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Unsurprisingly, the UFT didn’t like The Post’s editorial today poking some fun at the disclaimer on its new blog, EdWize.
They poke back, pointing to the disclaimer on this blog.
And their point would make sense if my Web site were in any way sponsored by, or formally affiliated with, The Post.
Alas, it is not.
My latest column for TCS, on the Iraqi constitution:
In an age where conservatives are convinced that liberal judges in America have created a dictatorship in which they interpret the Constitution to mean anything they very well please, what hope can there be for the Iraqis? If America has been cursed with a “Living Constitution” — one the meaning of which changes as society evolves — Iraq seems doomed to endure a “Mutating Constitution,” which will need to change, not just in its interpretation but in its contents, to keep up with the country’s emerging political culture.
And perhaps that is for the best. Would we really want a constitution set in stone this early in Iraq’s newly liberated life? Would any document so rigid long survive?
So, there is ambiguity.
And a little ambiguity never hurt… or, well, it’s better than the alternative.
A couple more points on the Santorum story…
First, I should make clear that I don’t care — not even one little bit, one way or the other — if the Scranton Times-Tribune was trying to use its ad campaign to slyly boost Bob Casey’s candidacy. I think the charge is ludicrous on its face, but maybe if I were in the paper’s circulation area and seeing the ads every day I’d have a different sense of it.
The point is: This is a newspaper, and it should be immune at every level from harassment by politicians and/or the government. And, as I take great pains to detail in my column, this is far from an isolated case. Campaign-finance laws are now routinely used to harass press outlets with which various politicians and activist groups become unhappy.
And, second, the National Republican Senatorial Committee is trying to make hay out of the fact that the ads in question featured a “fake” front page. Yes, they did. It’s actually called a “mock” front page, and it’s extraordinarily common in the newspaper business. Anyone who makes a fuss over this is either an utter ignoramus when it comes to the newspaper business, or he or she is being extraordinarily disingenuous. (It would be my guess that the Santorum folks fall into the latter category.)
Mock front pages are used at various points in a paper’s launch, both to test out new designs (internally or in focus groups) and to advertise the paper. These mock front pages can say anything the papers’ editors want, and they usually emphasize what types of stories readers can expect to find if they pick up a copy.
Furthermore, since the merged Times-Tribune didn’t even exist when this ad campaign was created — well, the front page HAD to be a mock front page. No real ones even existed.
Here’s my latest N.Y. Post column, on yet another outrageous abuse of campaign-finance law to harass the press. This time, it’s being perpetrated by Sen. Rick Santorum:
Republican Sen. Rick Santorum grows more embarrassing to his party and to his home state of Pennsylvania every day.
No, he’s not out comparing homosexuality to pedophilia and bestiality again; nor is he writing another book blaming America’s social ills on “radical feminists.”
This time, he’s waging a campaign of harassment and intimidation against a local newspaper that he and his handlers apparently see as a threat. Their weapon of choice: campaign-finance law — specifically, McCain-Feingold.
…
“It escapes me to what benefit they think this is to them,” Lawrence K. Beaupre, the Times-Tribune’s managing editor, told me. “It’s a joke . . . We’re certainly not intimidated.”
Nor should they be. That’s why we have a First Amendment, so that the press can do its job without getting politicians like Santorum all over them.
Well, at least that’s why we used to have a First Amendment. Unfortunately, that protection — at least as it relates to political speech — was all but repealed when President Bush signed McCain-Feingold into law and the Supreme Court upheld it.
Now, all kinds of media outlets are subject to constant harassment over whether their news coverage, opinion pieces and, in this case, advertisements cross a line where they can be considered “contributions” to political campaigns.
So far, response to this column has come from Republicans saying, “Well, thank God for McCain-Feingold.” So long as the campaign-finance laws can be used as a weapon against Democrats it seems, they’re alright with the Republican base.
It’s not surprising, I suppose, but it is sickening.
The AP is in sooooooo much trouble:
WASHINGTON (AP) — People in this country have a love-hate relationship with math, a favorite school subject for some but just a bad memory for many others, especially women.
Paging Larry Summers.
My latest TCS column, on Wal-Mart’s problems in New York and elsewhere:
The War on Wal-Mart continues apace this week in New York City. There, the cost of living is high — as is the demand for Wal-Mart’s services. But the labor movement’s tactics, as always, are lower than low.
Their latest tactic: a bill that will require grocery stores in the five boroughs with 35 or more employees to provide their workers with “prevailing” health-care benefits.
What this means, in practice, is erecting yet another wall to keep Wal-Mart out.
…
The unions think their members — not to mention the rest of the public — are simply too stupid not to shop at Wal-Mart. The debate over Wal-Mart has been going on for more than a decade, but they’re too damn selfish, and too damn interested in their cheap underwear, to spend a few extra nickels to support their unionized brothers and sisters.
Of course, the truth is that Americans simply no longer give a flying fig about unions. They don’t want to join them. They don’t want to show solidarity with them. And they don’t want to give their money to them when they’re just trying to put dinner on the table.
The nice thing is that the unions will lose this fight. They’ve been losing it slowly for more than a decade. But, in the meantime, we all have to listen to their yapping.
Here’s a speech by Democratic campaign lawyer Robert Bauer on just how bad campaign-finance reform is for progressives.
A quick sample:
More than anything else, progressives have to depend on politics — energetic and uninhibited politics — to advance their program. This is where a campaign finance reform supporter heads down the wrong path. The campaign finance reform supporter assumes that entrenched power, possessing the lion’s share of the resources, will have an insurmountable advantage that may be overcome only with legal controls. So we have detailed regulation of the rules of politics in the name of “political equality,” which, it is assumed, will give the “average citizen” a fighting chance.
This is delusional, on several grounds.
Well worth reading, as is everything Bauer writes, for both Democrats and Republicans.
The latest on the promiscuous octopus and its designs on NYC.
From The Post:
Outside PS3 in Greenwich Village yesterday, representatives of various unions urged New York City parents not to shop at Wal-Mart for their back-to-school supplies.
The unions’ request was a bit odd, since — thanks to them — there is no Wal-Mart anywhere in the five boroughs.
What’s more, it was also pretty insulting, since the unions know full well that tens of thousands of working New Yorkers want a Wal-Mart here.
…
“Teachers and all kinds of working people shop Wal-Mart,” Brian McLaughlin, president of the New York City Central Labor Council, acknowledged as he kicked off the rally. Why? “They don’t understand the costs.”
Apparently, in the unions’ view, though the public debate over Wal-Mart has raged for years, working Americans are just too stupid to see that the company is evil.
There’s some fun stuff about our economically illiterate City Council.
My latest column from TCS, on the FEC:
Why is it that campaign-finance-reform advocates and their accomplices in the media are able to recognize politicians as the petty criminals they are when it comes to mundane issues such as highway-bill pork and tax-loophole drawing, yet their heads implant themselves firmly in their rectums when it comes to the regulation of elections?
…
It’s as if they’ve read James Madison, but missed the irony. “If men were angels, no government would be necessary,” Madison wrote in Federalist No. 51. “If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.”
Madison’s point, in the first sentence, was to counteract the somewhat anarchic streak that had taken hold in American political thinking since the Declaration of Independence. In the second sentence, he acknowledged the danger of placing power in corruptible, human hands.
The reformers, however, seem to have read the second sentence and thought: “Yes! Angels! That’s the ticket!”
Yes, I’m fixated.
I was in D.C. Friday and away over the weekend, so I’m catching up.
Here’s my Friday Post column on McCain’s Reform Institute shenanigans:
As Sen. John McCain gears up for a prospective presidential run in 2008, he’s trying to put an ugly little incident behind him — one that makes him look like a flat-out hypocrite on his signature issue, campaign-finance reform.
If members of the national media are anything more than lapdogs for the war-hero, “maverick” senator, they’ll start asking some tough questions about a bogus little think tank in Alexandria, Va., called the Reform Institute.
…
McCain’s dealings are not something he or his speech-police compatriots would accept from anyone else in politics. Anonymous donations, in particular, are seen by such folks as utterly toxic.
Changing the window dressing is not enough. John McCain is the Reform Institute, and the Reform Institute is John McCain. Either he should bring it up to the standards he sets for everyone else, or he should get off the high horse he plans to ride into the White House three years from now.
The most important question I ask in my column is: Who is “Contributor No. 8″? This is an anonymous contributor to the Reform Institute — the Institute won’t even release the size of the donation.
You can read the Institute’s odd note to the IRS — explaining that the name of this donor is so sensitive the Institute can’t even include it on the organization’s 990, lest it leak out — in this PDF of the Reform Institute’s 2003 990. It’s on page 21.
I’m blogging from Union Station in Washington, D.C.
This concludes the blogging-for-the-sake-of-blogging-from-somewhere-you’ve-never-blogged-from-before part of our program.
to Misc. Mom, who turns… an undisclosed age today!
For those who have followed the case in Washington state of a couple of talk-radio hosts being harassed for their political activities, I wanted to point out an old case, from 2004, where another radio station was targeted by a politician.
House Rules Committee Chairman David Dreier is waging a furious re-election battle after he was targeted by a Los Angeles radio talk show as a “political human sacrifice” for his record on illegal immigration.
In the past month, Mr. Dreier and Republicans have spent an estimated $1 million to blanket his district with fliers and radio ads aimed at countering the massive “Fire Dreier” campaign led by “The John and Ken Show” on KFI-AM in Los Angeles.
Last week, Mr. Dreier, California Republican, and the National Republican Campaign Committee (NRCC) filed a Federal Elections Commission complaint against Clear Channel Inc., which owns KFI-AM.
“He’s basically complaining that we’re picking on him and supporting his opponent,” said John Kobylt, who hosts the show with Ken Champiou.
I admit I don’t know how it turned out. Though, I’m sure it was dismissed along with all the similar complaints for the 2004 election season.
Cancer-killing nanotechnology. Unbelievable.
Carbon nanotubes are inserted into cancerous cells. When exposed to near-infrared red lights, the nanotubes heat up, killing the cancerous cells — and leaving the healthy cells alone.
Instapundit has a round up of stories on this fairly remarkable development.
Of course, all of this is very preliminary and just in animal trials for the time being. But, with advances like this, is the idea of curing cancer a pipe dream anymore? Or is it just a matter of time?
And to the extent it’s a matter of time, how much time will be added by the FDA’s inane restrictions on human testing — even when terminally ill patients want to take their chances with highly experimental procedures?
Owen Muir is virgin blogging:
If the afterlife has infinite duration, then no matter how long you wait to deflower your 72nd virgin, you’ll still be looking at an infinitely long virgin-less future thereafter.
It’s quite the conundrum.
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