Putting aside her professional failings, which were very serious, plagiarism is one of the most serious sins in academia, why does anyone take Doris Kearns Goodwin seriously? As Atrios point out, she has said so many stupid things, such as this one on Bush's Mission Accomplished stunt:

Well, you see, I think what worked about the speech the other night was not only the imagery. The imagery is a kind of static thing, even the plane going in, but what made it work was partly what David said. There’s a war behind it. It was a real event, and by speaking to those soldiers who were on their way home, it gave it such an emotional connection between him and the soldiers, just like when Reagan spoke on the anniversary of D-Day before that incredible rock. And people had climbed up that rock and those rangers were there. There’s a connection then between the commander in chief and the troops that you cannot take away. So I think it is crazy to criticize it. I think it was a good thing he did for himself, for the country and the Democrats have plenty of other things to criticize, but it’s silly to go on about that.

(Emphasis supplied.) Doris Kearns Goodwin is silly, to put it mildly. Tim Russert is grilling George Tenet this morning on all the things he said in the past. When do pundits get grilled for all the things they said in the past? When is there accountability for them?

Some anti-Iraq Debacle groups have discovered that the House Iraq supplemental funding bill that they supported has led to nowhere. They feign outrage now and try to reclaim some type of pressuring role. It is too little, too late:

On Thursday, leaders of the liberal group MoveOn.org . . . sent a harshly worded warning to the Democratic leadership. “In the past few days, we have seen what appear to be trial balloons signaling a significant weakening of the Democratic position,” the letter read. . . . The letter went on to say that if Democrats passed a bill “without a timeline and with all five months of funding,” they would essentially be endorsing a “war without end.” MoveOn, it said, “will move to a position of opposition.”

NOW they will oppose? They supported a bill that would not have even, theoretically, ended the war until September 2008, two months before an election!

I find the critiques of Karl Rove from Jon Chait and Matt Yglesias regarding his envy of persons of faith strange. I guess I find it so because, as an agnostic, I agree with Rove when he says, according to Hitchens:

“I’m not fortunate enough to be a person of faith.”

Chait and Yglesisas object to Rove viewing persons of faith as "fortunate." I ask why? Yglesias says:

I think it's not at all condenscending to say something like "I wish it were the case that my destiny were in the ends of a benevolent higher power." I could use the help! But what Rove [says] is different, and condescending, Rove is saying he wishes he thought the world were like that, but, sadly, he knows better.

How is Rove saying that? I know when I say it, I envy the serenity and yes, strength of purpose, persons of faith can have in their life path. I don't have that and I wish I did. How is that condescending? I can assure you that for me my envy is genuine. Remember, you can't choose to have faith, you have it or you don't.

The AP "reported" the following:

Olbermann’s popularity and evolving image as an idealogue has led NBC News to stretch traditional notions of journalistic objectivity.

This line in an AP news article is, in itself, stretching traditional notions of journalistic objectivity past the breaking report. This sentence is an opinion, namely, the opinion of the Giuliani campaign repeated as a fact by an AP news report. It also misspells the word ideologue.

Can the Associated Press, after this egregious breach of journalistic ethics, continue to cover the Giuliani Presidential campaign?

Of course it can. It screwed up. It should admit its error and move on. Keith Olberman, by the way, did not screw up. He labelled his Special Comment um, a special comment, not news. AP did not label its editorializing as opinion. The AP needs a lesson in journalism it seems to me.

Finally, for the record, a lot of journalists give their opinions. It is a bad thing imo. It makes them famous, always bad for reporters. But the AP may consider whether it is just as bad when other journalists, including their own, engage in punditry and pontification when the decide to criticque Keith Olberman.

Newsweek's latest poll shows Bush's approval rating at 28%, his lowest level ever. And, he's bringing the Republican contenders for 2008 down with him.

This remarkably low rating seems to be casting a dark shadow over the GOP’s chances for victory in ’08. The NEWSWEEK Poll finds each of the leading Democratic contenders beating the Republican frontrunners in head-to-head matchups.

Another flip-flop for Rudy. First, when addressing an audience in Florida, he was for the congressional attempt to intervene and save Terri Schiavo's life.

In the debate this week, he switched positions, and said it's an appropriate matter for the courts.

The flip:

In April, Giuliani had explained his position this way: Noting that the controversy had been through the court system for years, he said the 2005 congressional intervention, "was appropriate to make every effort to give her a chance to stay alive. ... My general view is, you should do everything you can to keep somebody alive unless they have expressed a strong interest in not having very, very special things done, extraordinary things done."

The flop:

"The family was in dispute. That's what we have courts for. And the better place to decide that in a much more, I think in a much fairer and even in a deeper way, is in front of a court, " he said at the first GOP presidential debate at the Ronald Reagan library in California.

His campaign manager's attempt to reconcile the two:

There's a lengthy profile in today's news of Blair Montgomery Sibley, lawyer for accused D.C. Madam Deborah Jeane Palfry.

It's kind of bizarre, to put it mildly. What do you make of it?

Rahm Emmanuel says:

We cannot be a one-trick pony," said House Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel (Ill.), who helped engineer his party's takeover of Congress as head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. "People voted for change, but Iraq, the economy and Washington, D.C., [corruption] all tied for first place. We need to do them all."

This is Emanuel's way of saying 'look, we did our political game on Iraq, now we are going to cave in to Bush and face his intransigence on "kitchen table" issues. Oh by the way, I never cared about doing something about Iraq anyway. Look what I said in the beginning of 2006.'

They don't get it and they never really will. Paul Krugman told them:

Normally, politicians face a difficult tradeoff between taking positions that satisfy their party’s base and appealing to the broader public.... But a funny thing has happened on the Democratic side: the party’s base seems to be more in touch with the mood of the country than many of the party’s leaders. And the result is peculiar: on key issues, reluctant Democratic politicians are being dragged by their base into taking highly popular positions. Iraq is the most dramatic example....

They do not want to believe it. They want to listen to enablers like Leon Panetta:

The New York Times reports that many Guantanamo detainees are refusing to meet with or even accept mail from their own lawyers. They no longer trust them.

The detainees’ resistance appears to have been fueled by frustration over their long detention and suspicion about whether their lawyers are working for the government, as well as anti-American sentiment, some of the documents and interviews show. “Your role is to polish Bush’s shoes and make the picture look good,” a Yemeni detainee, Adnan Farhan Abdullatif, 31, wrote his lawyer in February.

Is the Government behind this? Many of the lawyers think so.

More...

I wrote here that I doubted new names would be aired on tonight's 20/20 in the D.C. Madam case and they weren't. 20/20 has aired and gone, and no new names were revealed.

I also laid out what I thought would be the probable strategy of those clients she threatened to call in her defense:

The clients are hardly going to be willing witnesses. What if they just tell her lawyer, when they get their subpoenas, there was sex involved? Surely, she won't publish their comments since it would be adding to the Government's case against her and hurtful to her defense. Nor would she dare actually put them on the stand.

At least one of the clients' defense lawyers apparently agrees.

More...

A Worthy Cause, and a great team-up idea: NORML and Prisons Foundation, with an auction at eBay.

NORML Foundation is proud to partner with Prisons Foundation, the nation's leading non-profit organization working with incarcerated persons seeking artistic expression and rehabilitation through visual arts, to present Prisoner Artwork for Auction.

Located two blocks from the White House and open seven days a week, the Prisons Foundation Art Gallery has hundreds of quality and moving pieces of artwork created by the hands of citizens currently incarcerated in US prisons--many of them for 'drug' related offenses including cannabis.

For those who can't visit the Prison Foundation's Art Gallery located at 1600 K St., NW, Suite 501, Washington, DC, the NORML/Prison Foundation's
weekly online art auctions provide citizens the opportunity to view and bid on prisoner-created works of art, with a large portion of the proceeds going to the prisoner-artist for living expenses while incarcerated.

Check it out.

Yesterday I stopped at the organic grocery and bought a plump free-range organic chicken to make chicken soup. I made it tonight, and while cooking it, happened across this:

About 20 million chickens being raised for human consumption in several states ate feed made with melamine-tainted pet food and are being held from market to keep them from entering the food supply, Agriculture Department officials said last night.

The agency called for the "voluntary hold" late yesterday, pending completion of a government risk analysis to determine whether the animals would be safe for people to eat.

I'm tempted to throw the whole thing down the garbage disposal. Then again, I hate giving in to fear. Does anyone know if organic chickens are given feed made with pet food? And what exactly is an "organic chicken" other than it's free to run around and not be penned in?