Apparently comrade Hugo has a burr up his ass and has severed diplomatic relations with Colombia over Colombia having the nerve to state the obvious to the OAS. That being of course that VE is, and has been for years, harboring/supporting Colombian rebels and their leadership.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez threatened on Sunday to cut off oil supplies to the United States if his country was attacked by U.S.-backed Colombia in a dispute over allegations that Venezuela provides a haven for Colombian guerrillas...

The only question at this point would be if the OAS will be intimidated enough by VE military power, and the clear lack of spine and obvious leftist sympathies in the current American junta, to the point that it has no choice but to downplay the plainly true Colombian accusations.

The risk in that seemingly lower risk path is the VE will feel emboldened to ratchet up its aggression against its island neighbors - the ABC (Aruba, Bonaire, Curacao) islands being obvious next targets. Dominica has already fallen victim and lost a small uninhabited peripheral island to Chavez bullying a few years ago.

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 07:57 AM | Comments (37)
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Pound the drum:

A letter created by Americans United for Life Action and signed by at least 30 state, national and legal organizations asks for "an investigation into discrepancies between Kagan's testimony before Congress and written documentation of her undue influence on medical organizations while advising President William J. Clinton on partial-birth abortion legislation."

The article links this weeks-old analysis from liberal, pro-choice Slate, decimating Kagan. And, actually, William Saletan spins here for her a little bit, and yet it's still damning.

Kagan, who was then an associate White House counsel, was doing her job: advancing the president's interests. The real culprit was ACOG, which adopted Kagan's spin without acknowledgment. But the larger problem is the credence subsequently given to ACOG's statement by courts, including the Supreme Court. Judges have put too much faith in statements from scientific organizations. This credulity must stop.

The Kagan story appeared Tuesday in National Review and CNSNews.com. You can read the underlying papers at the Media Research Center. There are three crucial documents. The first is a memo from Kagan on June 22, 1996, describing a meeting with ACOG's chief lobbyist and its former president. The main takeaway from the meeting, Kagan wrote, was that "there are an exceedingly small number of partial birth abortions that could meet the standard the President has articulated," i.e., abortions in which the partial-birth technique was necessary to protect a woman's life or health. She explained:

In the vast majority of cases, selection of the partial birth procedure is not necessary to avert serious adverse consequences to a woman's health; another option—whether another abortion procedure or, in the post-viability context, birth through a caesarean section, induced labor, or carrying the pregnancy to term—is equally safe.

The second document is a draft ACOG statement on "intact D&X" (aka partial-birth) abortions, faxed by ACOG to the White House on Dec. 5, 1996. The statement said that

a select panel convened by ACOG could identify no circumstances under which this procedure, as defined above, would be the only option to save the life or preserve the health of the woman. Notwithstanding this conclusion, ACOG strongly believes that decisions about medical treatment must be made by the doctor, in consultation with the patient, based upon the woman's particular circumstances. The potential exists that legislation prohibiting specific medical practices, such as intact D & X, may outlaw techniques that are critical to the lives and health of American women.

The third document is a set of undated notes in Kagan's handwriting, offering "suggested options" for editing the ACOG statement. They included this sentence: "An intact D+X, however, may be the best or most appropriate procedure in a particular circumstance to save the life or preserve the health of a woman, and a doctor should be allowed to make this determination." This sentence was added verbatim to the final ACOG statement released on Jan. 12, 1997, which read in part:

A select panel convened by ACOG could identify no circumstances under which this procedure, as defined above, would be the only option to save the life or preserve the health of the woman. An intact D&X, however, may be the best or most appropriate procedure in a particular circumstance to save the life or preserve the health of a woman, and only the doctor, in consultation with the patient, based upon the woman's particular circumstances can make this decision.

The basic story is pretty clear: Kagan, with ACOG's consent, edited the statement to say that intact D&X "may be the best or most appropriate procedure" in some cases. Conservatives have pounced on this, claiming that Kagan "fudged the results of [ACOG's] study," "made up 'scientific facts,' " and "participated in a gigantic scientific deception." These charges are exaggerated. The sentence Kagan added was hypothetical. It didn't assert, alter, or conceal any data. Nor did it "override a scientific finding," as National Review alleges, or "trump" ACOG's conclusions, as Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, contends. Even Power Line, a respected conservative blog, acknowledges that ACOG's draft and Kagan's edit "are not technically inconsistent." Kagan didn't override ACOG's scientific judgments. She reframed them.

No she didn't do just that.

The word "may" has a lot of meanings. It expresses a possibility... but what level of possibility are we talking about? I can say the sun may not rise tomorrow -- and, indeed, it is technically possible that some unannounced catastrophe could arrest the earth's spin so that the sun never rose again.

Or I can say it "may" rain tomorrow based on forecasts of a 60% likelihood of precipitation.

There is obviously a lot of ground covered here, and large differences between that first and second sense of "may." The first sense states merely that something is technically possible, no matter how unlikely; the second sense states it's likely.

In Kagan's case, she was specifically told that doctors could identify no situations in which the partial birth abortion was needed to save the life or health of the mother... and, indeed, they had trouble even imagining such situations!

In her own notes, she confesses this (this is from that first link):

In a June 22, 1996, memo, Kagan admitted that her meeting with the ACOG was "something of a revelation," for she learned that "in the vast majority of cases, selection of the partial-birth procedure is not necessary to avert serious adverse consequences to a woman's health."

In a Dec. 14 memo of that year, Kagan summarized the official ACOG report released in October as a "disaster," for it stated that "a select panel convened by ACOG could identify no circumstances under which this procedure would be the only option to save the life or preserve the health of the woman," a resounding blow to the president's position.

But the ACOG position was that the doctor should have the right to make a decision on a case-by-case basis. That's a conclusion, not a fact, and what was sought from them was the actual facts that should guide legislators and courts.

So Kagan changed the facts. Rather than admit that her position is based upon a situation that trained OB/GYN's have difficulty even imagining, she recast this negative -- this statement of a negative likelihood of the need of a partial birth abortion -- into a positive. It may be necessary. Just like the sun may not rise tomorrow.

True -- it may happen that way, but betting men would take odds against.

In no possible world would ACOG's actual position -- "we can identify no actual situations in which this procedure is necessary, and in fact have trouble even imagining such situations, but we think doctors should still have that option" -- ever carried the day in courts. That's why she branded the facts a "disaster" for her side -- they were a disaster.

So she changed the facts. Rather than the truth -- that this hadn't happened before and seemed unlikely to happen in the future -- she offered a lie: "It may be necessary," as if doctors had in mind a set of circumstances in which this would be the case.

In fact, they explicitly did not.

This is not "reframing." This is relying upon the inherent ambiguity of the word "may" to turn a clear statement that the procedure has never been necessary under real-world circumstances and in fact it's hard to imagine it being necessary under speculative, imaginary ones into a statement that the procedure may be necessary.

(This is why PowerLine says there is no "technical inconsistency" in changing the meaning by use of the word "may" -- because the broad meaning of "may" gives you a lot of room to deceive without being caught in convictable perjury. But they are speaking only to that -- not towards whether there was an effort to deceive and alter meaning, an effort that resulted in wild success for untruth.)

Even after Saletan offers his weak "reframing" claim, he notes that Kagan lied offered testimony at odds with the facts.

[Kagan answered a question about her role in drafting the language by saying] that she had just been "clarifying the second aspect of what [ACOG] thought." Progressive blogs picked up this spin, claiming that she merely "clarified" ACOG's findings and made its position "more clear" so that its "intent was correctly understood." Come on. Kagan didn't just "clarify" ACOG's position. She changed its emphasis. If a Bush aide had done something like this during the stem-cell debate, progressive blogs would have screamed bloody murder.

At the hearing, Kagan said ACOG had told her that intact D&X "was in some circumstances the medically best procedure." But that doesn't quite match her 1996 memo about her meeting with ACOG. In the memo, she wrote that

we went through every circumstance imaginable—post- and pre-viability, assuming malformed fetuses, assuming other medical conditions, etc., etc.—and there just aren't many where use of the partial-birth abortion is the least risky, let alone the "necessary," approach. No one should worry about being able to drive a truck through the President's proposed exception; the real issue is whether anything at all can get through it.

The language in this memo—"imaginable," "let alone," the quotes around "necessary"—depicts a conversation in which nobody could think of a real case where intact D&X was, as Kagan's revision would later put it, "the best or most appropriate procedure in a particular circumstance to save the life or preserve the health of a woman."

And yet the spin is offered that she merely "reframed" the issue, changed the emphasis, by turning a the facts -- that in every circumstance imaginable, this procedure simply wasn't necessary -- into the useful lie that it "may" be necessary.

Shouldn't her "may" have had a caveat there? As in "It may be necessary, but an exhaustive analysis of every imaginable scenario has yet to uncover a situation in which it is in fact necessary"?

Because if you've ruled out all situations you've looked at, but are still claiming it "may" be necessary, the truth demands a disclosure of precisely how unimaginable you yourself have found it to be.

And based on this lie, the courts have consistently claimed it was "unconstitutional" to prohibit (or merely limit) this procedure.

I'd say "expect that to change," but then, hey, Elena Kagan's soon to be ruling on her own lie.

Hm! I just realized -- we commonly differentiate the two uses of may in both written and spoken English.

When we are talking about a far-fetched, entirely hypoethetical slim possibility, we draw out the word to highlight that we're using it in that way -- "I guess the 12th Imam maaayyy rise tomorrow and lead Iran in battle against us." "I suppose Obamanomics coooullld work."

We italicize them in written English to stress these dubious possibilities as well.

No italics, though, for Kagan! No attempt to alert her reader -- the judges she would now presume to join -- that she was indulging in speculations about extreme unlikelihoods.

Nope, just plain old fashioned "may," same as you might say on a cloudy day, "You may want to bring an umbrella."

Posted by: Ace at 07:46 AM | Comments (94)
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There's a place downtown, where the freaks all come around.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 05:09 AM | Comments (199)
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Welcome to the Monday.

Facebook Friends And How Come You Tawk So Funneh

Does your dialect determine your Facebook connections?

Well here's a map of US dialects:

And here's an analysis of the geography of Facebook friend links by Pete Warden:

So you can see quite a bit of overlap but also a lot of areas where roughly equivalent dialects didn't cluster together and different dialects did. So there's more going on than just nearness and accents.

It's interesting to note that there are also distinct social borders in some places. For instance as Pete points out Columbus, OH and Charleston, WV are only 162 miles apart but by dialect and social connections they might as well be a 1000 miles away from each other. more...

Posted by: Maetenloch at 05:26 PM | Comments (764)
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Last week, Democratic Congresscritter Charlie Rangel* got pissy that a mere reporter would dare to ask him about his ethics problems. Today Democratic Senator John Kerry had an uncomfortable confrontation with reporters asking about tax-evasion and his yacht.

Actually, watch the video (it's in the sidebar) and see how fast he whips around to glare at whichever reporter yelled out "will you pay any of those taxes back?"

His answer:

There's nothing more to say about it. I have said-- wait a minute, let's get this very straight, I've said consistently we will pay our taxes, we have always paid our taxes. It's not an issue. Period. We've always paid our taxes; we'll pay our taxes.

Senator Kerry says the yacht is in Rhode Island, which does not have the same taxes on nautical vessels as Massachusetts, because "it's being worked on." He finishes by whinging, "Can I get out of here, please?"

Thanks to...uh, my Dad.

*Yes, I totally meant Rangel, but I'm still having MondayBrain in a bad way.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 03:47 PM | Comments (292)
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This was just a passing thought, but it's passed through me before.

The internet has created some new words -- "FAIL" as a noun, for example. ("Win," too, as in "made of win.")

A lot of these are good.

It's also revived a lot of musty, archaic, sort of pretentious words that had entirely died in spoken English, and 95% in written English, too.

I've noticed a few of these "rescued words" before. The only one I can think of now is daresay, but I know there are others -- this occurred to me before thinking about other words.

Ten years ago you wouldn't be caught dead writing, or for God's sake speaking, this dead word.

But the internet has revived it. People are daresaying all the time, way too much for my liking.

In fact: I hate to say this but I daresay if you google you'll find I've used it.

Part of this I guess is cross-pollenization from British writers, where I daresay many archaic/musty/fussy/pretentious/abandoned words are still part of everyday spoken English. And I guess that many Americans' inherent Anglophilism impels them to adopt these foreign words as a sort of affect of sophistication.

Help me out -- I know there are like ten words that show up way too frequently on blogs, which had been all but bannished from everyday American-accented English a while ago.

You know what I mean? Because I don't, but I daresay I'm keen to find out what I mean.

Actually... I daresay the word, maybe, is unobjectionable and useful, and so maybe it's not wrong that it's been revived.

I daresay, however, that if you used this word ten years ago, you would have gotten your ass kicked.

Another one -- Adam Carolla one time said he wanted to beat the hell out of any guy who used the expression "How so?"

That was like ten years ago. But "How so?" is now being used all the time.

If he told that joke today, no one would get it. It would be like him saying he doesn't like guys who use the word "shirt."

Posted by: Ace at 10:34 AM | Comments (1409)
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I know; now I'm double-posting myself.

But via Hot Air, we see the cleanest expression possible of the media's devotion to accurately reporting a story without regard to political advantage.

Now, a lot of lefty bloggers are quoted there; more than genuine Old Media workers. But there are Old Media hands like Richard Cohen making the absolutely false statement...

A clip of that speech made the rounds of right wing blogs and media outlets -- Fox News, for instance -- and in no time Vilsack ordered the woman canned.

McClatchy Newspapers:

Posted on the website of right-wing provocateur Andrew Breitbart, and then trumpeted on Fox News and other cable channels, the video made it sound like the African-American Sherrod had once refused to aid a farm couple because they were white. Conservatives went wild with indignation. In a hasty reaction, the NAACP called for Sherrod's head, too. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack got it.

An NBC affiliate:

Conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart posted only that part of the speech, to boost his own claim that the NAACP is racist. FOX News commentators ran with the story and demanded Sherrod's resignation from her job as director of rural development in Georgia. That led to USDA administrators to ask for her resignation Monday.

Just today CBS News quoted Media Matters as authoritative on the Black Pathers story (they "debunked" stuff, CBS News claimed). So here's CBS News' vouched-for Eric Boehlert of Media Matters:

Look, the first mistake they made, or the Department of Agriculture, or whoever was making the calls, they believed something that Andrew Breitbart put on his Web site. That‘s mistake one. And then they believed a smear campaign, a character assassination attack that Fox News was peddling.

Charles Kaiser of the NYT and Newsweek:

A completely discredited right-wing blogger posts an edited video which seems to convict a black Agriculture department official of racism. Fox News runs the distorted clip continuously on all of its shows Monday. Before giving Shirley Sherrod a chance to tell her side of the story, the Agriculture department demands and receives the resignation of the head of its rural development office in Georgia.

Let me point something out: Within hours, the rightwing was walking away from the story and correcting the record.

Let me guess -- there will be no apologies nor corrections in this case, from the left media, will there?

Correction! In my post below on Bob Schieffer/Bot Schieffert, I stated that CNN aired this clip before FoxNews did.

Now I realize I've done what all these phone-call makin', fact-checking paragons of journalism did-- I conflated the coverage Tuesday morning/afternoon with the coverage on Monday.

The CNN piece I saw was from Tuesday, after she'd been fired already.

It is not true, I don't think, that CNN covered this first. Certainly the one piece of evidence I was relying on was false evidence -- my memory tricked me.

Now, I just corrected the record -- something you will not see from the Washington Post's Richard Cohen, the New York Times' Charles Kaiser, CBS News' Bob Shieffer, or McClatchy newspapers.

Posted by: Ace at 10:06 AM | Comments (106)
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No, I'm not double-posting accidentally -- I know Slublog covered this below.

A couple of points I'd make:

First, a lot of these guys say "leave this alone, no good can come of it" before going into a "but if it's true..." scenario, and it's usually the "if it's true..." scenario that has the most attention lavished on it.

Second: Is the MFM going to cover this? They certainly squealed a lot when some right wingers (almost none in the commentariat) gave credence to the birth certificate conspiracy theory.

But here is the creme de la creme of young liberal thought-leaders (well, maybe not creme de la creme, but chosen by Ezra Klein of the Washington Post as being important seriously discussing the ramifications if the wackiest conspiracy theory since 9/11 Trutherism (and maybe wackier than that) is true or not.

I like Slublog's point: Maybe Andrew Sullivan continues to push this despite putative damage to his reputation among the liberal chattering class because in fact there is no damage to his reputation among the liberal chattering class about it; they're all around 50% on board with it, and repeatedly say "However, if some reporter thinks this rumor is worth investigating further, and he or she absolutely nails this story, that would be great."

I submit that based on these emails, the liberal chattering class does sort of believe this, or at least isn't terribly interested in dissuading others from investigating -- after all, if someone should happen to "nail this story," then "that would be great."

So is this why the MFM refuses to note that the left is taken with bizarre conspiracy theories of their own? Because to the MFM as a whole the conspiracy theory seems like it's sort of maybe true?

As Bob Shieffer (aka Bot Shieffert) said, they won't publish "unless they think a story is true." Well, if they think Trig Trutherism might be true -- and it sure seems that about half of them do, but refrain from saying so publicly purely for prudential, careerist reasons -- then I guess they wouldn't be able to expose this insanity for what it is.

Posted by: Ace at 09:54 AM | Comments (56)
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Great post at Just One Minute: Do as I say, not as I do.

Bob Schieffer of CBS News 'Face The Nation' is irrationally exuberant over the Shirley Sherrod debacle; he calls on the New Media to adopt the rigorous fact checking of our diligent Old Media but delivers this baffler:

Here's one way: Old Media makes its share of mistakes, but not if we can help it. We still call people involved in a story to get their side; editors fact check; and we never publish or broadcast anything unless we think it's true.

Last week, we saw what can happen when it's done the other way.

A partisan blogger with an agenda - not a journalist - put the heavily edited, totally out of context, now infamous sound bite of Shirley Sherrod on the Internet. Some of the cable folk picked up the story, and demanded the woman's ouster.

Which cable folk demanded the woman's ouster? He means Fox, of course.

But maybe he should check his facts. Since he doesn't trust the "New Media," he should pick up the phone and call Old Media guy Howie Kurtz:

But for all the chatter -- some of it from Sherrod herself -- that she was done in by Fox News, the network didn't touch the story until her forced resignation was made public Monday evening, with the exception of brief comments by O'Reilly. [Note: While those comments were taped at around 5:50, they didnt't air until 8:50, after the White House had fired her, and well after the NAACP had condemned her. -- ace] After a news meeting Monday afternoon, an e-mail directive was sent to the news staff in which Fox Senior Vice President Michael Clemente said: "Let's take our time and get the facts straight on this story. Can we get confirmation and comments from Sherrod before going on-air. Let's make sure we do this right."

Sherrod may be the only official ever dismissed because of the fear that Fox host Glenn Beck might go after her. As Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack tried to pressure her into resigning, Sherrod says Deputy Undersecretary Cheryl Cook called her Monday to say "do it, because you're going to be on 'Glenn Beck' tonight." And for all the focus on Fox, much of the mainstream media ran with a fragmentary story that painted an obscure 62-year-old Georgian as an unrepentant racist.

...

Ironically, Beck defended Sherrod on Tuesday, saying that "context matters" and he would have objected if someone had shown a video of him at an AA meeting saying he used to pass out from drinking but omitting the part where he says he found Jesus and gave up alcohol.

Note well: I saw this story on TV first on CNN -- CNN was running it that day, and the reporters interviewing Sherrod were pretty skeptical of their claims. But they certainly did not demand the woman's ouster, either.

CNN ran the story, and the video, before FoxNews. (Correction: No they didn't; see correction below, and more ruminations about this two posts up.)

Howard Kurtz, CNN employee, doesn't mention that.

Bob Shieffer of CBS News fails to realize that CBSTV ran the story on their website before FoxNews.

Bob Shieffer, however, wants you to know "We still call people involved in a story to get their side; editors fact check; and we never publish or broadcast anything unless we think it's true. "

It's that last part that's the laugher -- yes, I'm sure that's true, that you never publish anything "unless you think it's true."

The trouble is, Bobby, you seem to come to the table "thinking" a lot of things are true before bothering to make those phone-calls or do that fact-checking.

Repeat after me: Bob Shieffer, master phone-call-maker, fact-checker extraordinaire, will never retract this baseless smear nor even acknowledge that there is so much as a debate over what he "thinks is true."

Correction! I stated that CNN aired this clip before FoxNews did.

Now I realize I've done what all these phone-call makin', fact-checking paragons of journalism did-- I conflated the coverage Tuesday morning/afternoon with the coverage on Monday.

The CNN piece I saw was from Tuesday, after she'd been fired already.

It is not true, I don't think, that CNN covered this first. Certainly the one piece of evidence I was relying on was false evidence -- my memory tricked me.

Now, I just corrected the record -- something you will not see from the Washington Post's Richard Cohen, the New York Times' Charles Kaiser, CBS News' Bob Shieffer, or McClatchy newspapers.

Posted by: Ace at 08:41 AM | Comments (124)
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Really good Daily Caller hit on JournoList, in which message coordination in order to attack Sarah Palin is explicitly suggested. (Link Fixed!)

In fairness, Ezra Klein claims that they aren't in the business of message coordination, but with all this coordination going on, his statement reads as pro forma CYA to me.

Luke Mitchell, then a senior editor at Harper’s magazine, asked Tomasky if his paper would be able to help: “Michael – Isn’t this something that can be fanned a bit by, say, the Guardian?”

Tomasky didnÂ’t think it would work....

Mitchell replied: “Fair enough! But it seems to me that a concerted effort on the part of the left partisan press could be useful. Why geld ourselves? A lot of the people on this list work for organizations that are far more influential than, say, the Washington Times.

“Open question: Would it be a good use of this list to co-ordinate a message of the week along the lines of the GOP? Or is that too loathsome? It certainly sounds loathsome. But so does losing!”

...

While other members of the group debated whether to coordinate a pro-Obama message – or, more precisely, whether to concede that such a message was being coordinated — Todd Gitlin of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism had already made up his mind. Gitlin, whose job is to train the next generation of America’s most elite journalists, wrote this impassioned plea on behalf of the Obama campaign:

“On the question of liberals coordinating, what the hell’s wrong with some critical mass of liberal bloggers & journalists saying the following among themselves:

“McCain lies about his maverick status. Routinely, cavalierly, cynically. Palin lies about her maverick status. Ditto, ditto, ditto. McCain has a wretched temperament. McCain is a warmonger. Palin belongs to a crackpot church and feels warmly about a crackpot party that trashes America.

“Repeat after me:

“McCain lies about his maverick status. Routinely, cavalierly, cynically. Palin lies about her maverick status. Ditto, ditto, ditto. McCain has a wretched temperament. McCain is a warmonger. Palin belongs to a crackpot church and feels warmly about a crackpot party that trashes America.

“These people are cynical. These people are taking you for a ride. These people are fakes. These people love Bush.

“Again. And again. Vary the details. There are plenty. Somebody on the ‘list posted a strong list of McCain lies earlier today. Hammer it. Philosophize, as Nietzsche said, with a hammer.

“I don’t know about any of you, but I’m not waiting for any coordination. Get on with it!”

And so they did.

Repeat after me.

Repeat after me.

Repeat after me.

Repeat.

Repeat.

Repeat.

The keep claiming they're envious of the "message discipline on the right."

Really?

Repeat after me: You've forgotten more about message discipline than we've ever known.

But as Gitlin suggests, did they really need coordination to do what they were all going to wink-wink do anyway?

This is an interesting piece on JournoList (though rich with nuance, which isn't always appreciated):

The juicy bits from the JournoList archive, exhumed and disseminated through the (conservative) Daily Caller website, show leading mainstream U.S. journalists discussing things like how to trash and smear Sarah Palin most effectively, in the moments after John McCain selected her as his running mate. Or, how to distract America from the scandal of Barack Obama's long and intimate affiliation with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, when that story hit the fan.

It is interesting that the major themes of mainstream journalistic reporting exactly repeated those thrashed out on JournoList, beforehand -- where it was taken for granted that the journalists' purpose was to get Obama elected, by performing services as an informal "detachment" of the Obama campaign. It looks for all the world like a carefully-organized conspiracy.

And yet it isn't. As Joe Klein, of Time magazine -- prominent both as journalist and on JournoList -- hath protested, he didn't need any strategy sessions in e-mail to decide how to attack Palin; he could "easily" have selected all the angles, by himself. And I do not doubt for a moment that he is telling the truth.

It was his word "easily" that I found most significant. I could myself, in advance, "easily" have guessed from which angles Joe Klein would attack Sarah Palin, and will, as he promises, continue to attack her. The dogs in Pavlov's experiment did not "conspire" to salivate.

I think that's about right -- it's hard to say it's a classic conspiracy, exactly, when every individual involved intended to commit the same crimes regardless of whether he was asked to participate.

There is a conspiracy of a kind, here, though: One of such full and complete infiltration of important institutions by determined, lockstep partisans that without even needing a JournoList or any other formal group-messaging mechanism, the institutions' stated missions are subverted and a new mission is created.

That couldn't happen if there were greater ideological diversity in the media (or academy, or in NGOs, or etc.) But with the partisan transnational progressives having achieved 90% dominance in these institutions, they do in fact have the power to change a mission -- from academic excellence to political indoctrination; from a disinterested and accurate reportage to DNC blast-fax dissemination.

They don't need to conspire to do this, per se: They need only overlook their actual ethical and professional duties so that their personal passions become, de facto, the institutional mission.

The conspiracy comes in when no one among them is permitted to challenge this subversion of mission without experiencing career setback. A conspiracy of arrogance, then, with a conspiracy of cowardice, too.

Meanwhile, Jim Treacher is haunted by the Shape of Fear: Boo! Jazz-hands!

Posted by: Ace at 07:59 AM | Comments (137)
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