Scandals are just plain better in France. There, I said it.

Our scandals are pretty lame.

The French? C'est magnifique.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former head of the International Monetary Fund and once likely French presidential favorite, arrived at a police station in Lille, France, today where he will be interrogated by police for up to 48 hours for allegedly "procuring" a handful of hookers for an orgy in the northern French town, an official close to the investigation told ABC News.

Strauss-Kahn has an airtight defense, though.

One of Strauss-Kahn's lawyers, Henri Lecleric, told reporters his client wanted to tell his side of the story. In December, Lecleric defended Strauss-Kahn, saying that though his client certainly participated in the orgies, he was "blissfully unaware" anyone involved could be a prostitute.

"He could easily not have known, because as you can imagine, at these kinds of parties you're not always dressed, and I challenge you to distinguish a naked prostitute from any other naked woman," Leclerc reportedly told French radio Europe 1 then.

Off the top of my head? Here would be my thinking: The 19-year-old Eastern European beauties lining up to have sex with fat 70 year old French socialists just might have been compensated for their participation.

But that's me. I'm a naturally cynical person.

By the way, that "I had no idea they were prostitutes" defense doesn't even make sense: Apparently he's being questioned about "procuring" the prostitutes-- negotiating with them, hiring them.

If that's true, then he's saying.... what? "I had no idea the strange street-hookers I was paying for sex were actually prostitutes"?

Hookers

Hey, at least I didn't rape them.

Posted by: Ace at 10:32 AM | Comments (146)
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Corrected: This is a great idea, but today may not be the day -- although today is a Democratic Primary voting day, a Twitter guy says the recall vote isn't today.

Drew confirms that -- they haven't even certified that a recall will take place yet.

So today isn't the recall-nominee day, and this post is premature and wrong.

But, when date is set, it's a good idea.

...

Chris writes:

Fellow Wisconsinites,

Tuesday, Feb 21 [TODAY] is the democratic primary for the recall of Governor Walker. It is an open primary so anyone with a Wisconsin drivers license or ID can vote in it. If you so agree please go vote and "write in" Scott Walker in the line provided for write in candidates. If he receives enough votes, there won't be a recall because he can't run against himself. It would save the state of Wisconsin the exorbitant election fees. In the neighborhood of $2.3 million. If you agree with this, please pass it on. There is a face-book page and a web site set up to drum up support, and it has been going strong so far. Let's at least try to stop this dead in it's tracks. I know I have to try.

There's still lots of time to do this.

Posted by: Ace at 09:59 AM | Comments (115)
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Kind of a mixed bag. Few on the right could dispute this, if taken as metaphor; most of this is standard (and true) recitation of the left's assault on conventional values.

The odd thing is that Satan is literally tempting those in academia (using their vanity to mislead them into darkness) and so forth.

I know, I know: The argument will be It's all true and Santorum should be praised for speaking truth.

But I don't think there's a literal Satan. In fact, I'm pretty certain of that.

And I think it's unwise to set up a sign in front of this particular ride: You must be at least this religious to board this ride.

I can only keep repeating, as sarcastically as I can manage: I'm glad this election will be fought on the grounds that most favor us, rather than grounds that favor Obama.

Satan

Generally not appearing in the Top Ten issues named by voters in this election, but it's about time someone changed that.

Posted by: Ace at 09:49 AM | Comments (343)
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Once again, Santorum does not merely not have a libertarian streak, but speaks about liberty in a hostile and disparaging manner.

Apparently the Pursuit of Happiness just means that I'm free to live my life according to religious doctrine.

I'm glad that in an election primarily about Obama's failure to create a good environment for wealth-creation -- the creation of "stuff," and, in terms of disposable income and time off, "pleasure" -- we're going to be talking about how "stuff" and "pleasure" aren't that important.

The important thing is that we're on the clock 24/7, working for God.

So in that sense, we're all employed. Even if we don't necessarily wish to be.

Incidentally, I wouldn't claim that "stuff" was the sum and entirety of human existence. Even for a humanist/secularist, like myself, materialism is not the Answer to the Great Questions of Life.

However, let me posit the strange notion that perhaps a limited government, interested in maximizing citizen freedom by simultaneously limiting its ambit to only those functions it absolutely must perform, ought not to be in the business of insuring that each citizen make the right decision.

Freedom isn't just the freedom to make the right decision. Freedom is also the freedom to make the wrong decision. A government that only gives you the freedom to make the right decision isn't given you much freedom at all, and is assuming a paternalistic, daddy-says-so relationship to its citizens.

My problem... continues to be that every successful Republican candidate speaks about the energy, vitality, courage, and creativity of freedom, whereas every time I hear Santorum turn to the subject he talks up the fear of freedom.

Posted by: Ace at 08:30 AM | Comments (522)
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Megan McArdle was, to my knowledge, the first to raise red flags over the authenticity of documents from the Heartland Institute, supposedly showing them acting all evil and stuff about the climate.

Most of the documents are real and are fairly bland. But one memo is in dispute. This memo, by McArdle's reading, seems written not from the point of view of a climate change skeptic -- who would naturally see himself as the good guy -- but from the point of view of a climate change zealot impersonating a climate change skeptic -- and is thus written, oddly, as if the person doing the writing believes himself to be a bad guy.

(My own take: I skipped this because I think the Likely Forged Document itself is pretty bland, too. If this is an attempt at a takedown, it seems pretty subtle to me. But subsequent events seem to show that Megan McArdle was likely right and my lack of interest was likely wrong.)

5. The worldview is different. In my experience, climate skeptics see themselves as a beleaguered minority fighting for truth and justice against the powerful, and nearly monolithic, forces of the establishment. They are David, to the climate scientists' Goliaths. This is basically what the authenticated documents sound like.

The memo, by contrast, uses more negative language about the efforts it's describing, while trying to sound like they think it's positive. It's like the opposition political manifestos found in novels written by stolid ideologues; they can never quite bear (or lack the imagination) to let the villains have a good argument. Switch the names, and the memo could have been a page ripped out of State of Fear or Atlas Shrugged.

Basically, it reads like it was written from the secret villain lair in a Batman comic. By an intern.

Jimmah notes a very odd statement for Heartland Institute to make -- according to the Likely Forged Document, Heartland seeks to "disuade schools from teaching 'science.'"

Does that sound like a climate skeptic? Climate skeptics make the exact opposite claim: Schools should start teaching science and stop teaching the Catechisms of George Soros.

McArdle's theory is that the real information (bland stuff about donors) was in fact obtained by some lefty, but it wasn't juicy enough. So someone faked up a Memo, basically a digest of the information in the other documents (or through Google), but wrote about that information in the most negative way possible, in order to juice up a pretty weak leak.

A subsequent post firmed up that theory.

Moreover, the fact is that this document does not merely confirm facts found in other sources. It substantially recasts those facts, in the case of the Koch donation. And in the selection of facts it presents, and the spin it puts on them, it alters the reporting.

There's a reason that the majority of the quotes in the early blogging and reporting on this story seem to have been taken from the memo, including the initial post on DeSmogBlog. For example, someone named Richard Littlemore wrote "It is clear from the documents that Heartland advocates against responsible climate mitigation and then uses that advocacy to raise money from oil companies and 'other corporations whose interests are threatened by climate policies.' Heartland particularly celebrates the funding that it receives from the fossil fuel fortune being the Charles G. Koch Foundation." That is all taken from the memo, not the supporting documents. The fundraising document actually contains no record that I can see of contributions from oil companies.

The climate blogs presumably relied so heavily on the memo because the quotes were punchier, and suggested far darker motivations than the blandly professional language of the authenticated documents--and because it edited the facts into a neat, almost narrative story.

In the first 24 hours, I saw a lot of comments along the line of "See! They're really just as amoral and dangerous as we thought they were!" based on a memo which I now believe to have been written by someone who, well, thinks that AGW skeptics are amoral and dangerous. (And judging from his update to the original document dump, Littlemore's fellow blogger, Brandon Demelle, is also unsure of the memo's "facts".)

Another guy analyzed the metadata and found that the time-stamp on the forged document was changed from its original Pacific time to the Heatrland Institute's Central time.

I used a pdfinfo script to analyse the memos. The info I got is that all the meta data dates changed on the day of the leak in the Pacific time zone (-8 GMT). This is likely where our thief resides. This is also where the “fake” was created on 2/13. The other docs, with the exception of the IRS form were in the central time zone (-6 GMT). The IRS form was -4 GMT. This has been corroborated by a commenter at Lucia’s. Based on this, and I’m not sure if I’ve covered every base, the strategy memo is a fake.

Based on that, and other clues gathered from the Likely Forged Document, McArdle profiles the hoaxer:

1) They are on the west coast

2) They own or have access to an Epson scanner--though God knows, this could be at a Kinkos.

3) They probably themselves have a somewhat run-on writing style

4) I'm guessing they use the word "high-profile" a fair amount.

5) They are bizarrely obsessed with global warming coverage at Forbes, which suggests to me that there is a good chance that they write or comment on the website, or that they have tangled with writers at Forbes (probably Taylor) either in public or private.

6) The last paragraph is the biggest departure from the source documents, and is therefore likely to be closest to the author's own style.

7) I have a strong suspicion that they refrained from commenting on the document dump. That's what I'd do, anyway. A commenter or email correspondent who suddenly disappeared when they normally would have been reveling in this sort of story is a good candidate.

They seem to have it in for Andy Revkin at the New York Times. There's nothing in the other documents to indicate that Heartland thinks Revkin is amenable to being . . . turned? I'm not sure what the right word is, but the implication in the strategy memo that Heartland believes it could somehow develop a relationship with Revkin seems aimed at discrediting Revkin's work.

Now a lefty climate change zealot confesses -- is that the right word? No, it's not, because according to McArdle's theory this wouldn't be a confession, but a back-up story, a fake story -- that he obtained the memo from a Heartland Institute staffer through deception.

At the beginning of 2012, I received an anonymous document in the mail describing what appeared to be details of the Heartland InstituteÂ’s climate program strategy. It contained information about their funders and the InstituteÂ’s apparent efforts to muddy public understanding about climate science and policy. I do not know the source of that original document but assumed it was sent to me because of my past exchanges with Heartland and because I was named in it.

Given the potential impact however, I attempted to confirm the accuracy of the information in this document. In an effort to do so, and in a serious lapse of my own and professional judgment and ethics, I solicited and received additional materials directly from the Heartland Institute under someone elseÂ’s name. The materials the Heartland Institute sent to me confirmed many of the facts in the original document, including especially their 2012 fundraising strategy and budget. I forwarded, anonymously, the documents I had received to a set of journalists and experts working on climate issues. I can explicitly confirm, as can the Heartland Institute, that the documents they emailed to me are identical to the documents that have been made public. I made no changes or alterations of any kind to any of the Heartland Institute documents or to the original anonymous communication.

Time's eco blog scolds him for the lack of integrity in misrepresenting his identity in order to secure the documents. A "firing offense," Time calls it.

Of course, that may not be the biggest offense.

The major question now — beyond the legal ramifications for Gleick and the Heartland Institute — is whether the original document Gleick says he received, the strategy memo, is real or whether it’s a falsification as the Heartland Institute maintains. The problem for climate advocates, of course, is that suspicion will only grow that Gleick falsified the original document now that he has admitted using deception to get the additional memos.

Heartland calls his confession egregious enough, but insists that there's more to this story-- like the forgery of a document.

In his statement, Gleick claims he committed this crime because he believed The Heartland Institute was preventing a “rational debate” from taking place over global warming. This is unbelievable. Heartland has repeatedly asked for real debate on this important topic. Gleick himself was specifically invited to attend a Heartland event to debate global warming just days before he stole the documents. He turned down the invitation.

Gleick also claims he did not write the forged memo, but only stole the documents to confirm the content of the memo he received from an anonymous source. This too is unbelievable. Many independent commentators already have concluded the memo was most likely written by Gleick.

We hope Gleick will make a more complete confession in the next few days.

We are consulting with legal counsel to determine our next steps and plan to release a more complete statement about the situation tomorrow. In the meantime, we ask again that publishers, bloggers, and Web site hosts take the stolen and fraudulent documents off their sites, remove defamatory commentary based on them, and issue retractions.

In a bit of data that might just be the coup d'gras if/when the forgery is ultimately proven, Peter Gleick headed the "Task Force for Scientific Integrity" for the American Geophysical Union.

Per Wikipedia, it appears that the left has been showering him with accolades and paeans for the last decade.

1999 Elected Academician of the International Water Academy, Oslo, Norway.

2001 Named by the BBC as a "Visionary on the Environment" in its Essential Guide to the 21st Century.

2001 Appointed to Water Science and Technology Board of the National Academy of Sciences, Washington, D.C.

2003 MacArthur Fellow "Genius Award".

2005 Elected Fellow of the International Water Resources Association.

2006 Elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

2006 Elected Member of the United States National Academy of Sciences.

2008 Selected to Present the Abel Wolman Distinguished Lecture at the United States National Academy of Sciences, April 23, 2008, Washington, D.C.

2008 Named by Wired Magazine as "one of 15 people the next President should listen to." Wired Magazine: The 2008 Smart List

2009 Keynote Lecturer at the Nobel Conference at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, MN. [17]

2010 Named "Visionary: A Catalyst for an Enlightened Future" in the Los Angeles Times Magazine Section, January 3, 2010.

2011 Winner, along with his Pacific Institute of the first U.S. Water Prize.

2011 Winner of the IWRA Ven Te Chow Memorial Award.

Not that it has anything to do with anything else, but Peter Gleick heads the Pacific Institute, which is in fact on Pacific time, out in Oakland, CA.

Thanks to spongeworthy for tipping to me this week, and Andy for digesting all of the recent information in the sidebar. He kept up with it, while I just filed it under "Probably Not Important."

Oh: via @rdbrewer4, Charles Johnson is of course doubling down on the forgeries, baiting the Heartland Institute by publishing their demand he retract.

That's a friendly link to Diary of Daedelus, not Johnson's little-read blog.

Posted by: Ace at 08:01 AM | Comments (152)
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Have you recovered?

Unemployment in the U.S. rose to nine percent in mid-February, up from 8.3 percent a month earlier, according to a new Gallup survey. The polling company said this suggests that it is “premature” to assume the economy will not feature prominently in the 2012 election season.

Gallup figures typically provide an indication of what the government will report at the end of the month.

“The U.S. unemployment rate, as measured by Gallup without seasonal adjustment, is 9.0% in mid-February,” Gallup said in its mid-month unemployment survey, released on February 17. “The mid-month reading normally reflects what the U.S. government reports for the entire month, and is up from 8.3% in mid-January.”

Real unemployment, including underemployment and discouraged workers, rose to 19%.

This seems like an odd thing to say in a report:

“Regardless of what the government reports, Gallup’s unemployment and underemployment measures show a sharp deterioration in job market conditions since mid-January.”

Does Gallup have suspicions that the government won't report the rise?

AP: This Time, Obama Peddles "Modest" American Dream. This is not the moment when the oceans began to fall, it turns out.

- This time around, President Barack Obama's message can sound decidedly down-to-earth.

Four years after winning the White House, Obama is dealing with a different economic and political reality as he seeks re-election. He's focused less on a lofty vision for overcoming divisions and remaking Washington, and more on the most basic building blocks of middle-class economic security: a job, a house, a college education for the kids, health care, money for retirement.

What Obama describes as the American Dream can seem a spare, fundamental aspiration, tailored for a campaign that looks to be fought over who is best equipped to safeguard the interests of middle-class Americans.

...

"That's all most people want," he said. "Folks don't have unrealistic ambitions. They do believe that if they work hard they should be able to achieve that small measure of an American Dream."

The goals can seem almost humdrum in comparison with some of the rhetoric from Obama's 2008 White House campaign. But the message sounds made for the times, with the country emerging haltingly from recession, the income gap widening and unemployment stuck above 8 percent.

This sounds like Obama's 25th "pivot to the economy."

Which is itself an indictment.

The economy was in meltdown when he took office. That meltdown is 85% of the reason he was elected in the first place.

Why was there any need to pivot to the economy? He never should have been off the economy and jobs, not even for a moment.

Joe Biden, Road Scholar. He'll be campaigning in "Road Island," his crack team of staffers inform.

Announcing the vice president's schedule following the President's Day holiday, staffers reported Joe Biden as being off to 'Road Island.'

For "balance," the Daily Mail goes back weeks ago to find a spelling error in Santorum's schedule.

While planning a trip to Bemidji, Minnesota, a press release for Mr Santorum's stop misspelled it 'Bimidji.'

Just my own bias, I guess, but it seems like Rhode Island, one of the 13 original colonies and a state, of course, is slightly better known than Bemidji, Minnesota. And easier to spell.

If you got out of primary school not realizing that "Road Island" wasn't the way you spelled it -- maybe you don't know how to spell it, but at least you should know that's not the way to spell it -- I don't know what the hell you're doing working as a liberal Democrat staffer to the Vice President.

Tell a lie, I guess I do know what you're doing there.

Posted by: Ace at 07:08 AM | Comments (269)
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Who doesn't like charts? You love charts, I love charts, we all love 'em. Charts beat a lot of blather and talk-talk every time!

This devastating little number was cooked up by semi-retired cob Geoff, with further refinements by longtime Moron Stoaty. A final coat of shellac and baby spit was applied by cob Slublog.

Let's all stop talking and just look at the chart.
more...

Posted by: LauraW at 06:28 AM | Comments (103)
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Follow 'The Daily DOOM' on Twitter: @AoSHQDOOM.

Has the EU, ECB, IMF, and Greece finally -- at long last -- come to terms on the latest bailout package? It won't work, of course; Greece is simply not capable of achieving the present cuts nor the future productivity it would take to get themselves out of this hole. I also suspect that the Greeks themselves won't stand for it; they'll elect a new government that will repudiate the deal and that will be that. (I'm still not sure how this isn't a default, and why it wouldn't trigger CDS contracts. I guess it's just a matter of everyone playing "let's pretend" for a while longer.) UPDATE: More on this from Fox News.

Having run out of other people's money, Spanish socialists pour into the streets to protest. This is very much according to historical precedent. Socialists are neither very smart nor sensitive to irony, but give them this: they are consistent.

The upside of government default.

Today, there is a good chance that the U.S. government, like the state governments of the 1840s, will be forced to default on its explicit and implicit promises within the next few decades. Exactly how and when is less certain. But the fundamental and massive budgetary changes required to prevent a fiscal crisis are politically unimaginable. Perhaps only default can impose the necessary fiscal discipline. Fortunately, the state government experience of the 1840s suggests that this may provide the best and most durable long-run solution.

Posted by: Monty at 04:40 AM | Comments (121)
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Happy Tuesday.

Former IMF head Dominic Strauss-Kahn was arrested in France in connection with sex parties in Washington and Paris involving prostitutes. I can't decide whether this tweet from a Guardian reporter is accurate or not: "Lawyer for Dominique Strauss-Kahn, dirtbag: 'I challenge you to distinguish a naked prostitute from any other naked woman.'" Politifact rates it: "Sounds true, and that's good enough for us."

I haven't really been following the Heartland Institute's leaked document story, but it's time to get some popcorn and catch up. Andy summarizes it thusly "The global warmists couldn't get their own Climategate so they had to manufacture one. Now it has blown up in their faces and will be covered on page A364 of the New York Times." I expect legal action will be forthcoming.

Russian scientists have "regenerated" an ice-age plant from seeds frozen in permafrost for 30,000 years. The plant hasn't eaten anyone. Yet.

A new wave of Koran rage is starting in Afghanistan, as the NATO commander, Gen. John R. Allen, apologizes for improper disposal of Korans by NATO troops.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:51 AM | Comments (140)
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Late Night Bed Spins is an occasional post featuring musicians who have been mostly overlooked by the public at large. It also showcases unusual or rare live musical performances by known and unknown acts. Tonights featured artist is Parov Stelar. He is an artist who is hard to pigeon hole into a popular music category. As usual, please feel free to add your musical suggestions in the comments section. Enjoy! more...

Posted by: Open Blogger at 11:10 PM | Comments (31)
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