May 13, 2008 9:47

The Wit and Wisdom of Barney Frank

For journalists covering Congress, one of the best things about game-changing elections like the 2006 mid-terms is that they create a trove of new story lines. David Herszenhorn exploits the opportunity well in a smart piece about Barney Frank in this morning's New York Times. Frank, 68, was elected to the House from Massachusetts the same year Ronald Reagan was elected president. He was in the majority for 14 years, in the minority for 12. Now he's chairman of the House Financial Services Committee at a time of economic upheaval. Best line of the piece:

Then, in a flash of trademark wit, he said that asking the White House to support more government intervention was “like asking me to judge the Miss America contest — if your heart’s not in it, you don’t do a very good job.”

May 12, 2008 5:40

The Time Bomb in Hillary Clinton's Bank Account

There are all kinds of arguments being made as to why Barack Obama might want to help Hillary Clinton pay off her campaign debt--party unity, goodwill, etc. But there's no small amount of urgency on Clinton's part, thanks to a little-noticed provision of the 2002 McCain-Feingold campaign finance law. As just about everyone now knows, the Clintons have loaned her campaign a whopping $11.4 million.

Here's how the law works with regard to personal loans:

PART 116 - DEBTS OWED BY CANDIDATES AND POLITICAL COMMITTEES

116.11 - Restriction on an authorized committee's repayment of personal loans exceeding $250,000 made by the candidate to the authorized committee.

(a) For purposes of this part, personal loans mean a loan or loans, including advances, made by a candidate, using personal funds, as defined in 11 CFR 100.33, to his or her authorized committee where the proceeds of the loan were used in connection with the candidate's campaign for election. Personal loans also include loans made to a candidate's authorized committee that are endorsed or guaranteed by the candidate or that are secured by the candidate's personal funds.

(b) For personal loans that, in the aggregate, exceed $250,000 in connection with an election, the authorized committee: (1) May repay the entire amount of the personal loans using contributions to the candidate or the candidate's authorized committee provided that those contributions were made on the day of the election or before; (2) May repay up to $250,000 of the personal loans from contributions made to the candidate or the candidate's authorized committee after the date of the election; and (3) Must not repay, directly or indirectly, the aggregate amount of the personal loans that exceeds $250,000, from contributions to the candidate or the candidate's authorized committee if those contributions were made after the date of the election.

TRANSLATION: If she loses this race, and hasn't raised enough to pay herself back by the time Obama becomes the official nominee at the Democratic Convention in August, she's out for all but $250,000 of it.

UPDATE: A little more clarification of the law seems to be warranted here:

May 12, 2008 4:54

McCain VP Wire, Smelly Fish Edition

From WCCO.com:

[Minnesota] Gov. Tim Pawlenty landed a 17-inch walleye Saturday during the Governor's 60th Annual Fishing Opener at Breezy Point on Pelican Lake, but Lt. Gov. Carol Molnau reeled in a 19-inch walleye about two-and-a-half hours earlier. . . .

"I have a wife who genuinely loves to fish. I mean, she will take the lead and ask me to go out fishing, and joyfully comes here," the governor said before adding, "She loves football, she'll go to hockey games and, I jokingly say, 'Now, if I could only get her to have sex with me.'" The governor quickly clarified, "It's a joke, it's a joke."

I can imagine McCain's pollsters rushing new questions out into the field:

Are you more or less willing to vote for John McCain if his running mate jokes about being denied sex by his sportswoman wife?

Are you more of less willing to vote for John McCain if his running mate catches a 17-inch walleye?

Do you think Gov. Pawlenty knows what to do with a 17-inch walleye?

May 12, 2008 1:23

Obama: Moving On

The Clinton campaign continues to try to get Barack Obama to engage in West Virginia and Kentucky, states where Hillary Clinton is likely to win:

"Why can't Senator Obama beat Senator Clinton in West Virginia? Voters there have heard that he's the presumptive nominee," Wolfson said on "Fox News Sunday." "They've seen the great press he's gotten in the past couple of days. Let's let them decide. They have an opportunity. They want to end this on Tuesday, they're perfectly capable of it."

But Obama's schedule is already starting to develop a general election feel to it:

Tuesday - Cape Giradeau, Missouri
Wednesday – Macomb County and Grand Rapids, Michigan
Friday – South Dakota
Saturday and Sunday – Oregon
Next week – Tampa, Orlando, Palm Beach County and Miami

Obama spokesman Bill Burton tells us: "Our schedule reflects the fact that we are still fighting for votes and delegates in the remaining contests, but also that we are going to places that are going to be competitive in the fall. John McCain has gone unchallenged for far too long and we’re going to make sure that voters in competitive states know the choice in this election between changing Washington and the third term of George Bush’s failed policies that McCain is offering."

May 12, 2008 11:36

Three Reasons You Might Read This Story

1. It has a number in the title: McCain's 7 Steps to Beating Obama.

2. I just posted it this morning on Time.com.

3. Number One: Paint Obama as a False Messiah.

May 12, 2008 10:58

We Knew Him When...

Frequent Swampland commenter Jay Ackroyd is guest hosting for Atrios.

May 11, 2008 10:43

How Actual Journalism Works

Commenter Terrapinion is on a really silly crusade to find out if my military sources include any of the generals who have been tarnished by their association with the Pentagon:

Of course, it is very likely that Joe Klein's sources include many of the retired generals mentioned in the NYT article - the ones who spread disinformation to United States citizens over the public airwaves. And there is no reason to expect them to be more truthful to Joe Klein than they were on the air. So what about Klein's other sources? I am not asking him to name them, rather I am requesting that he engage us in a short discussion about how he views the information being fed to him in light of the recent verification of a program that many of us have suspected for a very long time. I realize that one must trust somebody in order to form an opinion so lets talk about how that trust is established.

First of all, the vast majority of my military and intelligence sources have never been on television. Most are active duty military. Several of them took real career risks, especially during the Rumsfeld era, to get out the truth about a war they saw going terribly wrong.

Second, I always rely on at least two separate sources when I'm writing about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Some sources are reliable on some topics, but not on others. Some sources are not likely to give new information, but are willing to say whether some of the things I've learned are true or not. Theoretically, even a general who has been hired by one of the networks--and is fed by the Pentagon--might be reliable to back up another source's story. That's happened once or twice. I don't remember ever using a TV general as a primary source.

Third, look at the record. Tell me where I've been misled by my sources. A year ago, I reported that real progress had been made in al-Anbar province--but that our intelligence community was extremely pessimistic about the Shi'ites and Sunnis getting their act together to actually govern the country. (Greenwald and others ridiculed that column.) Nine months ago, I warned against getting involved in the intra-Shi'ite battle between the Hakim and Sadr families. In recent months, I've emphasized my fear--and that of some of my sources, but not others--that the U.S. is trying to establish long-term bases in Iraq. I've also reported that we need more troops in Afghanistan, that we should consider cross-border special operations against the terrorist camps in Pakistan and that we should not pause in our Iraq troop withdrawals. All of these opinions were derived after extensive and ongoing conversations with a wide variety of sources--active duty military, diplomatic and others; retired military and think-tank people; politicians, diplomats and military sources from the region. I also try to visit the region as often as I can...and I read a lot.

That is how I report on the war in Iraq--in fact, that's how most of the journalists I respect report on the war, from Spencer Ackerman on the left to Max Boot on the right. It is about as far from simply relying on some TV general as you can get.

May 11, 2008 8:20

The News from Lebanon

Herewith Paul du Quenoy's most recent missive from Beirut, sent a few hours ago:

The settlement is touch and go. I slept very late today. Beirut seemed quiet, but there was word of fighting continuing in the northern part of the country, in Tripoli and Halba. The Sunnis are strong in the north and were out for revenge on the local Hezbollah forces. Gun battles had broken out in Aley and some of the other smaller towns in the hills to the southeast of Beirut. Those areas are populated by the Druzes, a religious group that derives from Islam but has an ancient influence of Greek philosophy and Gnosticism. Their leader Walid Jumblatt has been a Hariri ally, but some of the Druze community is allied with Nasrallah. By late afternoon the army was reported to have imposed order in the north. Jumblatt is said to have agreed to have his forces disarmed by the army in exchange for a cease fire. In Beirut the airport road and port are still closed. The road to Damascus is reported to be open some of the time but not in any reliable way.

May 11, 2008 7:36

The Seige of Beirut is Lifted

My professor acquaintance Paul du Quenoy sent this Saturday. To those who have enjoyed his dispatches from Beirut, my apologies for not posting this one sooner. An even more recent one, from today, will be posted soon. Here's Saturday's, with the subject line "The Seige is Lifted":

I am happy to report the situation is much better today. During the night Hezbollah and the other Shi’ite militias occupying West Beirut largely disappeared. No one is exactly sure why, but the best guess seems to be that their forces did not have the resources to continue their occupation or siege of the government buildings (and my neighborhood), which they failed to storm or cow into surrender. Yesterday the president of Syria, which backs Hezbollah and its allies and has intervened heavily in Lebanon in the past, declared the situation purely an internal matter. The governments of Egypt and Saudi Arabia, which support the current Lebanese government, and the UN called for an immediate end to the conflict. Nasrallah shot his whole bolt, but it didn’t go far enough. The city has returned to a tentative calm. The government troops in place around my neighborhood are still there, but, while not exactly bustling, the streets were populated. In Hamra, at the center of West Beirut where I am, there were kids on bikes and mothers with toddlers and strollers. Food shops have reopened and are doing brisk business. I stopped in at one in my neighborhood. It was very crowded and the staff seemed overwhelmed, but I managed to get some things. Most other businesses remain closed, though a few shopkeepers reappeared to check in on their stores.

May 11, 2008 11:22

Weekend Book Club

Books by TV journalists range from the charming to the useless, but they almost always have one thing in common--they're about the journalist in question, the fancy people he or she has met, or the unfancy family that he or she came from. But The Long Road Home by Martha Raddatz is a simply extraordinary exception. It's the account of a terrible fight that took place in Sadr City in April 2004--one of the bloodiest battles of this war--and it contains some of the best battlefield reporting and reconstruction I've ever read. Raddatz also spends significant time with the families of the soldiers back home at Fort Hood in Texas, which makes the battle all the more vivid and heartbreaking.

I've always thought that Raddatz was among the finest day-to-day journalists we have--both her war reporting and her more recent White House work. Now I know that she is one of our best non-fiction writers as well. Her book is especially relevant now that we're engaged in another fight in Sadr City. It is moving and horrifying and infuriating. Perhaps the best I've read about Iraq.