alternative hippopotamus

In the Hipposhire, the quirky few blocks around me in upper northwest, resides one of the great jewels of political discourse, the Politics&Prose bookstore. In the great American novel which I plan to write some day, some of the scenes will be set at an upscale bookstore where I casually bump into well known figures. I’ll call it Nostrums&Novellas, but you’ll get the idea.

Pretty much every day of the week they have authors of political books come in and give a talk. Tomorrow’s talk sounds interesting. Here’s the 411:

BROOKS JACKSON and KATHLEEN HALL JAMIESON
UNSPUN (Random House, $12.95)
Jackson, who runs the website FactCheck.org, and Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center, collaborate to write this practical guide to the tricks of the disinformation trade. With information coming in much more rapidly than most of us can process it, this volume promises to help spot bunk and separate the baloney from the real meat.

Also worth mentioning is Snitchens on May 10. But, seeing as that’s Dan Froomkin’s night at our local DL chapter, I’ll not be able to attend.

The BBC reports on the capture of a top Al-Queda figure:

The US says it has arrested one of al-Qaeda’s highest-ranking operatives, as he was on his way home to Iraq to plan future attacks.

The Pentagon said Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi was now in Guantanamo Bay.

He had been going to Iraq to take over al-Qaeda operations and possibly plot attacks on Western interests, it said.

Wow! When did this take place:

A US intelligence source told the BBC he was arrested late last year in an operation which involved the CIA.

Let’s see we’ve got more Gonzales hearings, the DC Madame scandal, Tenet’s new book… Oh, look a shiny object!

For someone who writes a politics/gossip column, Mary Ann Akers doesn’t seem to understand how either politics or gossip works. In case she’s reading this, I’ll type slowly. (Just kidding, Mary. I’m a pretty slow typist, anyway. But seriously, you may want to consider reading your commenters. They do a great job of pointing out the many errors of judgment and interpretation you made in this short column.)

Let’s start with this bit from a recent Akers column:

In Democratic political circles, though, Hamsher is better known as the author of a racially offensive attack against Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.). The incident occurred last summer when Lieberman still officially carried a “D” after his name but was running an ultimately unsuccessful primary race against Ned Lamont.

Hamsher, who was supporting Lamont in the race, posted a doctored photo of Lieberman in black face on HuffingtonPost.com (Read The Washington Post’s coverage here). Hamsher wound up apologizing (to “anyone who was genuinely offended”) and taking down the photo.

A day after Clinton’s post appeared on firedoglake.com, Democratic activists in various corners privately questioned the wisdom of the Clinton campaign in choosing to write for a blog associated with Hamsher. “It’s potentially problematic,” said one Hillary backer, who asked for anonymity to speak freely about the issue. “The topic [equal pay for women] is OK, but you have to wonder why she picked firedoglake.com?”

As one of the hosts of the DC chapter of Drinking Liberally, I’ve met of a lot of Democratic activists over the last couple of years. I would venture to say that all of them are very supportive of FDL, and would consider it a big privilege to post there. To the extent that anyone remembers the blackface incident, it’s as a sophomoric joke about Lieberman’s subservience to the Bush administration, twisted out of context and proportion, until it resembled the line that got Imus fired.

Since you (meaning you, Mary) are treating this as the defining characteristic of FDL, I have to guess you’ve been talking to the war bloggers and Lieberman spokespeople. And, by Lieberman spokespeople I’m referring to the eminently hacky Dangerstein, who you quote from at length.

Dangerstein doesn’t like lefty blogs. By that I mean he doesn’t like blogs in general, as it makes it harder for him to control the message, and he’s opposed idealogically to lefties, in that they oppose the war that his candidate enjoys from his desk in Washington. He especially doesn’t like Jane Hamsher. She was a major factor in Joementum’s primary defeat. So, there’s a lot of reasons why Dangerstein would want to smear FDL. It’s kind of like doing a column on Giuliani using his first wife as the primary source.

Atrios looks at White House Correspondent Knoller’s criticism of Bill Moyer’s program, “Buying the News.” Knoller, it seems has a severe case of amnesia. As Digby puts it: “A whole bunch of America sat there watching these sycophantic performances with our jaws agape, wondering if we had lost our minds.”

When Knoller complains that some of the questions asked during that pre-war press conference were close to being actual questions, he’s either not able to look at the situation objectively, or he’s being dishonest. I tend to believe the latter. I notice for instance that Knoller skips over one of Moyers’ biggest complaints. The press conference was scripted, but everyone acted like it was real.

Knoller also closes his op-ed by pulling what I’ll call a “Rummy”. He asks himself simple rhetorical questions, then answers them. For instance,

Did we report what the President said about his case for war? Of course we did. That’s our job. Did we also report that his views were challenged or disputed by others? Absolutely. Were questions raised about the veracity of the president’s arguments? Certainly.

Did reporters stop the U.S. from going to war in Iraq? No. Could reporters have done a better job? Always.

Should Knoller go back to the tapes before he passes judgement on Moyers? Could be. Did he sell his soul? Very likely. Was this the work of an honest, objective journalist? No way.

I’ve heard some speculation that the investigation by the OSC is pure head fake, and that it’s unlikely to do any serious investigation of Karl Rove’s activities. This article at MoJo (not to be confused with MoDo) supports that view:

Just minutes before the September 7 ceremony was to begin, Smith received word that the event was off because a relative of an osc staffer had died. It seemed “kind of fishy” to Smith; indeed, an osc source told me the excuse was so transparent as to be “ludicrous.” The real problem, the source said, was that Bloch—a Bush appointee who, employees say, shares his boss’ antipathy for dissent—had learned that Smith was planning to speak at a press conference sponsored by the whistleblower group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (peer), a persistent critic of the osc. The peer event went forward as planned, and at it Smith told the press that he felt the osc “bears some examination.” True, he had been vindicated, but many of his colleagues who’d made similar disclosures had been ignored, and the prison conditions had not changed. “I cannot help but feel that my experience is a beacon of false hope for public servants who are trying to correct wrongdoing,” he said.

Surprise, surprise, the NRO hacks are against congressional representation for the District. Talk about legal opinions that write themselves.

While there is more diversity in opposition at this Volokh Conspiracy thread, it’s clear that they don’t like the idea. Plus, they seem to think that if residents of the District don’t like it, they can move. Ignoring the fact that moving is a very disrupting life experience, particularly if you’ve lived here all your life, I think it’s odd that someone would say that if you want to participate in society you need to leave your community.

Below the Beltway exhibits what I’ll call business casual partisanship as opposed to naked partisanship: “Davis, the Democrats, and the District are all ignoring the Constitution and trying to use this legislation as a means to circumvent the Amendment process, where they know they could not succeed.”

BtB is probably right that an Amendment along the lines of the current bill wouldn’t succeed. Turning DC into a state isn’t going to happen either. Retrocession is unpopular with Maryland, so that’s off the table. In fact, nothing will work. It’s not in the cards. It’s the fait of the nation’s capital to lack representation in government.

Now, I tend to believe that last thing I said doesn’t make any sense. So I’m going to take a stand that may sound controversial. I really don’t care if the Voting Rights Act is unconstitutional. It’s probably as reasonable a solution as we can come up with. I’m proposing that we just look the other direction.

Allow me to explain. Ever so often there’s an episode of Law and Order where the Sam Waterston character has the evidence to put somebody away, but there’s some extenuating circumstance, like the guy’s going to die in six months, or he didn’t know the gun was loaded, or the person who was killed was a jerk. So he chooses not to persecute. Nobody, and I even include the NRO hacks when I say this, screams at the tv set: “But he broke the law. He must be punished.” No. Everyone shrugs their shoulders, and says: “Whatcha gonna do. Sometimes life is messy.”

Or, to put it slightly differently, I think there are degrees of constitutionality and unconstitutionality. For instance, I thought the Dread Scott decision was very unconstitutional. Even though we thought it was constitutional at the time. If there was a law requiring someone to recite the first 10 amendments to the Constitution before being allowed to vote, or the 10 Commandments if you live in Alabama, that would also be unconstitutional. But only a little bit.

I’m just saying that the merit of voter representation outweights the degree to which the Voting Rights Act may or may not be constitutional. Sometimes the disease really is worse than the cure.

I saw CSPAN’s coverage of the White House Correspondents Dinner, or as it’s sometimes referred Fear and Loathing in the Court of Versailles. My first reaction related it to Earth Day, and how we could save a year’s worth of fossil fuels, if we could just harness the power of the train wreck Rich Little perpetrated that night on stage.

It wasn’t just bad, it was the kind of atrocious that will make Stephen Colbert giggle for decades.

Oh, and Little did, as Reagan, the line about how he wanted to update everyone on the war on poverty: the poor lost. Hahahah. Jokes like that make Grover Norquist wet himself. Some of us, myself included, think that it’s a mortal sin that more in our society are at its fringes. Other than that it’s a great line.

I thought that this bit from Mary Anne Akers column was interesting:

Little was the sixth choice, the fifth being Robin Williams:

Robin Williams was a “maybe” for about 15 minutes, until his agent advised Scully that the left-leaning hyperkinetic comedian couldn’t be trusted not to offend President Bush.

The agent, Scully recalled, said Williams “wouldn’t be appropriate.”

I find it interesting that Scully’s goal was not to offend the president. The poor, however? Fair game.

I get very excited about this time every year. Sure, the end of the sub-Arctic DC winters is nice, but what really gets me hot and bothered is the free historical walking tours of DC under the collective name: Walkingtown, DC.

Here’s my picks for this Spring:

• Tenleytown
  Saturday 10:30 am – 12:30 pm
  Meet in front of Best Buy, 4500 Wisconsin Avenue, corner of Albemarle Street, NW (west entrance of Tenleytown Metro station)
  Did you know that Tenleytown is the second oldest neighborhood in the District? Discover beautiful 19th century buildings as well as Fort Reno Park, the site of a Civil War fort, and hear about Reno City, an integrated community formed immediately after the Civil War. Led by neighborhood residents and presented by Tenleytown Neighbors Association and Tenleytown Historical Society.
• Georgetown on the Underground Railroad
  Saturday 12 noon – 1:30 pm
  Meet in the garden of the Old Stone House at 3051 M Street, NW
  Mary Kay Ricks, author of the recent book, Escape on the Pearl: the Heroic Bid for Freedom on the Underground Railroad, will highlight the people and places in Georgetown connected with the infamous 1848 escape when nearly 80 fugitives attempted to flee Washington aboard a schooner.
• History Before History: The Geologic Story of Washington, DC
  Sunday 1 – 4 pm
  Meet outside the Harvard Towers apartment building, 1845 Harvard Street, NW, on the corner of Harvard Street and Adams Mill Road
  Go back in time 700 million years! Before DC was a city it was the bottom of an ancient ocean, the center of a mountain range, a magma chamber, and a river in which dinosaurs swam. Learn the geological story of the city by visiting rock outcrops in Adams Morgan and Rock Creek Park.

Here, I’ll leave myself a note for later: must check out the Spies of Washington Walking Tours.

Future historians will likely look at the following with skepticism. It’s barely conceivable that someone so uncomfortable with the English language could be elected president, they’ll argue. More likely that critics invented quotes like this as a means of parody:

• “Politics comes and goes, but your principles don’t. And everybody wants to be loved _ not everybody. … You never heard anybody say, `I want to be despised, I’m running for office.’”
• “There are jobs Americans aren’t doing. … If you’ve got a chicken factory, a chicken-plucking factory, or whatever you call them, you know what I’m talking about.”
• There are some similarities, of course” between Iraq and Vietnam. “Death is terrible.”
• “I’ve been in politics long enough to know that polls just go poof at times.”

For falsely shouting “vegan lesbian transsexual ‘interspecies erotica’ devotee” in a crowded theater, you Debbie Schlussel, are Valkyrie of the Day:

“Media Matters bragged to the Wall Street Journal that it was responsible for taking down Don Imus. I suppose now that Don Imus is gone, they’ve assigned the vegan lesbian transsexual ‘interspecies erotica’ devotee they had monitoring the Imus show to monitor my site.”