Month: February 2011

by Conor Friedersdorf

A reader writes:

I've read a lot of entitled, self-righteous things in my time with the Dish, but that absolutely takes the…bottle.  So because this guy (or I'm assuming it's a guy) looks down on coke-heads and fame-seekers, you attack him for working where they might go?  In a time of 10% unemployment and economic hardship all around, I somehow doubt he had the luxury of choosing where he wanted to work.  And even if he did, he probably makes more working at someplace with "bottle service" than a soup kitchen or Applebee's. 

Seriously, you lost a LOT of credibility with that comment, and I think you owe an apology.

Another:

It's "douchy." Or "douche-y." Leave the Germans out of it.

And a third:

Really?  The people who are just making a living in the hospitality industry are bigger parts of the douche problem than the needy insecure people who feel the need to trumpet their own importance by bragging of tangential connections to the quasi-celebrities who own or run the venues? I bartended in hotels in NYC all through the 1980s.  The hotel I worked in–the Grand Hyatt–was owned by Donald Trump.  Do you have any idea how many people came to my bar and tried to get special service by saying they were friends of Trump?  Their friendship was even more irrelevant than they knew, seeing as the Hyatt wasn't managed by Trump's people, but by Hyatt's people.  I never even saw Trump more than three times in ten years.

But people wanted to claim that connection.  Maybe it made them feel as if they functioned in the same exalted financial circles as Trump.  Lots of people want to be able to say they "know someone."  People like to think they've got a line on special service–whether by being regulars, or by dropping a massive tip, or by claiming a connection to the owner. Of course, that's being generous.  Sometimes, people are just jerks.  They are desperate to seem more important than they are, and the only way to do that is to make the person serving them jump through hoops.  And that server has to just suck it up and smile.

The cocktail waitress who wrote that blog post is venting to the outside world the things she says to her co-workers all the time.  We never spit in people's food, like they claim in the movies, or did anything to take out our frustrations on all those people who only felt big by making us feel small, and by claiming their connection to someone important they stood on line with in an airport (or wherever. I suppose Donald Trump doesn't actually stand on lines himself.  I don't know–we're not friends).  We'd sit around the bar after last call and tell can-you-top-this stories about the people who made our nights so difficult.  Then we'd go home.

And you're saying that that makes us an even bigger part of the problem.  People who are trying to pay rent, or pay for school, or pay for their kids' school.  People who see some of the wort of human behavior–whether at a businesss hotel or at a hot club.  Something that restaurant and club workers love to say is that the world would be a much better place if everyone had to support themselves for one year in a tipped profession.  Clearly, you would have benefited from such a stint as well.

I really think that readers one and three are imagining a much different industry than am I. Here's the e-mail I sent to reader three: "I think you misunderstand my point – bar-tending at The Grand Hyatt and dealing with Donald Trump friend pretenders isn't anything like the world the blogger is writing about, or the world I am criticizing. The sort of establishment I am referring to is chronicled in this piece. It's a niche that, to me at least, doesn't bear much resemblance to the world where you worked. If you get around to reading what's linked I'd be curious to hear if you agree."

I'd also be curious to hear if these readers still disagree with me after reading that piece. W/r/t my spelling error, however, I am chagrined. Finally, one more:

Ah, Connor, you can come hang out at our table.  We'll teach you how to spell douchey. Fact is, bottle service is fun as hell.  When the club is crowded, it's completely worth it. And DFW wrote his cruise ship piece AFTER extensively experiencing the experience.

Okay, fair enough – I'll email next time I'm in New York City. But next time you're in LA, I'll buy you a better, cheaper drink at a much better bar.

by Patrick Appel

Larison analyzes this poll. He notes that the poll only contacted residents of Cairo and Alexandria, and he warns that were "there a more comprehensive, nationwide poll that reflected the views of the entire population instead of a sample with a heavy urban bias, we might be seeing significantly different results." His view of the findings:

Perhaps most important is the Egyptian assessment of the reasons for the protests. Economic conditions, corruption, unemployment, and poor delivery of basic services top the list and make up a combined 65% of the “first most important reason” category, and they make up 51% of the “second most important reason” category. (Multiple responses were allowed.) This is overwhelmingly a protest about lack of opportunity and economic conditions. For just 3%, “political repression/no democracy” was the first most important reason, and the second most important for another 6%. About one in ten of urban Egyptian respondents sees these protests primarily in the terms that virtually everyone in the West sees them. Just 6% cite abuses by the security services, and another 6% cite the issue of succession. I’d be interested to hear from democracy promotion fans how exactly the U.S. could have been changing poor economic conditions in Egypt by insisting on free elections.

Larison has made a version of this argument repeatedly over the last few days. Here he contends that democratic reforms wouldn't have stopped the Egyptian uprising:

The argument that Western reform advocates make is that pressing Cairo on reform would have somehow headed off an uprising by allowing for gradual political change, as if repealing the emergency law or permitting free and fair elections would have alleviated rising food prices, reduced massive youth unemployment, or distributed economic gains more broadly among the population. The problem here isn’t just that democratists are opportunistically seizing on events in Egypt to make ideological demands on the administration, but that the remedies they have been proposing don’t even address most of the reasons for profound popular discontent.

Earlier he compared Egypt's fledgling democracy movement to Venezuela:

I don’t think anyone expects this group or any other in Egyptian politics to be able to meet Egypt’s economic and political demands. The “Bolivarian revolution” in Venezuela hasn’t delivered good governance, but once Chavez and his allies were in power they rigged the system to make it extremely difficult to remove them from power. Political movements don’t need to succeed in serving the public interest in order to keep their grip on power, and Egypt doesn’t need to suffer from an Islamic revolution to experience even more catastrophic misrule than it is currently experiencing.

Larison's pessimism is a sometimes necessary corrective, but his current campaign against Egyptian democracy is confusing. He requests that fans of democracy promotion in Egypt flesh out the connection between economic betterment and free elections. He's right that democracy by itself can't fix Egypt – democracy is a tool that can be used to fight corruption or it can be perverted to entrench it. The exact effects of democracy on Egypt are unknowable, but Larison's abstract arguments against Egyptian democracy are a lot less convincing when considering the alternative – the continuation of a regime that has already failed its people. Democracy is a high risk, high reward preposition, but at least it has the power to produce change.

by Chris Bodenner

Marc Lynch is stunned by the Egyptian president's latest reaction to his people:

It is virtually impossible to conceive of a more poorly conceived or executed speech. 

Omar Suleiman's televised address which followed made things even worse, if that's possible, telling the people to go home and blaming al-Jazeera for the problems.   It solidified the already deep distrust of his role among most of the opposition and of the protestors, and tied his fate to that of Mubarak.    Even potentially positive ideas in their speeches, such as Constitutional amendments, were completely drowned out by their contemptuous treatment of popular demands.   Things could get ugly tonight — and if things don't explode now, then the crowds tomorrow will be absolutely massive.    Whatever happens, for better or for worse, the prospects of an orderly, negotiated transition led by Omar Suleiman have just plummeted sharply. 

As far as the Obama administration, which seems to have been caught flat-footed by Mubarak's words, Lynch insists, "Now it's time to double down on the push for an orderly transition to real democracy before it's too late — and that is now." Goldblog:

Mubarak's speech seemed disconnected from reality. But such is the nature of autocracy. I fear for tomorrow.

An Egyptian anti-government demonstrator waves a shoe as he shows his anger during a speech by President Hosni Mubarak, who failed to announce his immediate resignation, in Cairo's Tahrir Square on February 10, 2011. Embattled Mubarak delegated power to his deputy and former intelligence chief Omar Suleiman and proposed constitutional reforms but said the transition to end his 30-year-reign would last until September. By Pedro Ugarte/AFP/Getty Images)

by Zoe Pollock

Pema Levy reacts to the House's attempt to cut all funding for Title X, which provides basic care, including cancer screenings and birth control, to low-income women:

I also think this is a trap, so that Democrats will bargain away family-planning funding to Planned Parenthood in an effort to save Title X. So rather than get Pence's bill through the Senate, a pretty impossible task, they distract Democrats by threatening to throw all poor women under the bus. It's a good strategy; Democrats will be so grateful to keep Title X, they'll be happy to cut off the millions of women who get basic care at Planned Parenthood every year.

KJ Dell'Antonia takes the long view:

It's enough to make one suspect that the real target isn't just abortion providers, but family planning and all reproductive choices. That's completely out of step with the views of most Americans regardless of political beliefs. Four out of five Republicans and eight in 10 self-identified "pro-lifers" support women's access to contraception and 86 percent of voters support government health programs that fund state and local family planning agencies that provide that access to low-income women. In many communities, that is Planned Parenthood. But if voters don't wake up to the implications of Rep. Pence's bill, not for long.

by Chris Bodenner

Stephen Walt provides a reality check:

Remember the avalanche of Muslim-based terrorism that was about to descend upon the West? Well, according to the EU's 2010 Terrorism Situation and Trend Report [PDF], the total number of terrorist incidents in Europe declined in 2009. Even more important, the overwhelming majority of these incidents had nothing whatsoever to do with Islam.

The report is produced by Europol, which is the criminal intelligence agency of the European Union. In 2009, there were fewer than 300 terrorist incidents in Europe, a 33 percent decline from the previous year. The vast majority of these incidents (237 out of 294) were conducted by indigenous European separatist groups, with another forty or so attributed to leftists and/or anarchists. According to the report, a grand total of one (1) attack was conducted by Islamists. Put differently, Islamist groups were responsible for a whopping 0.34 percent of all terrorist incidents in Europe in 2009.

by Conor Friedersdorf

Yesterday I encouraged Rich Lowry and other conservatives to ponder the consequences of the way movement magazines treat the right's entertainers, and suggested that on the whole staffers at institutions like National Review don't level with their audience when it comes to assessing talk radio and cable news personalities. Today, I thought it might be useful to delve into what their coverage is actually like. Imagine a rank-and-file conservative who trusts the National Review name, and heads over to NRO in an effort to assess how he should think about Rush Limbaugh. That talk radio host is the single most popular living figure in movement conservatism, so you'd expect his work to be scrutinized by its flagship publication.

I went to NRO, put Rush Limbaugh into the search box, and went through the results in the order they were presented, starting with content that appeared in the print magazine. Here is what I found:

– A short article by Rush Limbaugh himself about his experience meeting William F. Buckley. It includes this passage:

When I started my radio show in New York in 1988, I profusely commented on Buckley and quoted him and NR. Not long after, I was invited to a gathering of NR’s editors at Mr. Buckley’s apartment, the maisonette on Park Avenue. When the day arrived, I had my driver circle the block four times while I mustered the courage to get out of the car and go in. That night I was made to feel welcome in the “conservative movement” by its leader. Eventually he became a confidant and a friend and an adviser; it was just like having another father.

– Jay Nordlinger reviewing the Zev Chaffets biography of Rush Limbaugh. Its treatment of Limbaugh is glowing without exception. The closest the reader gets to criticism of the talk radio host is this:

His role in conservatism is “controversial,” of course. (What a dumb, recurrent word “controversial” is — hard to avoid, too.) When people bash Limbaugh, they sometimes like to use WFB. “Oh, Limbaugh’s no Bill Buckley,” they say. Yeah, so what? Each is his own man. And they have a lot in common. Moreover, WFB loved Rush, and got a huge kick and great satisfaction out of his success. I know this to a certainty. I vas dere, Chollie. People also like to use Reagan, to beat Rush — even people who had nothing remotely good to say about Reagan when he was alive and working. In December 1992, the former president wrote to Limbaugh, “Now that I’ve retired from active politics, I don’t mind that you’ve become the number one voice for conservatism.” He also said, “I know the liberals call you ‘the most dangerous man in America,’ but don’t worry about it, they used to say the same about me. Keep up the good work.”

– A Ramesh Ponnuru piece that mentions criticism of Rush Limbaugh (specifically, his drug use) as an aside to demonstrate that the person making it, Howard Dean, was being hypocritical.

– A single sentence in a Mark Hemingway piece: "Even Democrats have had trouble choosing an elected GOP leader as a target of national attack ads, so they recently settled on radio host Rush Limbaugh."

– A Byron York piece that mentions Rush Limbaugh was amont several conservative targets attacked by MoveOn.Org.

– A Ramesh Ponnuru piece that includes this line: "Even when Republicans aren’t talking about the 2012 race, they are debating who speaks for the party — sometimes explicitly, as when Rush Limbaugh and Michael Steele feuded this spring."

– This passage from Ed Gillespie:

Today, newspapers are folding, Washington bureaus being shuttered. And as the national media have become smaller, they have become even more homogeneous — and that makes it easier for them to indulge their cultural biases and be swayed by liberal blogs. The recent mainstream-media flap over Rush Limbaugh, generated and fueled by the Obama political machine, is only the latest evidence of the changed media dynamic.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs helped move the story along by suggesting that reporters ask Republican members of Congress whether they agree or disagree with Limbaugh’s comments.

Now, this is the kind of suggestion that operatives from both parties give reporters from time to time, but it’s usually whispered at a campaign event, or after half a bottle of wine at one of those painful black-tie press dinners. President Obama’s press secretary can say it right out loud from the White House podium. And instead of being insulted, or asking Gibbs whether it’s proper for a public official paid with taxpayer dollars to say such a thing, the reporters carry out the hit.

– A description of a paywalled piece by Byron York:

After the Fairness Doctrine was repealed in 1987, there was an explosion of talk and information on the radio, and today the business is dominated by Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Bill Bennett, and a long list of other conservatives. Their commercial success, along with the failure of a number of liberal talk-radio ventures, has led some influential people in Washington to argue that the Fairness Doctrine should be revived. 

– In a piece on Michael Steele, Ramesh Ponnuru says this:

Republicans began reconsidering Steele just weeks after he won the race for chairman of the Republican National Committee. He trashed Rush Limbaugh on CNN — calling his show “ugly” — and then apologized to him. As a coda to the controversy, Steele told the Washington Post, “I’m in the business of ticking people off.”

– Jay Nordlinger writes:

Frankly, one of the best things I know about President Obama is that he plays golf…The legendary teacher Harvey Penick once wrote a book with a memorable title: “And If You Play Golf, You’re My Friend.” I imagine that President Obama and Rush Limbaugh would enjoy a round of golf together. I’d like to make a third!

– A humor piece by Rob Long that I can't really describe, but isn't germane to this exercise.

– A piece by Jeffrey Bell that asks this question:

For conservatives, the populist question is front and center once again.

It began last year with divergent reactions among conservative elites to John McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate. That controversy continued beyond the defeat of the McCain-Palin ticket and is far from over today; it has branched out into a debate over Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, other conservative cable and radio hosts, and the town-hall/tea-party phenomenon of vigorous pushback against President Obama and his policies. Is the negative, take-no-prisoners style of the conservative talkers and tea-partiers gratifying in the short run but fatal to the prospect of a conservative comeback in the medium and long run?

Later in the piece he adds this:

As for the supposedly hate-filled radio and cable hosts, I remember their mood in the immediate aftermath of Obama’s inauguration as rather fatalistic. They of course welcomed the populist upsurge, but in its initial stages they seemed as startled as anyone that it was happening so fast and in so many different places, with so little evident top-down leadership or coordination.

If the populist upsurge had little to do with Republican officials or the talk-radio/cable-TV jockeys, how did it begin?

The piece never answers the question it posed about the negative, take-no-prisoners style, except to assert (accurately, I think) that talk radio didn't have much to do with conservative entertainers one war or another.

– In a piece on the Grammy's, Jonah Goldberg writes, "Politics has nothing to do with the selection process. This was a straightforward judgment based solely on merit, damn it. So if you’re listening, Ted Kennedy, you’d better bring your A-game if you hope to beat the likes of Rush Limbaugh!"

This is an imperfect look at the content of NR – the  magazine publishes a lot of stuff online, after all, and the magazine search function only goes back to 2004. Still, I think this is sufficient for a fair idea of what our hypothetical conservative would get if he turned to the magazine as a source on this subject: Rush Limbaugh was a confidant and friend of William F. Buckley; Ronald Reagan himself passed the baton to the talk radio host; his biography is uniformly positive, as it should be; Obama acts improperly in efforts to stop him; he plays golf; he is often unfairly or hypocritically attacked by liberals; he's been criticized by Michael Steele; the notion that his brand of populism does long term damage to the right isn't backed up by any persuasive evidence, although some people do think it; and he desserves to win a Grammy.  

This reader would be completely in the dark about the strongest critiques of Rush Limbaugh, the actual arguments offered by people think that he hurts rather than helps the conservative movement, thoughtful commentary on the role that populist entertainment should play on the right, or the fact that lots of NR writers themselves have cogent criticisms of the talk radio host, whatever their overall assessments of the man.

The fact is that if you were improbably friends with Jay Nordlinger, Ramesh Ponnuru, Rob Long, Jeffrey Bell, Jonah Goldberg, Byron York, Mark Hemingway, and Ed Gillespie  – and if over the course of a few weeks you sat down to dinner with each of them and asked their candid, off-the-record thoughts on Rush Limbaugh, the substantive quality of his commentary, and his relationship with the conservative movement – you'd come away with a wildly different impression than what you get reading the print magazine. And if you broadened your sampling of NR writers the gulf would only widen.

Obviously I am known for my belief that talk radio and cable news are doing grave damage to the right, and hurting the country generally by lowering the quality of its politica discourse. But one needn't buy into my critique to acknowledge that there is a real disagreement on the right, even among self-described conservatives, about the role of the movement's entertainers – a debate NR is failing to adequately cover.

To drive home that point, consider a recent project I undertook: back in the autumn of 2009, I e-mailed Republican Party County Chairmen all over the United States, asking them a number of questions, including one on the subject of talk radio: There's been a lot of debate about the role that talk radio and cable news hosts should play on the right. Particularly controversial are Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly and Mark Levin. What do you think about these folks? Do they help the right or hurt it (or is it more complicated than that?) How should Republicans interact with them?

Unsurprisingly, the most common answer was that these figures were a boon for conservatism. Still, various GOP County Chairmen were willing to go on the record to express these sentiments too:

Their listeners do not always or ever understand that they are entertainers. I'm not discounting their ability to formulate opinion or the good they might do as watchdogs. However, we must understand that in order for them to be successful, they have to have good ratings. Their decisions therefore are not based on the good of the Republican Party, but on how certain subject matters will affect ratings. We have to clearly delineate between members of the Republican Party and entertainers. We should be careful to ensure that people do not feel they are speaking for the Republican Party.

Here's another man's answer:

They could actually help the Republicans get their message out, but that would be a problem as it seems the Republicans don't actually have a concrete message. And I am not trying to slam the GOP. Many state officers are working on messages, that is great. But overall, there seems to be a national problem. And if they try to get a message out, good luck with any news media. (I will give a positive here; the networking through the web is a great move for dispersing information. In my state we are doing this.)

It seems many Americans see these news people as entertainers who sometimes actually have a message. The news people seem to enjoy stirring the pot, but nothing ever comes of what they talk about, no solutions are ever reached. Glenn Beck would maybe one exception here, but he doesn't necessarily cover all that many conservative issues, but he has made some efforts in getting a voice for issues. People seem to searching for a leader through these news people. Somebody is in for a let down. More than anything these news people seem to be pacifiers for a restless public.

And another:

Its more complected than simply help or hurt. Remember that it was 3 Clintonistas who have reincarnated as Obamunists, Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, Paul Begala, and James Carville, who started the '"Limbaugh strategy" to deflect attention from what Obama was doing. The talk show hosts and their staffs do the research and disseminate the information that main stream media won't. Overall they help. The Party should listen to them, as I do, but not let them set the policy.

Yet another:

Put them in their place by subordinating them to a cadre of true Republicans Leaders. True Leadership should speak for and be the face of Republicanism with the 'boys" as cheerleaders.

Still another:

It is certainly more complicated with that. However, most of these men are critical in getting the conservative word out to the public. Hannity wears me out quickly, same shit over and over. I’ve tried, but can’t listen to Levin; the constant Libertarian stuff also wears me out. I watch O’Reilly, agree with about half of what he says, but he is certainly not a leading conservative or Republican. Only NY and DC would think he is a Republican. Limbaugh has been a conservative voice for a long. I don’t listen to him anymore, but I appreciate the fact that he is out there keeping people stirred up and informed. Beck is really something else. He has struck a nerve with people who are fed up with Washington and corruption. I probably agree with 75% of his views. He alone is responsible for the groundswell of conservative, patriotic resistance that will kick the liberals’ asses in 2010. He is a little scary, but God bless him.

Another response to the same question:

Levin, Limbaugh and Hannity are genuine and fine leaders of conservatism in their own ways. O’Reilly and Beck are not genuine, both have moved their positions to attempt to be popular over the years. Interestingly as well, both O’Reilly and Beck are clearly lacking a depth of understanding of conservative political philosophy. Hannity rarely shows depth on his radio show but seems to have it. The GOP should deal with them just as any candidate or party does with an old fashioned editorial board – attempt to persuade when possible, to win over when needed, and recognize that at times the Party will be at odds with them.

And one more:

I have never watched any of them, so I cant comment on specific content. I think they helped in 1994 because it was a new phenomenon, and the American public mistook it for alternative news. In 2009, it just frustrates the conservatives more to hear it. I don’t think berating the President is proper under any circumstances, but I also think that the American people are becoming very cynical about politics. I don’t think they (Rush, Hannity etc) make that any better, but I have never seen them so I don’t know. I think we have to be careful not to push the conservatives away from politics because they are frustrated and feel the game is rigged. We need to send the message that participation can help to oppose those things you do not agree with, not simply point out how soft the media is on him. I am sending invitations out to a fund raiser for our county party, and apathy is a problem right now. I think conservative talk radio has a lot to do with that.

To me, it's striking that America's GOP County Chairman, emailed at random, have a broader, more forthright, and sophisticated debate about the role of talk radio on the right than does the print version of NR, which draws on some of conservatism's sharpest and most knowledgeable writers. And it leads me to believe that if the magazine was more forthright in reflecting the diversity of views among its staffers, readers out there in the rank-and-file might be more open to the conversation that one might imagine. As I've proved, even staunch fans of talk radio can have their minds changed about the value of their favorite hosts!

by Chris Bodenner

The Guardian's Matt Wells is in Tahrir Square:

At one point Mubarak made a reference to being a young man and understanding the young men of Egypt – basically the people who are here – and at that moment the whole square erupted in anger. At that point, the whole square exploded in anger. The way that Mubarak is comparing himself to the people on the ground infuriated them.

And when it became clear that the that Mubarak intended to stay on until September, the square shook with fury. "We are not going until he goes," they chanted.

There is real anger and real fury and people are not quite sure in which direction to channel it. As I speak to you now, one man is holding a banner next to me which says: "Freedom or I die here." Tears are running down some people's faces. They really thought he was going to go.

There is a feeling that people want to get on the move now. I can hear this chant: "We'll go to the palace and tear him out."

Suleiman just addressed the protesters in a live broadcast. Money quote:

Go home now.

EA:

2155 GMT: There are now reports that thousands of protesters are now moving towards state TV building in Cairo.

(Photo: Tens of thousands of Egyptian anti-government protesters chant slogans and wave their national flag as they crowd Cairo's Tahrir square on February 10, 2011 amid rumors that President Hosni Mubarak appeared to be on the brink of stepping down. By Patrick Baz/AFP/Getty Images)

by Patrick Appel

Mubarak promised a few constitutional reforms, but those don't neccessarily mean anything, as Tamir Moustafa makes clear:

[T]he legal conundrums that Egypt faces are far deeper than the constitution. The regime has spun out illiberal legislation for decades, making constitutional guarantees on fundamental rights ring hollow. Laws regulating the press, political parties, police powers, elections, trade unions, non-governmental organizations, and just about every other area of political and social life are designed to strengthen the hand of the executive. These are precisely the laws that political activists challenged in the courts over the past three decades, but the same dynamic always played out:  When litigation succeeded in striking down legislation, the regime would simply use its rubber-stamp People's Assembly to hammer through new legislation, often times more illiberal than the last iteration. 

by Chris Bodenner

Watch his address live on Al Jazeera. The Guardian's Richard Adams is blogging details:

Mubarak's not stepping down, that much seems clear, although exactly what that means with his previous statements about the army implementing change isn't clear.

Tahrir Square is going nuts, based on the live footage. … No one in Tahrir Square is listening to the rest of the Mubarak speech. The chant is: "Get out, get out."

… A clear translation of Mubarak's words will take a while so it's hard to know exactly what Mubarak was saying. But from the reaction on the ground, it seems that these minor concessions will not be enough. There was little that was new in Mubarak's speech, and he granted some powers to Omar Suleiman, but little else and far less than many were expected. None of this meshes with the statements issued by the military leadership today: that hints at a palace civil war going on behind the scenes. …

Mubarak says he's asked for the amendment of articles 76, 77, 88, 93 and 181 of the constitution, and abolishing the controversial article 179. Article 179 is the emergency law that has been a huge issue and a major demand of the protesters. The rest involve the powers and terms of the presidency but we'll get more details later.