I can’t say this is out of the ordinary, as they changed WFB’s obituary numerous times without acknowledging it, but at what point do they realize that web versions of their pieces aren’t rough drafts?

The NY Daily News reports:

Readers had plenty of beef with the New York Times after an obituary of rocket scientist Yvonne Brill came off sounding sexist, some of them said.

The backlash forced The Times to change the obit online Saturday and scrub a reference to Brill’s cooking ability in the lead paragraph. It was replaced with her professional accomplishment as a “brilliant rocket scientist.”

The obit initially began: “She made a mean beef stroganoff, followed her husband from job to job and took eight years off from work to raise three children.”

Her son, Matthew Brill, called her “the world’s best mom.”

Brill died Wednesday at the age of 88 in Princeton, N.J., after suffering complications from breast cancer.

The Canada native rose the ranks as a scientist in the 1940s during a time when women in the field were few.

During her storied career, she patented a propulsion system that would later be used for communications satellites. She was also honored by NASA, inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame and presented with the National Medal of Technology and Innovation from President Obama in 2011.

Those accomplishments weren’t lost on Times readers and bloggers, who slammed the opening of Brill’s obit.

The rest here.

And at the time of the writing of this post, the NYT has yet to acknowledge the multiple versions of Brill’s obituary.

The National Press Club has framed front pages of various newspapers on display, including one from the Midland, Texas, paper with the headline “Local Rancher Elected President,” reporting on George W. Bush’s victory over Al Gore. It’s funny because it’s correct but somehow incomplete.

The Atlanta Journal Constitution does the same thing on a much smaller scale regarding immigration, but it’s not funny. As I’ve written here and here, a perennial source for quotes is local immigration lawyer Charles Kuck, but his leadership of a local group that lobbies for permissive immigration laws is never disclosed. It’s clear at this point that this is not an omission but a conscious choice by the editors to hide his role as a lobbyist for a noble cause they consider beyond normal journalistic rules of disclosure.

The paper did it again earlier this month, in “Legal path to U.S. clogged” (behind the paywall). It quoted Rosemary Jenks, accurately describing her as “the director of government affairs for NumbersUSA, which supports lower immigration levels.” But then it describes Kuck this way: “who teaches immigration law at the University of Georgia,” and later, “an Atlanta-area immigration attorney and past president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association.” All that is true enough, but incomplete — Kuck is vice chairman of the lobbying group GALEO, the Georgia Association of Latino Elected Officials. Not someone who happens to get their direct mail, not even an adjunct, which is his role at UGA’s law school, but one of the people actually directing the activities of an immigration lobbying group — and that affiliation doesn’t have to be disclosed? “In the tank” doesn’t begin to describe it.

And sad to say, NRO is one of the creditors.

Just another liberal institution making its way in the world — as long as they use somebody else’s money.

“It is to the long and illustrious tradition of the Caudillos that Comandante Hugo Chávez Frías truly belongs.” So begins an important account of the legacy of the recently deceased Venezuelan leader.

In majestic prose appearing in the Spanish newspaper El País earlier this month, Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa attempts to explain the subconscious roots of Hugo Chávez’s enormous appeal. This requires a lyrical and artistic understanding. Echoing Karl Popper’s Open Society, Vargas Llosa continues:

“In all this we see the fear of freedom — the fear that comes to man as a legacy from his primitive past, from the world before democracy and before the individual, when man was a material and gave over his free will and his initiative to a demigod, who made all the important decisions about his life.”

He knows whereof he speaks. The author traced the same psychological threads in his book The Festival of the Goat, profiling Dominican strongman Rafael Trujillo. Just what might we expect from such a figure?

“At the crossroads between superman and buffoon, the Caudillo makes and unmakes at his discretion, inspired by God or by an ideology that almost always mixes both socialism and fascism — the two forms of collective super-statism.”

And how will we recognize the Caudillismo when we see it? One clue is its style.

“The Caudillo communicates directly with his people, through demagoguery, rhetoric, and vast spectacles and scenes of magical-religious importance.”

 Vargas Llosa’s remarkable article, still available only in Spanish, is a must-read for anyone seeking to understand both Hugo Chávez and the seismic changes wrought in Latin America by this historic figure. The author also has a message for the wider world: “Although more visible in Latin America, this line of the Caudillos continues to loom everywhere, in France and in the other mature democracies.”

It’s a timely observation. After attending Chávez’s funeral, France’s minister for overseas territories told a French radio station that the world needed “more dictators” like him. There have also been calls by left-wing French political parties to name a Parisian street after the late leader.

“Neither Chávez nor any other Caudillo can appear without a climate of prior skepticism and disgust such as existed in Venezuela in February 1992,” adds Vargas Llosa.

In these days of European strife, where clear-minded reform and leadership are urgently demanded, Vargas Llosa’s poetic insight has relevance and resonance reaching far beyond the confines of the Latin American situation he describes.

Oh my. First the story of the SEAL not having insurance fell apart, and now the rest of Phil Bronstein’s story is in question? CNN’s Peter Bergen writes:

In February, Esquire magazine published a lengthy profile of “The Man Who Killed Osama bin Laden.” The story did not identify the killer by his real name, referring to him only as ”the Shooter.”

The Shooter told Esquire that the night bin Laden was killed he had encountered al Qaeda’s leader face-to-face in the top-floor bedroom of the compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, where bin Laden had been hiding for more than five years.

The Shooter explained that when he found bin Laden in his bedroom the al Qaeda leader was standing up and had a gun “within reach” and it was only then that the Shooter fired the two shots into bin Laden’s forehead that killed him. That account was in conflict with the account from another raid participant in a wildly successful book “No Easy Day.”

Now, another member of the secretive SEAL Team 6, which executed the bin Laden raid, tells CNN the story of the Shooter as presented in Esquire is false. According to this serving SEAL Team 6 operator, the story is “complete B-S.”

SEAL Team 6 operators are now in “serious lockdown” when it comes to “talking to anybody” about the bin Laden raid and say they have been frustrated to see what they consider to be the inaccurate story in Esquire receive considerable play without a response. Phil Bronstein, who wrote the 15,000-word piece about the Shooter for Esquire, was booked on CNN, Fox and many other TV networks after his story came out.

The rest from Bergen here.

And from the archives in February when the milblog site “Blackfive” called the Bronstein piece “fiction.” 

But don’t feel bad for Phil Bronstein. If his career as an investigative reporter doesn’t pan out, he can always go to plan B: Komodo dragon whisperer.

Here’s a screenshot from a search of “Amanda Knox” on Google news. 

That’s quite a lot of coverage for a non-story. Here’s ABC News on what would happen if Knox were to be found guilty at retrial:

Her lawyer said the new trial will probably start again next year. He said Knox will not come back for new trial.

The new trial does not mean that Knox would be back in an Italian prison any time soon. She would not be required to return to Italy for the trial and if she is convicted again, that ruling would be appealed up to the Supreme Court. More legal proceedings will be necessary to extradite Knox to Italy. Experts do not believe such an effort would be successful.

Move along MSM, move along.

Here’s syndicated columnists Cynthia Tucker, via CNN, on conservative Dr. Ben Carson’s “mistaken” philosophy:

Like giddy teenagers, Republican activists have fallen for another charming, personable and accomplished black conservative. Dr. Ben Carson is the newest object of their crush, which was born of a desperate need to attract more black men and women as high-profile standard-bearers.

(Giddy conservative teenagers love neurosurgeons? There’s hope. . .)

You can’t blame Republican loyalists for swooning over the doc, a renowned surgeon who rose from poverty to head pediatric neurosurgery at Baltimore’s famed Johns Hopkins Hospital. If wooing voters of color were simply a matter of finding an attractive black face with an inspiring personal story and an impressive resume, Carson would be hard to beat.

But black voters tend to be more discerning than that. They have shown an unerring instinct for rejecting condescension and dismissing tokenism. There are many black Americans who admire Carson for his professional accomplishments (I’m one of them), but that admiration is unlikely to translate into votes.

(Newsflash: We like Dr. Carson because of his views. His skin color enters into it only with MSM “analysis.” We conservatives like to say we judge a man by the content of his character, not the color of his skin. Try it sometime . . .)

One of the reasons is that Carson doesn’t seem to know black Americans’ political values very well. In his most recent book — a political tract called “America the Beautiful: Rediscovering What Made This Nation Great” — he writes: “Many African-Americans voted for Obama simply because he was a black man and not because they resonated philosophically with his policies.” In fact,black voters have been increasingly allied with the Democratic Party since the 1960s when Lyndon Johnson pushed through significant civil rights legislation. Al Gore received about 95% of the black vote in 2000, John Kerry about 93% in 2004.

(And how has this blind faith toward Dems worked out for blacks in America?)

Moreover, Carson seems to have adopted the view, popular among so many ultra-conservatives, that the Democratic Party appeals to voters who shun the work ethic.

(Evil conservatives want people to work. Dems don’t?)

I could go on, but you can read the rest here . . . if you really want to.

Who claims he’s innocent.

Exit question: Why is the Today show interviewing him in the first place? There’s no news value, only salacious ratings points. Stay classy, NBC.

Remember when Mitt Romney was skewered by the Left for saying in the debates that Syria is important because it’s “Iran’s route to the sea?”

Well, John Kerry made a surprise visit to Iraq over the weekend and the purpose of his trip sounded a lot like what Mitt warned about:

Secretary of State John Kerry’s surprise stop in Baghdad Sunday made him the highest-ranking Obama administration official to mark the 10th anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq where it took place.

But Secretary Kerry’s visit had little to do with marking a milestone and much to do with invoking what dwindling influence America still has in postwar Iraq on two important issues for Washington: Iraq’s acquiescence at least to Iran’s use of Iraqi airspace to ferry arms to forces fighting for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and worrisome signs of a resurgence of sectarian divides and political power-grabbing in Iraq.

The United States wants Iraq to rigorously inspect Iranian cargo flights destined for Syria for arms shipments. And on the domestic political front, the US wants Iraq’s Shiite-dominated government to reconsider a decision to suspend provincial elections set for next month in two provinces with important Sunni populations. More broadly, it wants Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to do a better job of upholding democratic principles and promoting an inclusive political system.

This is old news, however. We’ve known since before the election that Iraq was letting Iran supply Syria by air (bullet point No. 7). 

It would be nice, however, if the media would report Kerry’s trip for what it is: an acknowledgement that the Obama administration has failed to stop Iran from propping up Assad with the complicity of our supposed allies in Iraq.

The Senator posted this yesterday:

And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love. I Corinthians 13

The question of marriage equality is a great American debate. Many people, some with strong religious faith, believe that marriage can only exist between a man and a woman. Other people, many of whom also have strong religious faith, believe that our country should not limit the commitment of marriage to some, but rather all Americans, gay and straight should be allowed to fully participate in the most basic of family values.

I have come to the conclusion that our government should not limit the right to marry based on who you love. While churches should never be required to conduct marriages outside of their religious beliefs, neither should the government tell people who they have a right to marry.

My views on this subject have changed over time, but as many of my gay and lesbian friends, colleagues and staff embrace long term committed relationships, I find myself unable to look them in the eye without honestly confronting this uncomfortable inequality. Supporting marriage equality for gay and lesbian couples is simply the right thing to do for our country, a country founded on the principals of liberty and equality.

Good people disagree with me. On the other hand, my children have a hard time understanding why this is even controversial. I think history will agree with my children.

This is big. Usually McCaskill reserves her Tumblr account for important announcements like how her husband makes a frittata out of leftovers or her recipe for lemon merenguie pie. 

Poor babies. They’re angry that Brian Williams asked — gasp — tough questions. Via the New York Post:

Hollywood uber-agent Ari Emanuel sent a fiery legal letter to NBC after he objected to a contentious interview he and his high-powered brothers sat for with Brian Williams for “Rock Center,” sources tell Page Six.

The brothers — Ari, Chicago Mayor Rahm and bioethicist Ezekiel — appeared on the show, in a segment that aired Friday, to talk about Ezekiel’s upcoming book, “Brothers Emanuel: A Memoir of an American Family.” But a source said that when they met Williams earlier this month to pretape it at a Manhattan bar, the NBC anchor was acting “like it was for ‘Meet the Press.’ ”

“Ari was not happy with it,” the source said of the aggressive interview done in a casual setting. “It was very odd, and [the brothers] were caught off guard. They were there to talk about the book and growing up together. They had offers to do this interview with lots of other people.”

The rest here.

The Congressional Research Service has a new study out calculating how many people have been killed in the United States in mass shootings since 1983. The number is 547, not including the shooters.

That’s roughly 18 per year.

As the United States averages 54 lightning deaths per year, you are three times more likely to be struck and killed by lightning than to be gunned down in a mass shooting. As Joe Biden would say, “literally.”

And on the plus side, a different CRS study analyzed the economic impact of increased sales of guns and ammunition. It seems our gun culture is a “boon” for the environment. Via National Journal:

What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. And, it seems, what’s good for the gun industry is good for the goose. Through a federal excise tax on guns and ammunition, the booming industry is providing a nine-figure windfall to state conservation programs, according to a Congressional Research Service report issued this month.

The Wildlife Restoration Program, prescribed by the Pittman-Robertson Wildlife Restoration Act of 1937, distributes excise-tax revenues collected in the previous year to state wildlife agencies. The money goes toward programs for hunter training and wildlife conservation, paying for the upkeep of nature preserves, and providing capital to buy and protect new parcels of undeveloped land. Funds distributed by the program, which also draw on a tax on archery equipment, are expected to rise 38 percent this year to $534 million, up from $388 million in 2012, according to the report. That total, though, does not account for sequestration, which could shave $21 million from this year’s disbursements.

Much of the uptick in gun-buying appears motivated by long-simmering fears that the Obama administration will institute tough gun-control measures. Revenues from the 10 to 11 percent firearms tax jumped 45 percent in fiscal 2009, which began just before his election.

The trend shows no sign of abating. Revenues from the excise tax were up an additional 40 percent in the first quarter of 2013 over the same period last year. And the revenue bump could get even bigger. According to Jane Gravelle, senior specialist in economic policy at CRS and coauthor of the study, the reported numbers do not yet reflect the surge in gun and ammunition purchases since the Dec. 14 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. That’s because the tax is paid by manufacturers, who would not have felt the effects of the buying spree before the close of the fiscal quarter at the end of 2012.

The rest here.

Yes, we all know the New York Times is slanted in its coverage, and sometimes people whine about that too much. But when an actual reporter, who’s not a conservative and who wants the Times to be better, examines that bias in detail, it’s worth reading.

That’s what my colleague Jerry Kammer, who won the Pulitzer for helping send Duke Cunningham to jail, has done in a new report on the paper’s coverage of immigration. (It follows last week’s release of a report on how the NYT’s editorials on immigration got to be so ridiculously bad.)

Jerry writes, “Thus conceived as a clash of noble strivers versus snarling nativists, illegal immigration at the Times is not subjected to the rigorous analysis of costs and benefits that, under basic rules of journalism, should be applied to any major issue of public policy.” Why is this is important? His answer:

That failing is severe precisely because the Times is so influential. It affects not only public opinion but also the work of reporters around the country who might otherwise look more deeply into a story of great complexity and profound consequences. The Times has failed in its coverage of immigration, and we are all the poorer for it.

Read the whole thing.

I’m not sure it would be worth going to Columbia Journalism School even if it were free, as opposed to actually covering zoning commission meetings and searching county records and persisting with a developer or politician for a straight answer. But at $83,884 a year?  A Ph.D. in Zimbabwean puppetry would be a better investment.

At first glance, the Washington Post Outlook section’s list of hackneyed words and phrases to avoid is no silver bullet in altering the lexical Zeitgeist of the tight-knit journalism community. Be that as it may, it is important to note that this stinging rebuke may midwife a paradigm shift and bring an ignominious end to a dizzying array of iconic phrases going forward.

And the editors of the WSJ warn on the consequences of this move:

A Royal Charter for the Press

A new regulator will inevitably mean greater political sway over the media.

So Britain will get a new press regulator, established by Royal Charter, but underpinned by a law that will make it difficult to change the way the new body operates. A Royal Charter is a declaration by the monarch granting powers and privileges to an entity. Think the BBC, the Bank of England, or the East India Company.

Regulating newspapers by charter was part of the strange compromise struck among the Tories, Liberal Democrats and Labour in the wee hours Monday. The Lib Dems and Labour want a new press regulator established through legislation, with all the muscle that implies. Prime Minister David Cameron opposed a statutory regulator but faced possible defeat in Parliament on this point. Angst is still high in Westminster over the need to “do something” about a press corps supposedly run amok in the phone-hacking scandals.

Some are deriding a Royal Charter as a “medieval” institution. Since you have to go back to the 17th century to find a time when the Crown licensed newspaper publishers, the throwback analogy seems apt.

This new press regulator is anachronistic in other ways too. Politicians are already arguing over the extent to which Internet blogs would fall under its sway, though membership is supposed to be voluntary. Some of Britain’s most prominent bloggers want no part of it. Paul Staines, who blogs under the nom de plume Guido Fawkes, hosts his blog offshore. Even his mobile phone is offshore.

The rest here.

Mike Lupica of the New York Daily News is outraged over the assault-weapons ban failing in the Senate yesterday and held nothing back with his op-ed today titled, “Spineless pols spit on the graves of Newtown victims by not pushing for assault weapons ban.” An excerpt:

Any fool knows that Lanza couldn’t possibly have killed as many children as quickly as he did on the morning of Dec. 14 without an assault weapon in his hands. So how does the President and any other big politician who allows the gun nuts from the National Rifle Association to win again answer the larger question about weapons that make killings like the elementary-school massacre ridiculously easy:

If not now for a ban for these weapons, when?

If Sandy Hook Elementary doesn’t make every member of Congress take a stand against assault weapons in this country, then what does? How many small coffins do we need the next time?

And after the next Adam Lanza shows up with a gun like an AR-15 in a school or a theater or a shopping mall, no one will believe a word the President says at the next memorial service about profoundly changing gun laws in this country. Because three months after Newtown, it turns out that the President has no real power to change anything when it comes to guns in the hands of the wrong people in America.

Of course background checks are important. But so is an assault weapons ban. And please don’t believe the self-serving and slobbering supporters of the NRA — that means all the politicians in the House and the Senate who have pimped themselves out to the NRA — who tell you that a ban like this won’t make a difference, will not save lives the next time.

That happens to be a shameful and gutless lie.

Again: Ask any gun owner if Lanza could have killed as many children as he did in as short a time as he did — before he was a sure shot putting a bullet from one of his handguns through his snake-filled brain — if he didn’t have an AR-15 in his hands. Then go ask the gun lovers to explain all over again how a ban on weapons like this wouldn’t have saved three young lives that morning, or five, or maybe even more than that.

Yet, on Sunday Lupica penned this piece where he used anonymous quotes from an attendee at a law enforcement conference where Danny Stebbins, a colonel in Connecticut’s State, spoke on yet-to-be-publicly-released details of the Lanza attack. Lupica’s piece from Sunday contradicts his rantings of today where he blames the NRA and thinks an assault weapons ban will somehow, magically I guess, stop the next Lanza. Some excepts:

First, his headline . . .

Morbid find suggests murder-obsessed gunman Adam Lanza plotted Newtown, Conn.’s Sandy Hook massacre for years

Meticulous plotting . . .

“We were told (Lanza) had around 500 people on this sheet,” a law enforcement veteran told me Saturday night. “Names and the number of people killed and the weapons that were used, even the precise make and model of the weapons. It had to have taken years. It sounded like a doctoral thesis, that was the quality of the research.”

Video games get a fair amount of blame from the Connecticut State Police, something Lupica conveniently left out of today’s op-ed:

“They don’t believe this was just a spreadsheet. They believe it was a score sheet,” he continued. “This was the work of a video gamer, and that it was his intent to put his own name at the very top of that list. They believe that he picked an elementary school because he felt it was a point of least resistance, where he could rack up the greatest number of kills. That’s what (the Connecticut police) believe.”

The man paused and said, “They believe that (Lanza) believed that it was the way to pick up the easiest points. It’s why he didn’t want to be killed by law enforcement. In the code of a gamer, even a deranged gamer like this little bastard, if somebody else kills you, they get your points. They believe that’s why he killed himself.

Another point Lupica missed today: the Connecticut State Police are saying Lanza chose the school as a target because it was a “point of least resistance.” That’s exactly why the NRA said armed guards were needed to protect schools. And it’s also why President Obama agreed with the NRA in his series of “executive actions” on the importance of adding security to schools. 

More from the conference:

“He [Lanza] didn’t snap that day, he wasn’t one of those guys who was mad as hell and wasn’t going to take it anymore,” the man said. “He had been planning this thing forever. In the end, it was just a perfect storm: These guns, one of them an AR-15, in the hands of a violent, insane gamer. It was like porn to a rapist. They feed on it until they go out and say, enough of the video screen. Now I’m actually going to be a hunter.”

About those high-capacity magazines: turns out Lanza didn’t need them, again via Stebbins:

“It really was like he was lost in one of his own sick games. That’s what we heard. That he learned something from his game that you learn in (police) school, about how if you’re moving from room to room — the way he was in that school — you have to reload before you get to the next room. Maybe he has a 30-round magazine clip, and he’s only used half of it. But he’s willing to dump 15 rounds and have a new clip before he arrives in the next room.” [. . .]

“They believe he learned the principles of this — the tactical reload — from his game. Reload before you’re completely out. Keep going. When the strap broke on his first weapon (the AR-15), he went to his handgun at the end. Classic police training. Or something you learn playing kill games.”

In summary, Wayne LaPierre blamed video games. The Connecticut State Police is, according to Mike Lupica, blaming video games, and for the first time gives us an official indication that it was not just an AR-15 that was used in the killings, but a handgun as well. But Lupica is outraged at the NRA and the AR-15 in particular.

Now here’s the sickening part of the story. The part that nobody really wants to address and that’s what responsibility Adam Lanza’s mother bears for this tragedy. If this is actually what Stebbins said, then I’d say she’s an accomplice. . .

The police in Connecticut believe that Lanza’s mother, a gun lover herself, was an enabler of her son’s increasing obsession with guns, that she was making straw purchases of guns for him all along, and ignoring the fact that he was getting more and more fixated on them.

Lanza didn’t need to steal the guns because his mommy bought them for him. A woman with the financial ability to get her son whatever help he needed, and she failed. Newtown is the result of that failure.

Lupica wants to know how do you stop the next Lanza is the question and I don’t know if you can. 

Mike Lupica is no dummy, and I ask with all seriousness, does he really think that Lanza, if denied an AR-15, wouldn’t have done just as must damage with a firearm not banned by Senator Feinstein’s bill? 

Via ABC News:

Pakistani officials said today they have arrested a suspect in connection with the brutal 2002 murder of Wall Street Journal correspondent Daniel Pearl.

Officials told ABC News the suspect, Qari Abdul Hayee, who often used the alias Asadullah, was captured Sunday in a targeted operation by the Pakistani Rangers, a paramilitary unit, in the city of Karachi, Pakistan’s biggest city and a sprawling metropolis home to an estimated 18 million people.

Pearl was kidnapped in January 2002 while en route to interview a Pakistani militant and was later beheaded in a gruesome video eventually posted online.

In 2007, self-described 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed reportedly confessed to having killed Pearl, but it’s unclear whether he personally carried out the beheading. Mohammed, currently in U.S. custody at Guantanamo Bay, has never been charged with the crime.

Pakistani officials said they do not believe Hayee carried out the murder, but said he was “privy to the whole situation” and that he was part of the terror group that carried out the crime.

The rest here.

Heckuva’ job:

CNN, Fox News and MSNBC recently aired the name of the underage victim in the Steubenville rape trial during reports about the case.

Two high school football players were found guilty of raping a 16-year old girl in a controversial case in Steubenville, Ohio. The verdict was handed down on Sunday.

All three cable news networks aired a clip of one of the defendants, Trent Mays, apologizing to the victim in the courtroom. Mays had addressed the victim by name, which was not censored during CNN and MSNBC’s broadcasts on Sunday and Fox News’ broadcast on Monday. Local CBS affiliate WTRF also aired the clip without editing the victim’s name out.

Via TV Newser:

Within Pew’s State of the News Media 2013report, the topic of opinion versus reporting on cable news came up. As we noted earlier, since 2007 opinion programming has risen dramatically while reporting has declined, but it is worth breaking it down by network.

According to Pew’s analysis, MSNBC had by far the most opinion programming of the “big three” cable news channels, with 85% of segments opinion, versus 15% reporting. By comparison Fox News had 55% of segments opinion to 45% reporting, with CNN the only channel to offer more reporting than opinion, with 54% reporting and 46% opinion. Opinion is not just hosts sharing their views, but also pundits spouting on about their thoughts on matters.

On the whole, 63% of all segments on cable news feature opinion, compared to 37% for reporting.

Not surprisingly, primetime skewed heavily toward opinion, with a broader mix during the day, and a slight skew toward opinion in the morning hours.

The rest here.

Politico reports on the similarity citing numerous tweets, and includes this picture via Glenn Beck:

Kind of a Sith version of the devil, no?

But it’s not really Barack Obama who is behind the tweet below. It’s the “independent” 501(c)(4) named “Organizing for Action” that now controls the @BarackObama account:

So how does this work, exactly? The president has loaned an independent group his website (BarackObama.com), his campaign logo and his Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr accounts that all bear his name? But, from the explanation on the Twitter page, the president will still get to post messages to the independent group when he wants? Here’s the explanation from OFA, stressing the independence between the president and the “advocacy” group:

Will OFA be involved in elections, supporting candidates who share a commitment to these policies?

No. Neither OFA nor its chapters will be involved in any way in elections or partisan political activity. Its exclusive purpose is public policy advocacy and development, and in particular, both enactment of President Obama’s legislative agenda and the identification and advancement of other goals for progressive change at the state and local level.

And. . .

Does President Obama support the establishment and activities of OFA?

OFA is advocating for the agenda that President Obama has presented to the nation, and as an organization dedicated to this purpose, OFA has been grateful for the expression of support for its work by the President, Vice President and First Lady. Although it was privately established and will be privately operated, without government funding, OFA will work hard to retain the support and confidence of the President by effectively advocating for his Administration’s core agenda. It also looks forward to working with other civic organizations that are similarly committed to the successful enactment of this agenda.

Do the organizations working closely with or in alliance with OFA include the Democratic Party?

No. OFA is not a partisan political organization and will not engage in electoral activity with any partisan political organization. It welcomes Democrats, Republicans, and Independents to support its work, and its advocacy will be directed to all Americans, without regard to party or other political affiliations.

And as soon as President Obama’s term in office is over, he gets to control his “name” again, no doubt. 

. . . and all it takes is a donation to Al Franken to enter this wonderful contest:

The New York Post reports Scott Sassa, president of Hearst Entertainment and Syndication, has resigned:

Top Hearst executive Scott Sassa has left the company over a sensational extortion plot involving a Los Angeles-based stripper he was sexting, multiple sources exclusively tell Page Six.

Sassa — the high-flying president of Hearst Entertainment & Syndication group who manages the company’s interests in ESPN, Lifetime and recent successes including executive producing the hit miniseries “The Bible” for the History Channel — is quitting after the stripper forwarded sexy texts between her and Sassa to Hearst Corp.’s very conservative top brass.

Sources tell us Sassa, 53, who has held top jobs at Fox, NBC, Friendster and Marvel Entertainment, met the stripper in LA in December. They engaged in several steamy, illicit exchanges while arranging to hook up, and she sent explicit photos to him.

And that is Hollywood in a nutshell: a hit television series on the Bible and an inappropriate relationship with a stripper at the same time.

Charles Lane writes:

Yet no one has asked: Why is it even legal to cast an 18-year-old in a sexually explicit movie?

Eighteen is, for most purposes, the age of majority. You can vote, serve in the military and so on. When Congress set 18 as the minimum age for porn “actors” in 1984 and, four years later, required producers to document performers’ ages and identities, lawmakers’ goal was to fight child pornography — by defining it precisely.

Still, I would think that having sex with a stranger for money and on camera belongs on the short list of risky behaviors that one can’t legally engage in before age 21. That list includes: buying a handgun from a federally licensed dealer; gambling in most casinos; working as a stripper in a bar; and smoking pot in Colorado. Porn-acting’s first cousin, prostitution, is legal in 11 Nevada counties, but nine don’t license anyone under 21.

Heck, Carnival Cruise Lines won’t even let under-21s book a stateroom. (That’s a contractual limitation, not a law, but the courts apparently enforce it.)

And, of course, the drinking age is 21. In Delaware, Melissa King isn’t old enough to enter a liquor store.

Well, since I consider voting and serving in the military much greater and important roles of our citizenry, Lane — at least to me — is making an argument that porn, prostitution, booking a room on a boat, drinking alcohol, etc., should be allowed for 18-year-olds.

Glenn Kessler writes on the White House claim that sequester cuts would hurt White House janitors:

We don’t try to play gotcha here at The Fact Checker. When Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) was ridiculed for saying last week that 170 million jobs would be lost because of the sequester, we dropped our inquiry when we realized she had corrected her statement — to the official Congressional Budget Office estimate of 750,000 jobs — later in the same news conference. Everyone makes mistakes, and that’s understandable.

The quicker the mistake is cleaned up, the better. As Education Secretary Arne Duncan showed this week, a little humility, even a bit late, can be a good thing.

But a clean-up brigade shouldn’t simply try to deflect and obfuscate. Apparently, the president assumed — incorrectly — that the janitors on Capitol Hill would get a pay cut. Rather than admit an error, White House aides doubled down on their talking points about overtime being essential to their livelihood, without actually knowing the truth.

Clearly, the sequester is hurting segments of the government and will cut the pay of some government workers. It would be better to focus on those people rather than imaginary victims.

 

Who knew there was a Goldilocks-type scale for dictators?

An excerpt from The Nation’s Greg Grandin on the now-dead leader:

Chávez was a strongman. He packed the courts, hounded the corporate media, legislated by decree and pretty much did away with any effective system of institutional checks or balances. But I’ll be perverse and argue that the biggest problem Venezuela faced during his rule was not that Chávez was authoritarian but that he wasn’t authoritarian enough. It wasn’t too much control that was the problem but too little.

Chavismo came to power through the ballot following the near total collapse of Venezuela’s existing establishment. It enjoyed overwhelming rhetorical and electoral hegemony, but not administrative hegemony. As such, it had to make significant compromises with existing power blocs in the military, the civil and educational bureaucracy and even the outgoing political elite, all of whom were loath to give up their illicit privileges and pleasures. It took near five years before Chávez’s government gained control of oil revenues, and then only after a protracted fight that nearly ruined the country.

Once it had access to the money, it opted not to confront these pockets of corruption and power but simply fund parallel institutions, including the social missions that provided healthcare, education and other welfare services being the most famous. This was both a blessing and a curse, the source of Chavismo’s strength and weakness.

Stupid Chavez not mean enough. The whole piece here.

Details here.

Earlier I posted that I didn’t read a threat in the e-mail between Sperling and Woodward, but this piece by Ron Fournier of the National Journal has changed my mind. His opener:

The fight between the White House and journalistic legend Bob Woodward is a silly distraction to a major problem: The failure of President Obama and House Republicans to lead the country under a budget deadline.

Woodward-gate is a distraction the White House welcomed, even encouraged, as part of a public-relations strategy to emasculate the GOP and anybody else who challenges Obama. It is a distraction that briefly enveloped my reporting last weekend, when I essentially broke ties with a senior White House official.

Yes, I iced a source– and my only regret is I didn’t do it sooner. I decided to share this encounter because it might shed light on the increasingly toxic relationship between media and government, which is why the Woodward flap matters outside the Beltway.

On Saturday, White House press secretary Jay Carney accused Woodward of being “willfully wrong” on a story holding the White House accountable for its part in a legislative gimmick called sequestration. (Months ago, the GOP-controlled House passed, and Obama signed, legislation imposing $1.2 trillion in cuts unless an alternative is found by Friday.)

Carney isn’t the first press secretary to criticize a reporter. Presidential aides do it all the time to set the record straight or — often, more cynically — to dodge accountability. I was struck by the fact that Carney’s target has a particular history with White House attacks. I tweeted: “Obama White House: Woodward is ‘willfully wrong.’ Huh-what did Nixon White House have to say about Woodward?”

Reporting by Woodward and Carl Bernstein uncovered Watergate misdeeds and led to the resignation of President Nixon. My tweet was not intended to compare Nixon to Obama (there is no reason to doubt Obama’s integrity — period) but rather to compare the attack to the press strategies of all the presidents’ men.

I had angered the White House, particularly a senior White House official who I am unable to identify because I promised the person anonymity. Going back to my first political beat, covering Bill Clinton’s administration in Arkansas and later in Washington, I’ve had a practice that is fairly common in journalism: A handful of sources I deal with regularly are granted blanket anonymity. Any time we communicate, they know I am prepared to report the information at will (matters of fact, not spin or opinion) and that I will not attribute it to them.

This is an important way to build a transparent and productive relationship between reporters and the people they cover. Nothing chills a conversation faster than saying, “I’m quoting you on this.”

The official angered by my Woodward tweet sent me an indignant e-mail. “What’s next, a Nazi analogy?” the official wrote, chastising me for spreading “bull**** like that” I was not offended by the note, mild in comparison to past exchanges with this official. But it was the last straw in a relationship that had deteriorated.

As editor-in-chief of National Journal, I received several e-mails and telephone calls from this White House official filled with vulgarity, abusive language, and virtually the same phrase that Woodward called a veiled threat. “You will regret staking out that claim,” The Washington Post reporter was told.

The rest here.

Below is the e-mail press release I received from the “Tea Party News Network.” I have no idea why it costs $75,000 to get WiFi access at the CPAC conference, however. 

WASHINGTON D.C. - The Tea Party News Network is spearheading an effort to raise $75,000 so that attendees to this year’s CPAC convention from March 14 to 16 will have free access to wireless internet. 

“We’re delighted that we could step in and provide internet for CPAC. It’s all well and good that mainstream media organizations can shell out hundreds of dollars for internet, but for many of the thousands of bloggers and conservative activists that will be there, paying that steep a price for internet is an undue burden,” said Scottie Nell Hughes, News Director of the Tea Party News Network.  

“Bloggers and CPAC goers alike are extremely thankful for what TPNN is doing in trying to provide WiFi for the conference this year. The venue change has provided great anxiety for everyone, and bloggers not having free or affordable WiFi would have proved to be nothing short of a disaster. Activists from across the country who rely on these citizen journalists would have had less coverage of the largest gathering of conservatives at a time when we are all calling on more communication, not less. I’m proud to see a major blog like TPNN step up to benefit the movement as whole,” said Ali A. Akbar, President of the National Bloggers Club.

“There were rumors that bloggers were going to be asked to shell out $250 for an internet connection on the floor of the hotel at CPAC. So, having TPNN step in to cover the costs is a game changer for conservative bloggers. It’s great to see that TPNN understands the importance of the new media to the future of the conservative movement and is backing it up in a powerful way,” said John Hawkins, a blogger at Right Wing News.

 

 

Over the next two weeks, the Tea Party News Network and its partner organization, TheTeaParty.Net will raise funds to help defray the $75,000 cost of providing internet over the conference’s three days. The website can be found here.

About TPNN: The Tea Party News Network is the Tea Party’s only trusted news source and the antidote to mainstream media bias.  Working on behalf of neither candidate nor political party, TPNN covers the stories other outlets ignore, holds politicians of both parties accountable for their promises, and pull sno punches in our principled commentaries on the national scene. TPNN’s single motivation is to tell readers the truth about the Washington establishment, our elected officials, and the depth of their fidelity to constitutional principles.    

 

 

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Press Contact

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