Making online pay

Rumor has it that the New York Times is abandoning its pay-only Times Select experiment. Let's hope so.

The New York Times is poised to stop charging readers for online access to its Op-Ed columnists and other content, The Post has learned.

After much internal debate, Times executives - including publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. - made the decision to end the subscription-only TimesSelect service but have yet to make an official announcement, according to a source briefed on the matter.

The timing of when TimesSelect will shut down hinges on resolving software issues associated with making the switch to a free service, the source said.

Personally this wasn't a huge deal, because we subscribe to the Sunday Times and get TimesSelect access thrown in as part of the deal.

But as a blogger it was very annoying, since nobody likes being linked to content they can't read. That led to three options: annoy my readers, don't blog about Select stories and columns, or quote so much of the story that it defeated the purpose of the firewall (and left me open to charges of copyright violation). It was especially annoying when I would read something in the dead-tree version that I wanted to write about, only to discover that the online version was in SelectLand.

Because I had access, I referred to TimesSelect articles when necessary. But I'm sure many, many people simply learned to live without the content -- and their lives were not noticeably poorer because of it.

The Wall Street Journal has the same problem with its Online Journal service. It's good content, but not so good that I can't live without it. The result is that WSJ content gets a lot less consideration in my blogging than it would otherwise.

I fully sympathize with both the Times and the Journal and all online publications, who are still trying to find ways to get people to pay for high-quality content. As bloggers, we're in the same boat -- and the lack of paying customers is why most of us do this as a hobby rather than a profession. The $30 or so I've earned on this blog in the last year doesn't exactly pay the bills.

Of course, there are other considerations. For instance, I like writing, which is one reason I blog. But even with that excuse blogging is a poor investment. Last year I earned $474 from selling a short story. If I was making rational decisions about my writing time, I'd ditch blogging and spend those hours writing fiction instead. Even if I only sold one story every 10 years, I'd be ahead of the game.

In the end I blog because I enjoy it, it makes me feel engaged in the political process, and I'm full of ideas and opinions that I want to share. But it sure would be nice if the market rewarded those efforts, instead of reserving its love for the sites that can draw a gajillion hits -- enough to make decent money despite the paltry online ad rates.

That's a long-winded way of saying that I'm all for coming up with ways to make money on quality content. But requiring registration seems to be a losing proposition. A lot of people -- myself included -- hate having to register at sites in order to view content, even when doing so is free. If people are resistant to registering when it's free, they're even more resistant to registering when it costs money.

Requiring registration also hamstrings the great strength of the Web -- the ability to surf multiple sites, gathering information from disparate sources. Registration encourages people to concentrate into segregated communities, an overall ill in a diverse democracy.

Admittedly, the problem is more one of reader perception than an actual legitimate gripe. People have no problem paying to subscribe to the Times, but balk at registering to read it online; that makes no logical sense. Why are we willing to pay for information in one form, but not in another, more convenient form?

Nonetheless, it's the reality. And it may remain that way until content starts to disappear because there's not enough money to support it.

But I think companies will find a middle way -- indeed, they've already begun. Notice how the online ads are getting more and more annoying? I especially hate the ones that expand to cover the article you're trying to read until you click on it to make it go away.

But that's the point. If the ads are really annoying, you'd probably be more willing to register in order to make them go away. And if registering brought other perks as well -- expanded comment options, access to sortable databases instead of static articles, expanded photo galleries, discussion boards -- suddenly registering might start to have value. For the best sites, people might even be willing to pay a reasonable fee. And publications could charge a premium for those non-annoying ads that they show to subscribers.

The basic idea -- free-but-annoying content to nonsubscribers, a much more rewarding experience for subscribers -- would preserve the publicity (and public influence) value of free content while providing a way for the creators to make money.

Even better would be if sites banded together to form a registration cooperative. That way, instead of having to register at dozens of different sites, you could register once and gain access to them all. Most of my objection to registering at multiple sites is the hassle of keeping track of them all.

Establishing a system of micropayments would help, too. If we all had something like a Paypal account, and accessing an article cost a penny, and payment was automated, most people would gladly pay without thinking about it. Reading 30 articles a day would cost you less than $10 a month. But for a blogger like me who gets about 3,000 hits a month, that would translate into $30 a month -- not a lot, but an order of magnitude more than I get now.

A site that got 1,000 hits a day would earn $3,600 a year -- not enough to live on, but not total chump change, either.

A site that got 10,000 hits a day would earn enough ($36,000) for the blogger to live on.

A site like Captain's Quarters, which gets 30,000 hits a day, would earn enough ($110,000) to be quite comfortable.

Any such micropayment system would be a huge target for fraud, as it would be very tempting to steal a penny or two from millions of people and end up with some serious cash. The safeguards would have to be robust. But again the general principle applies: people will start paying for content when the price is right and the mechanism is extremely convenient.

Now that the Times has abandoned its initiative, maybe it will throw its weight behind a push for such developments -- developments that are needed if the Internet is to mature into a true communications node, where great content -- provided by fairly compensated producers -- is just a click away.

blogging, politics, midtopia

Guest blogging at Stubborn Facts

I've been invited to guest blog over at Stubborn Facts for a couple of weeks while they're off getting their toes manicured. Or something like that....

My first post -- on the difference between "what's fair" and "what's legal" -- is up now. I'll post the full thing here at Midtopia tomorrow, and will probably cross-post simultaneously from here on out.

Thanks to Pat, Simon and Tully for the opportunity!

politics, midtopia

Bridge update

Some interesting political reactions to the 35W bridge collapse.

In Washington, the House quickly approved $250 million to rebuild it. That's rational, and unsurprising.

Here in Minnesota, Gov. Tim Pawlenty is suddenly willing to sign the gas-tax increase he vetoed in two previous sessions. He is expected to call a special session devoted exclusively to addressing years of deferred maintenance on highway infrastructure.

And state DFLers (Democrats to you out-of-state readers), to their credit, have been avoiding the blame game, focusing instead on what the policy reaction should be.

Of course, some things don't change. Lt. Gov. (and MNDOT Commissioner) Carol Molnau, whose political priorities have been opposing transit projects and the gas tax, crabbed about the change.

On a gas tax, she said, "we do need to look for resources we can count on long term." But in order to solve the problem, she said, "we would have to raise gas taxes 34 or 35 cents a gallon. I don't think the motoring public can sustain that."

First, let's just note that Molnau is scaremongering a bit: the gas tax is not the sole source of revenue for transportation spending.

But let's take her at face value. The gas tax is currently 20 cents a gallon, and has not been raised since 1988. You'd have to raise it 15 cents a gallon simply to account for inflation. Another 15 cents a gallon on top of that to deal with the backlog simply isn't that onerous -- and it's called being responsible.

Especially because, as I've argued before, the real problem is that gas isn't expensive enough. Not to mention the other benefits of forcing people make rational choices about energy use.

Important as it is to address the backlog of maintenance work, however, we should try to avoid overreacting to the problem. We're not going to suddenly have a rash of bridge collapses, and we shouldn't overspend on a frenzy of needless, emergency repair work. A crash maintenance program would:

1. Drive up the cost of the projects in the short term, thanks to scarcity of materials and labor;

2. Play havoc with travel times;

3. Lead to a repeat of #1 a few decades down the road, as all those freshly repaired bridges and roads start to wear out at the same time.

4. Make the whole thing less doable politically.

So it will be good if this disaster leads us to confront the consequences of deferred maintenance. But the response should take a medium view. Increase spending and move up repair timetables, but do it in such a way that the work (and cost) is spread out over a reasonable length of time, say 10 or 20 years.

Further, the cost of maintenance should be incorporated into our long-term planning, to ensure we're only building as much infrastructure as we're willing and able to maintain. Other considerations aside, there may be times when a light rail line or bus rapid transit will be the way to go because doing so saves on maintenance costs compared to a freeway of similar capacity.

I'm not at all confident that the response will be so measured. Instead, I expect to see a combination of two extremes: "spend a lot of money now" and "talk about it, but after the dust dies down continue doing little or nothing." With luck I will be pleasantly surprised, especially here in Minnesota.

35W bridge, politics, midtopia

Coulter update

We have news in the on-again, off-again Ann Coulter voting-fraud scandal.

When last we left our intrepid she-male, an FBI agent (rumored to be her ex-boyfriend) had made an unsolicited phone call to sheriff's office investigators claiming Coulter was a stalking victim -- a claim that dissolved under minor scrutiny. Whether related or not, the investigator subsequently closed the investigation after interviewing one person -- the poll worker who originally reported Coulter's misplaced vote.

Case closed, right? Not quite.

While most expected the conservative pundit to be off the hook for good when the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office punted a voting fraud probe in April, the Florida Elections Commission now is investigating....

Sadly, there could be far less here than meets the eye. The FEC investigation was prompted by a complaint -- a complaint filed by Democratic campaign consultant Richard Giorgio. So the mere fact that the FEC is investigating doesn't say much about the evidence against Coulter.

The only penalty the FEC can impose is a $2,000 fine. But fear not! They also can refer the case to various state legal offices for criminal prosecution.

Remember the Coulter Credo: "Hope for the jail term."

Coulter, politics, midtopia

Illegal raids, should-be-legal spying

A couple of interesting court rulings on the extent of government power.

CONGRESS OFF-LIMITS TO FBI
A federal appeals court has ruled that the FBI's raid on the legislative office of Rep. William Jefferson violated the Constitution, by allowing the executive branch to interfere with legislative business -- apparently because legislative documents were among those confiscated. It ordered the FBI to return those documents -- but not other, nonlegislative records.

That leaves unclear whether the FBI can use the remaining records in its case against Jefferson, or whether the appeals court has carved out a zone of criminal immunity inside the Capitol. Apparently that decision will be left up to the trial judge -- subject to appeal, of course.

At the time I thought that the FBI raid was legal, despite bipartisan Congressional objections, because the raid was narrowly focused and based around a properly grounded search warrant. And it seemed silly to establish a legal situation where a Congressman could safeguard incriminating documents simply by keeping them in his legislative office.

But that might be exactly what the court has established. While I recognize that Congress needs to be protected from executive-branch coercion, surely the Founders didn't envision an application that was so transparently stupid on a practical level. Nobody is above the law, not even Congressmen hiding out on Capitol Hill. This ruling gives Congress legal protections that not even the President has.

Update: The ever-dependable crew over at Stubborn Facts is assembling a legally informed view of the ruling. Here's the full text (pdf) of the ruling itself.

Update II: Pat at SF has now read the ruling, and I'm pleased to see that his opinion matches mine.

COURT RULING PROMPTS FISA REVISIONS
The Washington Post is reporting that earlier this year a FISA court judge ruled that the NSA cannot snoop on communications routing stations in the United States, even when both the sender and recipient are overseas.

This is a pretty big deal. FISA allows warrantless eavesdropping on foreign communications, but pretty much prevents it domestically. But thanks to the nature of the global telecommunications system -- and the evolution of the Internet -- a sizable chunk of foreign traffic is routed through servers in the United States. The FISA ruling placed a sizable chunk of that traffic off limits on a technicality.

While the ruling might have been technically correct -- I don't know -- it certainly violates the spirit of the original FISA law, as well as common sense. If it's legal to spy on the communications between two people, it shouldn't matter if that communication happens to be routed through American soil. The criteria should be based on the people being targeted, not the technical details of how they're communicating.

So Democrats are -- and should be -- scrambling to update the law so that such eavesdropping is legal again. And while in earlier years -- and a Republican majority -- Bush simply ignored laws he didn't like, now he is going about things the proper way, pushing Congress to make specific revisions to the law -- revisions that are much narrower than the sweeping, retroactive approval he sought from the previous Congress.

Of such small steps is respect for the rule of law made.

civil liberties, William Jefferson, eavesdropping, NSA, politics, midtopia

Ethics bill awaits Bush's signature

The Senate passed the ethics bill 83-14 last night, sending it to President Bush's desk for his signature, completing the end run around Sen. Jim DeMint.

Bush has indicated he might veto it. This makes little sense for two reasons. First, the bills passed with overwhelming majorities (the House vote was 411-8), so a veto would be symbolic, not substantive. Second, even if Bush thinks the bill is worthless, it only affects Congress and candidates (well, and executive branch officials who want to become lobbyists but don't want to have to wait two years to do so). So why does he care?

Never mind that his specific comments echo the "perfect or nothing" attitude of other critics, who attack the bill because it is weaker than the initial Senate version passed in January. Yes, it is; but it is also an improvement over the current rules. Should we throw out those improvements simply because they do not go far enough? Or should we instead view this bill as one step on a longer road?

But the funniest quote is from Mitch McConnell:

"This bill isn't nearly as tough as it would have been on earmarks if Republicans had been involved in writing it," McConnell said.

Uh-huh. Except that when Republicans were in power, they passed nothing. And while one might be tempted to blame Democrats for blocking those efforts, the fact is that Republican opposition was very, very steep as well. And Democratic actions aside, the proposed bill (HR 4975 of the 109th Congress) was weaker than the current bill.

For instance:

1. The ethics rules would only apply to the 11 big spending bills, and they would have sunsetted at the end of the year.

2. Instead of banning gifts from lobbyists, it simply required that such gifts be reported.

3. It didn't increase the wait time before members could become lobbyists.

4. It allowed members to accept privately funded travel.

5. Earmarks needed only be identified, including the sponsoring Congressmember. It didn't include, for instance, the requirement that the list be available 48 hours before the bill is voted on, or that members certify they have no financial interest in the earmark.

So claiming Republicans would have done it better rings just a little hollow.

McConnell does, however, get it right in the end:

"But weighing the good and the bad, many provisions are stronger than current law."

Exactly.

There are plenty of legitimate veto targets out there, notably the bloated water bill -- which, indeed, Bush has promised to veto. But the ethics bill isn't one of them.

ethics, politics, midtopia

Perspective

I tried to go over and see the downed bridge yesterday, but the police have blocked off access to all the obvious observation points. Which seems a bit misguided, given the hundreds of thousands of people who have some personal connection to the bridge, if only from driving over it thousands of times.

Meanwhile, Just to keep things in perspective, consider this: A bridge collapses in Minneapolis, killing at least five people and (it was thought at one time) as many as 30. It gets intense international media coverage, including television coverage from as far away as Japan.

Then yesterday, a train derailed in Congo, killing 100 people.

It merited a 10-line brief in my paper's world roundup.

For local media, it makes sense to focus on local events. And given that the bridge collapse occurred here, it makes sense that my paper would obsess over it. But I'm pretty sure the treatment would have been the same regardless. And I'm sure other papers had extensive coverage of the bridge collapse and the same short brief on the Congo crash -- if they mentioned it at all.

Again, for national media, it makes sense to pay more attention to homegrown events than things happening overseas. And for everyone, it's easier to get interested in stories where there is plenty of riveting video.

So this isn't an attempt to bash the media. But at the end of the day, 10 or 20 times as many people died in what must have been a horrific crash in Congo. Our local tragedy doesn't even begin to compare.

Count your blessings.

disaster, Minnesota, midtopia

Close calls

Frankly, I'm not in much of a mood for blogging today, as the Twin Cities absorbs the loss of the 35W bridge and the deaths of at least four and probably a couple of dozen people.

Traffic moved pretty well this morning, thanks to the state essentially turning an alternate highway into a freeway by turning off the traffic lights and blocking access from side streets. A new bridge will probably take two years to build, so they're also looking at longer-term fixes like turning road shoulders into extra lanes and things like that.

It seems like the bridge just got old and fatigued, and frequent inspections, while noting some issues, failed to spot the problems. Which may simply be a comment on how hard it can be to spot a weakening bridge.

One of my best friends from college normally is on that bridge around that time, commuting home. After the bridge fell, his wife spent a frantic hour or so trying to locate him, but the cellphone network was overloaded and she couldn't get through. Finally she sent her brother over to his office to look for his car. They found it; he had gotten stuck in a conference call. The bridge collapse and Twins game letting out meant he didn't get home until late into the night, but that was far better than the alternative.

Over at Centrisity, a friend of Flash's was on the centerspan that fell into the river. She's fine, but flip on over for a picture showing her car.

I work just a few blocks from the river. Later tonight I'm going to walk over and take a look.

Update: Added links to some of the information above. Meanwhile, the fingerpointing has already begun.

disaster, Minnesota, midtopia

Highway bridge collapses in Minneapolis

The Interstate 35W bridge across the Mississippi River in Minneapolis collapsed tonight, right at the end of rush hour.

So far, fatalities and injuries seem miraculously light, but that may just be a function of lack of information. It seems unlikely that there wouldn't be a substantial number of fatalities.

I don't use that bridge in my commute, although my wife drove across it twice earlier today. But we're all okay as are everybody we know.

Hope for the best.

Update: This is a major traffic artery. Tomorrow's commute is going to be a mess. And since it could take a year or more to rebuild the span, the Twin Cities are going to be a traffic mess for a long time.

disaster, Minnesota, midtopia

Congress passes ethics reform

The House finally joined the Senate in passing its ethics reform bill. Because objections from Republican Sen. Jim DeMint prevented the bill from going through conference committee, we have two curious effects: The law features different rules for the House and Senate, and the Senate will now have to vote on the new version before a unified bill becomes law.

The House on Tuesday overwhelmingly approved a sweeping lobbying and ethics reform bill on a 411-8 vote.

“We have kept our promise to drain the swamp that is Washington, D.C.,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said, adding that the legislation is “historic.”

Among the few dissenters was (of course) John Murtha. And for pure ironic humor, you can't beat this: over in the Senate, Ted Stevens has threatened to place a hold on the legislation.

Pelosi's grandiose words aside, this is a work in progress, not a finished product. For one thing, at least some of DeMint's fears appear justified: the House version appears to be less stringent than the Senate version in a few respects. (Here's the text (pdf) of the revised bill that the above link is working from.)

Are they key respects, however? Not really. Let's go through their objections:

The old version (passed by the Senate) required conference / committee reports to list all earmarks and required the chairman of the relevant committee to distribute the earmark list. But the new version of the bill allows the Majority Leader (as opposed to the Senate parliamentarian, a more objective judge) to determine whether or not a conference report complies with the disclosure requirements.

True, but minor. Somebody has to certify it. The Senate parliamentarian is by tradition nonpartisan and accorded a fair bit of deference, but s/he serves at the pleasure of the majority leader, so the distinction is less material than it might seem. That said, I'd support changing it back to the original.

The new version removes the requirement for earmark lists posted online to be in searchable format.

This appears to be simply wrong. For example, Page 68, line 6 and Page 69, line 3 expressly require a searchable format. The exception seems to be when a bill emerges from conference committee. The earmark data is still required to be publicly available 48 hours prior to vote, but the "searchable" requirement is missing (page 69, lines 22-24). Whether that's deliberate or simply a mistake, I don't know. But again it's a minor, easily fixed problem that doesn't change the underlying reporting requirement.

The new version removes the provision that prevented any bill from being considered at all prior to the disclosure of earmarks; now the text only prohibits a formal motion to proceed, which leaves open a procedural loophole that would allow bills to slip through without disclosure.

I'm no parliamentarian, but I'm not sure what loophole the writer envisions here. In the Senate, procedure is everything. Can someone tell me how a bill could reach the Senate floor for debate without a motion to proceed?

The old version prohibited earmarks which benefit a Member, their staff, or their family/their staff’s family. The new version waters that down and only prohibits earmarks that would “only” affect those parties --- which means so long as you can make a case that your shiny new project affects at least one person other than you positively, you’re all set.

This again appears to be wrong. Page 73, lines 8-11 require senators to certify that their relatives do not have a monetary interest in the item. That prohibition is fleshed out (and weakened somewhat) on Page 76, lines 3-12. But it does not go as far as the writer suggests.

It says no member may knowingly request an earmark if "a principle purpose" of the earmark is to benefit "only" the member, or members of his family, or (and this is the biggie) a "limited class of persons or enterprises" of which the member or his family is a member.

That language seems pretty reasonably drawn to prohibit narrowly directed self-benefit. It wouldn't, for instance, outlaw the kind of earmarks I wrote about a year ago, in which a project in a member's district benefits the member. Which only makes sense. Lawmakers live in their districts; a rule that banned earmarks that benefited lawmakers even indirectly or in a small way would be unworkable.

So this list appears to be a collection of mostly minor complaints, the strongest of which is the issue with the parliamentarian.

Now that we know what the bill doesn't do, here's what it does do:

1. Lawmakers must disclose "bundled" contributions of $15,000 or more from lobbyists.

2. Earmarks must be disclosed 48 hours in advance of a bill's consideration, along with the name of the Congressmember that requested it, the cost and a description of the project and the beneficiaries.

3. Senators and candidates would have to pay full charter fare to fly private jets. House members cannot fly in private planes.

4. Legislators and their staff may not accept gifts from lobbyists.

5. Senators must wait two years after leaving office to become lobbyists; House members must wait one year.

6. Lawmakers may not attempt to influence hiring decisions at lobbying firms -- a direct blow at the K Street Project idea.

Those are real reforms. Could Congress do more? Of course. Severe statutory restrictions on the number and value of earmarks would be a great idea, for instance, as well as some basic rules for justifying them. But Democrats can honestly say they've enacted more reforms than any Congress in recent memory. And Republican criticisms ring pretty hollow considering it was their misbehavior that led to Democrats promising such reform. Anything this Congress does will be more than the previous Republican Congresses did.

The next step -- after passage of the final bill -- is to watch and see how and if members try to get around the rules. There will almost certainly be some unintended consequences that will need to be fixed, which could be an opening for weakening some of the rules. Democrats have talked the talk and walked the walk as far as passing the legislation goes; now we have to see if they'll walk the walk as far as following it.

But it's a good start, and deserving of praise.

ethics, politics, midtopia

Gonzales update

The White House has sent Congress a letter that apparently backs up Alberto Gonzales' contention that when he said there was "no serious dispute" about NSA eavesdropping, he may have been technically correct -- the dispute was, as I discussed yesterday, over the NSA's data-mining program.

Also, thanks to PatHMV for pointing out the transcript (pdf) of James Comey's testimony before Congress, in which Comey repeatedly refuses to identify the program that prompted a nighttime visit to John Ashcroft's hospital room. That means that in order to believe Gonzales you don't have to call Comey a liar, and vice versa, restoring the possibility that they're both telling the truth. If that bears out then it will end this particular sideshow to the prosecutor scandal, returning attention to the main question of who fired the prosecutors, and why.

Meanwhile, a few Democratic hotheads in the House, led by Rep. Jay Inslee of Washington, want introduce a resolution calling for an impeachment investigation of Gonzales.

Even allowing for the fact that the resolution calls for an investigation, not impeachment itself, such a call is breathtakingly premature, and it has drawn scant support even among Democrats. Most importantly, there's no indication that the resolution, once submitted, would ever reemerge from committee. So chalk it up as simply one more piece of evidence pointing to Gonzales lack of support outside the Oval Office -- though Dick Cheney thinks he's doing a good job, too.

Gonzales, politics, midtopia

Improvement in Iraq? You be the judge

Two members of the liberal Brookings Institute, Michael O'Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack, are just back from a trip to Iraq -- and they are pumped.

Here is the most important thing Americans need to understand: We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms. As two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration’s miserable handling of Iraq, we were surprised by the gains we saw and the potential to produce not necessarily “victory” but a sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis could live with.

Wow! That's pretty cool.

But who are these guys, who say they have harshly criticized the Bush administration? As Glenn Greenwald points out, they've been war supporters since 2003. And that "harsh criticism"? They don't like the way Bush has executed things. In retrospect, that is; they tended to praise it as it went along.

This doesn't mean that they're wrong, and it would be very nice to think that they're right. But a war supporter claiming things are turning around is hardly surprising -- indeed, it's a mantra we've heard repeatedly at various points in the fighting. And the deceptive way in which they described their history with the war doesn't enhance their credibility.

I'd examine the specific points they make and decide whether they're significant, and take their overview comments with a grain of salt -- while waiting for September to come so we can make judgements based on fact, not biased opinion.

Update: Greenwald has yet another go at the pair, citing yet more writings showing that their support for the war has been pretty much constant -- including advocating a "surge" of troops before Bush ever proposed one.

Iraq, politics, midtopia

Et cetera

Finishing off the day, a roundup of outrage, humor and the merely interesting:

IRAQI PARLIAMENT ADJOURNS FOR AUGUST
Ignoring pleas from the United States, legislators took their month-long recess. They won't be back until Sept. 4, making it that much harder to make progress on the various "benchmark" laws we are asking them to pass. The report on the military surge in the Baghdad area will be due in September, and now it's highly unlikely that we will be able to point to any legislative successes to accompany it. Which makes it that much more unlikely that voters will support our continued presence. Even worse is that the main culprit is the government of Prime Minister Nouri al_Maliki, not rebellious members of Parliament.

HE IS DEAD TO US
After Newt Gingrich declined to defend Alberto Gonzales during his appearance this weekend on Fox News Sunday, host Chris Wallace dropped this little bomb: "By the way, we invited White House officials and Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee to defend Attorney General Gonzales. We had no takers."

SURGEON GENERAL REPORT 'NOT POLITICAL ENOUGH'
A 2006 report commissioned by former Surgeon General Richard Carmona -- on the link between poverty and poor health -- was held up by a political appointee with no background in medicine or public health because the report wasn't political enough. That's according to several current and former health officials. The appointee, Will Steiger, acknowledged he told Carmona the report needed to promote administration policies, but he denied that that dispute held up its release; he said the report was delayed because of "sloppy work, poor analysis and lack of scientific rigor." Steiger is the scion of a well-connected Republican family; his expertise is in education and Latin American history. And a "former administration official" said the report is just one of several that the administration has bottled up because they didn't like the conclusions.

Gonzales, Iraq, Carmona, politics, midtopia

Gonzales the truthteller?

The New York Times (alert, "liberal media" claimants) has a go at absolving Alberto Gonzales of lying to Congress.

The question, you may recall (primer here), involves whether Gonzales lied to Congress about the amount of internal dissent over the NSA eavesdropping program. There were three possible answers:

1. Yes.

2. No, because being a misleading weasel he was referring to the later, modified version of the program rather than the earlier, controversial one.

3. No, because he was referring to a totally separate program.

Earlier stories suggested the answer was #2, but the Times story suggests that it's #3, and that Gonzales was referring to the NSA data-mining program, not the warrantless eavesdropping program.

There's some self-congratulation at work here, inasmuch as the Times first broke the story of the data-mining effort. But it's a plausible explanation.

The only problem is, if the Times is right, why did James Comey -- the man whose testimony set off this whole controversy -- suggest that the whole thing was about the eavesdropping program, not the data-mining effort? Both of them can't be right, can they?

They can -- if we accept the premise that both Comey and Gonzales were punctilious about details to the point of silliness.

Take this scenario out for a spin:

The "eavesdropping program", broadly defined, includes both data-mining and wiretapping.

When it came time to reauthorize it, the data-mining provision was far more controversial than the wiretapping provision.

So the confrontation at the hospital was mostly about the data-mining provision, but it was all part of the decision whether to reauthorize the overall eavesdropping program.

Thus Comey is right when he describes the confrontation in the context of the eavesdropping program. And Gonzales is right when he splits the program into parts in order to make a distinction between the publicly admitted wiretapping effort and the still-unadmitted data-mining effort.

But neither Comey nor Gonzales bothers to clarify their testimony -- despite it being abundantly clear that their comments have caused confusion -- because doing so would require admitting the existence of the data-mining effort.

That's a pretty tortuous path of speculation and assumption in order to show that neither man lied. And it doesn't explain why they couldn't simply explain the distinction in private briefings. So to adopt this scenario, you must further believe that the Congressmembers have been so briefed, and are posing knowingly misleading and false questions to Gonzales in public simply to embarrass him.

Even if you believe that about Democrats, why would you believe it about the Republicans on the panel? And what would keep Gonzales from making a pointed rebuttal, along the lines of "I've explained all that in private, as you well know, Senator"? So that, too, seems unlikely.

All in all, it seems difficult to reconcile Gonzales' and Comey's testimony in a way that results in outcome #3. Might the Times story be correct? Yes. But if it is, then Comey either lied or misled. Of the two, though, Gonzales is less trustworthy and had more incentive to lie. So the answer seems more likely to be #2, with #1 as a possibility.

Update: Tully over at Stubborn Facts does, indeed, assume the worst about the members of Congress. He doesn't address the inconsistencies with that theory, though.

NSA, Comey, Gonzales, politics, midtopia

Spitzer's apology

New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer had an op-ed piece in Sunday's New York Times, discussing -- and apologizing for -- his office's misuse of state troopers in an attempt to dig dirt on Republican Senate majority leader Joseph Bruno.

He starts out by stating categorically that "what members of my administration did was wrong -- no ifs, ands or buts."

He then goes into a short summary of what happened, followed by his response: suspending one advisor and transferring another.

The piece represents an interesting strategy. In my earlier post I called this "Spitzer's Plamegate" because of the similarities between the two cases. But there's a key difference here.

In the Plame case, the Bush administration denied any impropriety at all, prompting investigations, a special prosecutor and a years-long scandal.

Spitzer, on the other hand, essentially admits to the charges against his administration. That more or less makes moot Bruno's threats of investigations and hearings, because Spitzer has already pleaded guilty to what such an investigation might hope to prove: impropriety, not illegality.

Spitzer appears to hope that derailing those investigations will make the scandal blow over quickly and not linger on to impede his policy agenda -- though there will be lingering problems thanks to his sour relationship with Bruno.

It's worth a shot, but it's probably a forlorn hope. Setting aside Bruno's personal pique and the political hay to be made by dragging out this embarassing episode, state Senate Republicans will note that one unanswered question is "who knew what when" -- in other words, was Spitzer part of the effort, or unaware as he claims?

That's a legitimate question, though the apparent lack of any possible illegality puts a limit on how aggressively and intrusively the Senate can pursue it. If Spitzer really wants to kill this scandal, he's going to have to give them an answer -- with documentation, if possible. Otherwise he gives them a premise to continue to flog the issue for months.

Senate Republicans, for their part, need to avoid overreaching and accept a reasonable solution if one is offered. That's not just simple fairness: Spitzer is a lot more popular than Bush, and an aggressively political investigation will backfire on them, especially now that Spitzer has donned a hairshirt over it.

Spitzer, New York, politics, midtopia

White House flip-flops

The White House has issued new information clarifying its flip-flops -- or rather, clarifying that flip-flops are forbidden.

signs have popped up at various White House entrances -- including the press entrance and the staff and visitors' entrance at the southwest gate -- along with e-mails to staff members, to remind everyone, particularly tour groups, that, even in these times of sinking poll numbers, proper attire is to be maintained.

The e-mail reminder was all in capital letters. It advised that there would be no jeans, sneakers, shorts, miniskirts, T-shirts, tank tops and -- with boldface added -- "NO FLIP FLOPS."

Dress code for staff? Make it tophat and tails. Dress code for reporters? Sure; it's a working environment.

Dress code for tourists that outlaws standard tourist attire? That's a bit odd. Especially because they apparently don't tell you about it until you've reached the front of the tour line. At which point you have to leave, change your clothes, and come back.

I actually have a hard time believing the White House would do that, so somebody please debunk this if possible. The White House web page explaining the tour rules doesn't mention any clothing requirements. It also mentions that tours must be arranged through your member of Congress, so perhaps would-be tourists get alerted to the dress code sometime prior to their arrival.

And overall -- is the sight of casually dressed citizens touring a building that belongs to them really so unbearable that it must be banned?

Goofs.

White House, politics, midtopia

White House on Gonzales

The White House has come out in defense of Alberto Gonzales' truthfulness -- but, of course, they can't tell you why.

Mr. Snow said, in effect, that Mr. Gonzales had been constrained in what he could say because there was a danger he would divulge classified material. “I understand it’s difficult to parse, because what you have involved here are matters of classification,” Mr. Snow said. “Sometimes it’s going to lead people to talk very carefully, and there’s going to be plenty of room for interpretation or conclusion.”

I'm not entirely clear how this could be true. The program was either the eavesdropping program or a different program. We know about the first, and Gonzales has already essentially said the second. How does making it clear that two different programs were being discussed compromise security any more than it already has?

And even if true, the White House is always free to brief the Congress members. After all, we're often told that Congress sees the same intelligence briefings that the President does.

Color this intriguing, but a bit lacking in punch without any supporting details. I don't expect the administration to publish sensitive information, but I do expect them to go beyond a mere assertion when making a claim like this. "I'd tell you but then I'd have to kill you" is a joke, not a legitimate rhetorical tactic.

Gonzales, politics, midtopia

Redistricting update

In Wednesday's post about a new redistricting algorithm, I focused on the technical specifics of the proposed method, and the pros and cons that made it different from previous proposals.

I deliberately avoided delving into all the standing arguments about how best to draw districts, largely because I've discussed them in tedious detail before. But judging by the comments and e-mails I've received, a quick overview would be useful.

The complicating factor is that there are situations where gerrymandering produces a better result than a purely nonpartisan approach. That's because redistricting involves several legitimate but competing principles:

1. District boundaries should make geographic sense.

2. District boundaries should be nonpartisan.

3. The makeup of Congress should reflect the makeup of the citizenry. If a given group makes up 15 percent of the citizens, it should probably have about 15 percent of the Congressional seats.

4. Districts should be socially coherent, so that their representative can truly represent them. A suburban neighborhood on the edge of the city, for instance, is better grouped with a suburban district with similar demographics than an urban district with which it has nothing in common.

The problem is that #4 is highly subjective, and it's hard to get #3 if you want both #2 and #1. For instance, assuming minorities are somewhat evenly spread through the population, a totally nonpartisan approach would create zero districts where blacks, say, are a majority -- greatly reducing the political power of black voters.

So one consequence of a completely objective method for drawing districts would probably be a steep drop in the number of minority members of Congress.

That doesn't feel right. That's why increasing minority representation is one of the few legal exceptions to the "no excessive gerrymandering" rules.

Besides leading to travesties like District 12 on the above map of North Carolina, such efforts created a whole new set of problems. Republicans, for instance, found that if you draw those minority districts right you not only get more minorities but you also get more safe Republican seats. Republicans gained 10 House seats in the 1992 elections -- 12 of them in states where minority districts had been created. Gains in those states, in other words, offset losses elsewhere.

This, in turn, has contributed to careerism and the alarming polarization of national politics, because someone with a safe seat is free to demagogue as much as they like, and it's harder to find common ground with other legislators. Why would a representative from poor inner-city Detroit care about the issues most dear to people in suburban Orange County, Calif.? Or vice versa? Their constituents have almost nothing in common.

If more districts were politically and racially mixed, you might find more legislators with direct experience and interest in a range of issues, making sane policy and pragmatic compromises more likely.

The problems don't end there.

Once you allow gerrymandering for one purpose, it opens the door for a whole host of questions, like: How much gerrymandering is too much? If it's okay to gerrymander for race, how about gender or religion or other demographic features? You end up having to engage in a lot more arbitrary, complicated and difficult-to-defend line-drawing than if you simply ban the practice altogether.

And while we must recognize race as a political force, why should we encourage it? Being willfully color-blind often disguises residual racism, but that doesn't mean we should build racial assumptions into the very structure of our political system. Perhaps if we stop reinforcing the idea that race should be a factor in politics, it will stop being as much of a factor.

In the end, while #3 and #4 are commendable ideals, in my book they come in second to #1 and #2. As an extension of adjusting the algorithm to account for existing political boundaries I'm willing to accept very minor adjustments to a district's boundaries in order to nudge it over into "minority" status. That will result in fewer minority districts, but more than if no adjusting were done at all.

To minorities who say that such a move destroys their political power, I'd say "join the club." Speaking as an agnostic political moderate, I can confidently say my views aren't proportionately represented in Congress, either.

The solution to that is to organize politically to create a voice out of proportion to your numbers. It worked for the religious right; it works for unions; it can work for racial groups, too. And it has the added advantage of making a given minority's concerns part of the political calculus of a far larger number of Congressmembers. Sufficiently organized, that could result in far greater political influence than could every be achieved by packing minorities into their own districts.

Even better would be to stop viewing representation through the prism of race and start organizing around specific issues instead. Symbolically important as minorities in Congress can be, would black voters, for instance, really prefer a black representative with whom they totally disagree, or a white representative whose positions they support?

Here in Minnesota, one of the main political divides is rural vs. urban. I find it difficult to believe that a rural black has more in common politically with an urban black than with a fellow rural dweller of any color.

In sum, then, the collective good of removing politics from the redistricting process generally outweighs the collective good of proportional representation. The first should be the priority, while the second should be a bonus to be added where possible -- but only if it doesn't derail the whole shebang.

redistricting, politics, midtopia

Tidbits

Some interesting nonpolitical stories that crossed my path today:

RULE BRITTANIA
Britain has decided to build two new aircraft carriers, each about 65,000 tons. They will be the largest ships ever to serve with the Royal Navy, three times the size of Britain's current carriers: three Invincible-class ships displacing just 20,600 tons. Even so, they pale in comparison to the American Nimitz class carriers, which tip the scales at 102,000 tons.

What makes this particularly interesting is that very few countries are building new carriers. China is trying to base one off the unfinished hull of an old Soviet carrier, the Varyag; France is considering adding a second carrier similar in size to the new British ones; India, Italy and Spain are all either building or thinking of building small carriers in the Invincible range. But that's it. American naval supremacy has really put a damper on the construction of large capital ships.

A FURRY GRIM REAPER
Oscar, a cat that lives in a nursing home in Rhode Island has an uncanny ability to identify patients that are about to die. He curls up next to them shortly before they die. He's apparently so reliable that the nursing home calls family members when he chooses someone, because it usually means the patient has less than four hours to live.

It takes more than anecdotal evidence to prove a phenomenon, of course, including strict observation to see how Oscar interacts with healthy patients, what separates a "choosing" from other behaviors, and the like. But the cat apparently does a better job of predicting deaths than the human doctors at the home. And it's easy to at least imagine cues that might guide her behavior -- changes in a patient's smell, for example, or breathing or movement. Spooky, in any case.

cat, Royal Navy, midtopia

Bush's "Al Qaeda" mantra

President Bush gave a speech earlier this week in which he laid out his view of Al-Qaeda's influence, presence and history in Iraq. It's a bit of a classic, both for what it admits and what it doesn't, and the most recent example of what I recently called his "rhetorical war" in Iraq.

His main point seems to be proving that AQ is in Iraq. That makes the whole speech is a bit of misdirection, inasmuch as nobody denies their presence. Critics tend to point out that AQ in Iraq accounts for a small minority of the combatants we face and that its ties to AQ Central are not that of a directly-controlled subsidiary, but of a loosely associated "affiliate."

The problem is that Bush tends to paint all of our adversaries in Iraq as being part of AQ, which simply is not true.

Some excerpts and my responses:

Al Qaeda in Iraq was founded by a Jordanian terrorist, not an Iraqi. His name was Abu Musab al Zarqawi.

Okey-doke.

In 2001, coalition forces destroyed Zarqawi's Afghan training camp, and he fled the country and he went to Iraq, where he set up operations with terrorist associates long before the arrival of coalition forces.

Uh-huh. In a part of Iraq not controlled by Saddam. Here Bush admits (despite himself) that there was no terror link with Iraq prior to our invasion.

In the violence and instability following Saddam's fall, Zarqawi was able to expand dramatically the size, scope, and lethality of his operation.

He elides over the fact that this expansion was made possible by our lack of troops, the disbanding of the Iraqi army, and myriad other missteps on our part thanks to the fatuous nature of our occupation plan.

In 2004, Zarqawi and his terrorist group formally joined al Qaida, pledged allegiance to Osama bin Laden, and he promised to "follow his orders in jihad."

Again, as an affiliate, not a wholly owned subsidiary.

the Zarqawi-bin Laden merger gave al Qaida in Iraq -- quote -- "prestige among potential recruits and financiers." The merger also gave al Qaida's senior leadership -- quote -- "a foothold in Iraq to extend its geographic presence ... to plot external operations ... and to tout the centrality of the jihad in Iraq to solicit direct monetary support elsewhere."

In other words, as critics have said for years, our invasion gave AQ a huge boost in recruiting and fundraising.

The merger between al Qaida and its Iraqi affiliate is an alliance of killers -- and that is why the finest military in the world is on their trail.

Except he gets his causation exactly backwards. AQ in Iraq exists because we invaded, not the other way around. And if Zarqawi was a proximate cause of our decision to invade, why didn't we try to take him or his camp out earlier?

Zarqawi was killed by U.S. forces in June 2006. He was replaced by another foreigner -- an Egyptian named Abu Ayyub al-Masri. His ties to the al Qaida senior leadership are deep and longstanding.... Many of al-Qaida in Iraq's senior leaders are foreign terrorists.

Okay.

Many of al Qaida in Iraq's other senior leaders are also foreign terrorists.

Eliding over the fact that most of the organization is Iraqi -- and those native members were not fighting us before we invaded Iraq. But that's almost irrelevant. Once again, Bush focuses on proving details about AQ while ignoring the larger fact that AQ in Iraq is only a small part of the total resistance.

"Our intelligence community concludes that `al-Qaida and its regional node in Iraq are united in their overarching strategy' and they say they that al-Qaida's senior leaders and their operatives in Iraq `see al-Qaida in Iraq as part of al-Qaida's decentralized chain of command, not as a separate group.'"

However they see themselves, the fact remains: AQ in Iraq is a separate group that was not involved in 9/11, because it did not exist before we invaded Iraq. Even if it has now allied itself with AQ, it is still not the same group that attacked us on 9/11.

You might wonder why some in Washington insist on making this distinction about the enemy in Iraq. It's because they know that if they can convince America we're not fighting bin Laden's al Qaida there, they can paint the battle in Iraq as a distraction from the real war on terror.

Bush's favorite "some people say" strawman is on full display here. He says the distinction between AQ and AQ in Iraq isn't important, and on one level he's right: they're both groups of bad people that deserve a few 500-pound bombs dropped on their heads. But the distinction is important -- just not for the reason Bush claims. It's important because the president keeps insisting that AQ in Iraq consists of the same people who attacked us on 9/11, and that's simply untrue.

Separately, Iraq is a distraction not because AQ in Iraq is a bunch of goldfish fanciers; it's a distraction because:

1. We helped create AQ in Iraq;

2. In order to fight AQ's 10 percent of the resistance we're also having to fight the other 90 percent -- people who weren't shooting at us before we invaded;

3. It's tying up our military and costing hundreds of billions of dollars, resources that could be put to much better use elsewhere;

4. It's making AQ stronger.

al Qaida is the only jihadist group in Iraq with stated ambitions to make the country a base for attacks outside Iraq.

Ambitions are highly distinct from capabilities. The one attack they pulled off, bombing a wedding in Jordan, backfired hugely on them.

Al Qaida in Iraq shares Osama bin Laden's goal of making Iraq a base for its radical Islamic empire, and using it as a safe haven for attacks on America.

Thing is, Iraq is never going to be fertile ground for AQ, even if we leave. Especially if we leave. Iraq is not a conservative, tribal country like Afghanistan, where a significant portion of the people and leadership support AQ's atavistic brand of Sunni fundamentalism. If we leave, who is going to support them? The Shiite majority? No. Shiite Iran? No. The Kurds? No. Even the Sunnis are getting heartily sick of them and their fanaticism, tolerating them largely because of our presence. If we leave, AQ in Iraq will find themselves besieged from all sides. They may well persist, but it would be no safe haven.

Further, our withdrawal may hasten the marginalization of AQ's fanatics. Because the day AQ blows up innocent Muslim Arabs without our presence as an excuse is the day they lose.

Bush's only real strategy these days appears to be "gotta keep fighting; gotta keep fighting." While doggedness in war can be a good trait, it's not particularly helpful if we're fighting the wrong fight. Is Iraq the best way -- or even an effective way -- to combat terrorism? Bush's own words and intelligence reports suggest the answer is "no."

Iraq, terrorism, Bush, politics, midtopia