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7/7: Tonite Let's All Survive In London

July 7, 2005 12:46 PM | |

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This a.m. all else is made irrelevant by the still-uncertain situation in London, where a series of bombs ripped through double-decker buses and the London Underground during rush hour. While there is no confirmation, it appears to be an al Qaeda attack, and is very reminiscent of the 3/11 attacks in Spain last year. At Memeorandum, which collects news links and blog citations, nearly every blog posting something in these morning hours has a response to the news reports out of London; the rest are left over from yesterday's big story: the surprise announcement by Matt Cooper that he would testify for special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, and the jailing of Judith Miller.

Obviously, we'll start with the attacks. If you're following the story online, here are a few resources:

TRACKBACKS: We Are All Brits Now

Where the blog swarm is headed, who's taking part, and what they're saying:

  • Though the attacks occurred while most in U.S. time zones were asleep, bloggers and their commenters were already posting and offering reactions as the sun rose over the Atlantic seaboard:

    >> Starting at 5:24 a.m. with a post by K.J. Lopez, National Review Online's The Corner has kept right on posting breaking news and commentary. Conservative One Jerusalem notes, a "friend who lives in London just said, 'It is War.' He's right and we are not going to win this war until the West realizes this fact." RedState's Josh Trevino, in London for the Live8 concert and G8 summit, dubs today the "Bloody Seventh."

    >> Liberal Mahablog: "The ever clueless Orrin Judd sniffs, 'Similar to 3-11 in Spain and obviously tragic, but is this really all al Qaeda can pull off these days?' Spoken like a true weenie who has never faced terrorism himself but thinks he understands it 'cause he saw it on TV."

    >> A few early comments from the 1st discussion thread at Eschaton, verbatim: "I think there will be a lot more casualties than reported now. It's horrible"; "f--- Bush and Blair and their enablers."; "I just read on the BBC that an Islamic militant group has already claimed responsibility. A note also to those with loved ones in the London area, the entire cell phone system is currently down there."; "It will indeed be horrible. BUT, this is at least a sign of how misbeggotten the dogma of BushCo has been. They will try to spin this to justify IRAQ just watch 'em." Comment boards at Daily Kos fill up quickly as well (600+ in one thread alone).

    >> L.A.-based Little Green Footballs didn't update to reflect the news until about 9:00a.m. EST, but the commenters were already discussing the bombings in an unrelated post. The responses are more amazed than emotional, mostly sharing info like: "Explosions on buses and trains, 2 confirmed dead but could and probably will be many more" and "So, are these anti-government types, or Jihadis? Moonbats or Muslims?" At Free Republic, a new thread asks: "How long will it take before the US is singled out as the causal factor in London?"

    >> From Oz, righty Arthur Chrenkoff is doing multiple updates within a single post. From AZ, lefty Kieran Healy does the same.

    >> DLC's Marshall Wittmann hoists a JPG of the Union Jack, titling his post: "We Are All Brits Now"

THE PLAME GAME: It Seemed Important At The Time

Had it not been for the attacks this morning, this would certainly have been the Blogometer's top story today. For primary coverage, FishBowlDC's Garrett Graf reported from outside the E. Barrett Prettyman Courthouse in Judiciary Square. At one point after leaving the courthouse, a reporter "congratulated" Cooper, who replied: "There's no congratulations. This is a sad day." He also posts photos of reporters waiting for a glimpse of Cooper and Miller from "Monica Beach." From afar, conservative Daly Thoughts and liberal TalkLeft both posted multiple news and blog links, following the news as it emerged throughout the day.

Centrist media critic Jeff Jarvis: "I've come to see that Time Inc. Editor in Chief [Norman] Pearlstine did the hard thing, probably the right thing. The easy thing for him to do would have been to defy the court, stand by the journalistic orthodoxy, refuse to hand over the subpoened documents, lump fines that wouldn't mean diddly to Time Warner, and go into the J-Hall of Fame on the back of his jailed reporter, Matthew Cooper. The hard thing to do was to defy the orthodoxy and conclude that, indeed, news organizations are not above the law. If the law is an ass, then change the law; that's what we do in this country." Lefty Kevin Drum agrees in part, adding, "as in any other case of conscience or civil disobedience, Cooper and Miller had every right to choose jail time over testifying. There's a long and honorable tradition for this kind of protest."

Recalling a 10/4 Washington Post story, conservative Tom Maguire speculates about the identity of Miller's source: "If Mr. Fitzgerald believes he has received a waiver from Ms. Miller's source, presumably he also believes he knows who Ms. Miller's source might be. And maybe we do too -- if we can trust our news resources, Mr. Cooper was protecting some other source, and Ms. Miller is protecting Lewis Libby. ... Perhaps ... she is unwilling to negotiate some form of limited testimony on the Libby question because she does not want to become exposed to wider ranging questions about who else she may have spoken with."

Josh Marshall at TPM Cafe: "A little more than a year ago, I reported on TPM how Fitzgerald had quite aggressively investigated another Bush White House leak in late 2001 and early 2002. ... But just before his investigators could swoop in with warrants, two of the charities in question got wind of what was coming and, apparently, were able to destroy a good deal of evidence. What tipped them off were calls from two reporters at the New York Times who'd been leaked information about the investigation by folks at the White House. One of those two reporters was Judy Miller."

Liberal Steve Soto sees a possible connection to John Bolton, noting that the Bush admin. hasn't recess-appointed him yet: "When I take a look at the strings of yarn on the [CIA agent Valerie] Plame case and Bolton's NSA intercepts, I think there is another reason why the White House doesn't want to turn over the intercepts, which speaks to why Bolton hasn't been recess-appointed by now, in light of the revelation just late last week that the Plame case was breaking into full view. Quite simply, isn't it possible that John Bolton learned of Valerie Plame's identity in his snooping around (remember that given her assignment at the Agency and his at State, they worked in the same areas), and was the source to either [Karl] Rove, Judith Miller, or even Bob Novak? If Rove heard about Plame from Bolton or Miller, he can claim that he didn't knowingly reveal her identity since it was already out there from others."

Whiskey Bar's "Billmon" was "inclined to swallow hard and support Miller," until he read a Washington Post report where Miller "compared her effort to that of U.S. troops risking death in their fight for freedom in Iraq." He writes: "F--- journalistic principles. I was glad Judge Hogan locked the bitch up -- I only wished he'd thrown the key away. ... So I've been doing a little rationalizing, to see if I could come up with something more substantial than moral digust to justify putting Judy Miller behind bars. Unfortunately, I can't."

David Corn: "While other reporters have resolved to be imprisoned to protect their sources (whether these sources deserve protection or not), what has Novak done? The obvious answer: He has squealed. To be fair, we don't know for sure." But Corn gives several reasons why he thinks so.

PoliPundit's Jayson Javitz dismisses the whole controversy: "If you actually believe regular people are going to be talking about the jailing of a New York Times reporter at their kitchen tables this evening, much less that they'll be up in arms about it, you need to get out more often."

A Reason column by Matt Welch, titled "Shield Journalism, Not Journalists," is widely discussed. Instapundit picks it up.

ABORTION: Causing A Roe

For some time, Wall Street Journal blogger/columnist James Taranto has used his "Best of the Web Today" column to argue for a trend he dubs "The Roe Effect" -- viz., the "political effect of Roe v. Wade was to transform abortion from a subject of ordinary democratic compromise into an all-or-nothing battle in which each political party felt compelled to take an extreme position," (from his 7/6 column) and the GOP has been able to stake out the center, meanwhile pro-choice women have abortions more frequently than pro-life women, meaning many potential Dem voters were never born in the first place.

He writes in an essay for Society, reprinted at the WSJ's OpinionJournal.com: "Polarization over abortion coincided with a period of Republican ascendancy. Since the parties split on abortion, the GOP has won five of seven presidential elections, and no Democrat has had a majority of the popular vote. ... Obviously, many other factors have contributed to Republican success, but it is hard to look at these results and conclude that abortion has been a winning issue for the Democrats. Thus, the politics of abortion has favored the party that opposes the court-imposed 'consensus.'"

Left-leaning Pandagon's Jesse Taylor scoffs: "You know, since Watergate, Republicans have won five of eight elections. Since the Iranian hostage crisis, five of seven. Since the Challenger explosion, three of five. Amazingly, if you pick any event from 1965 on, Republicans will have won more elections than Democrats. It's like that trick where you mess with all the numbers and eventually get your birth year, except mind-searingly stupid."

Note: In the 7/6 column linked above, Taranto reposts and responds to criticism from New York Times reporter Linda Greenhouse.

BLOGS VS. THE MSM: Get Carter

On 7/6, the New York Times ran an op-ed about conscription and recruiting by atty/reservist/Slate contributor Phil Carter, founder of the popular milblog Intel Dump. Later, the Times added a correction to the top of the story, acknowledging that Carter "did not say, 'Imagine my surprise the other day when I received orders to report to Fort Campbell, Ky., next Sunday,' nor did he characterize his recent call-up to active duty as the precursor to a 'surprise tour of Iraq.' That language was added by an editor and was to have been removed before the article was published. Because of a production error, it was not."

  • Washington Monthly's Kevin Drum points out the correction is incomplete: "Even now they don't quite have it right. It's true that Phil was 'recently called up to active duty,' but under the circumstances that still makes it sound like he was called up involuntarily. He wasn't. He volunteered."
  • UC-Berkeley prof Brad DeLong: "In what kind of circus is an 'error' like this even possible?"
  • Instapundit gathers a few comments on the Times' Carter gaffe.
  • At his blog, Carter just posts the text of his op-ed, with a link.

IRAQ: Phil? Phil Connors?!

The "chickenhawk" debate never seems to be settled, nor does it move much further than the opening arguments. Driving this fight between Iraq war supporters and opponents over the past few weeks has been a campaign, started by liberal satire blog Jesus' General, called "Operation Yellow Elephant," which aims to shame military-age war supporters about not enlisting to fight (see 6/21 Blogometer).

The Baltimore Sun quotes Young GOPer chair Nathan Taylor saying: "Most of our members either serve, have served, or plan to serve in the United States Armed Forces, or have participated in events or projects supporting the United States Armed Forces. We will not be intimidated." Duncan Black responds: "There you go. Most serve, have served, plan to serve, OR HAVE PARTICIPATED IN EVENTS OR PROJECTS, such as Operation Drink a Beer for the Troops, Operation Burn a Dixie Chick CD, or Operation Put a Yellow Ribbon on my SUV, supporting the United States Armed Forces."

"Armed Liberal" from Winds of Change responds: "I thought I'd beaten this to death and put a stake in it. It's an immoral position, a politically naive position, and one that undermines our polity. Plus it's just plain rude."

One Hand Clapping's Donald Sensing, whose son is a Marine: "Let me start with the spurious argument that the Army is having difficulty meeting recruiting goals (true) principally because young Americans oppose the war in Iraq. If that is true, why are the Marines -- who suffer a higher casualty ratio than the Army (though lower absolute numbers) -- meeting their goals much more easily?"

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: On Terror And Transportation

Oxford-based OxBlog's Patrick Belton: "I'm quite struck by the strategic cynicism of attacking public transportation, and then after an interval, the crowded bus lines once commuters had been diverted to them. But several friends I spoke with this morning who have lived in Israel say that this pattern -- an initial attack, followed by a staggered attack on emergency services once they'd arrived -- isn't at all uncommon. (My friends living abroad are kindly texting to see if i have all of my relevant body parts, attached in the appropriate fashion.) I find that such an attack on commuting civilians completely unengaged with the machinery of government, war, or administration is striking me as stomach-turning and revolting in a way I could not have previously imagined."

LEST WE FORGET: Nino "Hulk" Scalia

From Timothy McSweeney's Internet Tendency: "Five People Just As Doctrinaire And Tiresome As Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia Speculate On How He Got That Way." Among them are Judge Judy, Kim Jong Il, a vegan, and pro-wrestler "House of Pain," who renders his judgment thus: "Hear me and hear me good, Scalia, you SNAKE, you high-court LOWLIFE, you black-robed, black-hearted COWARD. For years, your manager and mentor, Ronald Reagan, told you LIES, PACKS of lies, NOTHING BUT LIES. LIES about what America stands for. About what's good for America. About the American people. And those lies are why you think like you do. Which is a problem ... FOR YOU! Because I'm COMING AFTER YOU, you maggoty magistrate. RRRRRRRRR!"

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BLOGOMETER SPECIAL: Gonzales' High-Water Mark?

What the blogosphere is saying about the SCOTUS vacancy:

TRACKBACKS: Activate And Aggravate

  • UC-Berkeley prof Brad DeLong, Suburban Guerillas and Daily Kos are among several liberal bloggers to highlight a New York Times op-ed by Yale law prof Paul Gewirtz and Yale grad Chad Golder arguing that the SCOTUS's conservative justices are more "activist" in that they vote to overturn fed'l law more often than the liberals.

    >> "TChris" from TalkLeft: "Prof. Paul Gewirtz explodes the myth that liberal judges are 'activists.' ... Justice Thomas comes out on top, followed by Justices Kennedy, Scalia, and Rehnquist. The president has suggested that a follower of the Scalia philosophy of judging would make a great choice for the Court. Extremists beware: your president wants to put another activist on the bench!" Thought Mechanics: "Of course, conservatives have already invested countless dollars in the 'judicial activism' frame game, so its doubtful they'll change their line of attack substantially. However, information like this has to give intellectually honest conservatives pause in their crusade to undo the courts."

    >> But liberal-leaning Yale law prof Jack Balkin disagrees, writing at his blog: "Gewirtz and Golder don't talk about judicial decisions that strike down state laws. ... For many conservatives, state decision making is an independent constitutional good, and they prefer to have lots of issues decided differently in different states. So the fact that the more conservative Justices strike down lots of laws at the national level that impinge on the states does not suggest that they lack respect for democracy. Rather, it bespeaks a disagreement about what democracy means. It's not about the activism. It's the federalism, stupid." Crescat Sententia points out that Gewirtz/Golder's definition "is is a rather odd way to define 'judicial activism' since it bears basically no correlation to the way the word is actually used in popular parlance about the court (and only a rough correlation to the way it is used in academic parlance)."

    >> More critiques come from libertarians and conservatives at JustOneMinute, Volokh Conspiracy, and NRO's Ramesh Ponnuru.

GONZALES: He's Got The Support Of Harry Reid AND Daily Kos!

This a.m., nearly all nominee-specific speculation surrounds AG Alberto Gonzales.

Liberal Daily Kos: "It's pretty clear that [Pres.] Bush made the following Faustian promise to the two core constituencies of the Republican Party -- The Corporatist wing, he promised legislation. ... To the Religious Right, he promised the judges. ... [W]e could go ballistic if Gonzales is the nominee, especially given his love of torture, but he's about as close a shot to another Souter that we'll get under this administration. Precisely the reason the Far Right hates him is the reason I'd be willing to give him a pass. He's not perfect. He's a Republican, after all. But given the alternatives, he may be the best of a bad lot."

Balloon Juice thinks praise for Gonzales by Senate Min. Leader Harry Reid "will officially be the nail in the coffin for Gonzalez as far as the conservative base is concerned." Noting that Reid voted against Gonzales for AG, NRO's Bench Memos titles a post: "Reverse Kerry! He Voted Against Him Before He Voted for Him."

GOP activist Mike Krempasky posts, to Confirm Them and RedState, text from Federalist No. 76 explicitly mentioning the potential for nominating friends as a reason for the Senate's check on the courts. Wrote Alexander Hamilton: "[A POTUS] would be both ashamed and afraid to bring forward, for the most distinguished or lucrative stations, candidates who had no other merit than that of coming from the same State to which he particularly belonged, or of being in some way or other personally allied to him, or of possessing the necessary insignificance and pliancy to render them the obsequious instruments of his pleasure."

U. Madison-WI prof Ann Althouse, a centrist: "Why is Bush homing in on Alberto Gonzales for the Supreme Court appointment, despite all the noisemaking by social conservatives who worry that he might not be pro-life? Maybe it's the Laura factor. Don't you think Laura Bush is telling him that he can't put someone on the Court who will vote to overturn Roe v. Wade? ... And since Bush is replacing a woman on the Court, there is all the more reason to pay attention to what the women in his life are saying to him."

THE FIGHT: Acela Has Ears

On 7/6 the Drudge Report reported overhearing Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) on an NYC-bound train outside DC. Among Schumer's reported comments: "It's not about an individual judge... It's about how it affects the overall makeup of the court. We are contemplating how we are going to go to war over this." Google News shows that the story made the rounds quickly. A number of right-leaning and conservative bloggers quickly jump on Schumer's alleged remarks:

  • Power Line: "Schumer's reported claim that the gang of 14 deal isn't relevant to the Supreme Court debate is laughable. Since Schumer wasn't a party to the deal, his view of it -- specifically his view of what constitutes extraordinary circumstances that might justify a filibuster -- is irrelevant..."
  • Captain's Quarters: "For those who spent the last few weeks thinking that the Gang of 14 had cleared the way for Supreme Court nominations, think again."
  • Vodkapundit: "I'm neither shocked nor particularly offended by Schumer's 'statement'; it's about what I figured his position would be... but I'm also reasonably sure that he didn't want it publicized. Ten years ago, it wouldn't have been."
  • Late Final: "Dear Sen. Schumer, Next time, please understand that the guy next to you on the train wearing the big fedora, craning his neck and writing into a little notebook is Matt Drudge."

THE ODDS: White Males Need Not Apply?

At Volokh Conspiracy, Northwestern prof James Lindgren keeps an eye on SCOTUS odds at the popular "betting/trading" site Tradesports. The bid/ask spreads for the court as of last p.m.:

1. Gonzales 25.0/31.0
2. Garza 23.1/24.1
3. Brown 13.1/13.7
4. Luttig 10.2/11.3

Lindgren writes, "the probability that President Bush will nominate a Hispanic for the US Supreme Court is about half, with the probability that he will pick a woman about one-third. This suggests what should be obvious -- that in filling Justice O'Connor's seat on the Court, Bush is highly unlikely to pick a white male."

FAMOUS LAST WORDS: Brains... BRAAAINS!!

Referencing an ancient Simpsons episode, Catallarchy's Micha Ghertner names an acceptable choice for O'Connor's replacement: "Zombie Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr."