The White House refuses to respond to the petition to investigate Chris Dodd, even though it got 25,000+ signatures...

... and they promised to respond, if there were that many signatures. 

To be fair, saying we're not going to respond is a kind of response. In fact, it's an especially meaningful response in the context where one is obligated to respond.

Or perhaps they were never obligated. Look at the text of the refusal to respond:

Why We Can't Comment

Thank you for signing this petition. We appreciate your participation in the We the People platform on Whitehouse.gov. However, consistent with the We the People Terms of Participation and our responses to similar petitions in the past, the White House declines to comment on this petition because it requests a specific law enforcement action.

The link is in the original text. Maybe you're not supposed to click on it. Maybe you're just supposed to assume that it goes to a page of official terms of participation that would show that there was always an exception for petitions that request a specific law enforcement action. But if you click, you'll see it just goes to the currently active petitions, and if you search that page for the word "terms" or "participation," you get nothing.

I spent some time looking for the terms of participation, and I couldn't find any. What is the rule? Was it really a rule? I see a button "Helpful Hints," but the only hint is to check your spelling and grammar because you won't be allowed to edit or delete.

And what were the "similar petitions" that were rejected in the past? I'd like to see how much like those other petitions this one was and also whether all similar petitions were rejected. What if the "similar" ones were the ones that named individuals the administration chooses to protect?

"The right to petition your government is guaranteed by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution."

"We the People provides a new way to petition the Obama Administration to take action on a range of important issues facing our country. We created We the People because we want to hear from you. If a petition gets enough support, White House staff will review it, ensure it’s sent to the appropriate policy experts, and issue an official response."

This is an interesting part of the official White House website, which I noticed for the first time last night when I was blogging about Christopher Dodd and discovered the petition demanding an investigation of his lobbying activities on behalf of the movie industry. (Is "lobbying" the wrong word?)

There were 10,378 signatures on the petition when I put the post up, and there are 16,459 now. (I'm not claiming credit for the increase.) 25,000 signatures are needed to force the White House staff to review it and respond. Note that you have to "create an account" on the White House site to sign, and if you sign your first name and last name initial, along with the name of your city, will be posted on the site. So that's something of a deterrent to signing. It's a bit of a test of how much you trust government.

When fascism comes to America, it will be with a smiley face (as George Carlin famously said (and Jonah Goldberg turned into a book cover)).

The White House will have your information, correlated to the petitions you've signed. You can see the subject matter of the currently open petitions. Click on filter by issue to get a sense of the issues raised by the people who trust the website with their information (and believe there's some point in petitioning this White House). That seems to explain why there are 0 petitions in the category "Firearms," but 15 in "Civil Rights and Liberties" and 13 in "Human Rights."

You can also filter by the number of signatures, and at the moment, the petition with the most signatures says: "Actually take these petitions seriously instead of just using them as an excuse to pretend you are listening." Well, naturally... what did you expect? How seriously should the government take 25,000 signatures?

But this is one way the internet is working now, for what it's worth. Check out the video they used to announce the new petition function. (This came out last August, and I didn't notice.) I am amused by the effort — by the White House! — to display youthful innocence and enthusiasm. Very smiley face:



"It's an official way to make your voice heard.... And if your petition is among the most popular, a group of White House policy officials..." Video frame suddenly widens to show 9 young people in suits sitting around a White House table. They smile and wave at us. "... like this good-looking bunch, will review it, make sure it gets to the right people in the Obama administration, and craft an official response."

The right people in the Obama administration? But will they be a good-looking bunch? Because I want good-looking bunches crafting a response. An official response. Because it's an official way to make my voice heard. And policy officials will be reviewing my official petition to give an official response. Are you sure all this is official? And is everybody good-looking? Okay, then. Start crafting responses. Because after you've given me this official way to blow off steam, what will help me reach closure in this process is a well-crafted response. Official response. Official and well-crafted.

Thank you, President Obama and your good-looking bunch of officials. Thank you for this official outlet for all our frustrations with government.

"With surprising candor, Chris Dodd tells Obama that the Hollywood purse strings are about to get tight."

A Metafilter post, linking to this Fox News piece, and continuing:

Angry over the Obama administration's siding against SOPA and PIPA, Dodd says openly that the money the Democratic party regularly counts on Hollywood for might not be there this election cycle. One view is that Hollywood considers that it bought something very specific with it's money, and it's angry it's not getting it. Should Obama be worried about this? Perhaps not. The guys from Freakanomics say that our assumption that money is the most important factor in deciding elections is a fallacy.

The 3d comment says:

We petition the Obama administration to: Investigate Chris Dodd and the MPAA for bribery after he publicly admited to bribing politicans to pass legislation.

(currently 7,312 signatures out of 25,000 needed for response)

It's up to 10,378 as I write this. Christopher Dodd has learned something in the last few weeks about how the internet works in a democracy. I suspect he's about to learn a whole lot more.

"Senate Delays Vote on Piracy Bill as House Balks, Too."

Okay. But why doesn't that NYT news story have the word "Dodd" in it? This story the NYT put up last night had "Dodd" in it. Have you noticed the role of the former Senator in the SOPA fight? He's kind of a lobbyist (for the movie industry), except that he can't actually be a lobbyist, because it's illegal for a former Senator to lobby Congress in his first 2 years out of office.

Hired as the consummate Washington insider to carry the film industry’s banner on crucial issues like piracy, Mr. Dodd ended up being more coach than player.

He's more of a coach, less of a player, because it's illegal to be a player — if in this ridiculous sports metaphor, a "player" is a lobbyist — so he's less of a player.

He helped devise a strategy that called for his coalition to line up a strong array of legislative sponsors and supporters behind two similar laws — the Stop Online Piracy Act in the House, and the Protect I.P. Act in the Senate — and then to move them through the Congress quickly before possible opposition from tech companies could coalesce.

Oh, my! Isn't that elegantly phrased! It's nice to be nice to Mr. Dodd — who plotted behind the scenes to ram this thing through Congress before it was noticed by "tech companies" — i.e., all the ordinary people who like to use the internet.

But slow pacing gave the Internet and free speech advocates time to wake up and mobilize, turning what might have been a relatively simple exercise for Mr. Dodd and his allies into a bitter struggle.

His plot failed, but it should have been easy for the consummate insider, don't-call-him-a-lobbyist, Mr. Dodd.

The delays violated a cardinal rule among professional lobbyists, who generally believe the worst enemy of a proposed law is the legislative clock.

Oh, those damned delays, foiling the plots of consummate insiders, violating the rules of professional lobbyists, of which Mr. Dodd is not one, because that would be illegal.

Christopher Dodd: "Had I known at the time that there were any A.I.G. bonuses involved..."

"... that this was somehow going to assist in that matter — I would have rejected it completely."

An impossibly lame excuse. It's his job to know. He holds a public trust. Which he doesn't deserve.

"I believe in God and Senator Dodd."

I read the opening lines of Calvin Trillin's op-ed -- written in June 2006, but featured on the NYT website this morning as an op-ed "classic":

MY excitement at the news that Senator Chris Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut, is considering a bid for president in 2008 is easy to explain: his name has enormous rhyming potential. We all have our own issues.

And it took me back to the 60s, when Dodd's dad was a Senator and Phil Ochs used the line I've put in my title in "Draft Dodger Rag," which you can listen to here or buy the album "I Ain't Marching Anymore." Lyrics here:

Oh, I'm just a typical American boy from a typical American town
I believe in God and Senator Dodd and a-keepin' old Castro down
And when it came my time to serve I knew "better dead than red"
But when I got to my old draft board, buddy, this is what I said....

The original "chicken hawk" song (I think).

But the subject is poetry and names. Trillin has made his career in part out of writing light verse with a high proportion of famous names:

Someone in my position tends to see Ross Perot and John McCain as two peas in a pod — blessedly iambic candidates with nearly unlimited rhyming possibilities. During my 16 years in the deadline poetry game, though, we've had nobody with a name like Ross Perot or John McCain in the White House. I've had to deal with presidents whose names are an affront to rhyme and meter. Given the rhyming difficulties of Bill Clinton's name, in fact, I believe future historians will think of him as the "orange" of American presidents.

I think of him as the banana of Presidents, but it's all a matter of how you look at things.

Just the other day, in this comments thread to that post about whether lawprofs should call students by their first names, we got to talking about the poetic limitations of some names. I said: "[T]here are no pop songs about 'Ann.' Actually, there are few pop songs with one-syllable names."

With this, Pogo proved me wrong and exposed my inadequate knowledge of the 1960s, to which I'll plead guilty, eschewing the defense that if you can remember, you weren't there.

I looked into your cool cool eyes
I felt so fine, I felt so fine
I floated in your swimming pools
I felt so weak, I felt so blue

If you want to rhyme, rhyme. If you don't, don't. ← inferred Stooge theory of poetry.

Back to Trillin, who despite his name, didn't sing his lyrics (as far as I know). Trillin's had trouble with the current administration:

At times George W. Bush has seemed interested in making my life easier. He must have known before the appointments were made, for instance, that Condoleezza Rice's name fits exactly into the meter of "The March of the Siamese Children" from "The King and I" ("Condoleezza Rice, who is cold as ice, is precise with her advice") and that Alberto Gonzales rhymes with "loyal über alles."

And he fretted over the names coming up in 2008:

In my more pessimistic contemplations of the 2008 campaign, I see myself telling some political operative that I've made my peace with the possibility that the Democrats, desperate for some charisma, could turn to Barack Obama — a man whose rhymes I long ago used up in trying to deal with Osama bin Laden.

"But Obama's not the only Illinois contender," the operative says. "There's also the governor."

"The governor?"

"The governor," he repeats. "Rod Blagojevich."

Okay, then. Let's see the poems. Roll out your "-itch" words, you bitch.

IN THE COMMENTS: JohnJEnright composes this:

He desired the joy
of being rich.

He devised a ploy,
but it hit a hitch.

Weep, Illinois,
for Blagojevich.

AND: More commenters are itching for frontpaging. First, bearbee:

Blagojevich
Chicago jock itch
Who tried to get rich
By auditioning off a niche
And ended in an FBI hitch
Now when will he turn and snitch

And Palladian (presumably sung to the tune of "The Munchkin Song"):

Blagojevich, you bitch,
Will scratch you where you itch
and name you to the Senate seat that Barry O did ditch.

But wait! Hold on!
There's just a little hitch!
A Senate seat is valuable! He's trying to get rich.

So here's the pitch!
Pay up you fucking bitch!
And just forget Pat Fitz and Lisa Madigan, that witch!

Blago-jevich!
Payola is his niche!
A suitcase full of unmarked bills, nobody's gonna snitch!

But who will stop
this monumental kitsch?
Corruption that would cause even Jack Abramoff to twitch!

Fitch? No, Fitz!
in a prosecutor blitz
will smash the Illinois machine to tiny little bits!

The day the news was so shocking that it knocked Chuck Schumer out of his partisan mode.

This leaves me feeling shocked in retrospect, so I can't imagine how it must have felt to the Senators as they listened to Ben Bernanke's warnings:

“When you listened to him describe it you gulped," said Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York.

As Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut and chairman of the Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, put it Friday morning on the ABC program “Good Morning America,” the congressional leaders were told “that we’re literally maybe days away from a complete meltdown of our financial system, with all the implications here at home and globally.”

Mr. Schumer added, “History was sort of hanging over it, like this was a moment.”

When Mr. Schumer described the meeting as “somber,” Mr. Dodd cut in. “Somber doesn’t begin to justify the words,” he said. “We have never heard language like this.”

“What you heard last evening,” he added, “is one of those rare moments, certainly rare in my experience here, is Democrats and Republicans deciding we need to work together quickly.”

Although Mr. Schumer, Mr. Dodd and other participants declined to repeat precisely what they were told by Mr. Bernanke and Mr. Paulson, they said the two men described the financial system as effectively bound in a knot that was being pulled tighter and tighter by the day.

“You have the credit lines in America, which are the lifeblood of the economy, frozen.” Mr. Schumer said. “That hasn’t happened before. It’s a brave new world. You are in uncharted territory, but the one thing you do know is you can’t leave them frozen or the economy will just head south at a rapid rate.”

As he spoke, Mr. Schumer swooped his hand, to make the gesture of a plummeting bird. “You know we’d be lucky ...” he said as his voice trailed off. “Well, I’ll leave it at that.”

"Top 44 moments from the path to becoming #44."

I love this "highly biased, incomplete, and unfair list of classic moments from the 2008 presidential primaries." With lots of video links. Here's the one I keep coming back to when I want to laugh a lot:



ADDED: If you don't see why this video is so funny, you probably do terribly on this awareness test:

Do even more difficult aesthetic standards apply to the male candidates?

Yesterday, we were talking about that picture of Hillary Clinton that appeared on Drudge. My son John Althouse Cohen emails:

I read the Dr. Helen post you linked to, which was basically my reaction to your post. A couple additional points along those lines:

(1) What's the simplest explanation for why Edwards and Obama are the only serious male contenders for the Democratic nomination, even though Biden, Richardson, and Dodd are so much more impressive on paper?

(2) At least a woman is just supposed to look good and then there will be no further discussion. In a sense, men have a higher standard to meet: first, they're supposed to look good ... but then they need to somehow convince people that they haven't put any effort into looking good. At least the complaint about that Hillary photo -- she looks bad -- is a clear problem with a clear solution: look better. But the complaints about Edwards -- he cares too much about his appearance -- could only be addressed by letting his appearance go ... which isn't politically viable either (considering the demands that are placed on all candidates to be visually appealing).

(Preemptive response to blog commenters: I know someone's going to say, "But he was only criticized for spending $400 on a haircut, which no reasonable person would do!" Well, a price that seems inexplicable for ordinary citizens might actually be reasonable for a national politician who has to constantly worry about looking good on TV. Also, even if it was an unreasonable expenditure, there is still an unfair gender disparity in how much something like that will hurt a male vs. a female candidate.)

"Hey Clinton, Stop Telling Young Voters to Stay Home."

The Facebook Group. (Via Politico.)

We created this facebook group to send a message to Senator Biden, Senator Dodd, Senator Clinton and Gov. Richardson.

We targeted the candidates above since they gave conflicting comments about student voters in the press and at rallies.

We wanted each of them to encourage students that are enrolled in a college in Iowa to caucus, even if that means they are not "from" Iowa.

When we say "from" Iowa we mean students who chose to move to Iowa to attend school. Richardson, Biden, Clinton and Dodd seemed to be saying those students should not caucus.

Why pick on Hillary Clinton with the name of the group? They say that's the name they started with, and there's no way to change it. But really, if you're going to put a candidate's name in the title of your Facebook group, are you going to put Biden, Dodd, or Richardson? Of course not. Frontrunners deserve special scrutiny.

Here's the page with the relevant candidate quotes. For Hillary:

"Hillary wants every student who lives in Iowa and wants to caucus in Iowa and is eligible to caucus in Iowa to do so. We hope that they will and we hope that they will caucus for Hillary. The Iowa caucus is special because it is based on Iowa values. We hope and trust that every campaign is making sure that potential caucus goers have all the information they need, and in no way explicitly or implicitly encourages anyone to break the law by participating in two places. Not only is it okay to engage students in Iowa, but it is critical to ensure that they are active participants in the process, and we are doing everything we can to get them out to caucus." –Howard Wolfson, Communications Director

The Iowa caucus is special because it is based on Iowa values. What does that mean? It sounds nativistic. Why do we start with Iowa, anyway?

Let's read Politico:

The argument centers on whether to encourage Iowa college students from out of state to caucus in Iowa — as the campaign of Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) is doing — or to frown at it, as the Clinton and Dodd campaigns have hinted at.

Drawing an implicit contrast with the Obama campaign, Clinton spokesman Mo Elleithee said, "We are not systematically trying to manipulate the Iowa caucuses with out-of-state people; we don't have literature recruiting out-of-state college students.”

So, the Clinton campaign is accusing Obama of using underhanded tactics?

And Dodd’s Iowa state Director Julie Andreeff Jensen accused Obama of “scheming to evade either the spirit or the letter of the rules that guide the process.”

Scheming... manipulating...

Dodd declared that students who did not grow up in Iowa should not caucus, saying, "If you're from Hartford, Conn., and you're going to school at the University of Iowa, and you're paying out-of-state tuition, you're [unfairly] casting yourself as an Iowan."

Interesting that the rougher statements are coming from Dodd. Trying to help Hillary?

And what is he saying? Young people who go somewhere to live for years ought to go back home where their parents raised them if they want to participate in politics? The fact that a state school makes them pay more tuition imposes additional burdens?

David Yepsen, the influential Des Moines Register columnist, criticized the Obama campaign Dec. 1 for distributing a pamphlet informing student supporters that even if they are out of state on Jan. 3 they can return to Iowa and caucus at their school precinct.

Yepsen wrote, “These are the Iowa caucuses. Asking people who are 'not from Iowa' to participate in them changes the nature of the event.”

Yepsen himself admits that it’s legal for any student at a four-year college in Iowa to vote. The Iowa secretary of state posts information on how students can caucus from their campus address.

They scheduled the caucuses during the holiday break to drive you kids out of town. How dare you be so interested in politics that you'd come back early! Stay away, you bastards! Shouldn't you be hungover from New Year's partying or snowed in somewhere in New England or hiding from the winter somewhere in the South? You seem like just the nasty little idealists who'd be motivated by that damnably inspiring character Barack Obama.

[O]n Monday former President Bill Clinton [said:] “If this is your primary political identity then you should vote, but if it isn’t and you’re going to turn right back around and vote in a primary the next day then you shouldn’t because it means that your primary identity is not in Iowa.”

He's stuck 2 things together: participating twice (which actually is wrong) and having a "primary political identity." Toward the end of that (manipulative, scheming) sentence he suggests that participating in 2 states' processes is the definition of a "primary political identity." But he's creating a bad feeling that if you came to Iowa to be a student you're doing something wrong by participating without having the requisite "identity." And he's assuming that if you participate twice, the one that's wrong is Iowa. Why isn't it the other one?

A core American value is the right of citizens to move from state to state. If you want to talk about "identity," American identity includes an entitlement to relocate in another state. Now what is Iowa identity? What are Iowa values? What does it mean to ask young people to question whether they have Iowa identity and Iowa values?

The Hillary campaign has since issued a statement encouraging students to vote provided they don’t fraudulently participate in both their home state primary and the caucuses.

Okay, so they got caught, it hurt, and they backed off.

ADDED: And speaking of inadequate hyperlinking at the NYT... Glenn Reynolds notes that a NYT book review has a hyperlink on "N.R.A.," in a discussion of Roosevelt's National Recovery Administration, that sends us to a list of articles about the National Rifle Association.

It's not as if the Web were invented yesterday. Get up to speed! I'd be mortified if I'd made a mistake on my little one-person operation here. The NYT should be proving to us constantly that mainstream media has a professional quality that puts independent bloggers to shame. Instead, we bloggers have to write posts shaming mainstream media.

"Contrast Dodd's leadership and conviction on this matter with the complete passivity and invisibility of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama."

Okay. Then contrast Dodd to Clinton and Obama on this new LA Times/Bloomberg poll (PDF), asking Democrats who are registered and plan to vote in the primary how they'd vote if the primary were held today:

Hillary Clinton 48%
Barack Obama 17
John Edwards 13
Bill Richardson 2
Joe Biden 2
Dennis Kucinich 1
Someone else 2
Don’t know 15

- Chris Dodd and Mike Gravel each got less than 0.5%.

Big debate tonight.

Did you know? Well, pay attention. And comment here, if you're watching.

UPDATE: Is anyone watching? Based on the comments so far the answer is no:

Prosecutorial Indiscretion said...
But Ann, Bionic Woman premieres tonight. And the election isn't for another 14 months.

hdhouse said...
sorry....Ken Burns' WAR is on PBS...

Trooper York said...
Sorry I am watching the Met game with Doyle as they blow another game, good times.

Revenant said...
I would rather be boiled in beezelnut oil than watch another damned political debate at this point.

Wake me when they narrow it down to two candidates per party.

Michael_H said...
Food TV is showing a sandwich making contest. Much more appetizing than the dembate.

What's beezelnut oil? Trooper York is friends with Doyle?... Well, I'm watching. I just can't bring myself to live-blog.

ADDED: Would you want second-grade children to read a story about a prince who falls in love with another prince? This seems like a question that could come back to hurt them. Edwards says "yes" outright, but Hillary blabs up a storm without answering the question and gets away with it.

Another interesting question is whether you'd lower the drinking age to 18. They go on about how bad alcoholism and drunk driving are without addressing the age issue and whether delaying legal drinking helps avoid alcoholism and drunk driving. Finally, Russert asks if anyone takes the other side. Gravel gruffly says if you can fight for the country you ought to be able to have a drink, and then Kucinich forcefully makes what I think is the right argument, that the key is -- if you're going to drink -- to learn to drink responsibly. He adds that the voting age should be lowered to 16. Since he has no chance of being the candidate, I feel free to say I like the guy.

AND: Quite amusing to pose a hypothetical (about using torture) and tell Hillary after she answers that it was based on a position Bill Clinton took. She just smiles and says she'll talk to him later. (I'd like to hear that conversation.) I thought it was interesting that on the hypothetical -- about a captured al Qaeda leader who knows the location of a ticking time bomb -- Obama and Clinton stressed that it can't be American policy to have a loophole to the proscription against torture. But I got the feeling that they were leaving a loophole there: It can't be stated outright so that the world knows we'd do it, but still, maybe we'd do it.

AND: What is your favorite Bible verse? Obama says Sermon on the Mount, but then blabs generically. Hillary Clinton says "The Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Which is not exactly a Bible verse, but okay. Why should the candidates be ready to recite Bible verses? Kucinich holds up a card with a prayer from St. Francis, which fits his theme (peace) but, again, isn't a Bible verse. Edwards is impressive with "What you do unto the least of those, you do unto me." This resonates with his poverty theme, and I like the way he doesn't point out that it does. Richardson says the Sermon on the Mount. Yeah, well, Obama already said that so it's boring. You had time to think of a specific verse in the Sermon to distinguish yourself. "Blessed are the peacemakers" would have been so easy. Gravel: Love! Dodd cites the Good Samaritan. Biden: "Christ's warning of the Pharisees." Which is a clever answer to the question, essentially critiquing the question. The idea is: Don't parade your religion in public.

FINALLY: Some general observations on presentation (not based on whether I agree with the positions taken). Obama seems tired. And he's tiresome. He needs to learn to give crisp, clear answers. Hillary was strong and solid and sometimes charming. Richardson did nothing to distinguish himself. Edwards was on fire. Smart, sharp, and clear. A lot of passion, but not in any way out of control. Dodd and Biden did fine for guys who know they have no chance. Best guy with no chance is Kucinich. Very clear. Knows what he wants to say and says it. Gravel is the old guy that wandered onto the stage to say that teenagers should drink and love is the answer.

WRITTEN THE FOLLOWING MORNING: You know what would have amused me? If, asked to give a favorite Bible verse, somebody -- Gravel? -- had said: "And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who would attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee."

"If certain things happen between now and the election, particularly with respect to terrorism..."

What's the rule about talking about the way a terrorist attack might affect the presidential campaign? On Thursday, Hillary Clinton said:

It's a horrible prospect to ask yourself, 'What if? What if?' But if certain things happen between now and the election, particularly with respect to terrorism, that will automatically give the Republicans an advantage again, no matter how badly they have mishandled it, no matter how much more dangerous they have made the world," she said.

"So I think I'm the best of the Democrats to deal with that as well," she concluded.

Of course, her Democratic opponents exploit this opportunity to attack her. The bland Senator Dodd said it was "tasteless." Senator Edwards calculated that the best thing to say is that we should never engage in "political calculation" when the subject is terrorism. They're concerned about America's vulnerability to attack, but they are also concerned with their own vulnerability to attack. They must realize that Clinton would be the stronger candidate for the Democratic Party if a terrorist attack occurs before the election. Since the party will have determined its nominee long before the election, there are many months when something might happen, and yet it will be too late to switch to a more hawkish nominee.

It's not really a question of whether it's calculating or in bad taste to talk about how a terrorist attack might affect the race. It's a question of which candidates see political advantage in asking voters to visualize the election under changed circumstances and which ones would like to soothe us into thinking only in terms of existing conditions. Clinton is prodding us to think about what a good candidate she will be in different situations that may develop over the lengthy campaign season. The others don't want to talk about that because they look worse in these imagined scenarios.

So here we see how Clinton has played a shrewder, more complex game all along. Doesn't this suggest not only that she will be a more capable candidate, but also that she will operate more effectively in foreign affairs if she becomes President? In this view, fretting about taste and calculation seems rather childish. I want a President who can calculate and is not afraid to say tough things at the right time.

O'Reilly versus Chris Dodd.

It's an interesting fight -- about whether DailyKos is so vile that the Democratic candidates should not appear at the YearlyKos convention. Both men do their thing -- reasonably adequately.

O'Reilly tries to create an exciting segment by gasping over a sexual depiction of Lieberman's devotion to Bush and emoting about the extreme leftiness of Daily Kos, and Dodd provides a stolid demonstration of the conventional strategy of standing his ground and not getting riled no matter what. Dodd's point is mindcrushingly obvious: DailyKos represents a large number of politically engaged citizens who are likely to vote in the Democratic primaries. O'Reilly's stance is equally obvious: Make the Democrats look bad -- for any connection to something that might shock viewers.

I first saw this clip on Crooks and Liars, but it ends with O'Reilly saying Dennis Miller is going to talk about it. That sent me looking for a longer clip, which is what I've linked here (on Hot Air). [ADDED: But the Crooks and Liars clip -- now linked -- is longer and has more of O'Reilly's overheated goading.]

Miller gets so overheated he makes O'Reilly seem mild mannered. Why is he so angry at Dodd? He's going "This guy had nothing" over and over, but then, why get so upset? It's that Dodd -- despite the fact that he's boring and way behind in the race -- was able to take advantage O'Reilly's high profile to gain some stature with the YearlyKos conventioneers.

Miller's attitude is that O'Reilly is so great and YearlyKos is so insignificant. He says: "That convention is a loser-fest. I mean, there are hookers who have put an embargo on that convention."

No one seems to notice that Miller is indulging in sexual humor... which is exactly what Kos did with that depiction of Bush and Lieberman that O'Reilly wanted Dodd to condemn.

ADDED: And here's a WaPo article on YearlyKos:

Last year in Las Vegas, the conference attracted 1,200 participants, including current Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.), Sen. Barbara Boxer (Calif.) and retired Army Gen. Wesley K. Clark. This year at the McCormick Place Convention Center near downtown Chicago, more than 1,500 participants are expected, including the entire Democratic congressional leadership and all the Democratic presidential candidates.

I'm surprised there is such a small increase in participants since last year. You'd think the proximity of the election and the glitziness of the guests would have much more effect. [MORE: I'm told in email that a cap was imposed on the number of participants.]

"The first step must be to get off the wrong battlefield in Iraq and take the fight to the terrorists in Afghanistan and Pakistan."

Said Obama. "There are terrorists holed up in those mountains... If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won't act, we will."

This flung open a door to criticism:

"It is dangerous and irresponsible to leave even the impression the United States would needlessly and publicly provoke a nuclear power," Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (Conn.) said in a statement.

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, in a telephone interview, said that Obama's threat, if acted upon, could inflame the entire Muslim world. "My international experience tells me that we should address this issue with tough diplomacy first with Musharraf and then leave the military option as a last resort," he said.

Former senator John Edwards (N.C.) said in a statement that he would first apply "maximum diplomatic and economic pressure on states like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia" to do their utmost to combat the spread of terrorism. He also challenged both Obama and Clinton to block a proposed U.S. arms deal with Saudi Arabia.

Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (Del.), chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, called Obama's threat misguided. "The way to deal with it is not to announce it, but to do it," Biden said at the National Press Club. "The last thing you want to do is telegraph to the folks in Pakistan that we are about to violate their sovereignty."

Nothing from Hillary yet.

So has Obama convinced you he's a tough guy -- a smarter tough guy?

Did you notice the visual pun when this ran on CNN?

I didn't. Chris Dodd can't catch a break. This was hilarious.

Getting political bloggers fired: Is Matt Browner-Hamlin the new Amanda Marcotte?

I wasn't going to write about this post by Ian Schwartz, because it involves something I consider to be an old blogosphere flame war. I decided not to talk about it when I saw it yesterday, but now I see Glenn is talking about it. He is saying no one's going to care too much, because it involves Chris Dodd, but he's still telling us to look:

This will get less attention than Amanda Marcotte, though, since most people, upon hearing about Chris Dodd's campaign blogger, will respond by saying "Chris Dodd is running for President?"

So Chris Dodd is interesting enough to bother to say that he's uninteresting. Glenn doesn't link for the purpose of noting that something isn't worth paying any attention to. And the incantation "Amanda Marcotte" conveys a lot of meaning. It says this is a story about how a blog that got someone a political job contains some nasty writing that could be used to drive him out of that job.

Now, I'm a weirdly interested party here, because the #1 nasty thing Schwartz tells us about is something the blogger -- Matt Browner-Hamlin -- wrote about me. He called me a "f*ckwit" and a "f*cking assh*le" in the midst of that absurd, frenzied blogswarm around me for the way I made fun of that photograph of a bunch of bloggers posing with Bill Clinton. Well, look. Amanda Marcotte got into trouble not just for writing bad words and attacking people. She said vicious things about religion. Anyone could look at her quotes and see the problem: John Edwards had hired someone to speak for him who had openly expressed contempt for religion. There's no back story that needs explaining. We already know what religion is and what it means to millions of American voters. No serious candidate is ever going to say religion is bad, even in polite language.

So not only is Edwards a more important candidate than Dodd, but what Marcotte wrote hit America's hottest hot button. What Matt Browner-Hamlin wrote, on the other hand, is blogosphere arcana. Not only will people say -- as Glenn put it -- "Chris Dodd is running for President?," they'll have to say "Who the f*ck is Ann Althouse?" I can't believe any normal person trying to understand the 2008 campaign would sit still for an explanation of why Browner-Hamlin felt motivated to write those things about me. I suppose you could try to avoid the back story and just slam him for screaming obscenities at a woman. And I suppose there are a fair number of Americans who are sensitive about language and manners -- and even attitudes about women. Browner-Hamlin did present himself as defending women by attacking a woman, though, and who is going to want to delve into what really happened there? It lacks the pizzazz of the Marcotte matter.

Anyway, apart from my self-interest in this, I'm not keen on using old, nasty blog posts to try to get bloggers fired. Let me remind you of the position I took in the Marcotte controversy:

... I'm a little conflicted about this. Not because Marcotte attacked me [link] -- that's life in the blogosphere -- but because I like to see bloggers use blogging to snag political jobs, and, on the other hand, I'm wary about this new activity of wrangling bloggers for the benefit of political candidates. [ADDED: Marcotte was hired by the Edwards campaign to act as a liaison to bloggers. I call that "blogger wrangling." "Edwards" is a correction.] For you bloggers seeking jobs: I hope you get them. But for you bloggers staying in this noble enterprise: Preserve your independence and don't let yourself get manipulated, even by some blogger wrangler you loved when she was one of you.

In that post of mine that Marcotte savaged, I really was trying to hurt this emerging profession of blogger wrangler. I want bloggers to keep their distance from candidates and not succumb to flattery and seduction. Oh, the candidate actually cares about me, wants to talk to me. It's fine to take advantage of some access, but don't come back like a sucker and blog about how nice the candidate was to you.

So, Browner-Hamlin is a young guy who did the blogger thing and got a job. Please don't try to get him fired on my account. But a little advice to the new bloggers who are starting out and hoping to leverage themselves into political jobs: Don't fall into the lazy blogger approach of calling your opponents f*ckwits and assh*les. It was never good writing. It's a cheap way to seem spicy, and it may seem cool to some readers, but it doesn't show off your skills even now, when you're just getting started writing. The fact that later it may screw up the career you're trying to promote is a huge other reason not to do it, but it was never good. Think of better, more original ways to express yourself. You should want to distinguish yourself through writing. Calling people assh*les... it's been done.

ONE MORE THING: There is something about the Clinton-and-the-bloggers controversy that I would like to draw more attention to and that is that way the attack on me relates to the Hillary Clinton campaign. My main point about the photograph was that the blogger who stood directly in front of Clinton would remind people of Monica Lewinsky and thus undercut what Bill Clinton was trying to do by lunching with bloggers -- to help Hillary.

Put yourself in Hillary's place, seeing that picture. I think it would piss her off! I think people working on her campaign are trying to figure out how to use Bill well and know they don't want events that yield pictures like that. As I suggested here, it would work as a dirty trick against Hillary to ruin appearances by Bill by having Monica-like women pose near him like this. And I'm not saying the woman in the photograph I mocked was doing that or was behaving in a particularly suggestive way. It really doesn't take much to make people start thinking of Bill as a lecher.

Obviously, a lot of bloggers attacked me over what I wrote, and I haven't checked through to see which candidate each one supports, but I don't think they support Hillary. That is, I think they were happy with the subliminal effect the photograph had and didn't want the subject made into a subject for conscious, critical thinking. Both Amanda Marcotte and Matt Browner-Hamlin went to work for Hillary Clinton opponents. Not long before he got his new job, Matt wrote a piece on Huffington Post that was very hostile to Hillary. These are not friends of Hillary Clinton.

The ludicrous Chris Dodd, etc.

I'm very busy this morning, getting things together for the trip to the 7th Circuit Judicial Conference in Milwaukee, finishing writing at least one of my two exams, thinking about a review session that's coming up in a few minutes from now, but, along the way, I did watch a little of the Sunday morning news shows. First, a little Fox News Sunday. Ooh, was Chris Dodd blindsided -- not so much by Chris Wallace, but by Ayman al-Zawahiri:

In a new video posted today on the Internet, al Qaeda's number two man, Ayman al Zawahiri, mocks the bill passed by Congress setting a timetable for the pullout of U.S. troops in Iraq.

"This bill will deprive us of the opportunity to destroy the American forces which we have caught in a historic trap," Zawahiri says in answer to a question posed to him an interviewer.

Continuing in the same tone, Zawahiri says, "We ask Allah that they only get out of it after losing 200,000 to 300,000 killed, in order that we give the spillers of blood in Washington and Europe an unforgettable lesson."

The video was just released this morning, so it had to be in the news, and Wallace had to ask about it. Apparently, Chris Dodd has zero flexibility of mind, because he just trotted out his prepared message, even though it was ludicrously inapt.

DODD: ... [T]his is a civil war going on in Iraq. This is not the United States versus Al Qaida. It's Shia versus Sunnis tearing each other apart. It's gone on for centuries, but particularly here right now.

The United States is being asked to, in a sense, referee a civil war. And at $2 billion a week, $8 billion a month, Americans believe that we have done all we can possibly do, and Iraqis have to decide whether or not they want to end this civil war and the sectarian violence.

The idea that this is a winnable conflict by the United States -- every military leader from the very outset have said this is not a situation where there's a military victory for us here.

That was the conclusion of the Baker-Hamilton report, the conclusion of General Casey, General Dempsey. Every senior military official who's been involved, Chris, in Iraq has said from the very beginning there is not a military solution to Iraq here.

So the point has arrived, I think, for all of us that the status quo is unacceptable and that we should begin redeploying our troops.

WALLACE: But, Senator, if I can just press this point, though...

DODD: Certainly.

WALLACE: ... Here you have Zawahiri in a video -- he seems to think that Al Qaida has a stake in this fight.

DODD: Well, they may think that, but I'm not going to let my foreign policy be decided by Mr. al-Zawahiri. Obviously, he's playing his game here.

He'd probably like to see us stay down there, bogged down, at the costs we're increasing here, the loss of lives, not to mention the isolation of the United States. The status quo is unacceptable.

The American people are so far ahead of Washington on this issue. They want a change in policy, a change in direction.

We should begin that redeployment, in my view, and begin to do the things we should have been doing a long time ago, recommended by senior people of both political parties, senior knowledgeable people about the Middle East, and that is to begin to work the diplomatic, political, economic side of this issue to help Iraq achieve that stability we've been talking about.

You're not going to achieve it, Chris, when you've got 60 percent of the Iraqi people think it's all right to kill Americans. Eighty percent think we're the cause of the chaos in their country.

You need a change in policy here. That's what we're trying to achieve. The president wants the status quo. That makes us less secure and more isolated, in my view.

Ridiculous, but maybe no one was listening. Conceivably, everyone but me changed channels when he gave a 52-word answer to Wallace's invitation to state the message of his campaign in "bumper sticker" form.

I also caught George Tenet on "Meet the Press," but I haven't got time to write about it, as I've got to rush off to that review session. I'll just say it was rather painful to listen to that man try to justify himself. And Tim Russert hung him out to dry about what he wrote Richard Perle said to him the day after the 9/11 attacks. Oh, how Tenet coughed and spluttered trying to salvage his credibility on that one.

UPDATE: I wrote and posted this email from a coffeehouse on State Street, then rushed up the hill to the Law School for the review session. Along the way, I passed some new graffiti:

No war but class war
All war is civil war

And here's the "Meet the Press" transcript. This is the part I was talking about:

MR. RUSSERT: You open the book with these words: "Wednesday, September 12, 2001, dawned as the first full day of a world gone mad. As I walked beneath the awning that leads to the West Wing, [I] saw Richard Perle exiting the building just as I was about to enter. As the doors closed behind him, we made eye contact and nodded. I had just reached the door myself when Perle turned to me and said, `Iraq has to pay a price for what happened yesterday. They bear responsibility.' I looked back at Perle and thought: Who has [he] been meeting with in the White House so early in the morning on today of all days?"

Perle yesterday sent MEET THE PRESS this statement: "George Tenet tells his readers that on September 12," "'today of all days' I told him that Iraq was responsible for the attack of' September 11. "This false claim is an obvious attempt to escape the responsibility for the intelligence failures of the agency he headed. But more important, it shows that even five years later he fails to understand that the decision to remove Saddam was based on the danger posed by Iraq, especially Saddam's possession of weapons of mass destruction--the certainty of which was repeated in every intelligence report and briefing I received from the CIA and other intelligence agencies. I was out of the country on" September 11, "unable to return until September 15. When I did run into Mr. Tenet at the White House a week later, we had already concluded that al-Qaeda was responsible for" September 11. "I never made the remark Tenet attributes to me, or anything like it."

MR. TENET: We, we, we had not concluded that al-Qaeda was responsible for September 11. That conversation may have, may have occurred days later. It is the conversation that I--that, that occurred, and I stand by what happened that day.

MR. RUSSERT: He said those words to you.

MR. TENET: Yes, he did. And so for him to say that we had concluded that al-Qaeda was responsible for 9/11, well, I'd like to know who made that conclusion.

MR. RUSSERT: When you say "yesterday" and "today of all days"?

MR. TENET: Well, Tim, I, I obviously--this is a jumbled, very difficult period of time. I may be off by a few days. What he said seems to be corroborated by what he said to another journalist. Mr. Novak has said he was called on September 17, and Mr. Perle said something like, "Well, aren't enough--there aren't enough targets in Afghanistan; let's go to Iraq.' And it's--it also is corroborative of the fact that he sent a letter to the president on September the 20 that mirrors those feelings. So I may have been off on the day, but I'm not off on what he said and what he believed."