Category: Blithe Spirit

Horrible

John Kass goes after Bush as Commander in chief of leaks, comparing him to the Arkansas Word Splitter.  But look at it this way: The nasty boy Joe Wilson, a schemer of the first water, goes public in that East Coast Paper of ill repute, initials NYT, with public statement misleading public about what’s going on with Sadaam and uranium, etc., and Bush wants to call him on it. 
 
Does he go on air with a fingering of Schemer Joe, whose own official report gives the lie to his East Coast Paper report?  No, it’s beneath him, but in the war of words that hurt the war effort he should be shot down.  It’s done to him via Cheney and a man named Scooter, though that’s what Prosecutor Fitz has to prove (I think: it get murky here, what with ancillary charges having moved front and center), and to defend self Libby wants to know what Fitz has and describes what he wants, and it says President B. has declassified stuff to shoot down bad info — in the usual Wash. way, without which East Coast Paper and others could not survive, giving it to reporters on background w/permission to use. 
 
It’s a horrible thing, to be sure, that there’s a political angle here — Wilson Scheming, East Coast Paper loving it, etc., White House countering — but such things do happen, and Wash.-based and other reporters will simply have to live with it, shocked though they may be.  In fact, the whole thing may be a wake-up call to them to play things down the middle and stop grinding axes, but I doubt it.

The lady protests a lot

And the Washington media is probably too polite to call her on that spousal left foot in her mouth,

says John Kass today, winding up his column about the very loud of mouth Congresswoman Schakowsky whose husband caught an excellent break in federal court the other day.  Yes, there’s this politesse among Beltway denizens.  Touching.

It wasn’t quite the end of the column.  Kass had this to add as to the congresswoman’s offensive volubility:

 So I’ll say it. Jan? Please put a sock on it.

Well said.

Angle on gotcha

This from Glenn Reynolds:

My take: The latest “Bush leaked” story — which doesn’t hold up very well when you look at the actual story — is basically a “spoiling attack” by the NYT and other media who fear subpoenas in the Libby case. As with all their efforts on this front, it’s likely to backfire. The more they say that leaks are bad, even as they rely on politically motivated leaks from insiders for their bread and butter , the more vulnerable they become. That’s why the Plame affair has been more damaging for them, long-term, than for Bush. Bush will be leaving in a couple of years, but the Times and other media will be living with the world they’ve created, and I predict that their position in this regard will be no better if a Democrat is elected in 2008.

They say leaks are bad?  Are they sure?

Gotcha, gotcha

Chi Trib’s Mark Silva has Bush dead to rights in Trib’s on-line-only “The Swamp,” B. having leaked classified info when he said no one would leak such in his administration — dated quote is supplied.  But wait.  B. and Cheney can de-classify what they want for a good reason, Silva admits and it says here.  Gotcha, Silva — who should have better things to do than lie in wait for the Great Satan in the White House, so as to catch him in his speech.
The sudden press flap over Scooter Libby’’s alleged “revelation” that President Bush declassified intelligence information related to Iraq is silly but all too predictable. The entire flap relies on mixing terms and “misunderstanding by innuendo” — a technique of demagoguery, not journalism. The flap is yet more evidence that the national press is more interested in playing “gotcha” with the Bush Administration than reporting the news.
That’s Austin Bay, who gives chapter and verse on the what and why of this.  He’s hereby recommended to Silva and swamp-like colleagues.
So what’’s the story here? That someone who worked in the White House selectively passed properly declassified material to the press? That’s not a scandal; that’s Beltway business as usual. I’d love to hear that reported– it’s not news per se, but it would be refreshingly open and honest media analysis.
Bay is a retired Army reserve colonel who won a bronze star for service in Iraq in 2004, writes novels and non-fiction, consulted in war games at the Pentagon, and has a booming media career at this point.  Quite a source for any enterprising Washington reporter.

Hidden persuaders

U. of Chi’s John Mearsheimer and partner in production of the much-discussed “israel lobby” paper may have talked to Chi Trib for yesterday’s story, he dismissing the discussion as a “food fight,” but Harvard’s daily newspaper, The Crimson, find them still unavailable for comment, as noted by PowerLine blog.

Mearsheimer in Trib

It’s here.  Chi Trib’s Ron Grossman does the Mearsheimer-Israel lobby story today. 

A University of Chicago professor has ignited an intellectual firestorm in halls of ivy and corridors of power with an essay in a highbrow British journal.

is the lead.  2nd graf calls the paper “a simple diagnosis.”  Grossman cites qualified support for it anyhow, even from some Israeli commentators.  But he notes:

“The Israel Lobby” smacks of the age-old accusation that a secret cabal of Jews aims at world dominance,

neatly summing up objections. 

He also, happily, further identifies Mearsheimer — “a former West Point cadet” and no “stranger to controversy.”  Regarding the latter, he cited his 1990 essay “proposing that Germany be encouraged to develop atomic weapons” and his fervent opposition to the Iraq war in 2003 on grounds that “it would give the Israelis an opportunity for an ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza.”

“The precedent is there [to forcibly expel Palestinians], and it behooves us to make sure it does not happen again,”

he said at the time.  Indeed, in the current essay, he and his co-author, Stephen Walt, say “the creation of Israel entailed a moral crime against the Palestinian people,” this in reference to the 1948 evacuation of Palestinian refugees.

Grossman quotes Mearsheimer as dismissing the current controversy as a “food fight.” 

He and Walt find no “compelling moral cause for sustained U.S. backing” of Israel.

The Trib got to this one in the nick of time, I’d say, but did justice to it.  Grossman was just the one to do it.  It’s a typically reliable, sensible piece by him in which he quotes the subject, who comes off as overly fond of the hot expression (“ethnic cleansing,” for instance) and naively arrogant (“food fight”).

City Hall in the dock

Chi Trib has a story about City Hall hiring practices that promises a lot — “Politics, jobs linked by ex-top city aides: 2 say mayor’s office involved in decisions” — but gets so complicated that by the end you not only are ambivalent about the promise but aren’t quite sure who’s on first, to use an old Abbott & Costello expression.  The story has a triple byline and reads as if all three took a crack at it, splitting the middle when they disagreed. 
 
The lead,

Political job recommendations were funneled through Mayor Richard Daley’s office in a widely known and long-accepted practice at City Hall, two former Daley aides contend in court papers filed Wednesday

is straightforward enough.  The prosecuting Feds say it’s “massive fraud” meant to circumvent a longstanding injunction vs. political hiring — “the Shakman decree,” we read. 

Then there’s something about “an attempt by the defendants” to pry loose from a court-appointed monitor materials she says she needs to stop political hiring. 

And then there’s why the defendants want the materials. 

And then something about “federal authorities” not having interviewed any of the presumably relevant ex-Daley aides. 

And then a concession by defendants about a hiring “clearinghouse” at the Hall and their lawyer’s disavowing any attempt to slime Daley to save his clients — here paraphrased to make sense of what the story has or spell out what it hints at. 

And then their lawyer’s arguing why he should get the materials based on others’ previously getting similar materials.  (But he got them this time, didn’t he?  [See below]  How else would the Trib know about it?) 

The U.S. prosecutor who got them in 1997, now in private practice and not available.  For what?  To bolster the defense contention that they should get materials they already have?  [See below]

And finally the city’s law dept. saying they don’t know nothing about nothing in 1997 and furthermore do not consider the mayor guilty of nothing.

There’s some good stuff here, I think, but if I have to go back over it, translating into English, as Daily News’ Bill Mooney used to say, then either I’m losing it from too much blood pressure medicine, a distinct possibility, or somebody in the Trib who knows how to write did not show up for work yesterday.  (Dock him.)

(OK.  Just re-read lead.  It’s about what defendants “contend.”  OK.  They don’t have the papers yet.  I get it, I get it.  Finally.)

Trib toe in water

Chi Trib has a Mearsheimer story — about his and a Harvard man’s paper on the “Israel lobby” as deciding our foreign policy — on its site.  It’s by AP and is dated today.  It’s not in today’s hard copy as far as I can tell, but maybe tomorrow.  Nothing by any Trib reporter yet, however — and Mearsheimer a U. of Chi prof of some notoriety.  Among critics of M. is Alan Dershowitz, also of Harvard, who calls the paper “David Duke with footnotes” — Duke praises it — and has posted his rebuttal on the Kennedy School of Govt. site, which has the Mearsheimer paper too.  Sun-Times editorialized about the paper a week or so ago — or am I imagining things?  It’s not on the S-T site now.  Is this the usual dynamic local coverage that Trib is noted for?  Maybe.

Jungle

If Chicago teachers union president Marilyn Stewart is not part of the problem at Kennedy High School on the SW Side, where 150 students walked out to protest violence by fellow students, I am an orangutang’s first cousin.  The students want more security, even cops in the classroom, and Stewart’s biggest fear is creating a “police state” environment.  She prefers a root-cause approach, supplying more counselors, as for “a child [who] is picking up feces” to throw them at a student being beaten up by other students, which happened at Kennedy.  “He needs counselling,” said Stewart, who could use some herself.  She hears of a student with a broken nose plus bruises inflicted in the presence of many other students and thinks of more jobs for her minions.
 
What ever happened to Montefiore School, the day reform school where Mike Royko spent some of his early years, emerging as a responsible citizen?  (It’s become in effect a mental institution, supplying “highly structured environment for Severely Emotionally Disturbed children.”)  Why does Kennedy keep these kids around, apparently some of the 190 transfers last October who in the words of senior class president and honors student Ibtesam Saleh “refuse to wear IDs, won’t sit down, stand in the hallway, do not want to be in school” and for whom school time is “a social gathering.”  May I suggest that those infractions might be enough to pack the kid off to a Royko-era-Montefiore equivalent?  It’s called “attitude” in some circles, clear warning of trouble to come in others.
 
One-third of the October transfers are classified as having learning, behavioral, or physical disabilities.  The attackers were black, the victim was white, a public schools spokesman said, but “there doesn’t appear to be any indication that this would be a hate crime,” he said.  Of course not.
 
Sun-Times education writer Rosalind Rossi did this story, which got page-one splash and all of page three with pic and deserved every inch.

A word to the wise in village government: Stay out of politics

Today’s Wednesday Journal column

What the heck was Oak Park village board President David Pope doing boosting a Democratic candidate by telephone, as reported in this newspaper? What the heck was he doing at the Dem candidates’ beauty contest at the library Feb. 11, where he was sighted from the podium and given a big hand? Doesn’t he know about the rise of the VMA (Village Manager Association) in the ‘50s as antidote to political-party shenanigans (hiring), in that case Republican?

The VMA floated and won adoption of village-manager government, taking government employment out of the hands of elected officials. These latter turn politicians when running for election. Otherwise, they are citizens with better things to do who decide to do this anyway, namely set policy for the village with nothing in it for themselves. Elected, they hire one person, the manager, who hires everyone else. Political-party candidates, on the other hand, get to hire lots of people if they win. It’s the nature of the beast.

A friend of mine some years back moved here from Northlake, where he’d been mayor. Came election time, he rang doorbells for Democrats, his chosen party. Chatting with the Oak Park Dem chairman at a post-election party, he was asked where he worked and named the major ad agency where he was office manager. End of conversation. The Dem chairman expected to hear a government agency, not an ad agency, as the man’s place of employment. Implication clear to my friend? As a campaign worker not dependent on victory for his job or promotion therein, he didn’t matter. Or he could show up on amateur night.

No skullduggery is suspected of Pope here. Rather, naivete. Oak Park is full of true-believing Democrats and (less full of) Republicans, who give their all as volunteers. That’s the kind of Democrat Pope is, I trust, but what of the appearance? Yes, his candidate, the presumed reformer Forrest Claypool, seemed untainted. But behind every reformer who wins is an army of people who depend on him for their jobs. Not in Oak Park. Here it’s the manager who hires and fires. Trustees should butt out of such matters, and that includes the feisty, provocative, uncivil Robert Milstein, recent subject of a barrage of commentary about him and unionized village hall employees and his offensive references to the manager and others.

As for Milstein and the unions, his critics hasten to say he has the right to join their protest, meaning legal right, I assume. What other kind I cannot imagine. Put it this way: If after joining the protest, he wants membership in the League of Wise Men in Village Government, he has no right to claim it. To call him imprudent and wrong-headed for doing it is to say nothing about his right to do it, which is a very red herring. Same for Pope and his phone calls for Claypool: He had the right to do it, but that’s beside the point. Not every right is to be claimed all the time. I mean, when husband or wife doesn’t feel like it now and then, it’s unwise, even unfair, to insist. Right?

MEANWHILE, IN CHURCH … Did you hear about the worshiper who came late to Mass and got trampled at Kiss of Peace time? He was tackled by the deacon in full regalia and woke up some minutes later being sprinkled with holy water hoarded in anticipation of the upcoming Easter Vigil. He has learned since then to get with the program or else. A word to the wise is sufficient, he’s been told.

As for trampling and being trampled, astute observer Bob O. notes the differences of opinion about kissing (or shaking) for peace among Catholics and suggests a solution: Have the ushers greet people and ask, “Kissing or Non-kissing?” They could then direct people to one side or other of the aisle. Good idea!