The Dish

It turns out Armstrong Williams isn’t the only aggressive journalistic backer of Bush administration policies who was at one point paid by the Bush administration. Maggie Gallagher, perhaps the chief journalistic advocate of the constitutional ban on civil marriage for gays, also received, by her account, $21,500 in 2002 to write materials related to the administration’s promotion of civil marriage. She never disclosed the income – even though she continued to write as an independent journalist on the issue of marriage, especially the Federal Marriage Amendment. Here’s her defense:

In 2001, HHS approached me to do some work on marriage issues for the government, including to do a presentation on the social science evidence on the benefits of marriage for HHS regional managers, to draft an essay for Wade Horn on how government can strengthen marriage, and to prepare drafts of community brochures: The Top Ten Reasons Marriage Matters, stuff like that.

The contract reads; “ACF is pursuing research to create knowledge about the dynamics of marriage among low-income populations, and potential strategies states might pursue to strengthen marriage. ACF needs additional expertise to accomplish this work.

“Statement of work: The Contractor shall consult with and assist ACF in ongoing work related to strengthening marriage, and provide assistance advice on development of new research activities in this area. The contractor shall performa a variety of activities including (but not limited to) providing information on the programs to strengthen marriage, advising on the dissemination of materials, and participating in meetings and workshops.”

The contract did not authorize a general consulting fee. Instead, it authorized payment for actual work performed, to be submitted and approved via separate invoice.

She argues, reasonably, that her case is not a direct equivalent to Williams’. She received a tenth of the money, and wasn’t paid to be a mere flack for a piece of legislation. She just worked for the government, while seeming to be writing independently of any government position. Howie Kurtz asked her whether she should have disclosed this information:

My first instinct is to say, no, Howard, I had no special obligation to disclose this information. I’m a marriage expert. I get paid to write, edit, research, and educate on marriage. If a scholar or expert gets paid to do some work for the government, should he or she disclose that if he writes a paper, essay, or op-ed on the same or similar subject? If this is the ethical standard, it is an entirely new standard. I was not paid to promote marriage. I was paid to produce particular research and writing products (articles, brochures, presentations) which I produced. My lifelong experience in marriage research, public education and advocacy is the reason HHS hired me.
But the real truth is that it never occurred to me. On reflection, I think Howard is right. I should have disclosed a government contract, when I later wrote about the Bush marriage initiative. I would have, if I had remembered it. My apologies to my readers.

I wonder who else is out there.

Fascinating piece in Slate on how some pro-war conservatives are going green. Why? For the obvious reason that anything that can reduce our dependence on Middle Eastern oil helps disentangle us from Saudi autocracy. I’ve never understood why conservatives in principle oppose tougher fuel standards or conservation measures. Conserving energy is conservative, no? And increasing energy independence is a useful foreign policy tool, no? Where’s the catch? One of my first attempts at policy analysis was a small study for Margaret Thatcher’s private policy institute arguing that the Tories should be far more enviro-friendly. It never caught on. I doubt this new outbreak of sanity will either.

WORDS AND REALITY: Some interesting contrasts from the president’s Inaugural address and actual incidents of torture by U.S. troops in Iraq, made possible by White House memos. A journalist friend of mine who has good sources in the Chinese government recently asked them what their response was to Abu Ghraib. He told me they smiled broadly. “Oh, we loved Abu Ghraib,” they replied. “We just hope your president doesn’t start preaching to us about human rights any time soon.”

RAMESH ON BUSH: Here’s an interesting concession:

Social conservatives have a legitimate complaint with Bush, who does appear to have used them (not to mention gays) for electoral purposes on the marriage question.

Moral values, anyone?

EMAIL OF THE DAY: “The current debate over torture marks the first time the issue has achieved such prominence in American political discussion. But it is hardly the first appearance of the issue. During the Spanish-American War, the use of certain torture techniques by US soldiers in the Philippines grabbed brief newspaper attention. Specifically, in 1902, a soldier was court-martialed for using what was called the “water cure” — forcing a prisoner to consume large amounts of water — as a technique in the interrogation of Filipino insurgents. The soldier invoked “military necessity,” saying that the insurgents presented a grave threat to the safety of his troops and had to be ferreted out.
The Judge Advocate General of the Army took an appeal from the case and addressed the claim that a “military necessity” defense could be raised to justify this conduct. He noted a General Order in effect for the US forces at the time which stated that “military necessity does not admit of cruelty, that is, the inflicting of suffering for the sake of suffering or revenge . . . nor of torture to extort confessions.” Indeed, this has been military doctrine for the US Army since the Revolutionary War, and reflects the famous Order at Trenton issued by George Washington. The Judge Advocate General’s decision goes on, “the [necessity] defense falls completely, inasmuch as it is attempted to establish the principle that a belligerent who is at war with a savage or semicivilized enemy may conduct his operations in violation of the rules of civilized war. This no modern State will admit for an instant; nor was it the rule in the Philippine Islands.”
Of course the Bybee Memorandum and even the DOD Working Group completely ignored military precedents like this and sought consciously to exclude military lawyers trained in such matters. This is an example of the administration’s enforced amnesia about US policy and traditions. The case is reported in 1 THE LAW OF WAR: A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY 814-819 (Leon Friedman ed. 1972).” More feedback on the Letters Page.

Somehow I don’t think Conde Nast will be calling. (Hat tip: Ollie).

“Their inclusion of the reference to ‘sexual identity” within their ‘tolerance pledge’ is not only unnecessary, but it crosses a moral line.” – James Dobson on the SpongeBob TV ad promoting tolerance of homosexuals.

“Today we contemplate the consequences of intolerance, as we recall all those … considered unfit for society – the Jews, the Slavonic peoples, the Roma people, the disabled, homosexuals, among others – (who) were marked for extermination.” – Archbishop Celestino Migliore, the Holy See’s Permanent Observer to the United Nations, commemorating the liberation of Auschwitz.

Kudos to the academy for ignoring the execrable “Fahrenheit 9/11” and the pornographic “Passion.” Right-wing and left-wing ideologues will be disappointed. But what do they know about art?

TORTURE AND THE RIGHT: A cartoon sums up the situation.

By Jeff Jarvis and even the FCC. Just take a look at Jeff’s summary of the right-wing nannies’ complaints. Sheesh.

Military abuse and torture of detainees may be more widespread than the official reports have found. Why? Because many incidents haven’t been reported. One case, uncovered by the ACLU, actually involved a death in U.S. custody that wasn’t recorded at the time. When it surfaced, the case was closed for lack of evidence. If actual deaths are ignored, can you imagine how many Bybee-authorized torture cases we don’t know about? Here’s an example of a case where only minor punishments were meted out:

An officer in the 20th Field Artillery Battalion deployed in Taji, for example, was given an unspecified nonjudicial punishment and fined $2,500 after he admitted to threatening to kill an Iraqi, firing a pistol next to the man’s head, placing the man’s head in a barrel, and watching as members of his unit pummeled the man’s chest and face. One of those who administered the beating told investigators that the officer “had given us a talk about how some circumstances bring about extra force.” Another said the officer told them after it was over: “This night stays within” the unit. “We all gave a hooah” before parting, the soldier said. The document indicates that four soldiers received suspended nonjudicial punishments and small fines, while a decision on a fifth soldier was pending.

Hey, sometimes “military necessity” requires you to pummel a detainee. That’s what the president said, wasn’t it? In that memo distributed as part of the war-plan. And he’s promoted all the architects of that policy, right? And no Republicans are going to complain, are they? Torture is, after all, an integral part of the expansion of freedom across the globe. Hooah.

When Spencer Ackerman notices it, things must be looking up. More interesting data here. For all the criticism of ABC News, this in-depth study would not have happened without them.

British Muslims will not attend Holocaust commemmorations. The reason? Here’s the money quote from one Iqbal Sacranie, secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain:

“We wrote to the Home Office three or four weeks ago. We said the issue of the Holocaust is not really the concern. But we have now expressed our unwillingness to attend the ceremony because it excludes ongoing genocide and human rights abuses around the world and in the occupied territories of Palestine.”

Just when you thought that the new Jew-hatred may not be so bad, you find the truth. Even the memory of Auschwitz cannot shame them into decency.

Theoconservative Joseph Bottum hails Bush’s Inaugural Speech as a Thomist classic. Money quote:

President Bush’s opponents should be afraid of this speech because it signals the emergence of a single coherent philosophy within the conservative movement. Natural-law reasoning about the national moral character gradually disappeared from America in the generations after the Founding Fathers, squeezed out between a triumphant emotive liberalism, on the one side, and a defensive emotive Evangelicalism, on the other. Preserved mostly by the Catholics, natural law made its return to public discourse primarily through the effort to find a nontheological ground for opposition to abortion. And now, three decades after Roe v. Wade, it is simply the way conservatives talk – about everything.

So those conservatives who favor different philosophical traditions have been put on notice. A particular theology now defines the conservative “movement.”

THE CIRCLE CLOSES: The somewhat hideous sight of Jewish cultural critics rhapsodizing about the brilliance of Mel Gibson’s pornographic “Passion” was perhaps merely the logical consequence of the degeneration of the American right. But this piece strikes me as a new nadir. Money quotes from Rabbi Daniel Lapin:

You’d have to be a recent immigrant from Outer Mongolia not to know of the role that people with Jewish names play in the coarsening of our culture. Almost every American knows this. It is just that most gentiles are too polite to mention it … The sad fact is that through Jewish actors, playwrights, and producers, the Berlin stage of Weimar Germany linked Jews and deviant sexuality in all its sordid manifestations just as surely as Broadway does today. Much of the filth in American entertainment today parallels that of Germany between the wars.

Yes, the man knows these were the exact sentiments expressed by Adolf Hitler. He even quotes the Fuhrer. He simply believes that Hitler had a point. When Jews peddle filth, they’re asking for it. Jonathan Rowe caught this. The piece of entartete Kunst that Lapin is repelled by? “Meet the Fockers.” I kid you not.