Your Liberal Media

by folkbum

Of course, as a matter of journalism and professional standards, Novak's piece was a textbook case of media irresponsibility. His column shouldn't have even run--Clinton supporters (who he will not name) are allegedly spreading rumors about rumors (which he cannot identify) addressing an Obama scandal (which may or may not exist).

A bunch of things to start your week

• Welcome USA Today readers! The article I was interviewed for about teacher bloggers is running today. I get two whole paragraphs. If you're here for the first time, you may want to read my reactions to being interviewed generally--and some of the issues raised by the reporter specifically--in this post from last month, as I go into much more depth than the article indicates.
  
  
• The USA Today story also has a great list of blogs in the sidebar, including some I read regularly. You should read them, too. One note: Ms. Frizzle has un-anonymized herself and is blogging her Fullbright exchange year in Turkey. (Hat tip to Edwise on that one. And, yes, I still haven't changed that link in my own sidebar, either.)
  
  
• New Rule: Anyone who thinks that conditions at Guantanamo Bay are so great--people like a certain pundit wannabe that some say I have an unhealthy obsession over--should spend time there. And not just like visit as a reporter, either. They should be kidnapped from their houses in the middle of the night, flown there in the company of people who don't speak their language and without being told what's happening or why, and forced to stay there without contact from their families, attorneys, or anyone more helpful than the Red Cross every few weeks. They could even take a detour on the way to some prison in Eastern Europe somewhere for treatments at the day spa waterboarding and more. After five years, without charge, we'll see if they still think it's the greatest place on earth. (The Journal Corp. blogging software is still returning errors when I try to link to specific posts, but the one I'm talking about is the "Ooh, it's so degrading" one.)
  
  
• The National Council of Teachers of English did a massive survey last spring about how No Child Left Behind is affecting (or not) teaching and learning in English teachers' classrooms. I participated, but I don't remember what all of my answers were. I can tell you, however, that my feelings are generally in line with the results:

  This study confirms findings from several recent public opinion polls that the more people know about NCLB, the more inclined they are to have an unfavorable opinion about its effects on public schools, teachers, and students.
  
  Virtually every poll shows public support for the four goals established by Congress when the No Child Left Behind Act was passed in 2001. But, literacy educators agree with the public that the law has failed to improve the education system for schools, teachers, students, and their families by not effectively meeting these goals. The table below shows a striking majority of literacy educators see NCLB as being ineffective when asked how well it was meeting its four stated goals:
  
  Based on what you’ve seen in your school and classroom over the past four years, to what extent do you think NCLB has been effective in reaching the four reform goals described by the U.S. Department of Education? [Number of teachers answering g]enerally ineffective (1 – 3 on a six point effectiveness scale).

  • Encouraging stronger accountability for results?--58%
    
  • Providing more freedom for schools and communities?--93%
    
  • Encouraging proven educational methods?--81%
    
  • Providing more choices for parents?--81%

  
  In addition, only 15% of literacy educators reported that NCLB has been effective in improving educational equity in their schools, a core rationale for passage of the Act in 2001.

  Read the whole thing, as they say, including some actual statements from literacy teachers about how NCLB has not improved literacy education.
  
  
• Michael J. Mathais has written probably the best post to come out of the Cheddarsphere in the last week:

  Although her picture stayed at JSOnline for two days at the start of this week, it seemed crowded away by the election news and speculation over whether President Bush had delivered too partisan a 9/11 speech.
  
  The picture was gone by Wednesday, but the story had garnered some interest. By 10:00 p.m. that day it was on a list of “most viewed” stories.
  
  Merideth Howard, an Army reservist from Waukesha, told relatives she didn’t know why she had been sent to Afghanistan, fretted about her training, and worried that, at the age of 52, she was too old to be in a combat zone.

  Please, please, please read the rest.
  
  
• Seth nails the budget debate between Jim Doyle and Mark Green:

  So getting back to the contradictions laid out by Doyle and Green in this current election race, the key to electoral success is really not what the candidates say about the budget -- they're both going to say contradictory stuff -- but rather how they say it. And on this point, so far, Green is getting slammed.
  
  A look at the JS article this morning tells us that Doyle's election year proposals would cost an estimated $66 million per year, while Green's would run at least $148 million per year. I bolded the "at least" because it's central to the problems Green has been having when discussing the budget.

  The significant difference on budgets, to me, between these two, is that Jim Doyle took office four years ago with a massive structural debt and budget shortfall from the Republican Thompson-McCallum years, and had to fix it. His fixes have been imperfect, but this state is now on a course that doesn't add up to insolvency. Mark Green, on the other hand, has been a part of Bush's Congress, where the mantra has been "cut taxes, raise spending." And look at where the national debt has gone. Is that the kind of budgeting experience we want in Madison? I think not.
  
  
• All those Republicans--I'm looking at you, Fred--who said they'd disapprove of ABC's phony "Path to 9/11" if it contained invented scenes about Bush, well, it does. I'll wait here for the condemnations.
  
  
• Along the same lines, a number of conservative bloggers are sure that the Valerie Plame outing controversy is over now that Richard Armitage has been revealed as one of Bob Novak's sources. But Novak keeps changing his story, so you gotta wonder what else he's hiding.
  
  
• Kudos to Fair Wisconsin for a good fight so far against the anti-civil-unions-and-any-substantially-similar-arrangement amendment. They've done some great organizing locally, and they have another knock-out ad (opens to a Quicktime movie).
  
  
• Those wacky white supremacists. Always rallying around something.
  
  
• In the Wisconsin 8th CD, where Steve Kagen is going to beat John Gard in a few weeks, the National Republican Congressional Committee is, as I first reported here, planning to spend a ton of money on independent expenditure ads. Carrie Lynch comments here, and Cory Liebmann suggests that the NRCC really needs to look at their own candidate before making ads against Kagen.
  
  Nationally, the story is much the same. As Chris Bowers points out, the Republicans so far have outspent Democrats, but the Dems have spent zero dollars in defense while Reps have spent 85% of their total defending seats like the WI-08. Chris has it laid out quite clearly in handy table format for you.
  
  
• The tax cuts didn't create jobs. Period.
  
  
• Anyone like me, who plans to do candidate advocacy on-line this year, should spend some time with the Net Democracy Guide.
  
  
• Finally, a question for Milwaukee-area iPod + iTrip users. What channel are you using? I've kind of settled on 88.5, but I still get static sometimes driving around town.

Novak, Plame, DiGaudio, and the Lies that Won't Die

I am not an expert on the "Plame-Gate" mess. I mean, I hardly write about it at all, and when I do, it tends be lame comparisons to TV shows.

I am, however, an expert on beating back the lies and distortions of Wisconsin bloggers, since, you know, someone has to do it.

When Bob Novak published his column this week, he finally spilled some of the beans about what he--conspicuously silent for years--has been up to in the much-scrutinzed case surrounding the outing of CIA agent Valerie (Plame) Wilson, whom Novak named in another column way back in July of 2003. The Nov-ster was the first to print her name and note that she was a CIA analyst, a revelation--combined with his later naming of the front company she supposedly worked for--that jeopardized work on Mid-East weapons of mass destruction.

The new column provides some new information--the name of two of three of his government sources--but most of the info is stuff that even casual observers of the Plame Game have probably already heard. For example, there's the fact that he claims to have learned Plame's name from Who's Who in America. Fine; I'm willing to believe that his unnamed Bush Adminisration source told him that Ambassador Joe Wilson's wife worked for the CIA--the same CIA that sent Wilson to Niger where he learned that Administration claims of Iraq trying to buy yellowcake uraium were false, and that the infamous "16 words" in Bush's 2003 State of the Union were misleading at best. At which point, Novak flipped open his copy of Who's Who in America to the Wilson section and saw this (.pdf), which does in fact list Wilson's wife by her maiden name, Plame.

The problem is not, of course, that Novak put Plame's name in his column, nor even that he identified her as Wilson's wife. None of those things were secret. The problem is that her status as a covert operative for the CIA was a secret, and the revelation of her name--as well as Novak's subsequent naming of the front company she worked for--blew the cover of one US operation to stop the proliferation of WMD in the Middle East. (In the post below, I opted for a bad example of the Bush Administration interrupting one of its own investigations for partisan political purposes in the AQ Khan case; I could have used this one.)

Whether or not you buy the Who's Who story, one thing is clear: The book does not say Plame was a CIA operative, no matter what FOX News commentators might say.

And, of course, the Right Cheddarsphere is not far behind. From Peter DiGaudio, Wednesday:

Chicago Sun-Times columnist Robert Novak admits he learned that Plame, husband of noted Bush basher and Democratic operative Joe Wilson, was an analyst for the CIA from Wilson’s entry in Who’s Who in America.

That’s right. Who’s Who in America, not some nefarious plot by Dick Cheney and Karl Rove to “out” a covert agent in retaliation for Wilson’s activities. [. . .] In short, much ado about nothing.

Did you catch that? In complete contravention of what Novak actually said--as well as in complete contravention of the facts of the case--Peter dismisses the whole Plame affair as "much ado about nothing" based on the untrue assertion that Who's Who had outed Plame, not Novak. That's right; despite the fact that Plame was unquestionably covert, and that her neighbors didn't even know she worked at the CIA, Peter (and, apparently,a FOX News commentator) believes that she and Joe Wilson were so stupid as to have noted it in Who's Who.

I think this is all part of the undying lie that outing a CIA agent, as Novak did at the behest of his administration sources, is no big deal (much ado about nothing, so to speak). How anyone can believe this, I don't know. All the attempts, even in plain contradiction of the facts, to try to say that she wasn't undercover or at least not deeply, or that Aldrich Ames gave her name to the Russians, or whatever, is to try to make the investigation into how the outing happened seem illegitimate.

Remember that the one idicted person from the investigation so far was not, in fact, indicted for the outing, but for the cover-up; lying to the FBI and prosecutors is a crime no matter what you may be talking to them about. Even if no one is ever indicted for blowing the cover of a CIA agent to the press--and saying that she is "fair game," according to Chris Matthews--there is still something wrong (and suspicious) about an administration-organized cover-up. There's also something creepy about an operation hatched by the vice president (see his hand-written notes here) to get one guy just because that guy speaks out against the adminsitration. That sort of thing shouldn't be happening in this country, whether you think Wilson was right or not in what he said.

One thing I do know, though: Peter DiGaudio is most certainly not right in what he wrote. But, as he said in response to my comments telling him that, it will be a cold day in hell before he admits it.