Schine Revisited: The Guckert Scandal breaks into the mainstream, here, here, here, and here. The story is important because of its connection to other White House efforts to create its own propaganda machine, separate from traditional media outlets. In this case, a pseudo-reporter was permitted to infiltrate the White House Press Corps and ask planted questions at daily briefings, and, in one case, even at a Presidential press conference.

But lets face it, the real reason this story has bite is the inference that it connects to what an earlier generation would have inelegantly called a "daisy chain". As soon as "Jeff Gannon", the reporter in question, became tied to internet sites plugging gay pornography and prostitution, the focus shifted from just another story about a fake website/blog shilling for the Bush Administration. With the revelation that classified information about the identity of a CIA agent was leaked to this clown, the story expanded geometrically.

One obvious avenue for investigation, by either the mainstream media or the blogosphere, is who in the administration greased Guckert's path, ie., who was his "Roy Cohn"? This guy was treated as a "reporter" for three years by the White House, even though they knew he was representing a website that was little more than a propaganda front for Karl Rove. So who looked the other way?

The Judds Say Farewell: Wasn't Andrew Sullivan supposed to be retiring or something?

To no one's surprise, the major obstacle to reapportionment reform in California is coming from...Tom DeLay, and the GOP rump in the state Congressional delegation. What DeLay and the crackerocracy fear isn't that the Republicans lose a seat or two in California in 2006; it's that the move to reform the drawing of legislative districts sweeps the country.

Ward Churchill Update: Academic fraud of a more traditional sort: the genocide that never was. I don't know of a civil libertarian defense to this sort of thing.

The Cole-Goldberg "debate" is becoming increasingly one-sided, as you might expect in a battle between someone who is paid to think for a living (the Professor) and someone who is paid not to think (the Pundit). Goldberg is being made to look foolish, in part because he's sparring with someone who actually knows something about the subject, rather than someone who can write well and has a lot of opinions, but also due to the Elephant in the Room in the debate over the "War" on Terrorism: the Chickenhawk issue. The question to Goldberg was simple: can someone who is of age (or who has children of age) and who backs a discretionary war, ostensibly because it is in our national interest, have his views taken seriously if he (or his children) does not volunteer to fight in said war?

Obviously, this is a different issue than the standard "chickenhawk" debate, which concerns the disproportionate number of non-veterans in the Bush Administration. There may have been any number of reasons why someone didn't choose to fight in Vietnam, but few of them are germane four decades later. The issue at stake here is whether someone younger than, lets say, thirty-five (or with a son in that agegroup), has any moral or intellectual credibility to ask other people to make sacrifices for him, if he is not also willing to make the ultimate sacrifice.

It is, as "Armed Liberal" points out, a question designed to end debate. As well it should, for the issue is one of simple hypocrisy. No one should feel so privileged in a time of war to cheerlead from the sidelines, especially when one is healthy enough to play. If you believe it is important enough for your nation to be fighting this war, why aren't you out there?

There's something morally repugnant about bloggers who have devoted more attention to the politically incorrect remarks of a college professor at Colorado or a news president at a cable network than about the death of a quarter of a million people in Asia less than two months ago.

"Angel," he said. Can I call you Angel?" Mr. Samgrass drinks Michael Totten under the table....

Cause I ain't got no dog-proof ass: Jonah Goldberg, on why he does not fight for freedom:

As for why my sorry a** isn't in the kill zone, lots of people think this is a searingly pertinent question. No answer I could give -- I'm 35 years old, my family couldn't afford the lost income, I have a baby daughter, my a** is, er, sorry, are a few -- ever seem to suffice.

The glory of Liston lives on!![link via Juan Cole]

Prediction: Pats 31, Eagles 13. Those of you who would like, shall we say, to make it a little more interesting, can participate in this little contest being sponsored by Atrios.

Obviously, the question of whether Prof. Ward Churchill should be fired due to his vicious, hateful writings about the 9/11 dead concerns academic freedom, not necessarily the First Amendment or freedom of speech. He's not being threatened with jail for his remarks, nor is the government attempting to bar him from exercising his right to vocalize his opinion. A college professor should be granted more leeway in being allowed to say what he wants without having to worry about the axe falling whenever he makes a politically incorrect statement.

But, really, I can't believe that a university should be powerless to act just because a professor has tenure. Putting aside the allegation that Churchill lied about his ethnic background (he claims to be part-Indian, an assertion that has been debunked by the tribe he claims membership in), it's hard to see why a state university, funded by the taxpayers, should have no recourse when one of their employees goes off the deep end. If a tenured professor in geology were to begin teaching his students that the earth was flat, or a paleontology professor were to advocate creationism in the classroom, or a history professor decides that his students should learn about how the Elders of Zion are plotting to eat Christian babies, the schools that are paying them clearly are not getting what they bargained for when they granted tenure in the first place.

The regents at Boulder should examine why Churchill is being paid a salary to teach at their university in the first place (it's certainly not because he has overwhelming qualifications; considering the thousands of PhD recipients who can't land teaching jobs in this country, the fact that Churchill never went beyond a Masters degree is especially grating), and act accordingly. Celebrating the slaughter of other human beings no more belongs in a school than a teacher advocating the rape of women, or the extermination of gays. That is not a matter of free speech, or of defending leftist politics: it is a matter of decency.

But rather than firing the professor, Colorado should set appropriate guidelines as to what it considers acceptable classroom conduct. The university should demand that Churchill apologize for his three-year old statements, and thereafter vigorously regulate the courses he teaches. If he refuses, he should be introduced to the rigorous virtues of the private sector. If they are unwilling to do that, the university might as well announce that it fully backs Prof. Churchill, and that his views about how the janitors and secretaries in the Twin Towers are "little Eichmanns" are shared by the college, and are consistent with what it regards as its educational mission. Poisoning the minds of students should never be considered part of "academic freedom". [link via Marc Cooper]

The man who lost the most important boxing match in history, Max Schmeling, has passed away. He was seven months short of 100.

I'm not sure what to make of this study, which indicates that more than half of all personal bankruptcies were triggered by excessive medical costs, even though most of those debtors were covered by health insurance. There tend to be a multitude of reasons why people file, most notably mortgage defaults and exorbinant credit card debt, but high medical bills are invariably a part of the problem as well.

Practicing in Los Angeles, a region that has always been ahead of the curve when it comes to bankruptcy law, my perspective may not be applicable nationwide, but I can think of an obvious explanation as to why this study came to this conclusion. There is still a great deal of embarassment when it comes to the filing of bankruptcy. Psychologically, it is perceived as an admission of failure, an acknowledgement that you can't make good on your own promises. Thus, a good many people will try to postpone the inevitable, to be done only in extremis.

Of all the reasons to give in to the temptation of having a deus ex machina, in the form of the Bankruptcy Court, wipe your slate clean, a medical debt is probably the most appealing. We can't be blamed for getting sick, in the same way that we can feel blame for losing their job or running up too much credit card debt. High medical costs are as much a given in our society as having to pay through the teeth for housing or a sports car, but it's just easier to make believe that the medical debt was an arbitrary event, as opposed to the other big ticket items we couldn't afford but purchased anyway.

While the President of Jesusland addresses the Crackerocracy in D.C. tonight, I will be honoring my status as a Californian, first and foremost, with a visit to the L.A. Press Club salon, where tonight the topic of discussion will be "21st Century Sports Journalism". Panelists include blogger Jon Weisman, sportswriter J.A. Adande, sportstalk host Steve Mason, and the moderator will be the venerable Matt Welch (pictured, twixt Sonny and Phoebe, above). First drinks start at six, the gabfest at seven.

Who loves the LA Times? Not apparently, Mickey Kaus, who writes that the greater SoCal area would be better off if it were to just disappear tomorrow. Quoth Kaus: "New journalistic organizations would form and expand to fill the void. Some of them would be good. All would be free to actually be lively and irreverent, without the dead weight of the Times bureaucracy and its historic faux-East-Coast confusion of stiff journalism with serious journalism."

In all likelihood, though, the Times' monopoly, should it ever be slain, would simply get replaced by a new monopoly, one that would inherit, in form if not in substance, the same "dead weight" bureaucracy and journalistic philosophy of its predecessor. People who wonder why Los Angeles is the way it is should always remember that the "city" of Los Angeles is only a portion of the vast mega-community of "Los Angeles", which expands as far south as San Clemente, as far north as Bakersfield, and as far east as the borders with Nevada and Arizona.

Even within Los Angeles County, there are numerous cities on the outskirts, not quite suburbs, that are quite distinct from the city of Los Angeles, cities such as Long Beach, Santa Monica, Inglewood, Compton, Pomona, Pasadena, Beverly Hills, etc., that have their own school districts and elect their own city officials, but which are still every much as part of the community of "Los Angeles" as Downtown or the Valley. Many of these satellite communities, in fact, have newspapers of their own, but none has been able to branch out and appeal beyond their locality. It's almost a cliche to note that this region is the Promised Land for immigrants from Central America and East Asia, and these groups have newspapers servicing their communities as well. The genius of the Times has been to create a touchstone, one of the few that exist locally besides the Lakers and the smog, that unites the vast community beyond the city borders.

Because of that, a local newspaper that appeals to the entire region is a necessity; the market demands it. Financially speaking, though, to have two (or more) newspapers attempting to appeal to that same broad base would be prohibitive. And it's been tried. As recently as sixteen years ago, Los Angeles was serviced by another paper, the Herald Examiner, a great newspaper published by the Hearst family. It had an awesome sports section, was gossipy and fun to read, and I still have the last edition from when it ceased publication in 1989, after years of drowning in ink as red as the blood of the Black Dahlia. There were other newspapers too, long ago, as much beloved as the HerEx (which was itself the child of a long-ago merger of two tabloids), but, in the end, none could compete with the Chandlers.

So we're pretty much stuck with the Times. Don't like its liberal politics? Too bad, you're in a Blue State, they come with the territory. Too stodgy for you? Not enough gossip? This isn't New York City, pal, and besides, what gossip column can compete with Court TV? Not enough coverage of local issues and events? Well, that's what the Press Telegram and the Daily News are for. Would LA be better off if the Times no longer existed? Maybe, but then it wouldn't be LA.

Listen, children, to a story, that was written long ago....

ESPN is reporting that Rudy Tomjanovich will step down as Lakers' head coach after tonight's game with Portland.

Jayson Blair, the Sequel: After reading this story, it becomes clear that the real scoop isn't that Iraqi kleptocrat Ahmad Chalabi is being considered for a position in the new Iraqi government, but that the New York Times has another writer who just makes shit up. Can't blame Howell Raines for this one, though....

A combination of a slow day in sports and an opportune buzz led me to see Sideways at the local AMC. Paul Giamatti was robbed; in fact, it can be argued that the principal reason it could even have been a plausible Best Film nominee was the fact that he was the star, only one year after his memorable (and also unrewarded) performance in American Splendor. Anyone who has ever taken the 101 north of Santa Barbara will appreciate the humor in this film even more.

Egads--DTP started his own blog!! I used to think he was really "Booze Buddy" from The Happiest Place on Earth, since he seemed to know a great deal about my life as a Functioning Alcoholic, until I heard he actually a had a professional degree in something. I guess he just paid very careful attention to my writing. Anyways, he's funny, if a bit off the edge politically.

Nguyen Van Chalabi: Some historical perspective on yesterday's election in Iraq.