The Magic Nanny Excuse

The Magic Nanny Excuse

The Magic Nanny Excuse

A mostly political Weblog.
Dec. 11 2004 5:12 PM

The Magic Nanny Excuse

It sure beats 'I want to spend more time with my family.'

If you paid real money for the L.A. Times, we have a word for you: "Sucker"! Kf readers email with more evidence of the LAT's near-desperate near-free distribution policy: ...

I just subscribed for LA Times for 2$ a week for A YEAR. This was after I
had tried to cancel my subscrtiption ..." --reader S.

"I subscribed to a full 52 weeks of Saturday and Sunday delivery to the LA Times for a $5 add-on to my Wired magazine renewal---and I didn't have to give my phone number ... " --reader C.

2:05 P.M.

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I Want to Spend More Time With My Nanny: Everyone (WaPo, NYT, LAT, Polipundit!) suggests that Bernard Kerik's problem with "the immigration status of a person who had been in my employ as a housekeeper and nanny" was not the full reason for his withdrawal from Bush's cabinet. Is "I have a nanny problem" the new resignation smokescreen of choice, replacing "I want to spend more time with my family"? The latter phrase has become such an implausible cliche it's lost all utility--it's practically a red flag signalling "I have a big problem I'm not telling you about." Use it and people will laugh at you--and immediately start digging. But the Nanny Excuse is perfectly calibrated to the times: Employing an undocumented nanny isn't a big sin--not serious enough offense to derail your career in the private sector. Yet it's still regarded as a plausible and sufficient reason for abruptly abandoning a government position. No need to look any further! Just another nanny problem! 'Joins a long line of nominees, starting with Clinton appointee Zoe Baird ...'--you know the drill. ... P.S.:WaPo, it should be noted, hints Kerik's problems did center on his nanny, but more on his failure to play it straight with the Bushies than the mere fact that he had employed her:

A Republican source said some White House officials found it highly suspicious that Kerik was not aware of a potential problem with a nanny who left the country very recently.

Update: Hosenball moves the story in Newsweek. He suspects the ...er, arrest warrant was the final straw for the White House. ...More: Kerik-backer Rudolph Giuliani highlights the probe-stopping virtue of the Nanny Excuse  in the NYT:

"Whenever this happens, there is always the idea that it must be something else, it must be something else," Mr. Giuliani said. "But that is when there is not a good reason. This is a good reason."

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Every public figure should keep at least one illegal housekeeper around, just in case! ... 1:55 A.M.

Friday, December 10, 2004

Thanks to Josh Marshall for drawing attention to Ed Kilgore's sharp New Donkey blog, which today chops up American Prospect's latest call for "class-based populism." ... 12:48 A.M.

The "30-year tradition" of Iowa's first-in-the nation caucuses is in jeopardy! That can't be. After all they've done for the party. ... 12:37 A.M.

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Thursday, December 9, 2004

It's Solutions Week at kausfiles! ... Problem: Hamid Karzai may be the new elected president of Afghanistan, but much of his country's economy is based on cultivating opium poppies for the illegal heroin trade. Various warlords (and, apparently the Taliban) are using drug profits to in effect challenge Karzai's government. ... Development: New strains of genetically modified poppies produce medicines, not opium. Other strains produce non-opiate painkillers. ... Solution: Get the Afghan farmers to plant these kinds of poppies. Duh! ... 8:48 P.M.

Forget Hoy!  The L.A. Times becomes a free paper--almost: I just subscribed to the "prize-winning" Los Angeles Times for $1 a week (for 20 weeks) ... "Holiday Special" ... At least they're not desperate! ... 2:04 P.M.

Wednesday, December 8, 2004

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Freedom and licences: Miriam Jordan's solid 12/6 WSJ summary of the illegal immigrant/driver's license debate notes the charge (from, in this case, Sen. Lieberman's office) that the attempt to deny such licenses is "not a security provision. It's an anti-immigrant provision." Of course it is! Or, rather, it's an attempt to restrict illegal immigration by denying illegal immigrants the normalcy, and the legitimate perquisites, of legal residence. Why isn't that a perfectly proper objective? ... It would be equally true to charge that the supporters of licensing illegals aren't really concerned with making the roads safer, requiring insurance, obtaining information on drivers, etc.--they're really, at bottom, committed to legitimizing the presence of illegals and they don't worry much about whether that encourages others to become illegals. ... Why is it only respectable to argue on the surface-argument level--about fighting terrorism and requiring auto insurance--instead of the real level (about controlling immigration)? ...

P.S.--And they say kf isn't solution-oriented!  I still don't understand why the most promising strategy isn't to separate the "i.d. card" function from the driver's license function. Give illegals, or anyone who can drive, a license that allows them to drive. But don't use this license for identification purposes--you'd need to create a separate I.D. card *** for that. This plan would satisfy road-safety concerns and make it a bit easier to be an illegal--but deny illegals full respectability (which is why, I suspect, it would be opposed by immgrant advocates). ...

P.P.S.: Tennessee is experimenting with a slightly tougher variation on this idea--people who aren't citizens or legal residents get a separate, second-class license that allows them drive but isn't an i.d.. The second-tier license is practically a red flag advertising illegal status, however. Will many illegals even bother to apply for it? (Needless to say, the plan--which began in July--has also produced  vocal protests and lawsuits from advocacy groups.) ...

***: A national ID card would help solve 1) the terrorism problem and 2) the illegal immigration problem. Comrade Kuttner points out today  that it would also help solve 3) the voter registration problem and 4) the underage drinking problem. A fourfer! It's very un-American, but it also seems unstoppably useful. ...  2:21 P.M.

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Andrew Sullivan is staging a contest to find the most cliche-ridden polemical sentence. I have the winner--or, rather, I know what the winner is. It's what the town fathers of Newburgh, New York said in their doomed attempt to restrict welfare receipt in 1961. I will retrieve the exact quote from James Patterson's America's Struggle Against Poverty as soon as I can find that book. But trust me. Don't waste your energy trying to come up with another entrant. Competition is futile. ... Update: Alert reader J.S. had the book on his desk. The quote is from Newburgh City Manager Joseph Mitchell, who declared, "It is not moral to appropriate public funds to finance crime, illegitimacy, disease, and other social evils." Patterson continues:

Ever since the Leopold-Loeb case, [Mitchell] said, 'Criminal lawyers and all the mushy rabble of do-gooders and bleeding hearts in society and politics have marched under the Freudian flag toward the omnipotent state of Karl Marx.'  [Emph. added]

That about sums it up! ... P.S.: He was right about welfare. ... P.P.S.: Then of course there's this Coulterish compendium of cheap anti-left insult:

'Socialism' and 'Communism' draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, 'Nature Cure' quack, pacifist, and feminist in England.

That would be ... George Orwell. [Isn't Andrew Sullivan our New Orwell?--ed. Now I'm all confused.] 1:21 P.M.

Tuesday, December 7, 2004

kf is Stupid IV: I don't understand the administration's argument that, if the government takes out a loan to fund the transition to private Social Security accounts, this "should not be regarded as a cost" (in the paraphrase of the LAT)

because it eventually would reduce Social Security's long-term unfunded liability. That is the difference between the level of benefits promised to retirees over the next 75 years and the estimated payroll taxes that will be available to pay them.

If the government took out a similar loan and used the money to simply pay the "benefits promised to retirees over the next 75 years" wouldn't that also "reduce Social Security's long-term unfunded liability"--by, you know, funding it? Yet we'd clearly regard that as a cost. ... Maybe Social Security's easier to save than I thought! ... General statement of initial bias: About 90 percent of my instincts are against Bush's partial privatization plan. Social Security isn't  that much of a looming financial disaster (Medicare is). The current Social Security system can be rendered solvent by any number of painful-but-bearable fixes (including, Noam Scheiber notes, John Kasich's--and including means-testing). It would be nice to have a system in which each generation paid for its own benefits with real, productivity-enhancing savings instead of the current system (in which each generation pays for its elders). But is it worth a couple of trillion dollars in transition costs? ... Plus Daniel Patrick Moynihan was for it. Case closed! ...

P.S.: Today's edition of ABC's knowledgeable Note chides those who doubt Bush will find "a way to achieve his monster legislative objectives," including Social Security privatization. Didn't the knowledgeable Note also tell us shortly after the Dem convention that it was "Kerry's contest to lose"? It did! Count me as one of the ossified Beltway hacks who would "bet against George W. Bush achieving the very tough twin acts of Social Security and tax reform"--at least his current version of Social Security reform. ...

Backfill:WaPo's bizarre self-refuting Social Security editorial initially seems to accept the idea that a) financing private accounts by borrowing money for them is somehow better than b) financing regular, currently-scheduled Social Security benefits by borrowing money for them. But the editorial goes on to suggest that option (a) --Bush-style borrowing to fund private accounts--may actually be worse, as far as the government's debt situation is concerned. That's because there is no guarantee that Congress won't give young workers their private accounts and then cave in and fail to cut their regular Social Security guarantees by an equivalent amount. The government would then end up with extra liabilities, not reduced liabilities. ... More: Here's an editorial ($) from Kinsley's LAT shop on the subject. ... Meanwhile Luskin and Dead Parrot do catch the NYT's Paul Krugman in a contradiction: After repeatedly saying the Bush economic policies are going to drive the economy off a cliff, Krugman blithely adopts the sunnier CBO estimates of continued economic growth as "realistic" when it helps his Social Security argument. Any weapon to hand. ...  8:33 P.M.

Save DeLay's Security First! According to the LAT, at a private meeting on Bush's Social Security plan "Administration aides indicated they wanted to move quickly on legislation next year. But House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) wanted to give higher priority to overhauling the tax code, because 'it was an easier sell' ...." Hmmm. Bush's Social Security plan is a very difficult sell (see item above). But tax reform isn't exactly an easy sell--especially if it involves eliminating popular deductions like the one for employer-provided health coverage. What tax reform is, though, is a proven generator of campaign contributions (from terrified corporations) and fees for lobbyists (hired by those same terrified corporations). It's the paradigmatic "juice bill."  If sweeping tax reform seems to be a real possibility, DeLay and any GOP lobbyists he's seeded up and down K Street will be rolling in money. I'm sure this had nothing to do with his decision to try to postpone the Social Security legislation that Bush campaigned on. ... P.S.:  Unlike many Democrats (and Republicans!) I don't dislike DeLay. During  the 1996 welfare reform debate, it was good to have someone on the pro-reform side who would ignore the MSM, stand his ground and enforce a little discipline. But he does seem to be trying to run a political machine, with its attendant financial requirements. Bush might need to figure out a way to meet them. ... 6:09 P.M.

Beinart-Skipper:TNR's Peter Beinart argues that, just as liberals needed to purge non-anti-Communists from their ranks in the late 1940s, Democrats need to purge today's "heirs of Henry Wallace"-- specifically, Michael Moore and MoveOn--who do "not believe there is a terrorist threat." It's a powerful analogy, and running Moore out of the party might well give any Democratic candidate an essential anti-Souljah credibility. But!

1) Beinart says

The left's post-September 11 enthusiasm for an aggressive campaign against Al Qaeda--epitomized by students at liberal campuses signing up for jobs with the CIA--was overwhelmed by horror at the bungled Iraq war.

There are two rhetorical tricks at work here. First is the conceit, among Iraq war supporters, that what's gone wrong in Iraq must be the product of administration "bungling." There has been bungling, of course. But it's not at all clear that a lot of the problems we've encountered could have been avoided by the best planning and diplomacy in the world. Maybe there were big problems inherent in the whole project. This is the possibility--that the decision to go to war itself was wrong--that vehement talk of bungling conveniently excludes. Was what we've faced in Iraq really what even the editors of the New Republic thought we'd face?

2) The second trick is the cunning exclusion of a sensible middle position--the anti-terrorist, anti-Iraq War position. Beinart supports the Iraq invasion and wants to purge those who don't believe there's a terrorist threat. But what about the "decent left" that doesn't support the invasion but believes there's a terrorist threat? They're handled in the penultimate, to-be-sure paragraph, which declares:

[E]ven if Iraq is Vietnam, it no more obviates the war on terrorism than Vietnam obviated the battle against communism.

True. But since we're right now in the middle of this particular Vietnam War, can we have a debate about it? Isn't that the big argument of the day? Beinart concedes at one point that Michael Moore and MoveOn don't even represent the vast mass of their own followers, let alone of anti-war Democrats.  Why then doesn't Beinart take on the majority of his opponents instead of focusing on the far-left 5%? Is it because that's a debate he wouldn't win? If the Vietnam War had been waged in 1947 at the start of the Cold War, even the anti-communist liberal luminaries gathered at the Willard Hotel might have spent some time fighting over it.

3) Otherwise, Beinart's whole Cold War analogy is perfectly apt. Except that  

a) "Islamist totalitarianism" isn't a state phenomenon the way Communist totalitarianism was (which Beinart acknowledges in passing);

b) Angry Islamists in 2004, unlike angry Communists in 1947, are increasingly empowered by ever-more-available technologies of mass destruction (something Beinart doesn't acknowledge);

c) Attacking Communism didn't threaten to radicalize hundreds of millions of otherwise peaceable socialists the way frontally attacking Islamic fundamentalists threatens to radicalize hundreds of millions of Muslims (another way of saying that the "clash of civilizations" has a self-fulfilling quality that the twilight struggle against the Soviets did not); and

 d) We never did anything as agressive, in the course of successfully containing communism, as what we've already done in the course of combatting Islamic terror (i.e. invading Iraq).

If Communism had been a non-state ideology that embraced suicidal terrorism and was potentially adopted by millions of individuals and small groups with increasing access to weapons of mass death--individuals who could be whipped into anger by Internet-era media technology in the wake of anything that smacked of an "assault on Communism"--the Cold War might have looked very different back in 1947.

4) Even if we abolished the Iowa caucuses and held the first Democratic primary in, say, West Virginia, it's unlikely Democratic voters would embrace Beinart's view. At times his piece --and his magazine!--read like the Howell Raines Fallacy writ large (the HRF being the easy assumption that the great and good American people, offered a fair choice, will of course choose the course you happen to advocate). Beinart may support the Iraq War abroad and gay marriage at home, and he may have good reasons for it. That doesn't necessarily mean there's a majority to be had if only a politician dares claim the waiting "Pro-War/Pro-Gay" mantle. It seems just as likely Beinart would find that his views put him in a relatively small political foxhole with Andrew Sullivan and a few ofTNR's other contributing editors. This doesn't mean he's not right. It means he can't avoid waging and winning the debates he's avoiding (about Iraq, and the ways in which the fight against terror is and isn't like the Cold War) if he wants to actually win elections.

P.S.: Beinart speaks of "Kerry's foreign policy advisers, some of whom supported the [$87 billion in] supplemental funding" for Iraq. You mean some didn't support it? There's your lede! Names please. ... Why not purge them? ...P.P.S.: Nor was the schizo peace/war "Kerry compromise ... born" with his vote against the $87 billion. Kerry had been a serial straddler on Iraq since the start of his campaign. ... P.P.P.S.: Beinart argues

The challenge for Democrats today is not to find a different kind of presidential candidate. It is to transform the party at its grassroots so that a different kind of presidential candidate can emerge.

Sure seems easier to just find a different kind of presidential candidate! The grass roots will follow a winner. In 1989, would it have been easier to transform the Democratic grass roots so that they wanted to "end welfare as we know it"--or to find Bill Clinton? ... 1:47 A.M.

Monday, December 6, 2004

Repackaged rhetoric will save the Dems! I like "poison-free communities" (instead of "environmental protection")--but somehow I don't think "public protection attorneys" (i.e. trial lawyers) will fly. .. [thanks to reader J.H.]. 10:12 A.M.

A buried mini-lede in yesterday's NYT piece on declining Latino birth rate: the black birth rate in California has fallen so fast that it's not only way below the declining Latino rate, it's below the white rate (which is actually rising, according to the NYT's chart) ... One obvious implication: If blacks are worried that they now suddenly seem to be a dissipating political force, they're right. [Isn't the most obvious implication the subversion of the stereotype of black hyperfertility that militated in favor of the demonization and marginalization of African American mothers within our dominant political-cultural narratives?-ed Help! They've assigned me a grad student. But yes.] 1:18 A.M.

Andrew Having It Both Ways (first of a series!): He wants you to vote for him in the Weblog awards ("by bot or daily or hourly orchestration") but of course he doesn't ("it all seems a little silly, doesn't it?"). ... P.S.: BoiFromTroy--in sharp contrast!-- doesn't pretend he's not vote-grubbing. ... 12:48 A.M.

Friday, December 3, 2004

How much does the rest of the country dislike New York's Sen. Chuck Schumer? In today's N.Y. Times Schumer welcomes the appointment of former N.Y.P.D. chief Bernard Kerik  as head of Homeland Security:

New York should always be the focal point of homeland security activities, and Bernie Kerik is a tried and true New Yorker who understands our city, our state, our problems and our needs. We look forward to working with him to bring greater help in terms of dollars and security for New York. [Emphasis added]

Not "a" focal point. "The" focal point. Sorry, D.C.! ...  And forget what Kerik can do for the entire country--he'll bring dollars to New York! . ... P.S.: I remember seeing Schumer on TV shortly after 9/11, when everyone was on New York's side, and his first comment was to insist that it wasn't enough that New York City get the same amount of aid that another part of the country would get in a similar disaster--New York, as a national hub of business, demanded more than other regions would get! ... You get the feeling that if we captured Osama bin Laden, won the Iraq War, and peacefully brought democracy to North Korea Schumer would put out a statement applauding the victories because now more federal dollars could be redirected to Manhattan. ... P.P.S.:  Here's a entertainingly nasty column about Kerik. He may actually be a hero, for all I know--but you wouldn't automatically think that someone whose most recent high-profile assignment was training the Iraqi police force would be first in line for a promotion. ... The Washington Post is skeptical too, featuring a rare vicious first-day blind quote:

A high-ranking business executive who is familiar with Kerik's tenure as police commissioner and as head trainer of Iraqi police recruits expressed shock at his selection, and said Kerik is not an accomplished manager. "Management just simply isn't his strong suit," the executive said.

But hey, if it means more money for New York ... Update: Here's a City Journal article arguing that Kerik turned around New York City's Department of Corrections. ... 12:55 P.M.

Thursday, December 2, 2004

What do lower courts know! A federal District Court judge in Virginia has dismissed Dr. Steven Hatfill's libel suit against the New York Times over Nicholas Kristof's columns on the anthrax mailings of 2001. Kristof crows a bit about the decision on his blog, calling it an "excellent" ruling that is "a victory for the right of journalists to write aggressively about issues of national concern." A Times lawyer declares "This comes out in favor of our right to report accurately on an investigation that is still active, pre-arrest."

Well, of course the Times can report accurately about anything without fear of a libel judgment. Truth is a defense. The problem is that Hatfill alleges that some things Kristof said were "untruths," as the court put it. And the part of the district court decision I don't understand--it seems quite bogus--is the part where the judge throws out Hatfill's libel complaint about these alleged "discrete untruths" (like the one regarding how many polygraph exams Hatfill had taken and what the results were). Sure, Kristof can't be sued simply for reporting on an investigation, and he covered his ass enough in his columns to avoid the conclusion that he was saying Hatfill was the anthrax mailer. But does that mean he can say any old untrue thing about Hatfill along the way? For example, how exactly did the judge conclude that saying Hatfill had "failed 3 successive polygraph examinations" was "not harmful to [Hatfill's] reputation"? Wouldn't that harm anyone's reputation?** ... 

Maybe I'm missing something, but if I were Kristof, I wouldn't crow too loudly. Lower court decisions are made to be reversed. ...

** Boilerplate: I'm not saying that what Kristof wrote is true or is not true. I have no knowledge or opinion about that issue. But to throw Hatfill's complaint out before a trial, the judge had to find that even if what Kristof wrote was untrue, it wasn't defamatory. That's the unpersuasive part. ... 1:50 P.M. link

Socialism-In-One-State Update: The proposed employer-mandate for health insurance (Prop. 72) failed  in California after an error in the official count was corrected. 11:25 A.M.

Speak Kindly of the Dead: A timely reminder that, in the months immediately following 9/11, Dan Rather's was the least annoying newscast to watch--he was fine, because he "felt 9/11 down to his bones," he was at heart patriotic and not cynical, and it showed. His old, ultimately fatal anti-Bush macho grudge only resurfaced later. ... 2:09 A.M.

Wednesday, December 1, 2004

That's Homage to you, Pardner: I'm not saying Neil Young should call his lawyer, but doesn't the annoying Big & Rich's tedious single, "Holy Water," sound a whole lot like Young's "After the Gold Rush"? ... Here's Big & Rich. ... Here's Neil. ... You, the listener, make the call! ... 11:50 P.M.

Some Don't Like It Hout: Kevin Drum has an easy-to-comprehend critique of that touted Michael Hout "Berkeley" paper suggesting finagling with the Florida electronic vote. Worth clicking for the killer graph alone. P.S.:Mystery Pollster gives good link should you still care about Hout after reading Drum. ... P.P.S.:RottenDenmark has plenty of other recount news, including the latest on the Ohio provisional ballot tally. (Kerry's so far gained about 5,000 on Bush with only 10-20,000 ballots left to count--much less of a Kerry pick-up than Denmark had hoped for). Update: Total gain for Kerry in the Ohio provisional ballots was about 18,000, leaving a Bush margin of about 118,000--which RD concedes is "a big number" to overcome in a recount. Advantage: Dirty Harry. ... 10:06 P.M.

Geoghegan Call Your Office: Two weeks ago I sniped at Tom Geoghegan's proposed left strategy [ $ ] of putting concrete government benefits on the ballot in blue states, pointing out that California's Prop. 72--mandating health benefits in medium and large companies--had gone down to defeat. Not so fast! Prop. 72 may have pulled it out in the late-counted ballots. The California secretary of state posted results to that effect, then withdrew them. We're on tenterhooks out here! . .. P.S.: The L.A. Times ran the Prop. 72 comeback story in the B section, with a little tease in a box on the A section front. More evidence that the Times's editors still don't know a front-page story when they see it. They must think they're competing with the New York Times and need to front all the big global stories on Ukraine, intel reform, Chinese mine explosions, etc. But the LAT's value to upscale Southern California readers who already get the NYT would be precisely in coverage of more local stories the big East Coast papers won't carry, including crime stories. Duh! ... P.P.S.: This may explain why the LAT has gotten oddly less compelling as it has become a much better paper under its new Chicago Tribune management. It used to at least be entertainingly, uniquely bad. Now it's just a 90-percent-as-good New York Times or WaPo. ... P.P.P.S.: I still resist bringing the thing into the house. It's what you should never be in California--namely fat. Too much newsprint to recycle! They should pay me to read all those ads. ... P.P.P.P.S.: As long as I was in the LAT B-section, I aimlessly leafed through its back pages just to see what they had in them. It turns out they have a whole editorial page back there, with op-eds and everything! Who knew? ... Update: Never mind! Prop. 72 ultimately failed, with 49.1 percent of the vote. The contrary results reported yesterday by the secretary of state were the result of a reporting error by San Diego County. [So it wasn't a front page story after all--ed I disagree. You report the wacky official results on Wednesday. You report that the official results were wrong on Thursday. Fun, fun, fun. It's a daily newspaper, not a history textbook.] 9:48 P.M.

Hispanic Hype Deflation Week: Anti-amnesty pundits (mainly conservatives who fear Republicans will pander to Latinos) and anti-gloom Democrats have joined forces in a formidable campaign to deflate those startling exit poll numbers-- the ones showing Bush winning 44% of the Hispanic vote  (up from 35% in 2000). Michelle Malkin and Ruy Teixeira, together again! ... Now the big Mitofsky/Edison NEP exit poll has issued a correction for Texas--Bush didn't get 59% of the Hispanic vote as originally reported. He got 49% percent. Hey, what's 10% among friends? Plus Hispanics were only 20 percent of the Texas electorate, not 23%. ... The Texas revisions by themselves would cut that 44% national figure down. But Teixeira and anti-amnesty writer Steve Sailer (here and here) argue that the NEP's results in other states are also highly suspect. To its credit, the National Council of La Raza seems to agree, arguing that the 44% NEP estimate is "at the extreme end of plausibility." Everyone gives 39% as a better estimate. That's still an improvement over 35%, but not quite the same "sea change"-signifying number. ... P.S.: Mitofsky's NEP has now been recalled for defects more often than a Porsche Cayenne! If it were a car, Joan Claybrook would be demanding that it be taken off the market. Must be the bloggers' fault! ... P.P.S.: Will a generation of academic poli sci scholarship now be based on this seeming pile of junk? ... [Thanks to reader K.] Update: Oy! The numbers of Hoy!, said to be the nation's fastest-growing Hispanic daily paper, turn out to have been wildly inflated too! ... "The original reports claimed 7,752 home-delivery subscribers on weekdays, but auditors slashed that number to 1,722 ...." That's late-90s dot-com-level bullsh---ing! ... Update: Mystery Pollster suggests "a national correction is coming [from NEP] as well," and explains one possible source of Hispanic-vote error. ... 12:59 P.M. 

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Links

Drudge Report--80 % true. Close enough! Instapundit--All-powerful hit king. Joshua Marshall--He reports! And decides!  Wonkette--Makes Jack Shafer feel guilty.  Salon--Survives! kf gloating on hold. Andrew Sullivan--He asks, he tells. He sells! David Corn--Trustworthy reporting from the left.  Washington Monthly--Includes Charlie Peters' proto-blog. Lucianne.com--Stirs the drink. Virginia Postrel--Friend of the future! Peggy Noonan--Gold in every column. Matt Miller--Savvy rad-centrism. WaPo--Waking from post-Bradlee snooze. Calmer Times--Registration required.  NY Observer--Read it before the good writers are all hired away. New Republic--Left on welfare, right on warfare!  Jim Pinkerton--Quality ideas come from quantity ideas. Tom Tomorrow--Everyone's favorite leftish cartoonists' blog.  Ann "Too Far" Coulter--Sometimes it's just far enough. Bull Moose--National Greatness Central. John Ellis--Forget that Florida business! The cuz knows politics, and he has, ah, sources. "The Note"--How the pros start their day. Romenesko--O.K. they actually start it here. Center on Budget and Policy Priorities--Money Liberal Central.. Steve Chapman--Ornery-but-lovable libertarian. Rich Galen--Sophisticated GOP insider. Man Without Qualities--Seems to know a lot about white collar crime. Hmmm. Overlawyered.com--Daily horror stories. Eugene Volokh--Smart, packin' prof, and not Instapundit! Eve Tushnet--Queer, Catholic, conservative and not Andrew Sullivan! WSJ's Best of the Web--James Taranto's excellent obsessions. Walter Shapiro--Politics and (don't laugh) neoliberal humor! Eric Alterman--Born to blog. Joe Conason--Bush-bashing, free most days. Lloyd Grove--Don't let him write about you. Arianna--A hybrid vehicle. TomPaine.com--Web-lib populists. Take on the News--TomPaine's blog.  B-Log--Blog of spirituality!  Hit & Run--Reason gone wild! Daniel Weintraub--Beeblogger and Davis Recall Central. Eduwonk--You'll never have to read another mind-numbing education story again. Nonzero--Bob Wright explains it all. [More tk