Eat The Press

[h/t; The Daily Dish] From ABC News' Lara Setrakian, comes this tweet:

Tehrani source close to those detained says some have been beaten heavily and waterboarded with hot water #iranelection

In my younger years, I would simply expect this news to be greeted with universal outrage, knowing that the techniques being described had long been deemed to be well across the Bridge Too Far. Now that I've lived through the Bush administration, however, I am forced to contemplate the possibility that Iran is merely taking legitimate steps to obtain critical information in their nations' vital national security interests. One mustn't preclude the possibility that many of those being waterboarded are privy to information about "time bombs" that may, at this moment, be "ticking."

The whole matter could be investigated, I suppose, but I'm also forced to consider that once Iran is through this rough patch, it would be better if everyone involved just looked forward, not backward.

Anyway, I guess everyone's really playing follow-the-leader on this nation's innovations in the area of what our press calls "enhanced interrogation techniques." Pop champagne.

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Ahh, Karl Rove! Not too long ago, Rove had command of an astonishing political portfolio. From his perch, he created the many great works, for which he is still celebrated, like the awesome permanent Republican majority and the bases full of U.S. troops that will be in Iraq's cities forever and ever. Look upon his works, and, I don't know, bleat, maybe, with despair!

Sadly, times change. Seasons change. And these days, Rove has mainly been reduced to a Prince of High Dudgeon, with a portfolio of squawky bitchcraft. And the other day, the White House held a town hall meeting in Virginia, soliciting questions from the public on health care. Naturally, this gave Rove the vapors, something awful. Via Think Progress:

ROVE: This White House has carried prepackaged, organized, controlled, scripted events to a new height, and they're getting away with things that in any previous White House, the media would have eviscerated the press secretary and the White House for it.

[WATCH]

Ha ha. Oh, the chortling! Uhm, here's some "previous White House" history:

- In April 2005, Bush's security detail threw three people out of an event in Colorado, citing a bumper sticker on their car that read "No More Blood For Oil." White House spokesman Trent Duffy said that if there's any evidence people might "disrupt the president," they "have the right to exclude those people from those events.

- In early 2005, North Dakota residents were refused entry to a Bush event after their names appeared on a "blacklist" of people banned from the event.

- In March 2005, people seeking tickets to a Social Security event were quizzed about their support of Bush and his Social Security plan ahead of time.

And, remember that time when the Bush administration prescreened soldiers for a Thanksgiving Day photo shoot in Iraq? GOOD TIMES.

Anyway, the Obama White House issued a statement describing the way in which they solicited questions. In their opinion, it was a pretty transparent process.

The President posted a video on YouTube several days ago, saying respond to this video with questions for me on health care, and we got hundreds, and all of those are online. So in terms of the videos that were selected, anyone can look at the range and see which ones we did and didn't select. That's fully transparent. They're all up on YouTube; they were all up yesterday on our website.

Because YouTube doesn't actually have a voting function, our new media staff took videos that were rated highly by other users and selected, from among those, questions that represented the range of things being asked. So a lot of people in the progressive community still want a single-payer system, so the first question was from a single-payer advocate. We took a question from a Republican member of Congress, Mike Burgess, about medical malpractice reform.

In terms of President Obama's health care proposal, questions about single-payer systems and tort reform can logically be deemed "adversarial." So, as far as processes that screen out those sorts of questions, it's not a very good one. But that's just two questions of many. And everything the White House says about how various YouTubes are rated could be worth exploring. In short, there's likely to be ample room to criticize this event. But Karl Rove needs to check himself.

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You know, whenever I try to point out how, in Washington, DC, the line between "edit meeting" and "cocktail party" has become blurred to the point of ridiculousness, there's never a shortage of people who'll line up and tell me how cynical I am. But from time to time, I get to issue a big fat, "Suck it!" and one of those days is today, thanks to this article in the Politico:

For $25,000 to $250,000, The Washington Post is offering lobbyists and association executives off the record, non-confrontational access to "those powerful few" -- Obama administration officials, members of Congress, and the paper's own reporters and editors.

The astonishing offer is detailed in a flier circulated Wednesday to a health-care lobbyist, who provided it to a reporter because the lobbyist said he feels it's a conflict for the paper to charge for access to, as the flier says, its "health care reporting and editorial staff."

The offer--which essentially turns a news organization into a facilitator for private lobbyist-official encounters--is a new sign of the lengths to which news organizations will go to find revenue at a time when most newspapers are struggling for survival.

Oh, the memories this brings to mind! Why I can recall a day, many years ago, when I was Wonkette, when I got Gawker Media into a whole heap of bad mojo. I had posted an item given to me by a tipster who said that Mike Allen, then of Time Magazine had been at a party at Dick and Lynne Cheney's house telling anyone who would listen that he knew who that year's Time Person of the Year would be. I put up the post, and suddenly everyone was outraged and I was a big jerk who told tales out of school. (On Wonkette. I know: HEAVENS TO BETSY!) (You can read what remains of that heavily redacted item, here.)

Anyway, what can I say? I was a noob, I guess? Unversed in the witchy ways of Washington politesse was I, and it showed. But you have to understand it from my perspective: The fact that some media type was off flaunting his scoops at a party in order to impress political types didn't strike me as something all that unexpected or rare. To me, it was just a wildlife study, and I seem to recall that Dian Fossey published all sorts of observations of her quarry without vetting her copy with the gorillas' spokespersons.

Anyway, after all the outrage over my Wonkette post had died down, I lived to write another day; Wonkette's proprietress, Ana Marie Cox, went to work for TIME; and Mike Allen got to deliver today's report on the WASHINGTON POST playing with lobbyists. Circle of life!

What this long preamble seeks to reinforce with you, gentle reader, is that I have been here, in Washington, a long time. And while I definitely experienced a mix of emotions when I read this story in Politico, there was a notable absence: shock. I was not shocked to read this report. Nor was I shocked to read the official WaPo response from Kris Coratti, his eerily practiced language, speaking in a resounding, "How did that happen?" And shock was similarly off the menu when Howard Kurtz reliably went around collecting everyone's statement, keeping the "critic" part of his "media critic" title corralled in the passive voice.

Yeah, there was really not a lot of shock to be had, I'm afraid. That said, this doesn't mean we can't have a whole lot of fun asking questions!

First off, when I heard that there might be lobbyists in the market for the Washington Post to play go-between between K Street and the White House, at first blush, I was inclined to think, "Hmmm. Maybe there really is something to this. Maybe the White House really is that hostile to the advances of lobbyists that they need all of this extra help!" But then, I consulted my birth certificate, and lo, the date July 1, 2009 did not appear on it.

So I would very much love to have a list of the "Obama administration officials [and] members of Congress" who were prepared to attend these little soirees. I especially want to know who was coming from the White House, after they made such a big, blessed deal about how they weren't going to cozy up to lobbyists, AT ALL. (With exceptions made for certain defense industry lobbyists with indispensable genius, of course.)

Nevertheless, I do not believe, not for one blessed minute, that the lobbying world is in such desperate need of a new channel to access lawmakers. Those channels are open because said lawmakers want to get re-elected. So, I am left to conclude that the key reason all this money might have potentially changed hands was in order to get access to "the paper's own reporters and editors."

And make no mistake, that's the only group of people from the Washington Post with whom anyone at a lobbying firm wants to converse. Coratti's statement reads, "The flier circulated this morning came out of a business division for conferences and events, and the newsroom was unaware of such communication." Please do not make me pull out my birth certificate again! The first of these "salons" was to be at Katherine Weymouth's house, and Marcus Brauchli was to be a featured guest.

Weymouth, for her part, issued the following statement:

"Absolutely, I'm disappointed," Weymouth, the chief executive of Washington Post Media, said in an interview. "This should never have happened. The fliers got out and weren't vetted. They didn't represent at all what we were attempting to do. We're not going to do any dinners that would impugn the integrity of the newsroom."

I have some ideas for Weymouth, as to a better way to avoid "impugning the integrity of the newsroom" while better representing "what [you are] attempting to do." TELL MARCUS BRAUCHLI TO STAY HOME FROM THESE EVENTS, maybe. How about: DON'T HOST THE EVENT AT YOUR HOUSE. The juxtaposition of these two concepts -- "roomful of lobbyists" and "Katherine Weymouth's personal dining room, at Katherine Weymouth's own house" -- don't leave a whole lot of mystery! Another suggestion: Maybe add a preliminary "vetting" stage where the people in your business division come to you and say something like: "Hey, Katherine, should we be putting your address on these fliers, which we are giving to lobbyists?"

I will say this about that Washington Post business division: I LOVE ME THOSE PRICING MODELS! $25,000 gets you into one of these "salons," but for $250,000, you get the eleventh salon for free! THIS IS EXACTLY HOW I PAY FOR CHOP'T SALADS! Was the Washington Post going to provide punchcards? If so, could I still have one, to commemorate this totally frabjous day in our lives?

I also admire this part of Mike Allen's report:

The offer--which essentially turns a news organization into a facilitator for private lobbyist-official encounters--is a new sign of the lengths to which news organizations will go to find revenue at a time when most newspapers are struggling for survival.

One email I read on this matter notes that this is about as close to describing the "pimp/ho" relationship as you can get away with in the Politico (who by the way, ALSO hosts sponsored parties). Maybe this is how print journalists "struggle for survival." It's enough to make you admire the class and dignity that Dian Fossey's charges display in their own struggles.

It's a funny thing. Just the other day, I was on the phone with my mother, who moved to Washington, DC as a child and whose father was a newsman in Hammond, Indiana. She was, on that occasion, lamenting the disappearance of a forgotten DC institution, the Evening Star. I don't have many memories of this paper, myself. During my lifetime it was known as the Washington Star, and a failing brand. But what my mother most admired about the Evening Star was that it practiced a "studied lack of concern" with anything having to do with the federal government. Instead, they went about their journalism with the guiding philosophy that there were actual people living in Washington, DC, living actual lives, who needed the news they needed to know.

In DC today, all journalism slouches toward Capitol Hill, seeking to be reborn. The paper that broke this story, Politico, makes its bacon selling print ads targeted at "influentials" -- that is, politicos. The Washington Times is reorganizing around national politics. The Washington Examiner is investing big money in institutionalizing a conservative-leaning political presence, that seems intended to be a righty version of TPM. And the Washington Post it seems, is much the same, competing for the same eyeballs and the same ad dollars, and demonstrating that they, too, are not above playing fast and loose to get some.

Of course, somewhere, at the Washington Post, there's some editor with a little bit of that Evening Star spirit, who desperately wants answers to what happened the other day on the Red Line Metro that resulted in the deaths of so many people. But no one is paying $25,000 to meet with that guy. And nobody is hosting a meeting at Katherine Weymouth's house to make sure that top notch reportage is applied to that story. The people affected by that train disaster just aren't influential enough. They aren't invited to the right parties.

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Hey, you remember a couple of days ago when Michael Scheuer appeared on the "Glenn Beck Whirligig Of Freakjuice" to talk about border security, and he said that "the only chance we have as a country right now is for Osama bin Laden to deploy and detonate a major weapon in the United States." And then Glenn Beck was all up inside Osama bin Laden's head like he was the star of "CSI: Methamphetaminetown," gravely noting, "Which is why I was thinking this weekend if I were him, that would be the last thing I would do right now."

Remember that? Well, I think we can all say that reasoned discourse was perfected that day. I think the next time I see someone on the streets caught out in the rain, I'm just going to march up to them and yell, "What's it going to take, jerkface? Another HURRICANE KATRINA? Before you remember your fracking umbrella?"

However, on last night's "Daily Show" it sure didn't seem that host Jon Stewart took this eminently sensible discussion in the spirit it was offered. It looked to me like Stewart was speaking from the perspective of someone who lived through a terrorist attack and had little patience for fools who just casually suggest that maybe we'd all benefit from another one.

SCHEUER: The only chance we have as a country right now is for Osama bin Laden to deploy and detonate a major weapon in the United States....only Osama can execute an attack which will force Americans to demand that their government protect them.

STEWART: What the fuck is that? And by the way, here's the fascinating thing about our culture. My guess is that you didn't hear me say "fuck." Because the Federal government is protecting you and your children's ears from that type of profanity. While, Santa's evil twin gets to, uhh...gets to nonchalantly proposes the needless slaughter of Americans to further his national security plan. But, obviously, in this country, everyone's entitled to their dope-pinion.

Beck, of course, has launched some campaign called the 9/12 Project, in which he beseeches Americans to start being the people they were on September 12th. I gather now that when Beck says that, he'd saying he'd like many of us to be like the people on September 12th who were scorched into ashes by Osama bin Laden.


WATCH:

Republican legislators are wondering whether Mark Sanford has gone crazy.

"That's a troubled man," said Sen. Harvey Peeler, R-Cherokee, a longtime Sanford ally who this year became frustrated at Sanford's refusal to take federal stimulus money. "You can see it in his eyes and his body language. I'm concerned about his mental well-being."

John Crangle, executive director of Common Cause South Carolina, called Sanford "delusional" and said it was obvious the governor has "serious mental problems."[...]

The state Constitution has measures for removing a mentally unstable governor, but that's not likely to happen in this case, observers said.

As many regular readers of our Sunday Morning Liveblog know, I'm not averse to turning these here Eat The Press pages over to the poets who walk among us and bravely pen verse about the world in which we live. I do this for many reasons. First, I think it can be helpful, from time to time, to the slip the earthbound shackles of the rote in order to touch the face of the Sublime. Second, I like to think that if Alexander Pope -- inventor of the "dope rhyme" -- was alive today and watching the same news that I'm watching, he'd be straight up wrecking fools.

So when we received this wonderful bit of poesy from Gershon Hepner in our inboxes, so clearly written in the throes of contemplating Sanford's covert polyamory, I wanted to share its excellence with you.

From Mr. Hepner's biography on Poemhunter:

I am a physician, educated in England and living in LA. I am married to a brilliant poet, Linda, and a father of four children who are all above average, In addition I am a scholar of the Hebrew Bible, and have written a book due to be published in the summer of 2009, called Legal Friction: Interplay between Biblical Laws and Narratives. I am collecting a selection of my biblical poems that I hope to publish at the end of 2009 if I can find the time.

Without further ado, here is "Appalachian Tale:"

On the Appalachian trail
hangs an Argentinian tale.
a trail-rhyme romance of which Chaucer
might well have been a rude endorser.
Alibis in Appalachia,
more consistent with males' nature
than the nature you may find
on the nature trail remind
the people who're in Carolina
that their Governor's a finer
lover than they thought when they
elected him. Now let us pray
for him, and nature of the male,
trailing in pursuit of tail,
and all the best of Argentina's
Ninas friendly to the penis.

All praise and gratitude to Mr. Hepner. For more of his poetry, click here!

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Hmm. It's July 1st! Somewhere, out in the recesses of memory, a strange, clarion call is sounding, reminding me of a hallowed Eat The Press tradition. But what can it be?

OMGZ, of course! It's CANADA DAY, and on this day, Eat The Press remembers and celebrates all things Canadian, in keeping with the rituals handed down by this blog's founder and blogmother, Rachel Sklar. She is Canadian and she walks among us, in plain sight, but do not be afraid! She probably has cookies for you!

As Rachel would remind you, the media is filled with Canadians, and no, not all of them are Conrad Black! My personal favorites include the Daily Show's Samantha Bee and Jason Jones, Slate's legal eagle Dahlia Lithwick, NY1's Zen-master Pat Kiernan, Rachel's platonic life-partner, Glynnis MacNicol, and Boing Boing's Cory Doctorow, who quaintly spells his name "C-O-R-Y," resisting the runaway-popular American variant, "C-H-O-I-R-E." Also, Catherine Collins, who has been offering spiritual advice to the Huffington Post's DC Office, is Canadian. She buys us beer on Fridays, in keeping with the traditions of a proud nation.

I would remind you that Canada has, for a long while, been a key source of fine rock music. Metric's new album, Fantasies, is likely to vie for my own personal Album of the Year this year. It's awesome and you should buy a million copies, for your friends. As always, I remind you that I think the best band in the world is an outfit from Montreal, called Stars. Here's their video for "Take Me To The Riot," off of their 2007 album In Our Bedroom After The War.

Canadians On Canadian Stuff: The New York Times had eleven Canadians weigh in on what they most miss about Canada. Breath mints, crosswalk etiquette, freezing to death in Winnipeg, Coffee Crisps, and "fugitive logs" rate pretty high. Oh, also, there's that whole universal health care stuff, that's pretty awesome.

Speaking Of: You know what conservative senators in Canada love? SINGLE PAYER HEALTH CARE! Love it to bits and bits! I tell you, it's like bizarro-land up there!

When Will Meghan McCain Hold An Encounter Group For Her Father's Advisers: And when will McCain campaign adviser Nicolle Wallace make s'mores with me? These are but a few of the questions raised by the aftermath of Todd Purdum's Sarah Palin profile, and answered by Megan Carpentier and I in a special Canada Day edition of Crappy Hour. (Did I mention that Crappy Hour is back? Because it is.)

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Yesterday, Al Franken, after a protracted Hundred Years War with Norm Coleman that played out in front of every legal body in the state of Minnesota, finally became Senator Al Franken, giving the Democrats a 60-vote caucus and a new set of challenges as to how they will manage to excuse disappointing their constituents going forward. You may ask yourself, "Huh, I wonder how all of Franken's opponents in the media are taking it?" Not very well, as it turns out!

You can watch for yourself, if you like, in this video mashup from Media Matters! Sean Hannity: he still BELIEVES, Y'ALL, that Coleman won! Glenn Beck says it's the equivalent of Glenn Beck being made Senator! Even that brown-haired dude from Fox And Friends, ol' what's his face, has a sad about it! Yes, Al Franken is the New New Reason Democracy Has Died, thus ending the reign of the Huffington Post's own Nico Pitney.

From where I perch, it's like a whole new set of Americans now are angry at the way a recount was decided, and are worried over their belief that Minnesota is represented by a crazy person. There's another group of Americans who know what that feels like, I think! So really, isn't Al Franken just bringing the whole country together, in empathy? Probably not!

[WATCH]

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Spencer Ackerman flags a "curious choice of words" from Defense Secretary Bob Gates, apparently bravely stating the case that maybe, someday, someone ought to look into that whole "Don't Ask Don't Tell" stuff that people keep talking about.

And so one of the things we're looking at is is there flexibility in how we apply this law in terms of -- well, let me give you an example. Do we need to be driven when the information, to take action on somebody if we get that information from somebody who may have vengeance in mind or blackmail or somebody who has been jilted....

In other words, if somebody is outed by a third party, we have to -- does that force us to take an action? And I don't know the answer to that and I don't want to pretend to. But that's the kind of thing we're looking at to see if there's at least a more humane way to apply the law until the law gets changed.

Spencer notes the nonsense that's at work here, "But doesn't this kind of absurdity -- we may have to discharge a soldier who's being blackmailed -- just argue for expediting the process of overturning Don't Ask Don't Tell?"

It does, indeed! But I can go even further! Not only does it argue for the immediate overturn of "Don't Ask Don't Tell," it presents, to my mind, a great example for why this dimwitted, asinine rule should have never been implemented in the first place! I can think of no reason -- no reason under the sun! -- why any commander should have had to worry about the sudden dismissal of his soldiers because of "blackmail" from "jilted" lovers until they idiotically adopted the "Don't Ask Don't Tell" policy, which opened the door to this possibility.

The United States has the finest Armed Services the world has ever known, but its leaders -- BY CHOICE -- decided to make "gay panic" its Achilles heel. But Robert Gates is so full of concern! Let's see if there's a humane way we can apply this nonsense, he says. I think it would be really "humane" of Secretary Gates to stop degrading our national security apparatus by randomly discharging valuable personnel for stupid reasons, if he wants to know my opinion!

Meanwhile, there really is nothing in the world stopping President Barack Obama from ending this practice today, five minutes from now, if he wanted to, despite what you may have been told.

MORE:
A 'More Humane' Implementation of DADT? [Attackerman]

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Sex. What is it exactly? Can you make babies, with this "sex?" Or is it merely something that Craigslist has to stop advertising, to save print journalism? Some reports indicate that an entire "entertainment industry" has stealthily formed itself, predicated on the notion that Americans are in constant, near-terror need of sex. But why then, does the thought of Mark Sanford having sex make everybody so sad inside? All of these are great mysteries, that no one had ever thought to penetrate. Until now, that is! Via Chris Lehmann comes the news that the brave souls at the Associated Press are finally going to get to the bottom of all of this sex stuff.

And AP's report, entitled, "What Is Sex? Americans Can't Agree," is just as delightful as you might suspect. You see, America was just sitting back, chilling, when all of the sudden, out of nowhere, "philandering politicians" started appearing in the news, with their "fuzzy definitions" of sex, and now the whole nation is gripped with "uneasiness." Yes! THAT IS EXACTLY HOW ALL OF THIS HAPPENED.

We talk about sex. A lot.

But all too often we don't know exactly what we're talking about. What's considered getting to third base these days anyway?

And when it comes to philandering politicians, the line on what's considered sex is especially fuzzy.

President Bill Clinton said oral sex wasn't sex. South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford says in his latest revelation that he "crossed lines" with women other than his wife and Argentine mistress, but "didn't cross the sex line." He wouldn't say what that meant.

AGH! I KNOW! Why didn't Mark Sanford clearly demarcate where the "sex line" was, in accordance with his destiny? How will any of us feel safe at "third base," ever again? Well, maybe none of this is Mark Sanford's fault! Maybe Mark Sanford was just the victim of our own notions about what sex is, or isn't. We have met the enemy, and, naturally, it has been polled, by a leading research institution!

In 1998, just as Clinton was defining what "is" is, two other Kinsey researchers were publishing a paper in the prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association on how people see sex. The answer: We can't really agree.

The study, based on 1991 survey of 599 college students, found something odd considering the parsing of male politicians. Women in general were less likely than men to consider oral sex or mutual masturbation as having "had sex."

Of the women, 37 percent considered oral sex as, well, sex. Forty-four percent of men did.

A second survey in 1996, asked "Is oral sex 'real' sex?"

About 52 percent of the men said yes, but only 46 percent of women did.

To me, the greater concern might be what Americans think the third person singular present form of the verb "to be" is, but nevermind that! Maybe, somewhere rooted in our nations' collected body of cultural arcana is the knowledge we seek!

In the classic Meat Loaf song, "Paradise By The Dashboard Light," radio broadcaster Phil Rizzuto describes baseball players advancing bases, as a young couple negotiates intimacy in their car.

It helped cement the public on the 1960s analogy of first, second, third and home to increasingly intimate sexual activities.

Yes! Everybody knows that the 1960s notions of "intimacy" weren't cemented until 1977, when the wizened sage Meat Loaf descended unto the nation, to explain all of this! And yet, years later, the same Loaf would seemingly find himself in the unsteady waters in which we now swim, professing that he would "do anything for love, but he won't do that." Huh? What? Oh, that must be THE SEX LINE. Cross At Your Peril. Which reminds me, I've been meaning to open a bondage club in Washington, DC named "Your Peril." Any backers out there?

Anyway, AP's watershed report concludes:

Americans tend to judge politicians more harshly about marital infidelity than Europeans, said Janssen, who is Dutch. It's a cultural thing.

But we do have something in common with those across the Atlantic, Janssen said.

Europeans don't really have explicit definitions of sex in their languages, either.

So, they can be just as vague when they talk about it as we are.

Maybe the need for 'explicit definitions" is redundant in a culture where prominent politicians, like Silvio Berlusconi, flaunt their recreational sexatoriums without so much of a breath of concern. I had a mind to inquire, but Europe would not return my calls, presumably because they were all busy fucking.

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So, here's the story: The Obama administration wants to close Guantanamo Bay. But Congress is filled with people who either inanely claim that housing the Gitmo detainees in the United States would be a terrible idea because their magicks and mutant hypno-beams would bring about the certain destruction of America. Or, there are those in Congress who have to worry about constituents who might buy that insane argument. So Congress has been no help at all! That started the Obama administration thinking: "Hmmm, well maybe we could cut Congress out of the conversation entirely by establishing some extra-special, unilateral system of "prolonged detentions." Surely we're comfortable with the Executive Branch doing this, right?

Actually, as it turns out, probably not! But no worries, because some anonymous White House official said:

"Civil liberties groups have encouraged the administration, that if a prolonged detention system were to be sought, to do it through executive order," the official said.

That led many to wonder, "Wow. Which 'civil liberties group' has, on this day, taken complete leave of its senses?"

As it turns out, most civil liberties organizations have responded very poorly to the idea that they support the idea of detention-by-executive-order. Via the Washington Independent:

But representatives of civil liberties groups were still stunned to see the quote. At a meeting with the administration's task force on detentions policy earlier this month, most of the major civil liberties groups explicitly urged the administration to instead either charge Guantanamo Bay detainees and future terrorism captives with crimes in federal court or release them. Now, with the prospect of a new administration creating a regimen for holding detainees for an unbounded period without facing charges -- a major target for civil libertarian fights with the Bush administration -- on the horizon, several groups that hailed Obama's election are vowing to fight the proposal.

"Any continued policies of prolonged detention without trial of Guantanamo detainees simply fails to turn the page on the counterproductive policy of the Bush administration," said Human Rights First's Devon Chaffee, who attended the meeting with the task force. "We oppose any prolonged detention without trial beyond what is already authorized under the laws of war. If an individual committed acts of terrorism, they should be tried in our regular federal courts."

The Washington Independent reporter, Spencer Ackerman, goes on to note that at a June 9, 2009 task force that was "empanelled by Obama's January 22 executive order to recommend changes to U.S. detention policy," civil liberties organizations on hand made their position pretty well known: "Representatives of Human Rights Watch, the ACLU, Human Rights First, New York University's Brennan Center, the Constitution Project, Amnesty International, the Center for National Security Studies, the Open Society Institute and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers spent about two hours making a case against preventive detention, as well as offering their perspectives on military commissions, the repatriation of Guantanamo detainees, and the detention facility at Afghanistan's Bagram Air Field."

Isn't that pretty much ALL the civil liberties organizations?

The Center For Constitutional Rights, one of the few major civil-liberties groups that did not attend the June 9 meeting, "would mobilize to oppose any effort to create a preventive detention scheme," said spokeswoman Jen Nessel. "Whether it's in the form of an executive order or legislation, indefinite detention without charge, trial or due process goes against our most fundamental principles of justice and the rule of law."

Uhm, okay. Well, since the quote, implicating the pretend civil liberties organization, was made public, the White House has reversed itself, "saying that the administration wasn't drafting an executive order and was unlikely to issue one." So, there you have it, once again the Obama administration has lost the game of three-dimensional chess it was playing with itself, for justice, just as they intended.

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As many of you know, the modern and civilized life that we lead in America, as sensible people, has long clashed terribly with the panoply of phantasmagoric doo-doo that washes and warps inside the mind's eye of Fox News' Glenn Beck. So it makes sense that he'd be the sort of person who could have a guest (Marching Toward Hell author Michael Scheuer) on the air who thinks it'd be a great thing for the United States to be attacked by Osama bin Laden. That izsto say, our nation's one hope for survival and reclaiming its values is for bin Laden to detonate a "major weapon" on top of it. Just like what happened the last time, right? Where we all went a little demented, started spying on each other, transformed the Executive Branch into a weird, lawless nether zone of extra-legal nonsense, fought a needless war and what not? Good times!

Naturally, no one has thought all this through. What if that "major weapon" that bin Laden detonates is the Gay Bomb? What a dilly of a pickle that would be!

Anyway, your psychosis highlight reel:

BECK: Yes, sir. OK. So you have seen this. Do you really, honestly believe that we have come to a place to where those very senior people in the highest offices of the land, Congress and the White House, really will not do the right thing in the end, that they won't see the error of their ways?

SCHEUER: No, sir, they will not. Not -- the only chance we have as a country right now is for Osama bin Laden to deploy and detonate a major weapon in the United States. Because it's going to take a grassroots, bottom-up pressure, because these politicians prize their office, prize the praise of the media and the Europeans. Only -- it's an absurd situation. Again, only Osama can execute an attack which will force Americans to demand that their government protect them effectively, consistently, and with as much violence as necessary.

BECK: Which is why I was thinking this weekend if I were him, that would be the last thing I would do right now.

SCHEUER: Absolutely.

In other news, Glenn Beck is just as fun to hang around with on the weekends as you might expect.

[WATCH]

It's probably worthwhile to give you the opportunity to experience this full interview. Lord, it is mindbending!

BECK: OK. Something, a story that -- I mean, you have been talking about forever and I have been with you the whole time saying something doesn't make sense here. The most dangerous place in the world is the U.S.-Mexico border.

Now, the Obama administration is going to get serious about it. He's going to send 1,500 National Guards to the border. Let me actually give you all the details: 1,500 unarmed National Guard volunteers. We have money to study to the mating habits of Argentinean men in bars and we have to ask for volunteers to protect our border?

Let's bring in Michael Scheuer. He's the former CIA counterterrorist analyst and the author of "Marching Toward Hell." One that actually -- Michael Scheuer is the guy who I have disagreed with on many occasions, but I think he is an honorable man and he never pulls punches. He'll tell you exactly what he believes.

And, Michael, I appreciate that. I thought of you today. I thought -- when I read this story -- Michael Scheuer has to be hemorrhaging, just having some sort of a brain aneurysm. How does this make sense, Michael?

MICHAEL SCHEUER, FORMER CIA COUNTERTERRORISM ANALYST: It doesn't, Glenn. It is -- you know, I am so old, I remember going to school and being taught that a sovereign country controls its borders.

BECK: Wow.

SCHEUER: Not for racist reasons, but for reasons of national security. And this is perfectly consistent with Republicans and Democrats.

BECK: It is.

SCHEUER: They send our soldiers into harm's way and they're targets, they're not killers.

BECK: Yes.

SCHEUER: It's an extraordinary waste of human lives, but, of course, the Democrats specialize in that.

BECK: Well, I have to tell you -- and, Michael, the reason why I really didn't like you the first time is because you start speaking out right after 9/11. I don't know, maybe it was a year after or something, and you said, they're not serious about getting Obama -- I mean, Osama.

And I was still, I was still in a place where I believed the lie, and I listened to you and I thought, how dare him say that? That's absolutely -- but then I listened to you, and I believe you.

We are doing the same thing. A lot of people, they watch and they just think this show is anti-Obama. It's not. I was saying the same thing about George W. Bush, about the war, and George W. Bush about the -- about the border. It makes no sense!

SCHEUER: Glenn, I -- our government elite does not care about the future of American society or our country.

BECK: So, OK, that's .

SCHEUER: It's just as simple as that.

BECK: That's a wild charge to make. So, tell me what you think they are doing? What is their end game then? If they don't -- I mean, to say the president on either side or anybody in Congress doesn't care is quite a charge.

SCHEUER: Well, the component of that is they care more about their offices than they care about American -- about the American people. Listen, what the Democrats want is what Mrs. Clinton laid out when she first went to Mexico. She blamed the violence in Mexico on the availability of guns in the United States.

What this is that they're going to eventually move against the Second Amendment in the United States, which is the bugbear of all the Democrats. They want guns only in the hands of the government. They will sell to the American people the idea that if we control guns more, Mexico will be safer, and there will be less violence coming into the United States.

BECK: Michael, let me have a conversation that I should have with you off the air. Let me have a frank conversation. I think we are headed for extraordinarily dangerous times. I think we are I think we're headed -- we're headed toward civil unrest. God knows what? Please, America -- please, keep things under control and look at Martin Luther King and Gandhi as an example. Michael, you say something like that, and that's dangerous stuff to say.

SCHEUER: Well, I think the founders, Glenn, went out of their way in the Constitution and the Federalist Papers to make sure minorities had a voice in our country and were protected from the oppression of the majority. It's a very odd situation, but now the minority -- those folks who go to Harvard and Yale and the prestigious universities who think they know everything and who want the government to control everything -- are in power. The majority of Americans who are just interested in security and getting by are being dictated to, interfered with, and generally neglected in terms of security by the minority that rules this government. It turns the founders on their heads.

BECK: So what -- so these -- I can't imagine who is going to volunteer for this National Guard. I mean, I know a lot of people who would volunteer to go watch the border if we were serious. But to send National Guard to protect us from violent drug cartels and not arm them and not pay them -- I mean, I don't even understand that. I don't even understand .

SCHEUER: And ignoring illegal immigrants, Glenn. We're in the absurd position right now of having the minutemen, who are private citizens and armed, if the National Guard volunteers get in trouble, private citizens are going to have to come to the aid of the military. It's an absurd situation.

BECK: And let me tell you something, if something happens down there, I mean, if I'm a national guardsman and I was protecting myself, do you really think -- I mean, I wouldn't trust that I wouldn't be thrown into solitary confinement for two months. These people will sell anybody out for their agenda. They don't care.

SCHEUER: Glenn, the Republicans and the Democrats have both prosecuted U.S. citizens on the southwest border for defending their families and homes against illegal -- violent illegal immigrants -- migrants.

BECK: Michael ...

SCHEUER: It is absolutely ...

BECK: I tell you, you have been -- you were in the White House under Clinton. You were in the White House under Bush. You are you -- if anybody looks look up Michael Scheuer. He has -- he's got quite a history. He has been around the block a few times. Do you really ...

SCHEUER: Well, I haven't been in the White House, Glenn, but I was in the -- I was in the CIA at a senior level.

BECK: Well, yes, you weren't part of -- yes, I didn't mean to say you were working at the White House.

SCHEUER: No.

BECK: You've been -- you've been in the White House with the president. You have been in the room with the president and you have been making, you know, suggestions. Do I have that right?

SCHEUER: I have been with very senior people, yes, sir.

BECK: Yes, sir. OK. So you have seen this. Do you really, honestly believe that we have come to a place to where those very senior people in the highest offices of the land, Congress and the White House, really will not do the right thing in the end, that they won't see the error of their ways?

SCHEUER: No, sir, they will not. Not -- the only chance we have as a country right now is for Osama bin Laden to deploy and detonate a major weapon in the United States. Because it's going to take a grassroots, bottom-up pressure, because these politicians prize their office, prize the praise of the media and the Europeans. Only -- it's an absurd situation. Again, only Osama can execute an attack which will force Americans to demand that their government protect them effectively, consistently, and with as much violence as necessary.

BECK: Which is why I was thinking this weekend if I were him, that would be the last thing I would do right now.

SCHEUER: Absolutely.

BECK: Michael Scheuer, as always, sir, thank you very much.

So, like a month ago, David Letterman told some jokes. Some not-that-great jokes! And one or two of them were directed at Sarah Palin and her family. And so, in keeping with the prophesy, she let slip the dogs of aerial wolf-hunty outrage, and then everyone, everywhere was warblogging about it.

Me, I said, "Lo, but this is some stupid nonsense. Sarah Palin, really, like Alex Pareene once said, you got to let the stuff slide, sometimes." It doesn't make mean jokes okay. It doesn't make wrong stuff right. It's just that sometimes, you have to appear to be above it all, untouched by the vulgar vagaries of late-night comedians and their captive audiences of claques.

But the Sarah Palin fans, they could not be assuaged! And in many millions of emails, they asked me if I would "let the stuff slide" if it were directed at my kid. Many of them, budding late night comedians themselves, fell all over to come up with their own vulgar jibes, and I enjoyed them all. And the answer, my friends, is that I don't know what I'd do if I were insulted in the same way by David Letterman. But I do know that the nation is not potentially counting on me to remain calm and level-headed in the case of crisis.

If I flip out, and choke some fool in the middle of the street, guess what? The Republic will survive. But Sarah Palin -- who wants to be president maybe? -- will face madmen and cryptofascists and evil mullahs if she's elected. And in addition to these madmen and cryptofascists and evil mullahs, she will also, as president, have to contend with people who aren't on K Street.

So, my advice to Sarah Palin would be to do as the old ad copy said: Never let them see you sweat. Don't get involved in a land war with David Letterman. Let other people go crazyface on your behalf.

Yet, this past week, some blogger no one had ever heard of did a photoshop putting the face of a talk show host no one had ever heard of on the body of Trig Palin. And now, all of these people that you had heretofore never heard of are famous, because Sarah Palin wouldn't let the stuff slide. Even dumber, she said that the Photoshopping was a "desecration," which means she believes Trig had been "divested of her sacred character." Now I think Trig Palin is an awesome kid, but COME ON. That's a really pretentious thing for a parent to say.

Anyway, shortly after Sarah Palin went WARBONKERS on a blogger you never heard of, the entire internet responded in an even more vapid and juvenile fashion, and now there are stupid Photoshops everywhere, thanks to Sarah Palin, because that is what happens when you feed the beast with your stupid anger, instead of calmly letting some stuff slide and depriving the beast of oxygen.

Yes, Sarah Palin has not learned and will probably never learn the important, presidential art of sometimes letting some stuff slide. And every other leader of the GOP knows this. And that is why when David Gregory or some such teevee talking-face asks any random GOP figure about whether or not Sarah Palin is a presidential contender or the "future of the Republican Party," they all -- EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM -- say something like, "Uhhh...yeah? Sarah Palin? Boy, yeah. She's just...great...we have so many great Republicans...uhhhh, yeah. Whole bunch of 'em. Say? Have you heard about Haley Barbour?"

Not Afraid To be Oversharey: Man, I'm not sure how I feel about Ross Douthat writing an article entitled "The Way We Love Now." But hey, Mickey Kaus has been blogging for ten years, now. And somebody out there said, "Hey, let's make an incomprehensible sequel to Transformers, with Egyptology, and robot boobs." I guess we're living in a brave new era of terrifying possibilities.

My Ongoing Series On Demystifying The Political Press: I want to just point out, in Ceci Connolly's defense, that the Washington Post has never made it a requirement that their reporters be smart enough to know the difference between the substance of an issue and the politics of an issue. Evidently, I mean.

Straw Men Form Civil Liberties Group, Provide Obama With Political Cover: Via Spencer Ackerman, inquiring minds want to know: Who are these civil liberties groups who are said to have "encouraged" the Obama administration to enact a "prolonged detention system...through executive order."

[Would you like to follow me on Twitter? Because why not? Also, please send tips to tv@huffingtonpost.com -- learn more about our media monitoring project here.]

Seems like only yesterday that the entire nation was thrilling to the sturm und drang of the Democratic Party presidential primary process. Remember that nonsense? Michigan and Florida had their delegates denied! Texas had some three-headed demon-cow thingy called a primacaucus, which no one understood. Delegates were awarded proportionally, based upon voting numbers, a fact which escaped sage-genius and microtrending bridge troll Mark Penn. And somehow, the whole mess culminated in some horrible dust-up at a DNC meeting in Woodley Park, where the only thing everyone could agree on was that Sam Stein needed to be yelled at, repeatedly, while eating a sandwich.

It's impossible to look back on those halcyon days and not wish that they would soon come again, especially that sandwich, because it looked delicious. Well, those monsters at the DNC are aiming to wreck a large part of what made last year's presidential primaries so downright magical. From The Note:

One year after the country got an in-depth lesson on "superdelegates," the Democratic Party may consider doing away with them in the future.

Nooo! Surely this can't be happening! If only because superdelegacy is basically a stupid perk of being a top dog in the Democratic party hierarchy, an honorary title that allows the "some" to feel more important than the "many." Repealing a cliquish privilege? In Washington, DC? Whoever heard of such a thing? There had better be a good reason!

Touching on what may prove to be one of the more contentious issues considered by the DNC, one presenter, Democratic Party activist and Harvard University lecturer and former superdelegate Elaine Kamarck, suggested that it may be time to completely eliminate superdelegates since most of those party leaders clearly determined their role in 2008 to be one of ratifying the decision made by voters in primaries and caucuses.

"We can probably let go of the superdelegates," said Kamarck.

"Their deliberative role," she added, "has in fact been supplanted by a very very public process."

Ahh. I get it. Being a superdelegate was all fun and games until there actually came a time when it suddenly mattered. Is a perk really a perk if it comes with responsibility? Surely not. And shucking responsibility? Well, that's even more Classic Washington than accruing pointless and inane honorifics!

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Hey, everybody! Want to make a quick and dirty $100,000? All you have to do is beat Barry Ritholtz, business journalist and author of Bailout Nation in a debate over whether the Community Reinvestment Act caused the entire housing industry to melt down into unending crisis. Here's Ritholtz, serving it up:

I've run out of patience with tired memes and discredited claims by fools and partisans.

[...]

Well, its time to put up or shut up: I hereby challenge any of those who believe the CRA is at prime fault in the housing boom and collapse, and economic morass we are in to a debate. The question for debate: "Is the CRA significantly to blame for the credit crisis?"

A mutually agreed upon time and place, outcome determined by a fair jury, for any dollar amount between $10,000 up to $100,000 dollars (i.e., for more than just bragging rights).

There's no shortage of potential challengers. You can pull a veritable rogue's gallery of CRA paranoiacs from this posting from Mary Kane at FAIR: Charles Krauthammer, Neil Cavuto, Lisa Schiffren, Alex Castellanos, even Rush Limbaugh. But according to Felix Salmon, it looks like Ritholtz is going to sparring with Clusterstock's John Carney.

That'll make for an interesting debate. Carney's only recently changed his mind on the CRA issue. On June 23, Carney published a post entitled, "Sorry, Folks, The CRA Really Did Require Crap Lending Standards." Carney followed up with a flurry of blog entries after that, and is today looking for backers. (Carney has a fair question, by the way, on how, exactly a "winner" in this debate is to be determined.)

Reuters' Felix Salmon is of the mind that Carney's crazy, but nevermind that! I don't see Salmon risking any of his green on this.

So, that's today's update on how your financial journalists are diddling around, making high-stakes blog wars with each other while everyone else in the world slides slowly and inevitably into unemployment.

[Would you like to follow me on Twitter? Because why not? Also, please send tips to tv@huffingtonpost.com -- learn more about our media monitoring project here.]

Over at The Root, you can read an excerpt of my colleague, Ryan Grim's book This Is Your Country On Drugs: The Secret History Of Getting High In America. A particularly juicy one, at that: the incredible true story of two newspapers, sparring over the story of Nicaraguan Contras, inner-city drug dealers, and the way the whole thing eventually evolved into a tidy little tale of a "victimized" black community, under the thrall of paranoia.

Most people experienced the journalism this way: The San Jose Mercury News broke open "the story of the connection between L.A. crack dealers and the U.S.-funded Nicaraguan Contras." A month later, the Washington Post tore the Mercury News up. Grim says, "The Washington Post, while it launched its assault on the Mercury News, had facts at its disposal demonstrating that the story was accurate." And he goes on to document a fascinating internal struggle at the Post, between reporter Douglas Farah, on the ground in Nicaragua, and the DC-based National Security Reporter Walter Pincus:

Pincus says he didn't actually disagree with Webb's thesis--that the Contras were running drugs--but rather objected to the idea that the CIA was running drugs. Webb had reported, rather, that the Contras were a CIA-backed army but didn't pin the trafficking on them directly. "To me, it was no great shock that some of the people the agency was dealing with were also drug dealers. But the idea that the agency was then running the drug program was totally different."

Pincus' front-page piece ran at more than 4,000 words and was headlined, "CIA and Crack: Evidence Is Lacking of Contra-Tied Plot." The evidence, in fact, was not lacking. It was on the editing room floor. The New York Times and Los Angeles Times would also weigh in with stories purporting to debunk Webb's scoop, but only the Post, as far as I know, did so with independent evidence that backed him up.

And here's the thing: to everyone who despairs of the seemingly too-close cocktail connections between DC journos and the corridors of power, you're going to recognize this story. Pincus had "flirted with joining the CIA and who is routinely accused of having been an undercover asset in the '50s." And while Pincus maintains that the cloak-and-dagger rumors were "overblown," Farah talks about it in pretty clear terms: "At the time, I didn't realize he had been an agency employee for a while. That might have helped me understand what was going on there a bit."

Farah continues:

"If you're talking about our intelligence community tolerating--if not promoting--drugs to pay for black ops, it's rather an uncomfortable thing to do [report on] when you're an establishment paper like the Post," Farah says. "If you were going to be directly rubbing up against the government, they wanted it more solid than it could probably ever be done."

Farah, by the way? He now works for the Department of Homeland Security as a consultant on drug policy. Circle of life.

MORE:
Black, Paranoid and Absolutely Right [The Root]

[DC readers can talk to author Ryan Grim about the book tonight at Busboys and Poets, 2021 14th St, NW, starting at 6:30pm. Chances are, he won't be holding, but it never hurts to ask!]

[Would you like to follow me on Twitter? Because why not? Also, please send tips to tv@huffingtonpost.com -- learn more about our media monitoring project here.]