I checked Instapundit and LGF and thought it was interesting that there's not a single reference on either site today to the NSA/wiretap/FISA issue. None at all.

Specifically, Scarborough was apparently convinced that the Times had deliberately chosen to run the story on Friday in order to ruin the otherwise good news about the Iraqi elections, and wanted to chat about that.

Yeah, which is why the wiretap colum was squeezed to the right and most of the front page was taken up with a big full-color picture of the Iraqi elections.

The scumbags are desperately hoping his thing goes away.

Any white women missing? What's Ward Churchill saying? Is Michale Moore still fat? Did Murtha really deserve those purple hearts?

Face it trolls. Chimpy screwed the pooch on this one.

It prolly wouldn't have mattered if ONE MILLION people had switched their vote, thanks to their corporate masters at Diebold.

You know, when Bush said he was going to be exporting freedom and democracy to Iraq he didn't make it clear that it was our own freedom and democracy that he'd be exporting.

Think we could ask the Iraqis if we could have it back?

"If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator."
-W

Thank The Good Lord the media protects the innocent electorate from those evil "facts"! Don't want people to make decisions based on anything but their 'gut,' and parrotted lies about Kerry.

robbymack has it right. We're kidding ourselves if we think 2004's result could have been changed by anything.

The Al-bot should be back soon with today's convenient fiction...

We'll never know if it would have changed the election result.

Would some people have voted differently had they known more about the Plame affair? More would have been known had Bush folks not lied.

My guess is that about 20-25 percent of all voters would support Bush no matter what. And most of that percentage actually approves of his questionalble behavior because he is their kind of guy. Too bad, but that still leaves a lot of voters up for grabs.

It certainly would be nice to know the answer to your question Kevin.

Patriotism, Blaming Clinton, 9/11, Librul Media, so called Activist Judges, etc ALL the refuges of scoundrels.

We get the 'democracy' we so richly deserve.

Millions don't care about it at all. Millions more are so pig-ignorant of the Constitution, this kind of thing just doesn't register with them -- 4th Amendment? Hell, that's not a suicide pact! Millions more worry more about their taxes than totalitarianism-lite, so they rank money higher than democratic principles and vote accordingly.

100,000 votes in Ohio may have mattered in the short run, but until and unless people, including our politicians, care more about the concrete, explicit codicils of our representative democracy over the tenditious abstraction of 'freedom' — we're only papering over the real and deep problems we face in this country.

What else is new?

Actually only 50 thousand of them would have had to "switch" their vote...more likely a bunch of fence sitters would have stayed home.

So now we know, it was more than a year that they sat on the story. I had wondered if it was known to them pre-Election. Oh well, I guess.

Please God, can we actually have the liberal media that they say we already do?

That would be so sweet...

I'm going to be perverse enough to suggest that publishing the story before the election would have helped Bush.

Remember the Bin Laden letter? Anything that put national security on the front page helped Bush.

DNS: I checked Instapundit and LGF and thought it was interesting that there's not a single reference on either site today to the NSA/wiretap/FISA issue. None at all.

Of course not.

Conservatives are in denial.

Every theory they proffer to show that the bad news for Bush and his low polling numbers are not his fault and not earned, but the fault of the all-powerful media (now, if the MSM were that powerful an influence on the public and hate Bush, how come Gore or Kerry didn't win the election in the first place - seeming to suggest that Bush earned the presidency by illegitimate means, since it could not possibly have been by winning public opinion in the face of the all-powerful MSM), gets immediately destroyed by the facts.

All of you pinko lefties make me sick - Name one other Dictator that would have allowed questions from reporters at a News Conference.

Is is a great "free" country or what?

The morning talk shows are full of Bush defenders who say they would love to have the government listening to every phone conversation in America. Yessir, that'll put an end to crime and defeat those Commies once and for all. (I mean terrists. What century is this, again?)

O.K., I knew it all along, but I'm still amazed. Republicans have no intellectual consistency whatsoever. When the government was forcing them to go to school with blacks, forcing them to clean up their factory emissions, they wanted to emasculate government. Now that their side is in control, let the government bloom!

Makes one appreciate the farsightedness of the founders and their system of checks and balances. They knew there would always be a significant number of people who would support repressive government if they agreed with its aims. But what happens if people who only only care about their side winning also control the Supreme Court? A good reason to filibuster every Bush nominee until the rascals are at last voted out!

Three notes:

1) This NY Times also declined to press Judith Miller who knew that Rove and the administration had lied about who outed Valerie Plame.

2) Friday is normally the day to bury news, because it's just before the weekend. It's laughable to suggest they printed it on that day to raise its profile.

3) The Times also employees Matt Bai and Susan Buhmiller as major economic and political reporters respectively. Both are pretty awful at challenging any tripe stuff the administration trots out.

4) It's really tough to wade through all the BS now to get at the good stuff written at the Times now. So much is just unverifiable or just appears to be garbage. They're killing their brand name - that can't be good for business.

OK 4 - I can't count. With another one.

One of the dynamics that fascinating too watch is to see how much the press are like sharks - they follow bleeding. When a candidate is losing they pile on, and when a candidate is winning they back off.

That's partly what the Bush team is so good at: never give an inch, and never look weak. Stop the bleeding at all costs.

But the Democrats are reluctant to start the bleeding. During the 2004 campaign the Kerry people consciously chose not to run a negative campaign. They never pushed a Bush is dumb, or bush is dishonest, or Bush is clueless meme. They kind of looked at the major media to do that for them. I have to wonder if they had gone negative and gotten traction - do we honestly think the NY Times would have sat on the story?

Damn the NYT to hell.

Uniformed Officer: STOP!
Citizen: What? OK.
Uniformed Officer: Are you a terrorist?
Citizen: God, no. Why?
Uniformed Officer #2: Disingenuous reference to the Christian God, questionable denial and questioning of authority. He's a level 2.
Uniformed Officer #1: Spread 'em!
Uniformed Officer #2: What have we here, "Akbar"? A leather wallet? Aren't those prohibited by Islam?
Citizen: Leather? That's Hindu!
Uniformed Officer #1: Good interrogation! He didn't deny being Islamic. We've got him dead to rights.
Uniformed Officer #2: Heh heh heh. If he HAD any rights.
Citizen: Ow ow OW! Stop! You're hurting me!
Uniformed Officer #1: This is mere physical discomfort allowed by UCMJ, short of death caused by organ failure. Quit complaining.
Uniformed Officer #2: Yeah, "Akbar", quit being a wimp.
Citizen: STOP! PLEASE! STOP!
Uniformed Officer #1: Let's have a look at his car.
Uniformed Officer #2: Treasonous literature!
Uniformed Officer #1: Degenerate artwork!
Uniformed Officer #2: He's a traitor for sure.
Citizen: That's a Frou Frou CD! Are you crazy?
Uniformed Officer #1: Book 'em, Dano!

This is the same NY Times that spiked a story about Bush's bulge . . the NASA scientist who used space-age technology to enhance the video image of Bush in the debate, producing an image that strongly suggests Bush was getting prompts from off-stage.

We'll never know for sure, but if *both* of these stories were in the open before the election I believe that the outcome would have been effected.

It's not a matter of 100,000 people in Ohio chaning their votes (actually you would just have needed about 53,000 to change their votes. It was to discourage a few libertarians from bothering to vote at all, getting it closer and then making the effort to cheat all that much more difficult (and difficult to hide). Then a recount comes into effect and people care about the recount because the election stands on edge.

Also Kerry's problem was that (unlike Florida) there were a number of different cheats in play. How can you fight five simultaneous lawsuits, all of which have to be successful (and all of which will surely be litigated to the Supreme Court which miscarried justice shamelessly once before)? The closer the election, the less you have to do to try to prevail (and presumably the more ebarassed SCOTUS) would be.

Well I guess it depends on your definition of "wiretap"?.?.?

Secondly, there are such things as roving wiretaps. Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires -- a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so. It's important for our fellow citizens to understand, when you think Patriot Act, constitutional guarantees are in place when it comes to doing what is necessary to protect our homeland, because we value the Constitution.

Why does the President hate America?

Maybe this survelliance doesn't include wiretapping...maybe it is wirelesstapping?

KEVIN DRUM: So not only was the timing not intended to hurt Bush, it's far more likely that the timing helped him considerably.

So not only was the timing not intended to hurt Bush, it was clearly intended to help him.

KEVIN DRUM: After all, if this firestorm had been made public before the election, do you think a hundred thousand people in Ohio might have decided to change their votes?

But you didn't do that then. You won't even do it now.

So now we know, it was more than a year that they sat on the story. I had wondered if it was known to them pre-Election. Oh well, I guess.
Posted by: mattH on December 20, 2005 at 12:04 PM | PERMALINK

I thought that the loophole in FISA that Al cited last night only permits the president to do this for 1 year. . . hmmmm. . .

Please God, can we actually have the liberal media that they say we already do?

This occurred to me the other day, listening to NPR jump through hoops talking about FISA being "unpopular" with FBI agents because they found it bothersome. NPR for God's sake. Today's LA Times has a banner headline "Bush Insists on Tools to Fight Terror" instead of "Bush Insists He is Above the Law". John Yoo is still writing op-eds for them, while Bob Scheer was pink slipped. Unbelievable.

LW Phil wrote: This occurred to me the other day, listening to NPR jump through hoops talking about FISA being "unpopular" with FBI agents because they found it bothersome. NPR for God's sake.

National RePublican Radio has been blatantly shilling for Bush since the 2000 campaign. They are bought-and-paid-for corporate whores. Their political reporters moonlight at Fox News.

I agree that the Times should have published sooner, but I doubt it would have influenced the vote much. Unfortunately, a lot of people have been so scared by the Republican hysteria over terrorism that they'll support breaches of civil liberties if they're told they'll help in the WOT. My guess is most of the people that this story would have influenced weren't going to vote for Bush anyway.

Fuck the NY Times for not releasing this news in a timely manner. We can no longer trust NY Times, LA Times, or Wapo to provide timely information to make informed decisions with.

The supposedly ultra-liberal Chris Matthews made the same arguement on his show last Friday.

This from the site that Kevin linked to, but did not reference. It suggests the Times is timing their story for effect.

This is part of a larger story I hope to tell in my dissertation about how presidential scandals are driven in large part by approval ratings. Media outlets and politicians appear to time their rhetoric for maximum impact. And in this case, the environment for creating a scandal is far more favorable today than it was a year ago. Similarly, Democratic criticism of the program is far more harsh than it would have been as recently as 2004 -- and that's because they don't fear the repercussions of questioning Bush's anti-terror policies nearly as much as they once did.

jayarbee wrote to Kevin: If the Times, if other major media, if Amy Goodman, if you had simply and plainly stated that Bush is a liar, a thief, a murderer; [...]

Do you by any chance mean Amy Sullivan, who occasionally writes for Kevin's blog? Rather than Amy Goodman, the journalist and host of Democracy Now?

I cannot think of anyone who has done a better job, day after day after day, of informing the public about the wrongdoing of the Bush administration than Amy Goodman and Democracy Now. She's a hero in my book.

clark wrote: The supposedly ultra-liberal Chris Matthews [...]

Who in the world "supposes" that Chris Matthews is "ultra-liberal"?

Chris Matthews is a consistently reliable shill for the Republican Party, the Bush administration and the corporate-feudal ruling class that they serve. He's about as "liberal" as Rush Limbaugh.

The American people have seen the Bush administration and its lemmings unmasked.

And they don't find it a pretty sight.

Secret police.

Secret orders.

Secret laws.

Secret courts.

Secret prisons.

Domestic spying.

Torture as state policy.

Invasion of countries that have not attacked us.

Unfettered executive power.

Reminds one of Stalin, Hitler, and Saddam, now doesn't it.

As someone on another thread implied, Bush is living proof that Intelligent Design is a very, very flawed theory, religious, scientific, or otherwise.

"This is part of a larger story I hope to tell in my dissertation about how presidential scandals are driven in large part by approval ratings."

Then how does he explain the Clinton impeachment? Clinton's approvals never once dipped below the mid-60s (if that) and were in the 80s or 90s during the actual impeachment.

SECULARANIMIST: Do you by any chance mean Amy Sullivan, who occasionally writes for Kevin's blog? Rather than Amy Goodman, the journalist and host of Democracy Now?

Shorter MSM:

Easily disprovable story about a Democrat that makes them look bad 1 month before the election: STOP THE PRESSES. THE OBVIOUSLY INDEPENDENT SWIFT BOATERS MUST BE HEARD.

Provable story about a Republican violating the law and possibly the Constitution 1 month before the election: SIT ON THIS ONE, NO PUBLIC INTEREST HERE.

SecularAnimist... and please also forgive typo of your handle above..:)

Bush on dictatorship now:

"To say 'unchecked power' basically is ascribing some kind of dictatorial position to the President, which I strongly reject."

Bush on dictatorship then:

"A dictatorship would be a heck of a lot easier, there's no question about it." - President George W. Bush, July 26, 2001.

"If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator."
- President-elect George W. Bush, December 18, 2000.

"You don't get everything you want. A dictatorship would be a lot easier."
- Texas Governor George W. Bush, July 1998.

Why would the New York Times care whether the story ran before or after the election? I'm going to guess that the Great Leader's Men put the strong arm on them or lied directly to them. Or, does this somehow involve Judith Miller? In any case, the Times does owe the public an explanation as to why un-Constitutional spying by the President was delayed for a year. A full explanation. That way, us lowly citizens (thank you Steven Seagal) can make a determination as to whether the New York Times is actually changing how it manipulates news reporting and whether there are other stories that it is withholding due to its "negotiations" with the White House.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- As Congress moves to slash $40 billion in spending, no program will take a bigger hit than college loans, where almost $13 billion would be cut over five years.

Why do Republicans hate education?

Is it because an educated public is less easily bamboozled by their mendacity?

They hate education because that is where all us 'wingnuts' get our 'wingnuttery'.

Hmmm, 44 comments so far and no one asked the critical question:

What made the NYT decide not to run the story before election day?

National security concerns? There's a laugh -- the NYT would publish shipping manifestos if they thought it would hurt GWB. They've been happy to publish anything, true or not, if it would hurt GWB, and they've been editorializing against the man from day one.

So why didn't they publish what would have been the October Surprise y'all were hoping for back in, well, October, 2004?

Why didn't the NYT publish back then? That's the critical question.

The NYT has lost all my faith. I used to be a loyal reader. When a newspaper has an explosive story, that story by definition will influence an election. Publishing something unflattering to an incumbent politician BEFORE an election necessarily hurts the incumbent.

Publishing something unflattering to an incumbent AFTER and election necessarily helps the incumbent.

So what is a newspaper to do? A newspaper's job is to publish the news, not sit on it. Either way, one side or the other is going to benefit and the other will be hurt so in the absence of any other countervailing reasoning, the duty of a newspaper should be to publish. Telling the American people that our government is spying on us is not the same as telling us HOW they are spying on us so national security issues are non-existent.

Poor Daniel Okrent. "Damned if we do, damned if we don't." Boo hoo. I have a question for Okrent. Why do you give a damn? Why should you?

Steve White: National security concerns? There's a laugh -- the NYT would publish shipping manifestos if they thought it would hurt GWB. They've been happy to publish anything, true or not, if it would hurt GWB, and they've been editorializing against the man from day one.

The Great MSM Conspiracy Theory.

Doomed by the facts.

Too bad.

It made such good reading (not) on conservative blogs.

Why didn't the NYT publish back then? That's the critical question.

Because they are Bush sycophants at heart who can only control their need to be journalists first for a limited time.

Advocate for God, it always does my heart good to find someone who seriously thinks the NYT is a right-wing rag.

Thanks for the chuckle!

Here's a meme to consider:

Maybe, just maybe, Bush and Cheney and Republicans make us MORE vulnerable to Islamofascism?

"Publishing something unflattering to an incumbent AFTER and election necessarily helps the incumbent."

Whahuh?

It might be less damaging that it would be during election season, but publishing anything unflattering about anyone neccessarily has a, well 'unflattering' effect on them; election season or not.

Do I think 100,000 Ohioans would have switched their votes? You bet. 100,000 Reagan Democrats who voted for John Kerry based on the economy, etc., might have switched their vote if it started to look like the Democratic party cares more about the fact that we might be listening to a few dozen al Qaeda members' phone calls, than about al Qaeda itself.

Can we all chip in here now for Anne Coulter to hire a Truck and buy some ANFO to put in it? ( My 2$ )

Why didn't the NYT publish back then?

I think that there are several dynamics operating to explain it. The overriding reason isn't easy to understand unless you are sensitive to the social politics of these businesses.

If, in front of a crowd in public, I accuse you of being a hate-mongering Nazi, I think you would become extremely self-conscious and watch your words carefully. In front of a public crowd, you wouldn't use words like kike, you wouldn't make racial stereotypes (about banking, big noses, etc.) because it would prove my point. You would keep it all to yourself, until you got among those who you knew were simpatico to anti-semitism.

That's pretty much what conservatives have managed to do to the MSM. The media have been neutered. By trying to be fair when the GOP accuses them of liberal bias, they get suckered into ignoring their journalistic judgment that knows what the real story is: These Neocons are corrupt to the bone and are destroying the country.

Not long ago I read that Karl Rove has every day of the rest of Bush's time in office scheduled out. That includes everything that Bush will be doing, everything that Cheney will be doing, and everything that both houses of Congress will be doing. Rove has everything that the GOP wants accomplished plotted out, legislation written, how it's to get passed, how to clear the path of obstacles, etc., all done and in every Republican operative's Dayrunner. Rove leaves nothing to chance. This is what they mean when they talk about the White House' and Republican leadership's extraordinary "discipline." Rove, Cheney, Frist, Delay, the entire GOP machine, don't give their caucus a moment to think for themselves.

Set aside the fact that Democrats have been unable to organize themselves like that, or get out in front of Republicans. The media can't do it either because, mainly, they don't see it as their job. They think of themselves more like sportcasters, calling the game. There's very little investigative journalism around, and those few who do it (Seymour Hersch) don't get *FRONT AND CENTER* coverage. They break a story every few months. That's not going to drive a revolution.

The media isn't going to do it for us, the Democrats aren't going to do it for us. Only we can do it for us.

Grassroots. In the streets. I know, it's winter, it's cold and lonely. But I swear to you, it won't be for much longer. Once our fellow fence-sitting Americans see the crowds forming in the streets across America, they will come and walk alongside.

Kevin sometimes allows his heart to overrule his mind. Why on earth would 100,000 people in Ohio change their vote based on this story? [actually, only about 60,000 vote changes would have swung the election -- it is rather odd that Kevin does not understand that]

It probably is more likely that voters would have moved Bush's way if this became an issue. Kerry probably would have stumbled on the criticism and looked like he was standing up for terrorists. In any event, Kevin is dreaming if he thinks this story would have had a significant adverse effect on Bush -- it would have played to his strength.

Kevin, you assume the people of Ohio had their votes accurately counted in the first place and so could have made a difference if NSA spying had been known prior to the election. I think that is a highly debatable assumption given the GAO report on 12/2 which got little coverage. There appears to be no smoking gun that votes were stolen but it does appear the bar to stealing votes was much much lower than we thought.

I'm more upset the Times saw fit to honor the Administration's request for secrecy instead of the public's right to know. That's dangerous.

Steve White: . . . it always does my heart good to find someone who seriously thinks the NYT is a right-wing rag.

It always does my heart good to find someone who seriously thinks that it isn't an establishment paper.

It also does my heart good to find someone who seriously thinks the MSM and Democratic criticism control Bush's polling numbers on every day of the year except election day.

Thanks for the extra-hearty chuckle!

AFG,

I really hate to add to Doc Steve's laughing - It might cause him to misdiagnose some poor soul's malady and his Malpractice Insurance may have lapsed - But, I too stopped reading the NYT following the 2000 selection process - Too much Kit Seelye and Elizabeth Bumiller and Frank Rich trying to demean Gore - Then we had the fawning of Seelye and Bumiller for Twigless again in 04 - Plus the rah rah pompomism of Chalobi's girl friend Judith of Arrogant - Also the fact that they had a firewall between the public and their "reporters". Even had a Public Editor who when returning from vacation admitted that he had not time to read the many e-mails from irate readers to his office.
Even Maureen Dowd was extremely wishy washy about Gore.
No Doc Steve, they are far, far from liberal. Now, tell us about that great "Liberal" rag of yours, the Trib - be sure to mention how they are ruining a once great paper, the LA Times.

From Brendan Nyhan's post:

Media outlets and politicians appear to time their rhetoric for maximum impact. And in this case, the environment for creating a scandal is far more favorable today than it was a year ago.

This really doesn't state the phenomenon correctly. In fact, both the media and politicians time their critical rhetoric to be heard when poll numbers are down because that's when it will make them seem popular and in tune with the times. It isn't about the popularity of the President, it's about the popularity of the messenger with the particular message they have to deliver -- that's what it's ALWAYS about, both when the President is up (where virtually no criticism will be heard), and when he's down (when all the stored up criticisms will finally be unleashed.)

In short, the true story here is one of human cowardice, in politicians and in our media. It is simply an accident of their cowardice that when poll numbers are down scandals suddenly start to get talked about.

And you can always expect that those at the very top, with the most invested in the their place of glory in the status quo, like the NY Times, will be the most obeisant, abject coward of all.

Another interesting thing about the Times, reported by David Sirota (or was it MMFA?): They back-paged the update reports by the 9/11 Commission giving low grades to the current government on post 9/11 preparedness. What's their game? And if they did keep the tapping story to protect Bush/National Security, why the snarky revelation right in the middle of the Iraq elections, which even I think was a bit cruel?

Steve White:

There's a laugh -- the NYT would publish shipping manifestos if they thought it would hurt GWB. They've been happy to publish anything, true or not, if it would hurt GWB, and they've been editorializing against the man from day one.

Ah, how it must please the people at the head of the Republican apparatus to know they can always count on rubes like Steve White and tbrosz.

Karl Rove et al have transparent contempt for Americans, but when you consider their supporters, you can understand why they might.

Tia writes, If, in front of a crowd in public, I accuse you of being a hate-mongering Nazi, I think you would become extremely self-conscious and watch your words carefully.

Actually I probably wouldn't watch my words in public.

I'd call you out for the jerk and asshole you'd be to accuse me of being a hate-mongering Nazi.

There, see? A perfectly acceptable alternate scenario for your supposition.

thethirdPaul writes, No Doc Steve, they are far, far from liberal. Now, tell us about that great "Liberal" rag of yours, the Trib - be sure to mention how they are ruining a once great paper, the LA Times.

The Trib is a middle of the road paper. The LA Times was, is and will always be a hopeless mess, no matter who owns it.

the NYT would publish shipping manifestos...

What the hell is a shipping manifesto?

The timing thing is quite possible though without too much malice behind it. The story was probably ready for some time ...and adjusting the launch date by a few weeks would be a judgement call made by some liberal supporter.

the NYT would publish shipping manifestos...
What the hell is a shipping manifesto?

Something like "If you elect me as captain, I will double the ration of rum and ensure that we only take on and offload cargo in ports with lively red-light areas"?

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