Last Year's Best Magazine Article Tells Story
Of How the Bush White House Really Works

As the Bush White House's serial disasters--from missing WMDs to the botched Katrina response to the Scooter Libby trial and then the fired U.S. Attorneys--begin to pile onto one another in accelerating fashion, it's getting hard to digest one disaster before the next one hits. They all have much in common, of course. At the bottom of them all is a blatant disregard for the rule of law and a basic inability to tell the truth. And at the bottom of all of that is a man named David Addington, who may be the purest expression of the heart of darkness at the center of the Cheney-Bush White House.

Last July, Jane Mayer of the New Yorker magazine published an eye-opening profile of this lawyer who serves as Dick Cheney's chief of staff and longtime principal legal advisor, a man so secretive and ruthlessly effective that he has been dubbed "Cheney's Cheney." It gets my vote for the best magazine piece published in the U.S. in 2006.

Mayer is a remarkable writer and equally remarkable investigative reporter. Formerly with the Wall Street Journal, in the mid-'90s she teamed with then-fellow-WSJ reporter Jill Abramson (now managing editor of the New York Times) to write a devastating book, Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas, that told the real story behind Thomas' shameful Senate nomination hearings. Piercing the elder Bush's smokescreens was no doubt good training for untangling his son's far more serious brand of lawlessness.

Beginning his career in the general counsel's office of the CIA, Addington later became a special assistant and then general counsel of the Pentagon during Dick Cheney's term as secretary of defense, under the elder Bush. But even earlier, during the Reagan presidency, Addington was a rabid true believer. Mayer writes that "his sentiment about congressional overseers was best captured during a hearing about covert actions in Central America, when he responded to tough questioning by muttering the word 'assholes.'" She goes on to describe how he became the chief legal architect behind several of the most lawless features of the Bush II White House, including the president's executive order erecting secret military commissions and the raft of signing statements accompanying new legislation (which have tended to absurdly suggest that the White House disputes the clear intent of the legislation's language). He's even said to be the originator of then-White-House-Counsel Alberto Gonzales's infamous declaration that the Geneva Conventions are "quaint" and thus non-binding on the U.S. as it went about erecting its own answer to the infamous string of Soviet-era prisons for secretly detaining terror suspects.

And the point of all of these actions? Mayer concludes that along with his patron Dick Cheney, Addington (who is pictured in an illustration gleefully putting a copy of the U.S. Constitution through an office shredder) is fighting for post-Watergate restoration of presidential power. And if you have to shred the Constitution to do it, well, that's just a small price to pay.

Was Dick Cheney Unconstitutional?

Law professor Glenn Reynolds explores that question in this recent law review essay. His findings: the kind of extreme delegation of presidential authority to the VP that happened in the Bush-Cheney administration was probably unconstitutional. That finding carries all the more weight given that Reynolds is a conservative, and the man behind a widely followed conservative blog, Instapundit. Naturally, we've had plenty of mentions of the nefarious one over the last six-plus years. But we'd especially point you to this uniquely impressive piece by the New Yorker's Jane Meyer (which we picked as the best magazine article of 2006), which was the first to comprehensively document how the Veep's office hijacked the presidency. The Washington Post's Barton Gellman followed up not long after that with an equally impressive and richly reported series (which ultimately won him a Pulitzer) about Cheney. It was eventually expanded into a book. As long as you're on the subject, I'd also recommend a well-done piece published in The Nation a few months ago, which explored Cheney's "dispiriting legacy." Here's hoping Obama's Attorney General, tarred by his own ethically compromised past during the Clinton Administration (he shamefully approved a pardon of fugitive financier Marc Rich), will withstand the pressure from centrists and the Obama kumbaya crowd and appoint a special prosecutor to look into the question of torture and related outrages. Nothing works better than light as a disinfectant, and this dark chapter in American history should not be forgotten, but culled for lessons about how to prevent its reoccurrence.

Quickies

Strap on your helmet. We'll be traveling pretty fast today.

Reaching Out to Citizens, Not Just the Usual Suspects. In an open letter to the new superintendant of the Cleveland Schools, the always-insightful Bill Callahan does a particularly fine job of explaining the difference between reaching out to the usual suspects in "the community" and staying in touch with average citizens, who will eventually be asked to vote on a school levy. Let's hope Mr. Sanders eventually reads this and reflects on its wisdom.

A Poetic Twist on Yet Another Plagiarism Scandal. NPR's On the Media, aired on Saturday afternoons, is one of the small jewels of the network. It can be lost amid all the larger, gaudier Hope diamonds (Morning Edition, All Things Considered, Fresh Air, etc.), but it's always worth tuning in. Last week's fill-in for co-host Bob Garfield, a fellow named Mike Pescas, had an inspired riff on the whole dreary Opal Mehta/Kaavya Viswanathan plagiarism story. He invited listeners to think of the affair as their ancestors in the Elizabeathan age might have: by putting it into perspective, and realizing that all writers borrow from others. Parts of her book, he argued, "had the unfortunate character of already having been written." He ended this way: "Eventually, plagiarists will be treated like hack comics. You can steal a joke, but not a career."

Cut and Run? You Bet. That's the headline on this piece in the new issue of Foreign Policy magazine, written by Lt. General William Odom. The subhead is similarly pointed: "Why America must get out of Iraq now." It closely echoes the message that Congressman Jack Murtha has been sharing with anyone who will listen, which is an increasing majority of the country. "In reality," he writes, "a civil war in Iraq began just weeks after U.S. forces toppled Saddam." As for the argument that withdrawal would undermine U.S. credibility around the world, he says, "were the United States a middling power, this case might hold some water. But for the world's only superpower, it's patently phoney. A rapid reversal of our present course in Iraq would improve U.S. credibility around the world." Interestingly, he seems to have some pretty serious conservative credentials. He's a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and was director of the now-infamous National Security Agency during the Reagan years. If you like to keep up on the world with well-written, authoritative reports, you might consider periodically adding FP's new blog to your reading list.

Jones Day is Everywhere You Want to Be. I was surprised--or on second thought, perhaps, not so surprised--to learn that our favorite hometown (well, sort of) corporate law firm has at least a tangential role in Lewis "Scooter" Libby's defense. The former Dick Cheney aide, dubbed "Dick Cheney's Dick Cheney," became the first White House staff member to be indicted in over a century. And today, the Washington Post reports that he's singing to prosecutors about Cheney's personal role in going after Joe Wilson and his wife, the CIA agent Valerie Plame. Anyway, according to this week's New York Observer, the Jones Day California office is part of Libby's far-flung, high-powered defense team. That couldn't perchance, be the L.A. office, where my friend Adele Eisner's daughter (Samantha) toils as a presumably overpaid young associate?

Santorum Nearly Toast? Some time ago, I mentioned an excellent New Yorker piece which examined the shifting politics of the abortion debate through the lense of the Pennsylvania Senate race. I'm thrilled to learn from The New Republic that the neanderthal incumbent, Rick Santorum, seems destined for a loss. TNR: "Even Republicans have privately started to refer to Santorum's campaign as a lost cause and are lobbying party leaders to shift money to more promising contests." We can only hope. I've written before about how the U.S. Senate, once home to enough old lions with safe seats and sufficiently high character to focus more on what's best for the country than partisan concerns (people like Pat Moynihan, Sam Nunn, George Mitchell, Bill Bradley and some others) has in recent years become a place filled with too many ignorant demagogues. These chuckleheads bring disgrace to the chamber where Daniel Webster and Abe Lincoln once spoke to our better nature, and Santorum is certainly high on that list, if not at the top. Let's keep our fingers crossed on this race, shall we?

Can this be the trade mag PR Week? I loved this Q&A with the infamous (at least in some circles) British muckraker Greg Palast. The walking quote machine wonderfully riffs about how U.S. papers shy away from investigative journalism, opting instead for the straightjacket of "acceptable discourse," as defined by elites. "Forget Watergate and Woodward and Bernstein; Woodward himself today would never, in a million years, as managing editor of The Washington Post, publish the Watergate story. It's official denial against an unnameable source. Forget it." Asked if he's ever thought of writing for U.S. outlets, he responds brightly: "Considered? That's the whole idea. I don't like being in journalistic exile. I don't like my words trying to swim across the Atlantic. They could drown..." But he's not holding his breath, either. Over the years, he's taken plenty of shots at the American media's timidity, and "when you pee on these outlets, they pee back."

And from an equally unexpected source, the ordinarily lame U.S. News & World Report, comes this powerful piece about how police across the country are using the post-9/11 atmophere to ramp up their spying. It's a deeply reported and well-written account, covering crucial ground I haven't seen covered anywhere else (most other outlets have their hands full just scrambling to keep track of the D.C.-based "security" outrages emanating from the federal government). Here are a few important highlights, but I urge you to read the entire piece, and perhaps share it with friends. "A U.S. News inquiry found that federal officials have funneled hundreds of millions of dollars into once discredited state and local police intelligence operations. Millions more have gone into building up regional law enforcement databases to unprecedented levels...Good or bad, intelligence gathering by local police departments is back...Among the changes: Since 9/11, the U.S. Dept. of Justice and Homeland Security have poured over a half-billion dollars into building up local and state police intelligence units reaching into nearly every state." Let's hope all serious media outlets keep close watch on this, along with the well-funded American Civil Liberties Union, which has been getting bogged down in other really pressing matters, like policing the internal dissent of its board members as they object to the latest outrage from this numbskull executive director, late of the Ford Foundation. Just kind of makes you shake your head...

Love's Leftovers and Veep's Duck & Weave

Valentine's Day Leftovers. Yesterday, I told you about that marvelous National Geographic cover story with the Valentine's Day theme. Here are two more great pieces I saw on the same subject. One was from the Washington Post's Hank Stuever, who may well be without peers as a daily newspaper feature writer. Another came via a link from the formidable Bookslut: a lovely piece in the Seattle paper about how some enterprising Belgian librarians are using the lure of reading as a way to make libraries hubs for meeting dates. That sure beats getting matchmaker help from your Aunt Betty.

Will Cheney Also Have to Bar WaPo From Air Force II? A couple of years ago, the wider world learned from a Sunday Times Week in Review article what portions of the media no doubt knew for some time before: that New York Times correspondents were routinely barred from traveling directly with Vice President Dick Cheney on his official airplane. That raised lots of eyebrows, but it was also a point of pride with the paper. They just kept on covering him the same way (probably, at least subconsciously, even more thoroughly). But the question hung unspoken in the air: why weren't other papers similarly targetted? Had they been soft on the Veep by comparison?

The Washington Post, its traditional rival for bragging rights as the country's best paper (NYU prof Jay Rosen, prolific author of the influential Pressthink blog has famously argued that the Post is now actually in the lead) was once far more forgiving of this administration, especially in the early stages of its march to war. Lately, the paper that ultimately cooked Nixon's goose has done plenty of catching up about the Bush crowd's similar (or worse) abuses of power. This piece by longtime Post writer and editor David Ignatius puts the issues starkly. After noting some parallels between Ted Kennedy's Chappaquiddick incident and Cheney's failure to notify the world about his shooting, he ends this way: "When critics question the legality of the administration's actions, Bush and Cheney assert the commander in chief's power under Article II of the Constitution. When Congress passes a law forbidding torture, the White House appends a signing statement insisting that Article II -- the power of the commander in chief -- trumps everything else. When the administration's Republican friends suggest amending the wiretapping law to make its program legal, the administration refuses. Let's say it plainly: This is the arrogance of power, and it has gone too far in the Bush White House."

Meanwhile, columnist Eugene Robinson, who has been unmercifully pounding away at the White House's arrogance for months, blasts away again today. I think he draws more blood than most, because of the breezier, more conversational tone he can take as a metro columnist (and also because he's a skilled and brutally honest writer). I just hope the rest of the press continues to pound away on all of this arrogance. The health of the republic depends upon it.

The Bush Administration's Legacy:
Militarizing American Intelligence

Late last year, the New York Times broke one of the most important national security stories in many years: the news that the Bush White House had chosen to unilaterally circumvent a law which obligated it to seek court approval to secretly spy on Americans. Since then, we've heard endless debate about whether the newspaper was or was not right to have held the story (either for additional reporting or to assess the danger of ignoring the government's request to suppress it) for a year. We saw endless debate about whether the impending publication of a book (State of War--The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration) by the same author was what really got the paper off the fence. What we haven't heard enough about, I think, is what, precisely, is contained in the book. And so, gentle reader, I purchased it, read it, marked it up and will now tell you about what I consider the high points.

To his credit, author James Risen makes a number of unequivocal statements that helps readers understand what happened. He argues that "the CIA has been so deeply politicized by the Bush Administration that its credibiility has vanished." He nicely describes how, time and time again, Secretary of Defense Donald "Rumsfeld simply ignored decisions made by the president in front of his war cabinet," so that "the president of the United States did not always have the last word in the Bush Administration." He writes that "officials at the White House and the Pentagon convinced themselves that the lack of planning (for post-invasion Iraq scenarios) was in reality a visionary approach."

He tells the unbelievable story of a Cleveland physician of Iraqi descent, Dr. Sawsan Alhaddad (as it happens, a first cousin of my friend, the writer Ayad Rahim), who was recruited by the CIA to go to Iraq before the war to gather intelligence on the country's nuclear program from her brother, who worked as an engineer in Sadaam's system. He explained to her that there was no weapons program: the UN embargo had worked only too well, choking off the country's access to all the ingredients needed for a bomb. There was only one problem: all the 30 or so such first-hand eyewitness reports gathered by the CIA were later ignored.

All of them--some thirty--had said the same thing. They all reported to the CIA that the scientists had said that Iraq's programs to develop nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons had long since been abandoned. Charlie Allen's program to use family members to contact dozens of Iraqi scientists had garnered remarkable results and given the CIA an accurate assessment of the abandoned state of Iraq's weapons programs months before the U.S. invasion in March 2003. CIA officials ignored the evidence and refused to even disseminate the reports from the family members to senior policy makers in the Bush Adminstration. Sources say that the CIA's Directorate of Operations, which was supposed to be in charge of all of the agency's clandestine intelligence operations, was jealous of Allen's incursions into its operational turf and shut down his program and denigrated its results. President Bush never heard about the visits or the interviews.

Not that that would have necessarily changed anything. The upshot of all of this bungling and bullying: an historic perversion of how the country is supposed to (and has since the dawn of the Cold War) separate its foreign intelligence capabilities from its military power.

Risen writes: "The dominant power relationship was between Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney, who in effect was the president's real national security advisor. Rumsfeld had been Dick Cheney's mentor and boss long before the younger man became v.p. To others in the administration, mystified by the process--or lack of a process--it eventually became evident that Cheney and Rumsfeld had a back channel where the real decision making was taking place, and that larger meetings were often irrelevant. The result was that the Bush Administration was the first presidency in modern history in which the Pentagon served as the overwhelming center of gravity for U.S. foreign policy."

UPDATE: A former senior CIA policy analyst says much the same thing in this article in the current issue of Foreign Affairs.

Floating the Dump-Cheney Baloon

Things have gotten so bad for the Republican ticket that the party is slyly raising the issue of possibly dumping the potty-mouthed, ailing-hearted Veep, who has really been running the country for three and a half years, mostly into the ground.

Dick Cheney, whom Jon Stewart once referred to as "the human embodiment of a grumble," is truly a piece of work, my friends. Why even bother writing fiction when you have such a real-life character as he to simply describe? What novelist is imaginative enough to summon such a person?

Here's a guy, a quiet Wyoming native, who begins his career climb as the cooly efficient young chief of staff for one of the most-moderate, most-decent presidents in U.S. history, Gerald Ford. And 30 years later, he has become the living embodiment of the Ugly American, a cowardly man who dodged the draft himself but who nevertheless has the balls to publicly question the patriotism of a certifiable war hero named John Kerry. Who is the intellectual architect of an administration whose FCC (rightly or wrongly, depending on your view) cracks down on mild indecency on the airwaves but who then personally tells a sitting U.S. Senator to "go fuck yourself" on the hallowed floor of the Senate! Perhaps only his shrink can explain how one keeps intellectual company with vicious neocons who would savagely dismiss his own lesbian daughter's humanity (what, precisely, does he tell that poor woman in private?) Average Americans, who are shrewd enough to spot a ringer, have awarded him with a disastrous 21% approval rating, according to the latest polls, which are finally getting the attention of even this dimwitted gang in the White House.

But I hope to god they keep the Old Grumble right where we can see him. Because if they do, we'll get the unique and historic treat, come early October, of seeing this vile ignoramus try to debate a truly charismatic, optimistic guy named John Edwards. The Veep debate will be on the campus of Case Western Reserve University, and the competition for tickets should be intense (I'm told that our influential colleague Sandy Piderit, whose dean is hoping to keep her from jumping to Harvard or Stanford B Schools for a seven-figure pay package, has been given 100 to distribute as she sees fit. Just slip your ticket request, wrapped in a newly minted $100 bill, under her office door). And we'll see if the supposedly callow "Breck Girl" (as the Times' increasingly shrill and daft columnist Maureen Dowd calls Edwards) can keep up with this wily old Beltway veteran. Unfortunately for Dick, in this venue, the two gladiators won't be able to fall back upon their wealthy connections or their vast network of informants sprinkled throughout the vast federal bureaucracy. They won't be able to set up rogue operations to feed them the information they want. And they won't be able to keep the door closed as they gather cabals of industry lobbyists to draft the legislation which is supposed to regulate their industries. They can cut all the sleazy wink-wink deals they want with old cronies who now sit on the Supreme Court, but it won't help them a bit here.

In a public debate, all they can rely on are their brains, their hearts, their records and their ability to articulate all of that into some coherent narrative about why a democratic people should trust their team, and them, to lead them into the future. I think the Bush-Cheney re-election machine is rightly beginning to worry if grim old Dick is up to that task.

Help Dick Cheney Begin His Book, Or
From Leading the Cheers to the Jeers

The Washington Post, which once sadly helped lead the cheers for the Dick Cheney administration's disastrous Iraq war, now wants to lead the jeers about his memoirs. It asks readers to propose an opening paragraph, and plans to publish the best. We liked the Post better when it was less focused on such fluff and more focused on traditional stuff, like keeping governments honest. So what would your paragraph be?

Puncturing Cheney Spin With Humor

Last week, in an appearance on the Letterman show, Al Franken did a marvelous job of breaking through the ridiculous White House spin that Cheney’s hunting accident was not as big a deal as the media has made it out to be. In his signature fashion, he did so simply by asking for a show of hands from the audience: “who has ever shot a friend in the face?” No one in the audience raised their hands (though they did laugh), but the moment became even more memorable when the band’s entire horn section raised their hands. Franken, the former longtime writer for Saturday Night Live, has moved back to his native Minnesota, the base from which he now produces his Air America radio show. And he's also seriously considering a run for the U.S. Senate. To some, that might seem an odd fit for the funny man, but we could do a lot worse: like about half of the right-wing Republicans currently in the Senate. With these intellectually challenged Cro-Magnons (to say nothing of their humor deficit), the joke's actually on their constituents, and indeed the entire country.

Newsweek & Wolcott Hit High Notes

Newsweeklies have been a dying category for years. Time, the grandaddy of the bunch, the institution that invented the format, remains (just barely) the flagship of the largest media company in the world (sister pub People has a far higher readership and makes lots more money). And while it's still probably the best of the Big Three, it can never come close to the agenda-setting role it once played in the news media. U.S. News & World Report is of course the poor cousin of the trio. Owned by the idiot developer Mort Zuckerman, it took one last grasp at respectability a decade ago, hiring the respected Jim Fallows as editor. He cleaned house and tried to turn the ship around, but the experiment went bust after just a couple of years when Zuckerman tired of his employee's Ivy League journalism tutorial and sent him packing. Now the mag is mostly known for its annual college rankings, which produce millions in ad revenue but have been widely condemned for doing serious harm to higher education.

But Newsweek may be the biggest mystery of all. It's owned by the Washington Post Company, which is pretty good at journalism. But they've let the magazine flail around in recent years, trying to find itself by dressing up in Serious Journalism while chasing this or that passing middle class fad. The cover packages often draw titters in journalism, seeming to alternate between big, solemn coverage of pseudo trends (inevitably tarted up as the New This or the New That) or soft porn for the masses, masquerading as medical stories (funny, but breast cancer and the like always seem to get top billing). But really: Who needs all that stuff when the downmarket TV beckons?

But Newsweek partially redeemed itself last week, by producing one of its best roundup articles in years, this stylish and well-reported piece about the mysterious soul of Dick Cheney. Unfortunately, it seems to take a half dozen of the mag's biggest guns to pull it off (see all the reporters' taglines at the end of the piece). The best part of the article: we learn that Cheney has had seven press secretaries, all apparently thoroughly scared of the guy. One was once asked if the Veep attended church on Sunday. "The spokesperson confessed she really couldn't ask the veep: the question was just 'too personal.'"

Meanwhile, Vanity Fair's ace columnist James Wolcott, who cut his teeth at the Village Voice many years ago, just keeps getting better and better. I think his column is now invariably the best thing in an otherwise very good magazine. That's partly because VF's former marquee columnist, Chris Hitchens, has been off his game for the last couple years while he's been off his rocker about the Iraq war and the Bush Administration (and media columnist Michael Wolff has never regained that must-read buzz that won him a National Magazine award back when he was writing weekly in New York Magazine). But it's also because Wolcott is a unique and remarkable talent: a polished stylist and also an incomparable cultural critic, one who routinely tackles the biggest subjects with the sharpest pen. While his VF columns are easily his best work, he also does a hell of a job on his blog. For proof, check this coverage of the Oscars, which I found more interesting than anything I read anywhere else, online or off.

This Month's Best Lead

'In one of the essays in "Regards," John Gregory Dunne recalls attending a screenwriter's funeral in Beverly Hills, Calif. During the service, his friend Gore Vidal leaned over and asked, "are you working?" No, Mr. Dunne thinks, he "had no intention of using the scene in a book," but "yes, it was always there waiting to be retrieved." So, he concludes, "the answer to Gore Vidal's question should have been, 'Always.'"
--from a Michiko Kakutani review of John Gregory Dunne's essay collection in last week's New York Times.

Meanwhile, we don't want to discriminate against great paragraphs, simply because they happened not to appear at the beginning of an article. Here's a wonderful riff from an article in the current Economist ("Ready, Fire, Aim") on Dick Cheney's hunting accident:

'Mr. Cheney's own expedition was a lot closer to "Gosford Park" than the "Deer Hunter"--a group of fat old toffs waiting for wildlife to be flushed towards them at huge expense. There has also been a huge increase in so-called "exotic hunting"--where guests not only go after indiginous species such as wolves and bears, but also blast away at imported zebras and giraffes. Convenience is essential for the hedge fund crowd. Most exotic hunts take place in ranches from which the animals can't escape (Texas has 600). Exotic hunters can shoot elephants from cars or from the backs of other elephants, sometimes the orphaned calves of the victims of previous hunts. For the truly lazy, there is "just-in-time shooting," where animals are trained to turn up at certain times, and "Internet shooting," where you can guide the gun from your desk. All this removes much of the inconvenience from hunting. It also removes its main justification, that it is the most natural way of culling local wildlife.'

Maybe All It Takes Is One Tough Democrat

I was in Youngstown not long ago, collecting oral histories for an historical project about the Mahoning Valley. And the most absorbing subject of all was a tough old guy named Don, a former steelworker who later became a politically well-connected lawyer and judge. I drove him around town a bit, and he would occasionally ask me to stop the car, so that he could talk to this person or that. He nodded to all the cops, whom he obviously knew. Later, as we slowly climbed the back stairs to his office (he now walks with the aid of a cane) I noticed he didn't lock the door. "They always bug me about locking the door," he said of his young partners and his daughter, also an attorney, "but who the hell's gonna rob us? We already represent most of the crooks in town."

His workplace was a museum, a testament to his decades at the intersection of local and national politics and the law. The pictures covered every available inch of his large office (where a sign on the wall said: Crime pays, but politics pays better) and the even larger conference room. The war stories, prompted by my questions about particular photos, unfolded over several hours. My favorite? He recalled once picking up Truman when he came to Youngstown as an ex-pres, and how the tough old Kansas City haberdasher demanded his mid-day drink. When he poured Truman a drink of bourbon in the hotel suite, the ex-pres didn't mince words. "What kinda fuckin' drink is that?" he asked of his young gopher, who quickly filled the glass to the top.

Eventually the talk got around to present-day politics, as I knew it would, and Don began shaking his head about how weak, how seemingly scared of their own shadows the national Democrats were these days in the face of the Republican onslaught over the war in Iraq. Jesus, he said, these guys never served, and a guy who was a military hero, Kerry, couldn't make the point that he'd be better on defense? If only he were 20 years older, he seemed to be suggesting, he'd get up out of that chair and show those sissies how to play the old smash-mouth brand of politics.

I immediately thought of him when Congressman Jack Murtha uncorked his righteous protest about the war this week. His timing was exquisite: according to the polls, about two-thirds of the country now, finally, understands that the Bush-Cheney imperium has no clothes, and can't be trusted any longer with protecting American lives. Some adults in the Congress will have to step up and see to it that that's taken care of. And who better than Murtha, a legendary strong-defense Dem of the sort that mostly no longer roams the halls of Congress. The jowly Pennsylvanian, a former Marine drill sergeant, knows he'll get the full attention of the Republican wind machine, and he sounds ready for it. As I watched him blow through the cuddly centrism of PBS's Newshour and knock down the tired Rove-Cheney evasions like so many toy soldiers, for a moment, he almost reminded me of Sam Ervin, the crafty country lawyer who slowly worked his way through the layers of Nixonian smoke screens, educating his countrymen about democracy's checks and balances as he went. God seems to place these characters from central casting in the middle of our democratic drama when they're needed most.

I think Murtha's natural charm has much to do with the part of the world he comes from. The Cleveland-Youngstown-Pittsburgh corridor was once called America's Ruhr Valley, for obvious reasons. And these areas were once ruled by tough old ethnic working-class politicians like Don. Murtha is squarely in that tradition, a no-bullshit Democrat who doesn't bother catering to the sillier whims of the national party, and who thus isn't saddled with any of its prissy baggage. In the current New Yorker, Peter Boyer wonderfully describes how a guy named Casey, the son of the former governor, is running strongly for a Pennsylvania Senate seat against the right-winger Rick Santorum by sticking to simple platform that mostly mirrors his constituency. Like his constituents, he's squarely for the right to bear arms and against abortion.

Murtha's opposition to the war may or may not prove to be the tipping point in finally bringing some sanity to this invertebrate Congress. But he is certainly a timely reminder about what authentic leadership looks like. The old Marine taught us a lesson this week about intestinal fortitude and how to stand up to bullies, including those with five draft deferments. We'll soon find out if the country is paying attention.

One Death Has Turned My Anger at Bush Crowd to Rage

When this blog was just a few days old, last April to be specific, I wrote about the tragic death of the talented and influential journalist Michael Kelly, who died as an embedded observor of his second Iraqi conflict. It was one of the first deaths of the war, and it sent shock waves throughout the small community of people who care about great writing and reporting. He was a superstar in that world, but then it's a modest little world, relatively speaking. But this morning brings the even more haunting news of the death of a guy who will quickly become a much larger martyr to the savage arrogance of this ignorant gang that occupies the upper rungs of our government.

Pat Tillman became an instant American folk hero last year when he walked away from a million-dollar-plus-a-year contract as an NFL cornerback to quietly volunteer to serve as an $18,000-a-year Army Ranger. He told friends that he was shaken by the events of 9/11 and felt the need to pay back some of the advantages he had been given. As far as I know, he NEVER spoke to a single member of the media about his uniquely inspiring decision, thus earning even a greater measure of respect--awe, really--from those who watched this incredible story unfold. Through his initial selflessness and his subsequent insistence on avoiding all attention, he became the embodiment of what patriotism is, or should be, all about.

Now, in death, he will offer one last incredible, mind-numbing service to his country: illustrating to even the dimmest among us that this war has been a disaster unique in American history, for which the architects must pay with their jobs and then their reputations, their names dragged through the mud of history as the bullies and cowards they are. As the tart-tongued Ariana Huffington observes today in Salon, speaking of the shocking disclosures in the new Bob Woodward book, the shame isn't reserved solely for the obvious moral villains of the drama such as Boy Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld, but also for the secondary tier of advisors who knew better but didn't speak up: "Woodward's portrait of this last group is particularly damning: an assemblage of cowards and sycophants who knew full well that the truth was being sacrificed on the altar of Dick Cheney's "fevered" obsession with Saddam, but who did nothing to stop the butchery. A very special Circle of Hell must be reserved for them."

Indeed, there's plenty of blame to go around. But that's for other days (and elections). Today is Pat Tillman's day. May this brave and inspiring American accomplish in death what even he could not do in life: teach us lessons about the inevitable limits of powerful people's cleverness, and about their almost unlimited potential to do the world harm.

Enough Is Enough: We Need To Impeach
That Arrogant, Reckless Fool Right Now

I don't know what it was about this story that just put me over the top with disgust for this ignorant, reckless, clown of a president we've been saddled with for the last seven years. No, I take that back--it was this passage:

Friends of his from Texas were shocked recently to find him nearly wild-eyed, thumping himself on the chest three times while he repeated 'I am the president!" He also made it clear he was setting Iraq up so his successor could not get out of "our country's destiny.'

Never in our history have we had a president who so blatantly thumbed his nose--his whole body, really--at our entire democratic system, our way of doing things, and the sacred understanding between leaders and led. Nixon in all his tortured scheming never came close to this level of blatant disregard for the electorate's wishes. I say run him out of town, kick his sorry ass back to Texas, and let him clear brush for the rest of his days. Send Cheney along to keep him company.

Tuesday Stuff

News Flash: Former congressman is the last person in America to learn that Dick Cheney doesn't give a damn what the public thinks. I think you can safely credit his fake surprise to the fact that he's hawking his new book. After all, as a co-founder of one of the architectural pillars of hard-right conservative theology (the Heritage Foundation), he's certainly no political naif.

Why Sex Scandals are Good for America. The German magazine Der Spiegel offers its take from across the Atlantic.

Onion Peels. The satirical publication The Onion has some ideas about McCain's possible running mates.

Parents of Teenagers Seen Dancing in the Street. They're celebrating the possibility that this anti-sagging-pants law could spread.

Never Stop Networking. Finally, with the economic storm clouds gathering, Fortune has some good ideas about how you can make your job more recession-proof. Pay special attention to this one: "Never stop networking. Of course, the day you get a pink slip is not the day you want to start calling old colleagues, asking former bosses out to lunch, and getting in touch to say hello to all the interesting people you've known over the years. No, the time to start doing that is now." Do please take that to heart, y'all. If I had a dime for every old friend and acquaintance who's suddenly feverishly interested in spending time with me shortly after losing their job (but who tends to disappear while gainfully employed), I could buy you all lunch. Hell, maybe I will anyway! The point, though, is this: stay in touch with your network on an ongoing basis, not just when you need something. Because good networks are like banks. And if you're only making withdrawals, pretty soon, there's nothing left to withdraw. Enough said about that.

Most of The Country
May Have Moved On,
But One 70ish Scribe
Emphatically Has Not

Just when you think the impending presidential election will finally prevent the Bush White house from starting any new hostilities shortly before the scheduled regime change in the U.S., a veteran reporter named Sy Hersh tears back the curtain again on what is perhaps history's most secretive American administration and shows the unpleasant realities at the heart of the corrupt Cheney co-presidency. The Veep and his henchmen continue to collectively motor on in their path of destruction right down to the last hour, as if it were one big cyborg sent from a future century to kill everything in its path.

In recent weeks, we witnessed far too much obligatory praise of the late Tim Russert and his supposedly fine, aggressive journalism. But I ask you--did official Washington really hold him close to its bosom and elevate him to a pedestal because he was adept at digging into its dirty laundry and challenging its basic assumptions as a member of the Fourth Estate, or because he subtly served as a megaphone for the conventional wisdom?

Since Russert's death, many have observed that the most serious kinds of journalists inspire not admiration so much as fear in their subjects. Sy Hersh is of course one of those kinds of reporters, and he has been for 40 years (since he broke the news of the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam war, earning a Pulitzer prize in the process). This past week, he was at it again, breaking the news of secret Congressional approval of a new pot of money with which the White House can make trouble in Iran, possibly touching off a reaction that could be used as a pretext to make war on one more Middle Eastern nation. This splendid interview he did with Terri Gross on NPR's Fresh Air is a nice companion piece to the article. I hope you'll closely read and listen to them both when you have the time.

We've mentioned Sy Hersh several times in the past. We've perhaps implied it before, but let us be more explicit now: Seymour Hersh is a national treasure.

Monday Stuff

Greider the Great. Veteran journalist Bill Greider may have discontinued his blog since I last enthused about him five years ago, but he's still telling it like it is. Are you listening, America?

Wickedly Funny & Wickedly True. Check out these brilliant animated editorial cartoons from Ann Telnaes. Despite having earned a Pulitzer some years ago, she's not terribly well-known. But judging by this brilliant stuff (I especially loved the Sarah Palin wind-up doll and the Dick Cheney cartoons) she should be.

Science Fans, Take Note: Wired Magazine announces its top ten amazing physics videos. Pay attention, you arts & sciences and humanities majors. Though you apparently sometimes seem to think it's fashionable to look down your noses at science and technology "nerds," a truly enlightened and educated person should be able to appreciate great science like they appreciate great art, since achieving greatness in either realm requires roughly equal amounts of genius, insight, perspiration and inspiration. We may not think we know (or can ever know) much about physics, but let's at least try, shall we?

A Culture of Life, With a Few Qualifications. We loved the Sarah Palin interview the other night with Charlie Gibson. But there was one moment that was particularly revealing, and too little commented upon, we thought. Seconds after she answered a question about abortion, and responded by saying she's just flatly and across the board in favor of "a culture of life," Gibson asked about guns. A nice juxtaposition, we thought. Was she against a ban on assault rifles? he asked. The answer of course was no. Now, I ask you: how can you be for a culture of life when it comes to abortion but not when it comes to heinous street crimes? Do these people ever experience even a little cognitive dissonance in pushing such absurdly self-defeating, inconsistent arguments? Apparently not.

Oh, Great. Cheer up, short folks. While your lack of stature may make it all but impossible for you to become, say, the president of the United States, it also makes you a less likely candidate for prostrate cancer, according to new research. Here's hoping my 6'-2" frame will shrink some in coming years.

Finally, to the Baltimore Sun TV columnist who recently denounced the sainted Bill Moyers as "a political ideologue and a propagandist" rather than a journalist, even likening him to Fox's resident demagogue Bill O'Reilly, I suggest the poor fellow either get a clue or expand his understanding of what constitutes journalism. It means gathering facts and trying to understand the world, and then sharing it with an audience--that's all. Which Moyers does better than all but a handful of people now working in the field. If you don't like his conclusions, tough. But he's 100 times the journalist you'll ever be, Mr. Zurawik. By all means, you continue to take dictation and serve as a careful, politically middle-of-the-road stenographer, if you like. The Moyers of the world will keep probing much deeper and more fearlessly present what they find to be true, no matter whom it might piss off. Hats off to PBS for sticking to its guns on this issue and riding through the tremendous roar of outrage from the right. Nothing less than the soul of American public broadcasting is at stake here.

We're Serving Holiday Leftovers

Items Left Over From the Holiday Season. If you're like most people, you tend to be in the giving spirit at year's end. But how about the rest of the year? For Cleveland-area readers, here's a good list of nonprofits and their various needs. While it was published last month, I'm guessing these organizations are just as much in need now as they were during the lead-up to the holiday season. And for those of you hyperorganized enough to begin thinking about next Christmas, if there are indeed any such animals out there, here are a couple of gift guides worth checking out (please note that all I really need for Christmas is this fun little toy to keep me occupied during bouts of writer's block). Finally, this interesting piece explores some of Charles Dickens' holiday stories that have tended to get a little lost in the glare of his enduring monster hit, A Christmas Story.

Michelle Marks Her Tenth Anniversary in Style. Michelle O'Neil, a newish Clevelander and a blogger of my recent acquaintance, turns her blog over to her husband for a note about their tenth anniversary, and then touchingly writes about it herself. Congratulations, Michelle and Todd. While you're over at her place, you might as well also check out this nice riff about how the first "chapter book" she ever read as a child turned Michelle on to lifelong reading. Isn't that how it works for most of us? Sometime soon, I'll take her cue, and tell you about the book that did it for me as a kid, back in Depression-era dustbowl Oklahoma (just kidding about time and place). I'll be eager to hear your stories as well. So thanks for the great idea, Michelle.

I'm Glad at Least One Bulldog Reporter Hasn't Forgotten Cheney. Newsweek's Ace Investigator Mike Isikoff, a name you may remember from le affair Lewinsky, keeps digging on the crucial story of how the Veep and his henchmen have systematically subverted the Constitution. Most of the rest of the media has clearly moved on to newer, fresher outrages. But this one is the gift that keeps giving for those with the attention span to keep at it. And Isikoff is as tenacious and untiring as anyone, famously walking away from the Washington Post in a huff when the paper refused to run one of his tougher pieces, and decamping to its sister publication. Take a bow, Mr. I.

It's Nice to Be Noticed. Former Plain Dealer reporter Bill Sloat, who apparently decided to use some of his severance pay from the staff buyout/downsizing to found the blog The Daily Bellwether, gets this nice tip of the hat from popular Slate media columnist Jack Shafer. It's well-deserved recognition. And here's a public thanks to Bill for having recently added this blog to his links.

The Rest of the Story with Leona's Parting Gifts. Not long ago, the media was awash in stories about how the late "Queen of Mean," Leona Helmsley, left a bequest of several million dollars to her pooch. But the always-interesting Chronicle of Philanthropy recently reported that her total bequests to charity, about $4 billion, landed her in the top spot of charitable givers this year. That may not be quite as titillating a story as giving your dog a few million bucks, but it would be hard to argue that it's a story not worth adding to the Leona files. But I've yet to see it picked up anywhere else.

NYT Book Blog Calls in Reinforcements. The writer behind the New York Times' popular Paper Cuts blog congratulates himself for his 250th post, and then announces that henceforth he'll be getting some help, as the blog turns into a group effort. He also writes this interesting riff on the mixed blessings of feeding the hungry beast that is any good blog. "Writing Paper Cuts has been, lo this past five or six months, great fun and a great, interesting mental derangement - it’s been a bit like taking in an outsize, very friendly stray dog, one that begs for food two or three times a day, sheds on your furniture, slobbers on your best shoes and dumps on the lawn. All in, fundamentally, a good way." That sounds about right.

Too Many Words

'Axe, cut, compress, condense, decrease, delete, drop, eliminate, eradicate, excise, hone, lop, pare, prune, reduce, remove, revise, rewrite, sharpen, slash, streamline, tighten, trim, whittle. … Two dozen words to remind us that we almost always write too many words.'
-- Theodore A. Rees Cheney, author of Getting the Words Right: How to Revise, Edit, and Rewrite

Why Orwell's Warnings
Haven't Lost Any Punch

'A man may take a drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and innacurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier to us to have foolish thoughts.'
--George Orwell, writing 60 years ago in his justly celebrated essay Politics and the English Language.

'Don Rumsfeld is the finest Secretary of Defense the nation has ever had.'
--Vice President Dick Cheney, speaking yesterday at Rumsfeld's going-away ceremony.

Question for the 9/11 Conspiracy Theorists:
How Could Clumsy Bush Crowd Pull It Off?

It sickened me to watch and read some of the inevitable coverage of yesterday's fifth anniversary of 9/11. Our idiot president's televised address to the nation was particularly revolting. It all reminded me of the best bumper sticker I've seen lately--"Is it 2008 yet?"--a minimalist lament on how long we've had to put up with this crowd, and how tiresome it's become for lots of Americans.

At the same time, all the tangled conspiracy theories about how the American government supposedly was behind the attacks are getting pretty silly (heck, if there was some substance to them, don't you think Oliver Stone would have made his 9/11 movie about that, rather than about the heart-tugging rescue of some port authority workers?). No matter: about one-third of Americans, according to polls, believe some version of these absurd scenarios.

The writer Gore Vidal may have said it best, in an interview with Progressive Magazine, published in its August issue. Asked if he believed the administration might have been behind the attacks, he had this to say: "I'm willing to believe practically any mischief on the part of the Bush people. No, I don't think they did it, as some conspiracy people think. Why? Because it was too intelligently done. This is beyond the competence of Bush and Cheney and Rumsfield. They couldn't pull off a caper like 9/11. They are too clumsy."