Month: September 2012

Who Cares About Free Speech?

Razib Khan investigates:

American cultural elites are particularly protective of free speech, while the lower orders tend to have attitudes which are more “relaxed,” and would be more in keeping with other parts of the world. Why? One can imagine many reasons, but this republic was founded by prominent and powerful men who were traitors, and who valued their own personal individual liberty. This is not an uncommon tendency; liberty of thought has been one of the privileges of aristocracy throughout human history. One aspect of ancient Greek democratic populism which rankled aristocrats was that the community might censor and restrain the freedoms of those who traditionally had more license to violate communal norms.

The Rise Of Women At The CIA

Among the many new details revealed in the recent SEAL book about the Bin Laden raid was that one of the key CIA analysts involved in the operation was a woman, referred to in the book as "Jen". Inspired by this, Eli Lake takes a look at the history – and newfound prominence – of women at the agency:

Jen is a new kind of CIA officer: smart, self-assured—and female. It wasn’t always like this. In its early years, the agency kept women away from the challenging work of espionage. Often employees with two X chromosomes were relegated to the steno pool, or midlevel analysis work at best.

Not anymore. Jen is a "targeter," an analyst who pores over grainy drone footage and sorts through phone intercepts and other fragments of intelligence to find the exact location of terrorists, drug traffickers, or arms dealers. Since Sept. 11, the CIA has come under heavy, and often negative, political scrutiny. But during this same period, the agency has quietly perfected the art and science of the modern manhunt by training a generation of targeters like Jen. As opposed to the area specialists who analyze a country’s government or economy, the targeters (sometimes called "targeteers") almost always focus on one person or one group. They work in the same units as the case officers and special forces teams that act on their analysis. And in recent years, according to Jose Rodriguez, a former deputy director of operations at the CIA, the majority of targeters have been women.

Morris Award Nominee, Ctd

Renaming The Von Hoffman Award

Several readers are making this point:

I checked your glossary (thank you) for the Morris Award. So I'm baffled as to how the Dorothy Rabinowitz quote you cited qualifies as any kind of "prediction" ("stunningly wrong" or otherwise). I don't see even a hint of any kind of prediction there.

Her article was predicting that the Middle East turmoil would hurt Obama, the night before Mitt put his large foot in it on the Cairo embassy. Another:

I really think the "Dick Morris Award" has a much better ring to it than the "Morris Award". Plus the latter looks and sounds so much like the "Moore Award". I realize the other awards are shortened to last names, but Malkin, Hewitt, and Yglesias are all unique last names, unlike the common "Morris". Sorry if this sounds like nit-picking, but the Dish is usually so precise about things.

We will leave it to readers to decide. You can vote between the two choices in the above Urtak. And no, despite many reader requests, one of the options will not be "The Dick Award". Update: The preference of readers is overwhelming – "The Dick Morris Award" it is.

Romney Tries To Massage The 47 Percent Message

It's not producers vs parasites, or the makers vs the takers. Coordinated with the Drudge report, he cites a 1998 clip from Obama:

"There’s a tape that came out just a couple of days ago where the president said yes he believes in redistribution. I don’t. I believe the way to lift people and help people have higher incomes is not to take from some and give to others but to create wealth for all."

Here's what Obama said:

"I actually believe in some redistribution, at least at a certain level to make sure that everybody's got a shot."

This is not socialism. It's about trying to ensure that "everybody's got a shot." It's centrist American liberalism. But Romney cannot back away from his 47 percent speech, or he loses the base. He can't intensify it, either, because of increasing damage from independents. So he's trying to make the whole thing some condescending message on why he's an American in his economic philosophy and Obama isn't. Nice try. But redistribution is inextricable from the progressive income tax code, and long has been in America. So why isn't Romney favoring a flat tax?

Pew: An Eight Point Lead For Obama

And that’s with likely voters. Money quote:

Obama holds a bigger September lead than the last three candidates who went on to win in November, including Obama four years ago. In elections since 1988, only Bill Clinton, in 1992 and 1996, entered the fall with a larger advantage.

Not only does Obama enjoy a substantial lead in the horserace, he tops Romney on a number of key dimensions. His support is stronger than his rival’s, and is positive rather than negative. Mitt Romney’s backers are more ardent than they were pre-convention, but are still not as enthusiastic as Obama’s. Roughly half of Romney’s supporters say they are voting against Obama rather than for the Republican nominee. With the exception of Bill Clinton in 1992, candidates lacking mostly positive backing have lost in November.

Enter The Two-Minuters

About two minutes of Romney's fundraiser remarks are missing from the recording released by Mother Jones, apparently due to a technical problem with the recording device. Cue the conspiracies:

[T]he omission, first flagged by Glenn Beck's The Blaze, is already causing some controversy on the right. The conservative blog Legal Insurrection sought Corn's explanation and Joel Pollak, editor-in-chief of Breitbart.com, accused Mother Jones of breaking its promise to release the full video. "There is new reason to suspect manipulation," Pollak writes. "Mother Jones's entire story now deserves to be treated with suspicion, if not contempt."

No, Joel. 47 percent of Americans – not Mother Jones' story – are to be treated with suspicion, if not contempt, according to your candidate. By the way, Twitter is having a field day speculating on what happened during those two minutes:

Many more here.