A drivng game (cars, not golf balls).

Along with poetry, personal complaints about service at a restaurant or gas station, and 3,000-word discourses on the Illuminati, the newspaper also gets a fair amount of astroturf—i.e., fake grassroots stuff. At present there is a campaign afoot regarding HR 2749, concerning regulation of the food supply.

At least some organic and other small farmers suggest the bill would be a disaster for their way of life. Maybe that’s just paranoia run rampant. Or maybe they’re right: Consider the largely liberal, countercultural artisanal toy makers who found themselves making common cause with right-wing congressmen and free-market interest groups after the Chinese toy scare led to new regulations on the manufacture of children’s toys—detailed in the excellent Reason magazine article, Dangerous Toys, Strange Bedfellows a couple months ago.

But I digress.

The small farm movement has launched a letter-writing campaign, which has led to a ton of letters like this one:

Sadey this well intended bill is a disaster for small farms and does not address the fact that agribusiness farms are at the heart of compromising food safety and yet they are not the ones who will be over regulated by this bill.

I urge you to stop this nonesense of trying to regulate at a federal level a matter that is best suited for State management.

Small local organic farms will be what feeds this nation as oil peaks and people are now demanding, in ever greater numbers, food from these safe clean sources.  This bill as an attempt to over regulate small farms and is government regulation at it’s worst.

And that’s it. The letter never says what “this bill” refers to. It doesn’t identify the “you” who is supposed to “stop this nonsense.“ If you read that in the paper, you’d have no idea what the heck the writer was talking about. 

In most cases, letters like that are generated by websites where someone has read about an issue and been urged to write a letter about it. They dash off a few lines about whatever it is they have just read in a template and hit send to direct the letter simultaneously to members of Congress, an advocacy group’s petition, and multiple media outlets. Sort of like what you can do here.

Sometimes, people will ask, “Why the heck did you run such-and-such a letter?“ Sometimes, the answer is: Well, it was better than the alternative. . .

President Obama surfed into the White House on a tidal-surge-sized wave of popularity and support.  According to the latest Rasmussen tracking poll, however, it appears that wave might finally have crashed on the shores of reality.

Politico reports that Virginia Rep. Tom Periello numbers among a few House Democratic freshmen the GOP is targeting, esp. because of their vote for the Waxman-Markey cap-and-tax bill.

“We’re scratching our heads,“ says Shirley Wilcher, who heads up something called the American Association for Affirmative Action.

We’re concerned about the impact on employers who want to comply with the law and do not want to discriminate ... and it’s not clear how to do that.

Precisely. That was the case before the Ricci decision and probably afterward. Employers can’t do anything that has a disparate impact on minorities, but many things they might do to avoid a disparate impact could be discriminatory as well. Good luck to ‘em!

P.S. Many of those quoted in the story say they want clarity, and who can blame them? But clarity shouldn’t automatically win the day. Jim Crow was pretty clear. Apartheid was pretty clear. Didn’t make them right!

P.P.S. What’s wrong with the bright-line clarity of “Thou shalt not discriminate on the basis of race, period”?

P.P.P.S.What’s wrong with it (say some) is that it does not produce the outcomes desired by those who view justice in terms of outcomes rather than processes:

In a 1971 decision, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that a test that was “fair in form, but discriminatory in operation” could violate Title VII even without proof that the discrimination was intentional. Congress eventually amended Title VII to codify that decision, Griggs v. Duke Power. The rule was clear: if a job requirement produced a “disparate impact,” the employer had the burden of showing that the requirement was actually necessary.

Federal agencies, in turn, stepped forward to define the statistical disparity that prompted the further inquiry. Under the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s “four-fifths rule,” a test that one racial group passed at less than 80 percent the rate of another group would place an employer in presumptive violation of Title VII.

From an old Herb Caen column, attributed to a PR wiz:

The computer industry is journalists in their 20s standing in awe of entrepreneurs in their 30s who are hiring salesmen in their 40s and 50s and paying them in the 60s and 70s to bring their marketing into the ‘80s.

That, according to Paul Krugman, is what you are committing if you don’t support the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill.

The Supreme Court today issued its opinion in Ricci v. Stefano, the much-reported case in which a panel of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, including Supreme Court nominee Judge Sotomayor, denied white firefighters’ claim of reverse discrimination.  The Court overturned the Second Circuit opinion, holding that the city of New Haven, Connecticut violated federal law by discarding the test results when only white firefighters passed the test for promotion to vacant lieutenant and captain positions.  The city stated that because no black applicants had passed the test, it would face potential litigation if it promoted only white firefighters.  Instead, the white firefighters who were denied promotion despite passing the test filed suit, claiming reverse discrimination.

It is unfortunate that the Supreme Court’s decision is split 5-4.  It probably is more unfortunate that the majority consists of Justices Kennedy (who authored the opinion), Roberts, Scalia, Thomas and Alito, with Ginsburg in dissent joined by Stevens, Souter and Breyer.  Such a result serves only to reinforce the perception of a politicized Court, writing ideologically-driven opinions, divided along lines of “conservatives,“ who clearly are racist, and “liberals,“ who defer too much to government, except when the result runs counter to their sensibilities.  The facts - and the law - get lost in the glossing-over that most will give the case.

Important if true: A rogue analysis of climate change at EPA.

Friday’s column offers a reminder that to pursue social goals through government action is, ultimately, to pursue them through an implied threat of violence.

Media Matters must be profoundly grateful for Fox News and Rush Limbaugh, without whom they apparently would be hard-pressed to fill a site dedicated to rooting out conservative media bias.

Of course, that’s especially easy to do in Limbaugh’s case, since he has never pretended for a moment to be anything like an ostensibly objective news source. He relishes his role as a right-wing bomb thrower. (Cf., oh, the ostensibly objective ABC.)

The same goes for the Media Research Center, though! It would be in a HEAP of trouble without ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, PBS, NYT, Newsweek, Time, the AP, . . .

For once, The New York Times doesn’t beat around the bush:

Private home-based dealers and gun show armorers should finally be regulated as rampant threats to public safety. Congress must repeal restrictions that prevent a national gun registry and bar local enforcement agencies from sharing in federal tracing information.

Which is not to say that its representation of the facts is much good. The Tiahrt amendment referred to in the second quoted sentence does, in fact, let local law-enforcement agencies receive federal trace information for law-enforcement purposes. What it doesn’t allow is the release of federal trace information to gun-control groups for the sake of political skulduggery.

The Supreme Court today announced its decision in Safford Unified School District v. Redding.

The school district had strip-searched a 13-year-old female student after another female student alleged that she had obtained a prescription-strength ibuprofen from the 13 year-old.  The school did not alert the student’s parents or summon police prior to having the school nurse and an administrative assistant require the girl to remove her clothing in a closed office.

The court ruled that the search violated the girl’s rights under the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, which forbids “unreasonable searches”. 

As the Washington Post Reports, the court reported an 8-1 decision, with Justice Clarence Thomas the lone dissenter.  Apparently, Justice Thomas would have deferred to the discretion of the school administrators, writing in his dissent that “"Judges are not qualified to second-guess the best manner for maintaining quiet and order in the school environment.“

As far as that statement goes, it’s a platitudinous truism.  What judges supposedly are qualified to do is recognize patently unconstitutional actions of low-level bureaucrats when they see it.

You knew it was only a matter of time before this headline showed up, dintcha?

Bill Clinton (D) had Monica.  And Gennifer.  And Paula.  And possibly others. 

Larry Craig (R) had a bathroom stall in an airport.

Gary Hart (D) (for those that remember back that far) dared the press to follow him, so they did.  And caught him engaged in some Monkey Business.

Gary Condit (D) had Chandra Levy.

A few members of Congress (D) and (R) have had problems keeping their hands off their pages.

Then there are various other extramarital affairs:

Representative Tim Mahoney (D)

Senator John Ensign (R)

Representative Vito Fossella (R)

And, shockingly!  John Kennedy had Marylin Monroe (and potentially several other women), and FDR had Lucy Mercer.  Plenty of other past presidents also likely had paramours.

And now, only the latest in a long tradition of politicians fiddling about with “a little on the side,“ comes South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford (R).

And the media, the blogosphere, and blog commenters have a field day.  “He’s a family values Republican!“  As if there are no “family values” Democrats.  And the left-leaning media and bloggers rejoice in the “hypocrisy” of the right-wingers. As if no Democrats ever have done exactly the same thing. 

Party affiliation is not the issue.  What every one of these “scandals” illustrates with precision and clarity is that, Democrat or Republican, our elected representatives and “leaders” are, despite their press releases, simply human after all, and therefore imperfect and fallible.  And almost never able to fully live up to the superhuman expectations and imagery developed by their media relations team or voters.

On either side of the aisle, schadenfreude is an ugly thing.

In today’s article on the Fourth Circuit ruling upholding Virginia’s ban on partial-birth abortion, Courtney Jones of Planned Parenthood says, “We would hope the court would stop playing politics with women’s health.“

This is the line Planned Parenthood and its cohort trot out seemingly every time an abortion restriction is discussed. Seriously, they have beaten the line to bloody death.

See for yourself.

It’s a mystery why Planned Parenthood continues to make that knee-jerk talking point. Maybe internal polling shows that it works. But has to be one of the dumbest talking points around.

First, it can just as easily cut the other way. For instance, legislators who vote against a bill to impose stricter health and safety regulations on abortion clinics because they live in pro-choice districts could be accused of playing politics with women’s lives, right? Sure they could. By the same token, if an anti-abortion court can be accused of playing politics, then so can a pro-abortion court.

Second, abortion is, on both sides of the debate, a question of deep and abiding conviction that is less open to political calculus than, say, immigration or the Employee Free Choice Act. In those instances, it’s possible to pick your position depending on how the outcome might affect partisan fortunes down the line. (More immigration and more union members = more voters for Party X. . .). With abortion, you can’t really make such a calculation unless you buy into the Roe Effect.

And third, in this case the line is just silly. It’s one thing to accuse elected officials of playing politics. But whatever one thinks about the Fourth Circuit ruling, the idea that the judges ruled the way they did because they were keeping one eye on the polls is just risible.

You could of course insist that the majority on the court was “playing politics” in a broader sense because it was acting out of political motives rather than simply interpreting law. But then see the first point above: The same criticism could apply to the minority as well, so the net effect is a wash.

The only place left to go is to maintain that questions of reproductive medicine should be sealed off from the governmental sphere entirely. In that case, of course, government should not subsidize abortion or contraception, either. That’s certainly a defensible position—but it’s not the position taken by Planned Parenthood.

Fox News is caught in a Freudian slip of biblical proportions.

So which do you like more, this account by conservative pundit Byron York, or this account by the

White House

American Broadcasting Corporation**, which informs us that

In that email, as well as other documents surrounding Walpin’s termination obtained by ABC News, a picture emerges of an ambitious and aggressive inspector general whose actions repeatedly offended officials of the US Attorney’s office, to the point that the Republican-appointee in the US Attorney’s office filed an official complain against the Republican-appointed Inspector General.

That’s relevant information, no? (Yes!)

OTOH, I seem to recall a great deal of furor surrounding the Bush administration’s firing of some politically appointed lawyers who serve at the pleasure of the president, whereas inspectors general, to the best of my knowledge, do not.
___________
** See here for details.

Unofficially, of course!

Hooray for Woodland Heights.