1/4: Dishonest Abe
Note: All week we'll be reminding you: The Blogometer now has permalinks for each section! Roll your mouse over each header if you don't believe us.
The most-discussed story this a.m. is probably the terrible circumstances of the 12 miners killed in a mine collapse outside Sago, WV. As we show below, the story's unwelcome change in direction highlights the medium's advantage over the print press -- the blogosphere was able to correct its reportage much faster than the newspapers, some of whose first editions carried the false reports of their rescue. In this case, the blogs were similar to the news cablers in helping spread those false reports, before changing direction.
Prior to the above, the biggest thing going around was the guilty plea of GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff, closely followed by the ongoing NSA wiretap/eavesdropping controversy; because of their obvious political implications, we've led with those, and given them more space than the WV story.
In other news, Senate Min. Leader Harry Reid has agreed to speak at the upcoming convo for the largest left-leaning political blog, another Justice Sunday -- and the live-blogging thereof -- approaches, and bloggers consider the just-published dead-tree work of one of their own.
The Abramoff plea deal was announced just as we headed for deadline yesterday. By the end of the day, all sides had weighed in on what, if any, impact this will have on members of Congress, others in the DC scene and the expected calls for "reform."
A CREW release mentioned by a handful of bloggers, including Charles Kuffner, does some "forensic work": "The information also refers to three unnamed co-conspirators: Representative #1 and Staffers A and B. Representative #1 refers to Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH), Staffer A is likely Tony Rudy, former Deputy Chief of Staff to Rep. Tom DeLay (R-TX) and Staffer B is Neil Volz, former Chief of Staff to Bob Ney." 
AMERICAblog's John Aravosis also makes available a PDF of the deal itself. Josh Marshall calls on his readers: "One thing I'm curious about is how today's Abramoff news is playing in districts and states of those who seem most likely to be the targets of the on-going investigation -- Ney, Burns, Doolittle, DeLay, etc. ... If your congressman or senator looks like he's in hot water, let us know how the local media is playing the story." Ed Morrissey makes fallout predictions, including: "No insiders for President in 2008 -- The most significant development from this scandal will be the almost-certain disqualification for serious Presidential runs by anyone currently on the Hill, including Hill(ary) herself."
In our 1/3 edition we quoted Ankle Biting Pundits' let-the-chips-fall type response, and on the right, that seems to be the order of the day. Michelle Malkin: "As I've noted before, Abramoff spread his stench across both parties. But principled conservatives must call Abramoff what he is -- a sleazebag plain and simple, as I've noted before -- and condemn his criminal activities unequivocally." Glenn Reynolds thinks corruption issues might have a negative effect on the fight against gov't pork: "The temptation will be to try to shore up their position by buying votes, but the GOP base is offended by this stuff and may be motivated to stay home. ... Limiting pork -- which will require structural changes in the House and Senate -- is not only a good political move. It's the right thing to do. The question is whether the GOP will be smart enough, and principled enough, to do something that's both smart, and right. I'm not overly optimistic about that."
AMERICAblog also noted that Abramoff formed a group called the "Capital Athletic Foundation," of which less than 1% of the funds went to youth athletic, some was used to pay for trips taken by then-House Maj. Leader DeLay, and as the Hollywood Reporter reported at the time, MSNBC's Chris Matthews and FNC's Tony Snow and Brit Hume were scheduled to appear at a on 3/26/03 fundraiser for the CAF. More: "An aside: I can't wait for [PA Sen.] Rick Santorum to explain what he was doing there." He updates later: "I'm told the event may have been postponed or canceled at the last minute since we invaded Iraq right about that time. Whether or not that's true, the fact still remains that Matthews, Snow and Hume agreed to host an apparently all-Republican fundraiser for Abramoff's shady charity."
At TPM Cafe, lefty economist Max Sawicky begs, please, no "reform" of lobbying: "It's been reformed forever, and it always turns back into sh*t. It needs to be blown up. Now is the time to talk about radical changes." Among those he lists: "Genuinely independent regulation of campaign finance and debates. Full access to the process for third parties. Decorporatization of Big Media. Sunlight on everything." RedState's Mike Krempasky agrees somewhat, albeit for different reasons. Having read Sen. John McCain's (R-AZ) lobbying reform proposal, he's alarmed at the implications of the "other purposes" alluded to in the bill's header. Krempasky: "The bill is horribly complicated, overbroad, and will be an absolute mess. Quick -- call Congress and tell them it's a bad idea. Before they pass this bill and figure out a way to make this post illegal."
Hugh Hewitt tries to temper down some of the emotion of the moment. "The Abramoff scandal is a big DC story and even a potentially national story, but when Howard Kurtz calls it a 'story of historic proportions,' I have to think people in DC need to get out more. Even if Abramoff brings down Harry Reid, it will still be just the latest installment in DC's long running and bi-partisan opera of greed."
A lot of people in the blogosphere and beyond have commented on Abramoff's odd choice of a black fedora and trench coat for his 1/3 court appearance, but the best comes from Ace of Spades HQ, which compares him to Major Toht from "Raiders of the Lost Ark."
EAVESDROPPING: Risen Up, Risen Down
The Abramoff story supplants (for the moment, at least) some of the ongoing discussion about the NSA's wiretapping. There's still a healthy discussion of the latest developments.
Orin Kerr quotes a section of the new book by New York Times' Risen on the NSA wiretaps that notes many int'l calls are actually routed through U.S. switches, and that the NSA became concerned this could be interpreted as domestic spying. Kerr reasons, "it seems that most of the new surveillance program was not about domestic surveillance at all; most of it was about the surveillance of entirely international calls and e-mails that just happened to be routed through U.S. networks in the course of delivery." But Kerr doesn't see why this would violate FISA: "This surveillance is technically domestic -- it occurs within the United States -- but it does not involve monitoring 'a person in the United States.'"
Malkin does a round-up on the promotion of Risen's book. She provides video clips of his "Today" show interview with Katie Couric, and comments: "Channeling Chuck Schumer, Risen cast his anonymous sources as 'whistleblowers' motivated 'by the purest reasons.' How do we know that's true? Because Risen says so."
An AP report quotes a 10/01 letter from then-House Min. Whip Nancy Pelosi to the NSA about its expanded wiretap authorizations: "I am concerned whether, and to what extent, the National Security Agency has received specific presidential authorization for the operations you are conducting." Captain's Quarters' Morrissey comments: "The outrage we hear today from people like Howard Dean should get directed to the members of Congress who have long known of this program and declined to object. Even today, we hear no voices from the intelligence panels that want this program to end." Right Wing News: "We have Democrats opposing the Patriot Act, which is designed to stop Al-Qaeda. Wanting to immediately pull our troops out of Iraq, where they're fighting Al-Qaeda. Getting up in arms about the President authorizing wiretaps on people who talk to Al-Qaeda. Fretting about captured members of Al-Qaeda at Gitmo and in Iraq...geez, they're practically acting like Al-Qaeda is one of their constituency groups." Atrios, known for his open threads, opens a special open thread: "Okay, now's your chance. Explain to me, in your best wingnutnese, how exactly it damages national security to reveal the fact that we spy on people without secret warrants instead of the fact that we spy on people with secret warrants?" There are 400+ comments so far, but few actually rise to the challenge. Here's one.
Andrew Sullivan: "You can say this for the president. The powers he seized after 9/11 have indeed apparently helped neuter al Qaeda as we once knew it. ... But the flip-side of unchecked executive power is also the chance of self-reinforcing error (WMD intelligence) and abuse of power (authorizing torture against domestic and international law)."
Plamegate kremlinologist Tom Maguire notes that Risen "compared his own sources quite favorably with the Plame leakers," prompting Maguire to ask: "Well, my question -- since Mr. Risen is an authority on the motivations of the Plame leakers, is he also sitting on a Bob Woodward style revelation of his own? Did Mr. Risen actually get a leak from an Administration official linking Wilson's wife to the CIA and the Wilson trip to Niger?"
Jeff Jarvis, on Times public editor Byron Calame's attempts to get Bill Keller et al to explain why they held the report: "Calame said he had a list of questions for Times editors they wouldn't answer. I wanted to see him list the questions; so did other readers. But Calame won't list them. What kind of transparency is that? Cough 'em up, Calame."
MINERS: Mr. President, We Must Allow A Mineshaft Gap!
As in the MSM, the trapped-miner story in WV -- and then the tragic mix-up late last p.m. -- gets plenty of attention. For a comprehensive summary of the reax, see Memeorandum. Few of the posts had actual political ramifications, but one from Scott Shields at MyDD did. He argues Pres. Bush's relaxed MSHA standards "made the situation worse." The post got linked by a handful of conservative sites; he updated the post to explain: "Bush's indefensible fealty to corporate power undercuts the health and safety of workers at every level of the economy. Corporations understandably want to save money any way they can. Sometimes government has to step in to remind them that there are some corners that just should not be cut." Lean Left continues with the deregulation theme.
Much of the commentary does have to do with how the story played in the media. Vaughn Ververs writes at CBS's The Public Eye: "Perhaps not since 'Dewey Defeats Truman' has the nation awoken to newspaper headlines so wrong." For example, USA Today's read "Alive! Miners beat odds." He adds: "Exactly how the misinformation got out and became so widely accepted is not yet clear. What is evident though is we're in for a day of examination."
It wasn't just the media that had to change its reports -- plenty of blog posts had to be revised when the bad news arrived later, including posts at PoliPundit, Obsidian Wings, and Pundit Guy.
THE ALITO NOMINATION: Are We There Yet?
NRO's Ed Whelan makes a few predictions about how the upcoming confirmation process for judge Samuel Alito will go down: "Alito's nomination will be approved by the Judiciary Committee by a 10-8 party-line vote"; "Democrats will not make any effort to filibuster Alito's nomination"; "On or around January 20, Alito's nomination will be confirmed by the full Senate, with 55-65 votes in support."
At Balkinization, Sandy Levinson argues that Bush's choice of Alito is "part of a plot designed to reinforce Executive power and that the issue in particular of abortion was designed to serve as a distraction." Inspired in part by that post, Mark Schmitt notes that the "never mind" clause of the Bush-approved version of the McCain anti-torture amendment is "something relatively new, cooked up by Alito himself during the Reagan administration, as a way to strengthen the hand of the president over Congress." More: "This is way beyond my legal depth ... but it seems to me there is a simple reason to reject Alito's seemingly sensible recommendation"
In a post at RedState, Fidelis' Joe Cella promotes a memo (PDF) he's co-written highlighting "the Left's inability to generate any substantive opposition to Judge Alito."
JUSTICE SUNDAY: Justice League
The 3rd installment of Justice Sunday will take place on 1/8, and as we reported on 8/10 for the last one, FRC's Charmaine Yoest, who blogs at Reasoned Audacity, is organizing bloggers to live-blog it. Among those already-scheduled to attend: Captain's Quarters, La Shawn Barber, Mind and Media and Rightwingsparkle. And as Yoest noted on 12/22, Planned Parenthood and perhaps other liberal orgs. will be there to protest.
There's not a great deal of talk about it, but what there is comes either from the left or the PA media: Pam's House Blend: "I know that there aren't any earthquakes in Philly, but I could hope for a selectively timed fissure in the earth's surface..." Phillyist: "Justice Sunday III: Proclaim Liberty Throughout the Land follows Justice Sunday II: God Save the United States and this Honorable Court, Justice Sunday I: Stop the Filibuster Against People of Faith, and Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol. OK, maybe not that last one."
In the lineup is Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA). As several bloggers note, he's had trouble on his right flank for distancing himself from the ID movement, and criticizing the Dover school board's efforts to bring it into the science curriculum. Santorum Blog hopes the appearance will "shut up" the PA American Family Assn., which "has been carping at Senator Santorum saying 'conservatives can no longer trust the senator' because of his distancing himself from the dubious scientific theory of Intelligent Design. Well apparently the PA AFA is lonely in the Anti-Santorum camp." Or as Think Progress puts it: "Apparently, Santorum now has to make amends for his transgression. He was just added to the program of Justice Sunday III."
IRAN: It All Starts Somewhere ...
Kevin Drum, on a Guardian report outlining Iran's efforts to gain nuclear weapons: "I don't have any trouble believing that this is true, but on the other hand the 'leak' is pretty obviously deliberate and the article gives no indication of what the assessment is based on. What's more, given the track record of western intelligence over the past few years, I'm reluctant to take their conclusions at face value just because they happen to seem believable to me. So: maybe this is for real. Or maybe it's just an effort to prepare public opinion for a military strike against Iran."
At PoliPundit, Lorie Byrd had puzzled over why Bush would invite all prior Secs/State and Defense to the WH to discuss Iraq, but the site's commenters have persuaded her the meeting has more to do with Iran than Iraq. She adds: "I have often wondered ... how this president and future presidents will be able to take action on other national security concerns considering what happened with the intelligence in Iraq. If President Bush determines that we need to take some action with regard to Iran, it makes a lot of sense that he would seek the opinions of all those with information and experience dealing with the situation in Iran."
MIDTERMS: Senator Pothole Opens His
New York Observer's Politicker picks up on an "an astonishing little segment on NY1 just now, in which New York's senior GOP figure," ex-Sen. Al D'Amato, "did his best to wreck Bill Weld's bid for Governor." Amato, in the interview: "Well let's say that Bill Weld is not a favorite of mine." Politicker: "This really does stem, it seems, from a failed prosecution of Al's brother, which Weld has said he doesn't even remember, and which involved -- of course -- lobbying. ... Guy nurses his grudges. And the amount of trouble he can make for Weld in GOP circles is almost unlimited."
Swing State Project's DavidNYC raises again the possibility that ex-Reagan Navy Sec. James Webb (D) might challenge Sen. George Allen (R-VA) in '06: "And since you're nobody until somebody tries to draft you, the obligatory Draft James Webb website has sprung into existence." More: "Switching from working in a Republican administration to running as a Democratic senate candidate is a compelling storyline."
MISCELLANY: The Kosette Edition
- Daily Kos diarist Jotter provides a statistical breakdown of the activity of diarists and recommending readers (who promote or demote diaries) at the site, including the top-rated diaries.
- Speaking of Kos, the site-affil. convention scheduled for 6/8-11 in Las Vegas, Yearly Kos, announced 1/3 that it had landed Senate Min. Leader Reid as a featured speaker. Site founder Markos Moulitsas, in the release: "Senator Reid's popularity in the netroots, despite being a moderate-to-conservative Democrat, is proof that we aren't about ideology. Rather, we rally around leaders who aren't afraid of their own shadows, aren't afraid of their convictions, and aren't afraid to take the battle to the corrupt neocons, theocons, and corporate cons who are misgoverning our country." Liberal Jane Hamsher: "Can we say it's about f---ing time these people realized who the base are and start doing some long-overdue sucking up?" Conservative K.J. Lopez links with: "In case you had any doubts ... The Democratic party is the party of Kos."
- Just released is soon-to-be-ex-Wonkette writer Ana Marie Cox's 1st novel, "Dog Days." Advance copies have gone out to various folks around the blogosphere, and the reviews are coming back. While reviews in the print press have been mostly negative, the bloggers have actually been kinder. Instapundit: "I was never a cute Washington woman having an affair with a major cable pundit, but I did work in a Presidential campaign (Gore, '88) and much of that stuff rings true." Stirling Newberry calls it the "Primary Colors of 2004 -- the novel that hits the zeitgeist of the Democratic Party's political class squarely between the eyes. If you want to know what's wrong with Democratic Party politics, you can read this book." Kevin Drum compares the New York Times' unfavorable review with Cox husband Christopher Lehmann's Washington Monthly essay criticizing American political fiction. To Drum, the NYT review makes the same points as Lehmann, and he asks: "So does that mean he thinks his wife's book is just another predictable piece of political pap? That would make for some interesting dinner table conversation, wouldn't it?"
- Speaking of Cox's departure from the site, WSJ's new Law Blog reports that her replacement(s) will include David Lat (see previous Blogometers), once known only as "Article III Groupie," author of the dishy and once-pseudonymous Underneath Their Robes.
Alan, Esq. observes: "The most overwhelming evidence that this story is true... Wonkette, the most shameless self-promoting blog there is, has not even acknowledged the existence of this story." - On another book front, Matt Yglesias gives a shout-out to Cato's "Electing to Fight: Why Emerging Democracies Go to War" -- which challenges the widely-accepted hypothesis that democracies don't go to war with one another, arguing in part that new democracies -- such as the one in Iraq -- may be actually more inclined to go to war.
THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Don't Take Us Too Seriously, Folks
Marshall Wittmann, who is profiled in the Washington Post, today "urges politicians to completely ignore the blogosphere." Noting Senate Min. Leader Reid's planned appearance before the Yearly Kos convo, Wittmann says: "Politicians should only pay attention to the bloggers with the understanding that they usually represent the most fevered and extreme elements of their base. Particularly Democratic politicians should largely ignore them. Democrats need less preaching to the choir and more persuasion and conversion of those who have left the flock or belong to another congregation."
LEST WE FORGET: You Know That Part About Troubles Seeming So Far Away? Yeah, That Got Changed
Lefty humorist-poet Mad Kane contributes new, Abramoff/Delay-specific lyrics to Paul McCartney's "Yesterday."
