Dan Kennedy raises the right questions regarding Scott Ritter.

I never considered Ritter to be a particularly effective spokesman against the war. I think his critics tended to twist his words to exaggerate the contradictions in his positions, but there were nonetheless some unresolved issues there. But, as Dan Kennedy says:

There has still barely been a word about this in the national media. But the fact remains that someone leaked sealed court documents about a leading (if misleading) critic of the White House's Iraq policy on the eve of a likely military invasion. Is anyone in the media going to get to the bottom of this?

This even more relevant now that the Feds have apparently gotten ahold of the case and are considering filing charges.

(via Interesting Times, who has some information about one of the involved Judges).

Listen to Rush's great hit song!

All hail Suckful!

MWO gets it exactly right:


When Bush is through with the courts, the most serious charge possible in a case like this will be "defacing government property."

Well, this is fascinating...

A number of sources close to the council said the Thacker nomination was pushed by the council's controversial executive director, Pat Ware, an African American woman allied with the Family Research Council and other conservative Christian groups and a vocal proponent of abstinence as an AIDS prevention method. Ware referred media calls to the White House.

A member of the council said Ware has made several comments to gay members of the council suggesting that gay white men are responsible for infecting the African American community with AIDS. Others confirmed that Ware and her allies among conservative Christian groups have promoted that theory.

"It is very clear that increasingly people within the Christian right and in the conservative movement are seeking to blame gay white men for the spread of the epidemic," said A. Cornelius Baker, executive director of the Whitman-Walker Clinic in Washington, an AIDS treatment organization. "Not only that, they are seeking to blame white gay men for the plight of African Americans in this disease. It is unacceptable.

"As an African American, I find this whole attempt to create division and wedges in our community one that is intolerable. It is a lie, and it is a lie that we cannot buy into."

Now, what on Earth could encourage this bunch to appoint a black woman who blames gay white men for the problems of African Americans.....

Oh Jeebus. Looted again.

The federal agency that insures the pensions of some 44 million Americans has been pounded by a succession of big corporate bankruptcies and has burned through its entire $8 billion surplus in one year.

The agency, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, provides protection to retirees in case of a failure, much as the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation protects depositors when a bank fails. Though it can continue to make its current payments, the agency is expected to disclose a deficit of $1 billion to $2 billion at the end of this month.

Its soundness is likely to deteriorate further in the coming months, as more bankrupt companies find themselves unable to fulfill their promises to tens of thousands of present and future retirees. US Airways, United Airlines and Kmart are among the companies struggling to emerge from bankruptcy protection under the weight of large underfunded pension plans.

Been busy...more later/tomorrow...

Bose has stopped purchasing ads on Limbaugh.

I look forward to Norah Vincent's condemnation of this. Any attempts to pressure corporate sponsors are, in her eyes, unconstitutional.

Wampum Blog has the Best Post Ever. Make sure to read to the end.

More Lott

The man with the super long permalinks, Arch Pundit, tells us about the cost of doing a survey, and has some other comments on survey methodology as does Ted Barlow.

Tim Lambert continues with the daily update, including giving us the revelation that Mary Rosh posted Lott's "new survey questions" on usenet, despite him having promised not too. Make sure you check out "Lott of the Rings" at the Bottom.

[do you have an obsession with guys named Lott?-.ed. Perhaps!]

Generally a good way to make the head of an economist explode is to ask him or her "is a weak dollar good or bad for the economy?" Partially it's because it isn't quite the right question, and partially because there isn't a simple answer. But, in any case, it is definitely bad for the price of European Vacations. $1.08 per Euro. Wow.

I posted a version of this in the comments at Hit and Run here, but I'll repeat:

It is weird how there's this cabal of Bellesiles worshipping gun control fetishists out there who are obsessed with finding revenge. I mean, I haven't met one. I haven't read one. I was never invited to the meeting.

I'm not saying they don't exist, but I would like them to be, well named. As far as I can tell most of the people who are looking into the John Lott situation are former supporters.

My own objections of Lott have not much to do with caring about the gun issue, and nothing to do with Bellesiles. It's all about exposing a huckster who has leveraged his supposed credibility into other areas.


Kierhan Healy has more:

I picked the brains of a few people who know more about sampling methods than me about this topic. In each case, I had trouble getting to the weights issue because they were laughing so much at the background information. Lott says he has no dataset, no paper records of any kind, no memory of the precise wording of questions in the survey instrument, and no recollection of the names of the students involved in the data collection. He did not apply for any funding, paid for the survey out of his own pocket, and did not collect the data via a phonebank. Instead, "one of the students had a program to randomly sample the telephone numbers by state. My guess is that it was part of the [marketing] CD [he obtained from an unknown source and no longer has], but on that point I can't be sure." Lott claims that he had two students on the job, working from their own phones, and they "had also gotten others that they knew from other campuses from places such as I think the University of Illinois at Chicago circle (but I am not sure that I remember this accurately)." Did they all get copies of the CD and its "program"? Did Lott do anything to oversee the data collection and coding? How was it all collated? Phone surveys have low response rates. Getting 2,424 respondents would have meant the RAs made at least twice that number of calls. That's a lot of long-distance calls to be making from your dorm room.

From Betty Bowers.

They're giving your tax money to Bill Clinton!!!

Tim Dunlop has come up with the best way to argue against the tax cut.

For the life of me I couldn't figure out what the hell William F. Buckley was trying to say in his New York Times op-ed the first time I read it, and I wasn't going to waste any more precious moments of my existence reading it again. But, Jeff Hauser has this to say about Buckley (in email):


ONE CHARACTERISTIC OF MODERATES IS TO ACCEPT RIGHT WINGERS AS PEOPLE TOO: HOWEVER, THOSE WHO A) OPPOSED CIVIL RIGHTS AND B) HAVEN'T BEEN 100% CONTRITE SINCE SHOULD C) BE PUBLICLY VERBOTEN. Heck, I'd be okay with getting rid of the contrition exception (i.e., how bad is Robert Byrd's presence as a leader in the Dem caucus), but let's take the first step and worry about even greater purity down the line.
Anyway, the NYT publishes an op-ed by William F. Buckley. . . on racial preferences vis-a-vis legacy admissions?

COMPARE:

William F. Buckley, Jr.

In 1955, a few short years after finishing college, William F. Buckley founded the National Review, which continues to be an influential journal of conservative opinion. Buckley's opposition to federal civil rights measures, including the 1964 Civil Rights Act, has remained unchanged. In a recent debate this year on his television show, "Firing Line," he was questioned by ACLU president Ira Glasser:

Glasser: In 1961, you said you were "not ready to abandon the ideal of local government in order to kill Jim Crow."

Buckley: That's true.

Glasser: You ought to be ashamed of that now. Are you?

Buckley: No In order to advance them [blacks], certain cultural changes, including education, had to be done Whether it should have been turned over to the federal government, in my judgment, it ought not to have been."

Yes, perhaps someone can correct me - but I'm not aware that Buckley has ever disavowed his explicitly racist pro-segregationist views of the past. Why the hell would the N.Y. Times allow him, of all people, to write an op-ed on the subject? Damn that conservative Howell Raines!

Neal Pollack has an advance copy of the State of the Union.

Oliver may have found Iraq's secret Weapon of Mass Destruction.


Get this...

it's..

OIL.

Don't forget to give poor Wolf Blitzer his daily stress..

I'll follow Josh Marshall's lead and acknowledge that the Time story about the confederate wreath may be a wee bit bogus. Oops, just went to check - apparently it IS definitely bogus. I'm not sure why some people have accused me of lacking credibility for daring to link to a Time story. But let this serve as a lesson to us all - never trust a goddamn thing written by Michael Weisskopf.

Oh boy, wasting money to buy drug ads during the Superbowl. Well, after a 6 pack or so I'm sure they'll be good for a giggle.