News flash: reporters are not stenographers

The New Neo Posted on by

Well, that’s good to hear: We’re not stenographers, we’re journalists says Philip Dixon, former managing editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer and currently chairman of the Howard University Department of Journalism.

Dixon was criticizing the actions of the press in the Massey case, in which countless reporters apparently reported the lies of Jimmy Massey without bothering to verify them, although such fact-checking could have been done easily, and there were inconsistencies in his stories to act as red flags.

What is it that Massey lied about? Oh, nothing special; just allegations of war crimes committed by the US Marines with whom Massey served during the Iraq war:

…no one ever called any of the five journalists who were embedded with Massey’s battalion to ask him or her about his claims.

The Associated Press, which serves more than 8,500 newspaper, radio and television stations worldwide, wrote three stories about Massey, including an interview with him in October about his new book.

But none of the AP reporters ever called Ravi Nessman, an Associated Press reporter who was embedded with Massey’s unit. Nessman wrote more than 30 stories about the unit from the beginning of the war until April 15, after Baghdad had fallen.

One good sign in all of this is that even some in the press are questioning what went on:

“I’m looking at the story and going, ‘Why, why would we have run this without getting another side of the story?'” said Lois Wilson, managing editor of the Star Gazette in Elmira, N.Y.

Join the club, Ms. Wilson. Some of us have been wondering that sort of thing for a long, long time.

Dixon’s “we are not stenographers” statement was a response to this defense mounted by some reporters:

In many cases, journalists covered Massey as he was speaking at public gatherings. Some reporters said that because he was making public statements, they didn’t feel an obligation to check his claims. Some editors worried they could be accused of covering up his claims if they didn’t report on his speech.

What does all of this remind me of? As with many things, the answer is “Vietnam.” Not My Lai, of course; that was a well-verified story. Rather, the Winter Soldier investigations, reported (to the best of my recollection) uncritically and widely–and very influentially–at the time, despite what turned out to be the lack of substantiation of so many of the claims.

I wonder whether these sorts of false claims of US atrocities happened during or immediately after WWII. Somehow, I tend to doubt it, although if anyone has any information to the contrary I’d be interested in hearing it. My guess, however, is that the all-too-real My Lai gave copycat attention-getting false claimants an idea for how to make a big splash in the press. But they would never have been able to do this to such great effect if the press didn’t so often act as their accomplice and enabler.

One of those days–and nights

The New Neo Posted on by

Well, I guess I never got around to posting today–except for this.

Oh, I had intentions–great intentions. To go into any detail would be boring even to me, but suffice to say there were many little glitches, including some unforeseen car problems and computer problems and even some mother caretaker problems (an aide who was supposed to take care of my mother no-showed). So I never even got around to posting a “taking the day off, see you tomorrow” post.

Consider this it, friends. See you tomorrow!

It depends what the meaning of “its” is

The New Neo Posted on by

I try my best to pay attention to grammar and spelling, helped out by the always-handy Spellcheck (shh–don’t tell anyone, but I’m not the world’s best speller, unaided).

But as Harriet Miers before me discovered, no doubt to her chagrin, Spellcheck has its limits. And one of them is the proper use of the word “its.” “Its,” that is, vs. “it’s.”

Have you ever noticed how often those two words are confused? Even though I try to pay close attention, I’m always catching myself messing up, and my bet is that, despite my best efforts, some of them have slipped by here. I see it all the time in the work of others, too (and no, I’m not going to do an exhaustive search and link to examples; you’ll just have to take my word for it. Or not.)

The error almost always goes in one direction only: the use of the apostrophe, as in “it’s,” for the possessive form of the word, when it should only be used for the contraction “it is.” Example (the one that sparked this rumination): originally, instead of “…see this from Reuters, not known for its right-wing bias” I had written “…see this from Reuters, not known for it’s right-wing bias.”

Why do we do this? Are we all just stupid! No, no, a thousand times no! We are actually very smart, because we are extrapolating a general rule to include this word, and that is the rule about forming possessives. Usually we do this by adding an apostrophe and an “s,” as you no doubt well know. But with the words “it’s” and “its,” we choose to reserve the apostrophe for the contraction, and that leaves the possessive hanging out there, alone and forlorn and apostropheless.

In this, however, we’re following another rule (are you still with me? or have I already bored you to tears?), that of the possessive personal pronoun: hers, his, theirs, ours, yours, for example. All lack apostrophes. But they’re not confusing, somehow–perhaps because, unlike “its,” they clearly refer to people, and are never given an apostrophe because they never become contractions.

Now, aren’t you glad I cleared that up? But I bet it won’t stop me from making the same mistake again–and again and again.

The fog of riots

The New Neo Posted on by

I’m still trying to get a bead on what’s happening in France. This post by Clive Davis seems to be an attempt to do the same. It contains this interesting quote:

As of this evening, AFP is quoting police commanders as saying there’s “nothing to support the existence of an organisation behind the riots… speculation of “a radical Islamic influence is baseless.”

So, are these police statements merely the equivalent of a politically correct “move along now, nothing to see here”? An effort to avoid adding more fuel to the fire by calling attention to what is really happening? Or are they the truth?

In the same AFP article, (that’s “Agence France-Presse,” by the way), you have this:

The leader of one police union, Bruno Beschizza, described the riots as “urban terrorism”, led by a radicalized minority of criminals and “Islamic radicals”.

There is no doubt that a certain “fog of war”–or rather, “fog of riots” has descended for the moment. My guess is that, as usual, there’s a mixture here–and that, as I said before, a host of factors are coming together to create these riots: cultural, generational, economic, and yes, Islamic. I’d be foolish if I said I knew what relative weight to give all those factors.

I am surprised, however, that police chiefs have denied any organizing factor at all in the riots. This seems to contradict the bulk of the coverage. For example, see this from Reuters, not known for its right-wing bias:

While fewer clashes with youths were reported, judicial officials said the unrest was being organized via the Internet and mobile phones…”Without question what is taking place bears all the hallmarks of being coordinated,” Yves Bot, the Paris public prosecutor, told Europe 1 radio.

So, I feel I’m on fairly safe ground saying the riots are being organized. But by whom? My current theory: not one group alone, and not for one reason alone. All of the above.

Handy phrases for the American in Paris

The New Neo Posted on by

Yesterday I was trying to be witty in the comments section, and I was looking for the way to say (and spell) “excuse me” in French. Since I don’t speak French, that meant Googling “handy French phrases translated”, which brought me to this website.

It’s a place for renting villas and apartments in France, and the phrase page has the usual instructions on how to ask for the bill and, indeed, how to say “excuse me.” So I found what I was looking for–although a villa in Provence would have been nice, too.

But someone there also seems to have a sense of humor, not to mention a finger on the pulse of current French attitudes towards Americans. Under the heading “Getting out of trouble,” they offer the following indispensable phrases for the traveler from the US (complete with phonetic pronunciation guides, which I’ve omitted here for the sake of brevity), which I now offer to you:

Sorry, I’m American.
Excusez-moi, je suis americain.

In my next life I hope I am French.
Pour le future J’ espere etre francais.

France is far superior to other European countries.
France est plus superior que les autres pays europeens.

This all follows some phrases listed under a previous heading, “Getting in trouble with the French.” There you can find the following distinctly unhelpful phrases:

Where is the nearest McDonalds?
Ou est le McDonalds le plus proche?

California wine is better.
Le vin de California est le meilleure.

We would like to see Euro Disney.
Nous voulons voir Euro Disney.

Paris suburbs burn on

The New Neo Posted on by

More information has been coming in on the French riots, and it’s sobering.

Take a look at this post by Shrinkwrapped on the culture wars and power struggles involved. It’s based on
this column from today’s New York Post, written by Amir Taheri, who makes it clear that the evidence so far indicates multiple and complex reasons behind these riots: economic, cultural, and Islamic.

Here are some excerpts from Taheri:

Some are even calling for the areas where Muslims form a majority of the population to be reorganized on the basis of the “millet” system of the Ottoman Empire: Each religious community (millet) would enjoy the right to organize its social, cultural and educational life in accordance with its religious beliefs…

“All we demand is to be left alone,” said Mouloud Dahmani, one of the local “emirs” engaged in negotiations to persuade the French to withdraw the police and allow a committee of sheiks, mostly from the Muslim Brotherhood, to negotiate an end to the hostilities.

President Jacques Chirac and Premier de Villepin are especially sore because they had believed that their opposition to the toppling of Saddam Hussein in 2003 would give France a heroic image in the Muslim community.

That illusion has now been shattered and the Chirac administration, already passing through a deepening political crisis, appears to be clueless about how to cope with what the Parisian daily France Soir has called a “ticking time bomb.”

It is now clear that a good portion of France’s Muslims not only refuse to assimilate into “the superior French culture,” but firmly believe that Islam offers the highest forms of life to which all mankind should aspire.

So what is the solution? One solution, offered by Gilles Kepel, an adviser to Chirac on Islamic affairs, is the creation of “a new Andalusia” in which Christians and Muslims would live side by side and cooperate to create a new cultural synthesis.

The problem with Kepel’s vision, however, is that it does not address the important issue of political power. Who will rule this new Andalusia: Muslims or the largely secularist Frenchmen?

Michael Moore, Halliburton, hypocrisy, and Me

The New Neo Posted on by

Via Don Surber:

It seems that Michael Moore owns 2,000 shares of Halliburton.

Here’s a summary of the source, a book entitled “Do As I Say, (Not As I Do)” by Peter Schweizer. And Moore is by no means the only one hoist by the petard of his own hypocrisy, courtesy of Schweizer’s research into the records of the liberal rich and famous:

Using IRS records, real estate transactions, court depositions, news reports, financial disclosures, and their own statements, [Schweizer] brings to light a stunning record of shameless hypocrisy. Critics of capitalism and corporate enterprise frequently invest in companies they denounce. Those who believe the rich need to pay more in taxes prove especially adept in avoiding taxes themselves. Those who espouse strict environmental regulations work vigorously to sidestep them when it comes to their own businesses and properties. Those who are strong proponents of affirmative action rarely practiced it — and some have abysmal records when it comes to hiring minorities. Advocates of gun control have no problem making sure than an arsenal of weapons is available to protect them from dangerous criminals.

One of my many caveats is now in order: liberals have no corner on hypocrisy; it’s an equal-opportunity vice. The Republican version is a bit different, of course, since everyone already expects them to be investing in the evil Halliburton and driving gas guzzlers. Their hypocrisies tend to be on the order of marital infidelities among the morally righteous, for example.

That said, the evidence reported in this book, if true (and I assume we’ll hear in due time from its targets and their defenders if it’s not) is a remarkable and quite stunning lesson in hypocrisy–although, on reflection, the tale it tells is hardly surprising, human nature being what it is and all.

And now I have a confession of my own to make. I’m faced with a moral dilemma I’ve been expecting for quite some time: yesterday I got my first subscription renewal notice from the New Yorker. And it’s even worse than that; I save a substantial amount of money if I subscribe for two years rather than just one. This is powerful temptation indeed.

I have quite a bit of time to decide; these notices tend to come way way before the subscription actually runs out, and the magazines can end up begging and pleading towards the end. The prospect of seeing the New Yorker beg somewhat appeals, I must say.

But in a way I’ve already made up my mind, and I’m afraid it places me in the ranks of Schweizer’s hypocrites in principle, if not in magnitude: I plan to renew.

Why? I’ve gone back and forth about this for quite a while, and indeed it’s true that I could haul myself to the library every week to read the latest issue. Or I could give it up entirely. But I’m unlikely to do either.

I can assuage my guilt by asking for the gift of a matching subscription to Commentary these holidays. But does that really atone? All I can say is that a thirty-year habit dies hard.

The last two issues have shown me once again that the magazine keeps putting out nuggets of fascinating information. The October 31st issue contained two biggies, each of which I have plans to make the subject of future posts: Jeffrey Goldberg’s piece on Brent Scowcroft and foreign policy “realism,” vs. the “idealism” of the neocons; and George Packer’s discussion of Hemingway and Dos Passos during that literarily influential engagement, the Spanish Civil War.

As for this week’s issue (Nov. 7), I’ve only skimmed it, but there are already these must-reads: an article about translating Dostoevsky and Tolstoi; a “compare and contrast” review of two new books about Lincoln, one of which focuses on how his depression affected his life and politics; and a piece about how Zola betrayed Cezanne that begins:

When Emile Zola and Paul Cezanne stopped speaking to each other, they had been friends for thirty-four years. They met in 1852, at their school in Aix-en-Provence, when they were twelve and thirteen, and they both cherished memories of their shared boyhood.

Zola and Cezanne were boyhood buddies?? And one betrayed the other? I don’t know about you, but I’m hooked.

And this is not to mention the fiction that can still every now and then be wonderful, or the dwindling but still very real possibility of a great cartoon. And then there is the occasional advertisement that can capture my interest, like the one on page 5 featuring a recent picture of the wonderful Mikhail Baryshnikov, one of the greatest dancers who ever lived–and whose arresting face has aged very nicely and attractively, thank you very much.

Yes, I’m supporting an institution that regularly publishes political pieces that make me fling it to the nearest wall and then pick it up and pencil angrily and furiously in all the margins. But we all have our vices. Plus, I can always compensate by writing about the things in there I disagree with, if I so desire. That justifies my sojourn in the belly of the beast, right?

I think I’ll take the 2-year subscription.

The transformation

The New Neo Posted on by

A while back I was complaining (me, complaining?) about the weather and the lousy fall we’ve had this year.

Well, it’s still fall, although just the tail end of it. Most of the leaves are gone, and the rest have turned a sort of brownish-rust. But that seemingly endless string of rainy days has finally ended.

I try to walk every day, usually at an oceanside park near my house. Even during the three-week run of rain and gloom, I walked there regularly, except for the days when it was actively pouring. I’d see a few other stalwart souls and their dogs—the Labs rather happy, the smallish dogs in a snit at having to be out in such nasty weather. We’d often exchange comments about the weather, the weather, the weather (myself and the dog owners, that is).

Even the ordinarily lovely park appeared monochrome. The usual kites were nowhere to be seen. The gray sky matched its twin, the gray sea, and everything else looked muted and featureless. It wouldn’t have been so bad if it had just been a gray and rainy day here and there, but this spell lasted so long that I think we nearly forgot what things would look like were the sun to shine again.

The day the sun came out, I noticed the colors first of all. The landscape didn’t even look familiar. Same walk, same scene—but now, the brilliant blue sky was reflected in the sharply blue ocean with its white waves standing out in contrast, almost glowing in the late-afternoon light. The slanted sun made the grass, still green, look nearly phosphorescent.

It’s still that way, fortunately—so we get a little bit of fall, after all. The whole thing is a lesson in the transforming power of the sun.

Out of curiosity, I just did a Google search for poems about the sun, and this one by John Donne came up. I’d never read it before, and it’s really not all that apropos to this post, since it’s more about love than it is about the sun. But I still think it very fine, so here it is:

THE SUN RISING

Busy old fool, unruly Sun,
Why dost thou thus,
Through windows, and through curtains, call on us?
Must to thy motions lovers’ seasons run?
Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide
Late schoolboys, and sour prentices,
Go tell court-huntsmen that the king will ride,
Call country ants to harvest offices,
Love, all alike, no season knows, nor clime,
Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.

Thy beams, so reverend and strong
Why shouldst thou think?
I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink,
But that I would not lose her sight so long:
If her eyes have not blinded thine,
Look, and tomorrow late, tell me
Whether both th’ Indias of spice and mine
Be where thou leftst them, or lie here with me.
Ask for those kings whom thou saw’st yesterday,
And thou shalt hear: “All here in one bed lay.”

She is all states, and all princes I,
Nothing else is.
Princes do but play us; compar’d to this,
All honour’s mimic, all wealth alchemy.
Thou, sun, art half as happy ‘s we,
In that the world’s contracted thus;
Thine age asks ease, and since thy duties be
To warm the world, that’s done in warming us.
Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere;
This bed thy centre is, these walls, thy sphere.

A new French underground?

The New Neo Posted on by

It sometimes seems as though all we hear from France these days is anti-Americanism.

But according to a correspondent of Roger Simon’s, there is a certain closet pro-Americanism in evidence there. His letter to Roger features stories of people coming up to him and confiding their disagreement with the fashionable and official US-bashing.

And this is not just in response to the current riots, either, since the incidents he describes occurred prior to them. I wonder, however, whether in the wake of these riots there will be an increase in sympathy for what in France is known as the “cowboy” approach–and for the “cowboys” themselves.

So, does this represent a new French underground: the pro-Americans? And, if so, how large is it?

To the latter question, I have not a clue what percentage of the population might feel this way. But my guess is that there are a great many people all over France and other parts of anti-American “old Europe” who are fed up with their countries’ recent behavior towards the US and the opinions expressed in their press.

Whether there are enough of these people to swing an election, and whether such a reaction would take the extreme form of a hardline and bigoted far-right backlash (read: Le Pen), only time will tell.

While Europe slept

The New Neo Posted on by

The current riots in France are another indication that Europe is having difficulty dealing with a long-neglected problem: its huge and largely unassimilated Moslem immigrant population (originally of immigrants but now including their European-born children), bulging in its belly like the meal of a boa constrictor afflicted with terrible indigestion.

Some time ago I read this sobering and chilling article by Theodore Dalrymple entitled “Barbarians at the Gates of Paris,” describing some of the conditions that have led to this mess. It was written in the fall of 2002 and is very long, but here are some excerpts:

But what is the problem to which these housing projects, known as cités, are the solution, conceived by serene and lucid minds like Le Corbusier’s? It is the problem of providing an Habitation de Loyer Modéré””a House at Moderate Rent, shortened to HLM””for the workers, largely immigrant, whom the factories needed during France’s great industrial expansion from the 1950s to the 1970s, when the unemployment rate was 2 percent and cheap labor was much in demand. By the late eighties, however, the demand had evaporated, but the people whose labor had satisfied it had not; and together with their descendants and a constant influx of new hopefuls, they made the provision of cheap housing more necessary than ever…

A kind of anti-society has grown up in them””a population that derives the meaning of its life from the hatred it bears for the other, “official,” society in France. This alienation, this gulf of mistrust””greater than any I have encountered anywhere else in the world, including in the black townships of South Africa during the apartheid years””is written on the faces of the young men, most of them permanently unemployed, who hang out in the pocked and potholed open spaces between their logements. When you approach to speak to them, their immobile faces betray not a flicker of recognition of your shared humanity; they make no gesture to smooth social intercourse. If you are not one of them, you are against them…

When agents of official France come to the cités, the residents attack them. The police are hated: one young Malian, who comfortingly believed that he was unemployable in France because of the color of his skin, described how the police invariably arrived like a raiding party, with batons swinging””ready to beat whoever came within reach, irrespective of who he was or of his innocence of any crime, before retreating to safety to their commissariat….

Antagonism toward the police might appear understandable, but the conduct of the young inhabitants of the cités toward the firemen who come to rescue them from the fires that they have themselves started gives a dismaying glimpse into the depth of their hatred for mainstream society. They greet the admirable firemen (whose motto is Sauver ou périr, save or perish) with Molotov cocktails and hails of stones when they arrive on their mission of mercy, so that armored vehicles frequently have to protect the fire engines.

Benevolence inflames the anger of the young men of the cités as much as repression, because their rage is inseparable from their being. Ambulance men who take away a young man injured in an incident routinely find themselves surrounded by the man’s “friends,” and jostled, jeered at, and threatened: behavior that, according to one doctor I met, continues right into the hospital, even as the friends demand that their associate should be treated at once, before others…

Whether France was wise to have permitted the mass immigration of people culturally very different from its own population to solve a temporary labor shortage and to assuage its own abstract liberal conscience is disputable: there are now an estimated 8 or 9 million people of North and West African origin in France, twice the number in 1975””and at least 5 million of them are Muslims. Demographic projections (though projections are not predictions) suggest that their descendants will number 35 million before this century is out, more than a third of the likely total population of France.

Indisputably, however, France has handled the resultant situation in the worst possible way. Unless it assimilates these millions successfully, its future will be grim. But it has separated and isolated immigrants and their descendants geographically into dehumanizing ghettos; it has pursued economic policies to promote unemployment and create dependence among them, with all the inevitable psychological consequences; it has flattered the repellent and worthless culture that they have developed; and it has withdrawn the protection of the law from them, allowing them to create their own lawless order…

…imagine yourself a youth in Les Tarterets or Les Musiciens, intellectually alert but not well educated, believing yourself to be despised because of your origins by the larger society that you were born into, permanently condemned to unemployment by the system that contemptuously feeds and clothes you, and surrounded by a contemptible nihilistic culture of despair, violence, and crime. Is it not possible that you would seek a doctrine that would simultaneously explain your predicament, justify your wrath, point the way toward your revenge, and guarantee your salvation, especially if you were imprisoned? Would you not seek a “worthwhile” direction for the energy, hatred, and violence seething within you, a direction that would enable you to do evil in the name of ultimate good? It would require only a relatively few of like mind to cause havoc. Islamist proselytism flourishes in the prisons of France (where 60 percent of the inmates are of immigrant origin), as it does in British prisons; and it takes only a handful of Zacharias Moussaouis to start a conflagration.

That last paragraph can be read as though it is offering an excuse for this turn to violence and to violent Islamic supremism. If that’s the case, I certainly don’t support such an excuse. But I do think Dalrymple’s article represents a good description of the phenomenon, an explanation that makes a great deal of sense.

It seems to be no coincidence that the current French riots are said to have been set off by an incident in which two youths suspected of a crime were accidentally electrocuted and died while being chased by the police. Whether the police were in fact chasing them is still an open question, apparently, but in a sense it almost doesn’t matter. The belief that they were, and the antagonism towards the police in general, is very clear, as well as the impotence of those police in dealing with crime and/or unrest in these immigrant strongholds.

If you read to the botton of this article, you will discover that part of the underlying reason for the riots at this point in time is a reaction to a recent attempt at a general police crackdown on crime in these neighborhoods by the new interior minister, Sarkozy:

Sarkozy, who returned as the interior minister in late May, began a new crime offensive this month, ordering specially trained police to tackle 25 problem neighborhoods in cities throughout France.

Opposition politicians say he has made things worse.

Laurent Fabius, a former Socialist prime minister and also a potential presidential candidate in 2007, mocked Sarkozy’s frequent visits to areas such as Clichy.

“When he announces that he’s going to visit such and such a commune or suburb every week, that’s not how we resolve those problems,” Fabius told Europe 1 radio.

“We need to act at the same time on prevention, repression, education, housing, jobs … and not play the cowboy.”

As one might expect, there is deep disagreement between those who believe only in prevention and think they have a kindler, gentler answer–the leftists and Socialists–and those who believe that the situation has gone on long enough and a firm and immediate crackdown is necessary. The latter group, of course, is labeled with that popular European epithet for what they see as the oh-so-simplistic law and order approach, American-style: “cowboy.”

I don’t have a solution, but common sense dictates it would have to involve approaches that are both long-term and immediate. A situation so long ignored is going to be all that much more difficult, if not impossible, to treat. As the Dalrymple article says, “Benevolence inflames the anger of the young men of the cités as much as repression, because their rage is inseparable from their being.” If this is true–and I believe it definitely is–it does not bode well for the future.

This article by Francis Fukuyama, appearing in today’s Wall Street Journal, contains a description of some short-term and long-term approaches. It’s a beginning, anyway:

New policies to reduce the separateness of the Muslim community, like laws discouraging the importation of brides from the Middle East, have been put in place in the Netherlands. The Dutch and British police have been given new powers to monitor, detain and expel inflammatory clerics. But the much more difficult problem remains of fashioning a national identity that will connect citizens of all religions and ethnicities in a common democratic culture, as the American creed has served to unite new immigrants to the United States.

Since van Gogh’s murder, the Dutch have embarked on a vigorous and often impolitic debate on what it means to be Dutch, with some demanding of immigrants not just an ability to speak Dutch, but a detailed knowledge of Dutch history and culture that many Dutch people do not have themselves. But national identity has to be a source of inclusion, not exclusion; nor can it be based, contrary to the assertion of the gay Dutch politician Pym Fortuyn who was assassinated in 2003, on endless tolerance and valuelessness. The Dutch have at least broken through the stifling barrier of political correctness that has prevented most other European countries from even beginning a discussion of the interconnected issues of identity, culture and immigration. But getting the national identity question right is a delicate and elusive task.

Halloween

The New Neo Posted on by

Oh, how I wish I had taken my relatively new and unused camera with me on a walk I took late yesterday afternoon, right before sunset on Halloween. One of these days I will even learn how to reliably transfer photos from said camera to my computer, and put them on this blog. (I know, I know, it’s not that difficult, but trust me when I say that I’m very technically challenged.) Till then I’ll have to make do with word pictures.

It was unusually warm for Halloween–always a wonderful thing, as I recall from my childhood when Halloween was pretty much my favorite holiday. Nothing seemed worse back then than having to wear a heavy coat over a carefully-planned costume–nothing, that is, other than rain. Rain necessitated going over to my grandmother’s apartment building instead, to trick or treat with all the residents there who hadn’t even bought candy for the occasion and who might end up giving you a mealy old apple–ugh!

In the Fifties, Halloween meant being out in the dark with all the other spookily-dressed children and no adults in sight, the possibility of getting huge candy bars rather than today’s tiny ones, and even sometimes a homemade treat. We went out for hours, till 9 PM or even later, and visited the houses of strangers as well as friends, with little or no fear.

Well, those days are gone, like many things. But what remains is the trick-or-treating children, and last night brought its full complement to my door, as well as the wonderful fact that finally, after decades of trying, I managed to buy the correct amount of candy. Only seven bite-sized pieces were left at the end of the festivities.

There were dogs dressed as pumpkins, and cute and polite kids–even the teenagers. Every now and then one of the children would exclaim that my selection of candy contained “OOO, my favorite! Wow!” This year’s favorite favorite seemed to be Skittles, a candy I detest; but there’s no accounting for taste, especially that of children.

But back to that neighborhood walk at dusk. The sense of anticipation was in the air, kids still playing in the streets but talking excitedly about the upcoming night, parents out on their porches and front lawns, putting the finishing touches on decorations. The decorations are the one thing about Halloween that’s much better than I remember from when I was young.

Some seen on that walk, and not at all atypical: a lineup of smallish pumpkins placed in two window boxes, nestled in straw and colorful fallen leaves; a harvest figure featuring a stuffed moosehead (not real) and dressed in lumberjack clothes, lounging on a deck chair with an empty beer bottle next to it; a huge sprawling old-fashioned porch entirely draped in fake cobwebs and laden with pumpkins and lights, with a recording of spooky music and maniacal laughter playing in the background.

I managed to eat a bit of candy myself, and am suffering from a sugar hangover today. Hope you all enjoyed your Halloween, too, despite the possibility of similar indiscretions.

Has this special counsel/prosecutor thing gotten out of hand?

The New Neo Posted on by

In an article in the Christian Science Monitor about the charges against Libby, Paul Rothstein, a law professor at Georgetown University, is quoted as stating that:

…the Libby case raises questions about the fairness of appointing a special counsel to engage in open-ended investigations that involve political officials in Washington.

[Rothstein] says political officials are under more pressure than most other Americans faced with a criminal investigation. “Because they are afraid of political embarrassment … they can’t do what normal people would do in this situation and simply take the Fifth – plead the privilege against self-incrimination and not answer,” Rothstein says. “They take a big political hit for that, so they lie,” he says.

Rothstein says to avoid this kind of trap, special prosecutors should use their prosecutorial discretion not to file coverup charges when there is no evidence related to the alleged underlying crime.

Rothstein isn’t saying he knows Libby’s motivation for lying, but he does state that he thinks it more likely than not that his actions:

were aimed at heading off political embarrassment, rather than covering up criminality at the White House. “He knew it would be embarrassing politically if the government even accidentally and innocently was the source of [the leak of the agent’s name],” Rothstein says.

Many are likely to embrace the nefarious explanation, Rothstein says, but the actions of the special counsel in declining to charge anyone with illegally disclosing secrets suggest the innocent explanation may be closer to the truth.

I don’t think Rothstein means to excuse perjury by making this point, and neither do I. But the fact is that, unfortunately, the special prosecutor/counsel is in danger of becoming just another political tool, a set-up that is often used by enemies to trap public officials–even previously innocent ones–between the rock of embarrassment and the hard place of perjury. In fact, perhaps that transformation of the special prosecutor/counsel function already happened quite some time ago. So Mr. Rothstein’s suggestion that the scope of charges filed as a result of such investigations somehow be more strictly limited makes a great deal of sense to me.

Now, what was the original purpose of Fitzgerald’s appointment?

When Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald began his investigation in December 2003, his instructions were to identify who leaked the name of a CIA agent to columnist Robert Novak and determine whether that action violated any secrecy laws.

It wouldn’t have been a bad idea if he’d kept it to that, since there’s a great deal of speculation that Plame was not even a covert agent to begin with, as she apparently would have to have been for the secrecy law in question to have been violated. Even Fitzgerald himself has alluded to this issue, and has only referred to her as “classified.”.

Oh, and in addition: it wouldn’t be such a bad idea if the Supreme Court, with its brilliant new justices we’ve all heard (and will hear!) so much about, could decide differently the next time this little question comes up: should a person be allowed to sue a sitting President?

So, what’s the connection here?

You may recall that the Supreme Court’s decision in Clinton v. Jones was unanimous, and I quote:

Respondent is merely asking the courts to exercise their core Article III jurisdiction to decide cases and controversies, and, whatever the outcome, there is no possibility that the decision here will curtail the scope of the Executive Branch’s official powers. The Court rejects petitioner’s contention that this case–as well as the potential additional litigation that an affirmance of the Eighth Circuit’s judgment might spawn–may place unacceptable burdens on the President that will hamper the performance of his official duties. That assertion finds little support either in history, as evidenced by the paucity of suits against sitting Presidents for their private actions, or in the relatively narrow compass of the issues raised in this particular case.

Even I could have told them differently; but they didn’t ask.

Well, you may also recall that the deposition in which Clinton lied and perhaps committed perjury (depending, of course, on whether the lie was both intentional and material) was a direct result of the Supreme Court’s decision in Clinton v. Jones to allow the Paula Jones lawsuit against Clinton to go forward. You may also recall that the motive for Clinton’s lie in that case about his relations with Lewinsky–which, unlike Libby’s alleged lies, did not even involve official conduct–was clearly and indisputably the desire to avoid personal embarrassment. Rothstein mentions the motivation of even innocent public officials to lie to avoid political embarrassment, but there is at least as strong a motivation for them to lie to avoid personal and familial embarrassment, which of course has political repercussions as well.

The above-linked 1997 Washington Post article about Clinton v. Jones contains the following statement, which in my opinion shows more prescience than the Supreme Court did in handing down their decision:

The ruling not only has historic consequences for the institution of the presidency, it also could have a bruising political effect on Clinton: He now can be required to answer potentially embarrassing questions about Jones’s claim that he propositioned her and exposed himself to her in a Little Rock hotel room while he was governor of Arkansas and she was a low-level state employee.

The questions were embarrassing indeed, and were not limited to his sexual conduct with Jones, but involved his sexual conduct with Lewinsky.

Perjury cases are very rarely pursued, as we saw here. But they can be a particularly dangerous trap for public officials: just get a special prosecuter or special counsel to go on a fishing expedition and someone, somewhere, somehow (even a heretofore legally innocent person) is going to lie to protect him/herself from embarrassment or from the need to plead the Fifth and expose him/herself to accusations of cowardice. Or, alternatively, allow a sitting President to be sued and force him to answer personal questions about his sex life and extramarital liasons–again, despite the fact that the original lawsuit itself ends up going nowhere–and you have a setup for him to lie to save himself and his family from embarrassment or the need to plead the Fifth and expose himself to accusations of cowardice or coverup.

That’s the symmetry between Libby’s situation and Clinton’s. It’s a dilemma: we do not want perjury condoned or winked at, or to go unpunished (even though it turns out that in practice it usually does). But we also do not want each political party to sequentially set up a series of traps–open-ended investigation after investigation, civil lawsuit after civil lawsuit–that can be used to get public officials into situations in which they are more and more likely to commit perjury to protect themselves from embarrassment.

And lest you think my suggestion that further civil lawsuits against sitting Presidents might be in the offing is farfetched, please read this:

In addition to the prospect of indictments looming in the CIA leak case, the Bush administration faces another threat: civil litigation that could expose top officials to damage payments and years of wide-ranging scrutiny.

Former diplomat Joseph Wilson, whose criticism of the administration’s Iraq policy sparked the current furor and led to the outing of his Central Intelligence Agency-operative wife, Valerie Plame, isn’t saying for sure if he will sue. But one recent precedent is the debilitating civil suit against his former boss, President Clinton. “What would be interesting to us would be to get the justice that a civil case offers,” Mr. Wilson says.

Interesting, indeed.

How could we put an end to this tit-for-tat mess, while still holding public officials accountable? I would hope, for starters, that the Supreme Court has learned its lesson, and if the question comes up again will rule that there be should be no civil lawsuits against a sitting President. Next, when a special prosecutor/counsel is appointed, the scope of the charges he/she can bring might be limited to ones that are reasonably related to the original matter for which the investigation was ordered, or to charges of a more serious nature. To discourage perjury, perjury charges could also be brought in connection with the investigation even if there are no other indictments, but not in the latter case for answering questions in which a public official, by answering, would be incriminating him/herself and for which most people would ordinarily be taking the Fifth.

Again, I’d be especially curious to hear what any lawyers among you have to say–whether these things are possible or desirable, and whether they would actually work. If anyone has any better suggestions than mine, please feel free–I’m all ears.