Plus harrumphing hack Hoagland, cocooning Rhino-baiter Krugman, and Hispandering Gephardt.

Model-activist Veronica Webb discovers the virtues of proven internal-combustion technology ... 9:45 A.M.

a) "No parent household" or "urban children living without a parent" makes you think these children are running around in empty houses without adult supervision, which they aren't. They're typically raised by their grandparents, which (as Wendell Primus notes) can be a good thing -- if, say, their mother is a crackhead whose problems were only smoked out when she was required to seek work. Bernstein's evidence that the kids in question are worse off is more or less nonexistent. (She says, "Children who do not live with their parents do significantly worse on average than those in single-parent homes" -- but that's a correlation you'd expect. Do these children do worse in these homes than in the presumably dysfunctional single-parent homes they've left behind?)

b) Even Bernstein admits the "no parent" trend is a smaller trend than the decline in the number of children living in single-parent households. (Bernstein would never give the pro-reform forces ammo by giving numbers on the increase in kids living in two-parent households. She does note one study concluding that among urban blacks "the share with an unmarried mother dropped to an average of 51 percent from 64 percent." That's a stunning positive trend, especially if, as Bernstein's wording suggests, it doesn't even count, in the decline, kids who are living with a mother who is now cohabiting with another adult whom she hasn't married).

c) Bernstein's billboarded assertion that the "no-parent" trend is "contributing to second thoughts among some of the most optimistic analysts" isn't really backed up by the rest of the story. She cites three "optimistic" analysts, all respectable people: 1) Wade Horn, who as Bush's point man on reform is obviously not having second thoughts about reform; 2) Gregory Acs of the Urban Institute, who (like Horn) simply says there's a good two-parent trend and a no-parent trend, which he doesn't even say is bad; 3) Wendell Primus, in whom it shouldn't be hard to spark second thoughts (since he's a veteran liberal advocate who famously quit his HHS job in protest over reform) but who nevertheless offers only carefully-hedged doubts -- the best Bernstein can do is say he has a "more nuanced view." If Bernstein, in her "billboard" paragraph, had said "more nuanced view," it would hold up. "Second thoughts" is the sort of loaded overstatement.editors often stick in to sell a story to the front page, or ambitious reporters stick in when trying to sell their editors, or agenda-driven reporters stick in to, well, advance their agenda.

There are liberalish, fault-finding reporters I've learned to trust (Tony Horwitz, for example, or Blaine Harden, or Kate Boo, or even Rachel Swarns, who wrote some disturbing anti-Giuliani pieces). Nina Bernstein isn't one of them -- she seems pretty much a pure attack animal. Even liberal welfare mavens distrust her. But I need to make some calls before deciding if she's stumbled on to a small, troubling trend in a positive overall picture -- or if there's even less to her story than that. ... Developing! ... Faster than kf: Reason's Ron Bailey reacts to Bernstein's rifle shot by describing that positive overall picture.  . ...8:20 P.M.

Bada Bing? The Scrum has what looks like a  genuine insidery post  on why it's significant that Liz Hurley's sperm donor, Steve Bing, is a leading contributor to Democratic presidential aspirant John Edwards. Bing isn't a policy guy, it seems -- he just wants to hang with political celebrities:

 A donor like Bing gives money to whoever the people who he's trying to impress tell him to. In his case, Bing is listening to [Bill] Clinton and his man in SoCal, Ron Burkle ...

So if Bing is giving to Edwards it indicates that Clinton is steering money to Edwards. ... That seems to be what the mysterious Scrum means when it says "Steve Bing is the fluoride-18 in the PET-scan of the political money network." ... 6:30 P.M.

Dan Balz (and Joe Lieberman) blame the Democrats regression into paleolib populism on the Enron/accounting/ethics corporate scandals. Balz writes:

... the prospective presidential candidates are all trying to balance their appeals to the DLC wing of the party with their courtship of labor leaders, feminists, gays and others on the left.

Republicans say the Democrats are being pushed to the left by these forces. But it is more a shift in the economic climate -- the decline in the stock market, the exposure of corporate fraud and greed, the return of budget deficits -- that has created the sharper, more populist message.

Does this make any sense? For one thing, Bill Clinton's own vice president, Al Gore, couldn't hold the centrist line in the 2000 presidential campaign, years before the Enron collapse. Even in 2001, also before the corporate scandals, blind anti-Bush anger over Florida was pushing Democrats into immoderate positions. Are Democrats adding Davis-Bacon "prevailing wage" provisions to the H______d Security Act because of Enron, or because unions want them? Are liberals currently chipping away at welfare reform --the latest Senate Finance bill is a disaster -- because of Enron, or because (contra Balz) they never, really, embraced the DLC/centrist pro-reform position, in part because of ideological hostility embodied in a whole institutional framework of anti-poverty foundations and lobbying groups?  I understand that there is nothing more important than Enron and the declining stock market, at least this week. But scandals are fleeting; the infrastructure of unions and foundations is semi-permanent. When it comes to explaining the persistence of paleoliberalism, it's the constituencies, stupid! Plus pent-up anger over Florida. ... 12:06 P.M.