Click a Day:
Mon, July 8 | Tues, July 9 | Wed, July 10 | Thurs, July 11 | Fri, July 12 | Sat, July 13 | Sun, July 14
(For more info on "Tapped," our permanent link, or to e-mail us, click here.)
Friday, July 12 The White House has done a typical late-Friday news release, in this case, revealing that the budget deficit is expected to hit 165 billion this year. We guess this is their way of saying to Americans: "Have a nice weekend." [posted 5:45 pm]
[Link]
CAPTAIN KIRK. In Texas, Democratic senatorial candidate Ron Kirk has taken the lead over GOP candidate John Cornyn -- setting the stage for a deeply embarassing home-state loss for George W. Bush. To learn how the Texas GOP has been taking a dive, check out this article from a recent TAP. [posted 5:00 pm]
[Link]
IGNORING THE GURU. Poor Alan Greenspan. It's not his fault, but he's such a tool. He just gets used when he can do a job. Remember how happy Republicans were when he endorsed a tax cut last year (of course, he never endorsed a tax cut as large as the one Bush passed)? Why did everyone listen to him then? Because the man is a guru, right? Wrong. Bush conveniently ignored Greenspan's endorsement of a rule forcing companies to report executive stock options as costs against their reported profits. So did Senate Democrats when they denied a vote on John McCain's amendment to the Senate accounting bill that would have included the rule. Warren Buffet agrees with McCain and Greenspan, too. [posted 4:35 pm]
[Link]
FAULTY ANALOGY WATCH. From the Kass report, Chapter 6, "Ethics of Cloning-for-Biomedical-Research," section IV., "The Moral Case against Cloning-for-Biomedical Research":
An embryo is, by definition and by its nature, potentially a fully developed human person; its potential for maturation is a characteristic it actually has, and from the start. The fact that embryos have been created outside their natural environment -- which is to say, outside the woman's body -- and are therefore limited in their ability to realize their natural capacities, does not affect either the potential or the moral status of the beings themselves. A bird forced to live in a cage its entire life may never learn to fly. But this does not mean it is less of a bird, or that it lacks the immanent potentiality to fly on feathered wings. It means only that a caged bird -- like an in vitro human embryo -- has been deprived of its proper environment.
Ignore all the obscurantist language about things being "immanent" and actualities and potentialities (to say nothing of actual potentialities). What on earth is being compared here? Bird: potential to fly :: Embryo: potential to become a fully developed human. You now see how deceiving this is: The bird locked in its cage is a fully grown bird with full bird features whether it knows how to fly or not; it is not an egg. But the embryo is not a fully grown human, and in the course of becoming human will change its very nature, becoming, among other things, sentient. And being sentient changes a heck of a lot more about your moral status than being airborne. This is pure sophistry on the part of the Kass council majority. [posted 3:45 pm]
[Link]
"LIBERAL MEDIA," OUR ASSES. Could Donnie Graham be pushing any harder for Dubya? Check out this Post editorial on the Harken "distraction." Of course, as we pointed out in TAP a few months ago, the Post certainly didn't seem to think that Whitewater was a "distraction." (In the aforementioned item we hit Post editorial-page editor Fred Hiatt for the editorial contradiction, but rumor has it that Graham is the Postie really pulling for Bush.) [posted 2:20 pm]
[Link]
THANK GOD FOR THE WEEKLY STANDARD, PART II. In case you were wondering (after reading this post): Yes, we know several Standard folks have also rotated through the Bush administration or are still there, including contributing editors John J. DiIulio Jr., Charles Krauthammer, and David Frum, and former staff writer Mathew Rees. Nevertheless, in our opinion the Standard has managed to be less blindly obedient to White House message diktats than National Review -- and as a result, a more provocative and interesting magazine. [posted 2:15 pm]
[Link]
AND SPEAKING OF PSYCHICS. We here at TAP are rather clairvoyant ourselves. See our correspondence section to learn why. [posted 1:20 pm]
[Link]
KRAUTHAMMER VS. SCIENCE. Tapped has read a lot of dumb things in our day. But we're reserving a unique place for the latest Charles Krauthammer column, titled "When Modern Medicine Fails." It is, in case you're wondering, a litany of successes by modern medicine, the latest being this week's development: "the decades-old medical axiom about the protective powers of hormonal therapy [being] overturned in a flash." This, naturally, happened in the course of a scientific study. Krauthammer seems to be burdened with the odd notion that if science disproves or corrects previously false assumptions -- especially if these assumptions were once the best knowledge that we had and were called "scientific" -- this is some sort of stunning indictment of science or medicine. On the contrary, it's a ringing endorsement, this being the whole point of the scientific method. Here's one dumb passage (out of many):
Less than a century ago, the most exalted scientific theory, Newtonian mechanics, was overthrown. Today its successors, general relativity and quantum mechanics, have yet to be fully reconciled. Thirty years ago, the scientific consensus was that we were headed for global cooling. Today it is global warming. The only thing I feel reasonably sure about is that 30 years from now meteorological science will have delivered yet a new theory, a new threat, a new thrall.The problem is that even the most sophisticated studies are limited by method, by modeling, by sampling and by an inevitable margin of error. Hence error and revision.
Please tell us, Mr. Krauthammer: What would you substitute for "error and revision" (i.e., trial and error)? Ungrounded philosophical speculation? Religious doctrine? Drug-induced revelation? The proclamations of psychics? Sheesh. And this guy is on the bioethics council that's now telling us what to think about cloned embryo research. [posted 1:10 pm]
[Link]
THE CASE FOR GUNS ON PLANES. You know what? Let the GOP ram through a bill letting airline pilots carry guns on planes. Sure, it's dumb. If you have to get into a firefight in the air to stop a highjacking -- that is, if terrorists already got their weapons aboard -- you're pretty much already screwed. And as we see it, the chance of an improperly secured weapon going off in-flight and blowing a slug through the autopilot or otherwise severely damaging the plane is far higher than the chance that a gun will come in useful on the two or three occasions over the next thirty years when a plane actually gets hijacked. If the former scenario arises and a jumbo jet full of exchange students comes plummeting into the Virginia countryside, let the public blame the Republicans and the NRA for it. [posted 11:45 am]
[Link]
INTERESTING. Did you know that National Review managing editor JayNordlinger took time off from NR to write speeches for the Bush campaign in 2000? Neither did Tapped. It's not necessarily a bad thing; Tapped has always felt a tour of duty in government can be a good thing for journalists. (The problem is when you bounce backand forth, like Mary Matalin.) And Nordlinger is far from the worst Bushophile in the NR camp. That would be either "Washington Editor" Kate O'Beirne, who earned her stripes as a GOP hack, or top dog Rich Lowry, a keen writer who nevertheless sounds a bit like Peggy Noonan when he's on television (which isoften). Thank God for The Weekly Standard. [posted 11:25 am]
[Link]
DAISY DUKE WOULD BE A BETTER DRAW. John Edwards showed up last night at afundraiser for Ben "Cooter" Jones, the former "Dukes of Hazzard" star running for Congress. The event was held at -- wait, wait -- Polly Esthers. But where was Boss Hog? [posted 10:55 am]
[Link]
WHEN REPUBLICANS DO GOOD; WHEN DEMOCRATS DO BAD. The House Republicanleadership, to its credit, has proposed some tough reforms for overseas corporate tax shelters. Meanwhile, Tom Daschle, to his great discredit, has bowed to pressure from SiliconValley uber-lobbyist John Doerr and decided to go against tighter regulations on stock options backed by Senators Carl Levin and John McCain. Sigh. [posted 10:50 am]
[Link]
IT WASN'T THE FIRST TIME, AND IT WON'T BE THE LAST. From today's Post:
The chairman of the Republican Party of New Mexico said yesterday he was approached by a GOP figure who asked him to offer the state Green Party at least $100,000 to run candidates in two contested congressional districts in an effort to divide the Democratic vote.
Those of you who aren't liberals with a severe vendetta against the Greens might not remember, but this kind of thing has happened before. [posted 10:30 am]
[Link]
MICHAEL NEWDOW IS A LOSER. Tapped was pretty stunned to learn that he doesn't have custody of his daughter at all, that the girl goes to church, and that her mother (who has custody) likes it that way. How the @$%@$^% did this not come out before? It certainly could change a lot for the Pledge of Allegiance ruling. Still, it doesn't affect the principle at stake a bit. There are lots of intact atheist families out there who still may have a legitimate grievance against the pledge, even if Newdow is starting to seem like the opportunist of the century. (Thanks to Instapundit for flagging this story.) [posted 10:15 am]
[Link]
LIKUD VS. A MODERATE. Sometime TAP Online contributor Adam B. Kushner has a great op-ed this morning in The Miami Herald about the shutting down of the office of Palestinian moderate Sari Nusseibeh by Uzi Landau, Israeli Public Security Minister and a Likud party leader. Writes Kushner:
Notwithstanding the minor infraction, Nusseibeh's credentials as a friend of peace are impeccable. The Harvard-educated Jerusalemite has long extolled liberalism and tolerance; he openly criticized Yasser Arafat's rejection of the generous Camp David offer, calling it "a major missed opportunity"; he condemned the immorality of suicide bombings and beseeched Palestinians to abandon them as counterproductive; and he repudiated the right of return as a painful delusion. With enemies like Nusseibeh, who needs friends?[posted 10:00 am]
[Link]
IS THE KASS COUNCIL MAJORITY PRO-LIFE? A recap from yesterday: The President's Council on Bioethics released its report on cloning, in which 10 members (a majority) recommended "a ban on cloning-to-produce-children combined with a four-year moratorium on cloning-for-biomedical research." Well, Tapped went back through the report's executive summary, looking closely at the section titled "The Moral Case against Cloning-for-Biomedical Research," which presumably outlines the reasons for the majority's position. And we were shocked to discover at least one section that seems to imply that human embryos are morally equivalent to persons. To quote:
As much as we wish to alleviate suffering now and to leave our children a world where suffering can be more effectively relieved, we also want to leave them a world in which we and they want to live -- a world that honors moral limits, that respects all life whether strong or weak, and that refuses to secure the good of some human beings by sacrificing the lives of others.
The "some human beings" referred to here are clearly those patients suffering from regenerative diseases. "The lives of others," meanwhile, can only refer to the cloned human embryos that would be destroyed for their stem cells in research that promises to help these patients. Excuse us, but if we're refusing to "secure the good" of living human beings to protect little balls of (potentially) human cells, how exactly is that not a pro-life position? [posted 9:30 am]
[Link]
Thursday, July 11 WHITE, PITT, & CO.. Today we found ourselves thinking of Josh Green's insight in his well-reported piece on Army Secretary Thomas White: That as long as White was taking the heat for being Mr. Enron in the administration, attention was diverted from Bush. Might the same ploy be at work in the case of the much beleaguered (but still defended) Harvey Pitt? It's food for thought, certainly. Of course, maybe we shouldn't give the Prez too much credit. According to Dana Millbank's Post report, Bush is amazed by the conflict of interest charges that continue to swirl around his SEC chairman. And given all the compromised appointments he's made in his administration, it may very well be that he just doesn't get it. Think of corporate backed researcher John Graham as regulatory czar at OMB; former mining lobbyist J. Steven Griles, now deputy secretary at the Interior Department; Thomas Sansonetti, a former lobbyist for Peabody Coal Corporation who's now one of the top environmental enforcement attorneys at the Department of Justice; and Linda Fisher, the former manager of Monsanto's PAC and their vice president for government and public affairs, who is now deputy administrator at the EPA. Yes, we have an even longer list. But we'll save it for next time. [posted 4:45 pm]
[Link]
"This is an issue that works," says Howard Wolfson, political director for the party's campaign committee for the House of Representatives. "And if anissue works, we're going to use it."
Here's a tip, folks: Stop playing along. When a reporter calls you and asks whether the Democrats "plan to make an issue" out of something, say: "We're focusing on crooked acounting because it is wrong. We want to reform itbecause it is bad." Not only does this sound better, it has the added advantage of being true. [posted 3:35 pm]
[Link]
DID I SAY THAT? Ed Hill catches Bush pere in quite a contradiction on the topic of Ted Williams, atheism, and patriotism. Niiiiice. [posted 2:55 pm]
[Link]
OKAY, WE ADMIT WE'RE TOTAL LOSERS, BUT STILL... We've already started reading the Council on Bioethics report. The personal statements of the members are particularly interesting. Here's Elizabeth Blackburn explaining why a moratorium would be a sham:
First, during any such proposed moratorium, patients will continue to have currently incurable diseases -- for which there is now no hope of alleviation -- and many will continue to die of them. Second, a moratorium is used to gain more information. It may sound tempting to impose a moratorium to get more information, since, despite very promising results, it is true, at this early stage of the research, that we still know only a little. But that information can only be gained by performing the same research that the moratorium proposes to halt.
And here's James Q. Wilson explaining why the "slippery slope" argument is nutty:
The slippery slope argument, stated baldly, would lead us to oppose allowing doctors to remove an inflamed appendix because they might later decide to remove a kidney, and after that a heart, and to oppose as well doctors prescribing a drug that will harm 0.5 percent of its recipients because we suspect that, once they do this, they will later insist on prescribing drugs that harm 1 percent, and then 10 percent, and possibly 50 percent of their patients.
And -- hmm -- what are we to make of Michael Gazzaniga starting his statement with this quote from Oscar Wilde: "A man who moralizes is usually a hypocrite"? [posted 2:40 pm]
[Link]
CAN YOU SEC WHAT I SEC? The folks over at The Note raise some really good questions about how the SEC investigation of Halliburton and Dick Cheney is going to work.
The White House is saying that Halliburton lawyers will handle this case, with no governmental or privately hired lawyers representing the interests of former CEO Cheney. We ask again: is the Veep really not even monitoring this at all? Is someone representating his interests going to vet the legal papers that the Halliburton legal team will file?SEC investigators have already made some Lone Star State forays on the matter, and many outlets report that the Veep himself hasn't been contacted yet. We wonder, when and if the SEC wants to talk to the former CEO, how they will faciliate that.
And let's not forget that Dick Cheney's boss appointed SEC chair Harvey Pitt. Maybe Pitt should recuse himself from this case too. Is there anything left that this guy can actually do? [posted 2:30 pm]
[Link]
MORE ON CLONING. Glenn Reynolds thinks that the just released bioethics report doesn't matter much, but Tapped thinks it signals a new political strategy. Remember: The punitive, Bush-backed Brownback-Landrieu bill to ban all human cloning -- which would have imposed up to 10 years in prison and a million dollar fine to transgressors -- is dead in the water in the Senate. So perhaps we shouldn't be surprised that Leon Kass and many prominent members of his Council on Bioethics are now standing up for a four year moratorium on what Kass calls "cloning-for-biomedical-research," whereas before they had supported or even lobbied for the passage of Brownback-Landrieu. It seems clear that the "moratorium" approach is going to be the next tack for research cloning opponents, who have shifted their positions to try to salvage some sort of victory. Advocates of the technology need to regroup -- fast -- and figure out how to defeat this deceptive strategy, which would effectively stop science in its tracks. [posted 1:50 pm]
[Link]
WHILE WERE AT IT. As long as we're making fun of Bush's speech on "corporateresponsibility" -- and the Republican assertion that corporate corruption is individual and personal, rather than systemic -- let's not forget that just a few months ago this was the very same tack chosen by Joe Lieberman. Like Bush, Lieberman wanted to make this debate about personal ethics, not the influence of big business on politics. (He also wanted Bush to appoint acommission of "respected former CEOs and investor advocates" to think up new accounting and oversight regulations" -- the same Bush who appointed accounting industry lobbyist Harvey Pitt to head the Securities and Exchange Commission and Ken Lay pal Pat Wood to the Federal Energy RegulatoryCommission. Oops!) Check out Lieberman's NYU speech here. Check out Nick Confessore's article on Lieberman here. [posted 11:45 am]
[Link]
STOP HIM BEFORE HE WRITES AGAIN. A few years ago, when the Internet becamede rigeur for all magazines, Newsweek -- which had its print deadline on Friday and Saturday -- started making its writers turn something in earlier in the week (which some had previously spent taking long lunches and coming into work late) for web publication. Howard Fineman's turgid web dispatches on MSNBC.com are a good reason to discontinue the policy. Take this paragraph, from the latest piece:
[Bush's speech] contained a fair number of reasonable, and tough, proposals for reform, including doubling criminal penalties, lots of new money for SEC enforcement, and a new Justice Department task force to attack "bad apples" in the barrel of Big Business. The president didn't go far enough for the Democrats, of course. But they are easy to dismiss as donation-grubbing insiders eager for a way to cover their rears and find anissue for the fall.
Fineman obviously didn't do any work to see how Bush's proposals really stack up. Tapped would bet money Fineman never even read them; when you're in a hurry, any proposal can be safely described as "reasonable" and"tough." (In fact, Bush's plans will do little to stop the kind of fraud and sleaze that brought down Enron, Andersen, and WorldCom.) Lazily, Finemanpicks the Democrats to play the sleazy politickers who always overreach: Check out that "of course." Why "of course?" Are the Democrats' proposals, such as the Pat Leahy accounting reform amendment that passed the Senate yesterday 97-0, really so unreasonable? How? Why? Explain to us, oh Chief Political Correspondent. And what's this about "donation-grubbing insiders?" What the hell is Fineman talking about? [posted 11:25 am]
[Link]
LOOKING BACK. Okay, time for some more liberal/progressive salivating over the current focus on corporate scandal. Mother Jones has dug back into its files and come up with a decade old story that widens the lens on the Bush family's involvement in financial scandal. This one mostly has to do with W. and his brothers, and Dad's financial escapades in the world of banking. And nationally syndicated columnist Matt Miller also has a fascinating reprise of a Harpers's magazine (February 2000) piece by Joe Conason that highlighted the following:
The "investigation" of Bush's fortuitous dumping of Harken Energy stock in 1990 was conducted by an SEC headed by a pal of Bush's father that dad appointed to his job. The SEC's general counsel then was the Texas attorney who had handled the sale of the Texas Rangers for George W. Bush and his partners in 1989. In the third world, given such circumstances, we'd say the fix was in. Anyone for an independent look this time?When the Texas Rangers were sold in 1998, while Bush was governor, his partners, Conason reports, "fattened his payout six times over by awarding him additional shares in the team at the time of the sale that brought his 1.8 percent share up to 12 percent." This boosted Bush's return on a borrowed $600,000 investment from about $2.5 million to $15 million. Anyone think it's time to better understand what that was all about?
If Democrats who'd made fortunes from Bush-like patterns of crony capitalism were in the White House during a crisis of corporate integrity, does anyone doubt that Richard Scaife would have scrambled the jets months ago and bankrolled mountains of American Spectator exposes?
Hmm....sounds a lot like what Aaron Brown said. [posted 10:25 am]
[Link]
LET THE SPINNING BEGIN. The new Kass bioethics report is bound to create massive confusion, with one side saying the council came out in favor of a moratorium while the other side saying it was divided. Even the papers are confounded. The Times report on the report gives the impression that the official position of the panel is for a moratorium and that this is the view that is being conveyed to lawmakers and the public. Indeed, the paper seems to think it's reporting on a 5-4 Supreme Court decision or something. The Post, on the other hand, gives the impression that the panel has failed to reach a consensus on what to do about cloning, is almost equally split, and hence no real course of action is communicated by the panel's decision. Interesting. [posted 10:00 am]
[Link]
MORNING ROUNDUP. With the current focus on corporate scandals, Tapped -- being a dirty, filthy liberal blog -- has been reading about twice as much news as usual. So we thought we'd provide a brief roundup. First, there's the lawsuit filed yesterday by Clinton-hater Larry Klayman that targets Dick Cheney and Halliburton. Then, there's the surfacing of a videotape in which the Veep gives an over-the-top endorsement of Arthur Andersen -- a development that should have sent him scurrying to an undisclosed location. The media, meanwhile, isn't letting going of Bush's sweet deals with Harken Energy,reporting this morning that he received the kind of personal loans he railed against in his speech earlier this week.
The press -- and Senator John McCain, who's giving a speech on corporate issues today -- is also still critiquing what Bush did and didn't propose as solutions to the current crisis of corporate capitalism. According to The New York Times this morning, most experts believe that if he was serious he would have addressed the issue of stock options. And the stock market keeps falling.
Capitol Hill, in turn, is operating at a nearly frenetic pace. Sensitive to the corporate scandals, there was nearly unanimous support in the Senate for anti-fraud measures. (Remembering the Pledge of Allegiance example, Tapped worries whenever Congress does something without dissent). Inthe House, the Homeland Security bill is meeting some difficulties (we can't help but wonder what will be left in the new department when all is said and done). And in case you were curious, the Immigration and Naturalization Service wasabolished. It will be split into two parts -- one piece going to the Justice Department, another going to the new department. [posted 9:45 am]
[Link]
YOU DON'T SAY. This latest scientific discovery gives us great hope here at Tapped. Now, at long last, someone may finally be able to explain to us why we're so hairy and walk hunched over. [posted 9:25 am]
[Link]
NEWS FLASH: KASS COUNCIL NOT STACKED ENOUGH. The President's Bioethics Council has done better than come to a conclusion about human embryo cloning for medical research -- it has come to two conclusions! As the Post reports it:
One opinion, supported by 10 of the committee's 18 members, calls for a four-year moratorium on the creation of cloned human embryos. The other, favored by seven members, calls for the research to go forward with appropriate oversight. One council member abstained.
This despite the fact that the council's "no" camp included such bioethics experts as Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer! As Chris Mooney has reported previously in the Prospect, one key reason the Krauthammer anti-embryo cloning position hasn't garnered more support is the inability to present a cogent case against research cloning that doesn't simply boil down to a pro-life position. [posted 9:10 am]
[Link]
THE CASE AGAINST VOUCHERS, PART II. TAP Online's second vouchers article, by Richard Just, is now up. In it, Just takes a new tack, arguing that vouchers would undermine American patriotism and unity. Here's an excerpt:
It is difficult indeed to find any other explanation for the ridiculous recent parade of conservative commentators bemoaning the Pledge of Allegiance ruling while beating their chests triumphantly over the voucher decision. Have these people forgotten where exactly the Pledge of Allegiance is said? Not in most private or parochial schools, that's for sure. TAP Online contacted every private or parochial school in Washington, D.C. Of those where someone spoke to us, only six of 26 begin each day by saying the pledge. Five leave the pledge to the discretion of individual teachers. And 15 -- the vast majority -- don't say it at all. (And this is the nation's capital. If most private and parochial schools here don't require the pledge, can we expect the statistics to be much better anywhere else?) As I was told when I inquired about the pledge at one Catholic high school, "We say, 'Our Father,' 'Hail Mary,' and that's about it." That may be enough to satisfy the religious right. But do mainstream conservatives who want to replace public schools with private ones really think the Lord's Prayer is an acceptable substitute for the Pledge of Allegiance?[posted 8:50 am]
[Link]
Wednesday, July 10 A voice of good sense in a sea of mindlessidiocy. Also a journalist not consumed with the mindless anti-Clintonism (as opposed to the principled version!) so common to D.C. journalists. Anyway, he hit the nail on the head last night:
We were taken to task today for a discussion we had on last night's program about President Bush's days on the board of an oil company called Harken. We don't need to go through all the details here again. One sentence should do it. There was a late filing of reports to the government on the sale of company stock, and over time, there's been a couple of different explanations as to why. In any case, our note writer was quite angry. "How could you dredge this all up" he asked. "This is yet another case of media bias," he asserted.In my response, I asked a simple question and I'll put it out there tonight. What if the man in question was named Clinton? Would the reaction to this decade-old story have been the same? Would it still be bias? Would the writers still say "drop this silliness?" Consistency counts and my gut says if the president were Clinton, this decade-old story would be hyped to death all over the radio, through at least half the Congress, probably around more than a few water coolers, and maybe, just maybe the Justice Department.
While I'm sure some will take this otherwise, this is in no way meant as an attack on the president or a defense of Mr. Clinton. Regular viewers know that we've taken a shot or two at the former president's conduct over the months. But just consider the question for a moment, and decide if there's a point here. Would the same people who now urge reporters to drop the Harken story have said the same thing three years ago, a different president from a different party, different times? Does consistency count more thanpolitics?
Damn straight, says Tapped. [posted 5:45 pm]
[Link]
BUSH'S REAR-GUARD ACTION. Looks like President Bush can lead by example. First, he has a widely publicized test for colon cancer. And now, a Senate panel has voted to approve legislation requiring private insurance companies to pay for colon cancer tests even if there has been no prior history of the problem. It's always interest to see what cues the elder statesmen of the Senate will take from the White House. Still, we wonder if anyone will accuse them of covering their asses. [posted 5:10 pm]
[Link]
BUT SERIOUSLY, FOLKS.Here's one reason, perhaps, why the NASDAQ just closed at a 5-year low: Investors knowthat Bush's phony "reforms" won't do jack to end corporate corruption -- that is, to protect investors. This, truly, is why accounting reforms are so necessary: To protect capitalism. Bush and the Republicans, sadly, don't have the courage to stand up to their contributors. Look to the next issue of TAP for more on this. [posted 4:35 pm]
[Link]
WHEN RUSH LIMBAUGH CALLED CHELSEA A DOG. Still more on Ann Coulter's ridiculous claim that only conservative women get called ugly. Reader D.G. -- we love these guys! -- pointed out to us that in 1993, Rush Limbaugh directly (and viciously) mocked Chelsea Clinton's looks. She was all of 13 at the time. Here's how a 1999 article in the Chicago Sun-Times reported it:
Right-wing commentator Rush Limbaugh, on his TV show in 1993, mocked the 13-year-old girl's appearance. "Everyone knows the Clintons have a cat. Socks is the White House cat," Limbaugh said. "But did you know there is also a White House dog?" he added, holding up Chelsea's photo.[posted 3:40 pm]
[Link]
A GREAT AMERICAN HERO. It has just come to our attention that Ted Williams -- at least according to this Sports Illustrated story (scroll to the last paragraph) -- was an atheist. Whew. We didn't know that, but we can't say we're surprised. Indeed, we think it says a lot about what it means -- and doesn't mean -- to be an American icon. (Thanks to reader J.M.. Hey, our readers rock today, huh?) [posted 3:30 pm]
[Link]
OVER AND ABOVE (THE LAW). Reader A.O. draws our attention to this BBC story, which relates how Dick Cheney participated in a 1996 promotional video for Arthur Andersen in which he described the firm as providing services "over and above the just sort of normal by-the-book auditing arrangement." Remember that quote. It's kind of like Bush's gaffe the other day, in which he described the SEC's Harken inquiry as an "honest disagreement about accounting procedures." [posted 3:10 pm]
[Link]
FACT CHECK ANN COULTER: RONALD REAGAN, COLD WAR HERO. In her new book, Slander, Ann Coulter repeats herself a number of times on a number of points (and we use the term "points" here loosely). Her most beloved mantra, however, is Ronald Reagan's heroic Cold War victory. Coulter returns to Reagan as a sacred mantra, reiterating at least ten times her assertion that Reagan "won the Cold war" (see pp. 16, 33, 34, 125, 130, 132-33, 134, 145, and 197).
Now, mind you, Coulter's book isn't about Reagan. She simply uses Reagan's Cold War victory as the ultimate trump card against liberals who criticized Reagan, then and now. How can they call him stupid, she asks -- and fiscally irresponsible, and a supporter of brutal third-world regimes -- when "the ripe old fellow single-handedly won the Cold War, ending the forty-year threat of nuclear annihilation"? (Aside: Will someone please tell India and Pakistan to get with the program? Nuclear brinksmanship is so fifteen years ago -- it went out with shoulder pads and good punk rock.)
The obvious objection to Coulter is that both the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Soviet Union took place while Bush Sr. was president. So at the very least, she ought to explain how they're Reagan's doing (she doesn't). More importantly, though, the frequently-touted argument that Reagan deserves credit for exhausting the Evil Empire through huge increases in military spending (with which the Soviets were forced to keep pace) is flawed. Soviet documents released in the 1990s reveal that Reagan's defense policies had little effect on Soviet spending (see, for example, Jonathan Kwitny's Man of the Century). The Soviet Union was going to collapse under its own weight no matter how many peasants U.S.-trained death squads murdered in El Salvador. Reagan deserves credit for disarmament efforts, but those certainly had support from Democrats -- as, to be fair, did huge budget deficits. (For a good summary of how the Cold War ended, see here.)
DEGREE OF DISHONESTY: 5
ANALYSIS: Cold War debates are always murky, and Coulter isn't the first to lionize Reagan, so she isn't lying. Still, Coulter never bothers to back-up her claim with any historical argument, even a flawed one. She glibly refers to Reagan's "winning" as though it were common knowledge, substituting soggy repetition for evidence.
Previous Coulter fact checks: Chapter 1: In which we announces the plan to fact check Coulter, and catch her on Jim Jeffords' voting record); Chapter 2: In which we discover that she needs to get a calendar; Chapter 3: In which she spouts off (embarrassingly) on Hardball; Chapter 4: In which she viciously abuses LexisNexis (not for the last time!); Chapter 5: In which she repeats the Gore Love Story howler; Chapter 6: In which she abuses LexisNexis once again; Chapter 7: In which we show that Coulter's wrong about whether liberal women get called "ugly." More to come![posted 2:40 pm]
[Link]
DOH. Last week we erroneously referred to Bush as having been the "CEO" of Harken. He was a director. [posted 1:45 pm]
[Link]
BY POPULAR REQUEST. We've been asked repeatedly to provide a list of our previous Fact Check Ann Coulter items. So, here are the links, with annotation. From now on, we will make sure to include this archive at the bottom of each new Coulter fact check item.
Previous Coulter fact checks: Chapter 1: In which we announce the plan to fact check Coulter, and catch her on Jim Jeffords' voting record); Chapter 2: In which we discover that she needs to get a calendar; Chapter 3: In which she spouts off (embarrassingly) on Hardball; Chapter 4: In which she viciously abuses LexisNexis (not for the last time!); Chapter 5: In which she repeats the Gore Love Story howler; Chapter 6: In which she abuses LexisNexis once again; Chapter 7: In which we show that Coulter's wrong about whether liberal women get called "ugly." More to come! [posted 1:35 pm]
[Link]
BUSH'S BAD PRESS DAY, PART II. One of the dilemmas of being a print reporter, as Tapped has noted before, is that you cannot often call a lie a lie, even if the lie is a lie. And part of the fun of reading the paper, as Tapped has also noted before, is that you get to watch reporters struggle with how to convey what they really think while satisfying the demands of "objectivity," which is required by newspaper editors even when it is not deserved. So it was surprising and gratifying to see most of the paperstoday call "bullshit" on President Bush's speech.
The first line of Floyd Norris' New York Times analysis (registration required) -- headlined "Hard Talk, Softer Plans" -- puts it well: "His words were harsh, but his proposals were generally not." David Sanger's news story, meanwhile,points out that even yesterday's flabby promises represent a 180 turnaround from Bush's paeans to "self-regulation" during the 2000 campaign. Steven Pearlstein's Washington Post analysis, similarly, is titled "Measures Not Likely To End Abuses." This is all a welcome change from the dubious coverage of Bush's tax cut.
P.S. The Washington Times, naturally, took up the most ludicrous part of Bush's claim: That this is all Clinton's fault. [posted 1:15 pm]
[Link]
DAMN! NOW WE CAN'T COOK THE BOOKS! Funniest caption of the day, from thefront page of The Washington Post: "On a monitor at the New York Stock Exchange, President Bush condemns 'cooking the books.' A key market averagefell 178 points." [posted 1:05 pm]
[Link]
WHAT GOES AROUND... How much do the Republicans regret indulging -- heck,lionizing -- professional litigant Larry Klayman during the Clinton years? He's already mounted several lawsuits against the Bush administration. Here's one that could also hurt the Bushies: A shareholder lawsuit against Dick Cheney and Halliburton. [posted 1:00 pm]
[Link]
JANET RENO NEVER GETS CRITICIZED FOR HER APPEARANCE. OH NO. NEVER. Just yesterday we debunked an Ann Coulter claim to the effect that liberal women never get called "ugly" or attacked based on their appearances. Now the good old conservatives at Best of the Web have gone and helped us out, by posting an item that, albeit subtly, makes more fun of Janet Reno's looks (search for "Reno"). It's called "One of the Beautiful People." We expect Ann will be having a word with them about this. [posted 10:10 am]
[Link]
THE CASE AGAINST VOUCHERS, TAKE ONE. TAP Online is coming out swinging against vouchers, and the first missive is this piece by Adam Kushner. Stay tuned for more. [posted 10:00 am]
[Link]
YOU GOTTA LOVE THE TITLE. Conservative pundit Bill Murchison's latest column is called "The magic of the marketplace." Yup, the market sure has cast its spell over all of us lately. Poor President Bush still can't get the fairy dust out of his eyes. [posted 9:45 am]
[Link]
LESSONS UNLEARNED. USA Today has a surprising story explaining how nearly all the protections against overzealous FBI and CIA behavior -- protections that were enacted following the Church Committee investigations of the Watergate era -- have been rendered moot. Tapped fully understands that battling terrorism will require new weapons at our disposal. Nevertheless, knowing our own history, we're unnerved to learn that "spying on Americans, toppling adversary regimes, even eliminating certain foreign leaders" are all options suddenly back on the table. (Maybe we knew much of this before, but the USA Today piece brings it all together in one place.) The article elaborates on just what our intelligence services might be allowed to do:
* Though assassinations remain forbidden, President Bush has asked the CIA to develop clandestine plans against Iraq that could involve killing Saddam Hussein in battle, according to national security officials.* CIA operatives have direct launch control of Hellfire missiles mounted on unmanned aerial vehicles patrolling Afghanistan for signs of al-Qaeda terrorists. It's the first time the CIA has been given operational control of a weapon.
* The president must formally authorize all CIA covert operations in secret findings, and Congress must be informed, a legacy of the Church Committee. But the political dynamic has changed. Lawmakers used to routinely question why CIA did so much. Now the pressure is on the agency to do more.
* The administration is targeting specific adversary regimes, an approach not seen since President Reagan's efforts against leftist Latin American governments and the elder President Bush's invasion of Panama in the 1980s. The Afghan Taliban regime was first to fall to this new policy. Iraq is next on the administration's list.
Now, it may very well be that times really have changed, and that therefore we should trust the CIA and FBI again with these newfound powers. After all, the intelligence agencies that Frank Church helped to discipline in the 1970s had not been on the trail of terrorists who had murdered thousands of Americans. Nevertheless, Tapped gets the feeling Church would have been uncomfortable with them regaining powers they once sorely abused. [posted 8:25 am]
[Link]
WELCOME ABOARD! The blogging world is a better place with Joe Conason blogging daily for Salon, and most days you won't have to subscribe to read it. As one of his first posts, Conason notes that even Lou Dobbs, CNN's decidedly non-lefty commentator, thought Bush's speech was subpar -- and reminds us that the corporate ethics problems in this administration don't end with Bush. [posted 8:10 am]
[Link]
NAKED EMPEROR WATCH. William Saletan has a smart analysis of Bush's speech on corporate responsibility set in the context of his own actions. Actually, it's more than smart, it's devastating. To wit:
There are standards and assumptions under which the explanations Bush gave Monday can be defended, and there are company directors whose conduct can be defended under the standards and assumptions Bush outlined Tuesday. But there's no way to square the rules Bush applied to himself on Monday with the rules he applied to others on Tuesday.
Read on. [posted 8:00 am]
[Link]
Tuesday, July 9 Jonah Goldberg is just the latest conservative to take a whack at Stanley Fish for his recent Harper's essay defending postmodernism. Tapped is all for whacks at Fish and postmodernism. But if you think Fish's philosophy is bad, you should see his Milton. Indeed, it just so happens that in the latest issue of the New York Review of Books, John K. Leonard has a scathing article detailing how Fish twists the meaning of Paradise Lost. Unfortunately, in order to find out just how craven Fish's analysis is, you'll have to get the New York Review on the newsstand or subscribe online. Nevertheless, if conservatives want tons more ammo to use against Fish, Leonard's article is well worth the cover price. [posted 6:45 pm]
[Link]
YOU CALL THAT "PRINCIPLED"? Tapped was feeling pretty psyched. After all, it looked as though we had finally found a conservative group that was willing to take on Ann Coulter. "Hallelulja!," we cried.
Our apparent salvation lay in a press release from a group called "Citizens for Principled Conservatism" (CPR). In their release, the group announced that they were planning "to refute the extremist views, flawed analysis and hateful rhetoric permeating Coulter's book."
"Awesome," we said to ourselves. "It's about time."
Being a blog, our first course of action was, of course, to look for CPR's website so that we could link. Being a competent blog, we found it without much trouble: anorexic-annie.com.
Yes, you read that right. Anorexic-Annie.
Sigh. Call us picky, but somehow we don't find this very "principled." Indeed, it's a below the belt shot if Tapped ever saw one. Moreover, it's precisely the kind of thing we try to avoid when tackling Coulter: stooping to her level. (Or should we say, falling into her trap?)
Clearly, CPR wasn't the salvation we were looking for. We had been trudging through the desert of Coulter's abusive rhetoric for longer than we could remember, but still, the ordeal wasn't over. And so -- pausing only to shed a few tears -- we pulled ourselves to our feet and resumed the lonely search.... [posted 6:10 pm]
[Link]
MARKETS DUMP BUSH STOCK. Robert Kuttner's response to Bush's speech (just posted) is here. Enjoy. [posted 5:30 pm]
[Link]
ATHEIST REPS? Below we quoted from a column by Richard Cohen, in which the author stated that he was personally aware of the existence of non-religious members of Congress (though he didn't name any). Cohen went on to object that when the Pledge of Allegiance ruling came down, "not one" of our national leaders "questioned the consensus" opposing the decision. Actually, that's not quite true. In the House of Representatives, a bill stating that the Pledge of Allegiance case had been "erroneously decided" passed 416-3; it was opposed by Pete Stark and Mike Honda of California and Bobby Scott of Virginia. All are Democrats. But the more interesting question is, are any of them "religious skeptics" (in Cohen's phrase), atheists, or agnostics? Hmm.... [posted 4:10 pm]
[Link]
FACT CHECK ANN COULTER: LIBERAL CHEAP SHOTS. As Tapped readers know, we've been fact checking Ann Coulter's new book with some regularity lately. And we've got some more on this today, but first, a couple of asides. Lest we be accused of bias against Coulter -- as opposed to mere animus -- let us note that she actually isn't wrong about everything. Yes, we know it's a shock. But Mickey Kaus
