Mandate Indeed

Geez. The way these conservatives talk, you'd think they won by 30 points instead of 3.

Even Bush himself has been telling the press that he has "the people at my back" (or is that backside?) -- in the process of making clear to everyone considering crossing those bridges they say they're building what the reality is: It's "my way or the highway."

But the entire press corps has bought into the myth of Bush's "mandate." Indeed, it's all any of them can seem to talk about.

Now, just as an experiment, I went back and checked, because I thought I remembered that Bill Clinton cleaned Bob Dole's clock in 1996 by a substanitally wider margin. Sure enough, the final figures were:

Bill Clinton 47,402,357 49%
Bob Dole 39,198,755 41%

Ross Perot 8,085,402 8%

In other words, Clinton won by a margin of of 8 percent of the popular vote -- 8.2 million.
Did the "liberal media" declare that Clinton had a clear mandate from the people?

Well, no.

The mainstream press instead proclaimed that Clinton had been given "a message, not a mandate".

Oliver Willis: Biden FTW, except with C+ America and the bone-deep stupid

Petrelis Files: Former assitant editor of the conservative Washington Times says it's all over for the Psychogeezer and Caribou Barbie. Maybe so, but get ready for a revival of Reverend Wright.

Calculated Risk: Charley Rose discussion on the economy with Mort Zuckerman and Andrew Ross Sorkin

Blue Heron Blast: Sarah Silverman and The Great Schlep

Open Salon: McCain Wrestles a Bear!

Justice Watch: Reagan appointees criticize Scalia activism

Wow. Just wow.

KOCO 5 (Oklahoma City):

An Oklahoma church canceled a controversial gun giveaway for teenagers at a weekend youth conference.

Windsor Hills Baptist had planned to give away a semiautomatic assault rifle until one of the event's organizers was unable to attend.

The church's youth pastor, Bob Ross, said it's a way of trying to encourage young people to attend the event. The church expected hundreds of teenagers from as far away as Canada.

"We have 21 hours of preaching and teaching throughout the week," Ross said.[..]

"I don't want people thinking ‘My goodness, we're putting a weapon in the hand of somebody that doesn't respect it who are then going to go out and kill,'" said Ross. "That's not at all what we're trying to do."

Ross said the conference isn't all about guns, but rather about teens finding faith.

What Would Jesus Do? Give a semi-automatic weapon to a teenager, naturally. Makes perfect sense to me. (/sarcasm)

A six year old West Virginia jury award now worth $70 million against the country's fourth largest coal company was overturned last week by the West Virginia Supreme Court. Now a look back at what happened in between is raising eyebrows, not to mention Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship's hackles. This one seems eerily similar to John Grisham's latest, only this is for real. ABC's Brian Ross explains.

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After Massey Energy appealed the case, its CEO Don Blankenship, a Richmond Virginia resident, helped bankroll a $3.5 million ad campaign to successfully unseat W.V. Supreme Court Justice Warren McGraw and replace him with Justice Brent Benjamin, or as fellow Justice Larry Starcher put it, "the election was bought, a seat was purchased on our Supreme Court, and I'm highly offended by it." Then pictures surfaced of Blankenship and W.V. Supreme Court Chief Justice Spike Maynard vacationing with their girlfriends on the Riviera. "It was a trip the Chief Justice never disclosed to the court, even when he voted with the majority to overturn the huge Massey verdict, according to Justice Starcher, who is now being interviewed by the FBI."

After the pictures became public, Justice Maynard did recuse himself, but so did fellow Justice Starcher because (gasp), he had dared to have been critical of Blankenship's relationship with the Court. So the three remaining W.V. Justices, including Blankenship's 3.5 million dollar Justice Benjamin, reheard the case last week and again overturned it.

When approached for a comment by ABC News, Blankenship threatened that the reporter was "liable to get shot" and attacked his camera.

W.V. Chief Justice Maynard insists he's been the victim of "the mother of all political smears," even after it came out that Blankenship's chief political consultant is now helping Maynard's re-election bid. Let's hope that goes about as well as Blankenship's $3 million attempt to finance a GOP takeover of the W.V. House in 2006.

David Seaton's News Links: A good question and a good answer

cab drollery: The hazards of wasting a vote on Ralph Nader, Ross Perot, Ron Paul, et al

The Satirical Political Report: GOP defends Spitzer's prostitution activities, but slams him for doing it with "undocumented hookers."

The Brad Blog: The insidious nexus between phony GOP charges of "voter fraud" and the U.S. Attorney Purge scandal will finally explored in a Senate hearing this week.

WTF is going on? Anatomy of a scam.

ANNALS OF JOURNALISM: This explains everything...An Ombudsman stumbles around...A politician actually speaks sensibly on security and fraidy-cat authoritarianism, while a store-bought GOP shill just lies...McCain BBQ and our insipid press corpse...Violent framing...Cancer scare tactics...News you may have missed...like our press keeps missing stuff

Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) probably thought he was in the clear, or at least close to it. He was exposed as a hypocrite who hired prostitutes after running on a family-values platform, he went into hiding for a week, and he returned to the Senate as if nothing had happened. From what I hear, the rest of the Senate Republican caucus welcomed him back with open arms (literally and figuratively).

Problem solved? Not so much. Leading far-right voices -- including Sean Hannity and Kathryn Jean Lopez -- are now urging Vitter to resign.

First the scandal was about sex. Then it was about hypocrisy. Now, it’s about a sitting senator knowingly violating criminal law. Ross Douthat put it this way:

Making use of a prostitution ring isn’t a private matter, and Vitter should not be sitting in the United States Senate while the “D.C. Madam” is facing up to 55 years in prison for selling what he was apparently interested in buying. […]

If a politician were caught with his name on the “call list” of a prominent drug dealer, he wouldn’t be able to wriggle out of it by admitting to a “serious sin” and leaving it at that. And unless prominent Republicans are prepared to join Matt in supporting the repeal of laws banning prostitution - which I certainly hope they aren’t - then they shouldn’t be backing Vitter’s “it’s a private matter” line. It isn’t. It’s a crime.

That’s actually pretty compelling.

AttyTood:

OK, you can't say that CNN and its diplomatic reporter, Richard Ross, don't care about the humanitarian crisis in Darfur. In fact, just seconds ago "Your Trusted Name in News" just aired one of the few full-length reports I've seen on the situation in Darfur, or more accurately the situation on 42nd Street in Manhattan, since the story was merely an interview with a cab driver who happens to have immigrated from Darfur.

Apparently Tom Friedman, the Pulitizer Prize winner of global cabbie journalism, is advising CNN now.

I kept waiting for the twist in the story, but there was no twist. That was the entire story. CNN found a guy from Darfur who now drives a cab in New York. (Although, as I learned from the story, there are apparently 100 others like him.)

And yet, they could afford a helicopter to give us door-to-door coverage of Paris Hilton's return to LA County Jail.  I bet Ross put in a whole ten minutes trying to find a cabbie from Darfur...that's called being committed to true journalism. (/snark)

ABC's much anticipated "20/20" report last night on the DC Madam scandal was a dud to say the least. Last week Brian Ross said:

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"There are thousands of names, tens of thousands of phone numbers, and there are people there at the Pentagon, lobbyists, others at the White House, prominent lawyers — a long, long list.

But last night on "20/20," Ross completely reversed course and said:

As usually is the case in Washington, much of it is dull. There are no members of Congress we can find in these phone numbers, no White House officials. Quite frankly, but for the few exceptions, most of the men on this list just aren't newsworthy.

What accounts for that sudden shift? A week ago the White House was involved, but now they're not? The last thing I want is anyone falsely accused of anything, but how did an extra week with the phone records lead Ross to conclude that people who he last week said were involved no longer aren't? That's just weird if you ask me.

Brian Ross has the scoop at ABC.

The Blotter:

The FBI repeatedly failed to follow the strict guidelines of the Patriot Act when its agents took advantage of a new provision allowing the FBI to obtain phone and financial records without a court order, according to a report to be made public Friday by the Justice Department's Inspector General.

The report, in classified and unclassified versions, remains closely held, but Washington officials who have seen it tell ABC News it documents "numerous lapses" and describe it as "scathing" and "not a pretty picture for the FBI."

FBI Director Robert Mueller is scheduled to brief Congress on the report at noon.

The officials say the inspector general found the FBI underreported by at least 20 percent the use of the controversial provision, known as National Security Letters, NSLs, in required disclosures to Congress. Read more...

Lest we forget President Bush issued one of those infamous signing statements back in February 2006 when he signed the Patriot Act reauthorization, effectively nullifying the provisions Congress agreed upon so that these kinds of abuses wouldn't occur. Will that be their legal defense? I think so.

When President Bush signed the reauthorization of the USA Patriot Act this month, he included an addendum saying that he did not feel obliged to obey requirements that he inform Congress about how the FBI was using the act's expanded police powers.

Washington Post has more...

...there's an easy fix: Blame George Soros:

Over the last couple days they've dusted off a well worn line, which they never fail to trot out when things are looking particularly bleak for the GOP: George Soros is behind this.

Why Soros? [..]In the minds of some Republicans, Soros, the billionaire financier and philanthropist who has donated generous sums of his fortune to democratic candidates and causes, is the kingpin behind a vast conspiracy to dismantle the Republican Party. So, in their thinking, it would follow that Soros and the watchdog groups that are funded by his Open Society Institute, such as Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), are pulling the strings on a well-timed effort to taint the Republican Party just before the mid-term elections by leaking Foley's emails to the press.

"The people who want to see this thing blow up are ABC News and a lot of Democratic operatives, people funded by George Soros," Hastert (who has previously intimated that Soros' philanthropic efforts may be funded by "drug money") told the Chicago Tribune yesterday. On Fox last night, Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly were also preoccupied by this prospect. Interviewing Brian Ross, the ABC reporter who broke the scandal, O'Reilly said, "Now the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington is a far left group. George Soros gives a lot of money to it through his Open Society Institute. They apparently are the ones that drove this thing behind the scenes. Is that what you're hearing?"

"I'm not familiar with them," Ross responded. "They didn't drive us."

Read on...

You can watch Bill O'Reilly grilling Neal Cavuto on Soros here and Hannity and Coultergeist blaming Soros here .