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Model Three: I thought Model Two would be a workable model for years, until either the MSM itself went totally online or until almost all voters stopped paying attention to it. I was wrong! The Edwards scandal did Model Two in. For months, the MSM failed to report the increasingly plausible rumors of John Edwards' extramarital affair even as it became the widespread topic of conversation in blogs, in the National Enquirer, and among political types. The disconnect turned out to be painfully embarrassing for the MSM, especially when the rumors were finally "verified" with Edwards' confession. A lot of...

Edwards: 'I Lied. It's Friday. Can I Go to Denver Now?' John Edwards finally confesses, sort of, on ABC News. He admits he lied repeatedly about his affair with Rielle Hunter, but denies he's the father of her child and specifically seems to be trying to deny cheating on his wife after the recurrence of her illness:

Will the Pro-Obama Bias Turn Anti-Edwards? At this point, does Barack Obama want John Edwards to even show up in Denver, much less give a prime time speech? Even if the Love-Child saga progresses no further than it already has, an Edwards Denver appearance will inevitably be accompanied by renewed speculation about his seemingly scandalous and politically toxic behavior. Obama's in what looks like a surprisingly close race. He doesn't need to carry Edwards' baggage. He needs a positive convention. And Obama has previously shown a willingness to bury troublesome associates without much fuss (ask Jim Johnson). If you're an...

As you may have heard, the National Enquirer claims to have ambushed former presidential candidate John Edwards in the Beverly Hilton the other night, where he was allegedly ronday-voo'ing with his alleged mistress and their alleged love child. Alleged alleged alleged alleged alleged! The newspaper reports that its team confronted Edwards about it, and he ran away and hid in a men's room until security forced the reporters away. The paper says it had a photographer present; I want to see pictures. Still, the Enquirer, as sleazy as its tactics strike many people, has a better reputation on stories like...

Today, the Los Angeles Times ordered its bloggers not to talk about the story. Here, via Kausfiles, is the memo from an editor there: Hey bloggers, There has been a little buzz surrounding John Edwards and his alleged affair. Because the only source has been the National Enquirer we have decided not to cover the rumors or salacious speculations. So I am asking you all not to blog about this topic until further notified. If you have any questions or are ever in need of story ideas that would best fit your blog, please don't hesitate to ask Keep rockin,...

LAT Gags Blogs: In a move that has apparently stirred up some internal discontent, the Los Angeles Times has banned its bloggers , including political bloggers, from mentioning the Edwards/Rielle Hunter story. Even bloggers who want to mention the story in order to make a skeptical we-don't-trust-the-Enquirer point are forbidden from doing so. Kausfiles has obtained a copy of the email Times bloggers received from editor Tony Pierce. [I've excised the recipient list and omitted Pierce's email address]: snip

LA Times Blog EditorVia Mickey Kaus, we learn that the Los Angeles Times has apparently banned its bloggers from mentioning the Edwards/Rielle Hunter story.

Dreams of My Father ... Page 293 (paperback edition) Obama remembers a sermon by Rev. Jeremiah Wright: "... It is this world, a world where cruise ships throw away more food in a day than most residents of Port-a-Prince see in a year, where white folks' greed runs a world in need, apartheid in one hemisphere, apathy in another hemisphere ... That's the world! On which hope sits." And so it went, a meditation on a fallen world. While the boys next to me doodled on their church bulletin, Reverend Wright spoke of Sharpesville and Hiroshima, the callousness of policy...

Greg Mitchell ridicules Bill Kristol for insinuating that Barack Obama was a Marxist for saying that residents of economically depressed small towns "cling to guns or religion ... as a way to explain their [economic] frustrations." But of course it was a Marxist thing to say, wasn't it? If Democrats_had delivered on the economy, Obama suggests, all_those GOP cultural "wedge" issues would lose traction. This idea--that the economy trumps culture--isn't new. It's "materialism." The economic "base," Marxists would argue, determines the cultural "superstructure." If the economy changes (i.e. if small town Pennsylvanians get well-paying jobs) then the superstructure will change...

"All of the statements that have been the subject of controversy are ones that I vehemently condemn." --Barack Obama This seems to be the General Rule of Obama--if it's going to damage him, he condemns it! And rejects and denounces. Vehemently! The Rule would seem to apply to all past and future controversial statements--his campaign could get that sentence printed up on little laminated cards and hand them out to reporters, or include them after the statements of all Obama surrogates, like those fine-print 'void where prohibited' waivers. "Condemned if controversial."

Think of what she won't get done! Mickey's Single Issue Voter's Guide: Suppose you were a single issue voter, and your single issue was immigration. Specifically, you were opposed to legislation that combines some form of amnesty (legalization of existing illegal immigrants) with tougher border enforcement. If so, you would probably be pretty depressed right now--three of the four leading presidential candidates explicitly favor such "comprehensive" reform. The fourth, Mitt Romney is the least likely to win. And even he's suspected of being a closet comprehensivist. But you still have to vote. Before you did, you'd want to ask: Which...

Mickey Kaus writes: Do you sense there is some large mass of dark matter, an unseen Scandal Star, the gravitational pull of which is warping the coverage of what seems, on the surface, a pretty dull presidential race? I do. So does Ron Rosenbaum. I thought the Dark Star was the Edwards affair allegation. But Rosenbaum says "everyone in the elite Mainstream media" knows about another juicy scandal that the LAT is supposedly sitting on. I guess this is proof that I’m not in the elite, because I don’t know what he’s talking about. … My vestigial Limbaugh gland tells...

It's not just Rasmussen: First Read notes underpublicized results in the latest WSJ-MSNBC poll indicating public dissatisfaction with the immigration "grand bargain"--including disapproval of the very provisions many MSM outlets claim popular support for. The latest NBC/Wall Street Journal has plenty of numbers suggesting that getting the immigration bill through the Senate -- and then the House -- won't be easy. In it, 46% believe immigration helps more than it hurts, while almost the same amount (44%) think the opposite. In addition, majorities oppose some of the Senate immigration bill's legalization provisions: 64% are against allowing illegal workers to receive...

Lott Lashes Out! GOP Senate whip Trent Lott attacks "these talk-radio people who don't even know what's in the bill." The New York Times reports: Comments by Republican senators on Thursday suggested that they were feeling the heat from conservative critics of the bill, who object to provisions offering legal status. The Republican whip, Trent Lott of Mississippi, who supports the bill, said: "Talk radio is running America. We have to deal with that problem."At some point, Mr. Lott said, Senate Republican leaders may try to rein in "younger guys who are huffing and puffing against the bill." [E.A.] a)...

OK, why did Fox News have to cover that volcano erupting? As I said, conservatives can't count on Fox to keep the immigration debate boiling. Fox isn't the conservative cable channel. It's the Bush cable channel. Try to find the immigration bill controversy on the Fox home page. (It's there, but you have to look way down. Even then it's spun deceptively in a pro-Bush way: "As plan moves forward in the Senate will House sink it?" As if it's already a done deal in the Senate and only those Pelosi Dems stand in the way. ... )

Ms. COULTER: ... It's sort of standard, feminist doctrine 101, and psychological doctrine that wildly promiscuous heterosexual men, you know, still believe in a place called Fire Island. I don't think it's that hard to believe, except that it happens to be, you know, being said about feminist great hero Bill Clinton, so they pretend they've never heard this before. I--I'm--I don't know why this should be a particularly startling statement. ...[snip] ...

The Cannon Con When immigration-legalization backers pose as something else. But wait: there's a deeper lack of contrast. Bilbray ran on a platform of opposition lto illegal immigration. Meanwhile, Cannon ... also ran on a plaform of opposition to illegal immigration. Here's the text of a last-minute Cannon TV ad, as reported in the Salt Lake Tribune: "I'm Congressman Chris Cannon and I approve this message." Female announcer "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free." Male announcer: " But Congressman Chris Cannon says only if they come here legally." It's all eerily reminiscent of...

Excitable Times in Ruins! Did the New York Times really run a story last week headlined: More Clashes Shake Iraq; Political Talks Are in Ruins "Ruins"? Wow. That is embarrassing. ... The hed was repeated in the story's lede, which said that "political negotiations over a new government" were "in ruins." Funny thing, though--in today's NYT, negotiations seem to be going on again. Those Iraqi "ruins" get picked up pretty quickly. ... P.S.: I'm not saying Bill Keller's** headline and lede writers were amping up the Iraq hysteria in order to manufacture another Tet. Maybe they just have no judgment...

Mickey Kaus at Kausfiles.com says that the gay-cowboy movie Brokeback Mountain has the same marketing strategy as Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11. Both, he says, have been hyped as blue-state movies that are reaching and changing minds in the cities of red America. He calls this the "Heartland Breakout Meme”. ("Meme" refers to a cultural copying unit that hops from brain to brain without much thought or any at all). What Kaus means is that the mainstream media keep reinforcing ideas liberals want to believe, whether they are true or not. But the alleged breakout of Fahrenheit appears to be myth,...

The Bubble Tightens! According to E&P, he New York Times has decided that only TimesSelect subscribers should be allowed to e-mail Paul Krugman, Maureen Dowd, David Brooks, et al. Not only do you have be a paid ($49.95 for non-print-subscribers) TimesSelect purchaser, but instead of being able to put an address in a mail program and fire it off at your leisure, TimesSelect subscribers now have to fill out an online form similar to the generic feedback forms found on many Web sites. Previous TimesSelect experiments deprived the paper's columnists of having their voices heard. This one threatens to deprive...

Rep. Murtha on whether the Iraqis will throw us out: [T]he military won a military victory. They got rid of Saddam Hussein. ...[snip] ... Now, it's got to be a political win. They have to win this politically. The Iraqis themselves. We'll stay there forever. The Iraqis are never going to say turn it over. We can't allow them to say when it's gonna turn it over.--This Week, 12/4/05 You're gonna see the Iraqis clamoring. Listen, anybody we support in Iraq loses the election. And so they're gonna be clamoring for us to get out. -- same show, a few...

Note to hapless LAT publisher Jeffrey Johnson: Instead of reviving Robert Scheer's dormant career by firing him, or having your telemarketers boast that you've extirpated liberal Michael Kinsley's insidious influence, why not pay attention to the bias on the pages people actually read--like the embarrassing deception in the second paragraph of Friday's front-page, two-column-headline lead story, which seemingly proclaimed that "no Democrat was a firmer ally" of Bush's war against Saddam than Rep. John Murtha, when in fact Murtha had been a critic of the current Iraq war in 2002, before it started? Funny how those propagandistic mistakes in the...

An "entanglement" exception to the First Amendment? The Times' Incoherent Turn Against Judy Miller: The NYT's editor, Bill Keller says [I]f I had known the details of Judy's entanglement with Libby, I'd have been more careful in how the paper articulated its defense, and perhaps more willing than I had been to support efforts aimed at exploring compromises. Maureen Dowd writes [$]: [B]efore turning Judy's case into a First Amendment battle, they should have nailed her to a chair and extracted the entire story of her escapade. I'm confused. What, exactly, would Keller have learned about Miller--i.e. what does he...

Kaus goes on a rant about--among other things--our federal system. He seems to wish US Army troops could march into any state or city at any time and do what they want. Never does he ackhowledge that federalism is the foundation of our freedoms, the only way we have of monitoring that part of government that affects us most intimately.

A 'Weather Nerd' in Indiana Sent a Warning to the Mayor By ANDREW ADAM NEWMAN One of the earliest and perhaps clearest alarms about Hurricane Katrina's potential threat to New Orleans was sounded not by the Weather Channel or a government agency but by a self-described weather nerd sitting on a couch in Indiana with a laptop computer and a remote control. "At the risk of being alarmist, we could be 3-4 days away from an unprecedented cataclysm that could kill as many as 100,000 people in New Orleans," Brendan Loy, who is 23 and has no formal meteorological training,...

Recent multiple exposures to Westside L.A. liberals confirms that (as George Will and Kevin Drum suggest) Hillary Clinton is currently heading for a much bigger train wreck in her party than anticipated--a wreck all her cautious planning failed to anticipate, and probably exacerbated. The same press drumbeat of defeatism about Iraq that has helped bring down Bush's numbers has also emboldened the party's mainstream left base (i.e., not just MoveOn or the DailyKos crowd). They hardly care whether Hillary is a member of the DLC. But they do not want to support someone who voted for the war, as Hillary...

Stone: 'Terrorists Are Like Einstein!'Why he shouldn't direct Paramount's big 9/11 film.By Mickey KausUpdated Tuesday, July 12, 2005, at 12:23 PM PT Does Brad Grey Have NEXIS? Here's what Oliver Stone, the man Paramount CEO Brad Grey picked to direct the studio's upcoming 9/11 picture, had to say about those events a month after they happened, as reported in The New Yorker. It's the smoking gun on the grassy knoll! Stone depicts the 9/11 attack as a "revolt" against the "six companies who control the world" and "control culture, and control ideas"--not oil companies, in other words, but media companies. 9/11 was, in short,...

Everything the New York Times Thinks About the Florida Recount Is Wrong!It turns out the U.S. Supreme Court really did cast the deciding vote ...By Mickey KausPosted Tuesday, November 13, 2001, at 1:18 AM PTJust when you thought the Florida recount story was settling down into a familiar bitter partisan dispute, the Orlando Sentinel has changed the story line again. The Sentinel, remember, was the paper that first uncovered the hidden cache  of valid, uncounted "overvotes"—seemingly double-voted ballots that, as the massive media recount of Florida has now confirmed, were the key to a potential Gore victory, if only ...

Friday, June 17 James Taranto and Mickey Kaus on Kudlow this afternoon discussing the meltdown of Dick Durbin My friend Larry Kudlow, on his CNBC show Kudlow & Company, held blogger court this afternoon with Mickey Kaus of Slate, and Wall Street/Opinion Journal's James Taranto. Here's the transcript from earlier this afternoon: LK: Welcome back, everyone. You know, we always say that what happens in Washington matters to business, and to Wall Street, but has the president dropped the ball on two issues, tax reform, and is Congress giving up on social security? Those are big for the stock market....

1600 READING [Rod Dreher]We had White House communications director Dan Bartlett in today for an editorial board meeting. I asked him if blogs fit into the WH's communications strategy. He said he has people on his staff whose full-time job is to monitor the blogs to keep up with what's going on. I asked him what the most important blogs to read, from the White House's point of view, are. He said that in terms of what influences the mindset of the Washington media, Kausfiles, the Slate daily roundup of the papers, and Andrew Sullivan were crucial ones to keep...

Wade's Wish: Boston Globe Managing Editor Mary Jane Wilkinson, explaining why her paper is not going to make public the Kerry military records it has received: It is my understanding that Kerry will release these papers to anyone else now that he has signed the Form 180. Wilkinson's understanding would be wrong, according to the New York Sun's Josh Gerstein, to whom Kerry denied the records. A Navy spokesman, Lieutenant Commander Daniel Hernandez, said the waiver applied only to the Boston Globe and did not authorize release of Mr. Kerry's records to the public."Kerry controls the release of his records,"...

It's worth asking if Senator McCain and his band of self-glorifying depolarizers are really just brave statesmen who, unlike their critics, "managed to put principle above self-protection," in a Washington Post editorial's adoring words. Why, after all, are so many people in Washington attached to the Senate's "right to unlimited debate"? ..Is it because the filibuster, and the exaggerated power it gives to both minorities and individuals, is the basis for much of the Senate's--indeed Washington's--corrupt cash economy? Without the filibuster, after all, senators in the minority party wouldn't be nearly as big a deal. They couldn't block legislation--so lobbyists...

I hadn't realized that the surprising ABC poll about the Schiavo case--showing overwhelming anti-tube sentiment--was so badly worded and biased. (For one thing, it deceptively tells pollees that Terri Schiavo is on "life support." * For another, it leads with the flat assertion that "Doctors say she has no consciousness and her condition is irreversible."**) Michelle Malkin and "Captain Ed" Morrissey are onto the ABC poll. ... Malkin, Morrissey and Powerline also raise doubts about that clumsy Republican talking points memo that ABC's Linda Douglass first trumpeted. I'm not so sure that you'd expect a letterhead on such a hastily-drawn...

For the Record: Here's how ABC's Peter Jennings, barely concealing his disdain, ended his evening newscast's coverage of the Schiavo case this evening: The story for today and we suspect that it's for today only. You think so? I don't. ... Update: Reader O. suggests Jennings was merely saying, in effect, "this is a fast-changing story." That might be plausible if Jennings' kiss-off hadn't followed a Jake Tapper piece asking "how serious was Congress really about trying to save this woman's life?" and quoting Norman Ornstein to the effect that it was all a stunt. ("If they really wanted to...

What's the pro-Bush number in the latest NYT poll story--"New Poll Finds Americans Actually Despise President They Just Re-Elected," or something like that--that Adam Nagourney and Janet Elder don't tell their readers about? You know it's there somewhere! Answer: Bush's approval rating for "handling the campaign against terrorism." 61% approve; 38% disapprove. ... That's a 10 point net gain in a little over a month. ... P.S.: Matthew Yglesias says "the poll doesn't find much support for the notion that a dash to the right on cultural issues is the way out" for Democrats. I'm not so sure. What percent...

P.S.: I'm not blaming McGovern. Virtually all right thinking sophisticates were for a guaranteed annual income when McGovern proposed it. I was too. But the voters hated it. Only later did it become clear to many in the center and left that the voters were right--welfare-for-the-abled bodied was sustaining an underclass.

By Mickey KausUpdated Monday, Feb. 7, 2005, at 7:29 PM PT Kurtz answers an email invitation to respond:  I have a story in tomorrow's paper. Had you been kind enough to check earlier, I would have told you that I flagged it for The Post on the day that I was crashing on CBS naming Bob Schieffer as Rather's temporary replacement and said we should pursue it. Two other Post reporters pursued it, spoke to Jordan and decided not to write anything based on the fact that what was actually said was in dispute. I had nothing to do with that decision....

It seems insane for Senator Ted Kennedy to give a high profile speech, three days before the Iraq election, publicly declaring the administration's Iraq policy a "catastrophic failure" and a "disaster." Even if that's what Kennedy thought, why would he put himself in the position where a successful election could make him look at least temporarily like a fool (as, apparently, it has)? ...It's not as if Kennedy differed all that much from Bush in the way of actual recommendations for the future. (Even his much-publicized "timetable" for withdrawing U.S. troops would be something we'd "negotiate;" his 2006 deadline is...

There's a small lefty group blog here in Los Angeles called Martini Republic that always has its knickers in a knot about something. A couple of months ago one of their posters, Joseph Mailander, referred to L.A. blogger Patterico (who just won the 2004 Wizbang Best Blog Award) as a "chronic bar-flunker" — an odd insult considering that Patterico is a deputy district attorney. A few weeks ago, they were in high dudgeon because our local media site, L.A. Observed, had left them off some list of L.A. political bloggers. Earlier this month they were fuming because L.A. mayoral candidate...

To: U.S. Congress Six Ohio-based reservists were court-martialed for taking Army vehicles abandoned in Kuwait by other units so they could carry out their own unit's mission to Iraq. Members of the 656th Transportation Company said they needed the equipment to deliver fuel that was needed by U.S. forces in Iraq for everything from helicopters to tanks. The reservists took two tractor-trailers and stripped parts from a five-ton truck that had been abandoned in Kuwait by other units that had already moved into Iraq, one of the reservists, Darrell Birt of Columbus, told the Associated Press on Sunday. Birt, a...

For Peter Beinart, it's 1950.Beinart-Skipper: TNR's Peter Beinart argues that, just as liberals needed to purge non-anti-Communists from their ranks in the late 1940s, Democrats need to purge today's "heirs of Henry Wallace"--specifically, Michael Moore and MoveOn--who do "not believe there is a terrorist threat." It's a powerful analogy, and running Moore out of the party might well give any Democratic candidate an essential anti-Souljah credibility. But!1) Beinart says The left's post-September 11 enthusiasm for an aggressive campaign against Al Qaeda--epitomized by students at liberal campuses signing up for jobs with the CIA--was overwhelmed by horror at the bungled Iraq war. There...

Mickey Kaus seems to believe the Slate/Liberal buzz that Bush is giving up on Ohio. Kaus is a great guy. He regularly (and from the left, or at least center-left) lambasts Kerry and the Media for their left wing bias. But I've noticed that when elections come closer, Kaus drinks from the liberal kool-aid (it's funny because he often warns against liberal cocooning, but he himself always does this near election day, quoting only liberal pollsters and blogs etc). For example before the midterm elections in 2002 he negated the strong Republican surge in the last few days, quoting numerous...

3) When I criticized John Edwards for gratuitously mentioning Dick Cheney's gay daughter, I got lots of email suggesting that Edwards was simply being nice. Sorry, that won't fly after Kerry bizarrely, needlessly and explicitly raised the subject again ("I think if you were to talk to Dick Cheney's daughter, who is a lesbian, ....")  There must be  some Machiavellian strategy behind the Democratic urge to keep bringing this up--most likely it's a poll-tested attempt to cost Bush and Cheney the votes of demographic groups (like Reagan Dems, or fundamentalists) who are hostile to homosexuality or gay culture or who just don't...

Everyone Was Wrong About McCain-Feingold! We all missed a giant loophole in the law. I was wrong about the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform law. The New York Times was wrong. Peter Beinart was wrong. And E. J. Dionne was wrong, too! We all missed an important wrinkle in the new law—important because understanding it reveals a gaping hole in the bill, a hole the bill's legal defenders (if you ask them) freely admit exists. Necessary background: Along with many others, I criticized McCain-Feingold for banning last-minute TV and radio ads sponsored by nonprofit advocacy groups even when those ads were...

Kausfiles is Stupid! I don't understand things everyone else seems to understand! For example: 1) If a man says he has a gun, acts like he has a gun, and convinces everyone around him he has a gun, and starts waving it around and behaving recklessly, the police are justified in shooting him (even if it turns out later he just had a black bar of soap). Similarly, according to the Duelfer report, Saddam seems to have intentionally convinced other countries, and his own generals, that he had WMDs. He also convinced much of the U.S. government. If we reacted...

OK, We'll Panic Later! Crushkerry.com--blogging against interest--warns against putting too much faith in that Newsweek poll showing an 11 point Bush lead. Scott Rasmussen says the same about the similar Time poll. .. Both polls oversampled Republican voters, the argument goes--which would mean that the actual Bush lead is much smaller than 11 percent. ... Update: Minuteman piles on--and he offers the obvious explanation: "proper Reps were at home watching their convention and answering the phone when pollsters called, while proper Dems were off doing" whatever Dems do during the GOP convention. [If that's right, shouldn't the Newsweek poll have...

As should be expected from an old media source—The New York Times WEEKLY!? Magazine—Matthew Klam’s otherwise excellent piece "Fear and Laptops on the Campaign Trail," http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/26/magazine/26BLOGS.html is far behind the curve. While it purports to capture a moment of revolutionary change in the free press, the article inadvertently chronicles the inevitable Thermidor, when the pendulum swings back towards normalcy and power slips from the hands of the people or the avant garde that would champion them. At the height of its Terror, the Blogosphere showed its potential when its flames engulfed Trent Lott, even though the spark was lit by...

Mickey Kaus, Kausfiles.com: John Ellis argues, with some powerful evidence, that Dan Rather is pursuing a "Krazy Glue" strategy as he attempts to save his job. ... :i.e., RATHER IS THREATENING TO TAKE HEYWARD DOWN WITH HIM. See Ellis' report in "comment" below:

Judging from tonight's televised non-retraction by CBS news chief Andrew ("This is going to hold up ") Heyward, it looks as if CBS will continue to twist slowly, slowly in the wind. ... Here's the interesting possibility, brought to my attention in an email by blogger Steve Smith (who may also have guessed right with his "grand hypothesis"): Does this ongoing story hurt Bush in the polls even if it focuses on forgery and possible CBS malpractice? After all, it keeps the subject of Bush and the Guard in the news, which might not help the president. Without the forgery...

Bloggers Making Phone Calls (We can do that?): Trouble with that Boston Globe forgery-knockdown piece. ... Instapundit remains a good clearing house for the right-blogosphere's efforts in the developing CBS Monkeyfishing story. (The CBSers willl pay for that "pajama" crack.) ... P.S.: Sorry for all the ongoing kf font difficulties. I should have used a Selectric! 2:53 P.M.