Quote of the Day: The Distinction Between "Illegal" and "Criminal"

On his decision not to prosecute Monica Goodling and other Justice Department officials who illegally restricted career positions to Republican cronies (via NYTimes):

“Where there is enough evidence to charge someone with a crime, we vigorously prosecute,” he said. “But not every wrong, or even every violation of the law, is a crime,” he said. As the inspector general’s report acknowledged, the hiring violations were such a case, because the wrongdoing violated federal civil service law, but not criminal law, he said.

Let's reduce this to syllogism form.

P1: Major Premise.The politically-motivated violation of civil service law constitutes a violation of everything we hold dear, as well as the basic anti-corruption and anti-fraud laws I would be seriously astounded if we did not have right now.

P2: Minor Premise. It is inconsistent with federal civil service law to apply a political litmus test when filling career positions in the civil service, i.e. the Justice Department.

P3: Fact. Attorney General Michael Mukasey will not prosecute the people who committed these "non-crime violations."

C3: Michael Mukasey is also a partisan tool and is committing an offense to ethics, if not to law (this syllogism is leading me to lose my faith in law).

Correct me if I'm wrong on P1; I really do hope I am, because I'd rather think the code of the law itself is incomplete (despite its obvious suggestion of the question, "WTF were the Civil Service reforms good for, then?"), rather than become depressed over the apparent lack of importance it has for our government.

What Happened to Bush?

I'm still at work, but I just wanted to ask a question to all of you: While we're paying attention to McCain, what are our President-for-another-seven-months and his cronies up to?

And why the hell hasn't he been impeached already?

Ivy League Volunteers Dissed By Obama?

Courtesy of KosherDutchAfro over at OpenLeft, apparently some Obama insiders are saying that he's trying to escape Ivy Leaguers (like, obviously, us), despite being one himself. (Thanks to Phil Grimm for the link.)

My source within the Obama campaign in Chicago has told me campaign employees have had it up to their ears with overly ambitious Ivy League volunteers who have been causing problems for the campaign by putting their individual ambitions over the larger goals of the campaign as a movement. This employee and fellow South Side native has shared with me that the campaign is getting a sense that the attitudes of dedicated Ivy League volunteers had, over the course of the primary, given Republicans enough stories to run with the 'elitist' trope in the general election.

In Pennsylvania, where the campaign lost big time to Hillary due to pushy Penn students stoking conflict with long-time city activists, the Obama campaign has instituted a training that teaches volunteers how to be sensitive to existing communities.

"They (Ivy League) students come on with this attitude that this is their big break," the source said as she edited a video for the campaign in the Roosevelt Road Kinko's. "I've got news for them, they're not getting jobs."

Evidently, according to this source, Senator Obama himself feels Ivy League graduates have held sway over Washington too long and even though he attended Harvard and Columbia, if elected, he intends to do very little hiring from the Ivies. "There is a general sense around the campaign that the Ivy kids are self-interested and out of touch with the general campaign culture."

Their solution? Go for ambitious, determined, self-interested campaign staff (who might just have the added advantage of being Ivy League rejects) from Northwestern and U Chicago instead. 

As the campaign advances into the general election, word from the inside is that additional general election hiring will lean heavily towards Midwestern colleges.  

As I'm just about to leave work at my posh unpaid internship that the Ivy League gave me access to (that's sarcasm; I'm here on my own, and I live in a basement), I won't go into this very much. But I do have to say that I've met a lot of people who write me off immediately because I'm from Harvard, and that if this source is correct, I'm terribly disappointed with the Obama campaign.

No, the Ivy League isn't a perfect meritocracy; no, we're not all perfect, or even deserving of being here; no, we don't represent America -- but neither does any campaign staff. It should be the most passionate, intelligent, hardworking, motivated, skilled group he can find, the most interested in politics and in the campaign and in the future of this country -- no matter what school they go to. I don't think ambition should be a disqualification at all. And I know through my own experience that progressive "campaign culture." at least among interest groups, is often dismissive of the people it needs the most. I'd hope the Obama campaign doesn't make the same mistake.

Thoughts? (Markus Kolic, I'm looking at you.)

NYTimes to McCain: Dude, You Can't Write

Forgetting for a second that McCain probably didn't write the thing himself, let's take a look at that Iraq policy op-ed of his that the NY Times refused to publish, in a move that has our favorite libertarian Frances Martel up in arms.

I’m not a John McCain fan by any means, but what glorified liberal rag The New York Times did to him and his editorial today crossed boundaries of objectivity and decency that should not have been crossed.

I think there's another answer, and it's this: McCain, or his speechwriter surrogate, submitted a genuinely unpublishable piece. Take a look for yourself over at the Drudge Report, which I commend for bringing this issue to light--not because I care about self-referential analysis of old media by new media, but because this op-ed is seriously educational, in a bad way.

Full disclosure: I think the surge worked. I thought it would, and I'm glad we did it. I do think we should think about eventually leaving a country we had no business in in the first place. But none of this has anything to do with why McCain's piece was rejected. I doubt it would have been accepted by the Crimson. It's a thinly-disguised attack ad, a shallow and partisan rhetorical stream. Case in point: It mentions Obama ten times. Ten. I'm excluding pronouns. (Examples, and much, much, much more, after the jump...)

Read more »

"Obama" is to "Change" as "McCain" is to... "Old"?

Remember the hype about McCain being too old? You know what I'm talking about: that site of everything younger than him (the six pack, the xerox machine, 5 out of 9 supreme court justices, your mom, etc); a whole lot of articles (including a few by our own); and, of course, blogs like this one.

It's working.

In an AP poll, widely circulated through the horse-race pundits this past Monday, voters reportedly associated McCain with "old" more than any other adjective (19%). With Obama, the top associated word was "change" or "outsider" (20%). That's right: for once, the left got its messaging right. This former Clinton supporter is a big fan of the Obama messaging engine just about right now.

But the poll has its depressing moments as well. Three percent of respondents linked Obama first and foremost with "Muslim." Five percent chose "unlikeable." Twelve percent cite his youth or lack of experience, and nine percent describe him as dishonest. I can't decide if I'm happy or not that (only?) six percent mentioned "his race" in their first association, because I'm pretty sure no one gave the answer "his race" in those words, exactly. So which one did they choose?

I'll finish off with a return to the theme (that axiom of Messaging 101): McCain is old. He’s so old that he has reached the second stage of possible deaths. This isn’t just incredulity, and it definitely is not “ageism” in the way racism and religious intolerance afflicts people who answered “his race” to the Obama question. It might be if age didn't matter—if McCain were still healthy, or if age had given him wisdom. He is not, and it hasn’t.

Age matters, because McCain is so old—and ailing—that he had to take out life insurance in case he died mid-campaign. He’s so old—and incompetent—that he leaves that whole newfangled computer thing to his millionaire second wife. He’s so old—and forgetful—that even he admitted that he was, eight years ago.

And that's how we need to frame ’08, people: “Change” vs. “That Old Guy.” Don’t let them forget it.

MySpace ruins lives

Ashley Alexandra Dupre isn't the only one regretting her MySpace right now.

The first female mayor of Arlington, OR is single, looking, and looking fine. But Carmen Kontur-Gronquist found out too late what we at Dem Apples have known since we were 14 and that 30-year-old with an interest in "photography" friended us: MySpace is mad sketchy.

So when the voters of this sleepy little hamlet (population: 500) found pictures of Mayor Kontur-Gronquist posed in a bikini on a fire truck (among other suggestive images) on her MySpace profile, hilarity ensued... and by hilarity, I mean scandal, of course.

Political opponents circulated fliers. "Dozens" of Arlington's 366 registered voters held meetings. And, finally, a recall election was held. Ms. Kontor-Gronquist has been officially removed from her unpaid position as mayor of Arlington, effective Tuesday, by a vote of 142-139.

Prudes and minors, stop here. (Semi-scandalous image after the jump).

Read more »

Polls, Pundits, and Politicians

As I write this, CNN has just projected that Clinton will win New Hampshire.

Eight days ago, this would not have been remarkable at all. Clinton was the anointed queen, after all. She was considered the most experienced candidate, the most electable, and Iowa was full of old white folks who would never elect a young(ish) black guy... right?

But then Iowa happened, and suddenly Obama was "the change candidate," the harbinger of a brilliant nonpartisan future. Suddenly the race was wide open, Obama was more electable, less status quo, more... hip? His mantra of "hope-change-bipartisanship" repeated ad nauseam was suddenly an asset, not a liability.

Polls showed him locked with Clinton in a dead heat, and then he was beating her by ten points. So what happened?

As a embattled Clinton supporter, I would like to think that it's because voters decided she would be a better present after all. But that doesn't seem to be the case. I spent a few minutes (okay, maybe almost an hour) poring over exit poll data on CNN, out of sheer amazement and a desire to procrastinate my philosophy paper, and this is what I found:

First, Obama supporters are younger, richer, more optimistic, and less likely to be Democrats. They don't mind the war in Iraq as much as Clinton supporters do, who are older Americans and tend to feel screwed over by the economy. Clinton has more female support, but even among men, she does better among those over 50.

The idea that the recently-villainized "establishment" is poor, old, and angry (read: John Edwards' people?) aside, I was most struck by another statistic. Voters who decided their vote more than a month ago chose Clinton, 40% to 31% -- no surprise there. Among those who decided in the last week or last three days, Obama won overwhelmingly, 43 or 40% to Clinton's 27 and 36%, respectively. But here's the funny thing: voters who decided their vote today chose Clinton, 40% to 37%.

Is this because of the moment when she shed a single tear during a constituent breakfast, shown yesterday? A moment of weakness, some called it. A moment of post-feminism: "Hillary Clinton cries? Really?" Because here's another funny statistic: the 16% of voters who prioritized a president "who cares about people" chose Hillary over Obama in a two-to-one margin.

For those of us who never doubted that Sen. Clinton was anything but another human being, the possibility that she edged past Obama because of single emotional lapse is a little depressing.

UPDATE: And here I thought I was being original. Apparently Maureen Dowd agrees with me, in less flattering terms. Perhaps I got it wrong, after all: what's depressing isn't that so many voters needed to be convinced by a tear than Clinton was human, but that so many
people were sure it was, yet again, proof of her political conniving and desperation to get to the White House. Or perhaps she was arrogantly crying for us, the voters, for not understanding how terrific she is.

Really, now? This is the kind of vitriol we usually save for Republicans.

The Man Who Lies, Cheats, Steals, and Runs for President

Rudy Giuliani has been having a bad month.

First, his longtime buddy and protege Bernard Kerik, who he made police commissioner of New York, gave a job in his firm, and nominated for the top job in the Department of Homeland Security, was indicted on 16 counts of "bribery, tax fraud, and obstruction of justice."

Kerik's sleaziness is old news, but now Giuliani is being forced to ask other cronies to keep him from calling up the "old crowd" in his defense, which might be tough considering this photographic gem:

Have you ever seen a two men kiss a baby less convincingly? I think they could give Lord Voldemort and Wormtail a run for their money.

Read more »