Month: December 2010

by Conor Friedersdorf

Over at USA Today, they're sounding very serious:

The nation's vast network of more than 3,200 stations and more than 20,000 miles of track combined with the impracticality and cost of screening every passenger leave U.S. subways and rails exposed to the type of terrorist attacks 22 other nations have experienced the last five years.

Having a secure network ultimately is the responsibility of the TSA, which is in the Department of Homeland Security. While the agency has imposed stringent screening of air passengers at the nation's 450 commercial airports, it says it has no similar plans for rail passengers.

The TSA has largely left rail security to local governments, which USA TODAY finds often don't have the capability and money to make systems secure.

Next you'll tell me our public schools, bridges, supermarkets and movie theaters are also vulnerable! This is newspaper journalism at its worst: obvious information dressed up like a news story, complete with sentences like "security analysts say screening all subway and rail passengers is impractical and too costly."

Did you need a "security expert" to tell you that?

"Mass transit systems are much less secure than the aviation sector or certain key government buildings," says Clark Kent Ervin, the Department of Homeland Security's former inspector general.

And they'll likely remain that way, USA TODAY has found in its examination of rail security, which included an analysis of the National Counterterrorism Center's incident database and interviews with Congress, federal security officials, transit authorities, rail operators, independent security experts and passengers.

Is this really the best use the newspaper's editors can find for its investigative reporters? We've already got television to dumb down the news.

by Chris Bodenner

Photo by Matt Bodenner (my Navy cousin).

by Zoë Pollock

Good news for those lacking confidence: according to a new study, the insecure flirt better:

They seem to be acutely attentive to the other person’s needs. They share of themselves; they appear interesting, because they want desperately to seem that way. …The self-confident may have these traits, too, but they’ll stop working so hard when their game’s not proving successful.

Insecure people don’t give up so easily. The same hyperawareness that attends their daily lives—always dressing of-the-moment, always listening to the right new band—also helps when talking with a potential boyfriend or girlfriend. It may be that the insecure are able to perceive how they’re being perceived, then mask their undesirable traits, or at the least counteract them with knowing jokes on the array of topics that their insecurities force them to stay up on.

by Conor Friedersdorf

It's safer to live in Southern California than it's been for a generation:

For the first time in more than four decades, Los Angeles is on track to end the year with fewer than 300 killings, a milestone in a steady decline of homicides that has changed the quality of life in many neighborhoods and defied predictions that a bad economy would inexorably lead to higher crime. As of mid-afternoon on Sunday, the Los Angeles Police Department had tallied 291 homicides in 2010. The city is likely to record the fewest number of killings since 1967, when its population was almost 30% smaller.

Strikingly, homicides in the city have dropped by about one-third since 2007, the last full year before the economic downturn, according to a Times' analysis of coroner records. Throughout the rest of the county, which is patrolled by the L.A. County sheriff and individual cities' police departments, homicides during the same period tumbled by nearly 40%.

I still remember media coverage of the street war between the Crips and Bloods in Los Angeles, a late 1980s visit from Indiana relatives who asked if we worried about getting shot on the freeway, and the awful spectre of the 1992 riots. The statistics above tell the story a city where almost everyone is less wary and afraid than they once were.

by Conor Friedersdorf

"In the end, some sort of bipartisanship will be required to pull America back from the fiscal precipice, and the productivity of this lame-duck December shows that cooperation between the two parties isn’t as impossible as it seemed just a few months ago.

"But when it comes to the hard challenges ahead, comity won’t be enough. Real courage is required as well. And this month’s outbreak of bipartisanship was conspicuously yellow-bellied. Republicans and Democrats came together to cut taxes, raise spending, and give free health care to the first responders on 9/11. They indulged, in other words, in the kind of easy, profligate “moderation” that’s done as much damage to the country over the years as the ideologies of either left or right," – Ross Douthat

by Chris Bodenner

Of the roughly 15,000 posts the Dish published this year, we'd like to look back at the 200 or so that Andrew delved into the deepest – the posts that stood out from the frenetic pace and now hopefully stand the test of time. Below is the first set of keepers, enjoy:

How Cheney Made America A Torture Nation
The ticking time bomb is now an ancient criterion.

"Radical Pacifists"
That's what Marc Thiessen labels people who oppose torture

Did Cheney Understand We Were At War?
How this utter failure gets to pontificate after his record is beyond me.

Sorry, Jonah, Conservatives Do Back Abu Ghraib
Will National Review run a correction for this untruth?

You Are Part Virus
I learned to love my HIV.

Lieberman And McCain Back Netanyahu Against Obama – In Israel
Are you surprised?

"Mentally Unstable"
The Palin selection was a farce; a joke; a disaster.

Ted Olson, A Conservative For Civil Rights
He reminds me why I should hold out hope for conservatism.

Have Gay Men Conquered The Crystal Menace?
Readers know I'm a libertarian on soft drugs, but this stuff is poison.

How Palin Responds To Factual Criticism
She doesn't.

Watching Beck And Palin
FNC is now the RNC.

Ailes' New Political-Media Party
More on the FNC-RNC hostile take-over.

Obama's Substantive First Year
A liberal pragmatist in politics and a conservative in his view of the presidency.

Three Corpes In Gitmo
The very worst seems true.

A Looming Landslide For Brown
This is a nihilist moment.

Both Sides Now
I have yet to see a single proposal from the right that would address the uninsured.

Now: Call The GOP's Bluff
Obama should agree to their healthcare compromise.

Now Fight!
The one huge mistake right now would be to surrender the Senate health reform bill.

The Fiscal Pivot
Obama should shift his attention to the deficit and the long-term debt.

How Natural Is Masturbation?
Now there's a topic for some interesting dialogue.

Live-Blogging The SOTU
"We were sent here to serve our citizens, not our ambitions."

Palin, Emanuel. Pot, Kettle
Did she really just call for Rahm to be fired because he allegedly said "fucking retarded"?

My John Edwards Failure
I displayed a double standard in my treatment of vice-presidential frauds.

Live-Blogging Palin's Tea Party Speech
"I will live and die for the people of America!"

The Latest From Leon
Let me grapple with his first claim, about my citation of Auden's letter to Niebuhr.

Something Much Sadder
Wieseltier attacked me as an anti-Semite without even the candor to say so.

Judis vs Walt
The case for Iraq was pushed most by neocons, Jewish and non-, and Israel was one factor.

The Silence Of The Bishops
On Thiessen's statements supporting torture on Catholic television.

Just The Catholic Church
I despair over its adoption decision in DC.

Joe Stack's Manifesto
Terrorism is terrorism whoever does it.

The OPR Report
It is the lynchpin for prosecuting war criminals.

On Chait
I'm overdue for the response I promised regarding Israel.

"May The Judgement Not Be Too Heavy Upon Us"
Thiessen's torture is not America.

by Zoë Pollock

A reader brightened my day with the above sketch, which amazingly mentions "sausage" as a "good woody sort of word." As a child my family had a store of dog treats called Snausages which I instantly latched onto (in a verbal sense, not in the epicurean) so that I instantly thought of it but was too ashamed to admit. Other readers offered up their favorites, both foreign and domestic. One writes:

My first boyfriend was Filipino, and he told me the word "boondocks," and its shortened "boonies," came from the Tagalog word bundok, for "mountain."  In the Philippines, bundok has become a colloquial way to refer to rural, out-of-the-way places, and in America we use it in exactly the same way. (Apparently the word migrated to English through the American military presence in the Philippines in the early 20th century.)

Another writes:

"Mamacita" is in heavy usage among all my ladyfriends (all from Florida, but only a couple are really latina). Also 'ciao', which down in Fla we didn't pick up from Italy. It's very common in Argentina and Chile, I'm told, so my cafe customers in college imparted that one to me (especially the older gentlemen professors teaching Spanish and Latin American politics).

Another:

[M]y two favorite words in the English language are both fairly commonplace. In fact, I hear one of those words virtually every single day: "evening." I love the simple, quiet poetry of that word, which I (correctly or incorrectly) hear as a gerund: the day even-ing into night. To me it evokes an ancient, maybe even pagan description of a mysterious but predictable and harmless daily process. It's simply a beautiful word, and I think an under-appreciated one.

My other favorite word is "watershed." I can't explain exactly why, but I think it's just a handsome, sturdy, benevolent-sounding word, and all the more pleasing because it gives no particular indication of what it means if you're coming across it for the first time.

And another:

Moist, charm, murmur.

Sounds like a wonderful evening to me.

by Conor Friedersdorf

The New York Times editorial board is on solid ground when it makes this observation:

The whistle-blowing Web site WikiLeaks has not been convicted of a crime. The Justice Department has not even pressed charges over its disclosure of confidential State Department communications. Nonetheless, the financial industry is trying to shut it down.

And I understand the source of their concern when they write:

The Federal Reserve, the banking regulator, allows this. Like other companies, banks can choose whom they do business with. Refusing to open an account for some undesirable entity is seen as reasonable risk management. The government even requires banks to keep an eye out for some shady businesses — like drug dealing and money laundering — and refuse to do business with those who engage in them.

But a bank’s ability to block payments to a legal entity raises a troubling prospect. A handful of big banks could potentially bar any organization they disliked from the payments system, essentially cutting them off from the world economy.

They go on to argue that banks "are not like any other business" – they're "not too unlike other utilities." And here's how they conclude:

What would happen if a clutch of big banks decided that a particularly irksome blogger or other organization was “too risky”? What if they decided — one by one — to shut down financial access to a newspaper that was about to reveal irksome truths about their operations? This decision should not be left solely up to business-as-usual among the banks.

The editorial makes it sound so reasonable for the government to invasively regulate who gets access to a bank's money money that is sent through banks. Its authors nowhere grapple with the fact that our financial institutions severed ties with Wikileaks amid a concerted campaign by the federal government to demonize it, and assertions made by a number of powerful political actors that its leader, Julian Assange, is akin to a terrorist.

The behavior of the Bush Administration and the Obama Administration during the recent financial crisis has brought us to a point where, more than ever before, the bottom line on Wall Street is tied to arbitrary political acts and how favorably one's firm is treated in Washington DC. It borders on myopia to imagine that, if only the FCC regulated big banks like a utility, those financial institutions would've continued to facilitate the ongoing operations of Wikileaks! Far more likely is that the organization would've been cut off much sooner. 

There is a larger point to be made, too. After the excesses of the Bush Administration, the failure to prosecute those within it who committed illegal acts, President Obama's claim that he is empowered to order the extra-judicial assasination of American citizens far from any battlefield, the treatment of Bradley Manning in custody, TSA's recent behavior, the growth of the DEA, the expansion of the surveillance state, and the bipartisan stamp of approval on indefinite detention – among other things! – the federal government has shown itself to be the most likely entity in American life to behave abusively toward American citizens.

I'm as keen as the New York Times to safeguard the ability of future organizations to challenge the status quo. But I have very different ideas about the nature of power and who is most likely to abuse it to terrible effect. Give me a competitive banking industry with lots of firms and a minimal federal role in determining which ones profit. That is the best guarantor that Wall Street won't collude against a private entity.

We're proud to introduce this year's finalists, carefully selected by our blue-ribbon panel. Click the following links to vote for the 2010 Malkin Award, Moore Award, Yglesias Award, Hewitt Award, Von Hoffmann Award, Mental Health Break Of The Year, and Face Of The Year. Also – for the first time -  Chart Of The Year and Hathos Alert are on the ballot. The Shut Up And Sing finalists have likewise been announced; it's now up to you to pick the worst pop song designed to reflect a profound moral conscience. I.e. the smuggest, most pretentious pop song in history.

Among the various contenders for the prizes, a roster of the big names in political and cultural discourse: Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, Kos, Justin Bieber, Bill Donohue, Jim Manzi, Glenn Reynolds, Sean Penn, Bryan Fischer, Keith Olbermann, Bristol Palin And The Situation, Larry Kudlow and … Andrew Sullivan.

We're giving readers a week to pick the winners for these prestigious prizes. The polls will close on the first of the year. You picked many of the entries; we just marshalled the very best/worst for your selection.

Award glossary here. Vote early. Vote often.

The Daily Dish Awards Glossary

Click here to vote for the 2010 Malkin Award!

Click here to vote for the 2010 Yglesias Award!

Click here to vote for the 2010 Moore Award!

Click here to vote for the 2010 Chart Of The Year!

Click here to vote for the 2010 Hewitt Award!

Click here to vote for the 2010 Face Of The Year!

Click here to vote for the 2010 Von Hoffmann Award!

Click here to vote for the 2010 Hathos Alert!

Click here to vote for the Pretentious Pop Song In History!

Click here to vote for the 2010 Mental Health Break Of The Year!

by Conor Friedersdorf

Courtesy of Wikileaks, here's a rundown of how the War on Drugs plays out in various nations, as interpreted by the New York Times:

– In Panama, an urgent BlackBerry message from the president to the American ambassador demanded that the D.E.A. go after his political enemies: “I need help with tapping phones.”

– In Sierra Leone, a major cocaine-trafficking prosecution was almost upended by the attorney general’s attempt to solicit $2.5 million in bribes.

– In Guinea, the country’s biggest narcotics kingpin turned out to be the president’s son, and diplomats discovered that before the police destroyed a huge narcotics seizure, the drugs had been replaced by flour.

– Leaders of Mexico’s beleaguered military issued private pleas for closer collaboration with the drug agency, confessing that they had little faith in their own country’s police forces.

– Cables from Myanmar, the target of strict United States sanctions, describe the drug agency informants’ reporting both on how the military junta enriches itself with drug money and on the political activities of the junta’s opponents.

I've often remarked upon how our drug laws are complicit in creating a black market that destabilizes dozens of nations and ravages countless lives. What this story makes me think is that meddling in the affairs of foreign countries to this degree is going to provoke a whole different kind of terrorist to come after us sooner or later.

The D.E.A. now has 87 offices in 63 countries and close partnerships with governments that keep the Central Intelligence Agency at arm’s length.

Because of the ubiquity of the drug scourge, today’s D.E.A. has access to foreign governments, including those, like Nicaragua’s and Venezuela’s, that have strained diplomatic relations with the United States. Many are eager to take advantage of the agency’s drug detection and wiretapping technologies.

If only the conservatives who are always agitating to shut down a whole federal agency would pick this one. If only liberals wouldn't keep waging the War on Drugs everytime they are in charge of government.