"Conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt resigned from the Washington Post after feuding Friday with two of the newspaper’s liberal columnists during a live talk show..."

"Hewitt stormed off the set during the online show 'First Look' with Jonathan Capehart and Ruth Marcus, who claimed former President Donald Trump was 'laying the groundwork'” to contest Tuesday’s election if he lost. After being cut off by Capehart, an MSNBC host, and then accused by him of spouting misinformation, Hewitt ripped out his earpiece and said: 'I’m done. This is the most unfair election ad I’ve ever been a part of.' Hewitt, who hosts a nationally syndicated radio show, then quit the paper, which has been roiled by owner Jeff Bezos’ decision to kill an endorsement for Vice President Kamala Harris."

The NY Post reports (with video of Hewitt up and leaving).

Can't we use the torture devices in the best order?

"Why did this seamy Trump trial have to be the first?" Ruth Marcus complains, in The Washington Post.

Can't we conduct this persecution in a sequence most effective in shaping the emotions of the electorate?

Don't you hate when you're using the courts to destroy a man and the courts interpose their own ways of doing things and interfere with efficient destruction?

"But what is interesting is that a few voices on the Left have spoken up to question the fairness of the proceedings."

"Not to defend Trump — they could never bring themselves to do that — but to ask whether the process being used to go after him is fair. Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus, firmly in the liberal camp and firmly anti-Trump, expressed worries about the precedent the Trump case could set. From her column this week: 'The essence of Trump’s argument on appeal is that the supposed harm he caused was minimal at best — all his lenders were repaid — and that the penalty levied against him was therefore wildly excessive....' Progressive commentator Cenk Uygur, also firmly anti-Trump, had a similar view. 'To me, putting up all the cash upfront before you appeal the case seems draconian for everyone, not just Trump.... But what if he wins the appeal? So you made him sell all of his properties to get the collateral, but then he can’t buy them back....'... Someday, of course, what goes around will come around for Democrats, probably in circumstances that none of them could predict right now...."

Writes Byron York.

Most Trump antagonists seem to be laughing and salivating. I suppose they would enjoy seeing the man tortured. It's bizarrely shortsighted. Do they think Trump is uniquely evil and nothing that happens to him will set a precedent?

One way to ensure that rights are not violated is to interpret them as very small.

Get ready for lots of pieces like "The Trump indictment tramples no one’s First Amendment rights."

That's by Ruth Marcus in The Washington Post.

"Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. just wants you to know: The leaker didn’t come from the conservative wing of the court...."

Writes Ruth Marcus in "The aggrieved Justice Alito points fingers but offers no proof" (WaPo).

Alito didn’t name names but freely assigned motive. “It was part of an effort to prevent the Dobbs draft … from becoming the decision of the court,” he said. “And that’s how it was used for those six weeks by people on the outside — as part of the campaign to try to intimidate the court.” 

Nice work, because this is the kind of inchoate smear that is impossible to defend against....

Ah! Can we have a general rule against inchoate smears?! They're impossible to defend against, so it's scurrilous to make them. Think hard before agreeing to the rule. How will you feel when it's used against you or someone you like? And what about the unintended side effects? If smears must be not be inchoate,* then sometimes, instead of blind items or silence, you'll get names.

I'm pulled into the upper right hand corner of The Washington Post — so dangerous, so syrup-drenched.

Here's that corner (9 items):

It's an omakase breakfast — omakase, not omicron — the selections entrusted to the illustrious mainstream newspaper. I will update this post, course by course. 

1. "For Clarence Thomas, avowed critic of Roe v. Wade, Mississippi abortion case a moment long awaited" by Robert Barnes. There's oral argument in the big abortion case this Wednesday, and, we're told, Thomas receives "unprecedented deference" these days — because of all his new colleagues, who "think like him," and because there's a new method of asking questions at oral argument, and not only does he speak now, he goes first, and no one cuts him off. They let him finish "his low-key inquiries." Thomas has repeatedly written separate opinions to say that Roe ought to be overruled. "Thomas’s idiosyncratic views and his resistance to compromise still make him the justice most likely to write a solo opinion," writes Barnes. But what's to prevent these new Justices, who may genuinely respect him, from curing that loneliness? Asking that question, I thought of the adage, "Any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one already." And then I realized I'm talking about the person named in the next headline down, Henry David Thoreau.

2. "The Black people who lived in Walden Woods long before Henry David Thoreau": "'Down the road, on the right hand, on Brister’s Hill lived Brister Freeman, ‘a handy Negro,’ slave of Squire Cummings once... With him dwelt Fenda, his hospitable wife, who told fortunes, yet pleasantly – large, round, and black, blacker than any of the children of night, such a dusky orb as never rose on Concord before or since,' Thoreau wrote in 'Walden.'"

3. "Amid massive shortage, Canada taps strategic reserves — of maple syrup": "Petroleum stockpiles aren’t the only strategic reserves being tapped this season amid concerns of supply shortages and sky-high prices." There's a Canadian federation that, we're told, gets called "the OPEC of maple syrup." The shortage seems to have mostly to do with people cooking more pancakes and such on account of the lockdown, but there's also stress to the maple trees from climate change, so make sure to keep worrying about climate change. It affects pancakes!

4. "The Rule of Six: A newly radicalized Supreme Court is poised to reshape the nation" by Ruth Marcus. The conservatives are no longer just looking for a 5th vote. With 6, it's like "an heir and spare." They can afford to lose one. No more need to cajole that last one, the fussed-over "swing" voter. And Marcus tells WaPo readers to be be afraid, be very afraid.

5. "Hanukkah isn’t ‘Jewish Christmas.’ Stop treating it that way. No need to include our holiday in the winter extravaganza of commercialization, thanks." Sample sentence, representing the tone and message of the entire piece: "No Jew has ever gazed longingly at a 12-foot inflatable reindeer and wished in her heart she had an equally large Moses to display in front of her house."

6. "Greece was in deep trouble. How did it right the ship? Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis on the arrival of migrants — and tech companies." An interview with the prime minister. Highlights: "We should agree in principle that no country has a right to weaponize migrants. . . . We won’t let people come in as they please." About criminalizing “fake news”: "What we are doing is very measured and very valid."

7. "Five myths about the supply chain/No, self-driving trucks wouldn’t fix all our problems." "Much of today’s mess was caused by relying on extremely fragile — and extremely long — supply lines. Ohno would have shuddered at the thought that his ideas were being applied in this manner." Oh no! Taiichi Ohno originated the concept of just-in-time delivery.

8. "The newest coronavirus variant is raising alarms. The pandemic is not over." "It will take time to determine if the variant is more transmissible than delta, or more virulent, but it is a worrisome development." Won't there always be a new variant so that we will always be told we don't know enough yet and we will need, once again, to err on the side of safety? This feels like a treadmill that we can never step off.

9. "Stephen Sondheim made art that made life more real" by Alexandra Petri. A song "can’t be too clever, and it can’t be too dull. It has to land on your ear as a surprise. If it contains jokes, they have to rhyme. (If it contains rhymes, words that are spelled differently are funnier, Sondheim thought, than words that are spelled the same.)... The song has to take the character singing it somewhere. It has to be essential to the show. 'If you can take the song out,' Sondheim said, 'and it doesn’t leave a hole, then the song’s not necessary.'... Life also exists in time. You cannot stop it and start it and go back and hope to make yourself better understood. You must express yourself in the moments allotted and make yourself heard and choose what to say." 

If I hadn't committed to reading every one of those 9 stories, the ones I would have read would be: 1, 2, and 9. And I would have blogged all 3. 

Having read all the stories, I rank their bloggability, for me, beginning with: 1, 9, 2. Then, there's a big drop off. There's something I'd wanted to say that 8 gave me the chance to say, so I'll put 8 next. I'd put 3 dead last, because I don't really want to blog about the syrup supply, though it would shoot to the top if I had a "syrup" tag (and I might create a "syrup" tag, but it will take a while to add it retrospectively, and it's only interesting if it collects a lot of old things, which it will, more than 10). I put 4 next to last, because it's obvious to me what it will be from the headline and the author, and I don't need more of that. Third from last is 5, which is unnecessary holiday fluff, and I didn't like the insinuation that I was "treating" Hanukkah in any particular way. That leaves 6 in dead center. The Greek Prime Minister. I had to force myself to read that, but he was concise and hard core — quotable.

Oops, I forgot the supply chain. I know it's important, but it's not my thing. I put Greek Prime Minister at what I called "dead center" and in 5th place, so let's put 7 in 6th place. 

Final ranking: 1, 9, 2, 8, 6, 7, 5, 4, 3.

ADDED: I have now made the tag "syrup." Click. It's pretty exciting. 

"My gut says that what Reade alleges did not happen. My head instructs that it is within the realm of possibility..."

"... and fairness requires acknowledging that. And there is another point to bear in mind: Double standards work in both directions. Those who disbelieved and diminished Christine Blasey Ford face the challenge of explaining why they seem so much more eager to credit Tara Reade’s account."

Writes Ruth Marcus in "Assessing Tara Reade’s allegations" (WaPo). Marcus wrote a book about Christine Blasey Ford and concluded that she was telling the truth. This column is (or purports to be) Marcus's effort to not be a hypocrite.

Outrage over misbehavior only by those with whom we have ideological differences is not righteous — it is hypocritical. Skepticism about accusations only when they are made against someone with whom we are ideologically aligned is not high-minded — it is intellectually dishonest.

And yet. Reflexive acceptance of any and all allegations of sexual misconduct against any man is not staunch feminism — it is dangerous credulity that risks doing terrible injustice to the accused. #BelieveAllWomen was a dumb hashtag and a dumber approach to inevitably complex, fact-bound situations. I have always tried to argue in favor of fact-finding first, conviction later, whether in the court of public opinion, in the Senate confirmation process or elsewhere....

I won't detail Marcus's assessment of the evidence in the Reade and Blasey Ford cases, but I wanted to point to something said in the comments over there. This combines 3 different commenters:

Women of a certain age, and Ms. Reade is one, know that we all wore pantyhose in those days in DC.... I have difficulty in thinking a female staffer on the Hill in the spring of 1993 was not wearing hose with a business skirt.... I'm a retired physician and a woman. I've done a lot of pelvic exams in my life and I honestly don't see how a standing man could reach under a standing woman's layers of clothes and insert a finger without groping, fumbling and cooperation.... Especially if she was wearing pantyhose....

"The clamor is growing for Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. to take an assertive stance in presiding over the impeachment trial of President Trump."

"... Roberts took the appropriate step, after midnight on the first day of the trial, of admonishing the House managers and the president’s lawyers to tone down the rhetoric.... Is Roberts supposed to instruct them to get back in their seats, or else? Come on. This is the U.S. Senate, not a kindergarten class. The chief justice is not there to take attendance... Charles P. Pierce of Esquire [wants Roberts to]  'Be the umpire' [and accuse the President's lawyers of lying].... This seems like the slipperiest of slopes. The chief justice is going to interrupt the trial to question the veracity of arguments being made by the president’s lawyers? Where would this stop? If it started, wouldn’t the chief justice open himself — and, by extension, the court — to claims, in this trial or, heaven forbid, the next, that he is putting his thumb on the scale for one side or the other? There is a difference between enforcing standards of decorum and opining on matters of substance...."

Writes Ruth Marcus in "A more assertive John Roberts would be a bad idea" (WaPo).

Pierce's idea is obviously horrible, but that has to do with intruding on the role of the Senators, who must decide things like who is lying. It would be easy to enforce the rules of decorum — the Senate's own rules about keeping quiet and remaining seated — without switching to making statements about which of the speakers are lying! Yet Marcus visualizes Roberts tumbling down "the slipperiest of slopes." That's one of the worst "slippery slope" arguments I have ever seen.

For background on the behavior of the Senators, see "Sen. Rand Paul works on crossword puzzle, paper airplane during impeachment trial" (Courier-Journal). The article is not just about Rand Paul (who also held up a piece of paper with "S.O.S." written on it). We also hear about Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., apparently sleeping, and Elizabeth Warren playing some sort of "game on paper." Some Senators are "reading non-impeachment materials." (Wouldn't you bring a book?) And then there's the open laughing, such as when "Adam Schiff said he’d only speak for 10 minutes." And when one of the lesser prosecutors got up to speak, it was, apparently, a cue for Senators to "bolt[] for the cloak rooms, where their phones are stored." Some Senators have taken to standing rather than the required sitting. Yawning is seen.

Should Roberts do something about this behavior? You make the call:

Should Roberts do something about this behavior?

Yes. He's presiding. He should preside like a trial judge and require decorum.

No. It's a slippery slope. If he starts, he may end up calling out the liars.

Yes, and he should feel free to go all the way and call out speakers who are lying.

No. Let Senators follow their own standards of behavior, violating their own rules if they like.

 

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"Granted, Clinton is in an exquisitely awkward place when it comes to determining how to punish sexual harassment in the workplace."

"You don’t need me to explain why," WaPo columnist Ruth Marcus says. "But it is possible to imagine her thinking process: If I can this guy for doing way less than my own husband did with a subordinate in his workplace, how’s that going to look? Well, Clinton erred in the other direction, and that’s not looking so good now, is it? And classically, infuriatingly, this episode and its aftermath exposes, once again, the trademark Clinton failure to take personal responsibility; the allergy to owning up to error; the refusal to cede any ground, no less apologize; the incessant double-standarding, with different, more forgiving rules for the Clintons and their loyalists. Imagine a Hillary Clinton who said something like this. [Imagined speech omitted.] Imagine that Hillary Clinton. She doesn’t exist."

And I think I can extrapolate: If Hillary were President, the #MeToo movement would not exist.

"Trump’s conveniently flexible standard on accusations — and he is not alone — boils down to: If the accuser points a finger at a Democrat — Bill Clinton, Harvey Weinstein — her word is to be trusted, automatically."

"If she complains about a Republican, Trump’s otherwise dormant devotion to due process kicks in. How can claims from 'many years ago' be allowed to 'destroy a person’s life'? Some answers: Because they are entirely credible. Because the girl, now a woman, has no conceivable ax to grind — she is a longtime Republican, a Trump voter even — and nothing to gain from coming forward. Because three other women related similar, although less disturbing stories, underscoring Moore’s interest in younger girls. Because the presumption of innocence, while essential in the legal realm, does not mean the elimination of common sense outside it. (Thank you, Mitt Romney, for saying that.) The willing suspension of disbelief has its limits, or should."

Writes Ruth Marcus (in the Washington Post).

Marcus doesn't point out the larger proposition: Human beings tend to have a conveniently flexible standard on accusations that boils down to: If the accuser points a finger at somebody in the party I oppose, her word is to be trusted, if at all possible.

By the way, do you think Democrats will ever stop giving Bill Clinton a pass?

A very long post about what Donald Trump said about libel in his interview with the Washington Post editorial board.

Here's the transcript of the interview. As I said in the previous post, I'm engaging with the libel section of the interview line by line. The engagement went long, and what was originally the end of that post got so out of proportion that I had to break it out. This might be the longest post I've ever done, and I guarantee you that my comments were what I thought as I read each section, so you see my reaction as it developed in real time.

Let's begin:

Upscale, Downscale.

That's a play on the old TV show title "Upstairs, Downstairs" — which I never watched (don't watch "Downton Abbey" either) — and assumes your familiarity with the first post of the day, the one that examines the phrase — spoken by WaPo's Ruth Marcus yesterday on "Face the Nation" — "downscale white guys."

I have an aversion to talking about people as "upscale" and "downscale." I think these are words for shopping malls and product lines. But let's assume the currency of these words, displacing — for some reason — the various other options, such as rich and poor or upper/middle class and working class, or affluent and... what's the counterpart of affluent?... struggling?

If we're going to say "upscale" and "downscale" right now, it might help to say upscale-downscale and downscale-upscale. I'm looking for a way to deal with the phenomenon of those so-called downscale white guys getting energized by Donald Trump.

Donald Trump himself is very rich, but he's speaking in a way that appeals to those who are getting called "downscale." He sounds like a proudly working-class New Yorker guy. Everyone knows he's a billionaire and that he was born rich, so what's going on there? I think he's a businessman who knows how to spot and appeal to an unfilled market niche. He presents his wealth in a way that those with upscale aspirations and pretentions find to be in bad taste — big name on a gold-plated building, heavily made-up model for a wife, steaks, bragging — but it's just fine to reach out in hearty friendship to the downscale white guys. He's upscale-downscale.

As for downscale-upscale... I'm thinking of all the unwealthy people who maintain the aspirations and pretentions associated with the political/academic/professional elite —  the prideful underpaid people of America who feel called to a higher taste level and look with repugnance upon Donald Trump.

A phrase that shocked me — "downscale white guys" — spoken by Ruth Marcus of The Washington Post.

I am used to class politics and racial politics. I have 181 and 993 blog posts with these tags. I read elite media every day and watch the Sunday shows — often all 5 — nearly every week. I notice and focus on language in my writing here. It's what I do. When something jumps out at me as different — not the way they normally talk — it means something. I think: Whoa! That must be the way they talk behind the scenes. The mask slipped.

Yesterday, on "Face the Nation," John Dickerson was moderating a panel discussion. He'd asked Ruth Marcus about Donald Trump's efforts to reach out to Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan in the interest of party unity. Marcus said "some Republicans" were "getting to yes with Donald Trump" but a lot were "getting to OMG with Donald Trump."

There was some talk about GOP leaders plotting a 3rd party move or "piggybacking" on the ballot access of the Libertarian or Constitution Party. But even if that worked to keep Trump from winning the presidency, where would it leave the Republican Party going forward? Reihan Salam (of The National Review) observed that younger voters — 18-29-year-old voters — leaned toward Bernie Sanders, and:

The Republican Party needs to think around the bend. Donald Trump is - he's energized a lot of voters who are, frankly, not going to be the voters of the future.

"Frankly" = These people are old and therefore on their way off Planet Earth (if not quite soon enough to stop Trump).

Susan Page (of USA Today) revealed that the Republicans who are talking to her (off the record) assume they're going to lose the presidential election, and they're just trying to figure out "a way to lose the presidency but hold the Senate" or — at least — "lose the White House and the Senate but not have the party destroyed." With that as the goal, they can't agree on "whether Ted Cruz or Donald Trump is the smarter bet."

John Dickerson said he'd talked to Lindsey Graham about that and "the gap between what they say privately and what they're willing to do [in] public... is vast." Two other panelists — Page and Jonathan Martin (of the NYT) — back Dickerson up. The GOP leaders don't want to endorse Cruz. Martin says:

[I]'s hard for these folks in the party to get behind Ted Cruz. Mitt Romney and Lindsey Graham are trying to make it easier, but it's - it's still very difficult.... But this is - this is - the state of the GOP in March of 2016 is, we have to lose with Cruz, it's important. That's astonishing, right, that they are trying to save their party by nominating somebody that they assume will lose the presidency.

This idea that Cruz is the preferable loser triggers Ruth Marcus. She thinks Trump would be "a less strong candidate against Hillary Clinton than Ted Cruz," but then she says "the Clinton campaign is quite nervous about the prospect of running against Donald Trump." Now, that seems contradictory, but it makes sense if you think that both Cruz and Trump will lose to Hillary, but Trump will be a much more unpleasant opponent for her.

Dickerson prods Marcus to explain:

DICKERSON: Because why?

MARCUS: Because who knows.

MARTIN: The unknowns. Yes.

MARCUS: Be - because the rustbelt. Because all those down scale white guys, who knows what - you know with Ted Cruz sort of where he's going and what he's going to say. You don't know that with Donald Trump and you don't know what voters he can energize.

The adjective "downscale" along with "white" and the too-casual "guys" felt so contemptuous to me. And that comes right after the inarticulate "be- because the rustbelt." So disrespectful, so revealing of waves of loathing roiling underneath. These people who should be dead already might get "energized" by Trump. He's the trumpet that blows on Judgment Day and wakes the dead. Could they just please remain in a state of suspended animation until they have the dignity to disappear? That's what I'm hearing in "all those down scale white guys." She's saying: Don't they know they're not needed anymore... how ridiculous they look heaving themselves up off their death beds and dancing to Trump's tune?

I didn't think I'd ever heard the adjective "downscale" to refer to a human being. It seems like something you'd say about a shopping mall or a neighborhood (if you were talking about a place where other people go). I searched the NYT archive to reinforce my impression, and it mostly did. But I found this July 2013 column by Paul Krugman, "Whites and the Safety Net" that used "downscale" to refer to human beings — white human beings — 3 times:

But if there really is a missing-white-voter issue — and I’d like to see some more analysis by serious political scientists before I completely buy in — what will it take to bring these people back out to play? Sean Trende, who has been making the missing-whites case, describes the missing as “downscale, rural, Northern whites”. What can the GOP offer them?

Wow! We know the answer in 2016. The GOP could offer Donald Trump. Krugman continues:

Well, the trendy answer now is “libertarian populism” — but the question is what that means. And for a lot of Republicans, as Mike Konczal notes, it seems to mean lower tax rates on the wealthy, tight money, and deregulation. And this is supposed to appeal to downscale whites because, um, because.

There's that "because" tic we saw in Ruth Marcus.

Krugman, of course, thinks the GOP really has nothing for these people. He doesn't buy the GOP's supply-side economics and doesn't think it has any power to win over anyone who's not already a believer. And what's worse for the GOP is that their attacks on safety-net programs threaten the downscale white people:

[N]ews flash: these programs don’t just benefit Those People; they’re also very important to downscale whites, the very people that will supposedly rescue the GOP.

There's the theory. "Downscale white guys" — or "downscale whites" if you're in print — are on the dole. They should belong to the Democrats, who empathize with the vulnerable. The GOP wanted them, but only if they bought an agenda that made no direct appeal to them. And the billionaire saw them and spoke to them: We don't win anymore! And they came alive. 

Who lured Monica Lewinsky out of her 10-year silence?

Corollary: Why was Lewinsky silent?

Theory #1 has to be: Monica and Monica acting alone as a free and independent woman in the modern world. She had her notoriety, which she attempted to leverage in various ways, and then she saw the limits of that approach and went low-profile, and now she believes she has a way to reconstruct her image (as a victim of internet humiliation, like Tyler Clementi, except that she resisted the impulse to respond to humiliation by jumping off a bridge, and she has gamely tried one thing after another from presidential "mistress" to Jenny Craig spokeslady to London School of Economics social psychologist — what a story of courage and survival in the face of adversity!)

But what are the other theories? Yesterday, as we were driving home from the dog park, I asked Meade the question in this post title, and his immediate response was: Hillary Clinton. You think the Clintons are using Monica Lewinsky, bending her to their will? Did they procure her 10-year silence too? Meade's thinking was: The Monica story is there, ready to spring forth, so inoculate yourself. Time it right where you want it.

I might not have blogged that conversation, but it came to mind when I read this Ruth Marcus column in The Washington Post this morning: "Monica Lewinsky does Hillary Clinton a big favor." Now, Marcus is all: "Monica Lewinsky may not have intended it this way, but she just did Hillary Clinton a big favor." Marcus isn't taking the next step: If it's a big favor to Hillary, then the Clintons procured the favor. That would be pure speculation, but given the questions — Who lured Monica Lewinsky out of her 10-year silence? and Why was Lewinsky silent for 10 years?— speculation should naturally involve analysis of who stands to benefit.

If it's in Hillary's interest to bring back the Monica story, wouldn't the Clintons have done that in 2008? As Marcus observes, the difference is that Rand Paul — a presumptive candidate in 2016 — "has already raised the question of whether Democrats in general, and Hillary Clinton in particular, should consort with a 'sexual predator' like Bill Clinton." And Lewinsky's new presentation stresses that she was a consenting adult, that her victimhood came as she "was made a scapegoat in order to protect his powerful position" — whatever that means — and "It’s time to burn the beret and bury the blue dress." We're victimizing her if we remember her in the only form we would ever have known about her. So: Conversation over! Unless you're an abuser. Rand.

So that's Theory #2: Hillary and Bill Clinton.

Theory #3 — which was my original answer to my own question — is someone in the Democratic Party who wants to prompt Hillary to announce she's not going to run. Push her back. Scare the prospective grandmother out of the impending ugliness so the donor money can flow to somebody else. I can see the self-interest this other Democrat might have, but not how this person would get to Lewinsky.

Theory #4: Somebody on the GOP side. Who? Why? How?

Theory #5: Vanity Fair saw the money in a cover story on Monica Lewinsky. Obviously, we're all looking at Vanity  Fair this week, so they'd have been right to see self-interest in this. And it's also easy to see how they got to Lewinsky. It's a direct arrangement: They paid her to write her story.

Who lured Monica Lewinsky out of her 10-year silence?
	Monica lured herself.
	The Clintons.
	Some Democrat.
	Somebody on the GOP side.
	Vanity Fair.
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"President Clinton did a bad, bad thing, Monica Lewinsky was not precisely an innocent victim completely..."

"... I recall thong flashing there," says WaPo's Ruth Marcus, noting the tendency of Republicans like Mike Huckabee and Rand Paul to portray women, "when it comes to sex and sexual activity," as "either innocent victims or... sexually promiscuous, slutty, low-life women." It should be that "women get to use sex and sexual activity and with that use contraception responsibly just like men do."

This is similar to what I said yesterday:

If young women are "conquering the world" (as Paul said), why not credit Monica Lewinsky with her conquest of the world's most powerful man? She was enthusiastic and willing, from what I read.

I had a problem with Rand Paul's talking about Lewinsky as a "young girl" who was taken "advantage" of. He acknowledged the importance of rules against sexual harassment, but for what I thought was the wrong reason:

I think the sexual harassment problem in the case of Bill Clinton has to do with other women who were pressured to have sex and with the women and men who were not in a position to improve their standing in the workplace by interacting sexually with the boss.

Lewinsky was young and seems really to have fallen in love with Bill Clinton, who blithely used her for his selfish amusement, but she was an adult and she made choices. As Ruth Marcus said, "women get to use sex... just like men." That's freedom. That's personal autonomy. And a lot of use goes on.

It's nice to hear Marcus plainly say that Clinton's use of Lewinsky was "a bad, bad thing," and I think some people really will feel that it's got something to do with whether he gets to reside in the White House again, even if it's counting the misdeeds of the man against the wife. When the wife is asking for the distinction of First Woman President, there's some sense in thinking about all of the relevant women issues.

I'd like to see Hillary run on the argument that she's the best. Don't do anything at all to get us hyped up about achieving another "first." Just be the best. It makes more sense, and it might be the easiest path.

Somehow what happens to be the most recent comment on Ruth Marcus's column, "Edward Snowden, the insufferable whistleblower," is far better than that column.

There are 279 comments, and I doubt if I randomly hit a moment of commenting greatness:

"Smug, self-righteous, egotistical, disingenuous, megalomaniacal, overwrought" are all good descriptions of Ms. Marcus' column. I don't care if Mr. Snowden is particularly engaging or lovable - what he lacks in Marcus' favorite qualities he makes up in pure unadulterated courage. He did what he truly believed was the right thing, the moral thing, the necessary thing. Ms. Marcus how dare you accuse Mr. Snowden of Orwellian "double think" when he has put his life on the line like Winston Smith, in order to expose the Orwellian "state-within-a-state" that the NSA has become? Not many people would have had the courage to do what Mr. Snowden did and he should be praised for it and not denigrated.

"The U.S. needs a leader, not a law professor."

Says the Washington Post in line 2 of a front-page teaser. The first line is: "Barack Obama, Agonizer in Chief" — which implicates a stereotype about law professors.  

(Do we agonize? Maybe the law school class is some sort of theater of agonizing over whatever it is we're talking about as we do what we can't do — or we'd be lying/putting ourselves out of work — just tell the students what the answer is.)

But when I click on the link I get to this Ruth Marcus column which begins: "No doubt: Barack Obama has what it takes to be a terrific law student. It’s less clear those are the ingredients of a successful president." So... not even a law professor. A law student. I guess the WaPo couldn't bring itself to tease us with "The U.S. needs a leader, not a law student."

Marcus tells us that a "terrific law student" analyzes everything "in a dispassionate, balanced way" without necessarily really taking much of a position, which is what, she says, Obama did in his speech last week at the National Defense University. "Barack Obama... the Agonizer" is at least way better than "George W. Bush... the Decider," because Obama must be better than Bush, because Bush was terrible. Bush was so not terrific. Bush, Marcus tells us, "decided too precipitously and agonized too little." But Obama is just too thoughtful.

Marcus compares Obama's speech to "scribbling exam answers in a blue book." She calls him "ever the A-plus student," even as she looks ready to give him a C- as he calls Guantanamo "this legacy problem" that ought to be "resolved, consistent with our commitment to the rule of law."

This answer doesn’t even pass the law student test. How, exactly? That the solution is elusive does not justify this blatant dodge.

The lawprof in me wants to say that if Obama's speech is the text to be understood, Marcus is the one who's not a terrific student. Her writing rests on the presumption that the words of his speech are the same words that run through his head as he thinks about the various problems and the words that he speaks in private. I say "her writing" because I'm not deluded enough to think that the words in the Washington Post are the words inside Marcus's head. She's arguing to him and his advisers that he needs to do something different and he's not getting away with the seemingly dispassionate, balanced analysis. She'd like to manipulate his mind.

And Obama, in his speech, was attempting to manipulate our minds. The performance in the Theater of Agonizing is for a purpose. We can try to discern his purpose — perhaps to get us to trust in his caretaking and to be patient while he continues to do the things that need to be done and not to look too closely at the incoherencies and possible illegalities. This is what leaders do.

"Cruz has taken the wear-their-scorn-as-a-badge-of-honor approach with his liberal critics."

"Behind the scenes, Cruz has rankled even Republican colleagues, who think he lectures too much at private party sessions — 'pontificates' is one word used — and listens too little, especially for a newbie."

WaPo's Ruth Marcus unleashes some classic schoolgirl-style taunting: No one likes you.

ADDED: He pontificates? You mean he's uppity? The liberals need to pre-ruin any people of color on the GOP side. After Marco Rubio's career went down in flames because he drank a glass of water, the appetite for destruction rages. Look! There's another Hispano-Conservo! Get him!

Romney and Obama — the leader of the bullies and the follower.

The Washington Post is doubling down on its Romney-the-bully story, with multiple columns today dragging the story out, but let's focus on faux-earnest angsting from Ruth Marcus over the "troubling" story:

So how to think about The Post’s story of Romney and the purportedly gay prep school classmate he bullied? Recklessness is a common side-effect of adolescence — drinking too much, driving too fast. Meannesss is another matter. Yes, teenager are more prone to displaying the primal cruelty of “Mean Girls” and “Lord of the Flies” than their grown-up selves. But the Queen Bees of middle school have an unpleasant tendency to grow into the Real Housewives of Wherever.

Romney’s reported leadership in the episode; his merciless wielding of the scissors to snip off the bleached-blond hair that seemingly so offended his sense of propriety, his continuing cuts in the face of John Lauber’s cries for help — these do not speak well of him. 

Now,  yesterday, when we first looked at this story, I brought up the anecdote in Obama's "Dreams From My Father," in which Obama had "found" himself in the playground horsing around with a "plump and dark" girl named Coretta who "didn’t seem to have many friends." Suddenly, he saw that he was surrounded by "a group of children," whom he describes as "faceless." (This is a literary conceit: Of course, the children had faces, but from his perspective, with "the glare of the sun" behind them, they appeared faceless.) The children chanted "Coretta has a boyfriend!," and Obama "stammered" “She’s not my g-girlfriend,” and then — as the chants continued and poor Coretta stared downward — he shouted "I’m not her boyfriend!" Then he "ran up to Coretta and gave her a slight shove," causing her to "stagger[]" back and look at him. He shouted at the poor girl: "Leave me alone!"

And suddenly Coretta was running, faster and faster, until she disappeared from sight. Appreciative laughs rose around me. Then the bell rang, and the teachers appeared to round us back into class.

Obama was an abject follower, who responded to chants, and gained the reward of "appreciative chants." As an adult, looking back, his descriptions drip with weird passivity. There's zero will involved in his playing with the girl. He simply "found" himself with her. Then the group of "faceless" children were there, then Coretta "disappeared," and then "teachers appeared." It's like he's sleepwalking in ghost world, where human beings are apparitions.

Ruth Marcus says "You want to imagine your future president in the role of the wise-for-his-years leader who intervenes to calm the howling mob of his more foolish peers." Yes, it would be better if Romney's role in boyhood bullying had been to apply his leadership tendency for the good. But Obama's role in boyhood bullying was as a follower of the bullies — responding to the "howling mob."

Obama's judges. Althouse's obsession with linking.

WaPo's Ruth Marcus quotes me in her column, which is aimed at allaying fears about what Obama might do to the federal judiciary, fears stoked by Federalist Society co-founder Steven Calabresi in that op-ed in the Wall Street Journal the other day. Marcus quotes Calabresi and National Review's Ed Whelan -- linking to both -- then asserts that it's "easy to exaggerate the impact of the next president" on the courts.

First, she quotes and links to Terry Eastland of The Weekly Standard, who, she says, "has managed not to succumb to the fevered worries of his fellow conservatives" and says that "a Democratic president would probably simply be doing 'maintenance work' on the Supreme Court, at least in his first term, replacing one liberal justice with another." The direct quote from Eastland is: "Obama couldn't create a liberal majority unless at least one conservative, or man-in-the-middle [Anthony M.] Kennedy, were to step down, and that looks doubtful, at least in the next four years." Marcus thinks Eastland "understates" how much McCain could do to tip the Supreme Court with conservatives to replace the liberal Justices. Eastland aptly noted that McCain will need to appoint people that the Senate will confirm, so he won't be able to go as far as avid conservatives would like.

But how far to the left will Obama go in picking judges? Here, Marcus looks at Obama's July 2007 statement (dicussed in Calabresi's op-ed): "we need somebody who's got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it's like to be a young teenage mom. The empathy to understand what it's like to be poor, or African-American, or gay, or disabled, or old. And that's the criteria by which I'm going to be selecting my judges."

Marcus writes:

This stance, Calabresi said, is tantamount to requiring “the appointment of judges committed in advance to violating” the oath they take to dispense justice impartially. But as University of Wisconsin law professor Ann Althouse, no wild-eyed liberal, pointed out, Obama “is not saying that judges should distort the meaning of law so that people they empathize with can win cases. He's saying judges need to understand the realities of the world, most significantly, what life is like for people.”

Now, the first thing I notice there is that Marcus did not link to my blog post, which you can find here. As you may remember, I got quite angry at The New Yorker's George Packer for writing about something from my blog without linking, depriving his readers of quick access to the complete context. Packer was especially irksome because he insulted me and clearly meant to damage my reputation as a law professor. But Marcus, distinctly differently, means to take advantage of my reputation as a law professor. She has chosen the statement of mine that best suits her argument and intends for my status as a law professor to bolster the statement. (By the way, Marcus dropped the italics I had on the 2 words, and I put them back above.)

Why no link? She linked the other writers she quoted. I see 2 possible reasons (aside from simple inattention to detail).

One reason would be to deprive readers of the context. Marcus picked the quote she wanted. She goes on to argue that "the suggestion that electing Obama threatens the rule of law, representative democracy and liberty itself is so unhinged it is hard to take seriously" and admits that conservatives won't like Obama's judges. My comparable assertion is: "I don't doubt that Obama will appoint liberal judges and that the Senate will approve them. But there is a limit to what judges can do, and if Obama appoints anything like the hemorrhaging hearts Calabresi envisions... there will be a mighty backlash," a GOP resurgence in 2010 and 2012. It's possible that Marcus wants to keep her readers from seeing that. I come out and say I think Obama's judges will be liberal, and she only says they probably won't make conservatives happy.

The other reason is that if she were to link to my blog, I would be transformed into Ann Althouse, the blogger, who might be writing some odd, bizarre thing at any given moment. Perhaps she stopped by at 10 a.m. yesterday when the top post was a picture of terrified eggs and the second one was titled "Priapism? That's the least of your worries!" Not so helpful in credibility-boosting as University of Wisconsin law professor. On the other hand -- let's be honest -- University of Wisconsin law professor connotes a person who would enthusiastically welcome the most far-left judges. What a dilemma! Oh, well, shore that up with "no wild-eyed liberal." What are you going to do? Write identifed as "right-wing" by The New Yorker?

IN THE COMMENTS: Trey writes:

Since I have highly developed empathy I am a shoe in [sic] for a high level judge appointment by He Who Must Not Be Criticized, dare I hope for SCOTUS? I dare!

After my appointment, I will have empathy for your distress Ann, and I will legislate from the bench. I will make quoting without linking to blogs written by women a federal hate crime.

I feel your distress.

Aha! Marcus linked to all the males she named and failed to link to the one female. Let's get the jump on the law of the future and think like a judicial-empath.

UPDATE: Email from Ruth Marcus, quoted with permission:

Dear Prof. Althouse,

I'm sorry about the missing link, but the explanation is a lot less interesting than the one you conjured up. The boring truth is that I'm a (relative) techno-idiot, and new to blogging. When I wrote the post in a word file, I was rather proud of myself to have put in hyperlinks, including to your post. But my email wouldn't let me attach the document to send to editors (yes, we still have editors here), and when I copied the documet into the body of the message, the links disappeared. My editors dug up the links themselves, but apparently neglected yours. I guess that makes them part of the grand conspiracy, but now that it's been unmasked, I'll ask them to put it in. Also your italics, which I suspect were the victim of the same word to e-mail copying.

It's probably more fun to impute motive to people, but a quick email to me would have gotten the link inserted pronto. Of course, it wouldn't have made for a blog post. And by the way, no wild-eyed liberal was my effort to try not to pigeon-hole you, to avoid the kind of resorting to cartoonish labels that you rightly criticize without going into a lengthy explanation. No good deed, I guess.

Best,
Ruth