Expect things to get much worse if Paul polls well in Nevada, which looks possible.

This is possibly true, but trivially so; contrary to Derbyshire's implication, it is not evidence of anti-libertarian sentiment.  Rather, it's simply that negative information about people who aren't already famous, important, or already in the news is not newsworthy -- and that if Paul becomes more newsworthy, so will negative information about him.  Here's an instructive example you can try at home:  call a few local reporters and announce that you are holding a press conference to reveal embarrassing moments from your past.  Now, the sheer novelty of a random person doing this may actually prompt one of them to come out and write you up as a Local Man Being Weird, but this report will not make any front pages.  Why?  Well, not that many people care about you.

Ron Paul has not proven particularly newsworthy throughout the campaign: he shows no sign of being able to get 10% in even one state, let alone to win the nomination.  Is this because Paul could not get earned press coverage -- and was that a result of anti-libertarian sentiment among journalists?  In short, no.  Journalists have and have had good reasons to be skeptical of the Paul campaign's prospects for success.  I'll list just three huge ones:

 1.  Paul is and was only a Congressman, who faced Senators and Governors and former Senators and former Governors.  Paul has never won a statewide race.  Paul received similar levels of coverage in the early goings of the campaign as fellow Congressmen Hunter, Tancredo, and Kucinich.  (Paul has received far, far more coverage than those candidates over the course of the campaign, and probably even received as much or more coverage than Senators Dodd and Biden.)  James Garfield was the last Congressman to be elevated directly to the Presidency, i.e., it hasn't happened in over 125 years.

2.  Paul was vastly outraised and outorganized in the early going of the campaign, which were and are and always will be reasonably accurate measures of support.  Why are Paul supporters trumpeting his fundraising now that they have money?  Why were they decrying the importance of money when they didn't have much?  (Hint:  Sometimes the obvious answer is the right one.)

3.  Paul was and is attempting to become the nominee of a pro-war party during a year when the Iraq war has been among the very most important issues.

So journalists had very strong reasons to be skeptical of a Paul candidacy -- and journalists must be skeptical of the unproven and the hypothetically important, as everyone is always begging them for the spotlight, which can only go to a very few places at any given time.

Now, let's fast-forward to the last couple weeks and apply a bit of Shiny Object Theory.  (Recall the Theory tenet that there is competition for media attention.)  Paul currently isn't getting routine coverage like stronger candidates; however, he is drawing 5-8% in these early primaries.  Jamie Kirchick has published his investigative piece on the racist and homophobic material in Paul-published newsletters.  To what extent has the piece been given attention by others?  Some -- that 5-8% of votes is worth something to somebody, and those people are undoubtedly trying to push the story -- but outside some notice on prominent blogs and a chat with Wolf Blitzer, not that much.  (For example, "Giuliani Florida strategy" and "Hillary tears" get far more results than "Paul newsletters" when searching Google News.)  National journalists continue to pay little attention to Paul -- about as much as they are paying to the similarly uncompetitive Fred Thompson -- because he is no threat to win.  And as the media is paying little attention to the story, there has been no obvious effect on Paul's polling figures or vote totals.

Libertarian bloggers, on the other hand, are going libertarian-blogocrazy over the story.  ("Paul newsletters" trounces "Giuliani Florida strategy" and is roughly even with "Hillary tears" in number of results on Google Blog Search.) Why?  I can't help but wonder if it's not this:  They are trying to blow it up into the latest excuse for libertarians' failures to make significant impact on American politics.  They are laying the groundwork today so that, a year from now, they can gaze peacefully back through the haze of time and recall that Ron Paul nobly fought for their noble cause, only to have his campaign subverted by a single malicious attack.  And, guys, what was the content of that attack?  Anyone remember?  Oh yeah, it was the leftists accusing us of violating political correctness!  Of course - what else would it have been?  How could we have forgotten?!  So, we tried, but, as usual, they immorally lied...and probably physically coerced us too somewhere in there.  Bummer about this recession and war on Iran, but don't blame us: we didn't vote, but if somehow we would have known that we would be decisive, we would have voted for Ron Paul, and he certainly would have prevented the war...

A typical example is the FDA: approving a harmful drug (Type I error) kills people and looks bad publicly. Not approving a safe drug (Type II error) kills people but is mostly unseen. This incentive structure will tend to produce more Type II errors and also more deaths than if the appropriate trade-offs were taken. That is the standard story, as I understand it.

There is at least one other factor to consider which isn't part of the above story. Whenever there is a Type I error, the very bureaucracy that committed the error will often gain more power, and that power is above and beyond what is needed to correct similar errors in the future. This is due to various related factors, such as media hysteria, Congressional desire to "do something," etc.

The Thalidomide case would be a perfect example, except that the FDA had not yet approved it when the resulting birth defects became known (this was due to red-tape unrelated to the possibility of birth defects). However, after the drug was approved in Europe and the results became known, the expected hysteria ensued. But the FDA already had the power to regulate the safety of drugs. The resulting legislation also gave the FDA the new power to regulate the effectiveness of drugs. But the effectiveness of Thalidomide was never in question, only the safety, which the FDA already had the power to regulate.

The big problem with my hypothesis is that we don't see this going on more often. Regulatory agencies do seem to bias towards Type II errors, although they don't seem to mind benefiting from Type I errors. Perhaps there are institutional structures that prevent deliberate Type I errors, perhaps it is just dumb luck, or perhaps the examples are just not visible. I am leaning towards the last two explanations. 

Wait, what? Nothing we can do about it? According to the AP "It will happen regardless of any future actions to curb greenhouse gases, several leading scientists say." One climatologist says "there's nothing we can do about it... It's going to happen no matter what." No, this is not an article about climate change skeptics, the scientists referenced seem quite concerned about the flooding of history, as does the AP writer.

When it comes to specific historic sites, the only real one (in my opinion) that it lists is Jamestown. I really don't care about government space programs or one of John Edwards' many beach homes. Now I've been to Jamestown, and would it really be that hard to build a dike to deal with 1 meter of sea level rise? Please, no jokes about government dikes on the Gulf Coast: we're talking about a gradual rise over decades, not unpredictable hurricanes.

Wait, 1 meter? Where does that come from? According to the latest IPCC report ("the consensus" that we keep hearing about), the likely scenarios range from 18-38 cm up to 26-59 cm over the next hundred years. Averaging the median values for the six scenarios, the likely sea level rise is around 34.3 cm. So how can these guys say we'll get one meter (three times that amount) for sure, in either 50, 100, or 150 years (science isn't so exact)? Clearly, they are not part of "the consensus." The maps linked to above show increments of 1 meter from 1 to 6, but where are the maps for 18 cm? Blank out.

But wait again, isn't climate change supposed to be much worse? You might believe that if you get your information from Al Gore. But a climate change-skeptical publication has already debunked Gore:

It estimated that the world’s seas in this century would rise a maximum of 23 inches — down from earlier estimates. Mr. Gore, citing no particular time frame, envisions rises of up to 20 feet and depicts parts of New York, Florida and other heavily populated areas as sinking beneath the waves, implying, at least visually, that inundation is imminent.

That bastion of skepticism? The New York Times, of course.

And again, despite the fact that the quoted scientists say "there's nothing we can do about it," the AP story notes that next week: "world leaders will convene to talk about fighting global warming [sic]." And they don't note it in an ironic fashion. 

Perhaps I am making too much out of this whole anti-porkbusting thing, as I have previously called it a distraction from other fiscal issues, notably the Iraq War and Defense spending generally. But the examples keep coming: Instapundit recently described an earmarking incident as part of "a culture of corruption." I think he is right, though not in the way he thinks: the incident involved a Defense contractor (in fact, all 2007 pork was in Defense and Homeland Security bills). Sometimes the Pentagon examples are even more egregious.

I am happy to see that some pro-war conservatives have made basically the same point I am making (not surprisingly, from a fellow Dakotan). And quite conveniently, this glimmer of hope among conservatives only confirms my basic complaint: this blogger compared pork to entitlement spending, while completely ignoring war spending! And so, my confirmation bias is further entrenched and the crusade continues.

Of course, the Club for Growth does not pitch the story this way. In their press release, The Club cites several achievements of their endorsed challenger, Andy Harris, and several poor votes from the incumbent, Wayne Gilchrest. They also note that Gilchrest came in 212th on their 2006 scorecard. First of all, I would be immediately skeptical of any scoring system that places 25 Congressmen and 20 Senators above Ron Paul. And there is the fact that Gilchrest actually authored one of the pro-growth bills used in the scoring mechanism.

But let us leave those issues aside and take The Club's word for it that Gilchrest is "one of the most economically liberal Republicans" (though note that there are still at least 22 Republicans scoring lowering that Gilchrest for The Club to throw money behind). There is another issue that these two Republicans clearly disagree on: the Iraq War. Specifically, the incumbent Gilchrest is against it. The War is not at all mentioned in The Club's press release, and that makes sense as it is not one of the issues they claim to take a side on (although they have passed along pro-war propaganda on their blog).

My main point, however, is not to accuse the The Club for Growth and other conservative organizations of a deliberate campaign to support pro-war candidates by draping them in "fiscal restraint" garb (but it wouldn't surprise me of some were doing just this). Rather, it is that they are missing the boat on government spending. The Iraq War, and the entire Defense/Homeland Security apparatus, are the real fiscal problems bloating the budget to the tune of $1 trillion per year (see my previous posts for elaboration). And pork/earmarking, as loathsome of a practice as it is, is not the problem with the budget, constituting less than 0.5% of the federal budget. Either these porkbusting groups have their facts wrong, are willfully deceived, or they are purposively deceiving voters (shocking, I know!). In the end, the result is the same: more wars, but plenty of fiddling about non-existent pork.

My contention has been that the recent fervor over pork barrel spending, or earmarking, or whatever other names they give it, is primarily a distraction. The idea seems to be getting the "limited government" base worked up about a minor issue so that they will overlook more pressing issues of fiscal solvency.

Recently the fervor has heated up again. When the 35W bridge collapsed in Minneapolis, it was inevitable that some pundits, politicians, and bloggers would use it to bolster their own worldview. An interesting post on Instapundit quoted John McCain denouncing, what else, "pork barrel, earmark projects." The Instapundit went on to say: "we have big infrastructure needs, and we're spending money on other stuff -- and members would rather have their name on something shiny and new than on unglamorous repairs."

For the purposes of this blog, it should be noted that he picked up on the shiny object meme. But more germane to my analysis is the denouncing of "other stuff" that money was being spent on, presumably "pork," instead of repairs to this bridge and other infrastructure needs. (The fact that this tragedy involved a bridge was also certainly a boon to the porkbusting crowd.) The criticism of pork becomes quite confusing at this juncture. If we could go back in time and divert funds from other pork projects to the Minneapolis bridge, what would be the result? Certainly several lives could have been saved. But for the porkbusting crowd, the problem would still lurk, for spending on local infrastructure certainly qualifies as pork. Regardless of the validity of the local public good argument for infrastructure such as roads, it is an enormous stretch to claim that such spending promotes the general welfare of the nation.

Another related porkbusting story, published in the NY Times the same day as this Instapundit post (though not linked by The Pundit), tells us that after pork reform was instituted, members of Congress are using the increased transparency as a means of bragging to their constituents. But another story from a few days prior (also not linked by The Pundit) brings this criticism to my broader point: the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the Iraq War could cost $1 trillion. Based on my nonscientific analysis, there seems to be a huge overlap between those supporting the Iraq War and those on the Porkbusting Bandwagon.

And now we will return to my question in the first paragraph of this blog post. According to the anti-pork group Citizens Against Government Waste the fiscal 2007 spending on pork projects is $13.2 billion, while the federal budget is $2.77 trillion. In other words, pork barrel spending is approximately 0.5% of federal spending. Perhaps economists should start using pork barrel spending as a calibrating question in addition to foreign aid (see Table 16). Pork as currently defined is an extremely minor component of federal spending, but expanding the definition (as I have done in previous posts) would threaten too many grand projects that the Porkbusting Crowd loves.

Another story in the news may help to illustrate my point on a micro level: "U.S. contractors get half of aid to Colombia." The "foreign aid" being sent to Colombia consists primarily of military aid, and as this story illustrates, close to half of the $630 million doesn't even go to Colombia, but rather to private U.S. contractors. But don't worry, it's all to fight an important war on a plant. Or try this one from the past week: "The Aircraft That Can't Fly; Congress' $63 Million Boondoggle."

Okay, but you say, maybe that is wasteful spending. But it's not "pork" (me: so what?). And furthermore, $300 million and $63 million is peanuts compared to earmarks in general. As Citizens Against Government Waste reports in their annual Pig Book, total pork spending in 2007 was $13.2 billion, and they happily report that this is down from $14.9 billion in 2006. I would point out that while pork may have declined by $1.7 billion (a good thing, don't get me wrong), this came about by eliminating fully nine of the eleven pork-laden appropriations bills. And which two remain? You guessed it, Defense and Homeland Security.

But, I will further point out, the $13.2 billion in pork is peanuts compared to the grandaddy of waste, Defense spending. As Robert Higgs calculates, the annual spending on the military is now within range of $1 trillion annually. And in addition to that $1 trillion annually, there is another $1 trillion (or was it $2.3 trillion?) that the DoD can not account for. Oh, but aren't we fighting important wars in Afghanistan and Iraq? Well, the Iraq War (clearly the more expensive one) has cost over $400 billion, but that's over 4 years, or roughly $100 billion per year. Once again, peanuts compared to total military spending, but also not peanuts compared to "pork" which is supposedly bloating the budget. Speaking of Iraq, though, that $1 trillion figure rears its head once again.

In closing, I will reiterate that this whole porkbusting game is a distraction from the real waste in federal government spending, military spending. It's easy for Congressmen and pundits to complain about things like the bridge to nowhere, which is actually a bridge to an international airport (Can you imagine of lobbyists had to take a ferry to Dulles? They already have a nice free road and plenty of Metro/bus options, but now are building a Metro line). But taking a real stand for limited government by opposing military spending is much harder.

Sometimes films stretch reality to demonstrate a point (NB: I shall do my best not to "spoil" any of these films, but they were all released a minimum of ten years ago). For instance, the plot of Wag the Dog (released in 1997) involves the creation of a war out of whole cloth, simply by producing a few news releases and feeding them to media outlets. While even a conspiracy-theory-loving individual like myself can not believe this could actually happen (not right now, at least), the film does provide insights into war as theater, using war to distract the public, and other issues.

However, films can also give us insights into the nature of journalism without stretching the bounds of reality that much, and I will mention two slightly older films that focus on journalism. The first, Network, was released in 1976 and deals without the fallout of a nightly news anchor's on-air tirades, following his being informed that he will be fired. What follows is a clear case of "news as entertainment," as the newsman becomes the news himself. As Faye Dunaway's character comments:

You know, Barbara, the Arabs have decided to jack up the price of oil another 20%... uh, the CIA has been caught opening Senator Humphrey's mail... there's a civil war in Angola... another one in Beirut... the, uh, New York City's still facing default... they finally caught up with Patricia Hearst... and the whole front page of the "Daily News" is Howard Beale. 

By our own tentative criteria, shiny objects will eventually drive societal or political outcomes. However, I would submit this can be achieved through a crowding out effect as well. By distracting the public from other social or political events, the shiny object can be dangerous fear-mongering or benign fluff posing as news.

The "fluff as news" comment brings us to our next film, Broadcast News (released in 1987). The film itself is much "fluffier" than Network, taking on the genre of romantic comedy over drama/dark satire, but some of the same ground is covered. Much of the substance of the film involves Holly Hunter (like Dunaway in Network, a female television producer) trying to put "real news" above the fluff pieces that parade as news. Early on in the film, Hunter's character is giving a speech to local news broadcasters, which is clearly not going well (some of the audience is walking out). She then skips to her grand finale (my transcription):

I was going to show you a tape of a story carried by all networks on the same night. The same night! But not one network noted a major policy change in SALT II nuclear disarmament talks. Here's what they ran instead.

She then shows the segment: a huge display of dominos! At this point the audience (remember, consisting of those in broadcast journalism) suddenly becomes interested by this object and claps at the finale of the dominos run. They love it! Then they leave. Perhaps this is a stretch, but probably not by much.

Well anyway, watch the three films I mentioned, they're all worth your $4.99 at Blockbuster. And yes, I am aware that under my terms war can be either a shiny object or an ignored object under different circumstances. 

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran's president said on Sunday the Lebanese and the Palestinians had pressed a "countdown button" to bring an end to Israel.

Wrong.  He said -- according to the third paragraph in this very article! -- that such a button had been pushed for the destruction of the "Zionist regime".  I would uncontroversially submit that the destruction of a regime -- call it "regime change", if you like -- is not the same as the end of the country it governs.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who triggered outrage in the West two years ago when he said Israel should be "wiped off the map", has often referred to the destruction of the Jewish state but says Iran is not a threat.

The anonymous Reuters reporter (possibly some sort of Iran expert?) may be unfamiliar with the months-old essay in which Arash Norouzi argues that the "wiped off the map" line was a dangerous misreporting of an irresponsible mistranslation, i.e., that Ahmadinejad never said that either.  (Part of the confusion then was also the distinction between a regime and a country.)

"With God's help, the countdown button for the destruction of the Zionist regime has been pushed by the hands of the children of Lebanon and Palestine," Ahmadinejad said in a speech.

"By God's will, we will witness the destruction of this regime in the near future," he said.  He did not elaborate.

How hard would it be to grab a George W. Bush quote out of context, ominously to append that "he did not elaborate", and endlessly to repeat it to a foreign mass audience, thus "proving" that Bush is some sort of evil monster?  (Wait, don't answer that.)  So I have to ask:  Why is this "news" about Ahmadinejad being tidily repackaged and pumped out to Americans?

One such issue ripe for investigation is the war on drugs and drug policy. The general characterization of drug use as a problem of "the others," i.e. poor minorities, has been a common theme. The history of marijuana and the connection to Mexicans provides an illustrative example, but similar incidents occurred with opium and Chinese immigrants, as well as crack and inner-city Blacks. The story of crack cocaine, however, provides perhaps one of the most stark examples.

According to Robinson and Schleren's new book on drug war statistics, the first major news coverage of crack came in late 1985 with a NY Times story, and was followed in 1986 by an explosion of coverage: both Time and Newsweek ran five cover stories each (and both named crack the largest issue of the year), CBS aired 48 Hours on the Crack Street (the highest rated news show of this type in the 1980s), and NBC followed with Cocaine Country plus 400 stories on NBC News (more than one per day!). Major legislative changes came quickley with much tougher penalties for crack in 1986 (100 to 1 versus powder cocaine) and the establishment of the Office of National Drug Control Policy in 1988, as well as major "jawboning" changes by President Reagan in August 1986 with a re-declaration of the war on drugs. American citizens followed suit, naming drugs the most important problem facing the nation. For comparison, in 2004 only 1% of Americans thought drugs were the most important problem (don't blame the GWOT, Reagan was using the phrase in 1986 as well).

The data do not show any epidemic of crack use. According to a report from the Department of Health and Human Services (Table 4.3a), first time users of crack did grow at what may be described as "alarming" rates in the early 1980s, increasing from 65,000 in 1980 to 271,000 in 1986. The number did dip in 1987 to 262,000 new users, and maybe this reverse in trend can be attributed to the media/political attention. But the subsequent increases in 1988 and 1989 to the peak of 377,000 new users can not likewise be attributed to the same factors. Whatever the reasons for the changes in these figures, they need to put in perspective. According to the 1990 Census, the U.S. population was over 248 million in 1990, meaning that the new crack users represented 0.15% of the population. For another comparison, according to the same DHHS data from above (Tables 4.14a and 4.15a) there were around 3.4 million and 2.5 million first time users of alcohol and cigarettes during this time period.

And what of the crack babies? This memorable phrase turned out to be a shiny object within a shiny object. In both the number of cases and the medical effects on children, the story was certainly unscientific if not an outright myth. But the myth was reported far and wide.

The narrative of crack is being repeated today with meth. Senator Charles Schumer has stated unironically that "it's 1984 all over again" and furthermore that "if we don't remember our history we will be doomed to repeat it, because crustal meth could become the new crack." Indeed.

By the way, if anyone still wonders whether P-Shock's pet "theory" has relevance, consider this and, of course, this.  It seems clear that significant resentment can be generated simply via observation of the roving attentions of mass-media producers and consumers.  If social scientists could explain why, or at least how, attention shifts (is shifted?), we might be able to mitigate that anger.

1.  The observation that news-media attention (as distributed across the near-infinite set of all possible stories) exhibits temporal comovement:  many news outlets will feature essentially the same story (or set of stories) all at about the same time, very often within the same week.

2.  The mild claim that this outcome is not the product of random chance:  it is driven by competitive forces, both internal and external to the news industry.

3.  The capper:  by generating coordinated waves of temporary news attention, this process of competition can drive long-lasting societal or political outcomes.

Newsweek's Weston Kosova went looking for the competitive forces at play in the Don Imus affair.  Here is his effort to trace the thread:

26-year-old Ryan Chiachiere wasn't a fan, and he wasn't tuning in to be entertained.  Chiachiere is one of a handful of young activists who spend their days wading through hours of radio and cable shows for Media Matters for America, a liberal group whose sole purpose is rooting out and "correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media."  Wired on coffee, Chiachiere was watching a recording of Imus's show when he noticed the "hos" remark...

The group posted a video clip of the exchange on its Web site and put it up on YouTube.  It sent e-mails to journalists and civil-rights and women's groups...

Young black journalists were among the first to demand that Imus be ousted.  Thursday evening, one day after Imus's comments, Jemele Hill, an ESPN reporter, posted the Media Matters link on the National Association of Black Journalists' e-mail list...  In a matter of hours, black journalists in newsrooms across the country were clicking on it, and getting angry.  The next day the NABJ demanded an apology from Imus, then called for him to be fired.

That gives a good account of elements #1 and #2, but what of #3?  Will the Imus affair drive long-lasting change?  We can't know yet, but Kosova writes (in a parenthetical remark!) that "[t]he Imus saga now joins the O. J. Simpson verdict and Hurricane Katrina as vivid chapters in the story of race in America."  Hm.

Part of me would like to close this out by making some slam-dunk statement to the effect that Don Imus, having made his career in some part by broadcasting snap judgments about people who happen to be in the news that day, has reaped what he helps sow.  It's true that I wouldn't choose to make my living doing what he does, but I really don't even know that the way the journalism industry works is "good" or "bad".  I do believe that the "neutrality" claimed by many journalistic enterprises is a self-serving myth, and thus it seems wise to remember that "the news" is at least partially designed to serve the interests of men and women behind the curtain.  On that ground, there is little cause to be upset at someone like Imus, whose entire enterprise makes it abundantly clear that what he says comes from him.  Then again, Bill O'Reilly is also okay on that ground, and having seen his show I know that I find O'Reilly's enterprise to be irredeemably anti-intellectual.  By contrast, I don't know any more about Imus than what I've read this week, because I've never listened to his show; for sure, though, nothing I've read compels me to seek it out.

On the supply side:  If narratives are forever unchanging, journalists don't have to engage in difficult (i.e., costly) rethinking in light of new events.  Furthermore, they expect that they can afford to dodge a general rethink of a subject because they expect that the the latest event involving the subject won't be in the news for very long.  (In other words, the agents in the model understand the theory.)  Only rarely does this expectation turn out to be incorrect, but even when it does (say, after three continuous years of bloody war), journalists can still expect to be largely in control of the narrative and thus expect ample opportunity to deflect criticism.

On the demand side:  Newsreading is a casual endeavor, not a careful intellectual enterprise.  If readers have a casual understanding of an event, group, or person, they may find it difficult or not fun to follow any subsequent articles in which that casual understanding is missing or is demolished.  Furthermore, no one likes to be told they were wrong, especially by the people who taught them.  This is exacerbated if readers have accepted the narrative and have gone around talking about it to family and friends; they would then have a vested social interest in its correctness.

Any thoughts or other ideas?

The trajectory of the KSM news cycle can roughly be traced by viewing archives of the Drudge Report. The story first appeared on Drudge late (11:36pm) on Wednesday March the 14th. The story stayed in Drudge's upper-left section for most of Thursday, with plenty of additional links added throughout the day (usually in red font). Then, less than 24 hours later, at 10:19pm on Thursday, Drudge began running the headline about the "exaggerated claims" of KSM. The last time the story appeared on Drudge was 12:39pm the following day (Friday). After that, the story dropped from being the large font, top story, right down the memory hole. As so far as I can discern, Drudge has not mentioned it since.

Now my tracing of the stories trajectory only follows one site, the Drudge Report, which is usually quite idiosyncratic in choosing precisely what the "top stories" are (a story about $1,000 pizza was competing with the KSM story for a time). However, I will make the assertion that Drudge's following of the KSM story closely paralleled the MSM coverage. The pattern was: print government news release basically as "fact," report the fallout briefly (so you can't be accused of bias in some undescribed direction), then quickly bury the story.

What are the lessons to be drawn, or more forcefully: So what? For one, the inability of the press to question government claims until "anonymous government sources" do so is a recurring issue. Also, there seemed to be some tone of vindication (initially) that: a) the GWOT is working; b) torture is a useful means of extracting information; and c) somehow, the antiwar crowd is wrong.

I really don't know the long-lasting societal or political consequences of this story, but the absurdity and creepiness of it quite obviously prompted a lengthy response from certain econo-bloggers.

None of this is to say that KSM was not partially responsible for some of the attacks he confessed to. He almost certainly was. But the absurdity of the 31-item confession seems quite evident when you read it now (seriously, assassinating the Pope and Carter?). Is this is not mere hindsight, as while I have no documentary evidence, I will vouch that I was laughing (partially in horror) at the claims before the "exaggeration" version of the story broke.

She said: "Since I became a mother, I cry more because I care about things more.

"I can't watch a movie where something happens to a child.  And I've always cared about global warming and breast cancer, but now there seems to be an urgency about them."

Does one measure the urgency of global warming in terms of the sea level, or in terms of Google searches?  If it's the latter, compared against a benchmark that we always have with us, Ms. Garner appears to be right as rain.

This post would have required some serious explanation two days ago...

Thelmon Green, the old man who for seven years has lived happily in a Chevy van in the 3800 block of North Keystone Avenue, is being evicted by the Marion County Health Department.
 
Sheryl Crum, who works for the department’s housing division, visited Green’s van on Thursday and pronounced the scene: "not a healthy place to live."

Green objected to Crum's ruling, but was resigned to it.  "I'll just find me another place," he said today.

...

Health officials learned of Green, who's either 93 or 86 (depending on whether you believe him or the government), through a Dec. 26 Indianapolis Star story, which described his unconventional yet fulfilling life: no income, many friends, and a huge social network of people in the neighborhood who look out for him and provide for him.

No income?  No address?  Such unhealthy, untaxable conditions!  Thank goodness for that heartwarming feature story; otherwise, "health officials" never would have found him...