Feministe: Hey, anti-tax conservatives...

Mario Piperni: On Health Care and Motives

Instaputz: Bill Bennett, Liar

Vagabond Scholar: Hot For Teachers

Balkinization: Forced to choose between Tiger Woods and Billy Payne, the chairman of Augusta National Golf Club, my loyalties are with Tiger, who is by far the lesser threat to Americans children and grandchildren than the members of Augusta National Golf Club for whom Mr. Payne so sanctimoniously speaks.

ANNALS OF JOURNALISM: Media indifference to murder...Rupert Murdoch has lost it...NPR's gender balance...Journo enablers...Pedalling mob violence... Introducing The Broder-o-Matic!...Crackerjack reporting...Cover-up News Network...WaPo hack...Deficit fascination...Unreal American stories... Dear Networks...CNN Fail...Big wheel...Who covers this?

If you haven't noticed lately, the Washington Post has become the NRO for the most awesome Rahm Emanuel. Dana Milbank penned a column that could have been dictated to him by Rahm and then came another one basically saying all the same things. Rahm is teh Awesome and Obama is not.

We've had big problems with Broder, but even these weird displays of over the top Rahm leaking riled up the King of the Village:

In the space of 10 days, thanks in no small part to my own newspaper, the president of the United States has been portrayed as a weakling and a chronic screw-up who is wrecking his administration despite everything that his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, can do to make things right.

This remarkable fiction began unfolding on Feb. 21 in the Sunday column of my friend Dana Milbank, who wrote that "Obama's first year fell apart in large part because he didn't follow his chief of staff's advice on crucial matters. Arguably, Emanuel is the only person keeping Obama from becoming Jimmy Carter," i.e., a one-term failure.

A week later, presumably the same anonymous sources convinced Milbank to pronounce that Obama "too often plays the 98-pound weakling; he gets sand kicked in his face and responds with moot-court zingers."

And on Tuesday, The Post led the paper with a purported news story by Jason Horowitz saying that a president with Obama's "detached, professorial manner" needed "a political enforcer" like Emanuel to have a chance of succeeding, "because he [Emanuel] possessed a unique understanding of the legislative mind." Unfortunately, the story said, "influential Democrats are -- in unusually frank terms -- blaming Obama and his closest campaign aides for not listening to Emanuel."

Rahm was instrumental in recruiting many new Blue Dogs in 2006 and 2008. If he was so great, then why didn't he get the ConservaDems and Lieberman on board with health care?

Dean Broder: "Get off my lawn!" by Tengrain at Mock, Paper, Scissors. Open thread below...

David Broder in the Washington (Republican Propaganda) Post:

The saga of South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford and his Argentine romance has been such ripe fodder for the gossip mills that the essential governmental question has almost been forgotten.

Whether Sanford can resolve the mess he has made of his personal life is of little concern to anyone but the people involved.

But when he disappeared for five days, telling no one in his administration or even his security detail where he had gone, he did something totally irresponsible. Had any kind of emergency occurred, South Carolina would have been leaderless.

At the moment Sanford abandoned his duties in secret pursuit of private pleasure, he in effect tendered his resignation.

The Legislature should insist he follow through on it.

Now while I agree with the sentiment that Sanford abandoned his job to follow his little brain, er...heart to Argentina, I'm struck by the difference in Broder's tone from his coverage of Bill Clinton's infidelities:

One of the most revealing statements Broder -- or, perhaps, any political journalist -- has ever made came in 1998. In November 1998, after nearly a year of public opinion polls showing, basically, that people liked Bill Clinton and wanted the Lewinsky investigation to just go away, and of the Washington journalist/pundit crowd vehemently disagreeing, the Post published an article by Sally Quinn attempting to explain the disconnect (which lives on to this day).

Quinn famously quoted Broder explaining why the "Washington Establishment" -- which under anybody's definition includes both Broder and Quinn -- was so angry at Clinton: "He came in here and he trashed the place ... and it's not his place."

Broder's implication -- that Washington was his place, not the president's -- is arrogant enough. But Broder's other comment speaks volumes: "The judgment is harsher in Washington. We don't like being lied to."

What a difference ten years can make. Of course, it has nothing to do with Sanford being a Republican, does it, Dean Broder?

I just loved this little tidbit from Paul Krugman this morning:

David Broder has a column this morning calling for bipartisanship. I know, you’re shocked. But what struck me was this bit about Al Franken:

Franken, the loud-mouthed former comedian, will be the 60th member of the Senate Democratic caucus …

Two points.

First, implicit in this characterization of Franken is the notion of the Senate as a decorous gentlemen’s club. I doubt that club ever existed in reality; but in any case, these days the World’s Greatest Deliberative Body is, not to put too fine a point on it, chock full o’ nuts. James Inhofe: I rest my case.

Second, Al Franken’s dirty secret is that … he’s a big policy wonk.

I used to go on Franken’s radio show, all ready to be jocular — and what he wanted to talk about was the arithmetic of Social Security, or the structure of Medicare Part D.

In fact, the only elected official I know who’s wonkier than Al Franken is Rush Holt, my congressman — and he used to be the assistant director of Princeton’s plasma physics lab. (The campaign’s bumper stickers read, “My Congressman IS a rocket scientist.”)

So what will Franken do to the level of Senate discourse? He’ll raise it.

Huffington Post:

Ken Silverstein of Harper's has discovered that Washington Post columnist David Broder has been spending time recently on the business lecture circuit. Among the groups to which he's spoken in the past few years are the National Association of Manufacturers, the Northern Virginia Association of Realtors, the American Council for Capital Formation, and an organization of health insurance companies.

As Silverstein points out, this is especially notable because Broder's spent years criticizing journalists who do this as being "greedy" and appearing to be "part of the establishment and therefore part of the problem." Silverstein has yet to receive a response from Broder about how much he's been paid for these speeches, although he did find that Broder seems to have received $12,000 for a 2006 talk.

And this behavior is nothing new from Broder. For decades his shtick has been to posture as an independent-minded guardian of the DC press corps' conscience, while engaging in exactly the kind of intellectually corrupt Washington insider-dom he publicly deplores. In fact, he's so shameless it almost makes you feel bad for everyone there with him in the DC muck. They may be all be whores, but Broder -- whenever he's on break from servicing the clientele -- makes the rest of the hookers listen to pious sermons about the evils of prostitution.*

What's unclear is whether Broder is deeply devious, or suffers from the kind of anti-self awareness usually associated only with severe brain damage. Perhaps it's the latter, and he believes those nice gentlemen are leaving the envelopes of cash on the dresser because he and they share a deep emotional connection.

Whatever the case, here's a little-known but especially hilarious example of Broder at his most Broder-iffic. Read on...

Way back in 1995, the Washington Post's Ben Bradlee explained why he was uncomfortable with journalists getting big bucks on the lecture circuit: "I wish it would go away. I don’t like it. I think it’s corrupting. If the Insurance Institute of America, if there is such a thing, pays you $10,000 to make a speech, don’t tell me you haven’t been corrupted. You can say you haven’t and you can say you will attack insurance issues in the same way, but you won’t. You can’t."

It's a shame David Broder wasn't paying attention.

[I]t’s surprising to see that Broder, who recently took a buyout but will continue to write his Post column, appears to be a regular presence these days on the business-lecture circuit and has even spoken to major health-care groups. [...]

Perhaps the groups to whom Broder spoke paid only for his expenses. Even if that’s true, he still appears to have—at minimum—been on the receiving end of some sweet junkets. And shouldn’t Broder disclose to the Post’s readers and the general public his moonlighting activities, especially when he writes about topics that overlap with his speaking gigs?

Ken Silverstein has all the details.

Vagabond Scholar: A thorough takedown of McCain's "100 years" comments. General Petraeus blames the writers' strike for his repeat performance.

William K. Wolfrum: Martha Burk and the Masters: Five years later, the sexism is more obvious than ever.

Dennis Perrin: Murdering Time

Spin Cycle: Powell praises Obama

Open Secrets: Expanding Washington's influence industry by 8 percent in 2007, industries and interests spent $17 million for every day Congress was in session. The drug industry spent the most of all, paying lobbyists 25 percent more last year.

Rising Hegemon: Broder talking sh#t out the side of his neck again...

I don’t care that Rudy Giuliani is a thrice-married serial adulterer. I care that there’s one level of scrutiny for Democratic presidential candidates, and an easier one for Republicans, when it comes to personal lives.

Greg Sargent notes that the Washington Post’s David Broder chatted with readers late last week, and there was a brief-but-interesting exchange.

New York: Will you and the media ever apply as much scrutiny to the Giuliani marriages as you have done to the single Clinton marriage?

David S. Broder: I plan to leave both subjects alone.

Is that so?

It's odd, given that Broder has devoted quite a bit of energy to the Clintons’ marriage, during Bill Clinton’s presidency and after, while giving Giuliani's scandalous personal life a pass. But now the Dean of the DC media establishment plans to leave both marriages alone. How big of him.

Duncan found this excellent piece (read it all) by David Broder from 1993 about Bush #41 and his pardon of the Iran-Contra's Caspar Weinberger:

We don't need more convictions and pardons of government officials. We need scorn and shame for those who violate their oaths of office. And that is a penalty that the American people -- and only the American people -- can invoke...read on

It's a scathing indictment of the media. If the Bill O'Reilly's would turn their attention to these crooked politicians and white collar criminals instead of crimes that are already abhorrent in our society we might reach Broder's conclusion. But then again, FOX NEWS would not have as many analysts working for them.