but more tantamount to first base in a long-range plan to ban birth control, too.

Erbe cites a long New York Times magazine article by Russell Shorto about the war on contraception that I’ve been meaning to blog about … so many outrages, so little blogging time. Shorto says that criminalizing birth control has been creeping up on the rightie to-do list. Opposition to birth control was pretty much a Catholic-only phenomenon twenty years ago; now the fundies and the more miswired elements among evangelicals are anti-contraception, also.

As with other efforts — against gay marriage, stem cell research, cloning, assisted suicide — the anti-birth-control campaign isn’t centralized; it seems rather to be part of the evolution of the conservative movement. The subject is talked about in evangelical churches and is on the agenda at the major Bible-based conservative organizations like Focus on the Family and the Christian Coalition. It also has its point people in Congress — including Representative Roscoe Bartlett of Maryland, Representative Chris Smith of New Jersey, Representative Joe Pitts and Representative Melissa Hart of Pennsylvania and Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma — all Republicans who have led opposition to various forms of contraception.

R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, is considered one of the leading intellectual figures of evangelical Christianity in the U.S. In a December 2005 column in The Christian Post titled “Can Christians Use Birth Control?” he wrote: “The effective separation of sex from procreation may be one of the most important defining marks of our age — and one of the most ominous. This awareness is spreading among American evangelicals, and it threatens to set loose a firestorm.. . .A growing number of evangelicals are rethinking the issue of birth control — and facing the hard questions posed by reproductive technologies.”

I’d like some of these men “facing the hard questions” to have to face a nice 18 hours or so of back labor, followed by the joy of an episiotomy.

You’ll like this part:

Many Christians who are active in the evolving anti-birth-control arena state frankly that what links their efforts is a religious commitment to altering the moral landscape of the country. In particular, and not to put too fine a point on it, they want to change the way Americans have sex.

Heart-warming, huh?

I’m not even going to go into the Bush Administration’s blocking approval of emergency contraception or the pharmacists who refuse to fill birth control prescriptions. I’ve ranted many times in the past that the only sure-fire way to reduce abortion rates is to provide easy access to birth control. Here I just want to point to how the way the fundies and Fetus People — excuse me, “social conservatives” — are trying to pull the whole bleeping country into a downward spiral that leads to more poverty, more dead babies, more repression, and more of everything else that plagues the Third World. Like I said, we’re on the road to becoming a Third World shithole. The fundies won’t be happy until we’re all wrapped up in burkhas.

But I’d like to provide one more example, which you may have heard before. Tristero asks why anyone would not approve of a vaccine that would prevent cervical cancer and save lives?

Well, as it happens, our morally-stunted fellow citizens on the right have the answer to the questions. Turns out the the best time to administer the vaccine is when the girl is between 10 and 12 years old. And Hal Wallace, head of the anti-fucking activist group that’s deliberately mislabeled as”Physicians Consortium,” believes that vaccinating an 11 year-old girl against cervical cancer would send a message “that you just take this shot and you can be as sexually promiscuous as you want.” And the equally loony Family Research Council (James Dobson’s band of self-righteous prigs) says “it would oppose any measures to legally require vaccination.”

They don’t call ’em the American Taliban for nothin’.

Richard Cohen’s Digital Lynch Mob

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Richard Cohen panned Colbert and got 3,499 nasty emails. In comparison, the emails he got after a column on Al Gore and global warming were much more even-tempered. His conclusion is that we lefties are brimming with foaming-at-the-mouth rage while righties are cool and rational.

This spells trouble — not for Bush or, in 2008, the next GOP presidential candidate, but for Democrats. The anger festering on the Democratic left will be taken out on the Democratic middle. (Watch out, Hillary!) I have seen this anger before — back in the Vietnam War era. That’s when the antiwar wing of the Democratic Party helped elect Richard Nixon. In this way, they managed to prolong the very war they so hated.

How soon they forget. Back in December 2004, Cohen was complaining that the righties were being mean to him.

When, for instance, I wrote a column suggesting that Bernard Kerik was a bad choice for secretary of homeland security, I got a bucket full of obscene e-mails right in my face. I was denounced over and over again as a liberal who, moreover, never would have written something similar about anyone Bill Clinton had named. This would be news to Clinton.

What struck me about the e-mails was how none of these writers paid any attention to what I had to say. Instead, they preferred to deal with a caricature — someone who belonged to a movement, a conspiracy, and was taking orders in the service of some vast, nefarious cause. E-mails are the drive-by shootings of the common man. The face of the victim is never seen.

Atrios suggests it’s time for Richard to retire. That’s a thought. Political commentary is not for the faint of heart these days.

Reaction to today’s column from leftie blogs so far has been dismissive. Digby points out that “There’s no political downside to hating Richard Cohen,” and he calls the column a waste of WaPo real estate. See also A Tiny Revolution.

It’s easy to be dismissive. One, Cohen is a wanker. He has fleeting moments of clarity — I link to him from time to time — but in the next column, or paragraph, he’ll be settled back into the foggy, clueless comfort of beltway insider conventional wisdom. He’s no Krugman. But then again, he’s no Krauthammer. He tends to bob about in the squishy center of the political spectrum, just to the left of the cognitively impenetrable David Broder.

We might, however, want to take Cohen’s charge a little more seriously. Beltway insider conventional wisdom already says that we netroots lefties are nothing but radical malcontents, and that close association with us is a political liability. Not exactly the effect we want to go for, I think. The VRWC could take charges like Cohen’s and turn them into a full-bore discrediting of us. In effect, we could be collectively swift-boated. Just as we’re trying to crash the gates, Democrats might put up bigger barricades. And a moat.

We know that rightie blogswarms can be vicious. Most of us have been targets of one from time to time. It ain’t fun, but it comes with the territory. However, I suspect — this is just a hunch — that righties are feeling less empowered than they were during the glory days of the Dan Rather smackdown, and are not swarming as strongly as they used to. But we lefties may be getting friskier.

On the other hand, the Al Gore column drew much less attention on the blogosphere than the Colbert column, which was a collossally stupid column. Among Cohen’s dumbest efforts, certainly. Technorati says the Colbert column was linked by 217 bloggers, whereas the Al Gore column had only 105 links.

I haven’t broken down these numbers by leftie v. rightie, but you can see at a glance that prominent bloggers who linked to the Al Gore column were mostly from the Left. The only prominent rightie bloggers (i.e., blogs with names I recognize) who linked to the Al Gore column were Gateway Pundit, Oxblog, Blue Crab Boulevard, and Carol Platt Liebau. No little green footballs; no nice doggie; no power tools; no instahack. The big guns of the Right, in other words, were silent.

The Colbert column, on the other hand — did I mention it was among Cohen’s dumbest efforts? — took fire from nearly all the big guns of the Left. Kos, Huffington Post, Crooks and Liars, Wonkette, AMERICAblog, Eschaton, Pharyngula, Pandagon, Steve Gilliard’s News Blog, The Poor Man, The Carpetbagger Report, Booman Tribune, Seeing the Forest, Ezra Klein — definitely the A Team. Plus Democratic Underground, Daou Report, and Alternet. And me. (Links are on the search list.)

Cohen’s comparison of reactions to the two columns, in other words, was hardly a fair trial. Let him piss off Wizbang or RedState, and then see what happens.

Still, the anger thing does worry me. I am not saying we don’t have a right to be angry. And I have argued many times that the righties have us beat in the hate and fear departments. I get angry, too. But I think it’s possible that this angry left meme, as unfair as it is, could hurt us. (Since when is swift-boating fair?) And, as I argued here, displays of anger are counterproductive to persuasion. Cohen is right about the antiwar wing of the Democratic Party helping to elect Richard Nixon. I remember it well.

So, I’m asking Mahablog readers to stop picking on Richard Cohen and to not indulge in sending hate emails to pundits or politicians who piss you off. Put your energy into something positive, like supporting Ned Lamont. Thank you.

Update: Avedon demonstrates how to challenge a bleephead like Cohen. Read and learn.

A New Week, A New Low

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USA Today:

President Bush’s approval rating has slumped to 31% in a new USA TODAY/Gallup Poll, the lowest of his presidency and a warning sign for Republicans in the November elections.

The survey of 1,013 adults, taken Friday through Sunday, shows Bush’s standing down by 3 percentage points in a single week. His disapproval rating also reached a record: 65%. The margin of error is +/- 3 percentage points.

How low can he go?

“You hear people say he has a hard core that will never desert him, and that has been the case for most of the administration,” says Charles Franklin, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin who studies presidential approval ratings. “But for the last few months, we started to see that hard core seriously erode in support.”

According to Howard Fineman on Countdown, the White House thinks the Hayden confirmation hearings will help them. The NSA spy program will be front and center, and the Bushies think that’s a winner for them. More dissociative thinking?

Moussaoui: “I Lied”

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Reuters reports that Moussaoui wants to withdraw his guilty plea.

Moussaoui, 37, said in an affidavit filed with the motion that he had pleaded guilty last year to conspiracy in connection with the attacks against the advice of his court-appointed lawyers because his understanding of the U.S. legal system was “completely flawed.”

Moussaoui’s court-appointed lawyers — who rarely speak to their client — said in a footnote that they were aware of a federal rule that prohibits a defendant from withdrawing a guilty plea after a sentence is imposed. But they said they filed the motion anyway “given their problematic relationship with Moussaoui.”

Make of that what you will.

The Shoulders We Stand On

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John F. Harris has a lovely article in the Washington Post on the friendship between the late John Kenneth Galbraith and Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.

There was a time — it’s been decades now — when politicians or pundits would call people “liberal intellectuals” and not mean it as an insult.

The phrase carried no sarcasm or disdain. Nor was it an abstraction. There were specific individuals who answered by the name….

… How to convey the way public intellectuals such as Galbraith and Schlesinger loomed over American politics and ideas for the quarter-century following World War II?

The easiest way would be to point to their latter-day equivalents. But there simply is no one these days who does what they did.

Don’t Miss

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Lovely lib links:

Justin Rood at TPM Muckraker connects CIA director-nominee Hayden to “a top executive at the company at the center of the Cunningham bribery scandal.”

Might Al Gore run in 2008?

Elisabeth Bumiller reports that the President is occupied by plans for the presidential library he will build after he leaves office. He wants the library to include a public policy center. Jeez, who knew Bush had any interest in public policy?

Ezra says,

You just can’t make this stuff up. George W. Bush reportedly wants to start a think tank once he leaves office, dedicated to “the spread of democracy and Alexis de Tocqueville’s vision of America as a nation made better by its “associations,” or community groups.” Sigh. Truth is, I think I’d rather bowl alone than bowl with Bush.

Good’n, Ezra!

The view from Germany, via Spiegal Online: “For some time now, the president has become an observer of his own political decline.”

Paul Craig Roberts, “A Nation of Waitresses and Bartenders.”

Paul Krugman Rocks

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“Who’s Crazy Now?” he asks.

A conspiracy theory, says Wikipedia, “attempts to explain the cause of an event as a secret, and often deceptive, plot by a covert alliance.” Claims that global warming is a hoax and that the liberal media are suppressing the good news from Iraq meet that definition. In each case, to accept the claim you have to believe that people working for many different organizations — scientists at universities and research facilities around the world, reporters for dozens of different news organizations — are secretly coordinating their actions.

But the administration officials who told us that Saddam had an active nuclear program and insinuated that he was responsible for 9/11 weren’t part of a covert alliance; they all worked for President Bush. The claim that these officials hyped the case for war isn’t a conspiracy theory; it’s simply an assertion that people in a position of power abused that position. And that assertion only seems wildly implausible if you take it as axiomatic that Mr. Bush and those around him wouldn’t do such a thing.

The truth is that many of the people who throw around terms like “loopy conspiracy theories” are lazy bullies who, as Zachary Roth put it on CJR Daily, The Columbia Journalism Review’s Web site, want to “confer instant illegitimacy on any argument with which they disagree.” Instead of facing up to hard questions, they try to suggest that anyone who asks those questions is crazy.

Indeed, right-wing pundits have consistently questioned the sanity of Bush critics; “It looks as if Al Gore has gone off his lithium again,” said Charles Krauthammer, the Washington Post columnist, after Mr. Gore gave a perfectly sensible if hard-hitting speech. Even moderates have tended to dismiss the administration’s harsh critics as victims of irrational Bush hatred.

I think Professor Krugman has been reading Glenn Greenwald.

But now those harsh critics have been vindicated. And it turns out that many of the administration supporters can’t handle the truth. They won’t admit that they built a personality cult around a man who has proved almost pathetically unequal to the job. Nor will they admit that opponents of the Iraq war, whom they called traitors for warning that invading Iraq was a mistake, have been proved right. So they have taken refuge in the belief that a vast conspiracy of America-haters in the media is hiding the good news from the public.

Of course, as long as they’re the ones running the government, and as long as they’ve got their own media reporting from Rightie Alternate Reality Universe, they don’t have to admit the truth.

Be sure to read the whole thing. It’s brilliant.

I found the Zachary Roth post to which Professor Krugman refers. It’s from February 2004, and it’s on the use of the phrase “conspiracy theory” by a number of prominent columnists.

… the phrase serves as a dismissal, closing off debate rather than opening it up.

Loopy us. At times we could swear that some commentators are using the label “conspiracy theory” to remove uncomfortable ideas from the public debate, without having to actually come up with countervailing evidence.

Or is that a conspiracy theory?