So, Justices Kennedy, Scalia, Alito, and Roberts:

If money is fully speech, corporations have full personhood and all associated rights therein, why is it not entirely unconstitutional to require corporations’ “free speech” be disclosed (but of course—only when it applies to political spending)?

Clarence Thomas at least has the guts to follow your argument to its logical conclusion—that forced disclosure would be facially unconstitutional if the entire foundation of your argument was actually true.

It sure is a problem when public outrage would reveal how baseless and transparently ideological the most basic of your arguments are, isn’t it? As always with regard to Supreme Court decisions, “activist judges” are totally OKIYAR^[1].

P.S.: Does this mean that shareholders should now be more accurately called slaveowners?

1. http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=IOKIYAR [↩]

I’ve been a fan of Jack Conte’s for a while (see his cover of Radiohead’s “The National Anthem”), but I somehow missed his collaboration with Nataly Dawn to form Pomplamoose. Highly recommended covers (and their originals are great too):

Mrs. Robinson

Nature Boy (eden ahbez)

My Favorite Things

Shorter Stephen Hayes:

The hysterically over-secretive Dick Cheney never informed me of the security bunker at the Naval Observatory while I was writing his hagiography; therefore, its existence is self-evidently “highly classified” and Joe Biden should be hanged at the next available opportunity. Prepare the gallows!

Cheney also had the Naval Observatory removed from Google Maps; its existence is thus obviously highly classified, and my knowledge of it means that I should be next after Biden.

I learned about the bunker under the White House from 24, but George W. Bush never mentioned it: highly classified. Joel Surnow, you’re up third.

Honestly, how does this man brush his teeth every morning?

Good overview of what he’s done right and wrong so far. (In my opinion, lots more wrong than right.)

This article from Alessandra Stanley makes such a ham-handed attempt at being “fair and balanced” (truly a hallmark of quality journalism), that it ends up reaching Cramer-levels of embarrassment for its author.

The first warning klaxons come when Stanley attempts to present a sunny case for CNBC:

Part of his frustration may stem from the fact that while Mr. Stewart clearly won the debate, Mr. Cramer and CNBC stood to profit from the encounter. In today’s television news market, the cable network and its stars are like the financiers they cover — media short-sellers trading shamelessly on publicity, good or bad, so long as it drives up ratings. There isn’t enough regulation on Wall Street, and there’s hardly any accountability on cable news: it’s a 24-hour star system where opinions — and showmanship — matter more than facts.

The first problem with this is the bald-faced attempt to dismiss Stewart’s serious criticisms as envy over CNBC potentially receiving higher ratings.  The second problem rests on the assertion that CNBC is concerned with total number of eyeballs.  This is so fundamentally unsound as to have been prohibitory for anyone who knows anything about the industry.  CNBC, like Bloomberg and Fox Business News, have off-the-charts low ratings compared to pretty much every other cable network in existence.  The reason why this is not a problem is that something like 90% of their audience is composed of people who make over $1 million, making advertisers salivate.  This premise is predicated on the idea that if CNBC increases its base viewership (with no regard to the income levels of new viewers), the network will benefit.  The obvious flaw in this argument is that financial networks, more than pretty much any other network, requires significant levels of trust.  After all, they’re dealing with the finances of presumably savvy people with millions of dollars to their name.  If they lose even 10% of their viewership in the high-income stratus due to loss of trust, they will require an over 10-fold increase in viewership from people making $100,000 per year for advertisers to remain even remotely satisfied.^[1]  The idea that CNBC doesn’t care about the composition of its viewership and only about raw numbers is transparently baseless.

Once he had Mr. Cramer at his desk, Mr. Stewart showed fresh, and even more embarrassing clips from a 2006 interview with the Web site he founded, TheStreet.com, in which he too candidly explained how hedge fund market manipulation really works.

He not only “candidly explained” it, he explicitly advocated the use of illegal tactics by hedge fund managers because it was an easy way to make money and the SEC didn’t know about it (I’m not quoting directly because I don’t have access to a transcript at the moment).  When Stewart showed just a snippet of Cramer’s statements, Cramer attempted to lie about the context of them, claiming that he was trying to bring to light the illegality to regulators, presumably assuming that Stewart would behave like every other mainstream journalist and simply ignore the lie.  But Stewart immediately noted his statement “interesting,” then aired Cramer’s next few sentences which completely eviscerated his blatant attempt to cover his ass from just a few seconds prior.  That seems an odd detail to leave out and gloss over by describing this portion of the interview as a “[candid explanation]“.  That is far too close to Cramer’s lie than the actual truth. Less whitewashing, please.

The final sentence is mystifying:

Mr. Stewart kept getting the last word, but Mr. Cramer may yet have the last laugh.

What does this even mean?  Is it an attempt to refer back to the earlier false premise that CNBC is cherishing this negative spotlight (while conflating Cramer the man with CNBC the corporate network)?  Is it making a claim that Cramer is just an attention whore who doesn’t care about what people think of him?  I have no idea, because it comes completely out of the blue.  There is absolutely no justification for its presence in the article; it’s simply a throwaway line attempting to make it seem like Cramer didn’t have his heart ripped out and shown to him on national television and to be “fair and balanced.”^[2]  It has no business existing even in the mind’s eye.

Update: DougJ hones in on a part of the article that I forgot to mention: the idea that Stewart’s interview is due to a “Messianic streak” rather than someone engaging in actual, you know, journalism.

1. And, due to lower levels of consumption, I would argue the required increase to be significantly over 10-fold. [↩]
2. Hat tip: Alex Koppelman. [↩]

A couple of months ago, the conservative establishment was up in arms over eightmaps.com, a website that takes the public information about political donations and places the donors in support of Proposition 8 in California on a map, intending to lift the veil on the pervasiveness of the bigotry living among us.

They predicted hailstorms, frogs descending from heaven, the complete end of civilization due to the firebombing of these decent, upstanding people who wanted only to forcefully divorce a few thousand couples and segregate an entire portion of the population.

Of course, none of that happened — much like their similar predictions about what would happen in the socialist nests of Massachusetts and Connecticut have, while being completely and inanely absurd on their face, been proven to be nothing more than the fantasies of the Republican establishment — and this past week a few journalists noted such in a few sidebars.

They obviously couldn’t stand for that reality to be acknowledged, so as a result, we got a story planted in the Sunday New York Times by way of Brad Stone.

The article laments the fact that laws intending to promote transparency (the so-called sunlight laws) leads to what its author believes to be serious privacy violations. (The fact that donors are fully notified that their donation information belongs to the public goes unmentioned in the article.) The premise is that websites like eightmaps.com are in fact violations of the principle of free speech because people who have chosen to express their views can be “challenged [by] their opponents directly.” Unlike Mr. Stone, I view this as an essential feature of democracy. The fact that you can freely say absurd things — AND the fact that your peers can freely challenge you on those absurd things — combine to form the essence of free speech. Claiming that free speech is intended to allow people to speak, but to disallow others from responding, is so transparently ludicrous that it should not have passed this editor’s smell test. Yes, that means that democracy is messy. That’s what democracy is.

Mr. Stone cites one blind quote and one attributed quote saying that they had received “several” intemperate e-mails to support the claim that eightmaps.com has resulted in mass instances of “harassment or worse.” According to SFGate’s latest numbers, 43,096 people just in California donated to pro-Prop 8 campaigns. Two quotes. Out of 43,096. Two.

I am not at all ambivalent to privacy issues — I consider myself a civil libertarian above all — but open democracy requires openness, lest it devolve into a lesser system entirely. If someone chooses to participate in the democratic process, then they must participate in it. The fact that you are feeling shame over the position you have taken is, again, a feature. The proper response is not to obfuscate that whole “participatory” part of participatory democracy, but to realize that maybe there’s a reason you’re feeling that way and to challenge your own convictions.

I don’t see that happening, though.

I am quite disappointed in the turn of events surrounding Michael Phelps. I firmly believe that private acts are private for a reason, with a few exceptions (one of which will come in a post later tonight). The fact that this British tabloid has obtained such purchase with American media is outright disgusting to me, and the responses of nearly everyone involved have been even more disgusting.

I was planning on watching Michael swim at his first competition since the Olympics, at the Grand Prix event in Austin in a month. That is now out the window, thanks to USA Swimming’s unbelievable 3-month suspension. (For those curious, Phelps broke no swimming competition rules, which do not restrict the use of marijuana outside of competition.) USA Swimming helpfully lists phone numbers for each of its executives here, and I encourage all of us of like mind to avail ourselves of that resource.

Kellogg’s has also dropped Phelps as a sponsor. I am personally boycotting that company and its subsidiaries (as are a few other prominent people, such as Andrew Sullivan), which really stinks because I inhale every Kashi product known to man — but I’m certain a replacement won’t be that difficult to find.

Seth Meyers covered the story this weekend on Saturday Night Live, and while he didn’t say everything I wish he had, he still hits home.

For those who haven’t read it yet, go read April Witt’s piece in this weekend’s Washington Post magazine. And as heartbreaking and disgusting a story that it is, realize that it’s simply the tip of the iceberg and the only reason an editor thought it worthy of printing was that the victim was a clean-as-a-whistle mayor. The fact of the matter is that this happens every day to people who don’t have the same opportunity to raise public awareness and whose only option is to simply grin and take it. As Balko notes, an elderly woman died of a heart attack due to a similar military-style attack on her home.

There was a chat this afternoon with the author and Cheye Calvo, in which he notes how much Prince George’s County has been able to lie and stonewall investigation, while simultaneously claiming that every thing they did was proper and with every single actor avoiding even the most cursory of punishments.

No matter what your thoughts are on the use of drugs, this story, amongst others, should clearly illuminate the absurdity that is this country’s militant (and completely ineffectual) approach to drug policy — and the complete disregard that local, state, and federal departments have for the Constitution.^[1]

1. Don’t get me started on Justice Scalia’s hilarious flip-flop in Gonzales v. Raich that similarly illuminated how utterly devoid of principle he is. [↩]

I was about a third of the way through writing a post ripping today’s piece by Greg Miller in the LA Times. I still have no idea how an editor didn’t take one look at that sorry excuse for logical thought (not to mention journalism) and openly laugh in Mr. Miller’s face; the fact that that didn’t happen doesn’t speak well of that organization.

Anyway, all this to say that Hilzoy and Scott Horton have already covered it perfectly and I don’t have anything to add.

Leah should have been sent packing, without question, but dems da rules. Stefan really saved her, and she owes him quite a bit. Radhika had a LOT more to do with the failures of that restaurant than did Carla. What Radhika was doing during service was unconscionable, and the fact that she was oblivious, even more so. I’m disappointed, because I was digging a lot of her dishes, but if you think that service isn’t the purview of the chef (as opposed to a line cook), you’re up a tree.

I continue to be disappointed with Jeff. I really think he has the most potential, but he’s just so inconsistent and, as Jamie accurately assessed tonight, unfocused. I’m really at a loss as to who will be going to the finals. I think Carla’s done sooner rather than later, with Fabio not far behind.^[1] Jamie and Stefan are the strongest at the moment.

P.S. I’m glad Leah realizes that she’s ended her relationship and is, in fact, cheating; Hosea, please give me a toke of whatever you’re on. Also, Bravo, please don’t ever pull this crap again.

1. I love his personality, but he makes major mistakes in every dish and hasn’t had anything close to a winning dish since the carpaccio, which basically won because the rest of the field was universally terrible. The amount of work that dish required was minimal. [↩]