The Little Administration Who Cried Wolf at the Door

Eric Lichtau, one of the NY Times reporters who broke the story about the administration's warrantless wiretapping program, has written a book about the experience which is excerpted in Slate. This graph stands out:

For more than an hour, we told Bush's aides what we knew about the wiretapping program, and they in turn told us why it would do grave harm to national security to let anyone else in on the secret. Consider the financial damage to the phone carriers that took part in the program, one official implored. If the terrorists knew about the wiretapping program, it would be rendered useless and would have to be shut down immediately, another official urged: "It's all the marbles." The risk to national security was incalculable, the White House VIPs said, their voices stern, their faces drawn. "The enemy," one official warned, "is inside the gates." The clichés did their work; the message was unmistakable: If the New York Times went ahead and published this story, we would share the blame for the next terrorist attack.

Sound familiar? This is exactly the parade of horribles Bush marches down Pennsylvania Avenue when Congress considers renewing the program. As Lichtau notes later in the article, none of these things proved true about the Times' story. There is every reason to believe that the administration alarmist rhetoric about the renewal debate generally and the supposed national security imperative of telecom immunity in particular is similarly specious.

Want to know why liberals suffer from Bush Derangement Syndrome. Exhibit A. The administration plays up fears, politicizes crucial national security issues and lies like most people breathe.

Fed Government May Ease NCLB

From the NYT:

The Bush administration, acknowledging that the federal No Child Left Behind law is diagnosing too many public schools as failing, said Tuesday that it would relax the law’s provisions for some states, allowing them to distinguish schools with a few problems from those that need major surgery.

“We need triage,” said Margaret Spellings, the secretary of education.

* * *

Under the new program, the federal Department of Education will give up to 10 states permission to focus reform efforts on schools that are drastically underperforming and intervene less forcefully in schools that are raising the test scores of most students but struggling with one group, like the disabled, for instance. The No Child law, which President Bush signed in 2002, was intended to force states to bring all students to proficiency in reading and math by 2014. In six years it has identified 9,000 of the nation’s 90,000 public schools as “in need of improvement,” the law’s term for failing, and experts predict that those numbers could multiply in coming years.

This is a potentially big deal. While Spellings is for now proposing a pilot this could move as quickly as the "value added" pilot which is now pretty much the norm. One measure of the bigness of the deal is that edblogs have already given it a jargony name: differentiated consequences.

Digest this for now; I'll be back with more later.

Hillary Set to Go Negative

The Leftysphere is buzzing about revelations that Hillary Clinton's pollster is testing negative messages against primary opponents in Iowa. Daily Left put me on to the story as it appeared on Talking Points Memo. Among other things, the negative messages tested include flogging Edwards' $400 haircut.

Political consultant and newly minted Ohioan Craig Schecter weighs in with a body slam on Mark Penn, the Clinton consultant behind the attack strategy. Craig has worked with Penn and doesn't like him -- at least that seems to be what he is trying to convey by comparing Penn to anal leakage. He also refers to a Nation story about Hillary's advisers, including Penn. Here's a taste of that:

It's difficult to tell where Penn's corporate life ends and his political one begins. Most Democratic consultants do some business work--it's the easiest way to pay the bills. Yet nobody wears as many hats--and advises as many corporations--as Penn. "Penn and Schoen have displayed a thirst for corporate work, often in conflict with the policy agendas of their political clients, that has long set the bar among Democratic pollsters," wrote Democratic pollster Mark Blumenthal on his blog recently. Furthermore, few Democratic consultants so consistently and publicly advocate an ideology that perfectly complements their corporate clients. Every election cycle Penn discovers a new group of swing voters--"soccer moms," "wired workers," "office park dads"--who happen to be the key to the election and believe the same thing: "Outdated appeals to class grievances and attacks upon corporate perfidy only alienate new constituencies and ring increasingly hollow," Penn has written. Through his longtime association with the Democratic Leadership Council, Penn has been pushing pro-corporate centrism for years. Many of the same companies that underwrite the DLC, such as Eli Lilly, AT&T, Texaco and Microsoft, also happen to be clients of Penn's.

And by the way, thanks to OhioDave for putting us all on to Craig.

This story speaks for itself, and Democrats should demand that Hillary answer for it. One interesting sidebar is how the internet makes life difficult for consultants working on the seemier side. The network of blogs pretty much guarantees that message polling will get a public airing, and that amoral mercenaries like Penn will be outed. How widespread the information gets disseminated will depend on MSM pickups and how effective opposing candidates are at using it.

Certainly any time Hillary uses one of these attacks, Edwards or Obama can sneer "You are only saying that because your big business consultant tells you to," or some variation. It doesn't end the attack, but certainly takes the edge off. In a week in which the Supreme Court appears on a glide path toward overruling any and all campaign funding regulations, it's good to know that at least some counterweights to the big money exist.

Elizabeth Edwards on Why She Bothered with Coulter

Since I'm on the Edwards campaign mailing list, I got an email "from" Elizabeth Edwards. While all campaign emails should be taken with some dose of skepticism, I liked this one and choose to believe it reflects Ms. Edwards' thoughts:

Last night I had an important talk with Ann Coulter and I want to tell you what happened.

On Monday, Ann announced that instead of using more homophobic slurs to attack John, she will just wish that John had been "killed in a terrorist assassination plot."

Where I am from, when someone does something that displeases you, you politely ask them to stop. So when I heard Ann was going to be on "Hardball" last night, I decided to call in and ask her to engage on the issues and stop the personal attacks. I told her these kinds of personal attacks lower our political dialogue at precisely the time when we need to raise it, and set a bad example for our children.

How did she respond? Sadly, perhaps predictably, with more personal attacks.

John's campaign is about the issues—but pundits like Ann Coulter are trying to shout him down. If they will not stop, it is up to us cut through the noise. [Emphasis mine.]

I like it. I like the notion of Elizabeth Edwards as the genteel southern lady trying to talk reason to Coulter's gum-snapping floozy. Of course, Coulter isn't actually foul-mouthed down home trailer trash, she just plays one on TV. Still, as dramatis personae, I find it agreeable.

But since I'm not a genteel southern lady, I have to ask: Just how f*cking batsh*t crazy do you think our friends on the right would go if, say, Cindy Sheehan had publicly fantasized about George Bush meeting violent death? I think so too.

Arkansas FRC Affiliate Putting Gay Adoption on Ballot

The New York Blade carries the AP story. The ballot issue will look like an adoption ban defeated in the Arkansas legislature last year after the state Supreme Court struck down the legislative ban. h/t FiPL.

Because they are responding to a state Supreme Court case, the ballot issue is a constitutional amendment preventing either gays or unmarried couples from either adopting or serving as foster parents.

The Arkansas group is a "State Policy Organization" of the Conservative Christian political group The Family Research Council. If all that sounds familiar, Phil Burress's Citizen's for Community Values in Ohio -- they of the proposed stripper law -- is similarly affiliated with FRC.

The way these things go, Arkansas's proposed ban will probably also look like the bill that went nowhere in the Ohio leg running up to the election last year. It's conceivable we could see this in Ohio next year in Ohio in time for the Presidential election. If it goes down in Arkansas, probably not.

But it's that much more likely if Burress is feeling it. For instance if someone tries to take to the voters the issue of whether patrons should be allowed to touch strippers and Burress is able to hand them their heads. Just in case you wondered why I was so irate.

Muslim KSU Prof Needs to Answer Some Questions

I would love to report that the right wing fulminating over Kent State prof. Julio Pino's work on a jihadist website is completely specious. I would love to post something like BREAKING: MATT DRUDGE IS FULL OF CRAP!

But I cannot. Prof. Pino has apparently done some work on behalf of the site and should be called on to account for his actions.

The controversy started when a TownHall columnist identified the blog as as belonging to Pino and broke down its contents. Drudge picked up the story and it was on. According to the Beacon Journal's report today, the blog is not Pino's, but he has done some work there:

Pino, 46, a Muslim convert and associate professor of history at KSU, did not return phone calls seeking comment.

His department head, John Jameson, defended him as a good teacher and said the allegations in the story appeared to have been blown out of proportion.

He said Pino told him he provided news stories to the Web site but didn't accept any ownership of it.

The Web site does not name the originator, but a photo of a bearded man there is not of Pino, the description of the originator does not fit Pino and none of the postings on it can be tied to Kent State, Jameson said.

So, Adam's story is overblown. Still, Pino has contributed in some way. Even a free speech and academic freedom zealot like me has a few problems with this. The blog in question carries no defensible content. It looks like this:


Less a blog than a jihadi headline writing service, it reproduces full-text news stories from all over, with original headlines spinning the story for the greater good of Allah. Every headline glorifies jihad as holy war and mass murder as a legitimat tactic. Every story is infused with that mindset. The blog is shot through and through with the most vile rhetoric justifying the murder of pretty much anyone who is not a particular stripe of Sunni Muslim.

In other words, this isn't like some liberal blogs where reasonable essays appeared side-by-side with 9/11 conspiracy nonsense or worse. One cannot aid the Global War website without at least implicitly endorsing its message.

So, I want to know, what did the professor contribute? How did he get linked to the blog, given that none of the stories are attributed? Does he endorse war against the West, against Isreal and against non-Sunni Muslims?

And what the hell is he thinking? I love this nugget from the ABJ story:

While Pino did operate a pro-Palestinian Web site in the past, he told Jameson he gave it up ``when the hate response got to be too much,'' Jameson said.

Will he call this a hate response as well? Because I try not to hate and all, but I don't love advocating the murder of civilians.

Whether a tenured professor should be dismissed for propagating these views, apalling as they are, is a close question for me. But at the very least, Citizens of the State of Ohio have a right to know.

UPDATED: The original version contained some editing errors and did not make clear my position that Adams overstated Pino's involvement with the blog. I've updated accordingly.

The Edwards Blog-ha-ha: Some Final Thoughts.

This thing needs to die, but some things I'm not hearing said need to be.

1. The Messenger Is Not the Message.

Yes, Donahue and Malkin are intolerant, viscious, hypocritical windbags. And yes, the media should have acknowledged their far more egregious comments when reporting that they were shocked, shocked. But just because someone is an intolerant, hypocritical windbag, does not make that person automatically wrong about everything, every time. Broken clocks and blind pigs and all that.

2. The posts were problematic.

The two posts in question were coarse criticisms of the Catholic faith. The comment suggesting that the Church is against birth control to generate more tithing Catholics argues that a Church teaching is based on greed. This one on Pandagon crudely mocks the doctrine of immaculate conception – a sacred tenet of the faith.

We might as well start admitting this to ourselves now, because things aren’t going to get any easier. The reason many people of faith believe the Democratic party is hostile to religion is that an identifiable segment of the party is hostile to religion. Or to put it more succinctly, people who are hostile to religion and who pick a party pick the Democrats. (Very much like people who are hostile to minorities and pick a party these days pick Republicans, though I’d much prefer dealing with the former group than the latter.)

And by the way, the nasty about white, sticky holy spirit doesn’t even make sense in context. Here it is in its entirety:

Q: What if Mary had taken Plan B after the Lord filled her with his hot, white, sticky Holy Spirit?

A: You’d have to justify your misogyny with another ancient mythology.

I’m hard pressed to find evidence that the doctrine of Immaculate Conception is used as a cover for misogyny. If anything, it gives women a role in getting out from under Original Sin – a truly pestilent and misogyny-generating doctrine if ever there was one. And one certainly open to feminist parody:

Q: What if we were given the far more likely scenario in which Satan appeared to Adam as a beautiful woman and promised to sleep with him if he bit the apple?

A: [etc.]

So the line wasn’t just bad politics, it was bad theology as well.

All that said, it should be noted that the bloggers in question aren’t the compulsive potty mouths one might assume from reading the media stories. They write plenty that I disagree with and their discussions of reproductive rights veer close to being anti-child, but for the most part they are just tough-dealing libs. It’s noteworthy that in their considerable blog work, we are talking in the main about one post each here.

3. Harsh, but not Bigotted.

The implicit message in Donahue's ranting is that disagreeing with church doctrine is tantamount to bigotry. Disagreement, bigotry -- two different things. I disagree with Catholic doctine. I don't hate people in my life who are Catholic as a result -- even those who side with the Church in all things. If I did, that would be bigotry. My Catholic friends love me even though I'm a Unitarian and therefore, by Catholic teaching, a heretic. Granted in the Donahue/Malkin universe there is no difference between disagreeing and hating, but for the both of us we can pull it off.

4. The Mistake was in the Vetting.

It might have taken some digging to unearth these two posts, but it wouldn’t have taken much work to figure out that the tone set by the two bloggers in question is inconsistent with that Edwards is trying to set. I can’t imagine what the campaign was thinking and can’t help wondering if someone else’s head will roll over this.

5. John Edwards Is a Standup Guy.

No one can know what the man was thinking, but my guess and my hope is that this keeping them on was a matter of keeping his commitment to them as much as avoiding blogosphere blowback. That works for me. The campaign made a mistake hiring them without fully vetting their public work, but it was the campaign’s mistake. It would be messed up to fire them for something they did before joining the campaign and which the campaign should have uncovered itself. Edwards manned up and agreed to take whatever hit there might be.

6. The Two Liberal Blogospheres.

At least two. In this case, we have a more professional blogosphere – bloggers associated with media outlets or long-time, well-established bloggers (think Drum, Marshall, Klein, etc.) in one and true-believer netroots (including dKos and MyDD) in the other. The netroots frankly wigged about this issue. The more professional blogosphere had some sharp things to say, but understood the issue through the lens of understanding how politics works – you don’t take on baggage unnecessarily. Witness this observation by Jon Chait by way of Yglesias.

The one exception to the rule was Glenn Greenwald who wigged impressively, mostly on the messenger-is-the-message tip.

Alright, this story has taken up far too much oxygen and now, let it be done. But hey, it kept us from talking about the untimely demise of Anna Nichole.

Elliot Spitzer Taking on Education

Spock: There is an old Vulcan proverb: “Only Nixon could go to China.”
-Star Trek: The Undiscovered Country

Last week New York’s new governor Elliot Spitzer made what I hope will be a groundbreaking speech on education. In it he proclaimed what he called a Contract for Excellence with the state’s public school system: more money in exchange for real accountability.

(And yes, I’m behind in my blogging, but this story is too important to let slide.)

He delineated the accountability piece of the plan three ways: financial accountability, which basically means adopting a foundation system so money follows students instead of politicians fighting over pieces of pie for their districts; programmatic accountability, where he will try to reduce class sizes, encourage innovative instruction methods, what have you; and performance accountability.

The first two are carrots. Performance accountability is the stick. Spitzer means to hold superintendents and principals accountable for results in their respective districts and buildings:

Accountability should run through the system from top to bottom. We should make sure districts hold principals and other school leaders accountable for their actions with individual school leadership report cards. From now on, our children and schools should not be the only ones receiving report cards. We must insist on annual “School Leadership Report Cards” that track the performance of principals and superintendents. For the first time, we will be able to rigorously compare the performance of principals and superintendents across the state.
And we should be ready to close more schools that fail – perhaps as many as five percent of all the schools in the state if we have to – through a tougher and more comprehensive program for schools under registration review.

More on the details of the plan in the Times.

Writing about the speech, Newsweek columnist Jonathan Alter notes that the next step is holding teachers accountable. That means doing away with contract provisions that let senior teachers bump their way into schools where they can continue to slide by. It means letting principals pick their teams. And it means taking on the most sacred of liberal cows, teacher tenure.

If anyone can make a run at whittling down tenure protections for public school teachers, it’s Elliot Spitzer. Not only does he have the demonstrated toughness for the fight and an overwhelming mandate from the last election, he has the Democratic credibility to say something a Republican can’t. When Republicans go after tenure, they are accused of attacking teachers for their historic support of Democrats. Spitzer can say “I’m not doing this to hurt teachers, I’m doing it because it’s right for kids.”

So why do I, lefty Democrat that I am, get excited about this? I don’t believe in tenure for public school teachers. Teachers rightly pride themselves as being professionals, and professionals are held to a higher standard. It’s easier to fire a line worker in a union factory than a tenured school teacher. That just makes no sense. Here’s the Ohio Revised Code on terminating a teacher contract:

The contract of any teacher employed by the board of education of any city, exempted village, local, county, or joint vocational school district may not be terminated except for gross inefficiency or immorality; for willful and persistent violations of reasonable regulations of the board of education; or for other good and just cause.
(R.C. § 3319.16)

Whereupon the code begins to map out the tortuous layers of procedure required to fire a teacher who is guilty of “gross immorality.”

If their ever was a justification for public school tenure, it was protecting teachers from arbitrary decisions by principals or superintendents. By holding principals and supers are being held responsible for performance in their schools, Spitzer’s plan blunts this justification. Few school administrators will dismiss and effective teacher for no good reason, and fewer of those will stay in the job for long.

Spitzer did not specifically mention tenure reform as being part of the agenda, but as Alter notes, his agenda won’t go far without it. And Alter notes that Spitzer has already faced down the teachers union President over charter schools.

Let’s all wish the new Governor well as he girds for battle. Taking on Merrill Lynch will seem like child’s play by comparison. But if he is successful, he could strike a template for Democratic governors across the country.

Caveat Blogger [UPDATED]

As often happens in blogworld, one of the hot topics among bloggers is other bloggers.

In case you haven’t heard at all, the Edwards campaign hired two bloggers – one from Pandagon and one the Pseudonym-sake of Shakespeare’s Sister – to do essentially netroots outreach. Since then, a conservative blogger/activist has called out the bloggers for “profanity” and “anti-Catholic bias.”

I’ll not run down the charges to decide if they are legit – Glenn Greenwald does a good job of that. I do agree with him that the NYT coverage of the controversy is a bit one sided – nothing in the story acknowledges that John McCain's blogger/consultant is guilty of some pretty ugly blogging himself. And I can't help but wonder if the NYT's editorial decisions were at least influenced by the Grey Lady's blogger getting schooled by the netroots.

All that aside, I do think this brings up issues worth considering.

First off, campaign hires are part of the blog ecosystem. While it’s not likely true at this point that people start blogging as a stepping stone to careers as political consultants, fact is, there have been natural cross-pollination between the two worlds that will likely continue. Veteran readers of the Pages recall my hiatus from blogging last yeas while I worked on Tom Sawyer’s campaign for State Board of Education.

Any campaign worth running weighs the baggage of anyone coming on board. In the new media world, this will include vetting the blogs of bloggers. It’s no secret that what people do online can get them sacked at work – just ask Melissa Hopsador. This could be the reason, at least in part, that Chris Geidner tore down all of Law Dork when he went to work for the notoriously prickly Marc Dann.

All of which is going to make some people fret that bloggers will censor themselves to keep themselves salable. It might happen, among those with political ambitions, but that’s life. It’s also not the worst thing that could happen to the blogosphere. After all, the chief public complaint against these bloggers is their liberal use of profanity. I complain about that too. Or more specifically, I tend not to read blogs that rely heavily on the dirty talk to make a point. Not that the words offend me – trust me, I’m no stranger to cussing in real life. But I’m far more impressed when a writer can be funny or express outrage without spraying f-bombs all over the place.

The other complaint – vulgar attacks on Catholics – is more in the eye of the beholder, but I wouldn’t exactly lose sleep if liberal bloggers were a little more respectful of religious beliefs they don’t share.

All in all, this is part of the new market reality of new media. Those people who want their blog to make them salable might be more careful about how they express themselves. Those who want nothing more than an outlet for public displays of outrageousness will continue to have an electronic soapbox, but will be less likely to get hired by campaigns.

UPDATE:

The bloggers appear to have been fired, per Redhorse's link to Salon. Reaction from TNR, TPM, Kevin Drum and Chris Cillizza. By way of Cillizza we get this dead on observation from Ezra Klein:

To back down would either prove that their hiring process was incompetent and they didn't vet someone with an extensive public record, or that they'll collapse beneath even moderate pressure from rightwing professionals. Neither is a good look for the new campaign.

Personally, I think the problem is the former, not the latter, which makes keeping the bloggers harder.

Oh, and Chris Bowers trying to throw his weight around hours after admitting that weight is rapidly evaporating is funny enough to be almost worth the whole episode.

Betty Sutton Cosponsoring Trade Bills

From the e-bag comes word that newly minted Rep. Betty Sutton is putting her name of a couple of bills as an original cosponsor. First, the Patriot Corporations of America Act:

The PCAA will soon be introduced by Rep. Schakowsky (D-IL) and provides real incentives to keep jobs and businesses in Northeast Ohio and in America. Companies who meet the criteria of the PCAA would receive priority for government contracts and a 5% tax reduction in taxable income.

The PCAA is a revenue neutral proposal and would be paid for by closing corporate offshoring loopholes and repealing some of the most recent tax breaks for
millionaires. Criteria to become a Patriot Corporation requires companies to:
• Produce at least 90% of their goods and services in the United States
• Limit top management compensation to no greater than 100 times that of their lowest-compensated full-time workers
• Spend at least 50% of their research and development budgets in the United States
• Contribute at least 5% of payroll to a portable pension fund
• Pay at least 70% of the cost of health insurance plans
• Maintain neutrality in employee organizing drives
• Comply with existing federal regulations regarding the environment, workplace safety, consumer protections and labor relations

Second, the Fair Currency Act, which has already been introduced as H.B. 762 (but not yet available on Thompson. Here’s what the presser has to say.

The Fair Currency Act provides tools to American businesses that are hurt by unfair currency manipulation by foreign governments, such as China. While the Bush Administration has failed to address this issue, American workers and businesses have been hurt by a Chinese currency that is undervalued by 40%. This has led to an estimated $800 Billion U.S. trade deficit with China and endangered America's national security.

The legislation requires the Secretary of Treasury to take action to determine if any trading partner manipulates the exchange rate.

The PCAA – whatever. If we are going to play with corporate tax breaks, it makes sense to tie them to criteria that actually helps America.

As for the currency bill, we don’t have a lot of information in the presser about what the Treasury Sec. can do once he determines that China is manipulating. From a quick and cursory search on The Google, I discovered that Sec. Treas. Paulson got cuffed around at a Senate hearing on the issue. The BushCo. line is that they are “constructively engaging” with the Chinese. Some heavy hitters, including John Dingell and Evan Bayh, are lining up to push the Administration toward a more muscular approach.

One of the unsung accomplishments of the Clinton administration was taking an aggressive stance on trade. Conservatives tend to be trade doves, letting our trading partners flout rules in a way that military adversaries could never get away with. I’m hopeful that the Congress will force

I’m not an across-the-board protectionist. That’s why I've opposed pols like Cafaro and the brothers Kucinich. But we need trade agreements to work for everyone, not just corporate management. And when we make agreements, we need to hold our partners too them. That’s why I support a guy like Sherrod Brown. I’m happy to see Sutton attaching her name to this sort of legislation.

Enough With the Early Prez Polls

I found this by Mystery Pollster to give a little perspective:

Consider these numbers, each the standing of the respective candidate from the Gallup Poll trial heat questions asked on surveys at about this time in each election cycle.

* 6% - George McGovern, August 1971
* 3.5% - Jimmy Carter, February 1975
* 2.9% - George Bush, January 1979
* 1.6% - Gary Hart, December 1982
* 3.0% - Bill Clinton, February 1991
* 3.8% - John McCain, March 1999
* 4.0% - Howard Dean, January 2003

(This came in a post in which Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) joked that he is competing with the margin of error.)

I know polls are always irresistible to political junkies like us, but at this stage in the game, polls only tell you whose names are familiar. Hillary v. Edwards or Hillary v. Gore may mean slightly more, but only slightly.

What really matters now is how much money candidates are raising, who they've recruited for core staff and how many times they get mentioned by the media.

TNR Editor 's Odd Appraisal of Ohio '04

Lately I’ve been reading The Spine, a newish blog by New Republic co-owner Marty Peretz. TNR has drifted noticeably to the left in recent years, but Peretz has done his level best to rein it back. Peretz is the embodiment of the cold-war era, crabby liberal TNR I grew up with; as Mickey Kaus puts it, right on warfare, left on welfare. Also fiercely Zionist and allergic to the cultural left. This Peretz description of Joe Lieberman could as easily be about himself:

[M]uscular on defense, assertive in foreign policy, genuinely liberal on social and economic matters, but not doctrinaire on regulatory issues . . . He has qualms about affirmative action. But who, in his hearts of hearts, does not? He is appalled by the abysmal standards of our popular culture and our public discourse. Who really loves our popular culture--or, at least, which parent? He is thoroughly a Democrat.

Peretz through and through. While he has his opinions and enforces them with, at times, Stalinist efficiency, he’s a smart guy with mostly thought-provoking things to say.

Mostly.

Today he presumes to explain why Ohio voted for Bush in 2004. It was Michael Moore. And George Soros. Seriously, in a post about Democrats lining up Hollywood supporters he makes both claims.

The Michael Moore claim is the sort of simple-minded shibboleth we expect coasters to say about flyover country. Granted, since Kerry’s lost by a fine-edge margin any number of factors could have made the difference. But there were so many big ones, singling out the little ones just seems silly. Saying Kerry lost Ohio because of Michael Moore is like saying he lost because of his “Lambert Field” fumble.

The Soros claim, on the other hand, is just bizarre. All Soros did was poor millions into a canvass and GOTV effort that helped turn out record numbers of voters. He was vilified as a result, but it’s hard to imagine that people who watched the dire reports on Fox Noise were going to vote for Kerry in any event. He didn’t personally appear in Ohio, he didn’t make a documentary featuring debunked conspiracy theories, and he certainly didn’t waddle around after Wesley Clark like a homesick gosling.

What makes me sick about this is that the right loves to play the game called "You Are Who Supports You." This despite right wing candidates being supported by plenty of unsavory candidates themselves. It's enough of a challenge staying out of that game when baited by the right. We really don't need people on the left signing up to play.

Ironically, if there was one factor outside of John Kerry being a stiff that tipped the balance in Ohio, it was arrogant East Coasters presuming to know what does or doesn’t play here. Peretz’s post indicates we still have plenty of that.

Education Notes

Amendment Summary: Don't Just Take My Word

Joan Platz at the League of Women Voters writes a weekly email summary of legislative activity germain to education in Ohio. Ohio Fair Schools hosts the update on the web (generally going up a day or so after they go out.) This week's update is heavily devoted to the Amendment With No Name. Joan has access to the information I have, plus, so she's a good source.

Finger in the Wind

Check out the comments to this post on BSB regarding the AWNN for gossipy news about how it's going down among education groups and the ODP. It's consistent with what I'm hearing.

Garrison Bill(s) Preempted by SOTU

I can find no coverage outside the Marietta paper. Even this dispatch is silent. Was this a mistake or not? SOP for bills you want under the radar is to introduce them Friday afternoon, and afternoon of the SOTU is certainly the equivalent. On the other hand, if Garrison wanted this to get noticed, she picked a bad day to announce it.

The Marietta Times suggests that Garrison is actually introducing two bills: one on parity aid and a separate one on all-day kindergarten. The piece does a good job of explaining how the parity aid piece works and extrapolating what it would mean for districts in that area.

Speaking of the SOTU

If I don't get a general reaction piece up, let me note this: By far the least enthusastic applause on both sides of the aisle was the response to the applause line exhorting Congress to reauthorize No Child Left Behind.

Hillary Clinton Has Too Much Money

Otherwise, why would she be advertising on Townhall? As I was researching the D'Souza piece below, I saw this:



Yep, that's a Hillary ad, paid for by the exploratory committee. Clicking on the advertising link at the bottom led to the blogads page for Townhall.com.

So who is she trying to reach at TownHall? Do liberals who are suspicious of her war stance know she's also reaching out to conservatives? And in any event, should she be called to task for financially supporting a rightwing mouthpiece (though a generally responsible and nearly bearable rightwing mouthpiece)?

Betty Sutton Has a New Gig

Per ABJ, Rep. Betty Sutton is now the Communications Director for the freshman class of the Democratic Caucus. She'll hold the post for the next six months.

It's possible, just possible, she'll have some things to say about Republican corruption.

Actually, she might want to consider updating the Caucus website which lists Tim Ryan as a member of the freshman class.

Not Holding My Breath: A Presidential Address Preview

The President's major address on the new Iraq strategy is minutes away. This evening WKSU interviewed Sherrod Brown, Betty Sutton and Steve LaTourette on the local news program "Your Way Home." They were asked how they feel about the much anticipated surge or escalation or escalating surge or whatever. Additionally, they were asked something like "what would you like to hear from the President's speech.

I won't agree with what the President has to say. I'm confident of that. But if he said any of the following, I might feel like we have some longshot hope of eventually getting out of this with something like a whole shirt.

• "I screwed up." Supposedly he is going to admit that "mistakes were made." I want to hear him go one better and admit his own mistakes. I'm a firm believer that a person who won't admit mistakes is guaranteed to repeat them.


• "I’m sorry." Which is the natural follow up to admitting you screwed up. Especially when your screwup results in thousands of needless deaths.


• "Other people screwed up. Their heads will roll." Unfortunately, the administration appears to be looking for fall guys in the ranks of military commanders. In fact, it's the civilian leadership who really botched this. Remind me again which party doesn't support the troops.


• "The enemy is . . ." As of now, I don't have any confidence that this administration has a real appreciation of who we are fighting. Of course, if the did, they would recognizing that we are splitting time battling the beligerents in a civil war.


• "Victory will look like . . ." I keep hearing that we will fight until victorious, but with no indication of what victory sounds like.

OK, off to watch. Not expecting much, tho.

Sherrod in MJ

H/t Kevin Drum, Sherrod sits down with Mother Jones for a quick four questions on Iraq, drug policy, trade and 'o8.