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Dana Milbank wasn't the only Beltway Villager all wanked out about President Obama prearranging a question with HuffPo's Nico Pitney yesterday. On Meet the Press, David Gregory pressed David Axelrod about it, suggesting that somehow this sort of thing is anti-democratic:

MR. GREGORY: I just want to be clear. Did the White House coordinate with a reporter about a question to be asked at a press conference?

MR. AXELROD: The White House didn't coordinate with the reporter about a question, we were looking for a way to get questions from within Iran. We could--we did not have access to Iranian journalists.

MR. GREGORY: So you talked to a reporter beforehand and said, "Could you ask a question about--from--directly from Iran at a press conference?"

MR. AXELROD: We said if you--we, we, we, we, we knew that he had been and he was very publicly involved in getting--in trafficking and communications in and out of Iran, and we felt it was important...

MR. GREGORY: Well, why is it appropriate to coordinate with a reporter about what's asked at a time when we're championing democracy around the world?

MR. AXELROD: No, no, David, you miss...

MR. GREGORY: Is that, is that what you should do at a press conference?

MR. AXELROD: You're not, you're not listening to what I said. We didn't coordinate with, with him about what was asked.

MR. GREGORY: Right.

MR. AXELROD: In fact, he asked probably one of the most--the toughest and most probing questions at that press conference. We had no idea what he was going to ask.

MR. GREGORY: But you coordinated with him about, about that subject of a question beforehand.

MR. AXELROD: He was a, he was a, he was a, he was a vehicle to get questions from Iran asked at this press conference, and that we thought was not only appropriate but, but necessary.

MR. GREGORY: If President Bush had done that, don't you think Democrats would have said that's outrageous?

Gregory is a Beltway Villager, and like all such folk, he wants to cling to the well-honed myths that preserve their favorite fictions about themselves. One of these is that White House press conferences are actually exercises in democratic, even egalitarian questioning of government officials by the people's representatives in the press corps.

So they are loathe to admit a simple reality: White House press conferences are in cold reality carefully stage-managed affairs, and the main beneficiaries of this arrangement have been the handful of "elite" reporters from big-name media outlets who traditionally have dominated them.

We're perfectly aware that presidents have for some long time gone into these conferences with a prearranged list of reporters upon whom they are going to call. The result has been an immense trivialization of press conferences, because those "elite" reporters have demonstrated over the years their eagerness to indulge trivial, celebrity-media-driven questions at the expense of serious policy matters. In the process, they've become increasingly manipulable.

This trend reached its apotheosis back when Jeff Gannon was lobbing softball questions to President Bush and White House press secretary Scott McClellan. Not only was Gannon a phony journalist, he was being regularly selected to be among the main questioners at the daily briefings.

Considering that this same White House never came clean on exactly why it issued credentials to this fraud -- and especially considering that David Gregory never once objected to it -- his outrage over the Obama White House's calling on Pitney for the toughest question any reporter at that conference asked seems strangely misplaced.

On the other hand, considering that this White House's admission of people like Pitney into the circle of people who get to ask questions at these conferences represents a direct erosion of the "elite" status of people like David Gregory -- and in fact an opening of these questions to many more "representatives of the people" -- it's really not too surprising.

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Thomas Friedman, the consummate Villager, demonstrated this morning on ABC This Week, as part of the roundtable following George Stephanopoulos' interview with Barack Obama, just how readily Republican talking points become Conventional Wisdom in their hands:

Friedman: There are many terrible handoffs the Bush administration, many many, uh, are leaving for President Obama. But there is one overriding large one -- there has been no terrorist act in this country since 9/11. And I think that is a very sobering, weighty handoff for this administration.

Stephanopoulos: The number one priority is to keep the country safe.

Friedman: And I think that's where the debate's gonna have to be. Where I think the administration, the last one, really faulted itself was not consulting Congress. But the fact is, you know, the American people don't want to lose that. And I think that how Obama handles that -- I think that's going to be one of the toughest, toughest challenges going forward.

OK, let's have that debate. But it can't just be on Village terms. Because there are three components of this "weighty handoff" that go unmentioned by Friedman:

1. Bush also laid the groundwork for future terrorist attacks. The 2006 National Intelligence Estimate, after all, warned that the invasion of Iraq and subsequent Bush policies -- including the use of torture -- have in fact made the likelihood of future terrorist attacks exponentially greater.

2. Bush didn't keep us safe before 9/11. The historical record is clear that prior to that event, Bush dismissed counterterror concerns as a "Clinton thing," and he was clearly asleep at the wheel on the day it occurred. Any president who allowed the worst terrorist attack on American soil on his watch has no business subsequently claiming that he kept the country safe. (Also worth noting: The lack of any international terrorist attack in the intervening years is not evidence that Bush's post-9/11 strategy actually prevented anything.)

3. There in fact have been other terrorist attacks since 9/11. The most noteworthy of these was the October-November 2001 anthrax attacks, which killed five people, and has still gone unsolved. There have also been planned attacks nipped in the bud: a planned cyanide bombing, a man who intended to blow up LA banks, a former Army Ranger who planned to bomb abortion clinics, and the Alabama militiamen who intended to go on an anti-Latino killing rampage. There have been a number of lower-level acts of terrorism that reached fruition as well, ranging from rampaging gunmen in Knoxville, Tenn., and Moscow, Idaho, to a conservative wingnut who was sending out hoax anthrax letters.

All of these cases underscore the fact that domestic terrorism is almost completely off the Bush administration's radar -- except, of course, for those "eco-terrorists." What the "war on terror" we've gotten from Bush has amounted has been little more than a political marketing campaign.

Until we mount a serious campaign against terrorism that recognizes it for the global beast that it is -- one perfectly capable of emanating from our own soil -- we won't be doing anything to effectively halt the forces that actually breed terrorism.

And what George W. Bush's post-9/11 "war on terror" has done has actually harm our ability to do that for many years to come. He may not have suffered any further attacks, but that does not mean he kept us safe, now or in the future.

Roy Edroso of The Village Voice puts together a handy guide to all your favorite far-right whackos of the blogosphere.

Looks like FDL is getting in on the fun with their own reference guide: The Official FDL Election Season Guide to the Left-Wing Traitorsphere

A few reactions from around the blogosphere, to Obama's big speech. Also, here, here, and here.

Halfway There: Thanks to our news media, I realize I come from a family of terrorists and can never be president.

Consortiumblog: Iraq War as War Crime (Part One) and (Part Two)

Econbrowser: Iraq Burn Rate > $12 billion per month?

gin and tacos: Anatomy of a partisan gerrymander

King of Zembla: The Village People and the Osmonds were narrowly aced out by Wham!

The Village Voice would have you believe that it paves the way for some sort of international tribunal. I'm just hoping it doesn't go down the memory hole unnoticed...

While the Democratic Congress has yet to begin a serious investigation into what many European legislators already know about American war crimes, a particularly telling report by the International Committee of the Red Cross has been leaked that would surely figure prominently in such a potential Nuremberg trial. The Red Cross itself is bound to public silence concerning the results of its human-rights probes of prisons around the world-or else governments wouldn't let them in.

But The New Yorker's Jane Mayer has sources who have seen accounts of the Red Cross interviews with inmates formerly held in CIA secret prisons. In "The Black Sites" (August 13, The New Yorker), Mayer also reveals the effect on our torturers of what they do-on the orders of the president-to "protect American values." Read on...

The Village Voice: From Joe McCarthy to Richard Nixon, he took them all on. Despite all his shortcomings, when it came to his journalism, he was fearless. In the current day, the public has pushed back against insider, access journalism�whether practiced by Bob Woodward, Judith Miller, or Robert Novak. Anderson always understood it was his role to be an outsider, not just in regard to the politicians he covered, but also vis-a-vis the established order of journalism, that established order having always been part of the problem...read on"

He's sorely missed now.

I had the chance to interview the great Horror and Sci-Fi director Joe Dante a little while back. His latest work is called "Homecoming," which was shown on Showtime. Dante talked about his influences in horror, what motivated him to direct this piece for the "Masters of Horror" series and the way he feels about many political issues of our day.

Update from Sinbaud: "Masters of Horror" marathon on New Year's Eve. "Homecoming" will be rebroadcast at the stroke of midnight, just as the champagne corks are popping.

Download | play -MP3 (25 min)

The King of Zembla interviewed Joe also.

You can read the Village Voice article on the film here.

(I edited out portions of myself speaking to Joe to make the file smaller)

--posted by John Amato

I've got a leak to sell you

Bob Woodward joined Larry King in his first interview after revealing that he knew the name of Valerie Plame and was called to testify in front of Fitzmas himself.

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I was talking to Jane and I agree that Bob knew he was going to be called as a witness sometime down the road so he finally came clean and told what he knew. First, listening to Bob for over thirty minutes almost put me in a self induced coma, but beside that is he really serious in his beliefs? If I want to leak something to a reporter, does Bob believe that I would hold out a bright-red-flashing-neon light that said "leak" while I talk to him? He can't be that naive, but the way he tells it, his source told him in such a casual manner that it didn't register to him. Isn't that the way a person would leak the information while trying to hide that fact, Bob? (By the way, you can forget some small potato being the leak. Bob wouldn't give those guys more than fifteen minutes of his time.)

Was Cheney, Libby and Rove sitting around playing "Texas Hold Em," wondering why Bob hadn't spilled his guts on the pages of the Washington Post all this time? Woodward only confirms that the White House was trying to tell every sympathetic reporter in earshot that Valerie Plame was CIA and Joseph Wilson's wife. It doesn't help Scooter's case either even though Bob can't seem to remember much from two years ago. I had the feeling that Bob thought he would be some sort of Gonzo reporter when he released this information, but instead looks like the village idiot.

FireDogLake says: "Bob Woodward managed to jam his giant ego into Larry King's tiny studio tonight to answer a few simple questions. To say that he did not dazzle before the cameras would be too kind. He really gave Sulzberger a run for the title of Bang Bang the Idiot Boy...read on"

AmericaBlog live blogged the whole telecast...

Teleconference Hackery

The Village Voice is reporting that a public affairs officer was part of the group of soldiers that President Bush talked to. Her name is Corine Lombardo who works for the military as spokesperson to the media.

Village Voice: The videoconference his handlers set up with U.S. soldiers in Iraq was staged, as the AP's Deb Reichmann just pointed out. But here's another part of the flack attack you may not know: The soldier on the left side of the front row was actually a flack herself, though she didn't reveal it during the regime's 24-minute infomercial....read on"

MediaCitizen has much more on this....

It's one thing to read the quotes in his book. Watching him say it while trying to look like he's some sort of a scholar is something else. Santorum's book promotion tour I think will not be all that popular. Even the wingnut "Torie Clarke" on CNN can't defend his position on working women and stay at home moms.

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Download | play -QT is a little better quality

BASH: Let me actually read one of these. Because I want to ask Tori about it. He says to your point, "many women have told me, and surveys have shown, that they find it easier, more professionally gratifying and more certainly more socially affirming to work outside the home than to give up their careers and take care of their children. "Think about that for a moment. Here we can thank the influence of radical feminism, one of the core philosophies of the village elders -- the village elders not so subtle swipe, perhaps, at Hillary Clinton." You're a working mom.

CLARKE: I disagree. I know women of all sizes and shapes and ages who have chosen many, many different paths. And they all put a lot of thought into it and lucky they can make the sorts of choices. You know, I think what's going to happen with this book is, some of those more inflammatory quotes are going to get a lot of mileage and the Santorum people will spend a lot of time saying, well that was taken out of context and you have to look at this aspect of it. And it will become a big, political battle. And there will be lots of ads and lots of counter ads. Transcripts