SWAN CREEK HEIRLOOM FARM, LLC

The Southbound Metra train out of Fox Lake was 18 minutes late and thus I missed the 12:30 connecting train back to Barrington. No Problem -- the Lord of Hosts has trained me as well as the best circus dog you've ever seen - LORD, I get it! There are people I now must meet.

Went to the Rock 'N Roll MacDonalds, thinking maybe Marla would be there, or Jill, and I could invite them out to my folks, feed 'em a hot meal, let 'em shower, do some laundry, and then put 'em back on the last train to the city. No dice.

Hotter than a cat on a Hot Tin Roof, too. I was melting.

Got involved in the most engaging conversation with George Rasmussen (there are several Rasmussen's that attend the crappy church my folks go to), the German-Danish Organic Farmer who owns about 30 organic farms across the country. HERE -- is what he and his vision are all about:

Farmers You Should Know

Good food comes from somewhere and someone. Behind food with superlative taste, there is always a place and a face.

Slow Food Chicago strives to forge stronger ties between our region’s farmers and the consumers of their products. When speaking about the food consumer, Slow Food founder Carlo Petrini has coined the term “co-producer”, to stress the importance of an eater’s partnership and bond with the farmer.

Wendell Berry, the Kentucky farmer and poet, famously said, “Eating is an agricultural act,” to which Slow Food responds, “Agriculture is a gastronomic act.” We all benefit when we strive to shorten the links in the chain from pasture to plate, and by realizing that satisfaction at the table is inextricably linked to conscientious custody of the field.

On these pages, we would like to introduce some farmers you should know. Read and learn, and then go meet these terrific producers at farmers markets in our area. Reestablish the connection we should all have to the sources of fresh, local, seasonal, healthy, delicious food.

Green Acres (vegetables)
Caveny Farm (turkeys, geese)
Prairie Fruits Farm (goat and sheep cheese)
Triple S Farm (pork, beef, chicken, eggs)
Mint Creek Farm (lamb, chicken, eggs, seasonal turkey)
Kinnikinnick Farm (vegetables)
Heritage Prairie (4-season vegetables, honey)
Chicago Honey Co-op (local honey)
Fairstream Farms (vegetables)
Growing Power (vegetables)
Organic Pastures (pork, chicken, lamb, beef, sausage)
Wettstein Organic Farm (pork, chicken, lamb, beef, sausage)
Seedling Fruit (Fruits, Jams)
Heartland Meats (Piedmontese Beef)
Plapp Family Organics (beef
Henry’s Farm (vegetables)
Nate Wieland Farm (dried beans)
Tempel Farms (vegetables, poultry, eggs, flowers)
Twin Oak Meats (pork, chicken, sausage)
TJ’s Meats
Spence Farm (Ramps, Maple Syrup, Heirloom Corn)
Slagel Family Farm (goat)
Arnold Family Farm (beef, pork, chicken, lamb)
Chicago Honey Co-op
Harvest Moon Organics (vegetables, meat, cheese, eggs, and flowers)
Genesis Growers (vegetables)
Swan Creek Farm (pork, chickens, turkeys)
Another excellent source of farmer information is the web site Local Harvest. There you’ll find a nationwide database of small, sustainable farmers, organized by region, with detailed information about their products, markets and CSAs. Local Harvest has also partnered with Slow Food USA to catalog producers of US Ark Products, in an effort “to bring the Ark of Taste off the page and into farms and kitchens!”

The Last Nail -- by Congressman Ron Paul

WRITTEN BY THOMAS R. EDDLEM
SUNDAY, 29 MAY 2011 21:00

Congressman Ron Paul delivered a five-minute speech on the floor of the House of Representatives May 25, a short speech that may sound to the uninformed like one wild statement after another. In his speech, Dr. Paul (he's an obstetrician) made a number of charges that the executive branch of government has established a virtual dictatorship with the willing assistance of Congress and many Americans who fear for their "security." But Congressman Paul is complaining about the erosion of constitutional protections that have already happened. Following is his speech verbatim, along with links documenting his allegations. All words are by Congressman Paul; hyperlinks were added by The New American's Thomas R. Eddlem.

The Last Nail

by Congressman Ron Paul

The last nail is being driven into the coffin of the American Republic. Yet, Congress remains in total denial as our liberties are rapidly fading before our eyes. The process is propelled by unwarranted fear and ignorance as to the true meaning of liberty. It is driven by economic myths, fallacies and irrational good intentions. The rule of law is constantly rejected and authoritarian answers are offered as panaceas for all our problems. Runaway welfarism is used to benefit the rich at the expense of the middle class. Who would have ever thought that the current generation and Congress would stand idly by and watch such a rapid disintegration of the American Republic? Characteristic of this epic event is the casual acceptance by the people and political leaders of the unitary presidency, which is equivalent to granting dictatorial powers to the President. Our Presidents can now, on their own:

• Order assassinations, including American citizens;

• Operate secret military tribunals;

• Engage in torture;

• Enforce indefinite imprisonment without due process;

• Order searches and seizures without proper warrants, gutting the Fourth Amendment;

• Ignore the 60-day rule for reporting to the Congress the nature of any military operations as required by the War Power Resolution;

• Continue the Patriot Act abuses without oversight;

• Wage war at will;

• Treat all Americans as suspected terrorists at airports with TSA groping and nude x-raying.

And the Federal Reserve accommodates by counterfeiting the funds needed and not paid for by taxation and borrowing, permitting runaway spending, endless debt, and special interest bail-outs.



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And all of this is not enough. The abuses and usurpations of the war power are soon to be codified in the National Defense Authorization Act now rapidly moving its way through Congress. Instead of repealing the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force [AUMF], as we should, now that bin Laden is dead and gone, Congress is planning to massively increase the war power of the President. Though an opportunity presents itself to end the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, Congress, with bipartisan support, obsesses on how to expand the unconstitutional war power the President already holds.

The current proposal would allow a President to pursue war any time, any place, for any reason, without congressional approval. Many believe this would even permit military activity against American suspects here at home. The proposed authority does not reference the 9/11 attacks. It would be expanded to include the Taliban and "associated" forces — a dangerously vague and expansive definition of our potential enemies. There is no denial that the changes in Section 1034 totally eliminate the hard-fought-for restraint on Presidential authority to go to war without Congressional approval achieved at the Constitutional Convention.

Congress' war authority has been severely undermined since World War II beginning with the advent of the Korean War which was fought solely under a UN Resolution. Even today, we're waging war in Libya without even consulting with the Congress, similar to how we went to war in Bosnia in the 1990s under President Clinton. The three major reasons for our Constitutional Convention were to:

• Guarantee free trade and travel among the states;

• Make gold and silver legal tender and abolish paper money; and

• Strictly limit the Executive Branch's authority to pursue war without Congressional approval.

But today:

• Federal Reserve notes are legal tender, gold and silver are illegal;

• The Interstate Commerce Clause is used to regulate all commerce at the expense of free trade among the states;

• And now the final nail is placed in the coffin of congressional responsibility for the war power, delivering this power completely to the President — a sharp and huge blow to the concept of our republic.

In my view, it appears that the fate of the American republic is now sealed — unless these recent trends are quickly reversed. The saddest part of this tragedy is that all these horrible changes are being done in the name of patriotism and protecting freedom. They are justified by good intentions while believing the sacrifice of liberty is required for our safety. Nothing could be further from the truth.

More sadly is the conviction that our enemies are driven to attack us for our freedoms and prosperity, and not because of our deeply flawed foreign policy that has generated justifiable grievances and has inspired the radical violence against us. Without this understanding, our endless, unnamed, and undeclared wars will continue and our wonderful experiment with liberty will end.

Thumbnail photo: Ron Paul

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Bob Donohoo said:


Do the ends justify the means?
As Americans we have slowly come to believe that the ends justify the means... We are trading in our liberties as we give more and more power to a few to "protect us."

I fear that some day "the few" will use that power against us ...

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May 29, 2011
Votes: +314
Robert Benson said:


Thank God there is one competent American in Congress
Thank you, God and Ron Paul; I love you, both.

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May 29, 2011
Votes: +281
kevin said:


mariner34
Thank you Ron Paul, there are only a handfull of good politicians in DC and you are at the top of that small list. Ron Paul 2012

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May 30, 2011
Votes: +248
kevin said:


mariner34
It's time for a change in DC. End the FED and give the power back to the states..way to go Ron. you have my vote

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May 30, 2011
Votes: +235
cnelson700 said:


Yep - I'm Definately in for the June 5 Money Bomb
Where did this guy come from and why hasn't he been assassinated yet? He is a powerful man of the people. He has my vote and total support! I'm in for the Ron Paul "Legalize Gold And Silver" Money Bomb on June 5!
Ron Paul 2012!

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May 30, 2011
Votes: +167
diest2602 said:


It's sad
How unfortunate is it that the vast majority of Americans either don't realize these things or don't care? This should be headline news across the country, yet nobody mentions it.

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May 30, 2011
Votes: +223
D Hugh said:


...
It is imperative that we all do what we can to alert as many people as possible. It's worth than you might think:

http://www.thedailybell.com/2422/Upcoming-US-Nuclear-Event.html

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May 31, 2011
Votes: +99
reeltexan said:


He's ours and we're keeping him.
When the inevitable collapse of the U.S. Government occurs, and Texas secedes and re-establishes it's independence, we are keeping Ron. Maybe the people of America fail to see the greatness of this patriot but we, here in Texas, do not.

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May 31, 2011
Votes: +140
Republicae said:


The Militant Jeffersonian
The evolved hostility toward individual Liberty is increasingly exemplified by this government’s claim to regulate essential aspects that are commonly associated with the life of an individual. While it is very true that our Freedoms may well prove inconvenient to this government, we should, in no wise, allow this government any abridgements of the foundations of our Liberty. There is, as there always has been, a propensity of the political process that leans toward mischievous inclinations. There must be a reinstitution of the Constitutional prohibitions on the powers by which this government nurtures itself. There must be a rejection and an elimination of government precedents by which such infringements have become legally justified.

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May 31, 2011
Votes: +143
L Tecolote said:


Ends v. Means
Do the ends justify the means? Ambiguous question -- depends on which ends and which means.

But the kind of means used invariably govern the kind of ends produced: vicious, lying, tyrannical means -- vicious, lying, tyrannical ends. Count on it.

Rep. Paul, like most of the other 534 CONgresscritters, the Justitutes of the Extreme Court, and any person (sic) slimy enough allowed to be in the Executive Administrations of the last two decades, understands that. The difference is, he doesn't desire the kind of ends their means are bound to produce ... but they do.

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May 31, 2011
Votes: +25
Republicae said:


The Militant Jeffersonian
There should be nothing more objectionable to a free People than the idea of sovereign supremacy of government, for such an idea should be no less abhorrent than the rodomontade of kings who claimed their powers by divine right. Contrary to discerning any power of sovereign supremacy of government, our Constitution enumerates such a long catalog of balances, checks, and divisions of powers, limitations and restrictions that the concept of such supremacy is nullified. Sovereignty and the Right of self-government inherently reside in the People, but neither resides in government except by force and fraud.

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May 31, 2011
Votes: +95
disgusted said:


Iam
First of all let me say this "Categorically there only seems to be one American Politician left with any integrity and that is Ron Paul"

Now let me digress just a little. When Pres. Obama was elected it was on the PREMISE that he was going to bring about change. Well Unfortunately any good intentions he may have had have long since been thrown out the door. It is extremely sad to me that a man who seemed to have some integrity has so soon sold out to "The Establishment" He has foolishly allowed himself to be hoodwinked by the Financial Power Tycoons who run this country.
I see very little chance of any good coming out of this Presidency unless he listens to Ron Paul, at least, on basic principles

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May 31, 2011
Votes: +90
jskis said:


Angry Patriot
Where is our military? Our military is supposed to uphold the Constitution of the United Sates of America. Why are they not stepping up to the plate and ridding us of the tyrants. This power is found in the Constitution and people who join the service swear to oath to protect the Constitution. Why are Americans sitting back and letting this happen? Are Constitution is being ripped apart and no one has any balls to step up and speak the truth. Thank You Much Mr. Paul for having the toughness to say it like it is. Thank You! Now let's have the military step up and end this destruction of the country I LOVE!

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May 31, 2011
Votes: +68
DWofTampaFl said:


why?
To the question of why Americans don't realize our rights are slowly being stripped away: First, how many of us actually know what are rights are (or more to the point, were)? I feel it's an essential part of an overall plan. Do it slowly over time and not many will notice, especially if they are tired, overworked, over stimulated, dumbed down, drugged up, divided in every which way, red pill, blue pill, confused and worried about boogie men whether in dark suits or rags. The non-federal reserve and it's practice of fractional banking has to go. It has robbed our wealth. People (and this is an even bigger challenge) have to take personal responsibility for there own actions, live within their means and stop looking to the government for everything. Wake up America, join forces and make changes before it's too late! We can make this country great, again.

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June 01, 2011
Votes: +81
Patriot1940 said:


...
The only people that can tip the scale back to fiscal sanity are the half of the population that are taking the handouts. Do they have the guts to vote for people that will reduce or eliminate those handouts? For all our sake I hope so.

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June 01, 2011
Votes: +33
secondthought said:


What's the REAL problem
Good point, Patriot 1940. It may be an even more important point, though, to say, will we Americans, on the whole, have the guts to vote for leaders who will actually say they are going to take away some of the "protections" they have installed "for us", such as scans at airports, the huge, expensive army (which dwarfs the expense of "handouts"), etc., etc. To do so would take a great deal of trust in our neighbors, and in human nature in general. And the recognition that in rule of law, bad guys DO sometimes get away with... well... murder, but that this is not a reason to let our constitution go.
I love the American constitution. I love the distinction between the rule of law and the tyranny of the majority. And at the same time, I don't think it can ever work by wagging our fingers at others who don't take responsibility for their lives (is it working now??). I think what we need to do is *inspire* others to take responsibility for their lives, by showing them ways to do that. When people's eyes open, then they march WITH us without our constant coaxing. THAT is power.

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June 04, 2011
Votes: +20
John Jones said:


I will vote for Ron Paul -- and sing about him!
This is my song about Ron Paul: iamthatmusic.comSLASHronpaul

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June 05, 2011
Votes: +4
alohajim said:


...
Ron Paul is the best hope we have to effect change within goverment. Support him all you can. DWofTampaFl' put it best. Read his post. It's up to us. Whatever is being pushed at us must be rejected, its that simple. Fight ignorance with learning and listening. Fight being divided by realizing that we are all suffering under the current monetary scheme and fight distractions by realizing how we all are being controlled by them. Fight dependency by realizing our enormous capacity for being self reliant. Make the available choice that 'opts out'. Homemade food vs. fast food; organic and local vs. GMO and agribusiness; don't watch television, zero reliance on government, healthy diet and lifestyle vs. big pharma solutions, save in precious metals vs. fiat curenty and strive for self sufficiency in every way. Help wake up and prepare others for the coming crisis and help them to understand why it will happen. THE SINGLEMOST IMPORTANT THING IS THE ENDING OF THE FEDERAL RESERVE AND THE CENTRAL BANKING CARTEL'S CONTROL AND OWNERSHIP OF OUR PLANET.

Now they tell me Donny Gardella is dead

Now they tell me Donny Gardella is dead,
He, the laconic one, always laid back,
Mostly silent sipping his glass of beer,
Always willing to talk with you,
And damned interesting, knowledgeable too.

A brain aneurysm, he had a head ache for three days
His eyes were blood shot,
He hurt, and complained.
Let this be a lesson to us all - get your ass to the doctor
When you have one of those unexplainable aches or pains
That we attribute to the onset of old age.
There's a lot that western medicine can't do,
But a competent healer and diagnostician can save your life
IF you get to her in time.

So I teared up, immediately.
Donnie never had a death wish,
But if I were a gambling man (and I'm not)
Or a betting man (which I am)
I'd bet that he was seldom, if ever told
That he was a perfect child of God the Father
Creator of All the Worlds
Perfectly formed in God's own image
And that he was, is, and always will be
Unconditionally loved by the God of Love.
I'd be willing to be too that he was seldom (if ever)
Held close to his mother's bosom,
Or had his father hold his hand while he waited with young Donny
For the school bus to come.

He didn't have a death wish,
But, he didn't really care if he lived or if he died,
And with that kind of attitude, the likelihood of you living
Until the end of the string of the thread of your days
Is quite small - miniscule.

He had cleaned himself up very well,
Full time employed, lots of responsibilities,
Although the State of Indiana is expecting him to spend
Fourteen days in one of its county jails, and so, Donny,
My hat's off to you, for you beat that rap.

It was just that one thing
That you'd do reckless things,
Down right dangerous things,
Recognizing full well that death was a path they might lead you on,
And you didn't care;
With a full time girl friend who loved you
And waited for you while you went out drinking beers
At the one Holy Place you knew, where you WERE loved
Unconditionally, completely
And that, that dog-love for human kind,
That is special and sacred.

So we all miss you,
And we now raise our glasses to you
Donny Gardella
Blessed and Beloved Child of God.

Special report: Who’s flunking now! PART 1—THE WASHINGTON POST FLUNKS AGAIN

Our major press organs may be corrupt—or they may just be incompetent. But of all the press corps’ Potemkin discussions, none are quite so IQ-challenged as the hapless debates they churn about our public schools.

Many of our biggest news orgs pretend to care deeply about this topic—but routinely, the work they produce merits a failing grade. Consider what happened when the Washington Post editorial board discussed—or tried to discuss; or pretended to discuss—the latest test scores from DC’s public schools.

The new test scores, from the spring of 2011, were released last Friday. In Saturday’s Post, education reporter Bill Turque discussed the scores in this news report; the editors offered their deathless views concerning the scores in this editorial.

Turque did a decent job, although the task of discussing the DC schools is a bit complex. Why is it hard to discuss DC schools? In part, the task is complicated by the large number of charter schools in the District. Roughly forty percent of DC students now attend these charter schools, which are technically “public” schools because they are publicly funded. Almost inevitably, reporting about DC test scores must distinguish between two groups of schools—between “traditional public schools” on the one hand and “public school charters” on the other. Discussions can get very confused if we don’t keep these groups of schools straight.

Adding to the confusion, the District’s traditional public schools carry this name: The District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS). They bear that name even though the charter schools are also public schools, under control of the mayor. And not only that! For reasons which are rarely explained, DC even has a “State Superintendent of Education” (Hosanna Mahaley), even though the District famously isn’t an actual state.

For these reasons, it’s fairly easy to get confused when talking about DC schools. Turque did a decent job in his news report—but as usual, the editors didn’t. By their third paragraph, the editors were citing gains in certain passing rates which didn’t match the gains recorded in the large graphic which accompanied their text. Repeat: The text of their editorial said one thing; their graphic said another.

This is the kind of sloppy work the editors have lustily criticized within the DC schools. (For a fuzzy look at the editors’ graphic, which was quite large in the hard-copy Post, go ahead—just click here. The Post is quite lazy about reproducing its graphics on-line.)

Needless to say, there were other problems with the editors’ work. Just for starters, what did the editors’ graphic actually represent? In four graphs which accompanied his news report, Turque carefully distinguished between the scores of traditional public schools and the scores of public school charters. (For a fuzzy look, click here.) The editors’ graphic may have represented the scores of all DC public schools, including the charters. But their graphic didn’t specifically say. Just from looking at their piece, there’s really no way to be sure.

The editors should be more precise—especially when the data in their graphic don’t match those in their text.

One other note: The editors’ graphic included grade 6 with grades 3-5 in showing the score gains in DC elementary grades. In the same day’s paper, Turque’s graphs included grade 6 with grades 7, 8 and 10, thus treating grade 6 as part of DC’s secondary schools. Neither approach is necessarily “right.” But it’s typical of the editors’ work that their basic configuration didn’t agree with that of their education reporter. This may also explain why the data in their editorial don’t match the data in their graphic, but we don’t plan to waste our time trying to puzzle that out.

The editors were careless this day, as is their wont when they preach and cajole about this particular topic. Then too, they seemed to be rather dishonest. In the highlighted part of the following passage, they gave a remarkably cheerful account of an obvious possibility—the possibility that substantial cheating may have occurred in recent years in many DC schools.

Cheerleaders are found in most American schools. In the highlighted passage, the cheerleading comes from the board room:

WASHINGTON POST EDITORIAL (7/9/11): The gains in test scores over five years—from an increase of 5.54 percentage points in elementary reading to a 19.35-point boost in secondary math—testify to the work begun by former schools chancellor Michelle A. Rhee in setting higher expectations and making the system accountable for results. But the leveling of scores in recent years—elementary scores in both reading and math even dipped slightly this year—suggests that even harder work lies ahead. It's clear that some of the early gains were attributed to what officials called picking the low-hanging fruit: ensuring instructional materials were in place or doing better at test preparation. Apparent anomalies on some test sheets in 2009 prompted some to question whether cheating occurred; outside consultants found possible testing improprieties in three of 14 classrooms flagged for investigation but found no conclusive evidence of cheating; further investigation is underway.

Question: Might “the leveling of scores in recent years” suggest that less cheating is now occurring? Not in this editorial! The highlighted passage about “apparent anomalies on some test sheets in 2009” is a stunningly selective account of an ongoing situation—a situation which is deeply unsettled. Indeed, the editors’ account of the ongoing cheating probe is just this side of flat-out deception.

Have score gains in DC’s public schools been affected by outright cheating in recent years? From this editorial, a reader might think that improprieties may have occurred in three classrooms. But consider what Turque, the Post’s education reporter, wrote about that same topic just one day before. This passage comes from a news report about the ongoing probe into possible cheating on DC’s tests:

TURQUE (7/8/ 11): The U.S. Department of Education has joined the District's investigation into allegations that some recent big gains in standardized test scores might have been the result of cheating by teachers or principals, a D.C. official said Thursday.

Roger Burke, a spokesman for D.C. Inspector General Charles J. Willoughby, said investigators from the Education Department's Office of Inspector General have been active in the probe, which was requested in March by Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson.

[…]

USA Today reported in March that from 2008 to 2010, classrooms in more than 100 D.C. schools registered unusually high rates of erasures on answer sheets; wrong answers were changed to correct ones. A test-security firm the District hired to investigate found evidence of "testing irregularities" at three schools during administration of the 2010 D.C. Comprehensive Assessment System exams.

As a result, D.C. officials invalidated test results in three classrooms at Noyes Education Campus and Leckie and C.W. Harris elementary schools and, according to multiple school system and union sources, dismissed at least two teachers.

Good grief! With regard to possible cheating, the editors mentioned “three classrooms.” Turque, the Post’s education reporter, mentioned “more than 100 schools!”

There is no way of knowing what the ongoing probe into cheating will conclude. But the editors massively underplayed the situation with their account of the matter. In Turque’s report, he noted that the Atlanta Public Schools conducted a bogus review of its own recent cheating before a fuller probe by the state of Georgia revealed a massive problem. (More on that topic later this week.) Is it possible that something like that has also occurred in DC? Yes, it’s obvious that this is possible. The editors plagiarized Pollyanna when they offered that absurd account of the ongoing DC probe.

Bill Turque did a decent though imperfect job reporting the District’s new test scores. As usual, the editors produced a lazy, inept piece of work and a big bag of agitprop. But then again, what else is new? Six days earlier, the editor produced an even worse editorial about test score gains in Prince George’s County, Maryland, a large, majority-black suburban county just outside DC. We’ll review that editorial tomorrow. But for now, understand this:

Even after all these years, the editors still produce D-minus work when they discuss DC’s public schools. They make good cheerleaders—but embarrassing students. If we assume they’re doing their work in good faith, they show few signs of understanding the basic ways standardized testing works; they show few signs of doing much more than cheerleading for their idea of “reform.” By reputation, this is the kind of lazy, who-gives-a-sh*t work which has infested the DC schools down through all the bad years.

Our news orgs produce many pseudo-discussions. None are quite so IQ-challenged as the debates our “press corps” churns concerning our public schools.

Tomorrow: Publishing Joel Klein

One more obvious point: In one passage we quoted above, the editors wrote the following about score gains under Rhee: “It's clear that some of the early gains were attributed to what officials called picking the low-hanging fruit: ensuring instructional materials were in place or doing better at test preparation” (our emphasis).

Has the District been “doing better at test preparation?” If anything, that should be a point of caution, a point of concern. If score gains have occurred in recent years because the DC schools are “doing better at test preparation,” then those score gains may represent increased test savvy on the part of DC’s students as opposed to real academic gains. In a fully competent testing program, test prep procedures will be the same from school to school and from year to year. To state the obvious: It’s hard to compare scores from one year to the next if you’ve changed your test prep procedures in ways which makes an actual difference in the scores students achieve. It should be a point of concern when we’re told that a change in test prep procedures may be driving test score gains, even if the new preparation procedures can be defended as honest and sensible.

If the editors care so much about this topic, they should have figured this out by now. But the editors rarely show any sign of understanding anything about testing procedures. We’ll return to this problem tomorrow, when we review their recent piece on the Prince George’s schools.

THE WASHINGTON POST FLUNKS AGAIN! The editors seem to do their worst work when talking about DC’s schools:

MONDAY, JULY 11, 2011

The social concerns of the Hamptons: Paul Krugman starts his new column which some unkind words. His words suggest that American pundits may be too well-off to give a flying fig about the U.S. economy:

KRUGMAN (7/11/11): If you were shocked by Friday's job report, if you thought we were doing well and were taken aback by the bad news, you haven't been paying attention. The fact is, the United States economy has been stuck in a rut for a year and a half.

Yet a destructive passivity has overtaken our discourse. Turn on your TV and you'll see some self-satisfied pundit declaring that nothing much can be done about the economy's short-run problems (reminder: this ''short run'' is now in its fourth year), that we should focus on the long run instead.

In the rest of his column, Krugman explains that a great deal can be done about the economy's “short-run problems.” As he closes, he again suggests that the “supposedly serious people” you see on TV are too well-off, too self-satisfied, to give a fig—to care.

Could it be true that our High Pundit Class is simply above such concerns? Could it be that those Millionaire Pundit Values have wiped away such concerns? Could it be that they’re too well-off—too isolated, too uncaring—to worry about our ongoing economic disaster? Our possible debt ceiling debacle?

Could any of that be true? Consider what Krugman’s colleague, Roger Cohen, wrote at the start of his own op-ed piece in Saturday’s New York Times.

It sounds like Cohen has been to the Hamptons. He knows what they’re saying out there:

COHEN (7/9/11): For almost two months now, the chattering classes in London, Paris, New York and the Hamptons have struggled to talk about anything but D.S.K. The old animalistic elements have exerted their magnetism: power, sex, violence and race.

The 20 minutes from 12:06 to 12:26 in suite 2806 of the Sofitel New York have become the object of a thousand theories and a French-American bust-up. Yes, there’s talk of a U.S. default and Greece is a bottomless pit, but those 1,200 seconds spent together on May 14 by Dominique Strauss-Kahn and a Guinean housekeeper trump every geostrategic lurch.

According to Cohen, the chattering class in our finer locales want to talk about DSK, nothing else. Darlings! The case is loaded with violence and race! And it’s spilling with sex!

As a naive reader, you might have thought Cohen was offering this thought as a criticism of this chattering class. Sorry! In his column, he too discussed the DSK case in exclusion to everything else! He devoted his column to DSK too! Rome, Georgia—or Dubuque—can pretty much burn.

Cohen’s column was all about that sexy-time race talk too! But this is in keeping with the dominant culture of the New York Times op-ed page. Yesterday, in the Sunday Times, three regular columnists published columns. None of the three showed any sign of knowing that their nation’s in trouble, especially so as the deadline for possible default looms.

Straight from the fancy restaurant beat, Frank Bruni is the Times’ latest star columnist. On what did he opine in yesterday’s column? Of course! On Casey Anthony! Darlings! She “partied while her daughter was missing!” And not only that: “For a court appearance after the verdict, her long hair was once again undone, and she petted it.” And not only that: Her lawyer “start[ed] two businesses, Bon Bon Bikinis and Brazilian Bikinis!”

Bruni’s brain was all wrapped up in murder and sexy-time sex. Then we turned to the clown, Maureen Dowd. Here’s the way her column started, sexy-time headline included:

DOWD (7/10/11): Erotic Vagrancy, Anyone?

Whether to wuther?

I’m never in doubt.

I’m obsessed with obsessions.

Give me a book or a movie about lovers in the depths of a “Wuthering Heights” passion or a Proustian fixation, and I’m off to the moors with a box of madeleines.

So my interest was aroused when I read that one of our most celebrated obsessive filmmakers was going to make a movie about one of our most celebrated obsessive couples. Martin, Liz and Dick—what a threesome.

News reports say that Martin Scorsese plans to make a film of Sam Kashner and Nancy Schoenberger’s 2010 book “Furious Love: Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, and the Marriage of the Century.”

Dowd, who is obsessed with obsessions, was aroused by Liz and by Dick. Does a bigger fool exist on the planet? As usual, she tossed in a few allusions to high literature, making her garbage seem smart. (If we were Dowd, we’d be wracking our brains for a play on words involving “lit” and “clit.”)

One more regular columnist published—Nicholas Kristof, who offered his summer reading list. There was nothing “wrong” with this column, which followed a weak attempt last week to analyze the debt ceiling talks. But the column was headlined like this:

“Action! Romance! Social Justice!”

Social justice? Darlings, please! Who let that one in?

Given the new lay-out of the Sunday Review, quite a few other columns and analysis pieces appeared in yesterday’s section. But no one seemed to have any idea that our nation is in bad trouble. Erica Jong wrote about the future of sex (or something); Diane McWhorter wrote about the legal problems of a relatively minor figure from the Birmingham civil rights era. Dudley Clendenin, a very fine person, discussed how to face the end of life. Peter Kramer discussed antidepressants; Ta-Nehisi Coates discussed a Gil Heron song he heard in 1994.

There was nothing “wrong” with any of these columns; you may feel that some of them were quite good. But something was grossly wrong with the editor who picked these columns while picking no others. Reading yesterday’s Sunday Review, you would have no idea that anything is wrong with our economy—that millions of people are out of work, that we are facing a possible debt ceiling disaster.

Who chose that array of columns? (There were others.) We’re not sure. But in recent months, we’ve often been struck by this paper’s “What, us worry” approach to its guest op-ed selections. On its op-ed page, the New York Times rarely seems to know—or to care—that this nation is in major trouble.

Who is making those selections? We aren’t sure, but here’s our question: Has he or she been out at the Hamptons, “struggling to talk about anything but DSK?” Cohen says that’s all they discuss; Krugman suggests they don’t care.

Final point: This has been going on roughly forever. Columnist Krugman to the side, why haven’t career liberal leaders ever complained about this upper-class culture? Why haven’t “liberal journals” ever profiled Dowd as one of the world’s leading fools?

Are they out at the Hamptons too? Perhaps on their latest job hunt?

PART 4—WHY LIBERALS HAVEN’T COMPLAINED

Special report: Sargent’s portrait!

It isn’t like nothing ever gets explained by our mainstream press corps. Indeed, a recurrent feature exists at Slate for that very purpose.

EXPLAINER: ANSWERS TO YOUR QUESTIONS ABOUT THE NEWS, the recurrent feature is called. Here’s the headline on the most recent report in this series, a report which was published on Tuesday:

“Why Does Dominique Strauss-Kahn Have White Hair and Black Eyebrows?”

Don’t say nobody told you! That same day, William Saletan posted a detailed report at Slate which ran beneath this headline: “Did Dominique Strauss-Kahn Try To Rape Tristane Banon? Seven ways to check his story and hers against the evidence.”

Saletan went into exquisite detail, helping French police learn how to solve this potential criminal case. So it isn’t like journalists never try to explain highly relevant topics.

Various things do get explained within our mainstream press. But the press corps’ powers seem to fade when serious topics are involved—topics which lay at the very heart of this society’s basic functioning. Consider what happened in today’s New York Times when the editors tried to explain why we have such large federal deficits.

Why do we have such large deficits? By now, you’d think this question would have been thrashed within an inch of its life out on this famous paper’s front page. You’d think we’d be swimming in simple graphics which lay out basic relevant facts. But that kind of explaining has not occurred on this newspaper’s feckless news pages. And here’s a key part of what occurred when the editors did some splainin’ today:

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL (7/8/11): It is already clear that the Republicans have succeeded spectacularly in their insistence that the agreement be mostly about spending cuts rather than building back the money lost from the Bush tax cuts that was the principal cause of the deficit. Mr. Obama has said there will have to be some revenue increases, but Republicans are in an antitax straightjacket and have defined the term so narrowly that cuts are likely to outweigh increases by a factor of three or four to one.

Is that true? Is the money lost from the Bush tax cuts “the principal cause of the deficit?” We’d have to say that isn’t quite accurate—that this statement is at least somewhat misleading. But for our money, the editors’ claim becomes downright misleading when it’s joined to the passage we’ve highlighted from the start of this same editorial:

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL: Every fresh report of “progress” on the debt-ceiling talks produces new reasons to feel profoundly uneasy. The talks were misbegotten from the beginning, made necessary only by the irresponsible refusal of Republicans to pay the nation’s bills unless they got everything their way on government spending and taxes.

President Obama had to deal with them to prevent an economic collapse, but he should have sought the most minimal way possible to get out of their headlock with the government’s crucial functions intact.

Instead, he seems to have embraced this illegitimate process—rooted in the false and dangerous premise that the nation’s budget problems are entirely a matter of overspending on the needy and not of undertaxing the rich. Now he is trying to expand it to reach a grand agreement to cut the deficit by as much as $4 trillion over 10 years, twice as much as discussed in the first round of talks.

We’ll let others decide who’s “rich.” But from reading this morning’s editorial, mightn’t a reader get the impression that our current large deficits have mainly or largely been caused by low taxes on our highest earners? That reader would have a hard time fact-checking this impression through the New York Times’ news reporting—though if he read all the way to the end of David Leonhardt’s informative column in Wednesday’s Business Day section, he would have reached the following data, buried deep in paragraph 14 on this newspaper’s page B4:

“Allowing the expiration of the Bush tax cuts on income above $250,000 a year would raise about $60 billion a year. The expiration of all the other Bush tax cuts would bring in another $200 billion or so.”

The Bush tax cuts on those upper-end earners are worth about $60 billion per year. The current deficit—the deficit our “press corps” pretends to discuss—is somewhere around $1.6 trillion. (This is not a criticism of Leonhardt, who presented some actual facts.)

Every word in today’s editorial can be defended as technically accurate. But does the editorial really explain the situation in a competent way? Our press corps will often display enthusiasm and great competence when it explains someone’s bushy eyebrows, earth-toned clothing, wind-surfing technique or limbic brain functions—or when it thrashes the details from a French attempted rape case. But the competence tends to fade when we get to trivial topics like Medicare, Social Security, tax rates and Grand Compromises. How bad does it get when our “journalists” examine such topics? For unvarnished incompetence on the part of the Times, we’ll suggest you examine this embarrassing but typical graphic, a version of which appears in today’s hard-copy paper.

Through its headline, this graphic purports to show “A Spectrum of Positions in the Debt Ceiling Debate.” Seven positions exist on this spectrum—but alas! Two of the seven positions seem to be exactly the same:

Consider raising new government revenue without raising taxes
Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, said he would consider eliminating some tax breaks and corporate subsidies provided there was not an overall increase in taxes.

Consider closing tax loopholes without raising new revenue
The House majority leader, Eric Cantor, Republican of Virginia, who earlier left talks led by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. because of administration demands on taxes, says that he is now willing to consider White House proposals to close tax loopholes. But Mr. Cantor, the second-ranking Republican in the House after Mr. Boehner, said that he would not accept any net increase in federal revenues and that any change “should be coupled with offsetting tax cuts somewhere else.”

Huh? The Times seemed to think those were different positions. In fact, as they are presented here, the positions adopted by Cornyn and Cantor seem to be exactly the same. (Some loopholes/tax breaks can be killed—but there can’t be an overall increase in revenue.)

The passage on Cantor is rather clear. The passage concerning Cornyn is a classic, world-class muddle. Meanwhile, feast your eyes on this pointless passage: “Some Senate Democrats, like Jeff Merkley of Oregon, have called for an end to $126 million in annual tax breaks for the horse-racing industry that Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, secured in the 2008 farm bill.” $126 million each year? Why not report the brand of gum Merkley was chewing as he made this tiny proposal?

The incompetence of your mainstream “press corps” is one of its distinguishing features. And this has been true for a very long time; to cite one example, it dates to the evening we cited yesterday, the evening in October 2000 when Ted Koppel said it turned his brains to mush when he tried to consider the budget debate which lay at the heart of Campaign 2000. Of course, Koppel wasn’t the first of our major stars to demonstrate an insulting malfeasance when it came to this topic, the matter of the Bush tax cut proposal. Candidate Bush had unveiled his plan all the way back in December 1999. Four days later, Cokie Roberts still had no earthly idea what the candidate had proposed; she made a groaning, ridiculous factual error about his proposal as she co-hosted ABC’s This Week, the network’s showcase Sunday program. Cokie’s remarkable error suggested that she had scanned a few headlines about the Bush plan but had done nothing more. In that case, George Stephanopoulos came to the rescue, overriding her ludicrous error while obscuring the fact that she’d made it. See THE DAILY HOWLER, 12/6/99.

Ten months later, Larry King politely moved on when Koppel said he was still clueless about the same topic—about the most seminal, most-discussed topic in the whole Bush-Gore campaign.

These people have been this way forever. Their grinding incompetence is a companion to their focus on trivia—on the question of which candidate is wearing too many earth tones or mentioning his or her children too much. (To their focus on Bristol Palin’s new jaw, on Rod Serling’s vast relevance.) These people tend to be multimillionaires—and they tend to act like they are. Last week, Greg Sargent painted a reasonably decent portrait of the criminal culture these gruesome miscreants have fashioned down through all these years:

SARGENT (6/30/11): [I]n our discourse,…it’s perfectly acceptable for reporters and commentators to allow outright falsehoods to pass unrebutted; to traffic endlessly in false equivalences in the name of some bogus notion of objectivity; and to make confident assertions about public opinion without referring to polls which show them to be completely wrong.

…[We have] a deeply ingrained set of unwritten rules about what does and doesn’t constitute acceptable political discourse that really deserve more scrutiny. This set of rules has it that it should be treated as a matter of polite, legitimate disagreement when Michele Bachmann says deeply insane things about us not needing to raise the debt limit, but it should be seen as an enormously newsworthy gaffe when she commits a relatively minor error about regional trivia.

Set aside the claim that Bachmann has said “deeply insane things” about that topic. Sargent painted a fairly decent portrait of the pseudo-journalistic culture which obtains in our modern, Potemkin press corps. As part of this journalistic culture, newspapers land at front doors every day, giving the impression that real discourse is occurring. Thanks in part to the culture Sargent describes, that impression is massively false.

So here’s the question we’ve posed all week: Why have “liberals” accepted this deeply destructive state of affairs over the past (let’s say) twenty years? Why have you never seen a challenging profile of the fool Dowd in your liberal journals? Why did you never see the profile of the disgraceful Chris Matthews of the Jack Welch years? When Koppel made that amazing statement to King, why did no one offer a comment? Why did no one even say boo when Matthews gave Gennifer Flowers a full half-hour to discuss the Clintons’ various murders?

In these and a thousand other cases, why was the silence so loud?

Everyone knows what the pseudo-conservative critique of the mainstream press corps is. The corporatist world has blared that carefully-constructed critique for three or four decades now; this relentless critique has changed the terms of American political discussion. But what is the liberal critique of that “press corps?” What is the liberal critique of a press corps which clowns in the way Dowd has done? Which engaged in the conduct Ezra Klein once described with substantial accuracy?

In a cover story for the American Prospect in April 2006, the still-youthful Klein described the conduct of that “press corps” during Campaign 2000. In the following passage, which started his piece, he is describing a speech by Al Gore in 2005. He is also describing conduct from 1999 and 2000 which changed the face of the world:

KLEIN (4/06): The address was the keynote for the We Media conference, held at the Associated Press headquarters in New York last October [2005] and attended by an audience that included both old media luminaries and new media innovators. In attendance were Tom Curley, president of the AP, Andrew Heyward, president of CBS News, and New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, all leading lights of a media establishment that, five years earlier, had deputized itself judge, jury, and executioner for Gore’s 2000 presidential campaign, spinning each day’s events to portray the stolid, capable vice president as a wild exaggerator, ideological chameleon, and total, unforgivable bore.

Yikes! According to Klein, the “media establishment” had “deputized itself judge, jury, and executioner for Gore’s 2000 presidential campaign.” Major news orgs like the three he named had “sp[un] each day’s events to portray the stolid, capable vice president as a wild exaggerator, ideological chameleon, and total, unforgivable bore.”

That’s true, of course, though a bit understated; those news orgs engaged in much more than mere “spin.” But in its essence, this is the story we are reporting, in full detail, at our companion site, How He Got There. For whatever reason, Klein made this accurate statement once, then never mentioned it again.

Just think about what Klein said in that passage, right at the start of a cover story in a liberal journal. Does that sound like something you’d say only once? More significantly, why hasn’t the rest of the liberal world told the public this story? If you still don’t know the answer, there’s a good chance you never will.

That said, just understand this:

There is no liberal critique of that mainstream “press corps” because liberal careers run through its organs. The Walshes don’t talk about the Koppels—or about the Dowds, or about Chris Matthews. Absent screaming and yelling from you, these career liberal leaders never will.

Happy ending: Ezra never mentioned this history again, not even in TV sessions in which he discussed this article. But here’s the good news: Today, he’s employed by the Washington Post and MSNBC, the two news organs which did the most to produce the gross misconduct he described—just once, when he was still young.

Simple story: Your “press corps” is now almost wholly Potemkin. For reasons which are blatantly obvious, career “liberal” leaders won’t tell. This adds to the way the liberal world gets its brains beat out in our pseudo-discourse—in the Potemkin discussions the children pretend to conduct.

WHY LIBERALS HAVEN’T COMPLAINED! Your press corps is almost wholly Potemkin. Why won’t your leaders complain:

FRIDAY, JULY 8, 2011

All good things must come to an end/At the same time, history continues: Today, our second non-annual fund-raising drives comes to its official end. We’ll be thanking those who have contributed, though you can still join in the fun! Go ahead! Just click here!

We’re plowing ahead on chapter 6 over at How He Got There. This chapter deals with the giant flap about Love Canal—perhaps the most consequential episode of Campaign 2000.

Sad story! By the fall of 1999, the press corps’ favorite theme—Al Gore is a liar, just like Bill Clinton!—was dying on the vine, basically due to lack of examples. This theme got its start in March of that year, driven by three alleged examples (click here). But one example was so bogus that even the press corps was forced to drop it. By November, this meant that the corps was down to just two alleged lies.

The corps was clinging to two alleged lies—but by the famous Rule of Three, the children needed one more. And along came Connolly and Seelye! On November 30, they misquoted Gore about Love Canal—and yes, it was a flat misquotation. Earth tones quickly faded away. The theme about lying came back with a vengeance. It hardened, then turned into stone.

Al Gore is a liar, just like Bill Clinton! From this point on, this theme never quit. Most strikingly, it was put to use in September 2000, when Gore was pulling away in the polls—and then again in October 2000, after Bush and Gore’s first debate.

Quite plainly, this theme sent Bush to the White House. Shouldn’t the public know?

Future generations should know this history, the history “liberal leaders” have agreed not to tell. We’ll be recording this history, in full detail, over at our companion site. For today, here’s a short opening chunk from the still-unfinished chapter 6. In this passage, we describe a swoon which coincided with an ugly war.

From chapter 6, How He Got There:

LATE IN NOVEMBER, AS THE FIRST SNOWFLAKES FELL, John McCain moved ahead of George Bush in New Hampshire’s Republican polling.

A series of headlines describe McCain’s rapid advance in the state which would hold the nation’s first primary.

NEW HAMPSHIRE: MCCAIN TWO POINTS UP, the Hotline reported on November 29, citing a new Time/CNN poll.

McCain had gone ahead in the state for the very first time. On December 9, another headline extended his margin. NEW HAMPSHIRE: MCCAIN UP 7, a new Hotline banner said.

One day later, another new poll: NEW HAMPSHIRE: MCCAIN UP 15.

In a truly stunning reversal, McCain was pulling away in New Hampshire. In mid-September, Bush had been leading McCain in the state by a walloping 31 points.

No one doubted a basic point about McCain’s advance. His remarkable rise had been aided, in part, by remarkably friendly press coverage. By late November, no one denied that a swoon for McCain had taken hold in the national press. That very term was in wide use, sporting a capital S.

For the record, the press corps’ swoon for John McCain had begun in the campaign’s prehistory. The love affair received its name from the Weekly Standard’s Andrew Ferguson; this occurred in July 1998, midway through the brutal year of President Clinton’s impeachment. “It is widely acknowledged that [McCain] wants to run for president in 2000,” Ferguson wrote at that time, “and already national political reporters are lost in love.” McCain “gets the best press coverage of any politician in the country,” the conservative writer continued. “The McCain Swoon is now so conspicuous that NBC News, the Washington Post and other news outlets have assigned reporters to do favorable stories explaining why the stories about John McCain are so favorable.”

Twenty-nine months before the election, “The Swoon” had been given its name.

Plainly, Ferguson was right on one score. By the summer of 1998, reporters were writing glowing reports explaining McCain’s glowing coverage. On June 8, to cite one example, Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post had examined the potential candidate’s relationship with the establishment press. Kurtz expressed a striking judgment: “The plain truth is that a growing number of journalists want John McCain to run for president.”

It was hard to dispute this assessment. Kurtz quoted a number of major press figures expressing their unvarnished admiration for the Arizona Republican. Liberal columnist Al Hunt had called McCain “the most courageous and one of the most admirable men I’ve ever known in American politics.” Mark Shields, another liberal columnist, had praised McCain for his “against-the-grain leadership coupled with his riveting personal history.” And a Mike Wallace statement was simply astounding, coming from an iconic symbol of a supposedly skeptical press corps. “I’m thinking I may quit my job if he gets the nomination,” Wallace had said, implying that he would work for McCain in a general election.

In Esquire, Charles Pierce had already offered a mordant assessment of the press corps’ general attitude. “If John McCain doesn’t run,” he had written, “the mandarins of the chattering class may throw [an] ensemble hissy fit.”

Pierce’s piece had appeared in May 1998. Its headline: “John McCain Walks on Water.”

What explained this hard early swoon? Over time, a string of profiles agreed on the basics. First, McCain had what journalists called “The Story”–his personal history in Vietnam, where he endured more than five years as a POW. Beyond that, reporters agreed that McCain had The Issue; campaign finance reform, his trademark, was a press corps favorite. Pundits agreed on another point; in their view, “The Story” proved that McCain had character, one of the press corps’ basic requirements for the coming post-Clinton era. And they agreed that he scored major points as a “maverick.” Because his trademark issues tended to put him at odds with his own party’s leadership, McCain had become “the conservative that liberals love to love,” Ferguson wrote in his 1998 profile.

One year later, in the fall of 1999, McCain was still quite low in the national polls. But profiles and columns reflecting The Swoon were appearing all over the press.

Gushing portraits came from all quarters. More strikingly, major journalists routinely acknowledged that they and their colleagues were caught in a swoon. “So far, McCain has gotten terrific press,” Roger Simon wrote in U.S. News in late September. “The praise has been so lavish, it has been dubbed the ‘McCain Swoon.’ ”

Two weeks later, Geneva Overholser said the same thing in the Washington Post. She cited the hopeful’s “adoring press. The McCain Swoon, it's called.”

Jonathan Alter said it in Newsweek: “It's swoon season on John McCain's bus, the Straight Talk Express.”

Kurtz authored a mocking headline in the Post: “Stop Me Before I Swoon.” In his piece, written in mid-October, he quoted several writers describing the way they themselves had now joined the swoon. “Journalists go weak in the knees around the guy,” Jacob Weisberg had written in Slate. “When I set out to spend a few days with McCain last week, I promised my editor that I wouldn't join in this collective swoon. That proved impossible.”

By late November, the swooning was general over the press corps. No one seemed embarrassed to say so, even though the love affair seemed to violate normal standards of journalistic deportment. But a very different pattern emerged as this press corps continued its war against Gore, a building war which was completing its seventh and ugliest month. Journalists widely acknowledged—if asked—that Gore was getting horrendous coverage. But in this case, no one was willing to state the obvious: The press was at war with Al Gore.

It was OK to cop to The Swoon. Not so with this undeclared war.

Indeed, no one even seemed able to say why the coverage of Gore was so brutal. This awkward group silence became rather clear on CNN late in November…

Before too long, we’ll post the full chapter. (Most work is done on all future chapters.) At any rate, on November 30, Love Canal hit—and a punishing theme turned to stone. No one in the mainstream press could explain that episode either.

Needless to say, your liberal leaders stared off into air. None of the liberal journals complained. The children behaved like good boys and girls. Are you happy with how that turned out?

CAN ANYONE PLAY THIS GAME?

Special report: Sargent’s portrait!

PART 3—CAN ANYONE PLAY THIS GAME: Candidates discuss their children too much! And the Twilight Zone is still highly relevant!

A press corps which finds itself drawn to such topics is unlikely to show much technical competence on the occasions when it feels forced to discuss serious issues.

How incompetent is our current press corps? Let’s consider two fleeting examples. Then, let’s review a discussion from the NewsHour, a program which is supposed to be our smartest TV news show.

Let’s start with Daniel Stone, described here by the Daily Beast as “Newsweek’s White House correspondent.”

Who is Daniel Stone? For one thing, he’s a recent college graduate. In 2005 and 2006, he was editor of the Cal Davis student newspaper—for a while. He seems to have come to Newsweek after working for the TV program, America’s Most Wanted. Not that there’s anything wrong with it!

In this July 4 piece for the Beast, Stone lists what his headline calls the “Biggest 2012 Campaign Whoppers.” Needless to say, there are ten.

Yes, we know, it’s only the Beast—and Newsweek ain’t what it used to be. But Stone’s report is utterly hapless, a virtual parody of reporting. Here are two of his alleged biggest whoopers. Each is attributed to President Obama, although Stone makes some hazy claims about GOP whoppers too:

Pick a Health Care Number, Any Number. While trumpeting his budget ideas, President Obama claimed that under the Republican plan—Paul Ryan’s "Path to Prosperity"—"up to 50 million Americans have to lose their health insurance in order for us to reduce the deficit.” But that number came from vague speculation, much of it partisan.

Lowest Taxes Ever: To combat Republican attacks that taxes are too high, President Obama, on at least two different occasions including his press conference this week, has pointed out that the tax burden on the wealthy is at the lowest point it’s been in 50 years, “since before I was born.” Except that it was lower in 1986, when Obama was 25.

W[hat] was the tax burden on the wealthy lower in 1986? Stone simply makes the assertion, then leaves the matter right there. The reader is given no idea of the basis on which he has made his claim about this top-ten whopper. But then, how about the “vague speculation, much of it partisan,” which allegedly lies behind Obama’s claim concerning health insurance? Obama’s statement may have been wrong. But Stone doesn’t try to explain his claim about that “whopper” either.

As an attempt at journalism, Stone’s piece is an utter embarrassment. But then, how about this news report, which appeared on the Washington Post’s web site yesterday afternoon? Maybe Newsweek has ceased to be Newsweek—but is the Post still the Washington Post?

In this case, we were struck by the famous newspaper’s characteristic semantic fumbling. This is the way the report was teased on the Post web site’s front page:

GOP open to closing tax loopholes in debt talks
In a marked shift, Republicans are willing to close some tax loopholes as part of a final deal to lower the nation’s legal borrowing limit, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor says, but tax increases are still off limits.

In this hazy presentation, we seem to be told that “closing a tax loophole” does not represent a “tax increase,” although “tax loopholes” (tax deductions) have traditionally been included in reports about tax cuts. (For example, President Bush’s 2001 tax cut plan included some changes in tax rates and a whole bunch of tax deductions. No one ever said that the latter weren’t part of the overall tax cuts.) We are also told that Cantor has said that “tax increases” are still off limits. Does that mean that Cantor has rejected increases in tax rates? Or does it mean that he rejected an increase in overall revenues? Such questions were muddled in the tease—and they weren’t much clearer in the news report itself:

SONMEZ (7/6/11): In a marked shift, Republicans are willing to close some tax loopholes as part of a final deal to lower the nation’s legal borrowing limit, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said on Wednesday.

But Cantor said that raising taxes as part of the final debt-reduction package was still off limits.

“If the president wants to talk loopholes, we’ll be glad to talk loopholes,” Cantor said at his weekly roundtable with reporters. “We’ve said all along that preferences in the code aren’t something that helps economic growth overall. But listen, we’re not for any proposal that increases taxes, and any type of discussion should be coupled with offsetting tax cuts somewhere else.”

Republicans had previously rebuffed Democrats’ calls for any comprehensive deficit-reduction package to close tax loopholes such as those for corporate jet owners and oil and gas companies. Such measures, GOP leaders have said, should be considered only as part of a comprehensive tax-reform effort.

If you read that passage with care, it seems that Cantor said that there can be no increase in overall revenues. But the Post reporters did a very poor job clarifying this basic point.

Do such distinctions actually matter? Yes, they matter a very great deal, for various reasons. In a rational world, citizens would want to be very clear about such basic proposals. In a rational world, it would be very surprising to see reporters at our leading newspapers struggling with such elementary distinctions. But things have worked this way at the top of our press corps for a very long time.

By the way, did you know that Rod Serling is still highly relevant? On a related point, why does Bristol Palin’s jaw now look somewhat different?

Our third example comes from the NewsHour, our smartest TV news show. The discussion in question was broadcast last Friday, with Jim Lehrer himself in charge. We’ll offer you a chunk of the chat, though it’s Michael Gerson’s muddled comments on which we will mainly focus. (To watch the full segment, click here.)

As they start, the storied Lehrer and his guest, Mark Shields, are talking about the Republican position on taxes—“or on revenue,” Lehrer said, a distinction he didn’t explain. Things rolled on from there, with Shields and Gerson disagreeing—or something—about where we should go from here. We will focus on Gerson’s statement near the end of this chunk:

SHIELDS (7/1/11): I think the Republicans are irrational. I really do. And I think it’s a politically indefensible and civically indefensible position they have taken.

LEHRER: On taxes.

SHIELDS: On taxes.

LEHRER: Or on revenue. OK.

SHIELDS: On revenue.

The reality is this, that every single group, whether it’s Simpson-Bowles, whether it’s Alice Rivlin and Pete Domenici, whoever it is—semi-serious, we probably should have said: Yes, there have to be budget cuts to deal with the deficit problem and the debt. But there have to be revenue increases.

It’s become a dogma with Republicans now that anybody who votes for a tax increase is no longer a member of the club or the party, and is driven out of the tent. Ronald Reagan raised taxes six times.

The amount of money we’re talking about raising taxes, which would be $400 billion over 10 years, is less than 1 percent of the money to be collected in the next 10 years, less than 1 percent!

And if you look at it—and Senator Inouye presented this yesterday, and I thought it was a brilliant document. If you look at it in terms, Jim, from 2001, the last time that the budget was balanced, the fiscal year, $128 billion surplus, and we look at what we’re spending on discretionary spending—that’s one that isn’t mandated—it is exactly the same, in inflationary dollars and in population growth, as it was then.

Defense spending and wars have gone up 80 percent. Tax revenues are down 18 percent. We are actually collecting $500 billion less in 2011 than we collected in 2001.

GERSON: I think, I think Democrats are being equally unreasonable on the issue of entitlements.

This is our long-term spending challenge. It’s not that we tax too little. It’s that we have expensive entitlement commitments, an aging population, and health care inflation that have made that portion of the budget completely unsustainable.

Democrats will not deal with that in this context. And I think that that’s a failure as well in this system. People are going to have to give in this process. And, you know, right now, everyone knows that this debt limit has to increase, OK. Everyone knows it. But no one knows what the path is, given these deeply seeded disagreements.

And Republicans make the point that we have a historically high level of the economy in spending right now, OK? Which has gone up considerably. The normal level of taxes is more like 20 percent of the economy, I mean, which is well below what— You know, the Republicans just want to bring spending down to historical level of taxes as a percentage of our economy. That’s their argument here, not to bring rates up to cover a larger portion of our economy.

LEHRER: But— OK. We’ve got the differences here.

“We’ve got the differences here,” Lehrer said. But did we have any facts? Shields had made a factual claim. “Tax revenues are down 18 percent,” he said. “We are actually collecting $500 billion less in 2011 than we collected in 2001.” This implied that our budget shortfalls might be connected to lower tax rates. But Gerson answered with a statement most notable for its fuzziness. Let’s look at that statement again:

GERSON: Republicans make the point that we have a historically high level of the economy in spending right now, OK? Which has gone up considerably. The normal level of taxes is more like 20 percent of the economy, I mean, which is well below what— You know, the Republicans just want to bring spending down to historical level of taxes as a percentage of our economy. That’s their argument here, not to bring rates up to cover a larger portion of our economy.

“The Republicans just want to bring spending down to historical level of taxes as a percentage of our economy?” Gerson’s statement was clear as mud. Lehrer’s reaction? Move on!

We’re not trying to tell you who was right on the facts. It’s notable that Shields was relying on a statistical claim that had only emerged last Thursday, after many months of pseudo-discussion concerning these seminal topics.

Here’s what we are trying to tell you:

In a rational world, a nation’s smartest TV news show would have hashed out these factual points long ago. Its famous host might even have some familiar charts and graphs around which to frame such discussions. The program’s viewers might be accustomed to seeing such charts—charts which laid out some basic facts about changes in spending and revenue.

Nothing like that ever occurs in the world where we actually live. Who can forget Ted Koppel’s brilliance near the end of Campaign 2000? Koppel appeared on Larry King Live one night after the first, extremely important Bush-Gore debate.

King played tape of a crucial exchange about Bush’s tax cut proposal. Koppel, in an iconic moment, showed you the street where you live:

KING (10/4/00): OK. Were you impressed with this “fuzzy math,” “top 1 percent,” “1.3 trillion, 1.9 trillion” bit?

KOPPEL: You know, honestly, it turns my brains to mush. I can't pretend for a minute that I'm really able to follow the argument of the debates. Parts of it, yes. Parts of it, I haven't a clue what they're talking about.

At the time, Koppel hosted our smartest news show. But when a press corps’ culture is heavily focused on every manner of trivial nonsense, its leading figures will respond in such ways when asked about topics that matter.

More than ten years have passed since that night. Question: Would Lehrer’s brain have turned to mush had he been forced to explain the subsequent changes in spending and revenue—changes which directly relate to that “1.9 trillion bit?”

Koppel showed you the street where you live. You’ve lived on that street for a very long time. Question:

Why have the liberal world’s top career players routinely refused to complain? Why does the career liberal world accept this silly incompetence?

Tomorrow: Sargent’s portrait

Jim Lehrer pretended to host a discussion. This showed you the street where you live:

CAN ANYONE PLAY THIS GAME!
THURSDAY, JULY 7, 2011

Nicholas Kristof, in from the cold, sets the bar quite low: Every so often, Nicholas Kristof returns to this country from the third world. Typically, he then offers half-baked pensées about what’s wrong “over here.”

Many liberals will be inclined to cheer his column in today’s New York Times. We think they’ll be wrong in that reaction. But first, let’s savor a clue about press corps culture—a clue which appears in the fifth paragraph of Kristof’s piece.

As he starts, Kristof says that he’s going to show us the worst tax loophole of them all. But wait! First, he feels he has to tell us not to go away bored:

KRISTOF (7/7/11): The House speaker, John Boehner, suggests that the Republican threat of letting the United States default on its debts is driven by concern for jobs for ordinary Americans.

We cannot miss this opportunity,” he told Fox News. “If we want jobs to come to America, we’ve got to give American businesspeople the confidence to invest in our economy.”

So take a look at one of the tax loopholes that Congressional Republicans are refusing to close—even if the cost is that America’s credit rating blows up. This loophole has nothing to do with creating jobs and everything to do with protecting some of America’s wealthiest financiers.

If there were an award for Most Unconscionable Tax Loophole, this one would win grand prize.

Wait, wake up! I know that “tax policy” makes one’s eyes glaze over, but that’s how financiers have gotten away with paying a lower tax rate than their chauffeurs or personal trainers. Tycoons have bet for years that the public is too stupid or distracted to note that in many cases they’re paying just a 15 percent tax rate.

Fascinating! In paragraph 5, before proceeding, Kristof feels he has to shake us awake. Something tells him that our eyes are already glazing.

Who knows? Kristof may be right! But here you see a striking clue about the way the mainstream press corps makes its news judgments. Kristof goes on to say that “financiers and tycoons” build their strategies goes around the idea that the public is just too “stupid” to focus on serious topics. But in paragraph 5 of this morning’s column, he seems to build his own strategy around that same idea.

Plainly, Kristof thinks his New York Times readers will find his topic boring. He may be right, or he may be wrong, in that Collinsesque judgment (see below). But we’ll guess a large clue is lodged in that passage—a clue about the way a news org like the Times selects its topics and points of focus.

Are New York Times readers really so “stupid” that they would be bored by those first four grafs? We don’t know, but let’s move on to Kristof’s actual column:

Many liberals will think that Kristof is smacking the GOP good in this piece. That may well be his intention—but in our view, the overall thrust of his half-baked column is really quite different. Wow! As he continues, Kristof names the worst tax loophole of them all—and he sets a very low bar for the GOP to step over:

KRISTOF (continuing directly): What’s at stake is the “carried interest” loophole, and President Obama is pushing to close it. The White House estimates that this would raise $20 billion over a decade. But Congressional Republicans walked out of budget talks rather than discuss raising revenues from measures such as this one.

The worst tax loophole of them all? It’s only worth “$20 billion over a decade!” In the end, the GOP could agree to close a dozen such loopholes. Their action would have a tiny effect on the overall budget problem. Beyond that, their action would have little real effect on the overall incomes of the truly wealthy—and the loopholes they agreed to close could easily be replaced or reinstated in the near future.

(Loopholes are easy; tax rates are hard. A loophole can be taken away quite dramatically, then reinstated quite quietly.)

Closing loopholes of this size doesn’t really address the overall budget situation. But Kristof’s column sets up an easy endgame for the GOP—establishes a very low bar by which they’ll be judged in the end. By this column’s dramatic but trivial standard, the GOP can emerge as heroes without doing any real damage to the real interests of its very wealthy base.

Our budget situation doesn’t turn on a few loopholes, however egregious they may be. But so what? Kristof glosses the larger budget picture, restricting his focus to a few minor outrages. By his standard, the GOP could make a minor concession on revenues and emerge as budget heroes—as masters of mature deal-making. By then, Kristof will be back in the cold again, reporting on outrages in the third world, building the reputation of the Times op-ed page for its lofty values.

Over on today’s letter page, a reader with a wonderful name is pretty much buying the con. Commenting on Tuesday’s column by David Brooks, he says this about the debt limit debate: “I hope that the president holds his ground.” But by all accounts, the president isn’t even asking for major concessions on revenues. If the GOP even meets him halfway, little will have been lost by their wealthy base—and little will have been gained in the effort to reduce future deficits.

Dramatically, Kristof focuses on the most egregious loophole—a loophole that doesn’t amount to squat. He fails to show us the larger picture—to show us what really may be required.

We think Kristof sets a low bar. But then, he’s been out of the country.

About Lady Collins—and Seamus: For decades, the Lady Collins has voiced the view that reporting and opinion must be entertaining or the rubes will wander off bored. (These judgments precede her stay at the Times.)

Who knows? The high lady may even be right! But we pay a very large price for her view. It’s measured in her endless citations of Mitt Romney’s poor abused dog.

Sargent’s portrait! PART 2—DOWD IN THE ZONE

Special report: Frank Bruni was back, with a large Sunday platform, and the gentleman was upset. What had him concerned as he looked at the world?

Simple:

Rick Santorum had “mentioned his seven children” at the first major GOP debate! And no, it wasn’t just Santorum! “Jon Huntsman wasn’t on hand,” Bruni wrote, “but a week later he…and his wife rounded up six of their seven children for an endless trek across a verdant lawn to the podium set up for his presidential announcement.” Meanwhile, Michelle Obama had allowed her daughters to read a book to some South African kids on a recent visit to that country.

Bruni spent his last five paragraphs helping us see that Bristol Palin is a general mess. So it went as the Times’ new op-ed star gazed out on the firmament. (See THE DAILY HOWLER, 7/5/11.)

Bruni’s focus might have seemed a bit odd at a time of peace and prosperity. To us, his topic selection really stood out at a time when his floundering nation is sliding toward the sea. But then, the Times op-ed page has long been a place where the nation learns to be fatuous.

This morning, the queen of that page made Bruni seem like the world’s most serious man.

What’s on the mind of Maureen Dowd as her nation slides toward the sea? In today’s column, the Pulitzer-winner explains how she spent her long weekend. Surprise! Dowd propped herself near her TV set and she watched Twilight Zone reruns:

DOWD (7/6/11): I knew I should have been out eating charred meat or watching a bad Michael Bay movie.

But I couldn’t help myself. Every July Fourth weekend, I get sucked into the spooky little dimension of “The Twilight Zone.” As the annual Syfy marathon proves, Rod Serling’s hypnotic show is as relevant as ever.

If Anthony Weiner had watched it, he might have been more aware of how swiftly, and chillingly, our technology can turn on us. Prosecutors and reporters, dumbfounded by dramatic reversals in the cases of tabloid villains D.S.K. and Casey Anthony, might do well to keep in mind Serling’s postmodern mantra: Nothing is what it seems.

Dowd watched Twilight Zone reruns all weekend. Inevitably, they made her think about Anthony Weiner and two other tabloid events.

In the end, Dowd produced a pointless column about the “endlessly inventive” Rod Serling, who of course can’t be blamed for this.

Is it true? Is the Twilight Zone “as relevant as ever?” If memory serves, the endless sameness of Serling’s scripts began to wear on our 11-year-old set during the program’s first run. When we watch the occasional rerun today, we are constantly struck by how formulaic the various episodes were. How did we 11-year-olds remain enthralled for as long as we did? That’s what we find ourselves asking.

For Dowd, the enthrallment continues. How far ahead of his time was Rod Serling? His brilliance has even been “ripped off” “in a popular new Samsung ad,” Dowd reports. Without the slightest hint of irony, the prize-winner even types this:

DOWD: Looking at this summer’s lame crop of movies and previews you can appreciate Serling’s upbraiding of the entertainment industry for “our mediocrity, our imitativeness, our commercialism and, all too frequently, our deadening and deadly lack of creativity and courage.”

Fiddling dumbly as Washington burns, Dowd praised Serling for his timeless attack on mediocrity.

Dowd has been like this forever, of course. The republic is lucky when she tackles topics like this; the problem starts when she tries to discuss real politicians and real issues. But make no mistake: Over the past twenty-five years, Dowd has been your nation’s most influential print journalist. As a reporter and then as a columnist, she has spread the press corps’ fatuous culture like no one else has.

Question: How has Dowd’s nonsense persisted for so many years with so little liberal complaining? Why have so few of our top career liberals complained as Dowd has made a joke of our discourse? It’s possible to complain about Dowd, as at least two professional journalists have shown. It’s possible to complain about The Culture Dowd Built, but few career liberals have.

Which professional journalists have dared take the measure of Dowd? Again, we’ll recommended that you revisit Greg Sargent’s work in 2008, when he did something quite thrilling—when he routinely named the names of the mainstream scribes who were making a mess of our discourse. Every liberal knows how to rail against the clowning of Rush and Sean. But Sargent routinely challenged Dowd and Rich and others who aren’t in that camp.

Darlings! It just isn’t done! For the results, look around you.

A second journalist took Dowd’s measure in that same election year. That was Times public editor Clark Hoyt, who savaged Dowd’s appalling campaign work in this column on June 22. No one could cover all Dowd’s sins in a single effort, of course. But like Sargent, Hoyt established a basic principle: It’s possible to tell the truth about Dowd and her gruesome work.

(For our own reaction to Hoyt’s column, see the DAILY HOWLER, 6/23/08. And people, Clark Hoyt got results! See THE DAILY HOWLER, 6/25/08.)

Today, your nation is sliding toward the sea—and Dowd is discussing Twilight Zone reruns. She’s telephoning Serling’s friends to ask if he trusted in God. Last Sunday, she walked her way through a cut-and paste column about—what else?—the DSK sex assault case. (Understandably! The Twilight Zone was on!) But then, during her tenure at the Times, Dowd has helped create an utterly fatuous press corps culture. The nation is lucky when she doesn’t pretend to discuss our major events.

Dowd has been a nightmare. This dates to her days as a front-page presence, when she introduced The Snark and The Snide into this nation’s White House “reporting.” But have you ever seen career liberal leaders complain about Dowd or this fatuous culture? Have you ever seen big career liberals complain about where this all leads?

Tomorrow, we’ll look at a bit of the technical incompetence which is now assumed in this fatuous culture. But as your nation slides toward the sea, we ask you to ponder a basic question:

Why have so few major liberals complained about this fatuous press corps culture? Its effects can be seen all around. Why did so few folk complain?

DOWD IN THE ZONE! As her nation slid toward the sea, Maureen Dowd got in the zone:

WEDNESDAY, JULY 6, 2011

What have they done with the real David Brooks: Many people have commented on David Brooks’ remarkable and puzzling column in Tuesday’s New York Times (click here). These are just a few of the things Brooks has now suddenly said:

“The Republican Party may no longer be a normal party. Over the past few years, it has been infected by a faction that is more of a psychological protest than a practical, governing alternative.”

“The members of this movement do not accept the logic of compromise, no matter how sweet the terms.”

“The members of this movement do not accept the legitimacy of scholars and intellectual authorities.”

“The members of this movement have no sense of moral decency.”

“The members of this movement have no economic theory worthy of the name…Members of this tendency [sic?] have taken a small piece of economic policy and turned it into a sacred fixation.”

These comments don’t seem to be typos. Near the end of his column, Brooks says the GOP may now be “an odd protest movement that has separated itself from normal governance, the normal rules of evidence and the ancient habits of our nation.”

These are not flattering comments.

Understandably, liberals and progressives have tended to second Brook’s all-new remarks; Paul Krugman takes a victory lap in this short post. For our money, some of Brooks’ assessments are in fact a bit shrill. But most of all, his new remarks raise an obvious question:

Will the real David Brooks please stand up? Or perhaps the actual question is this:

What have they done with the real David Brooks, the one whose previous columns are hard to square with these all-new thoughts?

Good lord! In recent months, Brooks has pounded away at those who made similar observations about the oddness of Republican conduct and proposals. Now, in a fiery reversal, he hammers away at the GOP in ways which would have seemed unacceptably shrill if they had come from Krugman. Can this be the same David Brooks who wrote all those Ryan Plan-lovin’ columns? If it is, does this perhaps suggest that Brooks doesn’t know what he’s talking about?

Does David Brooks know what he’s talking about? Here’s the way he started this column, in which he trashes the GOP for rejecting Democratic proposals:

BROOKS (7/5/11): The Republicans have changed American politics since they took control of the House of Representatives. They have put spending restraint and debt reduction at the top of the national agenda. They have sparked a discussion on entitlement reform. They have turned a bill to raise the debt limit into an opportunity to put the U.S. on a stable fiscal course.

Republican leaders have also proved to be effective negotiators. They have been tough and inflexible and forced the Democrats to come to them. The Democrats have agreed to tie budget cuts to the debt ceiling bill. They have agreed not to raise tax rates. They have agreed to a roughly 3-to-1 rate of spending cuts to revenue increases, an astonishing concession.

Moreover, many important Democrats are open to a truly large budget deal. President Obama has a strong incentive to reach a deal so he can campaign in 2012 as a moderate. The Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, has talked about supporting a debt reduction measure of $3 trillion or even $4 trillion if the Republicans meet him part way. There are Democrats in the White House and elsewhere who would be willing to accept Medicare cuts if the Republicans would be willing to increase revenues.

If the Republican Party were a normal party, it would take advantage of this amazing moment. It is being offered the deal of the century: trillions of dollars in spending cuts in exchange for a few hundred million dollars of revenue increases.

On-line, the Times has made a formal correction, changing “a few hundred million dollars” to “a few hundred billion.” Anyone can make that mistake, we suppose. But what makes Brooks say that Dems have agreed to “a roughly 3-to-1 rate of spending cuts to revenue increases,” which he calls “an astonishing concession?” There may be an answer to our question. But recent reporting had seemed to say that the Dems were proposing 83 percent in spending cuts as compared to 17 percent in new revenue. That would be a 5-to-1 ratio—but Republicans won’t do that either.

Forget about that 3-to-1 crap! Republican leaders are still saying they won’t permit any new revenues, in line with that “sacred fixation.”

Presumably, no one really knows what has been proposed or agreed to in the ongoing talks. But does David Brooks know what he’s talking about when he talks about these matters? In this column from last week, Brooks pontificated about the appropriate role of testing in public and charter schools. In this case, he typed from the Aspen Ideas Festival—the festival named for the type of thing you’re least likely to encounter if you attend. Can we talk? Despite the lofty setting, we got no sense that Brooks knew what he was talking about in that column either. He did seem skilled, as pundits are, at repeating various types of congenial conventional wisdom.

The Times appended a correction to that column too. Brooks misspelled the name of Caroline Hoxby, one of the conservative-leaning experts whose wisdom he had channeled.

Does David Brooks know what’s he talking about? More scarily: Did the real David Brooks type yesterday’s column? Funny things can happen in Aspen. Did one David Brooks attend the fair, a different Brooks return?

Daoist Diary: They're Here, They're Queer, They're Heavily Armed... Maybe now retired reserve Air Force JAG officer Lindsey Graham will feel safe to ooze out from under the closet door.

Court Orders Immediate Halt to Gay Military Ban

SAN FRANCISCO - A federal appeals court ordered the U.S. government on Wednesday to immediately cease enforcing the ban on openly gay members of the military, a move that could speed the repeal of the 17-year-old rule.

A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco said the "don't ask, don't tell" (DADT) policy must be lifted now that the Obama administration has concluded it's unconstitutional to treat gay Americans differently under the law. The appeals court noted that Congress repealed the policy in December and that the Pentagon is preparing to certify that it is ready to welcome gay military personnel.

As a senior naval officer I considered Don’t Ask Don’t Tell to be the dumbest of a host of ill-advised personnel regulations. I knew so many brass hats who made Hugh Hefner look like Saint Paul but who considered homosexuals and lesbians too “perverted” to serve in “their” Navy.

Get used to it, old boys.

Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) is author of the critically lauded novel Bathtub Admirals, a lampoon on America’s rise to global dominance.