Coyote Blog

Marc Hodak found this gem in a newspaper article about the new Grand Canyon Skywalk:

The Skywalk's builders have said repeatedly that the deck is extremely
durable. It's essentially a huge steel horseshoe, capable of
withstanding 100 mph (160 kph) winds and holding several hundred
200-pound (90-kilogram) people at a time.

I had no reason to doubt them. But out on the edge, my mind was
racing: I tried to remember if any government regulatory agency had
checked how well this thing was anchored to the cliff.

Hodak observes:

News writers are notoriously wary of private agents and their
self-interests versus "the government," as if its agents were somehow
endowed with a greater degree of expertise or caring for their fellow
man. They often can't fathom that, even regardless of their economic
interests, the owners and operators would be any less concerned about
their guests tumbling down the side of the Grand Canyon than some
bureaucrat with a tape measure and some forms to fill out. It kind of
leaves me breathless.

Maybe they can bring in the government crew that built the Tacoma-Narrows Bridge.

And there is no better place to find them than in the NY Times:

So there are these two muffins baking in an oven. One of them yells, "Wow, it's hot in here!"And the other muffin replies: "Holy cow! A talking muffin!"

Did that alleged joke make you laugh? I would guess (and hope) not.

Well, I laughed, and I was alone in the room.  I am fine if you don't think it is funny, so to guess that I did not find it funny is fine, but to hope so?

A couple of years ago I made this prediction:

We will soon see calls to bring a tighter licensing or
credentialing system for journalists, similar to what we see for
lawyers, doctors, teachers, and, god help us, for beauticians.  The
proposals will be nominally justified by improving ethics or similar
laudable things, but, like most credentialing systems, will be aimed
not at those on the inside but those on the outside.  At one time or
another, teachers, massage therapists, and hairdressers have all used
licensing or credentialing as a way to fight competition from upstart
competitors, often ones with new business models who don't have the
same trade-specific educational degrees the insiders have....

Such credentialing can provide a powerful comeback for industry insiders under attack.  Teachers, for example, use it every chance they get to attack home schooling and private schools,
despite the fact that uncertified teachers in both these latter
environments do better than the average certified teacher (for example,
kids home schooled by moms who dropped out of high school performed at
the 83rd percentile).  So, next time the MSM is under attack from the blogosphere, rather than address the issues, they can say that that guy in Tennessee is just a college professor and isn't even a licensed journalist.

Well, despite all efforts by John McCain, we still have free speech on the blogosphere.  But I was almost right, because another country is considering such a proposal -- In France:

The government has also proposed a certification system for Web sites,
blog hosters, mobile-phone operators and Internet service providers,
identifying them as government-approved sources of information if they
adhere to certain rules. The journalists' organization Reporters
Without Borders, which campaigns for a free press, has warned that such
a system could lead to excessive self censorship as organizations
worried about losing their certification suppress certain stories.

Google is a private company and can have whatever rules it wants for taking down videos at YouTube.  However, I finally watched the banned "anti-Muslim" video and boy was it a letdown, more so even than finally seeing the Mohammad cartoons.  It's literally a 9-1/2 minute video of music playing over text quotes from the Koran.  Period.  No voice over, no criticism.  Just the Koran in its own words, so to speak.  As I said, Google can do as it pleases with its posting policies, but it really looks like an ass for banning a user over this.  Particularly if it is true that similar videos profiling other religions in similar ways did not trigger a ban.

I would like to help Google by suggesting terms of use that are consistent and easily understandable and appear to reflect their current policies:

No video may be posted on YouTube that might result in a Middle Eastern man showing up at our headquarters building with a couple of pounds of C-4 strapped to his chest.

Here is something I would like to see entered into every media style guide:  "Do not use 'hits' as a measure for web page traffic, except in quotations.  'Hits" has a specific meaning in measuring web traffic and should not be considered synonymous with 'visits.'" 

QandO reports that Dennis Kucinich is trying to resurrect the fairness doctrine in media, reassigning the FCC the task of policing political speech in broadcast media:

The Presidential candidate said that the committee would be holding
"hearings to push media reform right at the center of Washington." The
Domestic Policy Subcommittee of the House Government Reform Committee
was to be officially announced this week in Washington, D.C., but
Kucinich opted to make the news public early.

In addition to
media ownership, the committee is expected to focus its attention on
issues such as net neutrality and major telecommunications mergers.
Also in consideration is the "Fairness Doctrine,"
which required broadcasters to present controversial topics in a fair
and honest manner. It was enforced until it was eliminated in 1987.

Usually, you can be sure that when a politician talks about the government intervening for "fairness" in free speech, it means that he wants the government to push his political point of view and squash others.  The only surprise is that Kucinich is totally up front about this:

Kucinich said in his speech that "We know the media has become the
servant of a very narrow corporate agenda" and added "we are now in a
position to move a progressive agenda to where it is visible."

So, having failed in the marketplace, and with well-funded entrants like Air America, Kucinich wants the government to force media companies to promote a progressive agenda on the airwaves.  Yuk.

Update: Q&O is on fire, with a great followup post here.

Thanks to all those who have bought my new novel BMOC and sent such nice comments.  While the rank fluctuates up and down, we were doing pretty well late on Friday.

It's still not too late to buy a copy of BMOC for Christmas! 

Few people in September, 2001 were willing to try to get us laughing again.  One notable exception was the Onion, which produced what was probably their greatest issue.  In particular, this is still dead-on five years later:

In a televised address to the American people Tuesday, a determined
President Bush vowed that the U.S. would defeat "whoever exactly it is
we're at war with here."...

Bush is acting with the full support of Congress, which on Sept. 14
authorized him to use any necessary force against the undetermined
attackers. According to House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL), the
congressional move enables the president to declare war, "to the extent
that war can realistically be declared on, like, maybe three or four
Egyptian guys, an Algerian, and this other guy who kind of looks
Lebanese but could be Syrian. Or whoever else it might have been.
Because it might not have been them."...

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said the war against terrorism will be different from any previous model of modern warfare.

"We were lucky enough at Pearl Harbor to be the victim of a craven
sneak attack from an aggressor with the decency to attack military
targets, use their own damn planes, and clearly mark those planes with
their national insignia so that we knew who they were," Rumsfeld said.
"Since the 21st-century breed of coward is not affording us any such
luxury, we are forced to fritter away time searching hither and yon for
him in the manner of a global easter-egg hunt."

"America is up to that challenge," Rumsfeld added....

Gramm said that the U.S. has already learned a great deal about the
details of the Sept. 11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and
Pentagon, and that a rough psychological profile of its mastermind has
been constructed.

"For example, we know that the mastermind has the approximate
personality of a terrorist," Gramm said. "Also, he is senseless. New
data is emerging all the time."

Phoenix hit with rains and flooding.  Where's FEMA?  Where's Bush?  Where's my $2000 Visa card?  The government is intentially ignoring us because, uh, we're all rich white people with plastic surgery.  I heard that tens of refugees were all trapped in a local Hooters for hours and hours with no national gaurd to protect them. 

Below is the Indian Bend Wash mentioned in the article, which is next to my house:

LOL, the whole town was laughing at the national coverage our morning rainstorm got.  Drive time DJ's were particularly mocking Wolf Blitzers breathless commentary.  They were interviewing people who had panicked calls from out of town relatives who had seen the coverage, only to meet with confused shrugs of local residents who may not even have noticed.

The rain lasted barely longer than an hour, and the streets were dry by the time I went to get the kids from school.  We did have flash flooding in our "washes" (what we call dry river beds) but that is to be expected since desert soil does not absorb water quickly and so you get a lot of water runoff.  Also, Phoenix has few storm sewers -- it accepts the fact that things flood once every two years or so, and accepts the costs involved as cheaper than building more infrastructure, which I think is correct.  The golf course is flooded (creating a new island-green) because that's where we put golf courses here - in the dry river bottoms.  The grass grows better there and the land can't be used for anything else and its only a couple of adays a year they get flooded out.

(By the way, yeah, I know I screwed up stitching together the panorama - some of the tree trunks don't match.  I was in a bit of a hurry)

I have never been one to wade much into the whole "media bias" issue.  Whenever I have discussed it, my main point of view is that journalists of whatever political stripe tend to suspend necessary skepticism when writing about an issue they are really passionate about.  That is why advocacy journalism can yield such crap.  I have never once dug into a strong advocacy journalism piece and not found any number of "facts" to be without attribution and often to not even make any sense.

Most people have now heard the origins of the now-famous "million homeless families" non-statistic, which was reprinted over and over but has been admitted to have been just made up by a leading homeless advocate.  And lets not forget Mary Mapes, who proudly describes herself as an advocacy journalist, and her now famous use of forgeries in her Bush-National Guard reports, leading to the classic "Fake but Accurate" meme.  People who believe in a cause, whether it be homelessness or GWB's fundamental corruption, suspend skepticism for "facts" and "statistics" that fit their point of view on the subject.  Usually they will shrug off challenges to the fact, saying "well, it may not be exactly X but we know the problem is a really big number."  In other words, fake but accurate.

Angela Valdez has a nice analysis of one such advocacy journalism effort, in this case the Oregonian's over-one-hundred part series on the "meth epidemic".  For example, she writes:

On Feb. 20 of this year, columnist S. Renee Mitchell wrote, without
offering data to back up her claim: "The number of meth addicts"”and the
crimes they commit to support their habits"”is exploding."....

In fact, meth use during the past four years has either declined or
stayed flat, according to two major national drug-use studies. The
National Survey on Drug Use and Health shows that meth use did not
increase at all from 2002 (two years before The Oregonian
started its carpet-bombing coverage) through 2004, the last year for
which there is data. The University of Michigan's Monitoring the Future
Study, which examines drug use among youth, actually shows a decline in meth use among high-school students from 1999 to 2005....

Despite The Oregonian's reliance on this figure, there is no good evidence that meth causes 85 percent of the property crimes in Oregon.

Portland State University criminology professor Kris Henning
says the number just doesn't make sense. Department chair Annette Jolin
says the unsupportable statistic has become "something of a joke"among
statistical researchers in the department.

For one thing, Oregon property crimes are much lower than they
were 10 or even 20 years ago, the time period of the supposed meth
"epidemic."

"If meth causes property offenses, and meth use has gone up,"
Henning says, "then property offenses should have gone up. And they
haven't. It's either that, or all the people who commit property crimes
have disappeared and been replaced by a small number of meth users."

I looked at the silliness of meth hysteria statistics here.  But my point is that this is not a meth issue - this is an advocacy journalism issue.  You could write the same article challenging any number of articles in the paper every day.

PS-  But on the subject of meth, I will make one prediction:  I predict that the meth hysteria will do more to create legislation and police practices that will undermine civil liberties than did 9/11.  In fact, much of the Patriot Act is already used more to fight the drug war than to fight terrorism.

Would it be at all possible that the LA Times assign people to the business section that know something about business?

Over the last several weeks of the Lay-Skilling Enron trial, the prosecution has been putting on witnesses to testify that Enron management managed their earnings in quarterly releases by adjusting accounting reserves to increase reported income.  Here is an example:  Many companies, when they book sales, keep a reserve for noncollectable accounts.  Let's say that if a company books $1 million in sales, they might book 3% or $30,000 as a reserve against noncollectable accounts.  This reduces reported income by $30,000.  But the 3% is fairly arbitrary.  What if the bosses suddenly called down and said, you know, I think its only going to be 2.5%.  Then the entries would be changed and suddenly the company has $5000 more income.  And, if they retroactively changed the 3 to 2.5 for the last several quarters, tens of thousands of dollars might be added to this quarter's income.  Of course, in Enron's case, these entries and reserves were orders of magnitude more complicated and arcane.

So what's my beef against the LA Times?  They headline of their story on the activity I just described is:

Witness Says Enron Raided Fund

Orders to dip into reserves to inflate profit violated accounting rules, a former company accountant testifies.

What fund?  They make it sound like Lay and Skilling went into some bank vault somewhere and took money.  These reserves are not wads of cash sitting in accounts - they are accounting entries providing estimates of future expenses to be booked against current revenues.  What is undisputed is that management changed their estimates of these future expenses, which caused these paper reserve accounts to be reduced, increasing paper earnings.  You might reasonably argue that the only purpose for changing these estimates was to manipulate reported earnings in an unlawful way, and that is what the jury has to decide.  But how can you describe this as "raiding" a "fund", unless you want to portray the defendants in the worst possible light.

My guess is that the people who wrote this at the LA Times are the same ones who keep writing about the "Social Security Trust Fund" as if it is an actual pile of cash in a bank vault somewhere, and not money long ago spent by Congress.

I am running a three-day off-site for my managers this week, so I am pretty tied up.  I do, however,  want to take a second to observe that the NY Times should be embarrassed by their stance on these cartoons.  Their lame-ass explanation that the immediate cause for a wave of world-wide violence and rioting is not really newsworthy is so transparently bullshit as to be unbelievable. 

And to argue that the cartoons are somehow too inflammatory is just pathetic.  As I posted earlier, these cartoons are nothing.  Hell, check out stuff like this, syndicated by the NY Times.  Clearly the cartoon shown is inflammatory against the US military (as is their right under the 1st amendment), so the issue of being inflammatory is a dodge too.  Hell, the NY Times has run multi-part series designed specifically to inflame people against the rich and successful, or more recently to inflame people against oil companies.  To to say they avoid being inflammatory as a policy is a bald-faced lie.  The fact is that there is an unwritten code today among the intelligentsia as to who it is "OK" to be inflammatory against and who it is not.  It is OK under the code accepted by the NY Times to be inflammatory against rich and successful people, white males, women and minorities who are not Democrats, Christians, the military, and the US in general.  It is not OK to be inflammatory against Muslims, suicide bombers, women's groups, most academics, advocacy groups, or the leader of the NAACP.  In the case of the cartoons above, it is OK to blame Islamic terrorism on the US military, but not OK to blame Islamic terrorism on the teachings of Islam.

This is a symptom of the same disease that inhabits politically correct speech codes at universities.  Specifically, institutions are increasingly banning speech that is "insulting" or "degrading" or "offensive", and then allowing some (but not all groups) of listeners to set the definition of when they consider themselves offended.  Muslims argue that these cartoons are hateful - so the Times reaction is "oh, we are so sorry, we won't publish them."   Can you imagine the NY Times giving executives at Exxon the same ability to define certain speech as insulting to them and therefore out of bounds of publication?  Sure.

I got several emails to my first post that boiled down to the following, "Coyote, what you don't understand is that we in America may not think there is anything out of bounds with those cartoons, but Muslims really are offended by them."  This is exactly my point - what other groups do we allow to effectively get a veto on the press coverage they receive?  Do we give the military the right to say "gee, that cartoon is hurtful to us, don't publish it".  No, and in fact this was just proved recently with the Tom Toles cartoon.  We give military leaders the right to say the first part, that they think is wrong for such and such reason, but we don't give them a veto over publication.  Nor, of course, should we give such a veto to anyone.  So why do we make an exception for people whose idea of political discourse is to burn down some embassies, kill a few priests, and set off a few bombs?  I would love to see the WaPo explain why it published (I think rightly) the Toles cartoon in the face of vociferous objects from the Pentagon and American veterans, but won't publish the Danish cartoons in the face of vociferous objections from violent Islamic totalitarian extremists.  Especially when the Muslim reaction to the cartoons is only serving to demonstrate exactly those qualities of Islam that the cartoons were meant to highlight.

At the end of the day, this whole episode I think will be very useful, in finally putting to the forefront the bizarre speech code many of America's intelligentsia have explicitly adopted, a code that absurdly defines exactly the same speech as alternately "healthy" or "offensive" depending on what specific groups are the target of such criticism. 

Earth to Muslims:  Grow up.
Earth to the NY Times:  The time is long overdue for a serious self-awareness episode.

Postscript: Another bit of irony:  The media often criticizes the administration as being the enemy of free speech, when the very fact of the frequent publication of this criticism without any government intervention tends to blunt the force of the argument.  On the other hand, when the group being criticized actually does respond with violence meant to suppress publication, the media decides that the targeted group is not really worthy of criticism.

Update: Here is a compiled excuse page from major US newspapers as to why they are not publishing.  Read it to enjoy the spectacle of supposedly smart and principled people twisting themselves into ethical pretzels.

Update #2:  Those of you who mainly rely on the TV and print media for news probably haven't seen the actual cartoons.  Here they are.  Internet to the rescue again, printing the news that the NY Times deems not fit to print.

...And boy were they a letdown!  Hell, I have had members of my own immediate family portrayed far worse than this in political cartoons.  I have just about lost all patience with those who try to "understand" and "explain" and "sympothize" with the violence that has erupted, ostensibly due to the publication of these cartoons.  There is no excuse for the recent violence, and I am tired of tiptoeing around the sensibilities of Muslims who are quick in their own turn to denounce anything Western in the most inflammatory and grotesque of terms. 

I am particularly flabbergasted that those who lead the charge to soften the criticism of Muslim violence are the same people who are most flipped out about the influence of fundamentalist Christians in this country.  I'm not particularly thrilled with the legislation that some of the Christian right tends to propose, but my God even the often egregious Pat Robertson is a bastion of secular reasonableness when compared to many Middle Eastern Muslim leaders.

Anyway, the controversy may at least serve some purpose, in forcing Western media to confront its own double standards in criticizing or not criticizing religions  (as a note, let me make clear that I am for having an open season on anyone believing anything, as long as one has his facts straight).

Jeff Goldstein is always a good read, particularly on this topic:

even now
you have Kos commenters contorting themselves
into positions of self-righteous progressive onanism that are a wonder
to behold"”suddenly, free speech is not a universal right worthy of the
crafting of puppet heads and the defacing of Starbucks' windows, but
instead is a culture-specific gift that needs to be filtered through
the religious precepts of the culture of the Other.  Unless, of course,
that "Other" happens to be, say, Evangelical Christians.  In which
case, such extremists MUST BE SHOUTED DOWN with free speech.

Pretzel logic, clearly"”and the dilemma that is at the root of an
incoherent philosophical system that favors the sociology of group
identity over the universality of individual rights.  Ironically,
George Bush, each time he argues that freedom is universal, is acting
in a manner far more progressive than self-styled progressive
activists.

Again:  note the crux of the debate, as framed by the voices for
Muslim protest, and take care to listen for the broad-stroked
rhetoric"”usually this kinds of gambit is more carefully crafted by
those who have, through years of experience, perfected its vocabulary,
cadence, emotional appeals, and key words"”of the "tolerance" movement,
the justifying force that cynically underpins all identity politics:

"The
12 cartoons ... have caused an uproar in the Muslim world and drawn a
new cultural battle over freedom of speech and respect of religions."

Translation:
"Free speech is good so long as it tolerates our right, as an identity
group, to dictate which free speech is authentic and allowable.
Otherwise, y'know, we get to torch shit."

But of course, freedom of speech"”reduced (for purposes of this
debate) to its core, animating mandate and protection"”is PRECISELY the
ability to look religion in its pious face and flip it the bird.
Freedom of speech includes the freedom to criticize religion, just as
freedom of religion is supposed to protect the rights of the religious
not to have their religion established for them by a government"”a
counterbalancing right that is lacking in theocratic states and in
religions where pluralism is denied legitimacy.

Remember Enron?  One of the aspects of the Enron case that the media latched on to was the document destruction at Arthur Anderson, destruction AA claims was routine but prosecutors and many in the media tried to classify as obstruction of justice.  So I thought this bit from Reason was interesting:

For decades, newsrooms have
shredded or thrown away notes some time after using them both to save space and
to prevent prosecutors like Fitzgerald from demanding them as part of an
investigation. This "routine expungement is a longstanding practice in many
news organizations," says Sandra Davidson, a professor of communications law at
the University of Missouri School of Journalism.

Hmmm, sounds familiar, huh?  The article goes on to point out the obvious - that the Sarbanes-Oxley provisions rushed into law and cheer-led by most journalists may come back to bite the media:

And for the press, the "obstruction of justice" provision [of Sarbanes-Oxley]
may cover more than just withholding notes from the government once an
investigation has begun. It may also endanger the common practice of routinely
destroying notes to protect anonymous sources.... Sarbanes-Oxley, because it
covers document destruction even "in contemplation" of a federal investigation,
could apply to the press's "routine expungement" practices, scholars say. "If
you're destroying documents to prevent them from being subpoenaed," says
Rotunda, "you have a risk that a vigorous prosecutor will think of that as
obstruction of justice."

Via Instapundit, comes this story of the Pennsylvania legislature declaring vendetta on local media:

Team 4 has a voicemail recording of Democratic State Rep. Tim Solobay,
of Canonsburg, saying that state lawmakers are preparing an all-out
assault on the media. Solobay hints that the first volley is a bill
that would start charging sales tax on all advertising in Pennsylvania.

Solobay left the voicemail message for editor Cody Knotts, who works at The Weekly Recorder, in Claysville, Washington County.

In
the message, Solobay says, "But you know, for the most part, the
majority of the legislative feeling about the media right now is if
there's something they can do to screw them, you can imagine it may
occur."

Apparently, the legislature is pissed the media embarrassed them last year over a pay raise:

Like many newspaper editors in Pennsylvania, Knotts wrote prolifically
last year about the 16 percent pay raise that lawmakers took, and then
gave back under heavy media pressure.

Then, last month, he
learned of a bill in Harrisburg that would hit the media hard --
lifting the sales tax exemption on advertising, along with some other
services.

If true, this is clearly a disgusting abuse of power, but probably only unique because someone was willing to actually admit the tit for tat.

However, I am left with mixed feelings.  The media generally cheer-leads every tax increase, and is the first to join the bandwagon of slamming corporate profits and poo-pooing corporate "fat-cats whining about tax increases that cut into their huge profits" - you know the drill.

So I am less than sympathetic when I hear a media guy saying this:

Knotts said the plan would cause some businesses to stop advertising.

"We
don't have a big profit margin," said Knotts. "We're sitting at around
3 or 4 percent, maybe, and it's going to cut that down to where we're
losing money and then how can we stay in business."

Media executives in Pennsylvania, including those at WTAE-TV, have been lobbying lawmakers to kill the advertising tax.

Guess what - my profit margins in camping are thin as well, and my customers get hit not only with the 6-8% sales tax you are probably facing but also lodging taxes as high as 14%.  I have never ever seen a media outlet in any city or state in which we operate oppose a lodging tax increase.  Or take oil companies, who media companies revel in slamming.  Oil companies make average margins in the 5-8% range, but get hit with sales and gas taxes as high as 30% or more.  Or what about Wal-mart?  Wal-mart has margins in the 3-4% range - have these media companies ever opposed sales taxes at Wal-mart? (hah!)  So after supporting every tax you saw come along and slamming every other business as greedy profiteers, excuse me if I don't cry many tears when you get hoist on your own petard.

Congress is again on the verge of conferring new Constitutional rights to a narrow subset of American citizenry.  Already the recipient of speech rights that the rest of us don't enjoy, the major media organizations are also about to receive a special pass from cooperating with law enforcement and criminal investigations.  The reason for granting these new rights is in part because the media, with their business model in tatters, has learned a lesson from the steel and airline industry about running to Congress for help.

First there were special speech rights for the Press:  McCain-Feingold

This special treatment began with the McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Act, which gave journalists unique speech rights during elections by taking away the speech rights of every other non-media-credentialed American in the 30-90 days prior to an election.  Of course, those of us who don't work for the NY Times or CBS were kind of confused about how we had somehow lost our constitutional right to political speech.  Reasonably, many of us in the blogosphere wanted our speech rights back, and campaigned to be called journalists (i.e. to get the media exemption from campaign speech restrictions).  As I wrote back in June:

These past few weeks, we have been debating whether this media
exemption from speech restrictions should be extended to bloggers.  At
first, I was in favor.  Then I was torn.
Now, I am pissed.  The more I think of it, it is insane that we are
creating a 2-tiered system of first amendment rights at all, and I
really don't care any more who is in which tier.  Given the wording of
the Constitution, how do I decide who gets speech and who doesn't - it
sounds like everyone is supposed to...

I
have come to the conclusion that arguing over who gets the media
exemption is like arguing about whether a Native American in 1960's
Alabama should use the white or the colored-only bathroom:  It is an
obscene discussion and is missing the whole point, that the facilities
shouldn't be segregated in the first place.

Now, Congress is Considering Enhanced "Shield" Laws

Now Congress is ready to take another step in the same direction of giving the media special enhanced platinum-level Constitutional rights with the proposed Federal Shield Law.  No doubt inspired by the whole Valerie Plame / Judith Miller mess, this is yet another example of Congress feeling like it has to "do something" with a half-assed solution to a non-problem that no one at this point, except perhaps Ms. Miller, even really understands.  The Federal Shield Law, named in typical Orwellian fashion the "Free Flow of Information Act", would make reporters the only citizens of the United States who can evade subpoenas and legally stand in contempt of court, a right we have determined that not even presidents have.

These shield laws, which I have criticized before, are often justified as necessary supports for the First Amendment.  Beyond the fact that the press in this country has functioned for centuries quite nicely without such shield laws, and have toppled President's without these extra rights, they are somehow now "necessary to help the United States regain its status as an 'exemplar' of press freedom", according to bill sponsor Richard Luger  (a statement made without explaining either why this was true or even how or when the US stopped being an 'exemplar' of press freedom).

Luger is not even shy about admitting that this law effectively creates two classes of citizen in the United States:

Lugar acknowledged that the legislation could amount to a "privilege" for reporters over other Americans.

"I think, very frankly, you can make a case that this is a special
boon for reporters, and certainly for their role in freedom of the
press," he said. "At the end of the day what we will come out with says
there is something privileged about being a reporter, and being able to
report on something without being thrown into jail."

Um, reporters can already report things without being thrown in jail.  Judith Miller, the explicit reason for the bill's existence, according to Luger, was thrown in jail not for her reporting, but her refusing to participate in an investigation.  An investigation that her employer the NY Times cheer-led the government into starting.  She was put in jail for refusing to testify about a source who had in fact already given her verbal permission before she went to jail to reveal his name.

Glenn Reynolds has a nice quote about the proposal:

ONE CHARACTERISTIC OF THE TITLED NOBILITY was its immunity from some
legal rules laid on the commoners; that's why such titles were an
important boon that the King could bestow on favorites. Reading this statement by Richard Lugar on the proposed journalists' shield law, which probably won't cover bloggers, I wonder if we're getting into the same territory

The Licensing Issue:  Who is a Journalist?

This new special privilege afforded to journalists, when combined with the special speech rights conferred in McCain-Feingold, increases the importance of the question "So who is a journalist and who qualifies for these unique privileges?" I predicted way back in February that I thought some type of official licensing program was going to be proposed for journalists.  Well, here it is in black and white in the aforementioned article on the new shield law:

A key reason some journalists oppose the popular federal shield
proposal is fear that giving Congress the power to define who is and
isn't a journalist could lead effectively to the licensing of
journalists.

Back in February, I predicted that the effort at licensing would fail, but now I have changed my mind.  After all, you can't have all of us unwashed folks who actually got good grades in math so we didn't have to default back to a journalism degree in college getting hold of these special privileges.  Only elite people who have proved themselves worth of being beyond legal accountability, folks like Dan Rather or the Katrina reporters, can be trusted with these extra rights and privileges.

Whenever the government by legislation gives a group of people special powers, it always leads to licensing.  It HAS to, else the courts would forever be bogged down with fights over who is in and who is out.  It is much easier to say "the only people who have the right to evade subpoenas are people with this piece of paper."  Using medicine as a parallel example, once you decide the average person can't be trusted to educate themselves enough to make their own medication decisions, you end up with a process where only licensed MD's can issue prescriptions.  The same will be true in journalism.

What is Really Going On Here

To understand what is really going on here, think "steel industry" or "airline industry".  When technology or markets or customers or competition changed in industries like steel, the last desperate defense of the US steel industry was to run to the government begging for import restrictions and price supports and subsidies and pension bailouts and god-knows what else.  Boy-oh-boy wouldn't the steel industry in the US love to have a law that says only licensed steel makers can sell steel in the US, and by the way, the current steel industry participants will control the licensing board.

Think that is a ridiculous exaggeration?  It can't be any more stupid than this form of licensing (or this one;  or this one).  Here are the various trade-specific licenses
you need here in Scottsdale - I would hate to see the list for some
place like Santa Monica.  My favorite is the one that says "An
additional license is required for those firms which are going out of
business."  Or for an exact parallel to my steel industry hypothetical, try this law from Ohio to liscence new auctioneers:

Besides costing $200 and posting a $50,000 bond,
the license requires a one-year apprenticeship to a licensed auctioneer, acting
as a bid-caller in 12 auctions, attending an approved auction school, passing a
written and oral exam. Failure to get a license could result in the seller being
fined up to $1,000 and jailed for a maximum of 90 days.

And my commentary on it:

Note that under this system, auctioneers
have an automatic veto over new competition, since all potential
competitors must find an existing auctioneer to take them on as an
apprentice.  Imagine the consumer electronics business - "I'm sorry,
you can't make or sell any DVD players until Sony or Toshiba have
agreed to take you on as an intern for a year".  Yeah, I bet we'd see a
lot of new electronics firms in that system - not.

This is exactly what is going on with the media.  The world, at least for the US media, is changing.  Subscriptions and ad revenues have been falling year after year after year.  People either giving up this media all-together or switching to new competitors, such as online media, in large numbers and there is no indication that this trend will stop.  As a result, the traditional media finds itself with its back against the wall.

What to do?  What every other industry has done - run to Congress!  Major media groups were extraordinarily strong supporters of McCain-Feingold, knowing that by limiting speech of everyone else, it added to its own influence and power come election time.  Over time, Congress will continue to add new privileges for the media, like the shield law, in part because it knows that it needs to stay in good with the only group of people who have full speech rights come election time.

The one thing I disagree with in the quote above about licensing is the notion that many in the press oppose it.  They are right to see the prospect as scary (see unintended consequences below) but once a licensing system is in place, I GUARANTEE that the licensed press will be huge supporters of licensing.  Just like lawyers and doctors, the press will find a way to take control of their own licensing and use it to keep out competitors they don't like.  Those pajama-clad bloggers irritating you - well, just make sure that they don't get licensed.  Come election time, they will all have to shut up, because only licensed journalists will have the media exemption in McC-F.  Milton Freedman described this process years ago:

The justification offered [for licensing] is always the same: to protect the consumer. However, the reason
is demonstrated by observing who lobbies at the state legislature for
the imposition or strengthening of licensure. The lobbyists are
invariably representatives of the occupation in question rather than of
the customers. True enough, plumbers presumably know better than anyone
else what their customers need to be protected against. However, it is
hard to regard altruistic concern for their customers as the primary
motive behind their determined efforts to get legal power to decide who
may be a plumber.

And as I said here:

Such credentialing can provide a powerful comeback for industry insiders under attack.  Teachers, for example, use it every chance they get to attack home schooling and private schools,
despite the fact that uncertified teachers in both these latter
environments do better than the average certified teacher (for example,
kids home schooled by moms who dropped out of high school performed at
the 83rd percentile).  So, next time the MSM is under attack from the blogosphere, rather than address the issues, they can say that that guy in Tennessee is just a college professor and isn't even a licensed journalist.

Hit and Run described how doctors use the licensing process, and even hazing of interns, to keep their numbers down and therefore their salaries (and their fees to us) up:

When Kevin Drum commented on the New England Journal
article, he said that the system's defenders "sound like nothing so
much as a bunch of 50s frat boys defending hazing after some freshman
has been found dead in an arroyo somewhere."

Hazing is the right metaphor. The system serves the same
purpose: It's a brutal initiation to a privileged club. Medical hazing
is part of the set of barriers that limit entry to the profession;
whatever other reasons there are for it, it's ultimately a byproduct of
occupational licensing.
Those long shifts don't just undermine public health. They drive away
qualified men and women, reducing the supply of doctors and allowing
those who survive the trial to charge more for their services.

Unintended consequences

Of course, all this has unintended consequences, as does any government meddling in individual decisions, limitations of rights, or attempts to pick industry winners. 

The first unintended consequence, or more accurately I guess I should call it the first irony because I am not sure that it is unintended, is that laws meant to keep the elite from having undue influence vs. the little guy in politics (via spending limits) have done just the opposite - concentrated political speech in a few elites in the media and squashed the one medium, blogging and the Internet, that hold the promise of giving individuals like myself new, inexpensive ways of influencing politics.

The second unintended and really scary consequence is that in attempting to remove a lever of government control over media - the subpoena power - Congress is potentially creating a larger one - that of licensing.  Of all the news-oriented media in the world, which is the most bland?  I would answer local TV and radio (by this I mean their local programming, not the syndicated stuff they air).  Why?  Because they are already subject to government licensing that to this point other media, such as newspapers, have not.  Local broadcast outlets are VERY self-conscious about protecting their license, and tend to keep their programming bland to avoid irritating some government bureaucrat.  Just look at how many rolled over immediately and dropped Howard Stern when the government started looking cross-eyed at Stern's raunchiness.  Do we really want all the media subject to this kind of pressure?

Technorati Tags:  Media

Government censors often try to rewrite the past, but Reason's Hit and Run passes on this funny story of British attempts to rewrite the future:

Britain's Meteorological Office has instructed forecasters to describe the
country's damp, dismal, seasonal-affect-disorder-inducing, godawful weather in
Bob Rossian terms:

Prolonged sunshine is expected under new "positive" forecast
guidelines issued by the Meteorological Office...

There is no need to dwell on a "small chance of showers" when "mainly dry"
tells a better story. If there are "localised storms" then it must be "dry for
most". Clouds over Manchester mean generally clear visibility for motorway
drivers

I don't know what the Brits are complaining about in a forecast such as "small chance of showers".  In the States, the same forecast would be communicated as "huge, civilization ending storm approaching - details at 11".  When I lived in St. Louis, I remember that the local news successfully predicted 11 of the last 3 snowstorms.

Update:  I appears that the media has also been reporting 11 of the last 3 murders:

Five weeks after Hurricane Katrina laid waste to New Orleans, some local, state
and federal officials have come to believe that exaggerations of mayhem by
officials and rumors repeated uncritically in the news media helped slow the
response to the disaster and tarnish the image of many of its
victims.

Claims of widespread looting, gunfire directed at helicopters and
rescuers, homicides, and rapes, including those of "babies" at the Louisiana
Superdome, frequently turned out to be overblown, if not completely untrue,
officials now say.

The sensational accounts delayed rescue and evacuation efforts already hampered
by poor planning and a lack of coordination among local, state and federal
agencies. People rushing to the Gulf Coast to fly rescue helicopters or to
distribute food, water and other aid steeled themselves for battle. In
communities near and far, the seeds were planted that the victims of Katrina
should be kept away, or at least handled with extreme caution.

I had my own commentary about media malpractice here.

Kevin Drum passes on this Times-Picayune story that apparently, New Orleans in general and the Superdome in particular were not quite the post-apocalyptic-mad-max killing zone they were portrayed as:

"I had the impression that at least 40 or 50 murders had occurred at the two
sites," he said. "It's unfortunate we saw these kinds of stories saying crime
had taken place on a massive scale when that wasn't the case. And they (national
media outlets) have done nothing to follow up on any of these cases, they just
accepted what people (on the street) told them....It's not consistent with the
highest standards of journalism."

....The picture that emerged was one of the impoverished, masses of flood
victims resorting to utter depravity, randomly attacking each other, as well as
the police trying to protect them and the rescue workers trying to save them.
[Mayor Ray] Nagin told [Oprah] Winfrey the crowd has descended to an "almost
animalistic state."

Drum has an odd way of introducing the story, saying that "conventional wisdom about the Superdome and Convention Center was wrong" and introducing the story as an "urban legend".  Conventional wisdom? Urban legend?  This isn't a story that was created around water coolers, this is a story that was reported like this by the major media.  If the Times-Picayune story is right, then a better lead would be "Major Media Greatly Exaggerated Deaths and Disorder at Superdome". 

What Drum is so coy about pointing out is that this is yet another example of the media falling in love with a story line and selectively choosing facts, and where necessary, suspending disbelief, to support that story line.  First, the media wanted what it always wants in a disaster:  the big story that will draw viewers  (Did anyone else notice last week during Rita that when the hurricane went from category 3 to 5, all the media said it was much more dangerous at 5, but when it went back down to 3, they all said its just as dangerous at 3 as 5).  As the days progressed, the media fell in love with a new story, the story of a racist administration that was abandoning blacks to chaos.

OK, well here is my new story line:  Its about a media that won't even trust General Honore when he announces the location of the hurricane Rita evacuation site without peppering him with 20 useless questions but is willing to believe, without evidence, that a mostly black population would in a period of two days descend into Lord-of-the-Flies level violence, murder, and yes, they even mentioned cannibalism.   Message to blacks from the media: The elite media types feel your pain, support litmus test issues like affirmative action, but they will assume that at your heart you are all murderers and cannibals.   Who are the freakin' racists here, anyway?   Heck, a black "social justice advocate" started the cannibalism rumor in print.  With leaders like these, do African-Americans need enemies?

And, by the way, there is a second really interesting story line here about how the major media's desire to portray the situation in New Orleans as bad as possible, even if the facts did not support it, actually slowed the pace of help to victims.  Any number of volunteers shied away from entering the damaged area, afraid for their own safety.  Many more were turned away from the area by authorities who were afraid they could not protect them.  There is no doubt in my mind that the media's fact-free coverage, skewed to make things look as bad as possible, made things worse for victims in the early days after the hurricane, all in the name of higher ratings.  If Walmart or Haliburton had done something to impede the rescue in the name of higher profits, they would be hung out to dry.  OK, I am waiting for a similar outcry against ABC and CNN and FOX, because it seems that that is exactly what they are guilty of.

Update:  From the LA Times:

"If the dome and Convention Center had harbored large numbers of
middle class white people," [New Orleans Times-Picayune Editor] Amoss said, "it would not have been a
fertile ground for this kind of rumor-mongering."

A lot of the blame, though seems to also fall at the footsteps of the Mayor and Chief of Police:

Mayor C. Ray Nagin told a national television audience on "Oprah" three
weeks ago of people "in that frickin' Superdome for five days watching
dead bodies, watching hooligans killing people, raping people."...

Some of the hesitation that journalists might have had about using the
more sordid reports from the evacuation centers probably fell away when
New Orleans' top officials seemed to confirm the accounts.

Nagin and Police Chief Eddie Compass appeared on "Oprah" a few days after trouble at the Superdome had peaked.

Compass told of "the little babies getting raped" at the
Superdome. And Nagin made his claim about hooligans raping and killing.

Mayor Nagin has for some reason chosen the strategy, which seems insane in retrospect, of hoping that making the situation look as bad as possible would somehow enhance his personal reputation.  This strategy seems nuts, but I will say that it is one that has worked well for black politicians for years, making political hay by pointing out how bad their black constituents have it because of outside racist forces and powers outside their control.  In this case, though, the chickens come home to roost as Mayor Nagin has been unable to shed that nasty, nagging question that African-Americans should have been asking of their black leaders for years: "Uh, but in this case weren't you the one in charge?"

Technorati Tags:  Katrina, Media

Its not very often that you can tell, right at birth, that a new meme or catchphrase has been created, but General Honore's "Your Stuck on Stupid" seems to be such a case.  Radio Blogger has the context and transcript.  I will quote the key part, but its good to read the whole thing. 

The General had been trying to explain the evacuation approach so the press could get the message out to citizens who needed to know where to go.  Actually, the mayor had been trying to do that first, but was getting eaten alive by a press who were less interested in getting information out on the new storm than with scoring points** about the last storm. Both the mayor and the general kept getting peppered with questions like "why didn't we do that last time" and "That didn't work before".  At this point, General Honore was clearly frustrated with reporters who wanted to have a political finger pointing discussion when he was trying to communicate evacuation information.  So then there was this:

Honore: ...Right now, to handle the number of people that want to leave, we've got the
capacity. You will come to the convention center. There are soldiers there from
the 82nd Airborne, and from the Louisiana National Guard. People will be told to
get on the bus, and we will take care of them. And where they go will be
dependent on the capacity in this state. We've got our communications up. And
we'll tell them where to go. And when they get there, they'll be able to get a
chance, an opportunity to get registered, and so they can let their families
know where they are. But don't start panic here. Okay? We've got a location. It
is in the front of the convention center, and that's where we will use to
migrate people from it, into the system.

Male reporter: General Honore, we were told
that Berman Stadium on the west bank would be another staging area...

Honore: Not to my knowledge. Again, the current
place, I just told you one time, is the convention center. Once we complete the
plan with the mayor, and is approved by the governor, then we'll start that in
the next 12-24 hours. And we understand that there's a problem in getting
communications out. That's where we need your help. But let's not confuse the
questions with the answers. Buses at the convention center will move our
citizens, for whom we have sworn that we will support and defend...and we'll
move them on. Let's not get stuck on the last storm. You're asking last storm
questions for people who are concerned about the future storm. Don't get stuck
on stupid, reporters. We are moving forward. And don't confuse the people
please. You are part of the public message. So help us get the message straight.
And if you don't understand, maybe you'll confuse it to the people. That's why
we like follow-up questions. But right now, it's the convention center, and move
on.

Male reporter: General, a little bit more about
why that's happening this time, though, and did not have that last time...

Honore: You are stuck on stupid. I'm not going
to answer that question. We are going to deal with Rita. This is public
information that people are depending on the government to put out. This is the
way we've got to do it. So please. I apologize to you, but let's talk about the
future. Rita is happening. And right now, we need to get good, clean information
out to the people that they can use. And we can have a conversation on the side
about the past, in a couple of months.

Awesome.  The press does a great job, and I couldn't do what I do as a blogger without them gathering the basic facts on which I comment***.  However, I think a lot of people are tired of their self-righteous shtick.

Footnotes:
**  While I am convinced that reporters seem more interested in scoring points in these press conferences than obtaining facts (have you ever watched a White House press briefing?), it is interesting to ask "score points with whom?"  With each other?  With CSPAN viewers?  Are either of these really a sustainable constituency?

***  Vodkapundit has a great analysis that I think is dead-on about the NY Times putting their editorial copy behind a paid firewall.  The WSJ charges for news, but puts out opinions for free.  The NY Times does the opposite. 

Look. I usually suspect any New York Times story to be biased - but I can
expect it to be researched and fact-checked. And in this day and age, I can rely
on some smart blogger somewhere to tell me exactly what the NYT got wrong. But
what I can't expect blogs to do - at least not yet - is to do the dreary,
day-in-day-out work of getting the news in the first place. For all its faults,
the MSM is still far better than blogs at reporting.

Given all that, do recent decisions at the New York Times make any sense?
They're forcing people to pay for opinions they can get most anywhere else for
free, while cutting back on doing the one thing they can still do better than
anyone else.

A pretty cynical bit of racial profiling going on here.  White people are borrowing needed food, black people are looting (though there is an interesting contrast here in how each person goes about their carbohydrate intake, lol)

I was reading the NY Times' International Herald Tribune today here in Paris, and saw something funny at the end of an article about the crazy process underway to select the 2012 Olympic venue.  By the way, this is the big issue in Paris right now - you can't walk anywhere without finding yourself in the middle of some sort of Paris promotional event, presumably being simulcast back to the selection committee in Singapore.

Anyway, the IHT had this funny line:

The last days of the race drew the president of France, the prime minister of Russia and the queen of Spain here.  New York City pulled Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton away from a busy schedule to lend her star power.

Uhh, you mean the president of France and the prime minister of Russia don't have busy schedules?  And wouldn't a more correct formulation be "while other cities were represented by their head of state, NY City could only muster a junior member of Congress"?  I hope any city but New York wins, because, given past history, NYC will likely get themselves into some financial hole hosting the Olympics that the rest of the country will have to bail them out of.

By the way, apparently in a bid to head off past corruption, the International Olympic Committee has banned its members from actually visiting host cities and their facilities ahead of the selection.  This seems kind of extreme - you have to pick between cities but you can't learn anything useful about them.  Its depressing that the members of the Olympic committee are so untrustworthy that the only way to prevent them from collecting bribes from potential host countries is to not allow them anywhere near the country.

Well, Newsweek has admitted that it screwed up.  Big time:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Newsweek magazine said on Sunday it
erred in a May 9 report that U.S. interrogators desecrated the
Koran at Guantanamo Bay, and apologized to the victims of
deadly Muslim protests sparked by the article.

Editor Mark Whitaker said the magazine inaccurately
reported that U.S. military investigators had confirmed that
personnel at the detention facility in Cuba had flushed the
Muslim holy book down the toilet.

The report sparked angry and violent protests across the
Muslim world from Afghanistan, where 16 were killed and more
than 100 injured, to Pakistan to Indonesia to Gaza. In the past
week it was condemned in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Bangladesh,
Malaysia and by the Arab League.

On Sunday, Afghan Muslim clerics threatened to call for a
holy war against the United States.

"We regret that we got any part of our story wrong, and
extend our sympathies to victims of the violence and to the
U.S. soldiers caught in its midst," Whitaker wrote in the
magazine's latest issue, due to appear on U.S. newsstands on
Monday.

It is not Monday morning quarterbacking to say that they should have known better -- many observers noted the danger right off the bat of posting such an inflammatory story based on only a single anonymous source.

The point I want to make is a different one than the obvious MSM-continues-to-slide-into-the-abyss observation.  That is:  We really, really seem to have dumbed down the whole "torture" thing.  When I grew up, torture was pulling out someones fingernails or whacking their genitals with a stick while they were tied to a cane chair or maybe starving them in a pit for a few weeks. 

Here is my fervent hope:  If I ever find myself imprisoned by hostile forces, I pray that they will torture me by sitting me in a chair and having me watch them flush books down the toilet.  The toughest part will be acting like I am really suffering watching a copy of some document I respect, maybe the US Constitution or Atlas Shrugged or the latest Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue, swirling down the pipe.  Then, if that does not work, I hope and pray that they then resort to stripping me naked and taking pictures of me in a human pyramid with other prisoners.  I just hope they don't find out that I already did something similar in college.

By the way, while we are inventing a kindler-gentler torture, can we also tone down our dedication to icons?  I have never understood the need to ban Koran flushing or American flag burning.  Both the Koran and the flag are symbols that have meaning to each individual.  If someone wipes their butt in public with the American flag, my  respect for the US and what it stands for is in no way tarnished - only my opinion of the flag-wiper has changed.

UPDATE:  WOW!  How did I miss this one?  I really, REALLY hope they choose this torture for me:

One female civilian contractor used a special outfit that included a
miniskirt and thong underwear during late-night interrogations with
prisoners, mostly Muslim men who consider it taboo to have close
contact with women who aren't their wives...

The female interrogator wanted to "break him," Saar adds, describing
how she removed her uniform top to expose a tight-fitting T-shirt and
began taunting the detainee, touching her breasts, rubbing them against
the prisoner's back and commenting on his apparent erection....

In November, in response to an AP request, the military described an
April 2003 incident in which a female interrogator took off her uniform
top, ran her fingers through a detainee's hair and sat on his lap. That
session was immediately ended by a supervisor and that interrogator
received a written reprimand and additional training, the military said.

Please, no.  Anything but that.  Las Vegas better watch out or it may start losing visitors to Gitmo.  I wonder if this is going to cause a problem for the ACLU, which has been opposing these interrogation techniques at Gitmo.  After all, doesn't this woman have a right to free expression?

Postscript:  By the way, I am serious that I think the media has purposefully dumbed-down the definition of torture to improve their story, and in the process has hurt the US internationally.  However, while I find most of the torture accusations a joke, I still absolutely oppose the whole Guantanamo Bay indefinite detention camp concept.  I don't like allowing US authorities to set up a civil-rights-free zone, and I think it is an incredibly slippery slope that we are climbing on.   And yes, I say this with full knowlege that some bad folks could be released back into the wild.  Guess what -- the American justice system does this all the time.  We have 200 years of history of preferring to let guilty parties go free rather than letting innocent parties rot in jail, and I am not ready to overturn our pretty succesful precendent on this matter.

UPDATE: And to be clear, this is torture, or close enough.  Its good these folks are being brought to justice.   I encourage the media to keep up the pressure on true misconduct -- the gratuitous "wrapped-them-in-the-israeli-flag non-tortures just dillute our focus.  I guess I would also encourage those of you who want to extrapolate from these events to a condemnation of the US military as a whole to inform yourself.  The US military, like any institution of human beings, has criminals in it.  However, that being said, our military has been by far the best behaved occupying force in history, bar none (And, if you don't think they should be occupiers at all, well, blame the politicians that sent them).  For every story of atrocious behavior by a US soldier are 20 stories of soldiers being fair and kind.  The fact that these 20 other stories don't make the paper doesn't make them any less true.

Its good that unlike us poor, mistake-prone bloggers, the major media outlets have multiple layers of editing.  Otherwise, they might make mistakes even worse than putting Tbilisi, Georgia near Atlanta, as did our "worldly" local paper, the AZ Republic.  (Hat tip:  WSJ Best of the Web$)

I was wondering if anyone else noticed this.  Greg Scoblete (hat tip: Instapundit)  points out the very different treatment that the Enron and the UN Scandals have gotten in the NY Times:

Notice the care this New York Times editorial takes
when treating Kofi Annan today, all hedged bets and mild condemnation.
It's only Kojo, after all. Confined to those shifty Swiss. Not a big
deal, besides the only people who care are the warmongers angry that
Kofi wouldn't sign on to the Iraq war. Just do better next time.

In other words, par for the Kofi course.*

Now, Enron.  Hang 'em high! Trust no one. Spare no one. Cast the net wide! Wider! The root of all evil. Crush all Imperial CEOs. Ken Lay - why wait for the trial? Even named a disease after it.

They are different:  The UN scandals are much worse:

• The UN is a far more important institution -- at the end of the day, Enron is just a pipeline company, and no one, except their hosed employees, really has missed it
• The UN has overseen a far larger amount of corruption in $ terms.
• Enron enriched some twits in Houston.  UN enriched a brutal dictator who used the money to cement his totalitarian power over his country
• At least as far as I know, Enron employees were not guilty of mass rape.

Disclosure: When I was a first year associate at McKinsey & Co.,
I worked on a study team led by Jeff Skilling (it was at McKinsey that
Skilling developped many of his ideas for the gas-trading business that
catapulted him into a senior position at Enron).  I had great respect
for Skilling's off-the-chart intelligence and ability to synthesize
tons of detail.  If that causes the reader to be suspicious of Skilling's Congressional testimony
, well, I will leave that to the reader's opinion and future court
decisions.  Remember, though, that the
I-was-too-dumb-to-know-what-was-going-on defense did not even work for Bernard Ebbers, and Skilling is a lot brighter than Ebbers.

We libertarians are often argue that both the left and the right are equally guilty of stepping on key freedoms.  We currently have an excellent example of that in the case of freedom of speech in broadcast media (radio and TV).

From the Right:  New initiatives to crack down on "bad language" and sexual content in broadcast media, most famously driving Howard Stern to satellite.

From the Left:  While bent out of shape about the right's crackdown on immoral speech, the left turns around and attempts a crackdown, via renewal of the Fairness Doctrine, on political speech.  See hapless John Kerry decrying loss of the Fairness Doctrine here, and a more coherent history here.

Can't we just agree to allow everyone free speech and turn off what we don't want to hear?